In economic policy jargon, you might hear about “foot voting” or “voting with your feet”, not a criticism of ill-considered voting but an expression of how an individual dissatisfied with the policy of a given public administration can demonstrate their opposition, their preferences, by emigrating elsewhere. The phrase, central to the studies of American economist Charles Tiebout, was often used by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to recommend competitive tax policy between US states in the race to reduce taxes in order to attract people and investment. Prominent economists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman had written about it, and contemporary Italian debate on differentiated regional autonomy is also influenced by this liberal-liberalist approach.

For example, Italians from southern cities who choose treatment in Milan, but also Turin or Bologna “vote with their feet”, in search of better services in the public and private hospitals of the North (but with costs borne by the southern regions, with their run-down yet expensive healthcare). Everyone from Milan who would rather go and live in Pavia, Magenta, Corbetta or Monza than suffer intolerable increases in the cost of living votes with their feet. Pensioners who preferred to change their residence to Tunisia and Portugal (and now, after the Portuguese reforms, they’re looking at Greece or even San Marino) to get a substantial reduction in the tax burden on their incomes vote with their feet. Also voting with their feet, with great effort and suffering from the separation, are those who abandon their ill-served municipalities and choose other, towns and cities with better infrastructure: 49.3% of Italian municipalities have a negative variation in population, with peaks of 89.3% in Basilicata, compared to just 15.2% in Trentino, an autonomous province that is well governed in terms of quality of life (“Italy’s depopulated inland municipalities: inhabitants flee, over-80s remain”, headlines IlSole24Ore, 17 March).

The companies that leave Italy and choose to invest in other countries also vote with their feet (the economic news provides ample evidence).

Above all, the 1.8 million young Italians (32% of the 25–34 age group) who have left Italy in the last 20 years to seek better working and living conditions elsewhere according to Censis voted with their feet, as do others of their age who continue to do so. This is demonstrated, among other things, by a report conducted by Astraricerche for ManagerItalia and Kilpatrick and published by Il Sole24Ore (13 March), according to which among expatriate business executives, only 22.8% want to return to Italy (it was 43.6% in a similar survey ten years ago) and all the rest are happy to stay abroad (33.7% with particular conviction) because in our country “there is a lack of valid professional opportunities with respect to my needs” or “because Italy is in decline and will never be able to recover” or “because there is no meritocracy”.

This volume of “votes with feet”, due to the quality of healthcare, tax burden, quality of life or opportunities for individuals and families to grow, should represent loud alarm bells regarding the risks of decline to avoid, imbalances to correct and reforms to begin implementing. Yet there’s little trace of it in our public debate, an irresponsible shortcoming.

Looking to the future, the most shocking figures concern young people.

Italy is right in the middle of a demographic winter, and the fertility rate of each woman is just 1.24, among the lowest in the world and in any case far from the replacement rate of 2.1% (i.e. 2.1 children per woman would be needed to keep the population from decreasing). In 2023, fewer than 400,000 children were born for the first time (in 2008 there were 600,000; in 1964, just after the height of the economic boom, there were 1 million).

For more than 30 years, in short, this ageing country has recorded more deaths than births (746,000 in 2020). “An Italy without children”, summarises Il Foglio (11 March).

Not only is the demographic weight of the coming generation decreasing, but many are leaving, worsening the overall picture. And fewer young people, long-term, means less productivity, less innovation, greater burden on the public coffers (on our taxes, consequently on our debt) due to burdens on the social security and health systems.

It is true that the ingenuity of the Italian people still keeps the machinery of production on its feet, as Marco Fortis illustrates, using data to show how “Italy is first in Europe for per capita GDP growth, despite the falling birth rate” (IlSole24Ore, 12 March) and therefore still has innovative and productive energy. But these are situations that can’t be permitted to continue long-term.

And so?

Ambitious, growth-oriented policy decisions are required, to finally make our country attractive not only to our young people, but also to all those who may look to Italy as the place to find better opportunities for work, life, enterprise, inclusion and sustainable development.

Policies for the family, with all the consequences in terms of services and incentives to reconcile work with parenthood. Well-governed immigration policies. And a general commitment, cutting across all political forces, to rebuild a robust social capital of trust, to stimulate a positive development culture. Trust is the key to positive demographic choice. Families and children are built on trust.

This is to be done without playing on fear, but by demonstrating – above all to young people of both sexes – that we’re working on a better future for them.

This was the widespread climate in post-war Italy, the Italy of Reconstruction and Recovery. Despite concerns about the dangers of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet world, social problems and political tensions, people invested, worked, built families and homes for them to live in, improved schools and, in time, launched public health care. They were all aware, albeit with different accents and cultural, economic and political positions, that a country’s development depends on investment, on innovation, on the spread of new technologies, but above all on the role and will of the citizens who go, stay, arrive – who plan, who act.

So people were voting with their feet even then, heading for the places of work where a better Italy was being built.

(Photo Getty Images)

Sixty years ago, when “Swinging London” was at its height, with the Beatles and Mary Quant, Pirelli UK Ltd’s advertising department came up with a groundbreaking promotional idea that would etch itself into the history of contemporary culture and art: the Pirelli Calendar. An icon of corporate communication, a social phenomenon, and, owing to the limited number of copies, a coveted status symbol and cult object for collectors. “The Cal” has left an indelible mark — and continues to do so — on the cultural landscape. Each year, it draws on the greatest international names: not just photographic luminaries like Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Bruce Weber, but also fashion icons such as Karl Lagerfeld and “pop” artists like Allen Jones.
Each artist has been tasked with exploring and interpreting their own personal vision of womanhood, the iconographic heart of the project. Female beauty has evolved in various ways over the years, and the imagery of the Calendar, which acts as a witness and a mirror of its times, has documented these shifts in taste and fashion, and in social norms.

Launched in 1964, “The Cal” found its winning formula in big-name photographers, top-notch graphic quality, exotic natural settings – from the sunny beaches of Mallorca to the crystalline waters of the Bahamas and the evocative landscapes of Jamaica, coupled with a celebration of feminine beauty, initially captured in bold compositions and close-up shots of faces. The early editions aimed to transport viewers into a realm beyond everyday life, evoking timeless dreamworlds.
As the Calendar evolved, it reflected reality and adapted to the passage of time: after the protests of 1968 and the Women’s Liberation movement, the 1970s brought a radical shift. In 1972, Sarah Moon became the first female photographer to take on the task, infusing her work with a highly personal style, with dreamlike atmospheres, impressionistic suffused lighting, and sepia tones creating a soft vintage effect. Her ethereal images offered a romantic exploration of femininity. 1973 brought another upheaval as Allen Jones, a British pop art celebrity, introduced a more explicit sensuality.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Calendar played with the aesthetic models of the time, with fashion stereotypes and classics of the male imagination, wavering between provocation and hardcore. Graphically, it pushed boundaries with glamorous photography and spectacular visual cues, inspired by the vivid colours of Barry Lategan’s tableaux vivants, Arthur Elgort’s dramatic chiaroscuros of the Olympic Games, and Norman Parkinson’s technical virtuosity. Despite the passing decades and the changes in culture between the present day and the collective fantasies captured in those bygone eras, the Calendar has remained synonymous with continual innovation, the pursuit of excellence, and a close eye on cultural evolution.

The new millennium brought sweeping changes as the image of women broke free from the traditional roles imposed upon them, turning them from objects of desire into subjects with agency. The shift began to surface in 1998, when Bruce Weber introduced male figures, such as Ewan McGregor and Bono, for the first time, as highlighted by the evocative title “Women that Men Live For – Men that Women Live For.” In the 2000 Calendar, Annie Leibovitz demystified the allure of the body with meticulously framed shots of anatomical precision, paving the way for the abandonment of the nude two years later. The 2007 edition definitively shifted the focus towards introspection, delving into the inner essence and psyche of five women who candidly opened themselves up to the lens of the Dutch duo Inez and Vinoodh.
The following decade saw the emergence of the most modern interpretations of beauty, advocating for a new aesthetic. In 2013, Steve McCurry drew connections between the world of women and that of social activism, while the 2016 edition, once again created by Annie Leibovitz, focused on female empowerment. In this case, twelve successful women of all ages, including Serena Williams, Patti Smith, and Yoko Ono, told of their journeys with their achievements and challenges they had faced. In 2017, Peter Lindbergh boldly stated that “The ideal of perfect beauty promoted by society is something that simply can’t be attained,” presenting his Calendar as a protest against stereotypical beauty and the tyranny of youth. Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, Helen Mirren and others appeared in natural, unguarded moments, captured in black and white: the Calendar shattered the illusion of artificial perfection, revealing the essence of the soul rather than the body. This brings us to the 2023 edition, titled “Love Letters to the Muse,” a heartfelt tribute by Emma Summerton to the muses — the female poets, directors, painters, and actors — who have influenced her personal and professional journey. In a dreamlike setting that owes much to the magic of Realism and Surrealism, it celebrates the timeless beauty that this year has inspired the creation of the “Timeless” Calendar by the Ghanaian photographer Prince Gyasi.

“Whenever a new car is launched on the market, tyre technicians are faced with the formidable task of creating a tyre specially designed for it – in other words, the tyre that best meets its particular needs.” This is how Fatti e Notizie magazine announced the arrival of the Sempione tyre on the market. It was specially designed by Pirelli for the Fiat 1800, which was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show on 12 March 1959. This was at the height of Italy’s economic boom, when Fiat and Pirelli were at the forefront of a surge in the motorisation of transport, with utility cars coming onto the market and infrastructure operations such as the construction of the Autostrada del Sole. Pirelli adapted to the increasingly segmented automobile market by expanding its tyre catalogue. In the wake of the Stelvio, which was introduced in 1951, the company introduced new models that were given carefully selected names that reflected their technical specifications and use. Alongside the groundbreaking Cinturato – literally, “belted” – the first radial tyre with a fabric belt underneath the tread, Pirelli continued the series with conventional models named after Alpine passes: the Cisa for the Fiat 500 (1955), and the Rolle for the Fiat 600 (1955), and then the “Nuova 500” (1957). In 1959 it was the turn of the Sempione for the Fiat 1800. Pirelli created a special tyre for the 6-cylinder, 85 horsepower car which, right there in Geneva, was dubbed “the European Single Market car“, and indeed newsreels at the time claimed it could stand up to any international competition in terms of its “practicality, elegance, economy of operation and price”. The tread of the tyre featured 5 longitudinal cords with many very thin grooves “which ensure grip in all directions and superb braking performance”.

While the Pirelli Cinturato catered to sports car enthusiasts, with its outstanding grip at high speeds and when cornering on both dry and wet surfaces, the more “conventional” Sempione tyre also enjoyed immense success. Renowned for its durability and comfort, it became the go-to solution for most Italian cars, cementing its place as a staple in the automotive industry.

In 1961 the Sempione was also approved for use on the Fiat 1300/1500, 2100, and 2300, as well as on the Innocenti Austin A40 and the Ford Anglia. Its success was ensured by the gradual introduction of technical improvements, such as the “safety shoulder”, which was unveiled at the 44th Turin Motor Show in 1962. This feature, with its rounded connection between the sidewall and the tread, significantly enhanced grip during cornering, braking and acceleration. Other technical innovations included the carcass in super 2 rayon, a yarn of exceptional strength specially developed by Pirelli, and the unique structure of the bead wires. In 1965 the Sempione was used on a vast scale for the Fiat 850 and in 1967/8 the “Sempione P” campaign launched it again as “more”: more flexible, more robust, more grip, more secure, making it ever more popular. However, radial tyre technology was on its way, bringing with it the innovations from rally racing, which would launch Pirelli into the world of high performance, where it still leads the way today.

A book to make us consider the great issues raised by artificial intelligence and our future has just been published.

Some are convinced we are truly on the cusp of machines that genuinely think (while others continue to nurture considerable doubts). These machines, in any case, though created by humans could soon not only replace humanity in performing many tasks but represent alternative creatures. Never before has the world – economic and otherwise – been so divided on the topic of artificial intelligence, raising many doubts flanked by just as many dreams. Now as never before, it’s necessary to understand. Reading Machina sapiens. L’algoritmo che ci ha rubato il segreto della conoscenza (Machina sapiens: the algorithm that stole our secret of knowledge) by Nello Cristianini, who lectures in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bath, certainly aids understanding, getting more of a (precise) idea and above all reasoning with a firm foundation of knowledge.

In just a few pages, Cristianini manages to provide the entire basic toolbox required to deal shrewdly with a topic that is complex and constantly evolving, starting from a consideration: machine intelligence arises from interaction between a mathematical mechanism and an extraordinary quantity of texts “that no one has ever tried to connect and distil before”. The consequence of all this is not just a language but a “model of the world with capacities that are still unexplored and unexplained”. Every unknown arises from this situation. This is where the great fascination of intelligent machines lies, but also the whole complex of doubts that they generate and which the book tries at least to put in order, if not to resolve.

To address the topic, Cristianini (rightly) starts from Alan Turing, effectively the father of computer science, who in the 1950s asked himself whether machines could think. From there the author comes to consider what is happening today, that new intelligent agents such as ChatGPT have proven capable of carrying out tasks that go far beyond the initial intentions of their creators. As Cristianini emphasises, this is because while these machines were trained for certain abilities, others emerged spontaneously as they read thousand of books and millions of web pages.
The narrative is based around three groups: scientists (who designed and created the machines), people (who are starting to deal with these machines in everyday life), and the machines themselves (increasingly revealing themselves as intelligent beings). In the epilogue, Cristianini doesn’t present conclusions but questions and suggestions. One relates to reaching a so-called “critical mass”, “the possibility that there is a size threshold beyond which the performance of the intelligent machine begins to accelerate”. Another relates to the fact that, once begun, the path that intelligent machines are capable of taking would quickly lead them to “outperform the weakness of our capabilities”. Cristianini then speaks of “emergent abilities” which confront humanity with the question of what could happen to it tomorrow (in terms of economics and work as well as socially). Again in the epilogue, the author calls the decisive role of rules to mind, and thus of wise policy also when faced with machines capable of thinking.

Nello Cristianini’s book doesn’t offer certainties or even definitive answers, and this is precisely where its great value lies: it helps the reader to think (intelligent machines notwithstanding).

Machina sapiens. L’algoritmo che ci ha rubato il segreto della conoscenza

Nello Cristianini

il Mulino, 2024

The need for specific legal rules for the good growth of particular production organisations

Social business is a particular expression of the culture of production unconcerned with profit as its primary goal, instead focusing on achieving other targets deemed no less important. We’re still talking about fully fledged business – social business – but it requires a series of management and legal measures to make it effective and efficient. Elisabetta Righini of the of the University of Urbino’s Department of Law reflects on this area. In a chapter of a book that has just been published, she starts from focusing on the true nature of social business and comes to define their general legal outline paying attention to the Italian context.

Righini begins by considering the definition of social business provided by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus: Social business is “a business which is created solely for the purpose of solving a social or environmental problem, and it is a business from which owners do not take any dividend except to recoup their own investment.” It is therefore business in which environmental or social sensitivity and awareness play a decisive and specific role, becoming essential components of the concept of social business as well as shaping the business management in its entirety. It’s a delicate and complicated path, which must be driven by a strong business culture placed alongside those very sensitivities that don’t focus on “making profit and balancing the books”.

Elisabetta Righini therefore specifies that carrying out the functions for which social businesses are conceived and created also requires redefinition of the legal and institutional system. This step is required to allow this particular form of economic organisation to completely fulfil its function. We are therefore talking about efficiency that extends beyond accounting and management to take in other fields of business activity. These areas must be well understood and integrated with business operations in a continuous exchange between economic and management rules and urges arising from attention to others and to the environment.

Answering questions concerning the legal structure of social business thus becomes a path to make these particular production organisations, and in fact the culture of production that drives them, grow in a balanced, helpful way.

Imprenditoria sociale e impegno ambientale per una nuova economia (Social Business and Environmental Engagement for a New Economy)

Elisabetta Righini (Department of Law – Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza DIGIUR, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy) in Place Based Approaches to Sustainability, vol. II, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

We live in an age of “sad passions”, to use an effective expression of Baruch Spinosa, of melancholy thoughts but also rage and widespread resentments (online comments from “keyboard haters” are disturbing evidence of this). We also live in an age of deep loneliness. We lack, however that “abstract fury” that Elio Vittorini linked to the ability to take on the “pain of the offended world” in the brilliant pages of Conversation in Sicily, that is, to move against the snares of a petty individualism paying attention to values and general interests, thus seeking to alleviate that pain and above all try to cut off its roots, to overturn its condition.

And yet, those who attentively investigate trends in social sentiment and developments in public opinion cannot fail to notice, even in these dramatic months of conflict and apprehension, some trends that offer hope. A newfound interest in politics is one example, and reinforcement of the commitment of million of Italians to volunteering is another.

“The passions of Italians: surprise growth in support for politics, the Church loses out”, headlines la Repubblica (9 March) in relation to a “map” by Ilvo Diamanti, an authoritative sociologist, built on a socio-demographic survey by Demos, comparing the current data with those of a similar survey carried out in 2016.

When choosing the issues that Italians are most passionate about, between “their town, their region, their country”, or “their religion or religious community” or “the team or sportsman they support” and finally “their party, movement or political leader”, the link with their area is still at the top as in 2016 (83%), while the weight given to the Church has fallen (from 72% to 60%), that of sport increased a little (from 49% to 51%) and an upswing in politics stands out (from 35% to 48%). This upswing is in evidence not among the elderly alone, but also the young, in the 18–29 age group. It is also widespread, ranging over all sections of opinion, from the centre left to the centre right, with particular sensitivity among 5-Star Movement voters. According to Diamanti, the responses of both local government and institutions more generally in the dramatic Covid and post-Covid periods have brought people closer to politics and parties.

It will be worth keeping an eye on these trends over time. For the public authorities and political forces, it will also be worth taking care not to waste the occasion of engagement, considering not only the current regional elections but also those in June for the European Parliament: Europe is home to our common destiny for the years to come, a strong anchor of values and interests in the face of the tensions and anxieties generated by geopolitical crises and the moves of other major international players, the US and China above all. This Europe should be viewed, even critically, as the place of hope, preventing Europeans from being overwhelmed by the bleak game of those who play on fears, by the manoeuvres and fake news of those plotting against Europe and its values. European values are an original fusion of democracy, market and welfare, that is, freedom, development and widespread well-being.

A great moral and civil lesson comes to mind in these difficult times: that of Don Lorenzo Milani. He was a 20th-century educator, and in his lessons to the children and young people in the school of Barbiana: “I learned that the problem of others is equal to mine. Finding a way out alone is avarice. Finding a way out together is politics.”

This is the value of politics, of good politics. These words also have a resonance, as an ethical and cultural horizon of reference, when reading the figures on volunteering, a shared social and civil commitment.

4.6 million Italians are engaged in volunteering activity. They refer to 363,000 non-profit organisations and 86% of those organisations offer their services “to communities”. They are the backbone of the so-called ‘third sector’. This generates a turnover of around €80 billion, or 5% of the national GDP. It also employs 870,000 people, even taking into account that more than 80% of non-profit organisations have no employees, instead relying on an extraordinary number of volunteers.

So we’re talking about huge figures, which demonstrate a robust commitment to community action and a widespread notion of the importance of feeling part of a community by “gifting” one’s intelligence, time and generosity. It’s a reality that warrants consideration, greater institutional attention and support from the “for-profit” world as well. (It was addressed at length last week during a “Stories of community action in Lombardy” conference organised by UniCredit in Milan that talked about the support financial companies can offer.)

Indeed, one of the conditions for growth is to find positive relationships of collaboration and exchange between market-driven businesses and the third sector, in the original landscape that also sees benefit corporations in action as well as every variation of the so-called stakeholder economy, in which a fertile concept of environmental and social sustainability, of the relationship between competitiveness and community, productivity and social inclusion can take shape. Italian companies are masters of this, as Symbola surveys show.

The outlook is indicated by the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella: “A civil economy is emerging, comprising a field of many forces, which can contribute to defining a better balance between the market, the environment and social equity… The third sector is the backbone, not a replacement, but an independent structure representing the specific responsibility of the whole country.”

Accordingly, volunteering is the pillar of more robust social capital, the subject of an idea of civic engagement that has all the characteristics of a desire for good politics. That is to say, vigorous participation in an open, inclusive polis or, better still, in a civitas (playing with the exactitude of the Latin vocabulary) extending beyond the structures of the urbs (physical urban spaces) and founded on the values of citizenship, on that positive intersection of rights and duties that are the cornerstone of a ‘community’. Such a union of values is shown by the etymology of the word itself: cum recalling the concept of being together and munus meaning both ‘gift’ and ‘obligation’. It is an intersection of bonds, a spur to contemplating a better future together.

These are the political values that volunteering calls to mind, which call upon everyone in the face of an age of widespread fears deliberately exacerbated to deaden a desire to take part and to look towards a better future, to benefit the coming generations above all. It is, after all, young people who find a response to the desire to take part in volunteering, a desire that today’s politics unfortunately do not succeed in seizing upon and representing.

Looking at today’s news, it’s true that it would be easy to agree with those who despair of improving our painful contemporary human condition and identify with the character of Altan, an expert in our mood swings, who declares: “I’m torn between the pigheadedness of the will and the gloom of reason.” Again, so as not to kid ourselves, we might find ourselves in this piercing repartee – “Old people have let us down,” complains one character, the other rejoining: “It’s time for new people to let us down.”

But there’s more to be found when you flip through the pages of Altan.

“Come on, grandad, we’re starting all over again,” says a child in an impassioned cartoon, pushing a reluctant elderly man forward. There is, however, always hope for a better time to build and to live in.

(photo Getty Images)

From today, a new series of documents from the Pirelli Historical Archive is available online. The publication of the Documents on the History of Pirelli Industries now extends up to the 1940s, forming a documentary collection that illustrates the story of the company from its foundation through to the 1980s. Alongside the usual price lists, product catalogues and patents, the approximately 580 documents that are now available also include records from the challenging period of the Second World War, with the German occupation of northern Italy and the subsequent reconstruction efforts after the Liberation. Photographs of the Milan factories in Via Ponte Seveso and Milano Bicocca were taken by Emilio Calcagni, Mario Crimella, and Giulio Galimberti, both before and after the air raids of August 1943. In them we see the Pirelli facilities and the destruction caused by the bombing. This devastation ultimately led to the decision, after the war, to concentrate production in Bicocca and to build the Pirelli Tower next to the station, on the rubble of the factory.

Several documents retrace the months following the Nazi-Fascist occupation after 8 September 1943. File number 2194 contains documents dating from the period of German occupation in Italy regarding the Resistance of Pirelli against the occupying German troops. The documents include letters and reports detailing the resistance work undertaken by the company and its workers against Nazi attempts to use the plant for their war efforts and to transfer part of the workforce to factories in Germany. They also illustrate the company’s contribution to the Liberation struggle, not only through economic support but also through active participation in the protests and strikes of 1943-4, which unfortunately led to many workers being arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Cesare Merzagora, the central director from 1938, director of the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy (CLNAI) from 1944, and commissioner of the company from May 1945 until the return to office of Piero and Alberto Pirelli in May 1946, told the Assembly on 11 December 1945 that Pirelli was “one of the most important centres of the resistance movement”, as we see in the printed dossier no. 2214.

The collection also illustrates the challenges facing the resumption of production after the war, the shortage of raw materials, and the assistance received from the American and British Allies. As we see in press review no. 2225 of 25 January 1946, the first tyres to be produced, after more than a year, were made possible by deliveries of synthetic rubber from America and natural rubber from England.

Having overcome the challenges of the war period, Pirelli was able to celebrate a significant milestone: its 75th anniversary. Various events were put on to mark the occasion, including the opening of the seaside holiday camp in Pietra Ligure, sporting events, the creation of commemorative postcards, stamps, and key rings, for which the sketches have been preserved. The company was now poised for a fresh start in an atmosphere of renewed optimism. 1948 saw the birth of Pirelli magazine and of the Cultural Centre, and a competition was launched for new advertising campaigns for the Stella Bianca tyre and foam rubber. A new era was dawning.

Pierluigi Ciocca’s latest book as a guide to understanding the crisis of today and prospects for tomorrow

Capitalism is a system with a formidable production capacity, but with countless problems that risk leading it to implosion. It truly changed the world a number of centuries ago, and is always observed attentively by its critics and proponents. This is an important issue, which risks being only partially addressed each time, and consequently blurred, misinterpreted and misunderstood. A demon to some, an essential solution to others, capitalism – today in particular – requires understanding without rabble-rousing. This is the purpose of Pierluigi Ciocca’s recently published and latest literary work, Del capitalismo. Un pregio e tre difetti (On capitalism: one virtue and three defects).

Ciocca aims to place the idea of capitalism at the centre of thinking about the present day, but with good understanding: interpretations that reject it rely on the idea of the market, variously embellished by historico-empirical references to institutions, culture and politics in individual countries. But, the author explains, capitalism features a more precise and better configured historical formation, the long arc of which can be well followed, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, risks, distortions and potential corrections. Indeed Ciocca focuses precisely on corrections, and therefore the tools for updating it and lending it prospects, in the final part of the book. He takes into account the fact that economic growth itself is no longer guaranteed today, and risks deterioration. The author’s message, therefore, is that we urgently require politics, governance of the economy, which must necessarily move beyond the nation state.

Over the book’s approximately 150 pages, capitalism is first clearly illustrated from a historical perspective then analysed according to several interpretations before arriving at crucial questions like growth, inequality, poverty and instability as well as the environment.

Pierluigi Ciocca’s book has the great merit of summarising a complex and varied theme in a limited number of pages and making it accessible – albeit with great attention – to the reader. It is also a book that leaves the door open to a better future than the present: the crisis, if not the implosion, of capitalism must – and can – be avoided.

Del capitalismo. Un pregio e tre difetti

Pierluigi Ciocca

Donzelli, 2024

Presentation of the fifth edition of the Nomisma, CRIF and CRIBIS study

Companies that – in terms of organisation, results and culture – represent examples to follow. Companies that don’t have to be imitated, but can rationally provide models from which to take inspiration, to grow other companies and therefore generate prosperity. All things considered, this is the reason that “Controvento: le aziende che guidano il Paese” (Against the wind: the companies leading the country), prepared by Nomisma in collaboration with CRIF and CRIBIS, remains important research. The fifth edition was presented a few days ago.

These companies “sailing against the wind” don’t just make progress, but do it despite problems, perhaps exploiting those occasions to do business that others don’t succeed in acquiring. It’s not a tight huddle of manufacturing organisations but, as the research itself explains, a group that has grown stronger over the years, much more when compared to the rest of the country’s manufacturing sector. Because – and this should be noted – the survey looks at companies who succeed in growing by defying the tide and overcoming the obstacles of today’s market. Such companies are still manufacturing companies, which is to say the ones that, for better or worse, firmly make up the core of the national industrial system.

As has now become customary, the research gives an account of the strategies and figures of these exemplary businesses and offers a meaningful snapshot of them as well. The aggregate analysis of the 2022 financial reports (the latest available) shows that 6.5% of Italian companies can guarantee competitiveness parameters enabling them to be classified as companies “sailing against the wind”. Altogether, they generate 9.4% of the revenues and 14.2% of the total added value of Italian manufacturing. The study brings out particular traits that should give us pause for thought, like the size class or the relationship between the North and South of Italy, with businesses in the South demonstrating a greater propensity to sail against the wind with respect to the rest of the country.

The Nomisma, CRIF and CRIBIS study therefore illustrates capacity and ability to produce and grow which are extraordinary, but not such a rarity in the Italian economy. The Osservatorio Controvento monitoring project aims to identify and promote it, and its annual report succeeds in summarising it effectively.

Controvento: le aziende che guidano il Paese

Various authors.

Nomisma, CRIF and CRIBIS, 2024

Europe must finally be considered in its entirety. It is also necessary to build, as part of a single political design, its security and sustainable development, strengthening of freedoms and spread of a fairer and more balanced welfare, investment capacities (starting with AI, the new requisite for knowledge and competitiveness, with all their consequences) and the long-term balance of public finances. In short, we need to finally sustain a combination of currency and the sword, pillars of every state organisation or unitary structure of states (we already have the former, a miracle of political and financial engineering; we need to build and sharpen the second rapidly). But we also need institutions and the economy, as an engine to generate and distribute wealth.

These are the considerations that come to mind when we read the news from the various arenas of ongoing geopolitical crises (Ukraine, the Middle East…) and reflect on the data and facts that demonstrate the EU’s fragility in the face of fundamental decisions by the United States and China, India, aggressive and expansive Russia and other key international players, old and new.

In short, the growing risks of decline are evident. One of the main ones is demographic. “A Europe without children”, reports Il Sole24Ore, citing Eurostat, which shows how the European working-age population will decrease from 265 million in 2022 to 258 million in 2030 and without corrective action could fall even further to 250 million in 2050. “We need 7 million workers by 2030,” calculates Confindustria’s newspaper (3 March). New policies to reform the labour market are therefore vital and urgent (bringing in the millions of women and young people who, in Italy for example, are still excluded) and above all better immigration policies, for millions of new people from Africa and Asia.

“Inflows are a requirement,” insists Alessandro Rosina, a competent demographer. There are people to be trained, qualified, brought into the positive cycle of production and citizenship and of rights and duties. It’s an immense task, a historic responsibility.

These are the issues on which it is essential to reflect, precisely in these months leading up to the June elections for the new EU Parliament. And even if it seems that public debate, not only in Italy but also in the other major European countries, favours issues of national internal politics and too often seeks to exploit fears, localised resentments and exclusionary ideologies  – attempts to play on “gut instincts”, not promote the intelligent planning essential for building a better future – it’s vital that we act responsibly to ensure the electorate understands that we’re at the beginning of a new historical cycle. In this situation, the fundamental choice is clear: either we’ll be able to achieve more Europe and a better Europe, or we’ll face a radical crisis of the Europe that we have wanted, built and experienced thus far: European decline, the waning of our model of democratic and, all things considered, prosperous civilisation.

In a time so charged with uncertainty and preoccupations, therefore, it’s worth returning to the foundational documents. The Ventotene Manifesto (signed in 1941 by three extraordinary Italian intellectuals, Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, with the world in the grip of war and Nazi and Fascist violence and the three imprisoned on the island of Ventotene as anti-fascists; the document was then circulated by two courageous women, Ursula Hirschmann and Ada Rossi). The writings of the “founding fathers”, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, Paul Henri Spaak and Joseph Beck. The Treaties, starting with the Treaty of Rome, which in 1957 gave birth to the EEC (European Economic Community) of Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. And, again, all the other documents that strengthened the Community institutions and made the construction of Europe more effective and efficient, gradually expanding to the current structure of 27 countries (envisaging further enlargement to 35). The choices inspired by great Europeans such as Jacques Delors and political leaders like Charles De Gaulle and then François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl. The birth of the euro and the European Central Bank. Contemporary choices, including the Constitution.

It’s a complex path, by no means lacking in shade, conflict, limitations, bureaucratic failings, scant spirit of collaboration, and national self-interest (after all, human history never proceeds in a triumphant straight line). It is nevertheless a path of great value, not to be underestimated or set aside. The British themselves are now viewing the Brexit decision critically, the break with the EU that has weakened its economy and social and cultural relations.

It’s the Europe of 70 years of peace and economic development, during which we have succeeded in sustaining the coexistence of liberal democracy, the market economy and the welfare state, that is, freedom, growth and widespread well-being. From an international standpoint, it represents a unique heritage, one that it’s necessary to study, claim, defend and promote. It is heritage for the generations to come.

The new Parliament and new Commission will therefore be tasked with refoundation and relaunch, in an original fusion of continuity and innovation. The institutional revival must move beyond slow and often paralysing unanimity governance in the direction of majority decisions. Reform of government processes is also required, starting with the Stability Pact and the other instruments in the hands of the Commission. Another area is financial renewal, from strengthening the EU 2024–27 multi-annual budget to issuing eurobonds on international markets, to finance reinforcement and development programmes. Renewal of planning is also required.

The point is this: a great European project that considers Europe from the perspective of common defence (in the Atlantic alliance, of course, but with greater independence from the US, as the US itself actually urges) and energy (European atomic energy). Again, there’s the perspective of the environmental transition to be made compatible with the competitiveness of European companies and social sustainability, the perspective of developing the digital economy and Artificial Intelligence (a European AI, to build rapidly to face up to US, Chinese and Indian decisions; we’ve talked about it already in blogs of previous weeks). There’s also the perspective of science and of open and inclusive culture to consider, according to the finest canons of Western culture.

In short, long-term economic and social changes are under discussion. They need to be addressed from a long-term perspective, which is to say with the requisite gradualism, but with a clear, demanding vision of the future. We therefore need a European industrial policy  – we’ve written about this several times – that hinges on the defence industry and insists on the factors of productivity and competitiveness, leaving the choice of instruments for investing in the various sectors and growth to companies. One example is technological neutrality for the automotive world, without limitations concerning the dominance of electric cars. And common fiscal policies are needed, which have an effect on the budget, avoid asymmetry between countries (encouraging tax evasion and avoidance) and reconfigure public spending, making it more efficient and productive (agriculture is one of the key sectors).

Too difficult? Marco Buti and Marcello Messori (Il Sole24Ore, 3 March) recall that the ambitious principles of reforming and relaunching the EU were fulfilled in the past. In the construction of the Single Market, with the White Paper of 1985 and the consequences that emerged in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and then monetary union. In Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” in July 2012, “which went beyond conventional monetary policy and averted an irreversible eurozone crisis.” In the initiative of Merkel and Macron and of the EU Commission that led to the post-Covid Recovery Plan and resulted in the launch of Next Generation EU in the summer of 2020: “Existing political capital has thus been rendered flexible, crossing ‘red lines’ that seemed insurmountable.”

These experiences should be repeated, also by overcoming “the taboo of reforming the Treaties” according to Buti and Messori, thus providing Europe with a better and more effective governance structure, more in line with times of crisis and change: more Europe, despite everything.