At least for Europe, the 1978s were characterized by the traumatic crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS), established in December 1992 and effectively put out of use by the events of the summer and autumn of 1998, and by the sudden recovery of the process of creating the single monetary area, restarted with the unexpected (albeit formal) reinstatement of the EMS and - above all - with the implementation of the previous Maastricht Treaty and successfully concluded in May XNUMX . Moreover, more or less in the same years, two other events of historical significance took place at an international level: the diffusion of a new technological paradigm (the so-called "information and communication technology": ICT), comparable to the innovations of the industrial revolution and those of beginning of the XNUMXth century, and the definitive introduction of emerging countries (first of all, the so-called BRICS) in world trade. Obviously, it is not possible to dwell on events of this magnitude here; it suffices to draw a few implications for the Italian case and for the problem of rents.
Italy, which since the beginning of the XNUMXs had maintained economic growth rates above or in line with the average of the other economically advanced countries, above all thanks to the competitive devaluations of the lira and the huge flows of public expenditure and which had an economic structure on arrears of services and on small and very small manufacturing enterprises (moreover, specialized in medium or low technology sectors), it was unable to face the competitive challenge imposed by the novelties of the nineties. In order to participate in the launch of the European Monetary Union (EMU), it had to correct its macroeconomic imbalances by proceeding, with a delay of a decade and in a less favorable European economic situation, with those adjustments that the competing countries had implemented - with greater gradually – already in the seventies or eighties. Moreover, these adjustments have had a negative impact on the 'real' economy, as they have added to the forced cancellation of past 'drugs' (competitive devaluations, public transfers, and so on) and the incapacity of our small and very small industrial companies to incorporate the new technological paradigm, characterized by organizational innovations and integration with advanced services. Our production system has thus become very vulnerable to competition from emerging countries; and it has increased its lag compared to the other major European countries which, in the meantime, were implementing microeconomic reforms aimed at increasing their competitiveness.
Faced with this situation, the Italian economic actors have reacted by further expanding the areas of income. A large part of our residual large private industrial companies took advantage of the privatization processes without market liberalization (1992-2001) to reconvert the activity and take refuge in protected sectors with respect to the competition, thus transforming old public monopolies into private quasi-monopolies; the inefficiency of public and private services has increased, especially affecting decentralized bodies and local businesses; the majority of small and very small businesses have tried to build protected 'niches' in the national markets, resorting to often illegal expedients (tax evasion, undeclared or 'grey' work, fictitious temporary or self-employment relationships); the privileged portion of employees has grown who, taking advantage of the low competitive pressure, have expanded their wages by incorporating robust annuity components; the privileged self-employed strengthened their monopoly barriers (orders, market barriers, etc.) and continued to thrive; the same banking sector, which also implemented an extraordinary process of consolidation and divestment of state control (1990-2002), maintained and increased the proprietary networks (chaired by foundations of banking origin) to protect itself from international competition. Consequently, the small group of medium and small Italian companies, which - challenging the negative environmental externalities (fueled by the positions of income, examined above) and the difficulties of adapting to the new - has been able to build and strengthen significant competitive positions in international markets, it had no appreciable impact at the aggregate level.
It therefore comes as no surprise that, between the second half of the 2005s and 2007 - i.e., coinciding with the period of the highest (albeit distorted) growth at the international level - the Italian economy initially achieved low GDP growth rates and then fell into a prolonged phase of stagnation. This situation is emblematically represented by the dynamics of productivity: since the mid-2009s, labor productivity and total factor productivity in Italy have recorded the lowest rates of increase among the countries of the European Union). Nor can it come as a surprise that, despite having a banking sector that remained on the sidelines of the international financial crisis of May 2008 - April XNUMX, Italy was one of the advanced economic systems with the worst GDP performance and with the highest incidence of corporate bankruptcies from the beginning of the 'real' crisis (autumn XNUMX) to today. Furthermore, the selection of firms has not led to the expulsion of the most inefficient ones: with the exception of the small subset of successful firms in international markets, the most solid firms and those most protected by rentiers have survived in the domestic market and many of those undergoing restructuring and more exposed to competition have left. Therefore, the Italian economy risks emerging seriously crippled by the long European crisis and becoming the most consistent threat to the survival of the EMU.
In the light of the above considerations, it is clear that Claudio Napoleoni's criticism of rents and the related economic policy proposals represent a precious legacy for coming to terms with the dramatic prospects of today's Italian economy. Our country has not been able to adapt to the new system of functioning of the economy at an international level (ICT, euro, emerging countries), which took hold in the XNUMXs, above all because it was suffocated by a growing and pervasive area of annuity. The positions of income, as defined by Napoleoni, have strengthened both in public administration and in private activities, both in services and in industry, both among entrepreneurs and among self-employed workers; indeed, especially in some phases (early XNUMXs, XNUMXs and mid-XNUMXs), they also involved segments of medium-low income wage workers. Today, after the most prolonged and severe crisis of our economy in contemporary history, the social cost of rents and the suffocating mass of associative ties, which is its corollary, are no longer compatible with Italy's membership of the EMU and to the same group as economically advanced countries.
Napoleoni's analyzes in the period of the Rivista Quarterly and his economic policy proposals in the second half of the XNUMXs, as well as the author's theoretical travails that allowed their elaboration, are therefore once again very useful. Obviously, it is a question of adapting these analyzes and these proposals to the current Italian situation and of interpreting them also in the light of the evolution of economic theory.
Regarding the first aspect, the growing and pervasive diffusion of areas of rent shows that both the productive bourgeoisie and wage workers would greatly benefit if Italian capitalism were reformed thanks to that cooperative and conflictual 'exchange', which Napoleoni outlines in the articles on the Republic of 1976 and deepens in the two subsequent reflections on economic policy mentioned above. This perspective involves the implementation of reforms, which could be called - with the author - "grain-reforms" but which would cease to be partial - in the sense of functional to capitalist interests only - to become a preliminary and necessary condition for the restart of the accumulation and development of the Italian economy and the implementation of more radical reforms. These would be "grain-reforms" aimed not only at making the environment in which Italian companies operate more efficient, but also at draining the multiple areas of income within the industry and services sector. To satisfy their objective, these reforms should hit the entrenched privileges of many social aggregates and open up to competition and economic innovations; and, since the transitions from the current Italian rent-based capitalism to an open and efficient capitalism require profound and socially costly changes, they should also erect effective public protections for the weakest sections of the population.
National programming, even in Napoleon's weakened version, should not have a significant space in the implementation of the new "grain-reforms" for the fight against rents. The systematic failures of the Italian planning State between the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, the widespread inefficiency of our current central and local public administration, the implosion of the Italian party system and the connected and growing spread of corruption, the exclusive attention the emergence of successive governments in Italy over the last fifteen years would make it unrealistic to entrust the reforms and consequent strategic investments for overcoming rents to national public planning, even if declined for specific areas of intervention. Thanks to the other aspect considered here (the recent evolution of economic theory) and to the progress of the economic governance of the EMU, however, it should be clear that this does not imply the reduction of the public or the exclusive recourse to market mechanisms. Instead, it is a question of engaging the public administration in crucial tasks of rationalization and of launching innovative economic policy, industrial policy and social policy initiatives that combine the various institutional levels, make use of contributions from both the public and the private sector and - above all – use the European rules as an opportunity rather than as constraints.
In particular, the national economic policy authorities would have, at least, six difficult tasks to carry out: (i) the elimination of rent positions which are the (direct or indirect) consequence of a distorted allocation of public expenditure; (ii) the allocation of a part of the public expenditure savings thus obtained to the qualitative improvement of education and research and - in general - of business services also through recourse to private initiatives; (iii) the allocation of the residual part of these savings and of the higher revenues, deriving from a more severe taxation of the persistent income positions, to the reduction of taxes on medium-low household incomes and on the activities of productive enterprises; (iv) a radical legislative and regulatory simplification that ensures the stability and effective safeguarding of the rights and duties of market players and that is based on policy making safeguards, on a reorganization of the public administration and on efficient market regulation ; (v) the establishment of policy guidelines which identify, through interaction with market signals and with those coming from intermediate institutions, the possible compatibility between the minimum discretion and the maximum selectivity of public interventions; (vi) a profound redesign of the welfare state, aimed at eliminating the current and pervasive distortions and offering effective protections and reintegration opportunities to those who will be marginalized by the processes of change.
In doing so, our country would really trigger the fight against rents, hoped for by Claudio Napoleoni, and would recover competitiveness margins in the European internal market and in international markets. This could give rise to a virtuous circle: by ceasing to pose the worst threat to the survival of the EMU and instead returning to fulfill the function of its influential member state, Italy would be able to push for the building of the necessary European institutions the implementation of more radical reforms.
