Next December 7th, ten years have passed since the death of Paolo Sylos Labini. In a conference to be held on 4 December at its University, "La Sapienza" in Rome, we thought, as a Civil Economy Association, to remember him in a concrete way, starting from his hearing fifty years ago at the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on competition (February 8, 1962) in which he discussed "the Italian structural situation and possible legislative action", outlining what we can consider a long-term government program. Some of the things he indicated have been done (e.g. Consob, Antitrust), but not necessarily along the lines he suggested; some not.
In a conference that took place on December 18 at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the hearings of that parliamentary commission – not only the hearing of Sylos, but also those of Lombardini, Steve, Rossi Doria, Ernesto Rossi and others – were used as a starting point to address some questions, which also feed into the debate of 4 December: what was proposed, in that meeting, to modernize market institutions and reinvigorate competition, in a phase in which it was alive, also politically , a reform push? What has been achieved, for good or at least in part by distorting the original proposals? What remains to be done today, also as a result of the changes that have occurred in the meantime in the economy and in society, in particular globalisation?
Behind Sylos' intervention one perceives the spirit of a lively political season, that of the first centre-left, in which the policy of 'structural reforms' (in Riccardo Lombardi's sense, i.e. modification of the power relations within society in a progressive sense, i.e. less inequalities). Today this ideal tension seems to have disappeared in the general degradation of the country. But precisely for this reason, with the optimism of the will that Sylos taught us, we would like to bring these issues back to the center of cultural and political attention and debate.
Sylos often recalled a phrase by Salvemini: "The tragedy of Italy is its moral putrefaction, its indifference, its systematic cowardice". In the political battles he fought in the last years of his life, he constantly underlined that Berlusconi, like the Peronism that destroyed Argentina, cannot be defeated without restoring the moral fiber of the country. With the pessimism of intelligence, he entitled his latest book, published posthumously, “Ahi serva Italia”; with the optimism of his will, he concluded the book with a list of people like himself who were convinced that Italy could and should "put Italy back on the long and arduous road to civilisation", and recalled that "England in the 600s was more corruption of today's Italy. Even worse in the 700th century! Yet England has changed. Why can't Italy change?”.
Passionate adherence to an uncompromising code of morality was for Sylos a matter of personal dignity, as well as the defense and development of the civilization of human societies. The two things are closely connected, as he recalled in a conference in June 2003, "From the honor of the gentleman to the honor of the citizen", in which he recalled the teachings of Adam Smith (who "before being an economist, he is a philosopher" ). In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, of 1759, Smith argued that it is part of our nature as human beings to take account of others (the so-called morality of sympathy, in the etymological sense of common sentiment), even when we pursue our personal interest, which is precisely for this reason it is not absolute selfishness and is bound by social norms, respect for which is ensured both by our personal conscience (what Smith called the invisible arbiter, the little man hidden inside each of us) and by institutions such as the administration of justice and the police. Only under these conditions can society survive – all the more, we might add, if it is a society based on a market economy.
Another motto that Sylos often repeated is "10% excellent, 10% bad, the rest ... tip". As in his theory of the middle classes, whose political choices play a fundamental role in determining the evolution of the economic and social system, it is the moral behavior of that 80% of the population which is neither excellent nor bad that tips the balance on one side or the other, resulting in a continuous oscillation between the decline and recovery of legality. For things to go wrong, it is not necessary for illegal behavior to spread among the majority of the population: supine acquiescence, "who makes me do it", perhaps favored by the inefficiency of justice, are sufficient. As Martin Luther King said, "The worst thing is not the violence of the wicked, but the silence of honest men".
