Development, public finance and "particracy": the three facets of Berlinguer’s moral question

Tracing its origins and evolution during the 1970s and 1980s, the essay proposes an original reinterpretation of Enrico Berlinguer’s thought on the “moral question”. The author high- lights how the “moral question” did not only address the problem of party corruption, but also encompassed other levels of analysis that are often overlooked. The first level concerns the issue of the global North/South divide and the crisis of the capitalist development mod- el, against which Berlinguer proposed a new “ethics of development”. The second level con- cerns the crisis of domestic economic governance and the issue of public spending, which in Berlinguer’s perspective had a “moral” relevance. The third level involves “particra- cy”, that is, the occupation of the State by political parties. On this issue, the author frames Berlinguer’s discourse in the growing anti-political discourse that would characterise the 1980s, and highlights similarities and differences between his thought and past and current anti-political sentiments.

Keywords: Enrico Berlinguer, moral question, Italian Communist Party, antipolitics, public spending, ethics of development

Chiara Zampieri, Sviluppo, finanza pubblica e partitocrazia: le tre "facce" della questione morale di Berlinguer in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 302/2023, pp 85-112, DOI: 10.3280/IC2023-302004