“A crisis of capitalism” is an article taken from the English newspaper “the Guardian”.

The Guardian was founded by textile traders and merchants in Manchester and it had a reputation  as “ an organ of middle class”. This article is written by the Italian economist and University prof. Riccardo Bellofiore.

The heading and the sub-heading have an intruductory function and the journalist states that Italy's problems are not  home-grown and they rather should beseen as a global attack on labour.

The economist quotes Marx when he said  History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce to  better explain the Italian economic and political situation. He has a negative opinion of Italian politicians, whom he judgese ast comedians.

According to the journalist to understand the true nature of Ithe talian crisis a wider European perspective on the crises should be adopyed.. He analyses the limits of the euro-zone as the reality of a  “single currency” not backed  by political sovereignty and a central bank that does not act as a lender.

The economist also says the Italian crisis is not home grown. Indeed German neo- mercantilism induced stragration in Europe which has survived thanks to driven exports.

One of the main problems is the inefficiency of European leaders in rescuing-indebted countries and the introduction of self-defeating austerity programmes.

In particular,   since the mid Sixties Italy's economy had structural, long-standing failings that resulted in the steady  decrease of both labour productivity and the growth rate. In this period Industrial branches disappeared, technology  was imported  andpublic prises were  privatized. The fatal moment came with the policies of labour flexibility which caused unemployment, further casualisation, increasing regressive taxes and savage outs.

At the end of the article the economist underlines that both the European and the Italian crisis are not just a form of financial crisis but a capitalist crisis. The European should support a socialization of investiments, state's intervention as a direct provider of employment and capital control.

According to Bellofiore what is really missing in Europe is internationalism.