The idea that the Mezzogiorno does not grow due to the "rapacity" of Milan, which takes everything without giving anything back, is obviously nonsense. That it was the Minister for the South Giuseppe Provenzano who enunciated it is sorry, as well as it is a source of discouragement that it was Svimez who suggested it to him.
But the fact that Rome has now joined the chorus of recriminations really crosses the threshold of ridicule. The truth is that no one has stolen anything from anyone, neither in the South nor in Rome, and if the latter is falling into the abyss it is certainly not because of Milan but, as Norma sings in Bellini's opera of the same name, is "because of his vices" (read: the abysmal incompetence of the pentastellata junta).
However, this obvious nonsense conceals a bitter truth, and it is the appalling regression of southern thinking that generated it. What southernism is it? Certainly not the democratic one which, in its liberal version as in the socialist and communist ones, has always traced the rise of the "southern question" to the failed liberal revolution.
In other words, the fact that the unification of the country was not accompanied by a policy of profound economic, social and institutional reforms, but rather by a policy of accommodation and consolidation of the status quo. Was the lack of reforms capable of contrasting rent, to reduce the role of the parasitic classes, to reform agriculture, to encourage private entrepreneurship and to favor the creation of a transparent and competitive national market which led to the rise of the "southern question".
And it is precisely for this reason that, now as then, this question can only be resolved within the framework of a general renewal of the country: a renewal that is not only economic, but also political and cultural. What has failed is precisely the awareness of this link, both in the conscience of the national ruling classes and in that of the southern populations, especially the younger ones. How could this happen?
The first step in this direction was when we moved from the idea that state intervention should be of an extraordinary (i.e. exceptional and temporary) nature to the idea that it should instead have a systematic character (i.e. ordinary and permanent). In other words, when one has passed from a liberal conception to a statistic one.
The second step was the transition from the idea that public investments should have a strategic character, i.e. be aimed at precise objectives of general interest (steel, energy, basic chemistry, telecommunications, railways, etc.) that only the State could make, with investments dictated instead by contingent political needs (the fibers in Ottana to counter banditry, for example) up to those imposed for patronage reasons (in Abruzzo with Gasparri or in Irpinia with De Mita).
The golden rule of “market if possible, State if necessary” (the market if possible, the State only if it is necessary) has rapidly transformed into the all-Italian formula "the State always and everywhere if politics ask for it". The outcome of this turning point was, in the nineties, the bankruptcy of Efim and subsequently the forced sale of most of the investee companies, almost all in bankruptcy conditions.
The third step was the transition from Development Contracts, i.e. agreements between the State and entrepreneurs to co-invest in industrial plants in the South, as in the case of Fiat in Melfi and Saras in Cagliari, to Territorial Pacts. In this case, the responsibility for selecting the projects no longer belonged to the State but to the local committees which promoted them in the hope of awakening the "animal spirits" latent in their territory in this way. However, the result was more than disappointing. Giuliano Amato once defined this policy as "the policy of a hundred frying pans", and that says it all.
The last and most disastrous step, however, was the arrival of welfarism. Southern politics has been abandoned it has been reduced more and more to handing out subsidies, paid once again in debt. Citizenship income is but the latest and most dangerous manifestation of this ruinous trend.
How is it possible that the South of the great workers' and peasants' struggles for land, work and development has become the land of choice for all movements opposed to development, be it sustainable or not? An answer to this question is attempted by Luca Ricolfi in his latest book "The noble mass society". According to the Turin economist, a "disadvantaged class" has formed, especially in the South, made up mainly of young people, which does not draw the resources to live from its contribution to the creation of profit but from rents (above all the small ones: parents' pensions, painstakingly acquired movable and real estate assets, subsidies, etc.).
It is a class which, being largely deprived of the cultural tools necessary to emerge (educational qualifications which correspond to real skills, salary expectations which are parameterised to productivity, etc.) and struggling to find the job they aspire to, it fuels victimhood and sometimes resentment. It is not a derelict class but an impoverished one.
The South, writes Ricolfi, is not yet a fully opulent society, but it is an inactive society, while the North is an opulent society but it is industrious. In other words, the Mezzogiorno lives beyond its means, consumes more than it produces, but this fact, far from favoring a movement for development, actually seems to fuel an ideology that no longer considers work, competence, merit and growth as primary values, but rather as disvalues.
If this ideology of incompetence, victimhood and rancor, which is the one on which the 5 Stars have created their fortune, were to really take root in the masses and among the young, then it could transform itself, as Marx said, into a difficult material force to be eradicated. And if that were the case, then really nothing would remain of democratic southernism based on the idea of reforms and work.
