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By Domenico Pacitti Italy
and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State 1980-2001 by
Paul Ginsborg. Published 2001 by Allen Lane, The Penguin Press,
London, 521, xv pages, GB Pounds 25.00, ISBN 0 713 99537 8. "Prettifying
Berlusconi and clientelism does not imply Ginsborg's support for
either: it reflects a largely unconscious practice by historians
and others of observing arbitrary limits to permissible discourse,
thus sparing cross-party politics and society from embarrassing
truths while avoiding stiff penalties. Precision and documentation
do not alone guarantee a true overall picture and may even impede
perception of a false one. History writing must be scrupulously
monitored precisely because history is of immense value."
Domenico Pacitti Although
Paul Ginsborg's account of Italian political and social life over
the past 20 years is clearly presented, well documented and
politically impartial, it nevertheless fails to paint a true
picture. Ginsborg,
a professor of European history at the University of Florence,
begins by describing Italy's rise to a major world economy, the
key role of service industry and small firms and the relative
failure of large firms, the public sector and agriculture. Income
distribution and increased social mobility have had their most
dramatic effects on the working classes, making them wealthier but
weakening their sense of collective identity. This, he says, has
radically transformed the traditional Italian household,
increasing individuals' freedom and producing a boom in cultural
activities and travel. Clientelism, "familism" and the
Roman Catholic church emerge as part of a legacy that has shaped
relations between individuals and civil society. The
bulk of the book maps the progress of political events through the
kaleidoscopic succession of 22 governments from 1980 to 2001,
notably: the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia; Antonio
Di Pietro and "Operation Clean Hands"; the P2 Masonic
lodge scandal; the murders of anti-Mafia heroes Giovanni Falcone
and Paolo Borsellino; the rise and fall of Bettino Craxi;
seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti's trials for Mafia
involvement; and the arrival of Umberto Bossi and the Northern
League separatists. Particularly
noteworthy is Ginsborg's coverage of Gladio, an Italian military
secret service organisation created by agreement with the CIA in
1956 as a "stay-behind" force that underwent CIA
training and direction until Andreotti was forced to recognise its
existence in 1990. Ginsborg rightly rejects the official version
that it was simply a measure against possible foreign invasion on
the basis of strong evidence that it was in reality an instrument
of surveillance and possible action against internal political
enemies. And
in relating Craxi's handling of the Palestinian hijacking of the Achille
Lauro liner in 1985, Ginsborg supports his refusal to
hand over the terrorists to the US government, correctly noting
the added strain on US relations given Craxi's prior sympathies
with Palestine. It
would be interesting to reconsider in this light Craxi's political
isolation and savage treatment by Di Pietro (at one stage alleged
to have been backed by the CIA) and the flow of unexplained
destabilising acts in the 1980s and 1990s, including bombings that
were readily attributed to the Mafia and Red Brigade. On
the other hand, Ginsborg's ingenuous disappointment that
"Clean Hands" did not revolutionise politics in Italy
starkly exposes his limitations in understanding how the country
really works. Italians knew that it would only be a matter of time
before everything was brought under control and back to
"normal". The
book's chief defect, however, is the author's curious
decision to sweeten his story by systematically omitting important
truths at key points, seriously distorting the overall picture. In
this he has unconsciously performed a priceless public relations
service for the Italian state. Thus,
clientelism, one of the principal forces that govern Italian
society, is dangerously semi-legitimised by Ginsborg within an
anthropological perspective and summarily dismissed. And his
account of corruption is mostly limited to the 1992
"Bribesville" political scandal and to the Mafia. The
reader is given little idea of the appalling damage that is caused
daily by socially accepted corruption in Italian public and
private life, obliging those who wish to make an honest living and
be judged on merit to emigrate. Similarly,
Ginsborg glosses over criminal accusations against Berlusconi,
making no mention of the fact that he was actually given three
prison sentences totalling six years and five months (which he did
not serve because of the statutory law of time limitations). Nor
does he consider the grave implications of Berlusconi's claim that
he was victimised by the Italian judiciary since, logically,
either Italy has a prime minister who is both a criminal and a
liar or else a large number of Italian magistrates should be sent
to an appropriate European court for trial. Disappointingly,
he has little to say about Italian universities, authoritatively
described by the late, great art critic Federico Zeri in 1998 as
"one of Italy's three biggest cancers" (the other two
being bureaucracy and the Roman Catholic church). Coverage of the
Vatican, again superficial, fails to mention its furious ongoing
battle over embryo research and medically assisted procreation. Ginsborg's
omissions extend to other areas. For example, he might have found
space for natural disasters and their socio-political
consequences, including the customary embezzlement of funds
intended for the victims, as happened in the Umbria and Marche
earthquakes in 1997, which killed ten people, injured 500 and saw
13,000 housed in tents, or the landslide in Campania in 1998,
which killed 100. An earlier, Italian version of the book has already been widely adopted in Italy's state schools for reasons that should be fairly obvious. One hopes that students of contemporary history and Italian at schools and universities in Britain and elsewhere will be spared similar indoctrination. Note: This review was first published by The Times Higher Education Supplement on September 27 2002. |
