Maurizio Landini’s star and Mario Tronti’s wisdom
The Notepad of Michael the Great
Is Maurizio Landini's star turning pale? Dario Di Vico, an attentive analyst of trade union events, asked this in an article in Corriere della Sera (economic insert, 30 August). The questionable and unpopular positions of the CGIL leader, accomplices the leaders of CISL and UIL, on the indefinite blocking of layoffs and on the green certificate in company canteens, external (sensational that of Sergio Cofferati) and internal (the provax campaign launched by building secretary Alessandro Genovesi) are there to prove it. But this is not the point. Once a pope is dead, another is made. The columnist from Via Solferino then asks himself, correctly recalling two readings of a rather reckless line: crisis of leadership or crisis of a certain model of union?
I don't want to sound like a bullfighter, but I answer: both. Crisis of leadership, because the keys to the main door of Corso d'Italia are still in the hands of management groups that were formed during the Fordist season, accustomed to seeing many traps and few opportunities in the demographic and technological changes. Crisis of a trade union model, or of an organizational centralism in contrast with the reality of work and of the company. Of broken and precarious work, whose owners have little say in the contractual system. Of the dispersed and widespread company, which on average has four employees. I am speaking of that organizational centralism which has its roots in a misunderstood principle, according to which confederality is a hierarchical order. While the identification of the particular interest with the bottom and the general interest with the top has no basis – neither theoretical nor historical.
An idea in which there is an inherent risk that the reasons of the trade union bureaucracies prevail over the reasons of the representatives and of social innovation. I stop here. Once upon a time the CGIL, albeit with some pansidacalist slips, tried to be a "political subject", strong in an uncommon capacity for proposal. Today, in the face of the pandemic and the Recovery Plan, it seems to be satisfied with the mere protection of its members (which is also decreasing). Yes, Luciano Lama and Bruno Trentin now belong to another geological era.
#The paper
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On 24 July, Mario Tronti crossed the ninety-year milestone. Best wishes to the theorist of workerism, who as a young man invited young people to listen to Mahler and read Musil. Best wishes to the irreverent and innovative intellectual, close to every critical position of dogmatic Marxism. Best wishes to the student of modern political thought, who has spent almost thirty years of his university teaching. True, his heresies have not always paid off. The attempt to introduce Carl Schmitt into the discourse of the Italian left lasted the space of a morning. Nor, more generally, has the idea of a revolutionary use of the great bourgeois culture had better luck. However, Tronti remains an inexhaustible mine of never banal reflections on the crisis of liberal democratic democracies in an era in which everything is called into question: planetary balances, state sovereignties, social blocks, development models, ways of forming individual and collective consciousness.
He wrote of himself, and of what he considered his time, the twentieth century: “We, nostalgic inhabitants of the century”. And he advised his world of belonging to cultivate the dimension of memory, instead of abandoning himself to a subordinate demonization of the past: “We could not do what has been done. But it was also possible to do what was not done ”. I think he is right, but without doing wrong to his constant and caring attention to the present, in which he continues to have his feet firmly planted. In fact, Tronti is one of the most acute observers of the national reality. His latest public interventions demonstrate this. Nothing to share with those that "the current government is the most oligarchic and anti-popular in republican Italy" (copyright by Tomaso Montanari), or "the government of masters, bankers and privilege" (copyright by Marco Revelli).
Tronti, on the contrary, on more than one occasion stated that he felt reassured to see the huge resources made available to us today by the EU in good hands. The good hands are obviously those of Draghi, and not those of “Conte uno, bis and, luckily for us, non ter” ( Il Riformista , 12 May last). The prevailing objective now must be that of “the economic and social recovery of the country in the post-war pandemic. And that of incardinating the famous reforms, not only because Europe asks us to do so but because they are necessary for Italy and for the Italy that works. After that, we can safely return to the normal political dialectic between left and right. I have always appreciated the figure of the enlightened conservative more than that of the confused reformist. Better to have a strong opponent than to look for a weak ally. This pushes you down, that leads you to level up in your action, makes you aware of your shortcomings, forces you to cultivate new ideas and to prepare leadership teams capable of realizing them ”(ibidem). Thank you for these wise and intelligent words of yours, prof. Tronti. She is of another category.
#The paper
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/la-stella-di-maurizio-landini-e-la-saggezza-di-mario-tronti/ on Sat, 04 Sep 2021 05:30:54 +0000.