WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #171: MELACCINI (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Published on 29 May 2023 by Ucadi in Newsletter, Issue 171 - May 2023, Year 2023.

---- The "governor" [1] of Emilia Romagna, the "granite" Stefano Bonaccini, is
speaking with Meloni. ---- And not from now. I mean, it is certainly not the
trifle of one of the greatest environmental disasters of recent decades that
binds the two characters, apparently lined up on opposite sides .... of the
hemicycle. ---- After all, the difference between the right and the "left" now
seems to be, in fact, only that of topographic positioning. For heaven's sake,
Schlein della Roccella is better, but we are in the context of sentimental
classifications, not in an actual politically significant presence.
But the Emilia case is particularly relevant. It is one of the most important
regions of Italy from an economic point of view, the fourth or third in the
Italian ranking. And it was also the laboratory of Italian capitalism.
"Red" region where PCI has put its organizational and productive capacity to good
use (it is appropriate to say) and where ideology has acted as a "glue" not to
conquer socialism, but to feed a complex system of capitalism "progressive" that
has become a bit the paradigm of the whole country. In no other region has this
module succeeded in such an emblematic way. Certainly not in Tuscany, the region
most similar (in many ways) to the land of Emilia-Romagna (a very recent duo -
born in 1970 - which marks the differences that are still very strong within this
real European macro area) but where the history and radical parochial
idiosyncrasies (and certainly not out of love of country or literally invented
traditions) have prevented the creation of a true
industrial/paternalistic/community system like the one in Emilia. Of course, in
the words of Becattini (Giacomo), Tuscan development had a very sudden main trend
after the Second World War, linked to the events of the end of the sharecropping
world (a system that seems to have been in structural trouble for decades). But
the subsequent history was very different from the Emilia-Romagna one, where the
latter reality seems to have really brought together the enormous organizational
characteristics of the PCI as a machine naturally oriented towards economic
development.
Let it be clear that this system has created effective well-being, has modeled
cities on a "human scale" (just to use a trivial term) and has distributed and
redistributed wealth. But we certainly cannot fail to connect these aspects to
that of a consensus machine with specific characteristics, a "system" which, over
the years, has shown to have been above all a construction aimed at favoring
capital under specific "social" forms. A kind of "ordoliberalism" in an Italian
sauce, where consensus and social peace have been guarantees for investments and
where "Coop", one of the largest large-scale retail players on the world market,
still presents itself today as a social enterprise, almost that it really was a
consumer cooperative managed and directed by and for the popular classes.[2]
Again, no harm. We are in a capitalist country and certainly not in the Russia of
the Soviets (if there ever was). However, it seems to me quite clear that the
"social capitalism" of the RE is not very distant from any form of capitalism,
except the guise in which it presents itself. Again, it is not a question of
saying that all "cows are black", but of understanding that, in the end, capital
does not fall in love with packaging very much, and that it can be "green" or
not, depending on where it operates and in what context does it arise? Of course,
better "green" than not green, but in the end what matters is
other.
Let's go back to our Bonaccini. In the parable of the PCI, one of the fundamental
steps was that anything is better than becoming social democrats. From this
ideological basis the slope that we know well and of which we have perhaps spoken
too many times has derived. In that process, however, the "concrete" aspect of
"doing" that characterized and has characterized the PCI after the Second World
War remained strong. That is, on a truly orthodox ideological basis, a system has
been built that is not only absolutely compatible with capital, but, indeed, so
connected with the latter as to have become one of its examples of greater
efficiency and capacity.
But development also brings external diseconomies that are passed on to
successive generations. For example with the enormous soil consumption of the ER,
on the cementing of the coasts, which became unrecognizable in a very short
period (watch the film "I Vitelloni" by Fellini to understand how they could have
been in the 50s of the last century). Valuable mining capacity, accelerated
developmentism, "socialist" efficiency rather than "climate change" have to be
placed in the dock for the destruction of these days.

But blaming the "climate" is easier. Forgetting that the same climate changes due
to human intervention.
But, as we know, the climate is a "big" thing, we'll talk about it again in a few
hundred years. But the profits are today, day by day and have to grow.
Salvo Torre specifies it well (there is no need to be prophets in these issues.
They are there for all to see) in his introduction to the reissue of a
fundamental work by Giovanni Arrighi:

"Within the rhetoric on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, however, an
exponential growth in consumption and general pressure on the biosphere and soil
has taken place in the last fifteen years. The dimensions of the ecological
crisis are devastating and represent precisely the limit category that the
classical economics did not agree to hypothesize.[...] Within the question of
global crises, which seem to follow one another at an increasingly rapid pace,
there is also the real ability to propose alternatives to a system of social
relations which has by now bankruptcy, especially if read on a longer time scale.
Capitalism does not have to fight with crises, it could not survive without it,
it has turned out to be a system based on destruction aimed at inserting any
element into the circuit of valorisation. of all the possible choices, the path
followed has always been the most destructive.It is a simple principle, because
the rhythms of biological reproduction and the times of environmental feedback
are incompatible with the constant acceleration that production and the market
must undergo. The whole system is extraneous to the logic of reproduction and
keeping it alive involves choosing which parts of the planet to sacrifice".[3]

Bonaccini and Meloni are part of the same coin in terms of fundamentals.
Development understood as continuous infrastructural growth, land consumption,
little or poor maintenance of the territory due to the privatization (even when
the property is public) of the universe-world and savings on personnel, often
underpaid and precarious.
And only now that it is in opposition does the PD pretend to take sides against
the differentiated autonomy which will give a definitive blow to the necessary
work of securing the territory, when Bonaccini himself was one of the creators.
Bonaccini needs the billions from the government, and through him through the EU
and for this he must be calm. If this were the only thing, it would also be
understandable.
The question, however, is that there is a profound "ditto feeling", a common
vision (which the increasingly debased ideology finds it hard to cover) of a form
of development that never seems to show any trouble.
And maybe, pro domo sua, the breathlessness doesn't really show it.
Except where disaster really strikes.
But it's the fault of the climate, or, as Bonaccini seems to have really said,
"of the porcupines".

[1]The figure of the "Governor" does not exist in Italy. But the term gives the
meaning that the "governors" themselves mean: a personal power without strings
and snares. "President of the Giunta" is still too democratic.
[2]See W. Bukowsky, The Mozzarella Dance. Slow food, Eataly, Coop and their
narration , Alegre, 2015.
[3]From the preface by Salvo Torre to the new edition of: Giovanni Arrighi, Adam
Smith in Beijing Genealogies of the twenty-first century , Mimesis, 2021 ed. or. 2008

Andrea Bellucci

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/05/29/melaccini/
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