The Relevance of Cattaneo Today
1 Introduction
Having reviewed the various aspects of Cattaneo’s output, and the unity of thought underpinning it, the civic passion that runs through his writings, and the conceptual and analytical foundations of his “theory of freedom”, his thoroughgoing federalism, and his idea of intelligence as the basis of human progress, we may now ask ourselves more directly if his method of analysing problems, the approaches he outlined, and the original contributions he made to the study of social issues are in any way still useful or stimulating. In other words, why study Cattaneo today? Why offer a selection of his writings to the “nation of intelligence, which dwells in every climate and speaks all languages”? (“Frammenti di sette prefazioni” [1846] 1960 SF 1:233). Firstly, because he was a student of modernity (which, at the time in which he was writing, could only mean European or Western modernity), with an original approach that was ahead of its time, free from the ethnocentrism and the naïve forms of historical evolutionism that marked the thought of so many of his contemporaries. Cattaneo urged his fellow citizens not to recognize any form of hierarchy within humanity, but always emphasized the cross-fertilization of cultures that was revealed through the study of modern linguistic science. He affirmed the multiplicity of ways and paths by which civilizations progressed towards modernity, produced by the reciprocal influences of different cultures and their interactions with native traditions, as he wrote in the preface to the second volume of the first collection of his own writings which he published: “Foreign interference was a necessary auxiliary to nascent indigenous civilizations. […] The historical combinations arising from the encounter between outside influences and native traditions produce as many different sequences as there are peoples; and each of them must supply its own special contribution to the world of learning”. (in this anthology: 24 and 30). Accordingly, in his essay “Thought as a Principle of Public Economy” ([1861] SE 3; in this anthology: 145), he exhorted more developed peoples to promote the development of intelligence everywhere throughout the world, because “every person has an interest in the culture of all humanity”, effectively affirming the value of education as a universal development goal (as does nowadays the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals).
Cattaneo’s oeuvre reflects an authentic interest in the different civilizations and populations of the earth, even those that were furthest from him in time and space, but the focus of his attention was modern European civilization, the salient features of which he described clearly: individual and collective freedom, rationality based on science, the connection between economic growth and civil development, federal democracy, the importance of social issues, and the relationship between the global and local (Martinelli 2007). Many of his ideas on modern civilization anticipate issues and analysis of history, philosophy and the social sciences, are still relevant and productive today, and are able to contribute to addressing the problems facing the contemporary globalized world.
2 Cattaneo’s Concept of Modern Civilization: Responsible Freedom; Intelligence and Will; Federal Democracy
First and foremost among these ideas is the affirmation of responsible freedom in all its aspects, to be exercised by citizens having the same rights. Domestically this means the foundation of public ethics and a policy for social reforms to overcome injustice and inequality; internationally it means respect for the rights of all peoples to live together and develop peacefully. It is a concept of politics that is diametrically opposed to the various forms of nationalism, that is, the ideology of the nation state which affirms that political unity and national unity have to be one and the same thing.
Cattaneo’s liberalism is republican and federal, and points to an open and pluralist society, distinctive for the combination of representative democracy and the market economy, in which individuals can express their intelligence and will in order to build their own destinies together, with due respect for lawfulness, civic spirit, private honesty and public morality. His concept of freedom at all times appeals to the social nature of human experience; in this way individual freedom can never be separate from the freedom of all. Freedom is always to be defended and developed through the participation and civil commitment of all the people, and is underpinned by full confidence in democracy, starting from the first circle, that of the free city state, as he argues in his famous essay “The City Considered as the Ideal Principle of Italian Histories” ([1858]1957 SSG 2). The essay’s key thesis is that the close, inseparable union of the city with its countryside is the distinctive feature of Italian history that persisted through innumerable vicissitudes, wars, political upheavals, foreign invasions: a permanent feature that gives sense to a sequence of otherwise meaningless events. It was in this context that an open economy, individual freedom and experimental science could flourish. Italian society has been characterized through the centuries by the mutual integration of its major cities–Milan, Venice, Florence and many others. Each city was the site of established markets, great manufacturing industries and ports fed by distant trade. Each city was interconnected with its surrounding countryside and represented a constitutive element of political federalism as an intermediate level of aggregation between municipality, state and union.
Cattaneo’s liberalism is well aware of the political role of classes. For him there is no freedom without the popular classes’ participation in all public life. It was the European revolution of 1848, and the Five Days of Milan in particular, when the Milanese people rose up in protest against Austrian rule (in which Cattaneo was one of the leading figures), that revealed the hitherto unsuspected power and abilities of the people. This almost sacred idea of freedom is seen clearly in the positions he took up in favour of universal suffrage, both political and administrative, abolition of the death penalty and prison reform, the ministers’ responsibility towards parliament, the independence of the magistrates in the exercise of their duties, fiscal equity, and his rejection of French colonialism in Tunisia ([1862]1964–1965 SP 4).
The fundamental value of freedom finds its preferred political expression in the organization of the state as federation. Cattaneo’s federalism is founded on the freedom of individuals and peoples, to the point where he affirmed that “federalism is the only possible theory of freedom” (EP 2: 122). Throughout his life Cattaneo advocated for the realization of a federal Italy as part of a United States of Europe. In “The United States of Europe”, the last page of his Dell’insurrezione di Milano (“The Events of 1848”), he wrote that in Europe, “the edifice constructed by kings and emperors can be remade based on the pure American model. The principle of nationality […] will dissolve the fortuitous empires of Eastern Europe and will transform them into federations of free peoples. We shall have true peace, when we have the United States of Europe” ([1849], SSG 4 in this anthology: 269).
Freedom is inextricably linked to the rational will: indeed, the two are virtually identical (“freedom is no more than the will itself, exercised fully and rationally” (in this anthology: 145). The alliance between freedom and will is the foundation of historical change, according to the Enlightenment idea of progress which occupies such a central position in Cattaneo’s thought (Bobbio 1971): the conviction, that is, that in human affairs, the path towards progress does not just fall from heaven by magic, but rather is linked to the actions of human beings and their desire to build their own destinies, and originates from the profitable interactions between the theories and experiences of different peoples. (This is one of the main theses of his essay “On Antithesis as a Method of Social Psychology”, in this anthology: 114–124).
Cattaneo’s scientific activity is reformist in nature (that is, for him development depends on good reforms), and as such fits with his teacher Giandomenico Romagnosi’s theories of civilization, in the sense that the study of the psychology of associated minds (that is, of human societies) must begin from a stated intention to achieve civil progress, in which the role played by the multitudes is of fundamental importance, “in order to foster the development of humanity along the path towards intellectual civilization, in which the principles of socialization are enshrined” (Della Peruta 2001).
3 Faith in Reason and the Centrality of Science
The second distinctive feature of Cattaneo’s conception of modern civilization is his Enlightenment faith in the capabilities of reason, experimental empirical science (based on facts, that is, free from dogma or censorship), and applied techniques. This feature too is a constant refrain in his work, and in particular of the “Fragments of Seven Prefaces” he wrote for the journal Il Politecnico, in which he exhorts his fellow Italians to return to the “fruitful experimental science” of the Galilean tradition. It is a statement of faith in a version of science that is “positive rather than positivist” (Bobbio 1945), directly inherited from the great Lombard Enlightenment thinkers Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria via the teaching of Romagnosi: an attitude that is an integral part of his civil philosophy (as he defines it in the introductory lecture to the course in civil philosophy that he taught at the high school in Lugano). Cattaneo can be considered as a both a successor of the Enlightenment and a precursor of modern positive science, in the no-man’s land between Enlightenment and positivist cultures.
Cattaneo was fascinated by the significant progress that had been achieved by the experimental sciences, both the physical natural sciences and the social sciences, and by the related technological innovations and the huge potential entailed by these for civil progress. He diligently followed the scientific debate, and published its developments in the journal he founded, Il Politecnico, with an approach that was genuinely interdisciplinary in nature. In the prefaces to the journal’s annual volumes for the 1839–1845 period (the “Fragments of Seven Prefaces”), Cattaneo outlines his objectives very clearly: “to facilitate the swiftest understanding by our citizens of that part of truth which may flow easily from mountainous regions of science to water the fields of practical applications, and so provide increased benefit and comfort to the common prosperity and civil coexistence” (in this anthology: 55). He described his public as that “class of worldly readers”, that is, the middle classes or bourgeoisie of the universities, professions and businesses, to whom he wished to communicate the achievements of science and technology, and of economic and social modernization. He also clarified the way in which he intended to perform this mission of scientific divulgation, which was to combine ease of style with substance of content (“we will seek in the lightness of the form the same popularity that other journals prefer to seek in the lightness of content”, in this anthology: 59). The journal’s manifesto makes clear both Cattaneo’s reformist ideals and his ideas on experimental science, interdisciplinary collaboration, economic liberalism and, and social progress. The same concept is found again in the Four Prefaces to the volumes of the new series of Il Politecnico starting from 1859, with the addition, this time, of his federalist vision, through the lens of which Cattaneo analyses the fundamental issues underpinning the construction of the new Italian state. The reasons that inspired this mission of engagement also drove his unceasing commitment to designing an effective educational policy in order to embed a culture of science and technology in all classes of society. As Armani has written, with Il Politecnico Cattaneo “makes an extraordinary attempt to ingraft the most advanced positions of educated, industrial Europe, where the banks and companies of a developed economy are consolidated, and where the debate of ideas is freer, onto the situation in Lombardy” (Armani 1997: 86). The establishment of Il Politecnico is the most representative expression of Cattaneo’s practical intelligence and modernizing spirit.
Cattaneo’s faith in science made him wary of abstract theorizing, which he contrasted with practical experimental science; he was critical of “the mists of idealism”, he condemned every form of dogmatism, and strongly advocated “the federalism of intelligences”, as part of what we might call a cosmopolitan vision of science and art. Cattaneo wrote as follows in “Fragments of Seven Prefaces”: “Populations must continually hold up a mirror to each other, for the interests of civilization are shared and common; because science is one, art is one, glory is one. The nation of learned men is one alone […]. It is the nation of intelligence, which dwells in every climate and speaks all languages” (in this anthology: 58; cf. also 304) and in the Psychology of Associated Minds he wrote: “the most social and gregarious act of man is thought, for it often brings together many people unknown even to each other, and many generations, in a single thought […] the wealth of mankind throughout all its circuit, the riches and power of the nations is measured against the freedom of analysis:—Science is power!” (SF 1 or Psychology of the Associated Minds 2019: 128). Cattaneo emphasizes the empirical foundation of science (that is, the meeting of nature and science), and also the equal dignity enjoyed by both natural and civil (or social) sciences: “Constrained by the harsh necessities of labour, human beings assimilate and organize ideas into arts. Then gradually they extend them, to the point where the needs of nature and the strengths of science meet […]. Indeed, those arts which govern civil aggregations are no less arts than others […]” (in this anthology: 56). In this respect Cattaneo is a source of inspiration for the epistemological approach that affirms the equal dignity of all sciences and the need to bridge disciplinary boundaries in modern science (McBean and Martinelli 2017). Cattaneo also affirmed the superiority of the inductive method, and believed that experience was the quickest and most certain way by which to arrive at the truth (“Experimental philosophy embraces the whole truth, that is, all facts: omnis historia bona” (SF 2: 39). He was a forerunner of scientific positivism, in the sense that he believed that social realities should be studied by applying the same experimental method as the physical natural sciences, and by using the inductive method, but was sceptical of the hurried and all-encompassing generalizations typical of reductionist positivism. He advocated co-operation between history and the social sciences, and affirmed that the purpose of history is to identify essential laws and general and constant facts, with the contribution of the empirical research carried out by all the new human sciences, proceeding by means of “cautious induction”.
Cattaneo recalls the fundamental contribution made by the first scientific academies, such as the Accademia del Cimento in Florence (with its motto “Proving and Disproving”), in consolidating “the great principle of testing nature by means of experiments, by repeating and varying” (in this anthology: 80). previously affirmed by Leonardo and Galileo. His preferred philosophers were Francis Bacon, the author of the Novum Organum (“who reduced the inductive method to scientific form, taught people how to study nature in order to dominate it, and invited humankind to establish its reign over the earth by scientific means” (SF 1: 297)), John Locke (who “rejected the doctrine of innate ideas, seeking to show that reflection was sufficient for the individual to ascend from the sensory perception to […] ideas”, and “how reflection, in its noblest efforts, was assisted by language” (in this anthology: 115). Giambattista Vico, the founder of “social ideology”, which is “the study of the individual within humanity”, that is to say, the study of the development of the human mind in society and in history (in this anthology: 43) and the Enlightenment philosophers, who he encountered through the civil philosophy of his teacher Giandomenico Romagnosi (in this anthology: 46).
Philosophy for Cattaneo is not the history of philosophy. The proper field of enquiry for philosophy as far as Cattaneo was concerned is the study of human thought, as conducted on historical and experimental territory, for we can only know human thought insofar as it manifests itself in actions and elaborations, in histories, languages, religions, arts and sciences. His reflection does not go beyond the limits and precautions of the experimental method, rejecting the generalizing theories of Comtian or Spencerian positivism. Cattaneo’s philosophy effectively leads to a new social science, which on the one hand involves the psychology of associated minds, that is, how thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by relations with others; and on the other, social ideology, that is, what the results of these interactions are for society and how thought, which is a social action, proceeds indirectly and tortuously in the history of peoples towards the goal of civilization, in plural and diverse forms, in the eternal contrast of different principles. This conception contains the premises in embryonic form for the modern social sciences to develop in a genuinely multidisciplinary manner, all of which, like the different cultures themselves, have equal dignity: from economics to social psychology, from comparative sociology to cultural anthropology (although Cattaneo does not use the term sociology, for at the time it was identified with the thought of Auguste Comte, or the term cultural anthropology, for the study of the physical and racial characteristics of different peoples and that of their social and cultural characteristics had not yet been distinguished from each other).
In the first part of this introduction I have outlined and demonstrated the relevance of Cattaneo’s conception of historical change at some length. I have shown how Cattaneo affirmed the huge variety of the different processes of civilization, through antitheses and contradictions, in opposition to linear and programmatic evolutionism, but without falling into Vico’s circle of pessimism with historical ups and downs (as he clearly argues: “Historical studies […] in our century seek rather to illuminate the indirect, tortuous routes by which mankind has launched itself from one mistake to another, and from excess to excess, in pursuit of the objective science of civilization”; “On Vico’s New Science”, in this anthology: 42).
Now I shall move on to discuss the role his work played in anticipating the future developments in four modern social sciences: namely, applied economics, reform-oriented social research, social psychology, and the sociology of global modernization.
4 On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy
The inclusion of intelligence and free will among the nations’ sources of wealth; the nexus of inter-relations between science, technology and industry; the strong roots binding industrial development to local regions; the relationship between the economy and the institutions; economic liberalism tempered by sensitivity to social issues: all these are distinctive features of Cattaneo’s conception of economics applied to the study of growth, a concept with which it is worth familiarizing ourselves. It should be noted first of all that Cattaneo is not an economic theorist, but rather, as Luciano Cafagna described him), “a militant economist”, who, “applies the economic knowledge of his time to the study of concrete problems, weaving together geographical observations, sociological considerations, and analysis of technologies and institutions and so comes to elaborate a coherent conception of economic growth” (Cafagna 1975: 207). For a long time Cattaneo was ignored by mainstream economic science even in Italy (this despite Giacomo Becattini’s exhortation to “force all candidates for positions as applied economists today to read, as compulsory texts”, not only his “magisterial essays on applied economics”, but also “large sections of his more ‘theoretical’ works, such as his “On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy” […], which are of notable historical significance as well as being of great scientific not to mention political relevance” (Becattini 2002: 32)).
However, as Giorgio Bigatti noted (2021), his development model became even more topical, unexpectedly, in the final decades of the twentieth century, following the profound transformation undergone by industrial capitalism from the Fordist model of mass production to that of flexible specialization analysed by Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel in The Second Industrial Divide (Piore and Sabel 1984). In Italy this transformation fostered the success of the industrial districts (Becattini and Rullani 1987, Brusco 1989): a model of development made up of small native businesses, specialized by sector and closely integrated, and with close links to the local countryside and small and medium-sized cities, distinguished by their close-knit communities, good administrative traditions, and lively commercial, artisanal and professional activities. The industrial districts are an example of widespread, uninterrupted industrialization, which are able to respond quickly to changes in the market and react well to crises because of their flexibility, as well as being able to innovate and share expertise rapidly (Fuà and Zacchia 1983). One fundamental resource which firms organized into industrial districts have is a particular wealth of technical, place-specific knowhow and expertise which is formed over time. Such “contextual knowledge”, handed down from generation to generation, and the industrial district model in general, are fully aligned with the ideas Cattaneo expounds in his most important economic works, On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy (published in the second series of Il Politecnico in 1861) and the Notizie naturali e civili sulla Lombardia (Maccabelli 1996). It is a model for development that echoes Cattaneo’s concept of thought as a factor of production, and his outline of the Lombard model of development, rooted in a region that had been profoundly transformed by human labour, which was characterized by the close city/countryside relations, skills passed down between different generations, shared values and local autonomies.
Cattaneo expounded his ideas on economic development in numerous essays published between 1835 and 1839 in the Annali di Giurisprudenza Pratica, in the Interdizioni israelitiche, in the Prefaces to the seven volumes of Il Politecnico (1839–1844), in the essay “On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy”, and the other writings included in Section 3 of this anthology, as well as in other articles he wrote on various topics, ranging from the economic and social situation in other countries (European and non-European), to the relationship between industry and morality, to communications and public works policies, to land and agricultural credit (SE, SP). In these writings Cattaneo argues for Adam Smith’s doctrine of economic liberalism, in opposition to the German protectionist model which sought rather to protect national industry and put politics above economic questions, exalting the role played by competition in this respect: “Competition is a great incentive to industry, for it is a source of prodigious effort in terms of wisdom, diligence and savings” (in this anthology: 144).
Free economic initiative (which is part of broader, personal freedom), market competition, protection of ownership rights (defined as the “primary need of social being”), the division of labour (which magnifies the effects of the forces applied to production, and stimulates the spirit of invention), are the essential prerequisites for accumulating and using capital, and guarantee economic growth. Free circulation of capital, by virtue of the role played by the public banks and stock markets, which channel the trade capital and the “fleeting” financial capital in the direction of productive uses. Freedom and will are also expressed in the spirit of initiative which applies technical and scientific innovation to manufacturing activities. The industrious populations of “courageous entrepreneurs” and “intelligent workers” are the main players in this process, which is based on the complementary relationship between creative intelligence, entrepreneurial innovation, and professional education. Cattaneo was critical of the economic nationalism advocated by Friedrich List, as he was also, indeed, of the political nationalism of Schlegel’s “imaginary doctrines”, engaging in a refutation of the essentialist approach in contemporary studies of nationalism avant la lettre (Martinelli 2013). He argued forcefully that free trade does not only encourage the economic growth of countries by directly promoting the growth of their industry, but also indirectly, by encouraging free thought, the exchange of ideas and scientific/technical discoveries, and the best reciprocal knowledge.
The link between freedom and economic and social development for Cattaneo is not only expressed in traditional terms, of the liberalization of commercial exchanges, but also in the more sophisticated relationship between free exercise of the individual’s own intelligence and will, and economic and social progress. He developed this thesis in the lectures he gave at the high school in Lugano in 1853–1854, when he argued that acts of intelligence are “valuable acts in their own right, every bit as much as labour and capital”, and indeed that “labour is unable to create new wealth without the application of creative thought” (“Del diritto e della morale”, SF 3, 1960), and above all in his fundamental essay “On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy”, in which he wrote as follows: “the acts of intelligence which opened up the largest and most universal sources of wealth to peoples had to precede every direct production or scientific accumulation. There is no labour or capital that does not begin with some act of intelligence. Before all labour and capital, when things lie as yet uncared for or unknown within nature, it is intelligence which begins the work and marks them out with the imprint of wealth for the first time […]. Every new treatise of public economy should formally classify intelligence and the will among the sources of wealth: intelligence which discovers goods, which invents methods and instruments, which leads nations on the road to culture and progress; and the will which determines the action to be taken and tackles the obstacles” (in this anthology: 129, 146). To give priority to intelligence means assigning a leading role to entrepreneurial, productive and organizational innovation (many years later Joseph Schumpeter would turn some of these insights into a systematic theory; Schumpeter 1934) and to spreading new forms of knowledge to all classes to allow them to express their intelligence and will more fully, a task to which Cattaneo devoted most of his life.
Such ideas, theoretically grounded, are based on empirical observation of economic reality, in particular of what might be referred to as “the Lombard model of development” (Notizie naturali e civili sulla Lombardia (EN, S III 1844; 2014)), which I will discuss in due course. Scientific research, technical innovation, and the formation of human capital are fundamental development factors, but give rise to different results depending on the specific social and institutional context in which they operate (federal arrangements, school reforms, trade union strategies, and so on), in contrast to the idea that there are economic laws that are valid in all times and places.
As Cattaneo was no abstract theorist but rather a man whose intelligence was concrete, these ideas found practical expression, in different phases of his life, in publishing initiatives such as Il Politecnico and his participation in innovative institutions, plans to reform schools, and the implementation of new infrastructure. The role he played in the Society for the Encouragements of Arts and Trades, the association founded in Milan by a group of entrepreneurs under the leadership of Enrico Mylius with the support of the Chamber of Commerce in the years from 1844 to 1848 with the aim of disseminating scientific and technical culture, organizing experimental laboratories, professional training courses, studies in applied science and collections of industrial models, and awarding special prizes, was of considerable importance. The Society obtained the services not only of a highly distinguished collaborator, but also the support of the most eloquent intelligence, scientific knowledge, and technical innovation as primary factors of growth (Lacaita 2002). In 1852 Cattaneo was engaged by the government of Canton Ticino to draw up plans to reform the higher education system in the canton, which led to the new high school at Lugano being opened, where Cattaneo was appointed professor of philosophy, and where the curriculum gave priority to the experimental sciences, offering a synthesis between the two cultures, humanistic and modern scientific (Fugazza 1989).
Following the unification of Italy, Cattaneo was critical of the structure of the state universities laid down by the Casati law of 1859, contrasting it with a system of higher education based on a synthesis of the characteristics of the various parts of Italy. He intervened in the debate on the reform of universities again in 1862, at the invitation of the new minister Carlo Matteucci (an illustrious physicist who had collaborated in the second series of Il Politecnico), arguing especially for the need to increase the universities’ autonomy, the range of specializations, and competition between different emphases and ideas. He was also an active contributor to the proposals for administrative reform, the new communal and provincial laws, and the organization of workers’ societies (outside of parliament, however, in which, despite being elected twice, he refused to set foot so as not to have to swear his allegiance to the Savoy monarchy and statutes).
Cattaneo also participated in railway construction projects both in Canton Ticino and in Lombardy-Venetia, contributing his own capital as well as his own ideas. In particular he took part in the project to construct the Milan-Venice line (arguing for the longest route between the various municipalities, rather than for the shortest line in geographical terms), and after Italy had been unified, in the project to develop the Gotthard railway, in order to advance the Lombard economy’s international connections. Cattaneo played a central role in these projects, handling relations between the entrepreneurs, technicians and political authorities involved, and drawing up the famous letter addressed to the citizens of Genoa (Moos 1992).
As a final point, it is worth noting how Cattaneo anticipated the trend in terms of research into the role played by culture in development processes, which is precisely the argument put forward by Amartya Sen on the inclusion of cultural capabilities among the list of substantial liberties (Sen 2004), as Alberto Quadrio Curzio and Claudia Rotondi have noted (Lacaita and Martinelli, 2021).
5 Inequalities and Reform-Oriented Social Research
We have described Cattaneo’s thought as a balanced form of economic liberalism, light years away from the “neoliberal fundamentalism” which sees the market as being spontaneously ordered. This is because he was well aware of the inequalities and conflicts produced by modern economic processes, and because his reformism implied an active role on the part of the state, not in the sense of bloated bureaucracy and benefits culture, rather as an enabling state, which treats the independent commitment of individual citizens as a priority, and seeks to put them in a position of being able to design their own destinies through exercise of their will power and intelligence.
Cattaneo’s thoughts on the subject should be interpreted against a backdrop of a culture in which welfare policies were only just starting, rather than being an established feature of western democracies as they are today, albeit in different forms (Martinelli 2007). However, in a world profoundly marked by inequalities, his thoughts are far from obsolete; on the contrary, they are still highly relevant today. In Cattaneo’s version of republican liberalism, his defence of economic freedom goes hand-in-hand with a sense of social responsibility and the need to implement an effective public policy programme in order to address social issues properly (Della Peruta 2001). Even in the works prior to 1848, in particular the article on public charity included in this anthology, which he wrote in 1839 (a detailed, critical review of Joseph Marie de Gérando’s De la bienfaisance publique), Cattaneo felt that a certain degree of inequality was inevitable in a scenario of economic growth. However, if economic growth cannot take place without a certain amount of inequality, it is imperative for a modern civilized society to create a system of public and private institutions of social security and social assistance that is able to guarantee the human dignity of those in need. The living conditions and morality of the poor are thus “the most serious and dangerous problem in social economics” (SE 1: 343–400). It is a problem which has a variety of causes, some of the most important of which include the lack of jobs, low wages, unemployment produced by technological innovation, commercial crises, imbalances in the ratio between population and means of subsistence, plus the absence of pension provision. He felt that the problem could not be left to the conscience of the individuals, but must be tackled by means of an effective programme based on what he called the “science of pauperism”. He argued that “public charity was not merely a question of piety, or a matter that the state could abandon to the arbitrary judgement of the do-gooders” (in this anthology: 237). He reviewed the multiple causes that lead to poverty and prolong it until it becomes destitution (“poverty which is no longer able to support itself with its own labour becomes destitution” (in this anthology: 241: and the influence exercised in the various social and cultural conditions operating in different countries, in terms of defining the condition of poverty. He also analysed critically the government measures taken to tackle pauperism, in particular the “poor tax” charged in England and the various forms of “legal charity” offered in different European countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain), such as shelter housing, hospices, home help, work houses and poor houses, and farming colonies. In general terms, Cattaneo is critical of public intervention when it hinders free economic activity, such as bans on import or export of agricultural produce, the introduction of minimum wages or price caps for certain commodities, while he is supportive where it serves to outlaw intolerable working conditions, such as limitations on working hours for underage children, or measures to address gambling and begging. His essay contains many ideas that were very original and ahead of his time, such as his implied criticism of the method adopted to measure poverty using a single indicator in all countries (a method still used today, which he considered to be statistically inappropriate), his censure of widely-held prejudices, such as the correlation between poverty and criminality rates, and his acknowledgement of the economic value created by female domestic employment (“a woman […] within the family creates inestimable value by the painstaking labours she performs” (in this anthology: 243).
As is typical of Cattaneo’s very practical science, he does not confine himself to criticizing the “various forms of public charity”, but promotes a whole range of government “public charity” measures based on liberalism tempered by state intervention: fiscal policy with taxes that do not weigh too heavily on the poorer classes, the spread of education, the removal of all restrictions in terms of domicile, industry and commerce, the division of estates and tillage of uncultivated land, protection against emigration, measures to discourage the negative effects of gambling, pubs and lotteries, and policies to encourage mutual aid societies, savings banks, insurance firms and pension policies. Indeed, Cattaneo wrote: “Factors that are undoubtedly useful are the education of the poor, the discouragement of all begging, the establishment of savings banks, the withholding of amounts from workers’ salaries in order to return them to them in the form of pensions, and other similar institutions that encourage private individuals to provide for themselves, by setting aside the means of an honourable retirement” (in this anthology: 240). Government measures must be supplemented, according to Cattaneo, by “private and voluntary charity”, but to ensure both were effective, it was necessary to avoid a situation whereby the condition of poor people on benefits might seem more appealing than that of the independent worker, and that clear distinction be made between the truly destitute and the merely imaginary ones. From as early as the lectures to the Lugano high school, Cattaneo developed a keen awareness of social inequalities and the discomfort suffered by the “fourth estate” who seemed to him to have acquired “clear awareness of themselves and their rights”. Nonetheless, this did not mean he approved of class warfare; on the contrary, he emphasized the need to increase the popular classes’ intelligence, to make them the ruling classes’ cultural equals (SF 3: 330–420).
Following the unification of Italy, although Cattaneo continued to express the utmost confidence in economic freedom as the driver for growth, and despite rejecting socialist and communist doctrines, this did not prevent him from stepping up his support for the workers’ mutual aid societies, for arbitration in employment disputes, and above all for universal suffrage. In his review of a series of articles by Ferdinand Lassalle he wrote as follows: “The date of 24 February 1848 was the first day of a new era. For the first time in France, a member of the working class was called to sit among the government; the improvement in workers’ conditions was included among the duties of society and state; and the right to influence public affairs to the same degree as others was granted to citizens aged twenty-three years […]. The only form by which the common law of the whole nation can be exercised over its destiny is through direct universal suffrage” (in this anthology: 258). Only by extending the vote to the “fourth estate” (the workers) and the “fifth estate” (the peasants) would these classes be able to have their voices heard in the representative institutions, and their conditions improved through reforms including the introduction of universal free education, tax relief (in particular the abolition of the detested grain tax, or tassa sul macinato), the elimination of the standing army, and the lengthy military service. Despite not being unaware of the dangers of popular electoral excesses, Cattaneo, as a convinced democrat, was fully persuaded that universal suffrage was an indispensable instrument for democratic participation and social justice.
Political representation on its own was not sufficient, however. It had to be accompanied by the development of independent workers’ societies providing mutual assistance based on savings, credit institutions to finance co-operative activities, and institutions for training and education. The suggestions he made to the Florentine fraternity of artisans on drafting the organizational statutes for the workers’ societies in 1864 (SPE 3: 53–56, 56–58) clearly show the difference between his plans and those of Mazzini compiled three years previously, as Nello Rosselli demonstrated in exemplary fashion (Rosselli 1927). Whereas for Mazzini the workers’ associations had to be an instrument of immediate political action, for Cattaneo they were to be extended to the peasant class as well, and were to be joined together in federal association while retaining their individual autonomy, with the objective primarily of improving workers’ conditions both economically and morally, including by creating a system of schools, libraries, banks and consumer co-operatives. Cattaneo’s reforming spirit also emerges clearly in his correspondence with Bertani regarding the formation of a radical leftist party, in which he emphasized the need for concrete reforms that were able to increase the scope of freedom, starting with the extension of the right to vote and tax reforms.
6 Psychology of Associated Minds
Cattaneo is interesting to read for students of another contemporary social science as well, namely social psychology, of which he may be considered a forerunner. This was the opinion, for example, of William Doise (1996), who described Cattaneo as one of the forefathers of social psychology, along with Baldwin, Piaget and Vigotsky, and also in the opinion of Fabrizio Butera (2021). Butera argues that a forerunner does not necessarily have to have a direct link to the scholars who cite them; rather, it is sufficient for there to be an analogy between the forerunner and their successors that enables the latter to locate the origin of contemporary thought, even if only in embryonic form. This is the case with Cattaneo, who effectively anticipates the fundamental idea on which modern social psychology is based, by stating that the thought of an individual “is no primitive or spontaneous phenomenon, rather it is a derivative and artificial production. It did not arise from the faculties of his mind only; it is the minds of the many who are thinking in him” (in this anthology: 114–124). All manifestations of human thought, from the development of the child’s personality to the achievements of science, are “not the work of the solitary faculties of one man, rather the associated faculties of several individuals and several nations […]. For science to develop, then, all the faculties of the intellect would still not suffice, if man were not by instinct of nature a sociable being” (translated 2019: 61). The similarity between these statements by Cattaneo and others like them with contemporary definitions such as the famous one by Gordon Allport in Lindzey and Aronson’s Handbook of Social Psychology (“Social psychology is the attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings”, Allport 1985 1: 5) are clear for all to see.
However, there is one way in which Cattaneo may be considered an even more direct forerunner of modern social psychology, that is, in his concept of the antithesis of associated minds, “that act with which one or more individuals, in seeking to deny an idea, come to perceive a new idea” (in this anthology: 117). which influenced Doise and Mugny’s research on socio-cognitive conflict, or rather, the conflict that emerges when there is a divergence between two points of view, the attempt to resolve which induces the parties involved to reconsider both the cause of the dissent (the cognitive aspect) and the relation between them. Butera takes this one step further, in converting the hypothesis formulated by Cattaneo in purely theoretical form into a verifiable hypothesis with the help of Doise and Mugny’s laboratory experiments (1981). The experimental method which Cattaneo so admired was not available at the time, but can be used today to validate his intuitions. And it is not merely similarity but direct influence in this case, because contemporary researchers into developmental social psychology have drawn inspiration from the knowledge of their forerunner’s thought.
7 Global/Local Tension in the Context of Global Modernity
Finally, Cattaneo’s acute awareness of the relationship between global and local is once again highly relevant to the sociological debate on the nature of contemporary global modernity (Martinelli 2005). What I mean by this is the complex relationship between the processes in force at world level (which led Cattaneo to take an interest in different peoples and cultures, identifying interdependences and reciprocal influences between them) and the multiple identities and requirements of local autonomy. In the contemporary debate on development and modernization ongoing in sociology, Cattaneo may be considered one of the precursors of the multiple modernities approach (Eisenstadt 2000). Indeed, he argued that it was necessary to leverage local excellences and specializations, while at the same time remaining open to the rest of the world, to learn from others’ experiences and compete on a level playing field, with no inferiority complexes, local protectionisms, or national prejudices. In the introduction to his Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia (EN S, III 1: 7–85) that was written for the sixth Congress of Italian Scientists, which took place in Milan in 1844, having been commissioned to do so by the city council, in his capacity as member of the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, Cattaneo proudly defended the originality of the Lombard model, which is based on the ability its population had always shown to respond creatively to the limitations of its natural environment, through the slow, tenacious work of building what he called an “artificial country” (a country made by human effort). This attitude allowed Lombards to exploit as effectively as possible the demand for agricultural and manufacturing products from other countries’ markets in the great turmoil represented by “the living Europe” of the Industrial Revolution.
The Lombard model of regional economics is based on its highly fertile countryside, which was hard won through centuries of investment and the work of many generations (the “immense deposit of labour”). It offers an example of what will and intelligence can produce, a wealth of experiences and skills handed down from generation to generation, which at the end of a cycle lasting thousands of years, has created a humanized, transformed landscape that owes its beauty as much as anything to the agriculture and works of civilization carried out there (as he wrote in a famous passage: “In this way, the lofty mountains and the depth of the lakes, the enclosed rivers and the uniform siliceous plain, the underground currents and the tepid winter waters, the intercepted north winds and the sea breezes, the abundant rains and the clear, sunny summers: each was like a part in some vast agricultural machinery. All that was missing was a people who, in completing the vow made by nature, would arrange the scattered elements into lasting order” (EN S, III 1: 12)). It is this people, transformed over the course of a thousand years of history, that was responsible for the region’s balanced development (both in the relations between the numerous cities and the surrounding countryside, and in the relationship between the distribution of the inhabitants and the potential in terms of agricultural and commercial development), for the technical experiments which enhanced the land’s productivity, and the existence of laws and legal institutes that did not hamper the development of free economic initiative, despite never losing sight of the real social necessities.
Cattaneo’s national pride, which meant he saw Lombardy as one of the most sophisticated societies in the world in the mid-nineteenth century, never prevented him from appreciating the most interesting aspects of non-Italian experience. Rather, he encouraged those in charge of public affairs to support the initiatives that had proved most productive elsewhere, adapting them to the specific conditions of Lombardy itself. In Cattaneo there is no fear of the new or rejection of what is foreign, merely a realistic acknowledgement of the need to learn from others, which goes alongside his desire for the nation to celebrate its own areas of excellence, in order to contribute to the general progress of European society. For Cattaneo Lombardy had to develop at the same rate as the most advanced regions of Europe, by participating in the great economic and social transformations in progress, based on a combination of freedom and willpower. But such an attitude was possible only if genuine and complete freedom and autonomy exist, for freedom is the foundation of all possible economic and civil development. It is only when they are free that peoples can truly be what they want to be, and only free peoples are able to establish mutually profitable relations with each other.
Cattaneo’s acute sensitivity to global/local tensions, and his exhortation to Lombardy to develop its areas of local excellence while at the same time opening itself up to the world, are a strong argument in favour of a process that today has become a twofold need: on the one hand, to develop political integration for Europe, to be able to govern the increasing economic interdependence more effectively (Martinelli and Cavalli 2021), and on the other, to safeguard local freedoms and local economies, from an open, pluralistic perspective. In this scenario, “glocal” cities have a role of primary importance: namely cities that are able to both to maximize the outstanding skills of their populations and territories, adding fresh resources to strong and in many cases ancient bodies, and becoming increasingly enmeshed in global relations of interdependence and interconnection, in economic, scientific, technical, social and cultural fields. In this scenario, Cattaneo’s attitude of openness to the world, to share the nation’s own areas of excellence while at the same time learning from the best of the other nations, is especially timely. The conditions that are most favourable to glocal development must be created, by investing in education and research, in material and symbolic infrastructures, and in cohesion policies in multi-ethnic societies, removing the obstacles to interaction between networks and territories, and promoting freedom for citizens to think, act, move, connect with each other, live in the global world, and think globally while acting locally.
We have, therefore, returned to the point from which we started, the indispensable need for freedom in individuals and peoples, on which Cattaneo’s thought is based. His conception of modernity is that of an open world, in which sovereign peoples and independent citizens can implement political and intellectual federalism in a common, shared path towards progress. This is also the basis of the radically modern project to construct the European Union, in which modernity is conceived as a period of time geared towards a future better than either the present or past (Habermas 1985), a project which was inspired by Cattaneo among many others.
For all these reasons, then, it is worth reading and indeed rereading Cattaneo today.