Maurizio Viroli - The Liberty of Servants: Berlusconis Italy

THE LIBERTY OF SERVANTS

BERLUSCONIS ITALY

MAURIZIO VIROLI

ANTONY SHUGAAR

Original edition published under the title La libert dei servi by Maurizio Viroli Copyright 2010 by Guis. Laterza & Figli. All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with Marco Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria
English translation copyright 2012 by Princeton University Press

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Jacket Art: Detail of The Janssen portrait of Shakespeare, c. early 1610s. Oil on panel; 55.9 43.4 cm. Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Jacket Photograph: Detail of Italys Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
September 19, 2008. Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty images.

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Viroli, Maurizio.
[Libert dei servi. English]
The liberty of servants : Berlusconis Italy / Maurizio Viroli ; translated by Antony Shugaar with a new preface by the author.

p. cm.

Originally published in Italian under the title: La liberta dei servi.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-15182-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. ItalyPolitics and government21st century. 2. Political corruptionItaly. 3. Social ethicsItaly. 4. Political ethicsItaly. 5. LibertyItaly. 6. Berlusconi, Silvio, 1936I. Shugaar, Antony. II. Title.

JN5641.V5713 2011
320.945dc23 2011026012

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The incompetence and the tendency to ignore the letter
of the law are intertwined: in order to remain in power,
Berlusconi needs menservants, who may possess the quality
of obedience, but who are rarely well educated. Their skill
is to serve. Anyone who possesses any worth and skill
cannot fully be a servant, and will therefore not last long in
Berlusconis employment. I told a friend of mine who went
with Berlusconi: Look, it wont be enough for you to bow to
him. Now he understands that I was right, but I no longer
speak to him. My friendship with my fellow man comes to
an end when I see him enter into servitude.
At that point, disdain comes into play.

Paolo Sylos Labini, Ahi serva Italia

The Liberty of Servants
and the Liberty of Citizens

The Court System

The Signs of Servitude

The Prerequisites of Servitude

The Path to Freedom

I wrote this book at the suggestion and with the encouragement of Ian Malcolm, an editor at Princeton University Press, who asked me to explain to an English-speaking audience what is happening in Italian politics. The publisher Giuseppe Laterza bears responsibility for the book coming out first in Italian. He persuaded me by suggesting a title, La libert dei serviThe Liberty of Servantsthat synthesizes in a way that cannot be improved upon the ideas that I am setting forth here.

I do believe that Italy is a free country, in the sense that there is liberty, but it is the liberty of servants, not the liberty of citizens. The liberty of servants or of subjects consists in not being hindered in the pursuit of our own ends. The liberty of a citizen, instead, consists in not being subjected to the arbitrary or enormous power of one or several men. Given that an enormous power has established itself in Italy, we are thereforeby the sheer fact that such a power existsin the condition of servants. The power in question is that of Silvio Berlusconi, possessor of immense wealth; proprietor of television networks, newspapers and magazines, and publishing houses; the founder and the master of a political party that is his to control as he pleases. Such vast power, which has never existed within the liberal and democratic institutions of any other country, engenders what I have described as a court system, that is to say, a form of power characterized by the fact that one man is placed above and at the center of a relatively large number of individualshis courtierswho depend on him to gain and preserve wealth, status, and reputation.

I hope to explore, with what will ideally be profitable results, a brilliant insight first set forth by Giovanni Sartori: There are any number of things by now that frighten me; but the level of submissiveness and intellectual blight manifested on this occasion [the approval of the Alfano Law that ensured the prime minister could count on a suspension of all criminal proceedings against the highest officers of the state] by a majority of our honorable members of parliament frightens me more than anything else. Its as if they were housekeepers. This is not bipartisan cooperation! This is a sultanate, the worst of all courts. The principal characteristic of a court system is its ability to spread or reinforce servile attitudes and habits: adulation, simulation, cynicism, disdain for free spirits, venality, and corruption. If we add to these unhappy results the fact that a man with enormous power can easily make himself master of the laws, we can understand that where a court has formed, the liberty of the citizen cannot exist.

I have wonderedespecially in view of the English-language edition of this bookwhy it was in Italy of all surrounded by a plethora of courtiers, who are in turn admired and envied by a multitude of individuals with servile souls. The answer that strikes me as most plausible is that all this is the product of Italys longtime moral weakness (in spite of the examples of greatness that have honored our past and our present). By moral weakness I mean the quality that so many political writers have explicated, that is to say, a lack of self-esteem that in some cases masks itself with arrogance, and which makes men willing to become dependent on other men. If I believe that I am not worth much, why should I not serve the powerful, if I profit considerably thereby?

Alongside this cause of a general nature, or context, we should also keep in mind, if we wish to understand what has happened in Italy, what I call the betrayal of the elite, that is to say, the inability of the political, intellectual, and entrepreneurial elite of Italy to prevent the formation of the enormous power of one man that has destroyed the liberty of the citizens. It is open to discussion whether it might have been possible to prevent things from winding up the way they did, just as it is possible to argue about the most serious mistakes made by this or that political leader. We should and we must discuss whether the lack of wisdom was greater than the lack of will. But what counts in the end are the facts and the facts are undeniable: those whose duty it was to defend the integrity of the Italian Republic failed to do so. I have resisted the temptation to end the essay with predictions on the future of Italian politics. Instead, I have preferred to venture a few considerations, which I hope may prove to be useful, for those who might be interested in working to defeat the court system and help to restore in its place the liberty of citizens. Because, in my opinion, the root cause of the Italian problem can be found in the mores and not in the institutions, much less in the Italian Constitution. I have therefore proposed remedies that are above all ethical in nature. Foremost among them is an attempt to teach a disdain for the court and love of true free living, as well as providing examples of intransigence. There is an abundance of elements in my prescription that make this book very distant from the sensibilities and the way of thinking that prevail in Italy these days.