Welcome to the Cetomedist society

What if we stopped talking about the middle class altogether? It is a question that may seem paradoxical within Censis, where for over fifty years the extraordinary expansion of the Italian middle class – perhaps the greatest social upsurge in our history – has been experienced and celebrated.

We began in the mid-1970s, a decade considered the darkest and most chaotic in our history as a society. A decade that began with the tensions following the events of 1968 and a few ‘hot autumns’, and ended tragically with the deaths of Moro and Bachelet. A decade in which we endured a severe economic crisis, endemic social conflicts, and an industrial landscape marked by the decline of large companies. All political and social observers were inclined to predict a collapse of the system, or at least its teetering on the brink of the abyss.

We at Censis were amongst the very few who had faith in the determination of Italians to persevere and overcome difficulties and the crisis. Those Italians who had been poor for centuries and had enjoyed a degree of prosperity for just a decade – and could not bear the thought of returning to poverty and disarray – channelled all their energy into averting the abyss and countering decline: by engaging in a great deal of the informal economy, entrenching themselves in numerous vital local communities, harnessing the will to survive of millions of small business owners, and developing support for new entrepreneurial initiatives. But above all, by setting in motion that process of ‘cetomedisation’ which dominated the scene for several decades, within a dynamic of ‘social mobility’ which, on its own, managed to compensate for the socio-political vacuums of the 1970s, the simultaneous crisis of the working class, the decline of the traditional elites and the stagnation of the middle class.

‘Cetomedisation’ was a highly complex process, because it did not give rise to a social class – almost a ‘middle class’ – but entailed a profound transformation of the whole of society on a horizontal and molecular scale, following an interclassist logic and a phenomenology comparable to the birth and growth of a lake, into which numerous tributaries carried an ever-increasing number of individuals. Many flowed into it: the southern farmer who, upon becoming a caretaker in a state school, immediately felt part of the middle class; the thousands of farm labourers and sharecroppers who found themselves categorised as ‘direct farmers’, feeling almost like small business owners; the many workers who, having gone from being ‘subcontractors of subcontractors’, became self-employed entrepreneurs; those involved in the vast world of the informal economy who gradually wanted to emerge with a profile of their own; the many employees (in the public and private sectors) who took on a second job whilst also creating small entrepreneurial opportunities to exploit in the future; not to mention the mass of workers in the tertiary sector (services to businesses, communities and individuals) who set up their own businesses, often driven by market logic.

The examples could go on, to the extent that the rapidly expanding ‘great lake’ of the middle class led Mr Agnelli, the lawyer, to ask me: ‘Who does the term “middle class” actually refer to?’ And he was given the most banal of answers: ‘Everyone, apart from a few people like you, a few thousand members of the underclass and almost all immigrants’.

The process of ‘cetomedisation’, as we at Censis have described it, has therefore not given rise to a new social class (perhaps one of selfish petty bourgeois, as Pasolini claimed), but to a different society, one that is complex and multifaceted. In other words, a ‘cetomedist society’ has gradually emerged, which can and must be accepted and interpreted as a reality that is stable over time. It is this established reality that ultimately supersedes the most fashionable political convictions: the elimination of social imbalances and inequalities. After all, on reflection, the transformation of society has been the factual and concrete response: it has been not merely a lift, but, more simply, a levelling device.

2. It is, however, worth starting with the structural origins of the process of ‘cetomedisation’ in the 1970s. The strength of its roots lies in that molecular character (‘everywhere and at grassroots level’, as we have said on other occasions) and in that horizontal logic which led many individuals and diverse local communities to move beyond those dark times.It was an almost instinctive choice, carried out in a state of socio-political isolation, detached from the class tensions that prevailed at the time, from the prevailing collective opinions (such as the ‘revolutionary’ sentiment following 1968) and even more detached from the drive towards industrial modernity that some (such as Giulio Bollati) then regarded as the sole objective to which one must conform.

In fact, the only allies of the ‘cetomedisation’ process can be found in the sector-specific associations that were then expanding rapidly, in local economic operators (local banks, associations of craftspeople and traders, etc.), in the many voluntary and third-sector organisations, and in the numerous examples of horizontal and vertical subsidiarity. It could be said that, without these allies, the process of ‘cetomedisation’ might not have had the impact it did. But the reverse is also true: without ‘cetomedisation’, the various organisations listed would not have had the deep-rooted stability they enjoyed.

It should, however, be borne in mind that perhaps the only major culture that has actually accompanied ‘Cetomedisation’ has been the Catholic one. One need only consider how much sector-based associations (from schools to smallholders) owe to the commitment of Pope Pacelli, and how much of this fed into the sector-based collusion that was characteristic of the Christian Democrats. Nor should we forget that the Church’s entire social doctrine fostered not only the vitality of intermediary bodies, but also – and especially – individual responsibility within society, and the primacy of personalism.

Beyond the explicit and hidden cultural and political alliances, the process of ‘middle-classification’ has in fact been driven by its own intrinsic force: deep within the collective psyche, becoming part of the middle class was a widespread aspiration in post-war Italy (though it is by no means certain that this was the case in nineteenth-century ‘Italietta’ or in Fascist Italy). I remember perfectly the tone of voice with which my mother, a primary school teacher, asserted ‘we, the middle class’, and I can therefore understand that for many Italians between the 1950s and the 2000s, the possibility of becoming middle class was experienced as a fundamental goal, a gratifying ascription of status.”

However, over time, I became convinced that, for the average Italian, this was not a matter of self-attributed social status, but rather the result of a desire for individual growth within a collective process. In other words, throughout the 1970s, a combination of aspirations circulated in the minds of Italians: a desire for affluence, for a standard of living comparable to that of the former ‘gentry’, and a desire to be more and to be different. From this arose that subtle drive to become something more than one’s previous social standing. At the heart of this drive lay the desire to be self-employed: a desire to exercise one’s own responsibility, something unknown in a society that had, for decades, been based on salaried employment; a desire for innovative forms of work, also unknown in a culture that had always been rooted in the status quo; a desire to identify opportunities for work even in sectors hitherto dominated by large, organised structures (in Fordist industry, but also in commerce and transport); a desire to capitalise on the growing diversity of individual, family and group needs; a certain inclination to act as a substitute for public intervention, particularly at the social and local levels. These were opportunities and temptations to work for oneself (or in small businesses, perhaps cooperatives) which were certainly not as clear-cut as they appear to us today, but which opened up fields of action for those who had sufficient confidence in their ability to succeed.

Alongside all this, there was a more or less explicit cultural element: namely, the desire for fulfilment through the standard of living gradually achieved. Everyone sought fulfilment not only in their work, but in their daily lives, in their everyday consumption, and in family investments (in a first or second home). We all wanted to live fulfilling lives, and when the primary income was not enough, we would seek out new sources of income, even involving other family members. Ultimately, the ‘composite family income’ was central to the process of ‘cetomedisation’: another of Censis’s key themes in the 1970s. Thus, cetomedisation proved to be a major social phenomenon, encompassing the key areas of employment, income and consumption. It was a foundational process.

3. Not everyone, however, realised that this process of continuous growth of the middle class was a dynamic that had to be reckoned with, both culturally and politically. Admittedly, there has been a deluge of opinions, articles and research, but ultimately it can be said that this complex new phenomenon was merely acknowledged, rather than deeply understood, by a political culture entrenched at both the top and the bottom: the elitist elements failed to grasp a process that was entirely horizontal, difficult to reduce to a debate amongst the elite; from below, the preference was to explore phenomena that were politically more exploitable (poverty, inequality, the inclusion of migrants). Thus, all the key players in this socio-political dynamic underestimated the concrete middle-class nature of society.

The major political parties, particularly those that had most actively cultivated sectoral collusion (the PCI and the DC), found themselves lacking adequate frameworks for understanding the middle class, which no longer identified with the corporatist structures of the various sectors. The various representative bodies (employers’ and trade union organisations) failed to represent the general interests of the new middle class, confining themselves to sectoral lobbying rather than political interpretation and social action. The result was a certain poverty of dialogue between politics and the emergence of the middle class. The traditional dialectic collapsed due to the inability of intermediary bodies to articulate demands of a systemic rather than sector-specific nature, whilst the political sphere slipped into offering a variety of benefits that ‘invented’ presumed demands, but failed to influence the experience of the process of middle-classification.

Over recent decades, the middle class has gradually become increasingly isolated. And when the crisis of ‘middle-class stagnation’ (the jamming of the social lift) began to take shape, we realised that we lacked the tools to understand and counter it. No one today seems able to get to grips with the fact that this crisis: is not comparable to industrial crises, all of which are linked to parameters (productivity, technology, exports, etc.) unrelated to the world of the middle class; does not pertain to typical corporate crises (quality of management, staff costs, generational succession, etc.); it does not give rise to major social conflicts (unemployment, the struggle for wages, etc.). All that remains for the middle class is a widespread fear (of decline, of fragility, of a lack of future prospects, of a loss of social influence) which, unable to be translated into concrete policies to tackle it, ends up fraying the social fabric, with dangerous shifts towards a perilous collective insecurity and the growth of collective resentment.

In fact, this is the worst crisis that could befall a young (and enthusiastic) economic system such as ours. However, those who have witnessed and experienced the process of ‘Cetomedisation’ from the 1970s onwards cannot give in to resentment – the ‘mourning of what might have been’ – because the process of ‘Cetomedisation’ has taken place and is still taking place, and there is still work to be done on it.

This is the unshakeable truth from which to begin when discussing cetomedisation, because it is clear that it has two major strengths. Firstly, a strong structural dimension, as can be seen from the data that can be cited to demonstrate the extent to which cetomedisation has influenced – and continues to influence – the systemic components of our economy. As regards employment, we have reached a record number of people in work: more than 24 million. Households’ real assets (net wealth) total more than 6,700 billion euros (i.e. three times the value of GDP). To this must be added households’ financial assets, which have reached nearly 6,500 billion euros (2.9 times the value of GDP), having increased by 233 per cent in real terms over the last forty years, between 1985 and 2025 (compared with GDP growth, over the same period, of just under 53 per cent).. 

In particular, deposits and cash reserves amount to 1,600 billion (+125 per cent). Conversely, the country stands out for having the lowest level of financial liabilities (mortgages, debts, household loans) amongst all European companies: 16.4 per cent of total financial assets, compared with an average of 25.7 per cent across eurozone countries (22.1 per cent in Germany, 23.1 per cent in Spain, 28.9 per cent in France). Furthermore, this quantitative strength is combined with great qualitative depth, given that Cetomedisation is a continuous manifestation of that desire to grow independently which formed its very foundation; it is a horizontal process, ‘lake-like’, but also one involving peripheral spaces (in Italy, the peripheries are increasingly more dynamic than the centre); it is an incremental process, linked to the continuous strengthening of the connective links between millions of grassroots behaviours; it is a process that effectively tends towards a continuous striving for social equilibrium, almost homeostasis; it is a very Italian process, in the sense that it aligns with our implicit and traditional preference for continuity.

Anyone who recognises just how substantial both the quantitative data and the qualitative characteristics of the process of ‘cetomedisation’ are will easily understand the hypothesis set out at the beginning of this text: it is time to stop talking about the middle class and to accept that we are dealing with an overarching configuration of society – a society that has gradually revealed itself to be a ‘cetomedist society’. This society is now a veritable constellation in Italian and European history; it is certainly a fragmented world, but within its molecular nature it seeks moments of interconnectedness amidst a proliferation of microcosms in which processes and flows – including external ones – silently unfold. In short, it is a world that has proven capable of withstanding even the major recent systemic crises, often even experiencing a qualitative resurgence as a result.

In the past, some observers have sought to define a more conventional and comprehensible outcome in this regard: namely, it was hoped that a ‘neo-bourgeoisie’ was taking shape, almost a ‘neo-bourgeois’ society (see the arguments put forward by Aldo Bonomi and Massimo Cacciari, together with myself). But it is better to accept the slow emergence of a ‘cetomedist’ society, even with its obvious ambiguities. Thus, it cannot be denied that the ‘cetomedist’ society is a society: affluent yet insecure; full of expectations, yet without a goal to pursue; characterised by a strong work ethic, yet with an almost obsessive focus on money (the constant flow of cash, but also a certain gambling addiction); with significant wealth accumulation, yet with clear risks of succumbing to a life of unearned income; with a general respect for the State (and the constitutional framework), yet with meticulous attention to certain specific issues (particularly tax-related ones); with a deliberate air of belonging to the ‘second tier’, yet with aristocratic undertones (living as the aristocracy once did); with a deep-rooted historical pride in ‘us, the middle class’, yet with little ability to transform this into a collective message.

After all, the entire recent history of the Italian middle class has been written in a generic and improvised style, but it is inevitable to reiterate that our middle-class society is the product of a process of great power and complexity, even if a fundamental question remains: is it the result of the events of recent decades, or is it a force for the future?

4. The question posed at the beginning of this text (“What if we stopped talking about the middle class?”) certainly stemmed from a cultural weariness with analysing overused terms (decline, crisis, tragedies, the middle class’s resentment), in order to provide a concrete political framework for addressing the issues at hand. Recognising how much better and more neutral it is to speak of a ‘middle-class society’ therefore raises two specific questions: is such a society the outcome of a self-propelling social evolution, and does it possess sufficient substance to engage in politics?

The first question is provocative for those who, like us at Censis, have always prioritised the logic of becoming (that is, the self-propulsion of the system) over the traditional logic of well-designed and well-implemented development. Will we have decades and centuries of a post-industrial society, just as we have had decades and centuries of an agricultural and an industrial society? One must always bear in mind that the original stigma of adaptation will always stand in the way of its historical autonomy. Agricultural and industrial societies, in fact, had very different foundations (there was the product, there was the centrality of the transformation process, there was the organisation of labour, there was even an inherent morality within the varied worlds of work), whereas in the cetomedist society there is no similar driving force.

However, if one delves deeper into Cetomedist society, one can find some traces of a self-propelling evolution: there is a molecular foundation of individual vitality, a widespread sense of personal responsibility, a strong inclination towards the use and accumulation of money, a propensity to combine work with unearned income, a talent for building relationships, a tendency to forge links between decision-making and power structures when tackling problems, and an ability to revitalise local communities even in the face of powerful external forces. In short, the process of ‘cetomedisation’ has been a profound process of becoming, rather than one of mere continuous adaptation; and its outcome – namely, the emergence of a ‘cetomedist’ society – certainly cannot be dismissed as mere chance or benevolent fate. We can count on this trend continuing, on it having a future.

What might be the relationship between this society and the electoral and decision-making spheres of politics? The latter has a problem of trust regarding what takes place within Cetomedist society, which is, in fact, politically elusive, because: it is horizontal and therefore eludes the usual verticalisation of interventionist logic; it lacks an overall capacity for self-representation (the ‘lake’ does not flow and therefore has no dynamism); despite having powerful sectoral components within it (in commerce, crafts, the professions, etc.), it fails to generate its own demand for representation; nor does its identification with the local area manage to have a political impact (the influence of local authorities carries greater weight). Thus, it is plausible that, in a ‘cetomedist’ society, politics may have little scope and little influence. And it is likely that the ‘cetomedist’ society is not the stage on which politicians play out their roles, but rather an audience that observes and evaluates politics as it unfolds.

Becoming an audience, rather than a playing field, likely constitutes the potential power (of consensus and dissent) that the Cetomedist society has built for itself. On which issues will the Cetomedist audience focus its attention in the coming years? Certainly, emotive issues will be inevitable, as has already been the case in recent international and domestic news stories. However, beyond the emotional dimension, there are two major areas of judgment and potential consensus.

First and foremost, the Cetomedist society will pay particular attention to the mechanisms ensuring the stability of the socio-political system, in defence of the constitutional framework and the resulting ‘rules of the game’, accepting politics not for its policy content, but for its ethical fidelity to the general principles governing the functioning of the system. Furthermore, it will be particularly attentive to and concerned with defending the foundations of its power, which are no longer those of the ‘hard work’ upon which the cetomedist society was built, but are now those of the substantial wealth that this construction has generated. In short, much of the attention paid to politics will centre on the protection, enhancement and hereditary transfer of the wealth accumulated over many years of toil and labour. One need only note how much the use of wealth management services entrusted to increasingly sophisticated financial operators has grown, and how much the desire to pass on assets to subsequent generations has increased (it is striking that, in the last year, one in three property transactions involved inheritance).

The future (fiscal and otherwise) of accumulated wealth is therefore the most sensitive and difficult issue to address. And it is the one over which the ‘cetomedist’ society will exercise prudent control over political actions. A difficult and delicate task, but at least more rewarding than the constant complaining about inequalities, imbalances and fears of regression.