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Paolo Gerbaudo

21 Oct, 8 tweets, 2 min read

Sottosviluppo italiano deriva da assenza storica di una "grande borghesia" degna di tale nome. La borghesia che abbiamo è piccola/media di stampo familiare e mentalità da orticello. Divisione proprietà/gestione propria del capitalismo moderno ha funzionato poco nel nostro paese.

Le grandi imprese italiane, eccetto per banche e poche altre, sono o 1) partecipate statali o 2) imprese parafamiliari, con controllo stretto della proprietà.

Abbiamo un'eccedenza di borghesi (e di città borghesi che da tempo immemore vivono sulle province, le 100 città di Gramsci) che però non sono in grado di fare i borghesi e creare egemonia stabile. Per quello spesso la borghesia italiana si è affidata all'estrema destra.

Modo di produzione capitalista paradossalmente si è affermato con capitalismo statale attorno a cui vivacchiavano le imprese private. Finito quello è finito anche il resto eccetto per alcune imprese iper-specializzate e export-led.

Seconda repubblica è tentativo di partorire grande borghesia privatizzando le imprese statali: una operazione di ingegneria economica miseramente fallita. Così oggi l'Italia si ritrova a vivere di nutella, scamorze, turismo, occhiali, bulloni per le auto tedesche e armi. Fail.

Pure estremo frazionamento e stratarchia (ovvero potere di potentati locali nei partiti) del sistema politico (es. cespugli centristi) riflette tale struttura sociale. Borghesia manca di coscienza di classe coesa e nazionale. È insieme riottoso di padroni a casa propria.

Ma tale "gelatinoso" (per usare bellissimo aggettivo gramsciano) stato di cose è problema anche per lavoratori e sinistra. C'è poco grande capitale che possa fare da fuoco di mobilitazione e da cui ottenere concessioni salariali ecc. Conflitto è sparpagliato in mille rivoli.

In Spagna (anche esso paese semiperiferico) dopo crisi del 2008 quantomeno avevano le grandi banche da attaccare (prima di tutto Santander e gruppi pivati corrotti come Bankia che avevano speculato su immobiliare), da noi dissenso quasi tutto incanalato in critica alla "casta".

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More from @paologerbaudo

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

20 Oct

@guardian

Here's are some of the points discussed in my @guardian op-ed on the populist right and Covid conspiracy theories. /thread

theguardian.com/global/comment…

The populist right dallying with conspiracy theorists is the last chapter of a longstanding culture war on values and identity. The idea was popularised back in 1992 by republican pundit and pres candidate Buchanan and it has become the standard strategy of the hard right. 1/

Read 13 tweets

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

12 Oct

The culture war is now eating the right from within.
/thread

Over the course of the last decades the growing consensus of the populist right has been partly built by pursuing a culture war against liberal elites and the left accused of imposing on ordinary people alien ideas. 1/

This culture war is multifarious. On the one hand it revolves around conservative rejection of progressive values (LGBT rights, racial equality etc). On other hand it comprises a suspicion of science and technique, seen as a means of imposing progressivism and rationalism. 2/

Read 13 tweets

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

9 Aug

While we wait for release of new IPCC report it is ever more apparent that to avert climate disaster we need massive state interventionism, the like of which we have not experienced for decades, and we are not culturally/psychologically prepared for. /thread

1/ For a long time climate policy discourse was framed either as changes in individual consumption patterns or local areas (do you remember transition towns?) or multilateralism and action at global level. "Think global act local" or "planetary solutions to planetary problems".

2/ Fact that changes in individual consumption patterns is only an illusion (for how it may give a little help) has already been demolished (at least in the activist milieu). But idea that only planetary solutions will deliver us from global problems is more stubborn.

Read 13 tweets

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

7 Aug

If Italy is the country of the future, expect to have not just one rightwing populist party but two (Lega + Brothers of Italy). I struggled a bit yesterday to explain to foreign journalist why this is the case.

My sense is that there are 2 parties because of 2 main reasons: 1. territorial divides, 2. divides within the Italian bourgeoisie. Ideology also matters ("post"-fascism in case of Brothers of Italy vis-a-vis post-regionalist populism in the case of Lega). But not as important.

In terms of territorial divides despite Lega becoming national party its heartland still very much in the Po valley, and its free market policy reflects it. Brothers of Italy strong in Centre-South and more economically marginal areas. Its economic policy is more protectionist.

Read 8 tweets

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

5 Aug

The problem of Agamben and philosophical allies is not that they are Foucaultian, but that they are not Foucaultian enough! It is as if they have only read Discipline and Punish skipping the lectures at the College de France.

Discussing rise of political economy Foucault says that entire point of biopolitics is circulation, facilitating movement of people and things. Agamben and the like instead operate with a vision of government as confinement, using the concentration camp as paradigm of modernity.

For example vaccine passports are not about confining people at home. Much to the contrary they are about persuading them to get out of their homes, winning over their reluctance for fear of contagion. It is a means of circulation not confinement.

Read 4 tweets

Paolo Gerbaudo

@paologerbaudo

5 Aug

We are moving from 'exopolitics' of neoliberalism (externalisation, outsourcing, offshoring, exports) to 'endopolitics' of postneoliberal era (reterritorialisation, isolationism, rescue-repair-recovery, domestic demand, insourcing, onshoring).

(The Great Recoil, Intro)

1/ Idea here is that we are facing a topological inversion in contemporary politics. Outwardness of high globalisation gives way to a countervailing trend. This is not just a moment of involution/backlash, but also of re-centering and internal re-organisation of political units.

2/ This trend is similar to many previous Polanyian counter-movements. Globalisation's expansionist drive was unsustainable politically (as shown by populist revolts) and economically (global supply chain disruption, stagnating domestic demand).

Read 11 tweets

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