The Unstable Stabilization. Italian Capitalism and the Origins of the Current Crisis

During the 1970s Italian society responded to the radicalization of its internal relations and to the crumbling of the Bretton Woods order at the global level with a mixture of inflation and devaluation that carried the country through the turbulent 1970s. In the 1980s, when the internal and external conditions became favourable, it came the time of stabilization. This chapter revises the ups and downs of the Italian cycle of radicalization-stabilization. My argument is that the choice for a development model based on exports and the containment of the labour cost – a choice originally justified by objective reasons but perpetuated by the conservative underpinnings of the Italian bourgeoisie – has led to a subaltern positioning of the country in the international division of labour that had generated the conditions for the present crisis.