At the beginning of the XNUMXs, Italy and Milan breathed a new atmosphere, a climate that affected almost all sectors of political and cultural life. Those were the years of Reagan and Thatcher, in which also the Unit began to publish stock exchange listings. Of course, in our speeches, both public and private, we decried Reagan hedonism and Thatcherite liberalism. However, it was not possible to ignore these trends and this political-cultural climate.
I have known Salvatore Veca precisely in that period, at the Feltrinelli Foundation, of which he would soon become president; Giulio Sapelli was then the scientific director of the Foundation, with whom I had a fruitful intellectual partnership for about ten years. I came from the United States, where I specialized in business history, and at the Feltrinelli Foundation we founded ASSI, the Association of Business History and Studies, unanimously considered a scientific center of fundamental importance for the development of economic history Italy in the decades at the turn of the new century.
Veca supported this experience. He had been called to the Foundation to change its scientific orientation and image, all aimed at furthering studies on the workers' movement. Not that this work was not important, but it was necessary to introduce and merge this approach with the social sciences coming from the Anglo-Saxon world. I think it was Inge Feltrinelli who chose the "improvist" Veca as the agent of this transformation that led the Foundation to be one of the centers of discussion and dissemination of the work of John Rawls, the liberal thinker who believed that ideals such as justice, equality and pacifism can be obtained by men who know how to dominate with reason even a world like the one we live in, which seems to have "got out of hand".
However, I also want to mention Salvatore here as a person open to dialogue and jokes. I remember that at the beginning of ASSI's activity in the Feltrinelli Foundation we had invited a German historian of great fame, Jürgen Kocka; three people were present to listen to his lecture. So Salvatore mobilized the clerks and library workers, and with them we reached a more respectable number.
We have always remained in contact since then. I invited him to Bocconi when I was organizing the business history meetings. I remember a very interesting one, in which we discussed the institutional arrangements of Italian companies analyzed by a group led by Giuseppe Airoldi. At the time there was no talk of governance yet. The discussants were Francesco Silva, Bruno Buitoni and Napoleone Colajanni. A political dimension was missing, and Salvatore immediately accepted my invitation. He made a highly suggestive speech, showing how the company's problems are ultimately political problems.
Even if not assiduously, we have always kept an eye on each other, even in more recent years, when I have worked a lot with the Casa della Cultura, organizing debates and meetings. From time to time Salvatore, as president, called me to thank me.
But the most important support for me was the publication of an Annale Feltrinelli on the period after the "economic miracle". The title I had given, L'approdo failed, aroused the unease of several members of the scientific committee of the Foundation.
I owe Salvatore the fact that I have completed the work, because he discussed with me and generously supported my reasons, positively evaluating the critical effort and the novelty of the research I carried out for the volume. Thanks friend.
