“While officials are treated with respect by Italians, this is not the case for places or objects that are public.”
While officials are treated with respect by Italians, this is not the case for places or objects that are public. The Italian has no feeling that these things are his, and therefore he should treat them well. His house or flat will be spotlessly tidy and clean, but he will think nothing of leaving litter and rubbish untidily on the pavement and street outside; there they become the city council’s responsibility, not his.
From time to time the Italians are called upon to vote in referenda on important issues, such as divorce, abortion, nuclear power, the use of pesticides in farming and the number of television channels any one Italian citizen can own. This gives them a sense of being involved in political decision-making.
“Referenda give Italians a sense of being involved in political decision-making.”
A referendum requires a 50% turn-out to be a valid quorum. Thus, despite an increasing number of Italians wishing to protect the country’s ever-diminishing number of birds and beasts, a referendum on the issue only resulted in a 45% turn-out and new legislation was blocked. On the other hand, the Italians turned out in force to vote in favour of having television films and documentaries interrupted by commercials.
Mafia is a word used all over the world both for criminal organisations and for coteries of power, so that people talk about a sports mafia, an arts mafia or a business mafia, yet the model is always the Italian mafia.
In Italy ‘mafia’ covers several different bodies each ruling over a well-defined territory, the main ones being the Camorra in the region around Naples, the ’Ndrang-heta in Calabria (the tip of the boot), the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia (the heel), and Cosa Nostra in Sicily; but whatever its name, they mean the criminal organisation.
Mafia in all its local forms has for centuries been a way of life in the South of Italy – except for some for whom it has been a way of death. The reason for its success is simple enough: in the absence of a recognisable or effective government, it was the only organised system ordinary people could refer to when they needed say, a permit to work or to get married.
“Most Italians are terrified and fascinated by the mafia at one and the same time.”
Most Italians are terrified and fascinated by the mafia at one and the same time. They know its tentacles of power reach to the highest levels in politics and business since the mafia have always specialised in making offers that cannot be refused, knowing that everything and everyone has their price. They also know that the code of omertà (silence) is so strong that the odds are that the mafia will never be defeated, and every time one of its tentacles is lopped off, hydra-like others will grow again, stronger than before.
The mafia is seen as a cancer that is slowly destroying the Italian state. The Italians have to live with it and alongside it, a state within a state, sharing their country with it as they always have done. And yet they secretly believe that, just as the right treatment in time might be able to cure a tumour, sooner or later the right treatment will be found and administered in time to defeat the mafia.
“Luckily, the closest most Italians will ever get to the real thing is the latest gripping episode on television.”
Much of the time the mafia is divided, as its various families fight out their latest power struggle in time-honoured ways. Dark-suited men carrying violin cases still burst into barbers’ shops in the back streets of Palermo and gun down the bosses of rival clans. Luckily, the closest most Italians will ever get to the real thing is the latest gripping episode of one of the many highly popular television series on Italy’s organised crime, such as Distretto di Polizia (Police Precinct) which replaced La Piovra (The Octopus).
Business
The Italian industrial and financial system is suffering the after-effects of some major scandals: two of them as a result of the collapse of food chain giants Cirio and Parmalat; two of them involving the bungled attempt to prevent two of Italy’s banks from being taken over by the Dutch and Spanish.
Business in the private sector in Italy is dominated by a handful of leading families, such as Agnelli (cars), Pirelli (tyres), Del Vecchio (eyeware), Della Valle (shoes), Berlusconi (TV channels) and Benetton (clothes). Although their companies are, in fact, vast conglomerates with a wide diversity of interests, they are run more like family businesses than multi-national corporations. Power tends to be kept within the family group by a series of cross-holdings. There is no similar concentration of power in any other western country.
“Italy is perhaps the only country in the world where employees appear to earn more than their employers, or so it would seem from their tax declarations.”
The success of the Italian economy is also based on the skills, hard work and dynamism of the small and medium-sized companies in the North that produce a large part of the country’s GNP. They are also mostly family-run businesses, organised in such a way as to minimise the payment of taxes and national insurance contributions. Italy is perhaps the only country in the world where employees appear to earn more than their employers, or so it would seem from their tax declarations. Similarly, professional people and craftsmen, like accountants, goldsmiths, dentists and lawyers, have few qualms about declaring subsistence level earnings while maintaining two or three houses, a race horse and three yachts.
“Every Italian mother dreams that her children, especially her male children, will achieve lo starbene – a state of physical and mental well-being in their work.”
Every Italian mother dreams that her children, especially her male children, will achieve lo starbene – a state of physical and mental well-being in their work. What this generally entails is finding lavoro fisso (a steady job) in the air-conditioned office of a government department or government-owned bank or company and looking good behind a big desk. Though not particularly well-paid, these jobs entitle their holders to 13 or even 14 months’ salary a year and offer all sort of perks including almost total job security and the possibility of retiring early on a full pension. Best of all, they are usually so undemanding that their holders can concentrate most of their energies on the family business, or on whatever really interests them: watching football, collecting stamps or just sitting, sipping coffee, reading comics. Too bad that the lavoro fisso is becoming ever harder to find as the Italian system falls into step with work practices elsewhere in the EU, it still remains the objective of most young Italians and, of course, their mothers.