Prodi's dream

An ordinary and ineffective dream by A. Autino
I propose that, in putting in writing his political thought ("Europe: the Dream and the Choices"), Romano Prodi didn't make any inaccuracies. On the contrary, he did something that all politicians, who still have a minimum of dignity, should do. I would like to promote a law, that establishes the following: every politician, if elected to any public position, shall produce, alone or with others, in a reasonable time period to be defined, some positive contribution (regardless of its real application or any political judgment on the worth of the contribution), otherwise he will lose the right to stand again at the next elections.
Having accorded to Prodi the status of a serious person, since he at least tries to do the work for which he receives public money, I am sorry to ascertain however that his thought is not so different from the ideological flatness which has characterized for solong the political houses of the Old Continent. His program doesn't aim high. When he proposes to use Space (par. 3.4 "education, research and innovation"), his only goal is to observe the Earth. Prodi fully copies, or probably he is rather among the inspirers of it, the European philosophy of so-called "sustainable development". Such a philosophy is completely restrictive, aimed at stopping technological development, in the absurd attempt to reverse in this way the environmental problems created by the growth of the human kind in a closed system.
Scientific research and technological innovation are covered in about twenty lines (par. 3.4), in which the goal is also expresssed: that Europe should go back to being a leader in innovation. As well as (par. 3.3 "The growth as first priority") growth is pointed out as an economic priority. The total lack of ideas of the post-industrial political class - only able to sail at sight, praying for the conservation of the status quo - is not indicated as a reason of the growth' stagnation. Tautologically, Sgr Prodi's paper complains about the results of missing growth (e.g. the increase of inequalities and diffused social conflict). It is a backward-looking political design, denouncing globalization and continuous technological innovation as among the "modern evils". Yes, Mr. Prodi, one can really never rest in peace: when one plans to take important steps to confirm European prestige in the world, and to sit down, comfortable and calm, to contemplate the decline of our civilization (or its euthanasia, as surely the most radical ecologists hope); what the heck are those Chineses doing? They compete! They aren't satisfied to take our mature technologies, but they directly aim for technological leadership, and even to reach space!
After the recent Chinese enterprise, some executives of the European Spatial Agency ridiculously hastened (in some interview) to revalue Astronautics, when their strategies have been for years focussed -- guess what? -- on telecommunication and Earth observation! But China announced a plan to land on the Moon within 2010 and to build a permanent lunar base by 2020. Then even Bush the conqueror rouses himself from his warlike numbness and announces, although as a step toward the exploration of Mars, the settlement of a permanent lunar base within 10-15 years. Not that anyone, in the so-called advanced West, goes out of their way to speak about the Moon or of the Geo-Lunar system as an area of industrial and civil development!
Then thank you China, and thank you India! Two great civilizations of a still recent past, two Countries that seem to clearly have identified Space as a strategic development axle. As Michael Martin-Smith remembered in a recent intervention in the TdF forum, China produced alone, up to 1800, the 50% of the world ecomomy. And today it seems well on the way to regain a position of prominence, if not of leadership, on the planetary market.
Back to Europe, it keeps on surrendering mature technologies (auto, appliances) to the emerging Countries, and, in the name of the "sustainable development", renounces to adopt strong industrial development lines, comparable to what the automobile has been in the last century. Space tourism, solar power harvested in space, are two lines which could finally open a new structural development horizon, and to relaunch the economy for centuries to come. Does Europe aim to be a leader or a laggard? With programs such as this, there is no doubt that we will lag behind, in the best hypotheses.
Prodi lists a series of problems, as any citizen of common sense would do, and perhaps this is the cultural and political profile that he aims to pursue. But we pay him sound money to do well other things, and not to confine himself to sit on his armchair, sharing the worries that whoever preserves a minimum of critical sense is able to perceive. Where are the long breath indications? Where is the vision on a horizon of least 30 or 50 years? We don't find trace of it. Prodi wishes the peace, and who doesn't wish it? And then he complains the crisis of democracy and the crisis of justice. Yes, Professor, but how will we get out from here? With the growth, he says. And he let us understand here and there that growth will be also a remedy to the conflicts. If the cake grows the conflicts will finally leave place to a loyal competition. Good. And how do you think to manage to get the growth? It doesn't work for decree, we already saw it so many times in the history, and neither for military imposition.
No doubt that growth is the key. But Prodi avoids, or refuses, to focus such point with clarity, and when he speaks about research - the essential fuel to the growth - he fires the "problem" in 20 lines. As it was an annoying, not at all exciting, duty, that we shall perform in passing. As it was for the fathers of the Italian Republican Constitution, which rhetorically spoke about culture and science, just to name them (but the new European constitution is another talk, though somewhat similar). But that was more than 50 years ago! We can forgive the fathers of the republic, in the middle of the industrial age, in the immediate postwar period (when the scientific search could appear a luxury or nothing more than a "rightful cultural engagement"), a similar approach. But not today, absolutely not today, in the middle of the electronic age, when to neglect the research means to deliver our civilization to a rapid and painful decadence! Not today, after 2,5 years of business oriented political power, that broke to pieces the remaining Italian research. Not after five years of green power, that neglected and sneered the research (we don't forget the 1500 scientists, which went down in the streets in February 2001, still under the Olive government). Not after forty years of Christian Democratic and than Craxi's power, that caused the diaspora of the Italian scientists toward United States.
Now this shameful neglect is enough! Who do we have to vote for, to finally have an upgraded, compliant with the demands of the human (before than European) civilization, scientific research politics??!? Maybe a scientist party doesn't exist, in Latin Countries; maybe it is only a problem of (500 years) delay in the Lutheran reform. Do we maybe have to invite some Northern party to open sites here around? Do scientist parties exist in the North European Regions?
When he speaks about education - the other great pillar on which any growth politics holds up or fails - Prodi uses the same 20 lines already mentioned. Prodi is not alarmed about the total lack of scientific culture in the schools, nor about the fact that the schools, from primary upwards, administers to the children a subcultural greenish mush, in which all that is "natural" is good and all that comes from human talent is pointed out as bad and perverse. How can we think that children can develop an interest and curiosity for the scientific research? The history of science and of the scientists of the past, Astronomy, Astronautics, are totally missing in the scholastic programs. But nobody seems to care about this. Prodi does not care, since he more and more aims to embody the thought of Mediocrity. The common anxiety, repeated every day, in all quarters, is one to set limits to science, seen as responsible for all the evils of the modern society. I don't believe when Mr. Prodi tells me that his opinion is different: his program treats research as an accessory, and does not give any concrete programmatic indication, of cultural breath.
On the topic of education, if we aim for an increasing integration among the Union's Countries, first of all we need to put the young Europeans in the position to speak to each other, without embarrassments nor problems. Therefore they should become used to a common language. The most used language in Europe is, without any doubt, English: the English language should be founded without hesitations as second language, and we have to quickly redesign the scholastic programs, introducing conversation as a priority, closely linked to the study of the grammar (please see also the TdF forum "School and Educational Systems". Why there is no trace of all this in the programs? Are we facing forgetfulness? What are the politicians paid for, if we only get back banalities and commonplaces, while the really important things shall always be thought outside of the professional political environments?
Discussing information, Prodi maintains to defend its pluralist character. In the current times, with the rampant censorship, the cowardice and the servile behaviour of so many journalists, this is really the least, discounted, thought that we can expected by a man as you are, Professor! But Europe, if it aims to become a confederate nation, needs well other enterprises! I don't find, in your program, any proposals to create European journalistic headings, a great newspaper, a newscast, endowed with European editorial staffs, that start to treat information at a continental scale. A true, really European, program, could be born only from an investigation conducted at continental level, in the civil society, giving the priority to universities, to the places of culture, anywhere there are people thinking for themselves and discussing the future, and not the mere maintenance of the status quo. To preserve this, as a strategy, has been always a pious illusion: the status quo can be defended by expanding into new regions, or we will end up losing what we have already.
On the topic of the free market, at least, Prodi's thought appears backward, - a product of that entanglement between the political power (Christian Democrat) and petty political industrialism that prevented, for fifty years, the development of a true free market economy in Italy. As for technology, the market is seen as something dangerous, to be limited, not as something to be freed indeed! And all this, in a Country - Italy - where more than 85% of the national economy is produced by small and medium enterprises (at least until they'll survive)! There is no sign of attention to the social evolution, to the transition from industrial to electronic age, to the growth of entrepreneurial subjects and the birth of new entrepreneurial subjects, to the widespread entrepreneurship as a mass phenomenon. The program doesn't speak about liberty of enterprise. Someone will perhaps think that these last are rightist values, and we should not expect them in the thoughts of a center-left man. These objectors do not understand anything of the social reality in which we live today: 85% of the economy produced by the SMEs means that the class divisions of society are more and more insignificant. Therefore also the political categories which represented the old classes (right and left), assume more and more the consistency of ectoplasms. While a concept of free market (free from commercial barriers, extrapowerful lobbies, heavy taxes and bureaucratic drawstrings) assumes more and more relevance. Yet also the old Karl Marx spoke about this. The growth of the productive powers (read= technology) leads, by itself, to the social growth and to the liberation from the chains of the salaried work. We would say, today, that the technologic progress led the end of the industrial age (with its load of exploitation, but also of great development), and progress to the electronic age, that requires a lot more responsibilities and self-governmental ability to free individuals. We have formidable tools in our hands, and it is up to us to decide to use them to continue the civilization' development or to sink our civilization. One thing is sure: without technology, without scientific research, without expanding to extraterrestrial space, 6.5 million human terrestrials don't have any hope.
Nowadays one only ideological division should finally take the lime-light, and to be freed from every useless encumbrance: the division between those who want to continue the development of the human civilization, and those who want instead to extinguish it, according to myopic personal affairs (they will end too, together with the civilization!) or according to old metaphysics, old (dualistic) conceptions of the man-nature relationship. Mr. Prodi, whose side are you on?
Some sites where the Prodi's program is online: http://europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/prodi/pdf/europedream_en.pdf http://europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/prodi/index_en.htm
[005.AA.TDF.2004 - 24.01.2004]