ANALYSIS OF BELLOFIORE’S ARTICLE

The text is an extract from The Guardian, that is a British daily printed in London.

Right from the title "A Crisis of Capitalism" the reader can expect the text will be about economy.

Such expectation is created by the word “capitalism”. However the word “crisis” reinforces the idea. InThe two  two words are both very popular nowadays, and are both linked to world of economy.

The article is written by Riccardo Bellofiore as you can see from the subheading.

He thinks that the financial problems of Europe, and in particular of Italy, are related to a global attack on labour. The image that immediately catches the reader's attention and conveys the idea of a violent crisis:  it portrays the police during a clash against anti-austerity protesters in Rome.

After the introduction, Mr. Bellofiore used a quotation by Karl Marx, maybe to involve the reader and push him to go on reading the article: “History repeats itself , first as tragedy, then as farce”.

Thanks to the is quotation he introduces the political and economical situation in Italy. He strongly attacks Italian politicians using pungent words such as comedians, and referring to the recent scandals in Italy.

He describes the Italian political situation as farce. The intelligent reader can immediately understand that Mr. Bellofiore is referring to PM Silvio Berlusconi as it was published on Wednesday 21th  September 2011.

In the second paragraph the journalist  explains how the Italian Crisis is connected to the European economic situation.

First of all Europe has a “single currency”, the central bank does not act as lender and European budget is not high. The ECB has an anti – inflationary stand and it raises the interest rate whatever the cause of price rises.

What’s more Germany imposes austerity bugdets to southern European countries  like Italy’s maybe to take advantage from them.

So, the Italian crisis is not Italian-born but rather due to German neo-mercantilism inducing stagnation. Likewise the Greek economic situation is really bad. Mr. Bellofiore lists the other European countries with  financial problems.

The Italian GDP decreased from 1,3% in 2010 to 1,0% in 2011. Besides, in Italy after the “economic boom” as it was called, in the years after the Second World War, from the Sixties  there was a continuous decrease in labour productivity and the growth rate.

Capitalists answered workers’ struggles preferring to intensify labour and therefore production rather than  innovation.

Industrial sectors disappeared, technology was imported, public enterprises were privatized and mid-sized Italian companies profited from international exports but they always depended and still do on outside growth.

According to Mr. Bellofiore it seems as if  Italy were depriving itself from the goods its factories produce.To tell the truth, later the institution of policies of flexibility of labour led to a collapse of labour productivity, unemployment and an increase of taxes.

In 1992 Italy left the European monetary system and its own monetary system, that is recognised as lira, lost value.

For Mr. Bellofiore the crisis produced a domino effect that can be stopped only dealing.

In conclusion,  the journalist stated that what is really missing in Europe is not money but internationalism.

THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF ECONOMY

ECB: European Central Bank

Neo – mercantilism: the power of a nation depends on how much it imports and it exports

Keynesianism: it is an economic school founded by John Maynard Keynes, who had focused the attention of economy from production of goods to demand.

Sovereign debt: it is the debt of a public corporation, for example if the expense of the State are higher than profit, the State asks for a loan to somebody and give him a title with interest

Private debt: it concerns with ordinary people

GDP: it stands for “gross domestic product” and it is the market value of goods and services in a specific moment

Eurobond: when you lend money to a foreign corporation

Iflation: a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.