Because I don’t like this creeping cold war in Italy
Woe to evoke, as Bersani tries to do, the spirit of the "cold war", in identifying the enemies of all time, albeit wearing new uniforms: on the one hand, the left, with its multilateralism and its pro-European projection; on the other, the sovereign and populist right.
In many ways we have returned to militant anti-fascism. Not to the one that marked the years of the birth of the republican Constitution, but that of the "years of lead". The years of the hunt for "black" by left-left groups. And the symmetrical response of the neo-fascist movements. A continuous escalation destined to bring grief and pain on both sides. Those times must not return. And not just for ethical reasons: the deaths of Covid are enough. But because the theses, which support its structure, are misleading. They prevent us from looking to tomorrow, lulling ourselves on the archetypes of the past. Let's say right away that populism and sovereignty have nothing to do with fascism. Donald Trump is not Hitler. Matteo Salvini is not the new Duce and Giorgia Meloni is not Claretta Petacci.
It is not so. Above all, it doesn't have to be that way. Woe to evoke, as Pier Luigi Bersani tries to do, the spirit of the “cold war” in identifying the enemies of all time, albeit wearing new uniforms: on the one hand, the left, with its multilateralism and its pro-European projection; on the other, the sovereign and populist right. Historical variant of the old fascism. “We must put an end to this uncivilized war – said Joe Biden in his oath – which pits red against blue, rural against urban, conservative against liberal”. To understand all together the contradictions of that new world that opens up in front of us. Those who insist on Manichaeism fail to see the specific reasons for certain divergences, which have nothing to do with the divisions of the 20th century, but have a life of their own. On which it is necessary to investigate. "Not to face – it is always Joe Biden who speaks – the challenges of yesterday, but the challenges of today and tomorrow".
At the beginning of the last century, the world experienced the first phase of globalization. Scholars and politicians tried to interpret it. From Hobson, who was responsible for the first studies on the nature of imperialism, to the social democrat Hilferding, so harshly attacked – even on a personal level – by Lenin. The respective assessments differ. The first saw a financial capital now master of the world, destined to overcome national borders and traditions. The second, on the other hand, spoke of a monopoly capital, the result of the inextricable intertwining between banks and large industries, nationally and highly competitive: thanks to its deep link with the organization, including military, of the state.
It was the conflict between the countries that had adopted that model that gave rise to the Great War: first simple colonial conquest, then total confrontation. It ended as it ended: 16 million dead, 20 million wounded and maimed. To which add up the tens of millions of people – the exact number is unknown – killed by the "Spanish", that epidemic that closely resembles the plague of Covid-19. At that time the contagion spread in the interbreeding and promiscuity of the trenches, today with the intensification of exchanges and movements induced by peaceful globalization. The order of the factors changed, but the final result was identical.
The Great War ended in disaster. The October Revolution divided the old continent for almost a century. The central empires were wiped out. Germany forced to pay those war reparations, which fueled a sense of general frustration: the breeding ground that led to the birth of Nazism. Britain and France lulled themselves into their chauvinism. Italy cornered, with its "mutilated victory", waiting for Benito Mussolini to take power. While the United States, which had been the real winners of the war, did not understand, as Charles Kindleberger later wrote, the need to exercise their world leadership.
The second globalization had more Hilferding's face than Lenin's. It was above all major international finance that guided the process. To move the huge masses of capital towards the periphery of the world where there were greater opportunities for profit, due to a low-cost labor and a production free from the conditioning – starting from the environmental ones – in force in the oldest countries civilization. The fortune of the Brics is explained above all in this way. A gigantic financial umbrella – 10/15 times the world GDP – was the crutch of a stateless capital, able to live autonomously. Without having to depend on the state envelope that characterized the first globalization.
This explains the suffering of the United States itself: perhaps the most illustrious victims of the great geopolitical changes that have taken place. In 1980 China accounted for 2.3 per cent of world GDP and the USA for 21.5 per cent. In 2020 for 19.7 and 14.9 per cent respectively. In the great communicating vessels of the world economy, a growing part of the surplus (Paul Sweezy) had been transferred from the old metropolises to the peripheries of the world, destroying the ancient wealth of the Western middle class. More and more frightened and impoverished, while a small minority, locally, enjoyed the benefits of globalization.
How to respond to these phenomena? Let's forget the references to populism: on the left seen as smoke in the eyes. However, you forget that Leninism was Marx's contamination with Russian populism.
And that Joe Biden himself, in his speech, deliberately quoted “We the people”. Which is also the "cry" with which the American Constitution opens. Instead, let's talk about sovereignty. Of that attempt to react to the breakdowns induced by a sick globalization, of which this same approach was a bastard daughter. Donald Trump in the USA, Marine Le Pen in France, Bernd Lucke in Germany, Nigel Farage in Great Britain, Giorgia Meloni in Italy are not cursed angels. But only those who have based their political perspective on the dark side of globalization.
Could a return to the 1920s be the best way to tackle the crisis? The closures at the time against the wounds of the war. That holing up of individual states in themselves, to the point of regressing into the darkest forms of autarchy. Hard to believe in the world of the internet and integral communication. So what? The solution can only be other. That of a control that has not even been attempted so far. That it seeks to guarantee the development of technologies that globalization has undoubtedly favored, while avoiding the domination of the most powerful and their desire for supremacy. From this point of view, defending the great national interests means nothing more than wanting to contribute, in the forms that will be possible, to a new multilateralism, more open, more democratic, one might say. Which, starting from the bottom, is an overcoming of past experience.
In Italy this road inevitably passes through a different Europe. Which has yet to be born. And of which, perhaps for the first time, with the Recovery Fund, a cry is heard. It follows that Europe cannot be a discriminant, as Bersani says, because the struggle to change it must be common. Overcoming the false alternative represented by a simple icon, to which to submit without question; to then fall into the caricature of a sort of reincarnation of the Third Reich, (copyright of Alberto Bagnai) against which to take the field.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-non-mi-piace-questa-guerra-fredda-strisciante-in-italia/ on Thu, 21 Jan 2021 15:26:43 +0000.