In a Solferino volume to be released on February 28, Carlo De Benedetti invites a different approach, clear right from the title: «Radicality». For the author it is necessary to restart from ecology and the fight against inequality
“Even if at my age you should seek peace, I am convinced that this is the moment of the storm”.
Carlo De Benedetti is 88 years old. «As a boy, son of the wolf, I took part in fascist rallies. Then came the racial laws, the war in the skies over Italy, the allied bombings which in November 1942 destroyed my family’s house in Turin. I can say that I’m alive by a miracle: on the night we fled to Switzerland we had just passed the last fence, slipping into a hole in the border fence, when a German patrol arrived on the other side. The difference between life and death was a matter of minutes, a roll of the dice of fate. After this daring escape, I lived with my father, my mother and my brother in a boarding house in Lucerne, where we lived by selling the diamonds that my mother had sewn into the bust before leaving. We sipped them, little by little, because we didn’t know when peace would come; we did not return to Italy until August 1945. However, in those long months I remember my father’s unshakeable faith: “I don’t know how long the war will last, but the Americans will win”. “And what are we going to do?” “If the communists stop in Trieste we will go back to Turin, if the communists arrive in Turin we will go to America”. The communists didn’t arrive in Turin and that’s where I experienced the reconstruction and the Italian miracle».
To understand Carlo De Benedetti we must start from the autobiographical data, which always resurfaces in his books. His conversation, like his writing, has that frank trait bordering on bravado that makes him loved and hated but never irrelevantand cannot be understood without the dramatic childhood, the awareness of being alive by a miracle, the desire to take the only luxury that Italian billionaires almost always deny themselves: to say what they really think.
What Cdb thinks of our country is condensed into 140 pages, coming out of Solferino. Title: Radicality. The change Italy needs. Departure: Italy is in decline. «You find yourself in a stagnation that is a prelude to decadence». There is no shortage of brains, nor the university to train them: that of Bologna which is the oldest in the world, Bocconi, the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin. There is a lack of “venture capital”, investors willing to finance not public debt, not a warehouse, but an idea; as De Benedetti himself confesses that he was unable to do, when in a garage in Cupertino a twenty-year-old long-haired Steve Jobs offered him the deal of his life, 600,000 dollars to buy 20% of the company that would become Apple .
But Italy lacks above all politics. That the author does not appreciate Berlusconi, Salvini, Meloni is not news. And the Democratic Party? «A team that after decades of conservative politics is still difficult to consider as progressive, hence the general disaffection of his voters. Not unlike me, I think they feel like betrayed spouses, who have made a pact and have not seen it respected”. And again: the Democratic Party is «a party that I consider irreformable, torn apart and screwed into its own internal psychodramas rather than projected into solving real problems. The equivalent of a psychoanalytic session on the deck of a sinking ship, without even the orchestra».
The only solution for the author is radicalism. In the etymological sense: change at the root. A “new socialism” that addresses i two great themes of modernity: growing inequalities and environmental disaster.
Capitalism no longer works. «He has betrayed his fundamental promise: the greatest possible well-being for as many people as possible. Today, however, it produces enormous wealth destined for a few, at the expense not only of the vast majority, but of the planet itself”. On the one hand, the monstrous inequalities: while humanity suffered in the time of Covid, the ten richest men in the world have more than doubled their assets, which is now six times that of the bottom 40%. It is such an impressive fact that it is difficult to understand it: three billion human beings do not reach half the wealth of the ten richest men. In the meantime, inflation has rekindled, which affects above all the poor and the middle class, and rates have restarted, which increase both the costs for the State and those of mortgages for families. In this regard, De Benedetti asks for a patrimonial balance for everyone, specifying that he has paid for it for decades, albeit in Switzerland (here is another passage from the book that he will discuss). On the other hand, drought, melting glaciers, floods put the future of humanity at risk, without politics taking care of it. Indeed, just when a global government is needed, the specter of war returns to the world.
Some of the most impressive pages of Radicality they are dedicated to the upcoming conflict between America and China, which the author considers inevitable. “History tells us so. When a dominant power sees a challenger emerge, the opposition sooner or later leads to open conflict. It happened with Athens and Sparta, it will happen with the United States and China. The signs are already visible: the repatriation of technologies; the relocation of the eastern headquarters of the large US multinationals to other countries, as in the case of Apple which moves a significant part of its production to Vietnam; the “chip war”, with America blocking the sale of semiconductors to China. In a private note from Air Force General Mike Minihan reads: “I hope I’m wrong. But instinct tells me that we will fight in 2025”».
At this point the reader will ask himself: where is the hope? What can Italy do in all this? In the geopolitical field, very little, replies De Benedetti. Nevertheless the concluding chapter is dedicated to a possible «European Renaissance». Europe’s primacy, argues the author, must be ecological. We are rich, we are old, we are beautiful. From the Loire Valley to the Valley of the Temples and from the Reno Valley to the Jerte Valley, from the fjords to the Strait of Messina, Europe is stupendous. We can cultivate, enhance and even export this beauty, which also means lifestyles and values». Italy can do its part: focusing on the environment, renewable energies, the training of young people, new technologies, and also a new finance capable of investing in ideas. And a new left, still to be built.
The presentation on March 8th
«Radicalità» will be presented by Carlo De Benedetti on Wednesday 8 March, in dialogue with Ferruccio de Bortoli, in a meeting in Milan organized by the Corriere della Sera Foundation. The event will be held in the Sala Buzzati (via Balzan 3) at 6pm.
February 26, 2023 (change February 26, 2023 | 21:30)
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