In 2008, in an article in Repubblica, Giorgio Ruffolo wrote: “I for myself have decided to die a socialist. Given his age, this is not a long-term commitment”.
Two years later I asked him to return to this thought, but in the context of a broad reflection on the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.
It was a cycle of talks that we had imagined with Gigi Covatta for Mondoperaio. For the communists Luciano Barca, for the Catholics Giuseppe De Rita and Piero Bassetti, for the socialists Giorgio Ruffolo, for the republicans Antonio Maccanico, for the liberal-radicals Marco Pannella. In conclusion Giuliano Amato president of the committee for the celebrations. The texts are in the Mondoperaio archive and following the news today of his death at the age of 96 – contrary to what Giorgio thought, it was “a long drive” – I propose the link to that dialogue, where there are many things about him and the his civil, intellectual and political commitment.
Many of us still remember him, elegant, phlegmatic, with that marvelous voice, part of a ruling class, of a system of skills, capable of reading history and taking on challenges with the economy. The of him”A country too long” (2009), among about twenty texts that accompanied his life as an economist (law graduate), as a parliamentarian, MEP, minister, was at the same time an update of classic southernism and a prophecy on the North-South rift of the last twenty years. His “Capitalism has its centuries numbered” (2008) was a moral suasion for the left who read the phenomenon in a form that was too recent and close to self-destruction. A confrontation engaged since the 50s.