In the editorial published on January 3, 2021 on Corriere della Sera, Francesco Giavazzi states that, for Next Generation EU projects, the preliminary to any other definition is to establish what are the boundaries between the action of the State and that of "private individuals". The author seems sure of the fact that the role of the State should be that of "identifying the priorities of the programme", without being its "main actor": just a "regulator", in short, while it is up to private individuals to define the projects and bring them on a fixed-term basis, without disturbances from the political power and the institutions.
History is often used to corroborate arguments in a debate on the present: its instrumental use is an easy exercise, if no one dares to make objections in a cross-examination that underlines the complexities of the historical precedents referred to, before sinking the jab final, almost always ideological. Instead, the whole story must be told, because it is more complicated than it appears, and it is not possible to identify any contemporary historical path in which the boundaries between the state and private individuals in the economy have been clear-cut and defined as is often hoped for in abstract argumentation.
For example, it is permissible to write that the economic miracle is the work of "private individuals" ("private entrepreneurs" would be more correct), however does not correspond to reality. If we read the interviews conducted by the Economic Commission of the Constituent Assembly with entrepreneurs and managers in the post-war reconstruction phase, it emerges that, if we had followed the "philosophy" of private individuals, today we would have an excellent economy to produce cuckoo clocks. This is what Pasquale Gallo, temporary commissioner for Alfa Romeo, proposed as an ideal for Italy: the Swiss model, organized craftsmanship.
For the Falcks, standard bearers of the private iron and steel industry, that economy was fine, but would they have been able to manufacture, from scrap, steel for the seventeenth century and then for the sixteenth century, for pipelines, for household appliances, for containers for the food industry? Absolutely not. For those products, essential for Italy-Pollicino to wear the "seven league boots" (an annual increase in GDP of almost 6% between 1950 and 1970), it was crucial that Finsider, an IRI company, obtain from the Americans, who disbursed the resources of the Marshall Plan, funding to operate continuous rolling mills. And Commissioner Gallo's Alfa Romeo, who wanted it to produce a few luxury models, by whom was it transformed into a serious automobile industry, which at the end of the 1954s was one step away from acquiring BMW? The answer is easy, from Giuseppe Luraghi, public manager, general manager of Finmeccanica who launched the Giulietta in XNUMX.
We are so sure that methane from the Po Valley would have been used in a way more favorable to the interests of the country by private individuals, by some American multinational, by Carlo Faina's Montecatini, or by Giorgio Valerio's Edison, rather than by Eni of a public manager like Enrico Mattei? If I reread the pages of Eugenio Scalfari and Giuseppe Turani in Razza master, the difference between Mattei's stature and the mediocrity of the two heads of big private Milanese companies is simply abysmal.
I know very well the limits and shortcomings of public managers, and how some of these subsequently scuttled IRI and transformed ENI into a cemetery of "smoking ruins", but this does not detract from the grandiose season in which competent and efficient state entrepreneurs/managers have built (rather than re-built) the national economy, providing the country with infrastructures (motorways, telecommunications) and large companies in the most diverse sectors (steel, mechanics, energy, petrochemicals, shipbuilding). Among these is Gianangelo Giavazzi, father of the author of the article I am commenting, general manager of Finmeccanica and president of Dalmine for 12 years, then in the IRI group.
What about private individuals? Some of these were protagonists of the "miracle", but I have already had the opportunity to write how Italian private entrepreneurship has been "badly educated" by state support that has never been lacking over the last century, in various forms and as a response to a plaintive and not very dynamic attitude. Perhaps we should once again mention the names of these champions, however, once the Pantheon has been defined, a thorough investigation should be made into who really took the business risk (with their own resources) and who instead obtained large and substantial public backings.
But anyhow, today the large private Italian company no longer exists, if not in sectors that cannot represent the country in the global game of the XNUMXst century, nor can it be represented by transnational groups such as FCA or Tenaris, or by a few, too few, dynamic exponents of the well-known "fourth capitalism". Unlike the reconstruction phase, today we don't see "long-line" entrepreneurs, with the prospect of bringing Italy to results that are difficult to imagine before their action could unfold, such as Oscar Sinigaglia and Vittorio Valletta.
The big company in Italy today is controlled by the State, like Enel, Eni, Fincantieri and Finmeccanica. The fabric of industrial districts has not yet recovered from the 2008 crisis and those that survive struggle to keep pace with a tumultuous global economy, both in phases of growth and in those of crisis and decline. We can not ignore finally the contribution of public funding – national and European – in frontier experiences: the acclaimed start-ups most often access development paths thanks to their inclusion in financial and technological circuits that have little to do with the myth of an indigenous and innovative heroic entrepreneurship.
In fact, it is not clear what kind of image of technology can nourish the idea that a country like Italy must develop "original" paths, when today, as in the first, second and third industrial revolution - three centuries of historical experience to consider – the circulation of ideas and technological applications has represented the high road of learning and consolidation for all Western economies. And perhaps it deserves a mention once again the role of the state – of several states – in promoting and funding research and technological development in sectors too important to fail the race for scientific innovation and its industrial applications.
"Succeeding in establishing the boundaries between the state and private individuals" is not "essential": it is impossible and useless. My approach, as a historian, requires me not to be prescriptive, but to carefully evaluate reality. Next Generation EU does not build on virgin ground, it is not destined for Mars, and it is of little use to give advice by appealing to an undisputed scientific authority to argue once again that it is better to see "inclusive" institutions at work - with the well-known fairy tale of “level playing field and therefore equal opportunities” – when urgent reality imposes choices that only a sovereign power can pursue.
Are we still in the state that "puts its hands in the pockets of Italians", the false and ideological fruit of many years of Berlusconi's propaganda? Really the debate can not go further to recognize that the "rent positions and benefits reserved for those who hold political power" are the same reserved for those who hold economic (and financial) power? Brandishing the mythology of the private entrepreneur is not a positive contribution, neither at the level of intellectual confrontation, nor for those who have to make important decisions by measuring themselves against the economic and social structure of a real country.
We cannot undermine the terrain of the debate by opposing terms such as "producers" and "State", the former good-efficient-dynamic-innovative, and the latter corrupt, par excellence, extraneous to civil society.
Let us remember that, in a democracy, we are the state and if we are dissatisfied with it, let each of us strive to improve it, according to our abilities, in this dramatic moment.
