CAPITALISM EVEN LOVES DEGROWTH

CAPITALISM EVEN LOVES DEGROWTH

Of comidad 

The Gentiloni government, in the throes of schizophrenia, before proclaiming to want to cut taxes, then even announces a tax on dogs . Since there is no absurdity that does not find its admirers, the " debate " on the new tax is looming tense and interesting. 

The poor dogs prepare to be abandoned en masse

One suspects that the true purpose of government is not to chase the change of the revenue from the tax but, in fact, the " debate " itself, the meaning of which, as always, will be reduced to " there is no money and you have to find them somewhere ". The real purpose of certain government-media provocations is therefore to reinforce the message, or rather the ideology, of pauperism. An ideology that devalues an entire area and helpless surrender to the sell-off to " investors " foreign potentates the usual multinationals so they can pretend to be saviors of the starving country. Degrading the image of a country means to lower the " rating " and promote sales, and privatization. Poverty serves, just as picture, because a low credit rating, even unjustified, implies for the country to which it relates having to pay higher interest on its public debt. One of the mantras of Europe relates the tale of " ants " of the north who do not want to pay for " crickets " in the south, but the fact is that they are the " cicadas " to pay for everyone because of their low rating. 

But the image can serve very often to anticipate the reality. In 1964, after decades of double-digit increases in GDP, the Italian lira was in a financial storm. What had happened? Development of production required ever more oil and to buy it abroad, it was necessary to first buy dollars, leading to collapse the lira. When capital moves in the international financial markets, other capital move their wake, which is a trail of dead and wounded. Capital movements invariably go to destabilize the real economy. 

In deficit is the trade balance of the balance of payments, the Colombo government of 1964 had wanted to devalue the lira; but the governor of the Bank of Italy, Guido Carli (left in photo), in line with the dictates of the super-global finance, who did not like devaluations, negotiated a loan from the US and imposed the Colombo government to cut a lot ' national industry to lighten the financial burden of oil imports. Where it was operated industrial logging? To the south, of course. The south was poorer - poor par excellence - so it could impoverish more without disturbing the domestic balance, neither economically, nor ideologically. From 1964 to 1966 he occurred in the South the first major de-industrialization after the economic boom of the early 60s. Even the largest pharmaceutical industry of the South, the Farmochimica of Naples, was ceded to the US multinational Richardson-Merrell, what in the name that benefit foreign investment would bring the balance of payments. Having taken the technology that was used, the Richardson-Merrell slunk off in 1975. 

The " southern question " held so his role anticipatory mythology to mystify the real role of the southern Italian economy, to the tensions drain valve of the trade balance and balance of payments. Year to year, the South has come to resemble more and more to the portrait that if it was for more than a century earlier. The scenario of 1964 was in fact promptly repeated whenever there were any financial tensions, in 1975/76, 1981, 1992, etc., Up to lead the current of the South industrial desertification.


Like all fundamental ideologies, pauperism never find true opposition, least of all in those who present themselves as " opposition ." A recurrent and persistent myth about the " betrayal of the left ", a myth reconfirmed by the " debate " on the left, in which, for example, Pier Luigi Bersani warns that " the left must be left ." The problem is that you do not understand what this left, because it all comes down, once again, the old old story of redistribution of sacrifices.
In 1977 the secretary of the Communist Party, Enrico Berlinguer (pictured above), had arrived even to sing the praises of de-industrialization and impoverishment, called " austerity " , placing the same " austerity " between the moral categories. Even now that Berlinguer's speech is his tireless admirers, who even identify him as a foreshadowing of the "project of the decline ."

The misunderstanding is obvious: capitalism is interpreted as a mechanism of uncontrolled growth which oppose a controlled depletion. Except that pauperism is an essential component of capitalism and the history of capitalism is also made of a lower decrease controlled. When capitalism must choose between industrial development and the mobility of capital, it is still the industrial development to be sacrificed.