english version
for the nation’s finances and economy and, simultaneously, the clash between the protagonists of the preparatory phase. There were two issues, one relating to the disposition that had to be given to the electricity sector and then the outcome that awaited companies about to be dispossessed of their production plants. Firstly, it had to be decided whether or not to operate with a sort of “IRI-zation” or else through the establishment of a new independent body. The position of the “IRI” (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction), by nature conservative, sponsored by large sectors of Democrats and Republicans, was opposed to the establishment of a different and independent body, as suggested by the PSI. But the Socialists got their way; and Enel was founded. The second point concerned whether or not it was necessary to preserve the structure of the old companies and who the recipients of the substantial financial resources resulting from the nationalization
should be. On the latter issue, Riccardo Lombardi harshly confronted the then Governor of the Bank of Italy, Guido Carli, who had played and, in subsequent years, maintained a decisive role in the Italian situation, exceeding on both an economical and political level. Lombardi was for the dismantling of the companies and the financial settlement of their shareholders. Carli opted for saving the electricity companies, arguing that only in that way would the massive flow of capital resulting from the nationalization remain in the economic-financial system, producing new investments. Carli's thesis prevailed and the 1,500 billion lire as credit toward the State went to fatten the balance sheets of the companies, all survivors. It turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory: that enormous wealth was then squandered in failed operations, killing the greatest opportunity Italian capitalism had ever received. What followed has been well illustrated in The Master Race, by
Eugenio Scalfari and Giuseppe Turani, published in 1974 by Feltrinelli. “The nationalization,” Cappon notes, “had resulted in the emission of a huge amount of liquid capital into the hands of what was considered an entrepreneurial class. It was a historic occasion and I think that those who then fought to keep the former electric companies operating and have them be the recipients of compensations, rightly thought to have made a choice in favor of entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, we soon saw that among the former electricity groups, there was not a single entrepreneur; or that funds which had been entrusted to them dissipated in the wind through erroneous initiatives and did not produce any benefits for the Italian economy that were even remotely comparable, for example, to what had happened at the beginning of the century with the creation of the electricity industry by the nationalization of the railways.”
| oxygen
the nationalization of electricity accompanied and marked the biggest political change ever enacted after the constitution, and the end of the governments of the cln (national liberation committee) which had arisen as a result of the resistance
139