Venice owes a lot to Paolo Baratta, for over twenty years president of the Biennale, years that represented a decisive leap in the work of one of the most important cultural institutions in Europe. After having illustrated in a recent book —The Garden and the Arsenal, Marsilio — his effective and innovative work in the Biennale, offers, in another book — From the South, Reflections and convictions from inside Svimez, The Mill — the testimony of the activity carried out, once again, in the service of the country.
The Industrialization of Southern Italy: Between Successes and Difficulties
It is a reinterpretation of what has been done and what has not been done to promote, from the post-war period onwards, the industrialization of the South and therefore the economic unification of the peninsula. A review of events, favored by the live broadcast Author's participation in the life of Svimez, from 1967 to 1978; a crucial decade in which "the era of great growth culminated, but also the public action in favor of the development of the South culminated". It is from mid seventiesindeed, that the Italian growth slows down, instead, the weight of current public spending increases further, new welfare instruments are being fueled also in the South while industrial growth, after the investments of the Sixties, will fall in the following decades to much more modest levels. And the government of the economy was in those years the theme on which a new ruling class of the country was formed. Even the Southern development slowed and the birth of the Regions further complicated the picture by interrupting the direct circulation of wills between the national community and local realities.
Svimez and the debate on economic development
Baratta, who graduated in economics in England, entered Pasquale Saraceno's Svimez where he remained for eleven years, which coincided with a phase that increasingly appeared crucial to him in the history of the Italian economy and society.
La SVIMEZ – Association for the development of industry in the South – is a private association, founded at the end of the war. It was fwave from Morandi and Saraceno and represented an important innovation in the Italian panorama. In the economic-social culture it was the Italian outpost of new energies that exploded in the world starting from the post-war period and in the following decades, revolving around the United Nations and engaged in the new problems of development of the emerging ex-colonial countries. It was the great novelty of the second post-war period. Svimez argued that in the new world economic order and in the new internal constitutional order theindustrialization of the South had to be promoted immediately under penalty of a chronic gap persisting which would have prevented the completion of national unity and ultimately damaged the entire Italian economy and society. It was from the beginning place of studies and proposals where economists and statisticians from different cultures, lay, socialist and Catholic, worked. A generalized membership was requested, a sort of constructive nationalism (as Baratta defines it), a farsighted look. They were proposals that went beyond the courageous actions implemented with the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, established in 1950 to promote dialogue with the World Bank, and which operated in the countryside and in infrastructure. There were industrial developments, important among these are those promoted by state-owned companies in the construction of large plants that processed raw materials operating in port areas. Baratta defines that development as a Porto Marghera expanded to the whole of the south).with a delay the Italian manufacturing industry began to decentralizeThe first mentioned crisis of '73-'75 was fatal.
Lessons from Economic History and the Legacy of Baratta
The book highlights a general teaching; that economic policy, unlike abstract theories, places the question of time for decisions and actions as a central issue. A lesson for today, which should put on guard against those who believe they can procrastinate on privileges or simply consolidated operating conditions and miss opportunities for more intense innovations, with the consequence of always finding themselves a little in the rearguard and dependent on the decisions of others.
Baratta later covered public positions, always at the service of the country, from the presidency of Crediop to those of minister in three governments (Amato, Ciampi, Dini), up to the presidency of the Venice Biennale from 1998 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2020.
Un personal memory from Venice: Pasquale Saraceno was a professor of Industrial Technology at Ca' Foscari in the 1960s and 1970s and we owe to him the creation of an innovative degree course in Business Economics, following in the footsteps of Bocconi; here too he left a trail of students.
