The left and the accounts with neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, as Totò would say, is a bit like fog: “When it’s there, you can’t see it”. The Mulino website, the magazine that is currently interpreting the culture war of the left more than any other, hosted an interesting long-distance debate between Angelo Panebianco and Norberto Dilmore. The first argued that considering Italy a neoliberal country is laughable because “nothing of the kind has ever taken root here”. The reply is particularly interesting because it does not come from an exaggerated censor of capitalism, but from a nom de plume who, through his writings, exhorts the left not to get sucked into the maelstrom of extremism. The scholar is a steady couple with Michele Salvati, one of the intellectuals who more than anyone fought to modernize the Democratic Party and, even earlier, the center-left. Dilmore primarily carries out two topics. The first, which we could call neoliberalism malgré soi, sounds like this: “It is difficult to think that the neoliberal narrative and the policies it prescribes, which for thirty years dominated the international economic scene in both advanced and emerging countries (including China), has not had a important impact also on Italy”. The second, which we will call asymptomatic neoliberalism, is that “Italy is one of the countries in which neoliberal policies, also due to the way they were adopted, have produced limited positive results, while in many cases the measures undertaken have exacerbated problems existing”.