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Class Structure in Italian Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Massimo Paci
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Extract

Class structure in Italian society presents some important specific characteristics in relation to other ‘advanced’ capitalist countries. I shall deal with these specific characteristics especially, using statistical and descriptive material which has only recently become available, following on new research and studies in this field. Then, as a conclusion to this paper, I shall deal with the problem of interpreting these specific characteristics, asking particularly whether they should be put down to the ‘backwardness’ (or insufficient development) of Italian capitalism, or, whether we should rather see them as the expression of the Italian economy's ‘peripheral’ position inside the Western capitalist system.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , May 1979 , pp. 40 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1979

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References

(1) See Trigilia, G., Sviluppo, sottosviluppo e classi sociali in Italia, Rassegna italiana di sociologia, XVII (1976), 249–295Google Scholar; Fonte, M., Furnari, M., Struttura dell'occupazione precaria in agricoltura: in Italia e nel Mezzogiorno, Rassegna economica, XXXIX (1975), 751–780Google Scholar.

(2) Forme e caratteristiche della partedpazione al lavoro-principali risultati di una ricerca Isfol-Doxa, , Osservatorio sul mercato del lavoro e delle professioni, I (1975), 15–96Google Scholar.

(3) Eboli, M. G., Contribute per l'analisi delle classi in agricoltura, Community development, XXI (1974), 97–118Google Scholar.

(4) See G. Trigilia, op. cit.; Fonte, Furnaki, op. cit.

(5) See G. Trigilia, op. cit.; M. G. Eboli, op. cit.

(6) Part-time involves about twenty percent of ‘middle’ peasants, and about fifty percent of ‘poor’ peasants, see M. G. Eboli, op. cit. See also Daneo, C., Capitalismo e riformismo nelle campagne italiane, Inchiesta, II (1972), 10–21Google Scholar; and Barberis, C., Gli operai contadini (Bologna 1970)Google Scholar.

(7) Fabiani, G., Gorgoni, M., Una analisi della struttura dell'agricoltura italiana, Rivista di Economia Agraria, XXVIII (1973), 65–118Google Scholar.

(8) Actually, keeping in mind that a part of agricultural land is State-demesne and a part share-cropping, the peasants keep less than half of the national agriculrural surface. See G. Fabiani, M. Gorgoni, op. cit.

(9) G. Trigilia, op. cit. For analogous estimates see also Braghin, P., Mingione, E., Trivellato, P., Per una analisi della struttura di classe nell'italia contemporanea, La critica sociologica, XVII (1974), 70–116Google Scholar.

(10) Mottura, G., Pugliese, E., Mercato del Iavoro e caratteristiche dell' emigrazione italiana nell'ultimo quindicennio, Inchiesta, II (1972), 2–14Google Scholar.

(11) Ascoli, U., Mantovani, S., Riflessi dell'emigrazione sullo sviluppo economico italiano (1945–1970), in Federici, N. (ed.), L'emigrazione dal bacino mediterraneo verso l'Europa industrializzata (Milano 1976)Google Scholar.

(12) U. Ascoli, S. Mantovani, op. cit.

(13) Reyneri, E., Il sistema dei sussidi, Rinascita, XXXIII (1976), 15–16Google Scholar.

(14) In connection with this we must remember that the population active in agriculture is cut by half in Italy between 1951 (the year in which it is higher than 8 million) and 1974.

(15) For a brief discussion of the categories of Marxian derivation used in the text, see the third paragraph infra. For a limited bibliography of the matter, see note 34 infra.

(16) Ciocca, P., Toniolo, G. (eds.), L'Economia italiana nel periodo fascista (Bologna 1976)Google Scholar. See also the observation of Castronovo, V., Economia e classi sociali, in Castronovo, V. (ed.), L'Italia contemporanea: 1945–1975 (Torino 1976)Google Scholar.

(17) The problems connected with the subjective dimension of social stratification or ‘class consciousness’ are only just touched in the text. However, there is no doubt that, in a discussion about the class positioning of certain strata, it is very important to keep in mind the role played by ideological and cultural factors on the class ‘selfidentification’ of the strata involved. From this point of view it seems that those people are right who tend to place the majority of Italian peasants among the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ because of their political orientation, notwithstanding the objective processes of proletariatization that they undergo. See Labini, P. Sylos, Saggio sulle classi sociali (Bari 1974)Google Scholar.

(18) On this subject, with reference to a local situation typical of central Italy see Paci, M. (ed.), Famiglia e mercato del lavoro in una economia periferica: il caso delle Marche (Milano, to be published shortly)Google Scholar.

(19) M. Paci, op. cit. Various sources and studies indicate a number of industrial home-workers, mainly women, in Italy as high as two millions.

(20) P. Sylos Labini, op. cit.

(21) G. Trigilia, op. cit.; Braghin, Mingione, Trivellato, op. cit.; see also Maitan, L., Dinamica delle classi sociali in Italia (Roma 1975)Google Scholar.

(22) The debate over Italian industrial ‘dualism’ reaches far and wide. Recalling only some of the writers involved, it can be said that they put emphasis above all on the ‘territorial’ aspects of dualism: Hildebrand, C. H., Growth and Structure in the Economy of Modern Italy (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar and Kindleberger, C. P., Europe's Postwar Growth—The role of labor supply (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The following however underline the interindustries aspects in particular: Graziani, A. and others, Lo sviluppo di una economia aperta (Napoli 1969)Google Scholar and, more recently, Salvati, M., Sviluppo economico, domanda di lavoro e struttura dell'occupazione (Bologna 1975)Google Scholar. The following, on the other hand, underline the dualism between big and small enterprise: Lutz, V., Italy: A study in economic development (London 1962)Google Scholar; Paci, M., Mercato del lavoro e classi sociali in Italia (Bologna 1973)Google Scholar and FuÀ, G., Occupazione e capacitá produttive: la realtá italiana (Bologna 1976)Google Scholar.

(23) Conti, G., Note sulla posizione relativa dell'Italia dal punto di vista della specializzazione internazionale delle produzioni, in Graziani, A. (ed.), Crisi e ristrutturazione dell'economia italiana (Torino 1975)Google Scholar.

(24) See, finally, the comparative data offered by FuÀ, op. cit.

(25) See Prodi, R., Sistema industriale e sviluppo economico in Italia (Bologna 1973)Google Scholar; Gallino, L., Politica dell'occupazione e seconda professione, Economia e Lavoro, IX (1975), 81–96Google Scholar. More in general, on the factors of ‘rigidity’ of the labour force occupied in the ‘central’ production sector, see Paci, M., op. cit. 1973Google Scholar.

(26) Bini, P. Calza, I1 dibattito sul mercato del lavoro: dalla caduta del tasso di attivita al decentramento produttivo, La critica sociologica, XVIII (1975), 49–70Google Scholar; Paci, M., Crisi, ristrutturazione e piccola impresa, Inchiesta, XX (1975)Google Scholar; Bagnasco, A., Messori, M., Problematiche dello sviluppo e questione della piccola impresa, Inchiesta, VI (1976), 64–80Google Scholar.

(27) According to Sylos Labini, for example, the ‘precarious’ workers in industry came to about 2 million in 1971, and those working in firms of no more than 100 dependent workers were at that date 3,700,000 (of whom 1,600,000 in firms of no more than 10 dependent workers), According to TRIGILIA, the ‘precarious’ proletariat amounted to 2 and a half million, in the same year. According to Braghin, Mingione, Triveixato, op. cit., the ‘marginal’ proletariat amounted in 1968 to 3,250,000.

(28) According to a vast poll conducted at national level in 1974, the active employment figures for the Italian population turned out to be 39.6%, higher, that is, by 3.9 in respect to the official statistics, See the inquiry mentioned in note 2. As support for these figures, see also FuÀ, op. cit.

(29) These data are taken from Sylos Labini, op. cit.

(30) See Sylos Labini, op. cit.

(31) See the analysis of the process of proletariatization of a wide strata of small traders, contained in Belloni, , Bianco, M. L., Luciano, A., Picchieri, A., Quaderni di Sociologia, XXIII (1974), 157–250Google Scholar.

(32) See Paci, M., Istruzione e mercato capitalistico del lavoro, Quaderni Storici, XXII (1973)Google Scholar (English translation: Education and the Capitalist Labor Market, in Karabel, J., Halsey, A. H. (eds), Power and Ideology in Education (New York, Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 340–355)Google Scholar.

(33) Disoccupazione giovanile e piena sotto-occupazione? (Acts of CGIL-CISL-UIL Congress of Ferrara, 11 12, 1976) (Roma 1977)Google Scholar.

(34) The hypothesis of an accelerated growth of the surplus population and of an intensification of the process of social emargination and pauperization is common both in numerous Latin-American Marxist investigators; see for example the anthology edited by Turnaturi, , Marginalitá e classi sociali (Roma 1975)Google Scholar, and the school of North American neo-Marxist which has its origins in the theoretic work of Baran and Sweezy and the editing group of the Monthly Review; see, for all of these, the work of Bravermann, H., Labor and Monopoly Capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century (New York 1974)Google Scholar. In Italy, theoretic inquiries in this direction have been carried out by Donolo, C., Sviluppo ineguale e disgregazione sociale nel Mezzogiorno, Quaderni Piacentini, XI (1972), 101–129Google Scholar, and Paci, M., Teoria e metodo nello studio della mobilità sociale, Studi di Sociologia, XIII (1975), 3–29Google Scholar.

(35) As for the movement of the ‘organized unemployed’, see Pugliese, E., Sviluppo e problemi attuali nel movimento dei disoccupati organizzati, Fabbrica e Stato, III (1976), 79–88Google Scholar.

(36) Among the many supporters of this interpretation, we must include G. FuÀ, op. cit.

(37) See Paci, M., Il mercato del lavoro dall'unità d'ltalia ad oggi, in Tranfaglia, N., ed., II mondo contemporaneo (Firenze 1978), I, 629–648Google Scholar.

(38) This interpretation is that offered, for example, by A. Pizzorno, I ceti medi del meccanismo del consenso, and by Berger, S., Uso politico e soprawivenza dei ceti in declino, in Cavazza, , Graubard, (eds.), Il caso italiano (Milano 1974)Google Scholar.

(39) See Paci, M., Il costo del lavoro non è la variabile determinante, Inchiesta, VI (1976), 24–26Google Scholar.

(40) See G. Conti, op. cit.