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Rating: Sandro Bondi is a political figure and intellectual who needs no introduction: once a local administrator for the PCI, he gradually distanced himself from the positions of the maximalist left starting in the second half of the 1980s, coinciding with the fall of the illiberal regimes of Eastern Europe, gradually embracing a liberal-democratic position, fulfilled in his long collaboration with Silvio Berlusconi, both in Forza Italia and in Popolo della Libertà, in which he is currently a Senator.
A character who is, in some respects, controversial—similar to Giuliano Ferrara, Paolo Liguori, Fabrizio Cicchitto, and others who have opened up to liberalism from originally left positions—Bondi has often been opposed by the opposing political side, which perhaps too superficially has made fun of his uncritical adherence to liberal thought and the center-right political formations that have succeeded over the years.
Easy accusations, in some respects, and undoubtedly simplifying, often leveled against those who are considered, rightly or wrongly, a "traitor" of the Idea; these matters, however, matter little, compared to which it must be observed, for the sake of completeness, how Bondi's reactions have always been marked by maximum balance and full serenity, without ever getting caught up in unnecessary controversies, and how, in my modest opinion, he lacks any form of opportunism and cynicism.
His recent experience as Minister of Cultural Heritage, from which Bondi resigned in opposition to the reckless management of Italian cultural heritage over the last few decades, provided the Tuscan politician with the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the "cultural problem" in Italy.
Bondi's thesis, expressed with his customary elegance and richness of language (the Author is also a poet as well as a bibliophile), is that culture in Italy has become a "problem" due to the social fractures and partisanships that have spread over the last few decades in the country: while in the years immediately following the Unification and over the first three decades of the last century—even under the influence of aggregating figures like Croce and, above all, Gentile—Culture was a tool of unification and a shared heritage of all Italians. Since the postwar period, it too has become an object of contention between the moderate front and the social-communist front.
Culture—understood as schooling, university education, dissemination of literary, visual, and cinematographic arts—has therefore become a tool through which political Parties, and particularly the PCI, well provided for this purpose through the programmatic Gramscian guidelines, attempted to shape the collective consciousness, especially that of the younger generations, in respect of determined values all linked to the ideological constellation of Communism.
Hence, the massive penetration of the Party into the frameworks of educational institutions, universities, cultural foundations, the world of cinema and the arts in general, implementing what is known as the "hegemony of the left in Italian culture."
To get more concrete, more in line with the users' experiences on the site, consider the spread of a cinematic language that has uprooted the concept of family from within (the whole Commedia all'italiana is a clear example), spreading alternative models to it, or, again, the "semantics" of Italian songwriting, imbued with messages aimed at initially bringing adolescents closer to certain values, and subsequently to specific voting preferences (notable are the cases of De Andrè, Dalla, Guccini, Pietrangeli, Marini, not to mention expressly aligned groups like Area, Stormy Six, CCCP-CSI and similar ones). And it is indeed not by chance that, in my collaboration with the site, I have often encountered languages and maximalist conceptions, which constitute the product of that very "culture."
Up to this point, Bondi's book seems, however, to revisit rather frequent arguments within the liberal culture—consider the contributions of Urbani and Veneziani and intellectuals who, especially in the 1990s, defined the cultural paradigm of Forza Italia—adding notes of particular importance, especially when analyzing the events of the last fifteen years: in the Author's opinion, Berlusconi's entry into politics has "shown the king's nakedness," demonstrating the persistence, in Italy, of a "culture of doing" already inherent in the productive and tertiary sectors (in fact, the basis of the economic boom and the country's development in the postwar period, embodied by the same center-right leader) and materially and factual, prevailing over the leftist culture, tied to theoretical speculation, without effective practical repercussion or dialogue with the everyday.
At the same time, the advent of Berlusconism itself—which symbolically embodies the actual Italian culture—has thrown the left into rearguard battles: in effect, having lost the battle for cultural hegemony, the contest would have shifted to ethical hegemony, where the heirs of the PCI assert themselves as morally superior, and therefore, legitimized to govern in place of the economic and social forces supporting the Popolo della Libertà.
The thesis is suggestive, in some aspects plausible, but I don't want to venture into yet another controversy by taking one side or the other, and assuming the too easy—and frankly rhetorical—role of sophist and defender of one side or the other, even in light of my personal history and my current duties on the staff of a politician opposed to Bondi's alignment.
The point I place at the end of my reading of Bondi's book, however, is different: leaving aside the issue (whether true or false) of the cultural hegemony of PCI-PDS-DS-PD, I wonder if, in its cultural policies of the last fifty years, the left has not made mistakes in judgment, starting from erroneous historical-anthropological assumptions and overestimating the characteristics of the Italian citizen, as well as the electorate as a whole.
The shift in my perspective should be easily perceptible even for the more hotheaded and less reflective users of the site: I summarize it in some final questions, on which I hope we can, at least once, engage in a serious dialogue.
Is it possible to assert that the entire left-wing culture stems from an idealized conception of the individual, believing, on the basis of a rationalizing thought of Enlightenment origin and coming to Gramsci through the mediation of Marx, and did they not ask, rather than for "culture," a simple well-being, in the manner of the well-known Roman saying "Franza o Spagna purché se magna," or the old "Bread and circuses," which today is echoed in the figure of young consumers of television, cinema, music, or in the majority of young fans of "Big Brother"?
Is it possible that the left-wing culture, aimed at the elevation of the individual towards the "magnificent destiny and progress," has resulted in a normative-optative message, that is, has it always considered the individual, technology, the arts, from the perspective of the "ought to be," underestimating the "being in itself," that is, the actual condition of Italians and the reasons why Italians have certain character and behavioral structures?
The questions are not idle: among other things, they statistically explain why many young people are not attracted to studies in mathematics, engineering, computer science (as happens in economically emerging countries) but to humanistic studies not always conclusive, and they clarify, perhaps better than too many abstractions, the reasons for the Italian cultural weakness, which then makes our country so porous in relation to cultural influences from Eastern Europe or the Maghreb, as well as from Chinese, Indian, and generally Eastern philosophies.
To Sandro Bondi and his book goes the merit of highlighting a subject that deserves wide reflection, opening up a renewed dialogue between the opposing factions of a culturally divided State, against a Tradition that should be reconsidered as unitary, perhaps starting precisely from the aforementioned Croce and Gentile.
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