Storia della mia gente (Historia de mi gente, Salamandra 2012) won in 2011 the Strega prize for novel, one of the most prestigious in Italian literature. The book was signed by Edoardo Nesi, a Tuscan with family ties to what had been the prosperous textile industry in Tuscany. The text was the chronicle of the evaporation of the world in which the author had been raised, forged through companies with known capital and owners with known names, surnames and addresses. As a counterpart, employees who also meant something more than an annotation referring to production costs in an Excel document.
A landscape common to many other places in Europe that the author took for granted in his autobiographical novel. Nesi was saying goodbye to a way of life, something that went far beyond simple work relationships.
The book, a bitter read, took that reality for granted due to the negative externalities of first and second generation globalization. If the first globalization phase had meant the transfer of production to Asia, mainly to China; the second resulted in the proliferation in Tuscany itself of textile workshops in the hands of Chinese citizens (some legal, many others not), who cloned the manufacturing methods and working conditions of their country of origin. Although at the cost of breaking European and Italian laws.
A precise drawing of the death sentence of the productive fabric of which Nesi was a son. One company after another marching towards the cemetery of oblivion for not being able to compete in those conditions of inequality. And with its disappearance, the inevitable progressive disappearance of the social contract built on the ashes of World War II.
Without the drama or the literary precision of Stefan Zweig's Yesterday's World, Storia della mia gente was also the notarial record of an era's end. In Italy, yes, but exportable to other places on the European continent.
This long prologue comes at the end of the major scandal that has just taken place in the Italian luxury goods firm Armani and that affects in particular Giorgio Armani Operations, the industrial arm of the family empire. We have known since Friday that handbags, belts and who knows what other products from the famous brand are manufactured by Chinese slaves in industrial estates in Lombardy. The heart of the old Europe choked by the worst labor practices that one can imagine in the name of luxury.
We write slaves because this is who is condemned to live in a polygon workshop with endless days, sleeping on mattresses that are occupied in shifts, with toilets that also fulfill the function of kitchens and wages that oscillate between two and three euros per hour. The business division affected by the scandal has been placed under judicial administration by the Milanese courts.
Edoardo Nesi's book already described the existence of this reality in 2012. Twelve years later, the Armani scandal shows the inability of the national authorities to effectively combat the birth of parallel societies that operate on the margins of legality on European soil and in plain view of anyone who dares to look.
But it shows something else. The moral decline of a part of the business community and the lack of any commitment on their part to the society of which they once formed a part and which they have decided to cut off completely in favor of themselves alone and his pocket.
The investigation assumes that the company now under judicial administration was aware of the slavery practices and that they are even part of a specific business strategy for growth and profitability. Now we will witness the recurring and effective tactic of the squid: Blame the subcontracts so that the great brand continues to shine without a stain as an icon of luxury and refined taste. Moreover, to Armani's reassurance, the collective memory is always shorter than the moral and practical magnitude of these scandals.
And a fundamental question: How many polygons like Lombardy are spread across Europe that we don't dare to look at? Some are not so far away. And it's easy to guess that similar things happen in there.
We wanted to colonize the world with our values and it turns out that as soon as we turn around, the world colonizes us. In any case, take note Armani and others. The true luxury brand continues to be, even today, being a person. With all that that must mean.
