#IOLEGGOPERCHÉ is back. This year, the largest reading promotion initiative in Italy, organised by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), will for the first time be together with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and the Centro per il Libro e la Lettura, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. The project, which aims to inspire new readers by setting up and expanding school libraries, involved 15,000 schools and over 3 million young people in 2019 and, thanks to the tireless work of students, booksellers, publishers, parents and teachers, it has brought over 1 million new books to Italian libraries over the past four years. Last year, the Teaming up with Books meeting saw considerable participation with over 300 students in our Auditorium, with Javier Zanetti, Luigi Garlando, Regina Baresi and Mario Isola on stage. This year, Pirelli is again continuing its support for #ioleggoperché, inspiring a passion for reading among the very young, and inviting everyone to buy a book to donate to a school.

The donation can also be made from afar: for this fifth edition, the ioleggoperché website lists all the bookshops through which books can be ordered from home, together with a list of the schools taking part in the project.

At the end of the campaign, publishers too will be making a contribution, by donating up to 100,000 additional books to the schools that request them.

Join us and part of it! Because books always bring us together, however far apart we are.

The ADI Permanent Design Observatory selected the Skyscraper Stories project for the ADI Design Index 2021. The project brings together the results of the research and promotion work designed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Pirelli Tower in Milan, which has always been a symbol of the modernity of Italian technology and industry. The project, which consists of a book, a website, an exhibition, and a series of related events, is curated by our Foundation and by the architect Alessandro Colombo, and it is promoted together with the Lombardy Region.

Since 2000, the ADI Design Index has published an annual selection of the best Italian design, and this prestigious publication also includes essays penned by great names from the world of culture. This year it is presenting the second volume in the biennial series with the products nominated for the 2022 ADI Compasso d’Oro, an award launched in 1954 to honour the technical and aesthetic quality of Italian design. Its accumulation of the products that have won the accolade has led to the largest historical collection of design objects. The products selected, 233 out of the more than 1,000 items submitted, are divided into a number of thematic areas: next to the Design for the Home section, there are numerous products from the Design of Materials and Technological Systems, and from Corporate Research and Theoretical Research, all of which testify to the vitality of Italian innovation.

The selection of the Skyscraper Stories project in the Theoretical, Historical and Critical Research and Editorial Projects category fits into the historical long-term bond between Pirelli and the Compasso d’Oro, which dates back to the very first year of the award: it was the little monkey Zizì, a toy designed by Bruno Munari and made by Pigomma, a Pirelli subsidiary, that won the first edition of the famous award. Also our Foundation has become part of the history of the ADI and of the Compasso d’Oro: with the selection of the Rubber Soul exhibition in the ADI Design Index in 2012, as well as with the candidacy of the Advertising with a Capital P publishing project at the 2020 edition of the Compasso d’Oro Award.

Today, with the publication of the 2021 ADI Index, the history of Pirelli continues to intertwine with that of design and the very best of the Made in Italy label.

“LIUC per la maturità 2021” is a project run by the Università LIUC Carlo Cattaneo di Castellanza to assist sixth form students in the run-up to the state exam in the school year, which has proved so complicated for the world of school. Thanks to the participation of its teachers, the University is offering a series of in-depth mini-lectures on various topics: from anxiety management to the gender gap in the labour market, to literature, culture, and business history.

Snippets of Industrial Cinema – A “Beautiful” Factory: Can It Be Done? is the title of the meeting organised by the Università Cattaneo and the Archive of Industrial Cinema and Business Communication, in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation, with the participation of Antonio Calabrò, director of the Pirelli Foundation, and Daniele Pozzi, lecturer at LIUC and director of the Archive of Industrial Cinema and Business Communication. The webinar helps the students reflect on some issues closely related to the history and culture of the company and the relationship between them and the society we live in. The issues are introduced by a number of short videos from the vast heritage of industrial cinema and communication created by Italian companies. Starting with some provocative ideas, this interaction between current affairs and historical documents helps the students reflect on the complexities and contradictions of the industrial development of Italy during the economic boom and on the relationships, which have been improving over time, between factories, the environment and people. It helps them reflect on company profits, which can be used to improve the quality of life and well-being of the individuals and communities that have dealings with the company, and takes them through to today’s digital factories and the “Il Canto della Fabbrica” project, with which Pirelli illustrated the new world of the factory through music. The musical score composed by Maestro Francesco Fiore for the violin of Maestro Salvatore Accardo and his Orchestra da Camera Italiana took inspiration from the rhythms of the Pirelli factory in Settimo Torinese – a centre of excellence on the cutting edge of Italian industry. The music tells of one of the “beautiful factories” in Italy, created as a welcoming, bright, sustainable and safe place.

Click here to see the text drafted by LIUC to illustrate the project and put it in context.

Click here to watch the video.

On 10 December, in a live stream from the Pirelli Headquarters Auditorium, the three finalists of the 1st Premio Campiello Junior, the new literary prize, launched by the Fondazione Campiello and Pirelli libraries, for Italian works of fiction and poetry written for children aged between 10 and 14.

From the over 81 books admitted, the Technical Jury of the award chose the three finalists at the selection ceremony:

Chiara Carminati, Un pinguino a Trieste (Bompiani),

Guido Quarzo – Anna Vivarelli, La scatola dei sogni (Editoriale Scienza),

Antonella Sbuelz, Questa notte non torno (Feltrinelli).

Over the past few days, 160 young members have been selected to form a jury, from the last year of primary school and the three years of lower secondary schools, in line with statistical criteria of age groups and geographical distribution. Over the coming months, this jury will be asked to choose the winner, who will be announced in May 2022 and celebrated in September at the Campiello 2022 Awards Ceremony.

In the spring of 2022, the Pirelli Foundation will work with the Premio Campiello to organise a series of events devoted to the world of books and publishing for children. These events will be for the jury of young people, as well as for schools and young readers across all Italy, and they will also involve the participation of the authors of the finalist books.

For further information on the Premio Campiello Junior events, please go to www.fondazionepirelli.org andwww.premiocampiello.org.

Alberto Pirelli was born in Milan on 28 April 1882. After Piero, who was born in 1881, he was the second of the eight children of Giovanni Battista Pirelli and Maria Sormani. Ten years earlier, his father had set up GB Pirelli & C., a company that processed elastic rubber. The destiny of the two brothers, who were virtually born into the factory, was sealed from the outset. Their higher education studies were designed to prepare them for the positions they would hold in the company, and they attended the Politecnico University and the Bocconi University in Milan, as well as the University of Genoa, where they both graduated in Law. Right from their adolescence, they worked alongside their father, going on a number of campaigns with the cable-laying ship Città di Milano as well as on some business trips abroad. In 1904 Piero and Alberto Pirelli officially joined their father in the management of the company. They formally became part of company management at a time when the electric and telegraph cables sector was enjoying huge international expansion, and tyres were entering a period of massive growth, after an initial phase of experimentation. For both brothers, these were years of numerous trips abroad, during which they visited companies, presented Pirelli at international fairs, and formed business alliances. Alberto worked in the United States, Brazil, Canada, and Argentina, and in particular he concluded important agreements in the electricity sector, which was dominated by large German and American companies at the time. During this period he became aware of the importance of international relations and of having a full understanding of foreign markets. Thanks also to his diplomatic skills and excellent knowledge of languages, he became one of the best-known Italian entrepreneurs in the world. At the end of the First World War, the skills and experience he had accumulated in important international negotiations led him to obtain a public position of great importance: from 1919 to 1932 he was called upon by the Italian government to play a leading role in international negotiations regarding German war reparations and war debts between the Allies, an experience he later wrote about in his book Dopoguerra 1919-1932. Note ed Esperienze, which came out in 1932. The brothers thus took on separate tasks, with Alberto more geared towards international relations and public office, and Piero more devoted to the organisation of the company and to relations with the workers. In the 1920s, Alberto took centre stage in a number of financial transactions designed to settle the debts incurred by the group, participating in an American loan through Morgan Bank, and consolidating the interests of the electricity and telephone industry in Italy. He continued to be one the most influential businessmen for the Italian government and around the world throughout the 1930s and his work is documented both in the company papers now in the Historical Archive and in his private archive, which has been preserved by the Pirelli Foundation. In 1927 he was appointed president of the International Chamber of Commerce, a position of great prestige, and in 1935 he became president of the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), which he had helped set up the previous year. One of the many positions he held was that of president of the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies (Assonime). For a short period after the Liberation, at the end of the Second World War, Pirelli was placed into special administration, but Alberto and his brother Piero were soon reinstated in their respective roles as CEO and chairman, which they had held since 1932, the year their father died.

In 1946 Alberto decided to retrace the history of the group, which was preparing to celebrate its 75th anniversary, and he wrote a book called La Pirelli. Vita di un’azienda industriale. Upon the death of his brother Piero in 1956, he took on the role of chairman, and passed the baton on to his son Leopoldo in 1965. He passed away in 1971 and has been remembered ever since as one of the greatest Italian industrialists and businessmen since the Unification of Italy.

The screening of Welcome Venice (2021), a film by Andrea Segre that is currently competing for the David di Donatello award, brings to an end the tenth edition of the Cinema & History refresher and training course for teachers. The course is promoted by Fondazione ISEC and the Pirelli Foundation, for the second consecutive year in collaboration with the Cinema Beltrade in Milan.

In the online meetings (five lessons and a workshop), 200 teachers who registered from across all Italy examined the economic history of Italy in depth, from Unification through to the contemporary age, acquiring the tools they need for including an economic perspective in their own teaching courses.

True to tradition, the course started with a lecture by Professor Marco Meriggi, professor of the History of Political Institutions at the University of Naples Federico II, who gave an insight into the pre-Unification period and a series of events that still influence our world today.

The film chosen to accompany this first lecture was Happy as Lazzaro (2018), by Alice Rohrwacher, a political fairy-tale that tells the story of fifty years of Italian history through the events of its starry-eyed protagonist.

The second event was curated by Monica Naldi of the Beltrade Cinema who, with the Cinema in the classroom workshop, gave the teachers some ideas for the best ways to use cinema for teaching purposes. She started with a selection of titles and illustrated various methods for allowing films to arouse curiosity and interest in the students.

In the second lecture of the course, Professor Vera Negri Zamagni, of the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna, examined the period when the Italian state was born. The participants examined the complex modernisation and industrialisation process that Italy had embarked upon, starting from an economically and socially backward baseline riven by huge inequalities.

The contrast between the working class and the managers of a textile factory in Turin in the late nineteenth century is at the centre of one of Mario Monicelli’s masterpieces, The Organizer (1963), which was chosen to illustrate the changes that took place during that period.

The third lecture was held by Professor Mario Perugini, professor of Economic History at the University of Catania and at Bocconi University in Milan, who looked at the inter-war years to reconstruct the extraordinary period that ultimately led to the great expansion of Italian industry, in a virtuous intertwining of public and private companies.

Franco Rossi’s film Youth March (1969) took the participants on the course through the story of the friendship between three young university students in Ferrara, whose lives are separated by the war, in a tale of private feelings coupled with a historical and political overview.

Antonio Calabrò, the director of the Pirelli Foundation, gave a lecture on the period immediately following the Second World War which, in just a few years and thanks to political, economic and social decisions, led to a radical transformation of the industry, employment, consumption and lifestyles of the Italians, which became known as the “economic miracle”.

Ermanno Olmi’s partly autobiographical film Il Posto (1961) masterfully portrays the profound changes that took place during this period in Italian society in major cities, in characters that have remained indelibly impressed upon Italian cinema, inspiring entire generations of filmmakers.

In the last lecture of the course, given by Professor Marco Doria, professor of Economic History and History of International Economic Relations at the University of Genoa, the participants examined the contemporary period. The lecture took them from the processes of globalisation and the consequent readjustment of international economic balances that showed up the fragile Italian industrial structure with its multitude of small businesses, to the huge opportunities that have opened up for our country, which is known worldwide for the quality and originality of its products.

The current situation was then described in the scenes of Welcome Venice, which like all the other films chosen for the course, was introduced and commented on by the Cinema Beltrade. The clash between two brothers, fishermen in Giudecca, illustrates the sweeping changes taking place in the life and identity of Venice and its people, brought about by the ever greater impact of global tourism.

The anniversary celebrating the first ten years of the Cinema & History course could hardly have been better, once again showing how the key to its success is the opportunity it has given to teachers to expand their knowledge of subjects that cut across the various school disciplines and to improve their use of films as a tool in the classroom.

It was 1872 when a young twenty-three-year-old engineer, Giovanni Battista Pirelli, returned to his homeland from a “grand tour” through Switzerland, France, Germany and Belgium, with the aim of introducing “a new or not yet widespread industry in Italy”, which was that of rubber and its production. In 1873 Pirelli products started coming off the line in the first factory in Milan, which was by the Sevesetto river. Forty workers and five office staff were employed at the factory. A few years later, the rubber articles for industrial machinery, ships and railways were joined by consumer goods such as toys, clothing and haberdashery items. Within the space of ten years, in 1883, Pirelli had brilliantly overcome the inevitable difficulties of a pioneering activity and now had more than 300 workers and constantly expanding areas of production. The company broke into the British monopoly of the cables sector thanks to the research carried out by the greatest electrical engineers of the day (Emanuele Jona, and Leopoldo and Luigi Emanueli), and also secured a contract to supply power cables for the Niagara Falls and for the Nile, and it opened factories in Spain, England, Belgium, France and Argentina.

From this time on, the company expanded exponentially, including overseas. It was in 1902, just thirty years after the first factory opened in Milan, that a plant was opened in Villanueva y Geltrù in Spain, making Pirelli one of the very first Italian multinational companies. In 1913, Pirelli arrived in England, in Southampton, and in 1917 in Argentina. By 1922, fifty years after it was founded, the company had countless commercial offices on three continents and two rubber tree plantations in Indonesia.

To celebrate its great success, the company decided to set up a historical museum – the Museo Storico delle Industrie Pirelli – in its second plant, in the Bicocca area of Milan. Infographic panels, machines, documents and an exhibition of raw materials illustrated the growth of the Group, not only in terms of its industrial development, but also in terms of its products and the plantations it had acquired. Two employees, Domenico Bonamici and Umberto Ubaldi (both graduates in Fine Arts and draughtsmen for the plans and sections of the factory and for the Tyre Technical Office respectively), were tasked with creating a series of designs both for the display installation and for the publication of a book entitled La Pirelli & C. nel suo cinquantenario.

Among the various drawings they made for the occasion were the Panel of Pirelli organisations, illustrating the firm’s many overseas offices and rubber plantations around the world, and sketches showing the increase in the production of sports goods, tyres and conductors from the founding to 1922, while others showed the growth in the production of raw rubber and its consumption internationally. Then there was that of Pirelli organisations on the company’s fiftieth anniversary, which shows the Società Italiana Pirelli as a lake from which, like streams and rivers, the foreign subsidiaries (Produits Pirelli, Société Française, Société Belge, Cauciù Pirelli, Pirelli Ltd, Comercial Pirelli, Pirelli S.A. Platense, Agenzia Cairo, and Pirelli Giava) “flow into the various international offices (from London to Seville, to Bucharest and Brussels, Paris and Zurich, Cairo and Indonesia). But there is more, for rivers representing the great factories of Milan, Bicocca, Vercurago, Southampton, Villanueva i Geltrù and Buenos Aires flow down from the mountains and into the lake of Italian society. Lastly, in the distance, we see the plantations in Malacca and Java in Indonesia, where everything begins.

150 years after it was founded, the company’s branches are even more extensive and ramified, with more than a hundred and sixty points of sale around the world and nineteen factories in twelve countries. This expansion started long ago but it is still the basis on which Pirelli builds its present and imagines its future.

Thanks to the warmth given off by a Pirelli hot water bottle, an egg hatches, giving birth to a little chick. This was the picture created by the painter Gino Boccasile in 1952 to advertise the Pirelli hot water bottle. This had been one of the first rubber products to be made by the company in the late nineteenth century, and it was portrayed in the 1950s by a number of artists. One example is Raymond Savignac’s campaign in 1953, with a child hugging the hot water bottle, and another is the amusing animation by the Pagot brothers called “Freddo, semifreddo, caldo“. The original sketches for these advertisements, which were made in tempera on paper and signed by the artists, are now in our Historical Archive, together with some of the prints made from them: window displays, window transparencies and price tags used by shops for window dressing. Boccasile died prematurely in 1952, at the age of just 51, at the height of an intense career as a poster designer and illustrator, mainly for satirical newspapers and fashion magazines. In particular, in 1937 and 1938 he designed the covers of a magazine, Le grandi firme, creating a female figure, known as “Signorina Grandi Firme”, which brought him great fame at the time. It was therefore no coincidence that in 1938 Boccasile was commissioned by Pirelli to create an advertisement for clothing, in which his elegant ladies appeared in Pirelli raincoats.

A thesis discussed at the Polytechnic University “Giorgio Fuà” helps us better understand this theme

A pandemic and two new sets of economic guidelines have necessarily led to some changes in the way companies do business, including strategic and financial planning. But how? Answering this is important, as it will also illustrate the particular transformation that has affected production culture itself and the way in which it influences how companies are conceived, created and managed. Consuelo Paoletti explores these topics in her thesis, presented at the Polytechnic University of the Marche “Giorgio Fuà”, Faculty of Economics, Master’s Degree in Economics and Management.

Her work is entitled Covid-19, Codice della crisi d’impresa e nuove linee guida EBA: l’impatto sulla pianificazione strategica e finanziaria (COVID-19, Business crisis code and new EBA guidelines: the impact on strategic and financial planning) and attempts to analyse the impact that the three above-mentioned factors have had on businesses. “These three occurrences,” the researcher states in her introduction, “have deeply affected some companies, so much so that a few of them were not able to continue with their activities or are finding themselves in a position where their best choice is now to shut down.” Paoletti proceeds to investigate the reasons that led to such circumstances, explaining that, in many cases, this is the result of insufficient care in scheduling and planning, as well as neglect of potential ways that could safeguard the companies. She then explicitly states the aim of her study: “The goal is to illustrate the implementation of a business plan looking at both its ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ aspects and integrating into the latter an analysis and some indicators that can help entrepreneurs to comply with the new guidelines while adapting to the new market and banking laws.”

To this end, the thesis begins by framing the concept of a business plan as a basic tool for strategic planning, then explores the “tools and analyses” required for the overall assessment of a corporate project and, finally, draws a comparison integrating the three great events with which companies had to recently deal – the new Italian Code of business crisis, the new EBA guidelines, and the COVID-19 pandemic – and, finally, includes two case studies summarising the results.

In her conclusion, Paoletti writes, “Corporate continuity is the initial premise, without which any consideration, forecasting, market analysis, search for new finances would be useless. Nowadays, a feasible business plan must include a synthetic crisis forecasting model through which entrepreneurs can show whether they are or not within the boundaries imposed by the Code of business crisis. As Covid taught us, an optimistic five-year plan mapping forthcoming positive cash flows cannot be considered complete without an adequate scenario analysis considering market fluctuations, especially negative ones. As such, the worst-case scenario may mean that the plan no longer complies within the parameters set by the EBA and a strict credit rating, and the company might no longer be able to count on planned financial resources, so that banks will start doubting debt sustainability and, once the rating has deteriorated, obtaining credit will only become more difficult.” Having completed her analysis, Paoletti then proposes a circular model, whereby “the business plan will be deemed satisfactory and suitable to meet the new requirements, restrictions and market changes if, in all outlined scenarios, the company remains able to comply with the conditions imposed by the bank and does not foresee exceeding the limits set by the crisis indicators.”

Consuelo Paoletti’s investigation strives to harmonise theoretical analysis corporate instruments, as well as concrete corporate case studies, within a logical approach, which makes for excellent research.

COVID-19, Codice della crisi d’impresa e nuove linee guida EBA: l’impatto sulla pianificazione strategica e finanziaria (COVID-19, Business crisis code and new EBA guidelines: the impact on strategic and financial planning)

Consuelo Paoletti

Thesis, Polytechnic University of the Marche “Giorgio Fuà”, Faculty of Economics, Master’s Degree in Economics and Management, 2021.

Here are some random thoughts, to remember Jean-Paul Fitoussi, one of the best economists of our troubled and difficult times. Thoughts on economy values, on the GDP as an inadequate tool to measure economic development (showing only the quantity, and not the quality, of economic growth), on the needs for what is called “sad science” to give consideration to people, not just making money.

Thoughts inspired by a comment by Tony Judt, one of the most clear-headed historians of the second half of the 20^th century: “We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.” This quote is from Ill fares the land, written in 2010, just before his demise, and published in Italian by Laterza as Guasto è il mondo. In those pages – a kind of political and moral testament – Judt reiterates the responsible role politics and intellectual work should play, and collects reflections on the unresolved issues of the century that’s just ended, as well as on our current imbalance (ample evidence of it can be found in Novecento. Il secolo degli intellettuali e della politica (Thinking the 20^th century. Intellectuals and politics in the 20^th century), a long and fascinating conversation with Timothy Snyder, also published by Laterza in 2012).

Judt’s work embodies a full awareness of the major analytical and strategic shortcomings evident in the turn of the century’s mainstream cultural thought – characterised by laissez-faire, market fundamentalism, the unregulated free market and unrestrained individualism – and fostered by politicians à la Margaret Thatcher (“There is no such thing as society”) and Ronald Reagan, as well as those monetarist economists of the ‘Chicago school’ led by Milton Friedman (1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics). It also emphasises the importance of rethinking political reforms and economic strategies in favour of a public and private intervention on the economy, which would encourage a move towards sustainability and better social balance.

These are themes that will bring back to the fore John Maynard Keynes‘s theory on a form of liberalism with pronounced social leanings, which will change our economic thinking – less emphasis on shareholder value ideology (whereby companies are ruled by profit and the stock market) and much more focus on stakeholders values (prioritising attention on the communities on which businesses rely, such as employees, suppliers, consumers, people).

Friedman’s supremacy is on the decline, Keynes is coming back (cleansed from those welfarist interpretations given by the most superficial Italian readers, which have very little to do with Keynesian theory), to give economists such as Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Prize in Economics) and, in fact, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, their well-deserved space within public debate. Stiglitz and Fitoussi, together with Amartya Sen (1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) led the Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress, created in 2008 by then French president Nicholas Sarkozy, thus contributing to bring on a radical shift in economic thought, a move towards a “just”, “circular” and “civil” economy, as well as environmental and social sustainability. An approach that encompasses the philosophy of Pope Francis, wide debates in the best economics publications and, after the Great Recession of 2008, a commitment by powerful financial institutions, such as the largest investment company in the world, BlackRock, headed by Larry Fink, to support environmental and social sustainability.

Fitoussi’s work is key to all this, as evidenced by observations such as, “For some time now, according to prevalent thought, public authorities have legitimised their actions by turning the spotlight on price stability as the goal of economic policy – which should also allow to maximise GDP growth – as well as on competitive market theory.” Critically, “GDP growth was accompanied by deep social misery and market deregulation merely foreshadowed the worst market performance since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The wrong spotlights were turned on and we tried to act in accordance with a theoretical representation of the world that had little to do with the real world, with poorly measured targets (such as GDP ones) that were not really significant to society.” Basically, “The GDP would be a useful economic measure if it could at least give an idea of how wealth is distributed within a nation. Yet, GDP can appear positive even when 80% of wealth belongs to just 1% of the population.” In short, “Economy expands only when the increase in prosperity is distributed among most of the population.”

All remarks taken from a book that’s really worth reading: Misurare ciò che conta. Al di là del Pil (Beyond GDP: Measuring what counts for economic and social performance), written by Stiglitz, Fitoussi and Martine Durand and published by Einaudi in 2021. Indeed, going beyond the GDP, ISTAT devised an Italian index measure, the BES (Benessere equo e sostenibile – Equitable and sustainable well-being, which has already become a primary reference when drafting Italian financial policies). And, further, disregarding the quantity of the economic growth (which is nonetheless useful data, especially to defuse so-called “happy degrowth” delusions), we should above all look at the quality of our development, paying greater attention to topics such as health, education, social inclusion, occupational safety and the participation of young people and women in productive and social processes. This is rereading Keynes à la Fitoussi, unquestionably, where choices can be found outside the spurious antinomy between State and market (both, with their different yet convergent roles, are necessary to attain harmonious reforms focused on development and employment), and where special attention is paid to EU policies, of which Fitoussi was a strong supporter, in order to overcome ordoliberalist beliefs and all their parameters and insist, instead, on public investment as a way to foster development (the EU Next Generation Recovery Plan, set up in response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s solid evidence of this).

Italian economic thought shows a trend in this direction, something that Fitoussi well knew and appreciated, such as the theories by Franco Modigliani (1985 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics), Claudio Napoleoni and Federico Caffè (intellectual mentor of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, suddenly and mysteriously disappeared in the spring of 1987, just when a more intense form of liberalism – what he strongly opposed – was taking over the economic world. Amongst others, Ermanno Rea in L’ultima lezione (The last lesson), published by Einaudi; his favourite pupil Bruno Amoroso; and, more recently, Guido Maria Brera, Dimmi cosa vedi tu da lì (Tell me what you see from there), published by Solferino, speculated about the reasons for his disappearance.

One further thought to bear in mind, while we’re rediscovering Keynes and Fitoussi, well expressed by Zygmunt Bauman in Vite che non possiamo permetterci (Living on borrowed time), published by Laterza: “Society can soar and become a community only if it is able to effectively protect its members from the twin horrors of misery and humiliation, from the terror of being excluded and condemned to ‘social redundancy’ or, in any case, to be marked as ‘human waste’.” A good lesson for our times.

(Photo by Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)