In 2008, in an article in Repubblica, Giorgio Ruffolo wrote: “For me, I 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 Gigi Covatta and I had imagined 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 celebrations committee. The texts are in the Mondoperaio archive and following the news today of his passing at 96 – unlike what Giorgio thought, it was “a long time” – I propose the link to that dialogue, where there are many things about him and his his civil, intellectual and political commitment.
There are still many of us who remember him, elegant, phlegmatic, with that wonderful voice, part of a ruling class, of a system of skills, capable of reading history and taking on challenges with the economy. His “A country too long” (of 2009), among about twenty texts that accompanied his life as an economist (graduated in law), as a parliamentarian, MEP, minister, was at the same time an update of classic southernism and a prophecy on the north-south divide of the last twenty years. His “Capitalism’s centuries are numbered” (2008) was a moral suasion for the left who saw the phenomenon as too recent and close to self-destruction. A confrontation that has been underway since the 1950s.