Work is the foundation of democracy

It happened in Montepulciano, in the splendid setting of the Fortezza Medicea, as part of the annual three-day event entitled " Lights on Work." It was not easy to open a discussion on the pressing relevance of the relationship between work, its almost lost and often impoverished meaning, and the new conditions dictated by the crisis of liberal democracy, which a few years ago were predicted by the analyses of Colin Crouch, for whom, precisely, we are in that phase of postmodernity in which many twentieth-century certainties, including those regarding work as a dignity and an element of socialization, are at risk of being lost. And with them, even the form and substance of our Constitution are at risk of being lost.

The challenge launched in Montepulciano by the CGIL Toscana and the Di Vittorio Foundation is one that calls for more careful reflection and a much more detailed analysis of the transformations underway, cultural as well as technological and economic. And it must be embraced and relaunched. As Francesco Sinopoli, president of the Di Vittorio Foundation, stated in his introduction to the conference, "we are faced with profound and unprecedented changes, which today escape most people, even though some intellectuals, such as Colin Crouch, and before him in the 1990s, Christopher Lasch, had already defined the essential elements of the crisis of liberal democracy. However, none of us could have imagined the degree of regression to which the crisis of democracy in advanced capitalist countries could reach." Sinopoli then continued by quoting the illuminating words of Bruno Trentin, spoken as early as the 1970s at a conference on the crisis of Soviet socialist democracies: " Democracy advances in the world thanks to the workers' movement, with its struggles, and even the institutions, as we understand them today, bear the imprint of social struggles."

The close relationship, therefore, between the form and substance of democracy and the achievements of the workers' movement, for Sinopoli, was already present in the analyses of twentieth-century intellectuals and trade union leaders. Why then discuss it today, and why relaunch the challenge in this historical context? Sinopoli is very clear: "The fact that theorists of democracy at a certain point gave up analyzing its relationship with work, considering it no longer necessary, is for us the central issue of the twenty-first century, especially because the Constitution is founded on work, the cornerstone of the workers' movement and the fruit of their struggles." So where does the collapse of liberal democracy lie, which began in the 1970s with the process of capitalist restructuring and its consequent financialization, which sacrificed production and labor, and what effects is it having on the twenty-first century? "This is why we are launching this epochal challenge, for the trade union movement and beyond, to construct analyses of the present," Sinopoli concluded, underlining the need to understand the aporias of the relationship between conflict and participation, which are increasingly problematic in the post-democracy era.

Father Bruno Bignami , director of the National Office for Social and Labor Issues of the Italian Bishops' Conference, accepted the challenge launched by CGIL Toscana and the Di Vittorio Foundation, sharing Pope Francis's analyses on the issues of labor and democracy (and post-democracy). "I would like to highlight three passages in Pope Francis's teaching that draw our attention to labor issues, with one premise: Pope Francis's teaching is more alive than ever precisely because he has taught us to activate processes rather than occupy spaces, and thus he has activated processes, including the initiative called the Economy of Francesco, driven primarily by many young people. It is a movement that seeks to reflect on a different kind of economy. It is not just a teaching of words, but of investments in people who do not find themselves in an economic model that continually generates waste and that instead needs to valorize people." For Father Bruno Bignami, "First of all, Pope Francis's theology is one of work, which already in the twentieth century produced interesting passages, grounded not only in the creative work of God, which is quite evident and obvious, but also in the work of Jesus Christ. What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ the worker is at the center, a concept we reflect too little on. In the Gospel of Mark itself, Jesus is described not as the carpenter's son but as the carpenter, that is, as someone who carries out complex and precise work. Jesus does this for thirty years, and then for three years he goes around preaching. Pope Francis characterizes this specificity of Jesus as someone who sees in inert matter the creative work of man, the craftsman who creates a violin from a piece of wood, for example."

What does this shift in theological paradigm mean? Father Bignami is very clear, even from an anthropological perspective: "We are not just human flesh, but projects. Pope Francis's theology of work is therefore this ability of the craftsman God to see within our existences an extraordinary capacity for expression. Each of us, through our intelligence and our work, is capable of great things ." At this point, Father Bignami emphasizes the anthropological nature of Pope Francis's theology of work, citing perhaps the two most famous documents of his magisterium, Laudato si' and Fratelli tutti: "Work is the great social issue, because work not only allows people to live but has a whole other set of relationships with dignity. In work, people engage themselves, learn about life with others, acquire knowledge and skills, and live a community experience. Work is the world in which we relate to the world. Laudato si' has this very bold vision that shifts paradigms on the subject of work, because work improves the world, builds a different world. Therefore, for Pope Francis, what destroys the world is not work. What destroys humanity—building bombs or landmines—is work? No, says Pope Francis. It is human activity, but it is not work. This is why we should be more rigorous when we think about what work is. Does work improve the community and the lives of people? Or is it simply an activity that allows an economy to thrive?" "Moving GDP and so on, and counting for nothing compared to what it achieves and the quality of a society? This is why, if we follow Pope Francis in his anthropological and theological reflection, we should warn those companies that decide to convert production to armaments that that is not the future."

Don Bruno Bignami then repeatedly recalls Pope Francis 's remarks during the meeting with the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) at the Vatican. In short, Pope Francis's specific focus is on the concrete problems of the world of work. Don Bignami highlights three passages: "The dramatic issue of workplace safety, a veritable war bulletin for the Pope; the central value of work is the person; and the definition of a neologism, carewashing, or the investment by entrepreneurs in football players rather than expensive artwork and other objects, to promote their image, rather than investing in workplace safety. The carewashing Pope Francis speaks of is the artificial construction of one's own image at the expense of the safety and value of the worker. He addresses this issue several times."

Don Bignami also recalls Pope Francis's utmost attention to the issues of injustice and exploitation, which particularly affect women and young people. And finally, Pope Francis's sensitivity to the issue of poor labor, human waste, the new slavery and exploitation, the inhumane conditions that crush people, and profit becomes the sole criterion by which labor is analyzed. "So what remains of this teaching, and what remains fundamental?" asks Don Bignami. Meanwhile, let's try to imagine different forms of economics, like popular movements, that is, workers who self-organize in the face of an unjust economy, those who have never given up, and imagine new paths to regaining the dignity of work, reclaiming the person. There is much to recover from Pope Francis's teaching, therefore, and it is a very useful and effective undertaking, also for the challenge posed by the CGIL and the Di Vittorio Foundation.

For Francesca Coin , a sociologist at the University of Parma, "Today we need to rethink the issue of class, and we need to understand, also in relation to the referendum of June 8th and 9th, what class is, and where class lies. First of all, I think that referendum was right to promote because it perfectly fits the historical era we are living in, one of great loneliness and isolation, even in the workplace. The picture offered by the Istat Report depicts a country experiencing major industrial crises, poor employment, and a growing number of young people and women emigrating. We have a labor market in deep crisis, and yet the portrayal we are given is completely the opposite." What kind of crisis are we experiencing?, asks Francesca Coin. This is a crisis of the country, a crisis of the development model, because there is no vision. But the greatest, most obvious, and most dramatic crisis is the crisis of people, and I thought that with the referendum, especially those experiencing hardship would respond with greater participation and passion. This has not been the case, and we must understand the reasons. Loneliness, depression, and desolation have become phenomena of unprecedented magnitude. Desolation: an important word, used by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, tells us about the erosion of solidarity between people, between those who work, between those who live in communities, large and small.

Desolation and the absence of solidarity, in Francesca Coin's analysis, are phenomena that partly give rise to anti-democracy, the lack of participation, and the absence from public and social life. It is a condition, as Hannah Arendt stated, that allows for easy manipulation of power. "We have outgrown post-democracy and are sliding toward anti-democracy ," is Francesca Coin's bitter conclusion. Even though the referendum result, the sociologist maintains, still offers some positive elements for changing course. We need to start from there. "We need to recover the meaning of a cultural campaign of social emancipation, especially to counter the anti-democratic winds blowing from Trump's United States, which tell us of a naturally unequal society." Alessandro Volpi, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Pisa, then used several slides to demonstrate how Italian financial capitalism is evolving, its connections with the global stock market, the unproductive investments it makes, and, above all, the decisions it makes that lead to shareholder profits. This overview, perhaps unfamiliar to many, included stories, events, and the names and surnames of a financial economy that is ceasing to produce goods and investing in paper money, in an economy where "paper begets paper," and where profits run into tens and tens of billions.

Alessandra Ingrao , associate professor of labor law at the University of Milan, has drawn extraordinary connections in the Italian Constitution between the various articles that address work and democracy, starting with that crucial paragraph 2 of Article 3. In particular, Ingrao revisits the clause that states that the State's task is to remove obstacles that impede "the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic, and social organization of the country." This is the only time, Ingrao argues, in which the Constitution explicitly mentions workers, and it does so in connection with the democratic principle of participation, as if, precisely, without workers there were no authentic democracy. "Article 3 raises the issue of complex industrial societies," Ingrao recalls, in which forms of union representation "moderate and temper the power of the entrepreneur." But the Constitution, in Articles 36 and 49 , embodies the belief that representation, collective bargaining, and conflict are inextricably linked. However, over the years, the legislature has decided not to implement these constitutional provisions. The latest example of this is the way the center-right Parliament has used, and profoundly changed, the CISL's popular initiative law on worker participation in companies. This was certainly not the intention with which the founding fathers conceived the second paragraph of Article 3.

"Work creates, war destroys, this is the time we live in, " says Michele De Palma , general secretary of the FIOM, in his conclusion. De Palma's concluding analysis highlights the issue of the workers' movement's defeat over the last half century. " This is an analytical thread we must rigorously address if we want to emerge from the political crisis of the labor world ," De Palma argues. The crisis isn't just about the lack of electoral participation. What is democracy if not that extraordinary ability to balance power, between those who hold it and those who lack it? One participates in democratic life when one is aware that participation gives meaning to that balance. The democratic void lies primarily in the contrary belief, according to which no one deprived of power can rebalance the system. But not even the capitalists today are at peace, if we look at democracy in America. The point of democracy is not simply the quantitative calculation of how many people participate in elections, but the material condition of loss and disorientation of work. This is why we must ask ourselves what the defeat was, starting with the vertical separation between work and that which produces income, between capitalists and their knowledge of the systems of material production.

For De Palma, the great question of public, state, presence in production returns, as is the case in some major European countries, not only to try to overcome the crisis, but above all to restore a sense of direction. For this reason too, for De Palma, "conflict today is not only a choice, but above all a necessity, because that pact between capital and labor has been torn apart. Capital is no longer able to tell that story. This is why the spaces for democracy are shrinking, but now that the time for resistance is over, the time for liberation has arrived."

*Di Vittorio Foundation