Calabrò's book "La morale del Tornio" Bocconi Editore University, aims above all to counter the general pessimism about our chances of recovery, "this widespread obsession with irreversible decline" which is transforming us into a population of depressed people who tend to see everything black and that they enjoy only when they can find confirmation of their gloomy predictions in the media. Which actually happens too often given the all-Italian tendency to denigrate ourselves, beyond the demerits that exist.
So let's go back to business, in particular to the manufacturing industry where we can boast extraordinary strengths and which we can enhance by appealing to the particular cultural richness of our land, to the sense of beauty and therefore of design that we internalize from birth, to the masters of work that has its roots in the great medieval craftsmanship, up to the most modern Italian industrial creations such as that of the "pocket multinational". The factory is a powerful factor in the creation and diffusion of culture, but it also arises from a widespread culture that knows how to become a business. In this sense, the company as a community has a strong ethical value because it is the terminal of a bundle of relationships that link it to the various internal and external social actors. Going back to the factory therefore means founding the recovery of our economy on moral values that can unify the social body and therefore give rise to that "good economy", i.e. that highly productive but supportive system based on a good balance between rights and duties and ultimately on individual and collective responsibility.
Calabrò guides us along an evocative journey of over 220 pages in which he explains how we can exploit our strengths and how we can instead overcome the ancient and recent vices of our society. The objective, achieved, is to demonstrate that change, innovation, is convenient for everyone and that those who think they can find real protection in the niches they had managed to build for themselves in the past are wrong. We must therefore open up to the market, obviously well regulated and transparent, because contrary to what many continue to believe, the market is far more moral than political intermediation which often offers glittering gifts which then turn into dangerous disappointments. And this also applies to business owners who have to ban union pacts and relational practices that too often have protected managers from their bankruptcies, thus damaging businesses and the communities that had formed around them.
It is therefore necessary to free Italy from what Guido Carli called "the archconfraternities of power" which prevent the good part of our culture from fully emerging and therefore from shaping a society on the basic principles of merit, trust, good reputation, winning the ancient habit of passing from one excess to another: a forcaioli period, the one after maximum tolerance so much "everyone does this".
The recipes for implementing this program are known: economic and industrial policy that avoids waste and excessive taxation, a real fight against corruption based not only on repression, but above all on prevention, a bureaucracy that must not serve only itself, as he said Gaetano Salvemini, but must respond to the real needs of citizens, a real Justice and not just the media, and so on. But to do all this, i.e. to create an efficient market, capable of enhancing our excellence in industry, as in other fields, we need a different and better state than the current one which must withdraw from some sectors (such as companies that can stay on the market) and looking after others more efficiently, and therefore institutions capable of selecting a different political class from that of the recent past (but still very present in the system), which seemed dedicated only to taking care of their own business. I don't know if it is good institutions that create a good widespread culture, or if vice versa it is general culture that creates institutions in its own image. Maybe relationships go both ways. But in concrete terms, having to quickly start changing our behavior, I believe it is necessary to start from the institutions and the need to make laws that encourage certain behaviors of citizens, penalizing the vices that we have accumulated over the years.
Information, for example, can improve if Rai is freed from subjection to political parties and if, instead of encouraging political publications, the market is opened up to real investors in the sector, ensuring a general cost containment. Then we must not underestimate the role of good finance for the development of businesses while today there is a tendency to demonize all banks to a certain extent, including the Italian ones which have made little speculation and which have gone into crisis because they have given too much credit to companies which they didn't deserve it.
A profound change in the mentality and role of the trade unions must also be fundamental. We need to move from ideological conflict to collaboration. It is necessary that the new factory can count on the active participation of the workers and on their assumption of responsibility in the efficient management of the production process. It is a radical change from the concept of the mass worker and the struggle against the boss. To change the union culture, we also need new rules that push towards cooperation and that tend to cool down conflicts.
Calabrò's book demonstrates that a return to manufacturing is not only possible, but it is also the only road that Italy can take to resume a path of development that is moral, socially equitable and sustainable. Culture has the task of explaining it, of giving people certain points of reference, as this book does with particular skill, of bringing industry and its values back into the spotlight. Today, working in the factory appears at the bottom of the scale of the desires of our young people. And instead the modern factories (the neo-factories), have nothing to do with the black and smoking sheds of the films of the first half of the last century, and therefore going to the factory must once again become fashionable, make status.
