Collection of different essays written English, Italian and Spanish

1. CONTENUTI
• Introduzione / presentazione
• Possibile struttura - versione lingua italiana.
• A possible structure - english language version.
• An analysis of The Capital’s first nine chapters.
• Commonwealth and individuals.
• A thin thread from Englishness to identity.
• Poems and novels: reality’s mirrors.
• The economic structure and alternative ways of living
• A grammatical analysis of Samuel Johnson’s the Preface to
first English Dictionary
• Analisi de Runa Yupay di José Maria Arguedas
• Analisi de El Matadero di Esteban Echeverria con
introduzione al secolo XVIII in Latino America.
• Bibliografia

2. Nelle seguente pagine il lettore troverà diversi elaborati scritti,
prevalentemente, in lingua inglese ma anche in italiano ed in spagnolo
che ri
fl
ettono gli idiomi studiati del sottoscritto. Testi scritti tra il
Febbraio 2022 ed Agosto 2022. Effettivamente, la lettura sarebbe di
maggior giovamento se la conoscenza delle tre lingue fosse acquisita
anche da chi sfoglia questo fascicolo di saggi anche se la scelta di
utilizzare le tre lingue è dovuta al raggio di azione che questa raccolta
si auspica di avere. Infatti, l’utilizzo della lingua inglese è dovuto al fatto
che personalmente sono stato testimone dell’in
fl
uenza anglofona in
varie nazioni del mondo: mi è parso come se la lingua inglese fosse
diventata la lingua comune a tutti favorendo la comunicazione anche
tra culture tra di esse lontanissime. Dopo un approfondimento, è
emersa la storia dell’Inghilterra e del Regno Unito con la loro epoca di
esplorazioni e colonizzazioni che ha dato una forma precisa alla
connotazione degli Stati Nazioni. L’inglese è la lingua parlata
dall’economia, qualsiasi Azienda che voglia puntare ad espandere il
proprio mercato deve necessariamente mirare a zone altre con rispetto
dei con
fi
ni nazionali; cosi, allo stesso tempo, l’inglese è la lingua della
scienza per cui non esisterà scienziato o divulgatore che non conosca la
lingua per poterla utilizzare nelle sue esposizioni. Insomma, sempre dal
mio punto di vista, oggigiorno, l’inglese è paragonabile alla lingua latina
durante l’esistenza l’impero romano: coloro che ne conoscevano i
meccanismi ed i modi di utilizzo godevano di migliori condizioni di vita
perché capaci di capire ed intendere la realtà intorno a loro.
Ciononostante l’obiettivo primario di questa raccolta è mettere in
evidenza, innanzitutto, la ricerca e l’analisi di aspetti ritenuti centrali
per la descrizione della contemporaneità; un altro obiettivo è quello di
mostrare capacità linguistiche legate alla scrittura; ed un ultimo è
sicuramente quello di creare un lavoro coeso nelle sue differenti parti.
Questa raccolta è indirizzata a coloro che considerano la
conoscenza della lingua parlata e scritta come un grande vantaggio da
possedere per poter affrontare le grandi s
fi
de che la contemporaneità

3. lavorativa mette difronte a ciascun lavoratore, nonostante la sua
natura eterea e meta
fi
sica. Il linguaggio è uno degli aspetti centrali della
nostra epoca ed i suoi utilizzi posso variare a seconda del contesto in cui
si impiega. Se prendessimo ad esempio, un’azienda, indipendentemente
della sua grandezza, il modo per utilizzare il linguaggio sarebbe quello
di fornire una forma al contenuto, delineandone i contorni con le parole
che costituirebbero la forma di comunicazione attraverso la quale
collaboratori e clienti genererebbero una certa idea che deve,
assolutamente, essere supportata dal lavoro in tutte le su sfaccettature.
Inoltre, il linguaggio è il mezzo attraverso il quale si educa; è utilizzato
nelle scuole per impartire nozioni intelligibili e per favorire la
cooperazione tra le persone di una società. Per citare un famosissimo
fi
losofo tedesco, il linguaggio è il contenuto del pensiero: ed il pensiero
può tendere alla massima espressione dello stesso; ma forma della
conoscenza dell’uomo. Allo stesso tempo, però, è anche il corpo
principale della stesura di una e-mail, oppure sono quelle brevi linee di
auguri su un qualsiasi biglietto.
All’interno di questa raccolta, è ovviamente il linguaggio scritto il
protagonista. In un certo senso, è l’insieme di parole che costituiscono il
sintagma ad avere spazio tra i fogli bianchi. Esse infatti raccontano,
narrano di eventi, di nozioni, giudizi ed osservazioni che riguardano,
prima di tutto, un’analisi dei temi centrali della nostra
contemporaneità: uno fra tutti l’economia. Infatti, partendo dalla
lettura dei primi due volumi del Capitale di Karl Marx ed una
successiva analisi dei primi nove capitoli dell’opera ho cercato
d’individuare gli elementi costituenti e fondamentali con i quali ognuno
di noi ha a che fare nel quotidiano. Dal mio personale punto di vista
quest’ investigazione è stata necessaria per poter
fi
ssare le nozioni
principali di cui l’economia, osservata dal punto di vista del lavoratore,
si compone per poterne costruire una struttura teorica ideale composta
da cosiddetti blocchi sui i quali il concetto di economia poggia. In questo
caso il linguaggio, così come l’aiuto del dizionario, è stato fondamentale

4. per la comprensione di un opera cosi dettagliata come quella
dell’economista tedesco.
Sicuramente un’altra
fi
gura centrale all’interno dell’elaborato che
prospera sotto l’utilizzo di una determinata lingua è la nozione di
economia che come detto poc’anzi è il fulcro delle attività diarie dei
cittadini occidentali per cui l’analisi è partita da un libro preciso e si è
diretta verso la conoscenza del contesto in cui il libro è stato scritto.
Infatti, la sua stesura rappresenta il clima culturale di un’intera parte
dell’Europa, quella nordica, in cui l’analisi venne portata a termine; per
ciò altri elaborati che riguardano la costituzione del Commonwealth e
dello Stato moderno si sono rese necessarie per poter supportare
l’investigazione cosi come la messa in evidenza della nascita
dell’identità, sia culturale che individuale che per certi aspetti possono
essere riunite in un unica entità, prodotto della crescita esponenziale
dovuta all’industrialismo trasformatasi in una vera e propria maniera
di esistenza contemporanea. Successivamente, vi si troveranno saggi
che adottano una prospettiva diversa di quella utilizzata nei primi
elaborati: infatti se quest’ultima prendere il punto d’osservazione
europeo, ben due testi si focalizzano su un’altra parte del mondo, il sud
America. De
fi
nito come un laboratorio di pensiero da parte di
professoresse e professori dell’ Università Statale di Milano, la
conoscenza dei processi storici, culturali e sociali veri
fi
catisi nel
continente portano come evidenze e giusti
fi
cazioni le ragioni per le
quali si pensi in tal modo di quella enorme zona geogra
fi
ca. Basti
pensare che la scoperta dell’America è equiparabile alla scoperta di
alieni nell’universo: ovviamente la seconda condizione non si è ancora
veri
fi
cata ma il trauma cognitivo potrebbe essere identico. La conquista
e la colonizzazione sono processi comuni veri
fi
catisi nella storia
dell’umanità e purtroppo ancora possibili. Il punto d’osservazione
distaccato, quasi oggettivo, sulle vicissitudini europee, nostrane direi, è
necessario in quanto permette un allentamento che giova
l’osservazione e l’esecuzione che, appunto, l’America ispanica ci offre.

5. Per concludere. Nonostante ammetta che questi testi non siano
stati pensati con l’obiettivo di produrre un insieme coeso di idee, questa
raccolta si fonda sulla ricerca e l’analisi delle origini delle nostra
modernità localizzabili dopo la rivoluzione francese del 1789. La caduta
dell’assolutismo monarchico e la presa di potere da parte di una nuova
classe sociale emergente, quale la borghesia, è da identi
fi
carsi come
l’origine della nostra più immediata contemporaneità.
Mattia Locatelli.

6. Possibile struttura - versione in lingua
italiana
Di seguito viene proposta una possibile struttura teorica per
l’esposizione di una determinata nozione che in questo caso è
l’economia. Leggendo libri quali la scienza della logica, il capitale e la
struttura assente, mi si è pre
fi
gurata l’idea di struttura che
personalmente ho interpretato come la costruzione, parte per parte,
degli elementi costitutivi di un certo argomento.
Vengono proposti gli elementi costitutivi dell’economia che
maggiormente in
fl
uenzano la quotidianità dei cittadini: produzione e
consumo, bene o servizio, valore, lavoro e soldi.

7. Oggigiorno una delle parole più pronunciate dai mezzi di
comunicazione è sicuramente economia. Il dizionario
Zanichelli, edizione 2016, sotto quella voce pone questa
descrizione: ‘tendenza dell’uomo a realizzare il massimo
risultato con i mezzi dati, o un dato risultato con il minimo
dei mezzi’; ma anche: ‘complesso delle attività e dei
rapporti fra uomini connessi alla produzione, distribuzione e
consumo dei beni e servizi’. Ne descrive, inoltre, le qualità
a seconda della tipologia assunta in base alla
caratteristica che maggiormente la contraddistingue: sarà un
economia mista se l’operato dell’ apparato pubblico si
intreccia con l’interesse del privato; così come sarà nuova
se improntata sullo sviluppo tecnologico piuttosto che
sull’utilizzo di mezzi di produzione obsoleti; oppure sarà
verde se, appunto, la teoria si focalizza soprattutto attorno
al risparmio energetico ed il rispetto dell’ambiente
circostante. Queste alcune delle definizione che propone lo
Zanichelli che confrontiamo con un’altra autorità
linguistica, quale l’English Oxford Dictionary, di modo da
avere due punti d’osservazione diversi, seppur appartenenti
alla cultura occidentale.
Questa la descrizione della voce economy nel OED: ‘The state
of a country or region in terms of production or consumption
of goods and services and the supply of money’. Entrambe,
poi, forniscono l’etimologia della parola: economia proviene
dal greco oikonomia, composta da oikono, ossia casa, e
nemein, gestione, che successivamente nel XV secolo si
trasformerà nel francese economie per approdare anche alle
lingua anglofona, per effetto della diglossia.
Indipendentemente dall’origine etimologica della parola
che se analizzata ci mostra come l’idea di unità, comunità e
società quindi, si sia ampliata dalla gestione della
famiglia dell’antica Grecia sino all’amministrazione-governo
dello Stato Nazione moderno, porremo la nostra attenzione,
inizialmente, sulle parole in comune tra le due definizione
forniteci dalle due autorità tra cui troviamo produzione e

8. consumo. Esse sono classificabili, infatti, come le due più
rilevanti attività o azioni di cui l’economia stessa è
costituita, che definiremo come le macro-operazioni
necessarie affinché l’apparato economico possa esistere, a
cui i cittadini di ogni Stato Nazione, che costituzionalmente
si fonda sul lavoro, si dedicano maggiormente. É ovvio che le
operazioni debbono essere portate a termine da persone,
conseguentemente, potremmo aggiungere un terzo elemento alla
composizione del blocco economia: l’uomo di cui lo Zanichelli
già ci aveva dato un indizio e cioè che è ‘tendenza dell’uomo
a realizzare il massimo con i mezzi dati’.
Abbiamo ora, l’agente, l’uomo, e le operazioni:
produzione e consumo ma per comporre in modo più articolato
il concetto servono sicuramente altri elementi che
successivamente verranno menzionati ma rimaniamo per il
momento su quello che conosciamo. L’azione imperatrice
dell’economia è la produzione cui segue quella del consumo in
una simbiosi necessaria per la chiusura di un ipotetico ciclo
della materia che non avviene (vedasi le oasi di spazzatura
negli oceani), ma produzione è prendere un qualcosa per
trasformalo, attraverso il lavoro (attenzione! altro elemento
fondamentale di cui se ne darà una spiegazione
successivamente), in qualcosa di diverso rispetto alla forma,
alla dimensione, magari al colore, posseduti prima di essere
sottomesso alla processo di lavorazione; quindi estrarremo
rame, ad esempio, lo estrarremmo dalla vene della terra,
dalle miniere (rimandiamo ad uno stimatissimo scrittore
Uruguaiano, Eduardo Galeano che scrisse Las venas abiertas de
America Latina in cui denunciò i furti di materie prime dal
continente) e poi attraverso l’utilizzo di una potentissima
fonte di calore, lo fonderemo in una forma di forchetta di
modo da avere un utensile utile per una necessità quotidiana;
oppure faremo dei fili elettrici conduttori; o delle bobine.
Attraverso un cambio di stato materiale ciò che prima era
rame ora è una comodità. Questo vale soprattuto a livello
industriale dove il settore siderurgico, il settore primario

9. di ogni economia occidentale, immette nei sui forni quantità
enormi di materie prime per trasformale in oggetti.
Come detto in precedenza l’esistenza della produzione di beni
obbligatoriamente chiama in causa il consumo di suddetti
beni, quindi arriviamo al consumo. L’essere umano consuma per
le necessità vitali infatti tra queste vi sono le primarie
ossia bisogni imprescindibili per il sostentamento,
soprattutto del corpo, come cibo, acqua, riparo e
riscaldamento, vestiario sono le necessità primordiali quelle
che se anche dovesse mancare una, la vita potrebbe essere
messa in serio pericolo. Poi, esistono anche le necessità
cosiddette secondaria: queste sono nate in seguito allo
sviluppo culturale e sociale dell’uomo e all’avanzamento
delle civilizzazione in cui l’uomo divenne sempre più
appendice di un apparato tecnico-meccanico (l’economia)
generandogli nuovi bisogni, più propriamente psichici, come
lo svago, l’attività fisica, l’identità, l’individualismo, la
moda, la tecnologia e molti altri ancora. Per cui vediamo che
nel consumo di beni si uniscono i primari ed i secondari che
possono assumere la forma di servizi, ossia un bene
intangibile, un’esperienza che si trasforma poi in ricordo da
conservare. Tra i consumatori è doveroso ricordare, oltre
agli esseri umani, anche alcune specie di animale vengono
utilizzate, ovviamente, per produrne altre: l’essere umano
mai ha pensato di produrre cibo per un animale specifico che
non lo aiutasse nell’infausto compito della produzione
sennonché, al contrario, contribuisse al processo attraverso
il consumo, ed è il caso dei bovini alimentati con
particolari prodotti per poi essere macellati e serviti ai
supermercati ed è anche il caso dei cani, diventati parte
integrante delle famiglie, forse un pò cinicamente,
sodisfando un certo tipo di necessità affettive, forse.
Ora l’agente: l’essere umano. Chiaramente queste sono
operazione svolte da una mente razionale che sfrutta le sue
capacità fisiche, motorie ed intellettuali per portare a
termi un’operazione ben precisa che abbiamo definito come
trasformazione nel caso della produzione ma anche di scelta

10. come nel caso del consumo. Allo stesso tempo, però, lo stesso
agente potrebbe anche svolgere azione completamente diverse,
diametralmente opposte, da quelle che mette in atto da ormai
due secoli e molto più. Infatti potrebbe, per esempio,
cacciare animali ed avi per nutrirsi cosi come pescare nel
mare sempre con la stessa finalità oppure raccoglie frutti,
dono della Natura, Invece no, oggigiorno l’essere umano si
sveglia e si dirige in un preciso luogo prestabilito per,
appunto, la produzione ma non produrrà mai da solo, non
trasformerà mai da solo le materie prime in beni. No, egli o
ella parteciperanno, con azioni intellettuali o manuali, ad
un macro-sistema volto alla produzione nazionale, saranno
parte di una sovra-struttura impostagli da un’autorità
superiore: lo Stato Nazione in cambio di un avanzamento
culturale che si dirama in vari ambiti accomunabili nella
preservazione di una vita dignitosa. Alieneranno per lo meno
un terzo della loro vita nella generazione di valore per poi
terminare e riprendere l’altra operazione necessaria alla
sussistenza dell’economia nazionale: il consumo. Ecco, due
esempi antitetici sono stati evidenziati per dare rilievo
alla condizione dell’essere umano nella contemporaneità
confrontandolo con lo stesso essere umano prima che il
processo civilizzatore iniziasse a cambiarlo. Con ciò non si
vuole assolutamente alludere a nessun ritorno alle origini,
l’esempio è stato proposto in chiave di comparazione.
Una descrizione dei primi tre elementi, due azioni ed una
entità, è stata avanzata per provare a comporre la struttura
dell’economia, vivisezionandola nelle sue parti più
significative. Ora è il momento di proseguire con l’aggiunta
di un altro elemento. Questo elemento accomuna le due
operazioni sopra citate, le unisce e per utilizzare una
metafora motoristica potrebbe essere l’olio del motore che
fluidifica il movimento dei pistoni dello stesso. Questa
azione è lo scambio che avviene sempre tra esseri razionali
siccome mai si è registrato il fatto che due animali si
fossero scambiati qualcosa per necessità. Ma è infatti propio

11. dalla necessità, dalla mancanza, che nasce l’esigenza dello
scambio. Sarebbe impensabile che ogni essere umano
provvedesse solitariamente al soddisfacimento di tutti i suoi
bisogni, di conseguenza la pratica dello scambio, cui
antenato fu il baratto, è stata utilizzata sin dalla Antica
Grecia (la dracma fu la moneta dei greci) cosi come
all’interno dell’impero romano vennero utilizzati i metalli
(Asses or sestertii) come simbolo di scambio. Modernamente,
lo scambio invece rappresenta quel momento di unione tra
produttore e consumatore che a differenza del baratto
succede, oggi, attraverso l’utilizzo dei soldi (attenzione!
altro elemento, assieme al lavoro, che è parte fondamentale
dell’economia e che successivamente verrà analizzato). Ciò
che è fondamentale segnalare nella pratica dello scambio è un
entità non visibile ad occhio nudo, una caratteristica
intangibile propria di ogni bene scambiato: infatti, due
comodità che ci si scambia mai saranno uguali nella quantità
che nella qualità perché altrimenti lo scambio non porterebbe
a nessun giovamento per entrambe le parti in quanto l’oggetto
donato lo ricevo in cambio di nuovo, per cui lo scambio ha
prodotto effetto nullo. Ci si scambia invece due comodità
qualitativamente e quantitativamente anche molto differenti
tra di loro: pensiamo, effettivamente, all’oggi quanto per,
ad esempio, sei chili di legno necessari per accendere il
focolare domestico per scaldare la casa in montagna, li
scambiamo per una banconota che non pesa nemmeno un grammo ed
è carta (alla simbologia delle banconote sarà dato il suo
spazio). Ma meglio ancora intenderemmo, se lo scambio
avvenisse tra tre chili di alluminio e cinquanta di legno.
Poniamo che è qualcosa che accade anche oggigiorno: due
lavoratori, un falegname e un carpentiere, amici di lunga
data, anziché utilizzare il denaro como mezzo di scambio, si
scambiano direttamente tre chili di allumini per cinquanta di
legno. Che cosa accomuna due oggetti di peso e forma diversi?
Il loro valore.
L’unione che soggiace la differenza qualitativa e
quantitativa di due beni è il valore.

12. Un ulteriore elemento si aggiunge al mosaico
dell’economia che sommato ai precedenti menzionati ci pone
difronte agli elementi costitutivi quali tre azioni
(produzione, consumo e scambio), un agente e un’entità che
chiameremo metafisica (il valore). Ora per ben intendere uno
degli elementi costitutivi dell’economia ci rifaremo ad
un’analisi svolta da un conosciutissimo economista, e non
solo, che di fornisce una spiegazione chiara del perché gli
oggetti scambiabili, le comodità, a differenza di altri
oggetti presenti in natura che non possiedono le
caratteristiche per essere ritenuti commerciabili, sono da
considerarsi tali ossia oggetti di commercio. Ebbene questi
beni, queste comodità vengono cosi chiamate perché hanno due
caratteristiche fondamentali: valore nella loro forma e
valore nello scambio. In altre parole: il primo tipo di
valore è associato all’utilità, all’uso, che un certo oggetto
può avere in un determinato momento storico, pensiamo per
esempio a quanti oggetti prima avevano un valore nella loro
forma (floppy disks, compact disc, VHS, etc..) ma attraverso
lo sviluppo tecnologico sono stati rimpiazzati da altri
oggetti (hardware esterni da 1tb, applicazioni musicali per
il cellulare, librerie di film multimediali) cosi come
tantissimi altri oggetti che in un momento possedettero
valore d’uso, e quindi anche di scambio, lo persero per
diventare quel tipo di oggetto inammissibile nel mercato
commerciale se non per collezionisti perché ormai inutile.
Per quanto riguarda, invece, il valore di scambio si intende
che un oggetto possiede più valore, cioè il valore di scambio
può essere ridotto a semplicemente valore, in relazione alla
sua presenza sul pianeta terra per cui un elemento raro,
difficile da trovare, avrà più valore di un oggetto comune.
Questo è quello che si intende per valore di scambio, o
semplicemente valore: la sua reperibilità è minore, quasi
insistente allora avremo un oggetto di gran valore come, ad
esempio, l’oro, il diamante, il petrolio, chissà tra qualche
decennio sarà l’acqua che per il momento appartiene al polo

13. opposto di questa scala di valori. Di acqua ne sono pieni gli
oceani, i fiumi e i laghi e addirittura cade dal cielo; non
come i metalli per cui serve uno specifico lavoro (!) per
essere estratto: non cade dalle nubi.
Un piccola digressione sulla simbologia dell’oro è dovuta in
quanto evidenzia una caratteristica dell’essere umano: se
come abbiamo appena detto per l’occidente intero l’oro ha
valore altissimo perché introvabile, cosi come altri metalli,
la stessa cosa non vale per altre culture che invece
considerano l’oro como dono dell’astro solare considerato
come un Dio e stiamo parlando della culture precolombiane, in
particolare quella Inca. In comune c’è sempre l’essere umano.
Arcinoti, nelle cronache delle conquista, sono gli episodi in
cui è l’oro ad essere conteso tra i conquistatori ed le
popolazioni autoctone; cosi come Cristoforo Colombo riferirà
di quelle terre come territori pieni di oro. Insomma, la
simbologia che adottano gli elementi naturali, il significato
che l’essere umano conferisce ad un’entità in particolare è
una caratteristica propriamente mortale.
Quindi si era rimasti al confronto tra, anzitutto, oggetti
con valore e oggetti privi di esso; successivamente alle due
forme di valore attribuite ai beni: il valore d’uso ed il
valore di scambio. Più il bene è introvabile, più ha valore:
oro. Più è accessibile, meno: acqua. Altro elemento viene
quindi ad unirsi con gli altri sopracitati: la comodità, bene
o servizio, che sodisfa una necessità.
Produzione, consumo, agente, comodità e valore sono
elementi dell’economia, questa enorme sovrastruttura che
pende sulle teste di noi contemporanei. In tutto ciò, noi, i
contemporanei in età adulta, partecipiamo attraverso lo
svolgimento di attività intellettuali e manuali come
menzionato precedentemente con l’esempio dell’uomo primitivo
come evidenza di un certo agire rispetto ad un altro che,
nella contemporaneità, ricade sotto il nome di alienazione
rispetto piuttosto ad un artigiano premoderno che del suo
stesso lavoro, della trasformazione di un qualcosa in altro,

14. guadagnava il suo pane quotidiano mentre, oggi, ogni
partecipante s’incarica di una piccola parte, una semplice
unità che costituisce il blocco intero del lavoro: la
produzione.
Breve ricapitolazione di quanto scritto fin ora: il nostro
proposito è quello di sviscerare il concetto di economia, per
lo meno, nei suoi elementi più rilevanti; quegli elementi che
fanno parte della vita di tutte le persone comuni, coloro che
partecipano attivamente alla creazione della della ricchezza
nazionale attraverso il lavoro alienato. La struttura
economica, vista come la colonna vertebrale dello Stato
Nazione nel suo dialogo tra pubblico e privato ma anche
nell’interesse dello stesso, è oggigiorno imprescindibile
condizione dell’esistenza dell’ essere umano occidentale ma
anche di quelle culture che fino a qualche decennio fa erano
disinteressate, caso mai perché non equipaggiate
tecnologicamente e anche culturalmente, alla produzione di
beni e comodità come, invece, lo sono proprio in questo
momento e che, nella loro crescita economica, rappresentano
una minaccia per l’occidente, ormai in declino. Queste
Nazioni, numericamente rappresentanti, non solo della
maggioranza della popolazione mondiale, anche della
stragrande maggioranza del continente asiatico, sono Cina ed
India.
La struttura economica è ormai presente in molte parte del
globo terrestre.
Per tornare alla nostra analisi è necessario riprendere
dall’ultimo concetto: il valore. Si era detto che gli oggetti
per essere considerati comodità devono possedere un valore
d’uso e un valore di scambio o semplicemente valore. É
doveroso esaminare il concetto di valore siccome, come detto
in precedenza, ciò di cui stiamo parlando è un entità
metafisica, non è tangibile come la foglia di un albero o la
pietra di una montagna, è un qualcosa pensato e creato per
favorire una migliore cooperazione tra esseri umani in
termini anche di pacifica convivenza. L’etimologia della

15. parola ci riporta ovviamente al latino da cui nasce, valere,
per conservare la sua struttura in italiano, diventare valor
in spagnolo e valoir; per le lingue germaniche abbiamo
l’inglese value proveniente dall’Antico Francese mentre per
il tedesco wertsein, or to be worth. L’analisi lessicografica
è utile in quanto ci riporta all’epoca in cui questa parola
venne utilizzata e dal fatto che, nonostante la caduta
dell’impero romano, essa sia stata mantenuta nell’utilizzo in
congiunzione alla pratica dello scambio e del commercio.
Abbiamo detto che due diverse comodità possono essere
scambiate in quanto il valore è uguale creando, cosi, una
equivalenza. Il valore, però, è conferito alla comodità
attraverso uno specifico processo: il lavoro. Per riprendere
l’oro e l’acqua como comodità che si posizionano ai due
estremi della scala dei valori espliciteremo il perché di
tale locazione e, per far ciò, avremo bisogno proprio del
termine lavoro che da valore agli oggetti perché per trovare
l’oro è già di per se un impresa straordinaria testimoniata
da un’infinità di documenti, figuriamoci per estrarlo o
addirittura setacciarlo, pietrúzza per pietrúzza, avremo
bisogno di un nutrito gruppo di persone disposte ad eseguire
quest’operazione per tempo decisamente consistente, ma non
solo avremo necessità di alimentare, di remunerare e magari
vestire questo gruppo di persone; per non parlare, della
logistica perché difficilmente troveremo persone proprio nel
luogo in cui pensiamo di trovare l’oro. Questo è ovviamente
un esempio banale e superficiale ma per l’investigazione
portata avanti in questo elaborato conserva la natura dello
stesso: esempi semplici ma efficaci per la comprensione. Di
conseguenza, mettiamoci nei panni dell’azienda che davvero ha
intenzione di trovare oro e prepara tutti gli strumenti per
portare a termine il lavoro; sarà in termini contemporanei un
grossissimo investimento che potrebbe non essere ripagato con
il guadagno per tutta una serie di fattori, primo fra tutti
l’incertezza della presenza. Mettiamo il caso, pero, che
l’oro viene trovato. Quanto lavoro è stato necessario per
trovarlo e, anche se non è stato ancora spiegato, anche gli

16. strumenti utilizzati sono da considerarsi como lavoro in
quanto, a loro volta, rappresentanti di valore. Quindi
sommando tutto il lavoro esercitato per la ricerca ed
estrazione dell’oro avremo che questo oggetto naturale ora
possiede un valore uguale al lavoro impiegato per trovarlo.
Ma non solo i metalli possono avere un valore: tutti gli
oggetti in natura utilizzabili per altri fini sono
qualificabili come valore. Prendiamo il legno. Il legno viene
impiegato in diverse settori dell’edilizia e
dell’utensileria, è un materiale richiesto per la sua
robustezza, facilità di modifica della forma, pregevolezza
etc… ed in quanto materiale di scambio possiede un valore. Il
valore sarà diverso dal valore posseduto dall’oro nonostante
sia due elementi naturali presenti sulla superficie terreste
con l’unica differenza che il legno per l’essere umano è di
più facile accessibilità, gli alberi, oltre ad essere
l’elemento naturale necessario per la generazione dell’aria,
visibili ovunque; per ciò la stessa azienda che prima si era
proposta di cercare l’oro ma con scarsissimi risultati, ora
si butta in un nuovo commercio attribuendo un valore al legno
che conseguirà attraverso un lavoro meno dispendioso
rispetto a quello impiegato per la ricerca dell’oro ed è per
questa stessa ragione che il legno avrà meno valore del
metallo. Ora, per dirigerci nel regno dell’assurdo, ma non
per molto, proviamo ad immaginarci l’inverso: l’oro che
fiorisce dalla terra, magari per qualche effetto alchimico
mentre il legno prolifera nelle viscere più impervie della
crosta terrestre. Magari vedremmo case comuni con ornamenti
d’oro ed il legno come accessorio dell’alta borghesia o
tesoro di famiglia di famiglie aristocratiche.
Da questa investigazione sul valore degli oggetti naturali
emerge che è il lavoro a dare valore ad essi. L’azione
dell’essere umano che, sempre quel notissimo economista
politico tedesco ottocentesco ha definito come lavoro umano
astratto, è stato trasferito all’oggetto, che nel frattempo è
diventato comodità, assumendo un valore preciso datogli dal
lavoro necessario per produrlo.

17. Ecco un altro elemento, tra i più fondamentali, che si
aggiunge alla nostra lista di elementi costitutivi
dell’economia; quello forse cardine in quanto azione,
esecuzione, moto, cambio di stato che sta alle fondamenta di
questa nostra costruzione. Estraendolo dalla nostra
contemporaneità, in cui vige la legge della divisione del
lavoro su cui si fonda anche la società occidentale, Marx
definì il lavoro come il metabolismo necessario tra l’essere
umano e la natura, quasi come se l’uomo avesse la necessità
esistenziale di modificare il paesaggio intorno a sé,
cambiandolo a sua immagine e somiglianza e per sue necessità
vitali. La parola lavoro appare nell’articolo uno della
Costituzione Italiana su cui, di nuovo, si fonda; il lavoro è
definito come azione che nobiltà l’uomo trascinandolo via
dalla spirale dei vizi e dandogli orgoglio e virtù nel breve
arco della sua esistenza. Al giorno d’oggi il lavoro
rappresenta il fulcro di ogni individuo adulto che attraverso
il compimento in specifiche azioni contribuisce
all’avanzamento civile della sua società, della sua nazione,
e all’aumento della ricchezza comune. Oggi il lavoro è
distribuito ma l’obiettivo comune è sempre quello di
preservare, se non aumentare, il commonwealth.
Essere umano, produzione, consumo e scambio, comodità,
valore e lavoro. Ed ora soldi. Una delle pratiche più comuni
della quotidianità di tutti gli occidentali è quella dello
scambio che si era definito l’unione tra la produzione ed il
consumo. Quando esplicitato il concetto di valore si è detto
che quest’ultimo soggiace l’equivalenza creatasi dallo
scambio di due oggetti diversi. Nell’antichità, si passò da
un’economia del baratto ad utilizzare i metalli come forma di
scambio comune anziché necessariamente utilizzare una sorta
di contropartita, che non fosse metallo, in quanto scomoda
nel maneggio e nel trasporto. I metalli possiedono la
caratteristica, unica nel suo genere, di essere materiali
divisibili e unibili attraverso l’utilizzo di una fonte di

18. calore per questo ragione venne applicato lo stampo dello
stato ed utilizzati come moneta comune per successivamente
passare all’utilizzo della carta-moneta che simboleggiava un
altro materiale: l’oro. Ancora questo metallo per la sua
irreperibilità divenne la il valore universale di tutte le
altre comodità. Si arrivò ad un certo punto nella Storia, a
decidere di usare un comune denominatore di valore e la carta
stampa, che ancora oggi utilizziamo ma per chissà quant’altro
tempo, non è che il simbolo dell’oro posseduto da una certa
Nazione.
Questa appena terminatasi è stata un’analisi, sommaria
comunque, di alcuni elementi ritenuti rilevanti nella
descrizione del fenomeno dell’economia. Sono quei blocchi
senza i quali la stessa non potrebbe esistere e che formano
la stessa. L’economia è fulcro della vita nazionale di tutti
i cittadini, consapevolmente o inconsapevolmente, tutti vi
partecipano.

19. A possible structure - english language
version
Di seguito viene proposta una possibile struttura teorica per
l’esposizione di una determinata nozione che in questo caso è
l’economia. Leggendo libri quali la scienza della logica, il capitale e la
struttura assente, mi si è pre
fi
gurata l’idea di struttura che
personalmente ho interpretato come la costruzione, parte per parte,
degli elementi costitutivi di un certo argomento.
Vengono proposti gli elementi costitutivi dell’economia che
maggiormente in
fl
uenzano la quotidianità dei cittadini: produzione e
consumo, bene o servizio, valore, lavoro e soldi.
Il testo è stato scritto in lingua inglese, o meglio, è una traduzione del
precedente testo in italiano.

20. The present investigation’s main aim is that of building
a simple structure. Generally, any structure supports;
whether it be material such as Church or be it the
structure of a language which is more ethereal. A
structure is made of thin parts of which their
togetherness generates an object.
Because of the structure, an object or an entity can
stands on the its feet: even any of us carries out many
activities because our body is a structure. In this very
case the structure will try to sustain the concept of
economy highlighting its essential constitutional
elements without which economy itself would not exist;
therefore production and consumption, the worker,
commodity, value, labour and money will be briefly
explained with simple examples. The investigation starts
from a lexicographic perspective.
Nowadays, one of mass media’s most pronounced words it’s,
without the shadow of doubt, economy. The Italian
dictionary, Zanichelli 2016’s edition, gives this
description of the word: ‘man’s tendency to realise the
utmost result with given means, or a given result with
the least of means’; it says also that is ‘a unity of
activities and relations between men, related to
production, distribution and consumerism of goods and
services’. Moreover, it reports its qualities regarding
the most relevant characteristic that economy assumes in
a specific context; hence, it’d be mixed if private
economy is intertwined with the State’s public affairs;
it’d be new if it is based upon the development of recent
technologies instead of the utilisation of obsolete means
of production; otherwise it’d be green if its pragmatic
approach be that of the safeguarding of the environment
with no carbon emissions.

21. These are few description that the Zanichelli proposes
that are confronted with another linguistic authority:
the Oxford English Dictionary so to acquire two different
perspectives, although both belonging to the western
culture; hence, description runs as follows: ‘The state
of a country or region in terms of production or
consumption of goods and services and the supply of
money’. Both donate the word’s etymology: economy comes
from the Greek oikonomia which is composed by oikono
meaning house and nemein, to manage.
Independently of its etymological origin, that if
weighted it shows how the concept of familiar
togetherness, of community and society though, got
amplified from the management of the single house, or
village, in the ancien Greece until the administration
and governance of the modern State, the analysis focuses,
initially, on those words which are mentioned in both
dictionaries, namely, production and consumption. They
are identifiable as the most relevant activities or
actions, of which economy is constituted of, that are
defined as necessary macro-operations so that economy
exists and to which any citizen of any State that is
constitutionally founded on the activities of work, must
contribute to. It’s obvious that these operations are
carried out by persons consequently, in addition to
production and consumption, a third element is included
and it is the agent, woman or man, though.
Now, the agent, woman or man, and the operations. These
constitute the first three elements of the concept of
economy although more elements are going to be added so
to give a more detailed idea. The actions: the most
significant activity of economy is the production
followed by consumption, both connected together as in a

22. circle in which the matter, once transformed, should be
re-transformed, although it is not the contemporary case:
oceans, seas and rivers host oasis of garbage; this
phenomena is documented by images and photos and it is
the manifestation of the fact that instead of being an
ideal circle, the process is an unnatural straight line.
To start with, production is the transformation of matter
A into matter B through work. The final object, undergone
the process of production, is different in dimension,
colour and shape with respect of the initial object not
yet undergone the process; hence, for instance, copper is
extracted, extracted from the earth’s veins, from mines
and melted into a fork’s shape, through the use of a
powerful heat source, so that a kitchen tool is created;
or from copper electric wires and coils are produced.
Thus, through a change of state of the matter what
previously was raw material, copper, now is a commodity,
a fork or electric wires. This process concerns also the
industrial steel sector, the most relevant sector of any
western economy. It inserts enormous quantities of raw
material in its industrial ovens so that to produce means
of production and commodities.
As mentioned in the entry sentence of this paragraph,
production goes along with consumption because the
process of generation calls for its balancing action:
consumption. The human being consumes for its vital
necessities of which the primaries are those mandatory
for the sustainment of the body: food, water shelter,
heating and cloths are, indeed primary necessities for
which the lacking of one of them would endanger life.
Then, secondary necessities exist also: these were born
because of the cultural and social development and the
unfolding of civilisation of which men and women have
became a part. The technical-mechanical apparatus
(economy) has generated new needs, phycological

23. necessities, such as entertainment, physical activities,
identity, individualism, fashion, technology etc… Primary
and secondary necessities, though, are conveyed in
consumption goods that comprehend, also, services or
intangible goods, experiences. Are considered to be
consumers also species of animals which are used to
produced and help in the process of transformation,
indeed man has never thought of feeding any animal that
wouldn’t be of any help to him; hence is the case cattle
which is breed and then served on supermarkets’ shelves
(primary necessity) but, also, dogs and cats although
they satisfy a more emotional necessity (secondary
necessity).
Furthermore, the agent: the human being. Clearly,
production and consumption are operations performed by a
rational mind that utilises his physical and intellectual
faculties to carry out a precise action which belongs to
the transformation of matter A into matter B in the case
of production, but also it is an action of choice for
what concerns consumption. However, at the same time man
might perform a different operation, diametrically
opposed to the one he executes every day; indeed, he
might hunt for animals and birds and fish for food or he
might collect fruits and herbs for the same purpose but,
nowadays, the human wakes up and goes to where he’ll
produce, although not alone, he will not transform the
matter by himself: he will be part of a bigger structure,
a macro-structure, which will demand his manual or
intellectual faculties for the advantages of production.
The worker will alienate a third of his or her life in
the construction of national wealth of which the State is
the authority that administrates this structure and
demands its citizens to contribute in order to progress
culturally and socially. Although superficially, two
antithetical examples were brought in to highlight the

24. human condition in our contemporariness confronting it
with the primordial human before the process of
civilisation.
A first description of the first three elements have been
put forward: one agent and two actions are the first
blocks that compose the theoretical structure of economy
made of separated but connected components. Now a fourth
element is going to be discussed and it is another action
which unites production and consumption; metaphorically
speaking it can be referred to as the motor-oil that
lubrificate the motor’s pistons and makes it runs
smoothly. This action is trade, or commerce which occurs,
again, between, rational beings because an exchange
between animals in need of something has never be
documented. It is from necessity, from lack, that the
exigency of trade rose. It’d be unthinkable that every
human would solitarily provide to the sustainment of all
his needs, indeed the practice of trade has been utilised
since from the Ancien Greece (the Dracma was the grecian
coin) and the Roman Empire (Asses and sestertii) where
metals were exchange for goods. Nowadays, trade
represents that moment of unison between producer and
consumer mediated by coins or notes. What is of utmost
importance to highlight in the practice of trade is an
entity that is invisible, it’s an intangible
characteristic of any exchanged good: when two
commodities are traded, they are never of the same
quantity and of the same quality because, in the opposite
case, the exchange would not benefit neither one of the
two parts; I donate the same object I receive: doesn’t
make any sense. Two quantitatively and qualitatively
different commodities get exchanged, indeed and by way of
simplicity, when we buy a good we exchange an object for
paper (money although it is a symbol of another object)

25. but what has been performed, effectively, is an exchange
of, let’s say, shaped plastic for paper. Another example
will illustrate the deed of trade. Let us suppose that
two friend exchange three pounds of aluminium and fifty
pounds of woods instead of selling and buying: they are
friend. What does this exchange of two different objets
have in common? Answer: the value. The union that links
the difference is their value.
To sum up the elements discussed we see: agent,
production and consumption, trade, value. To fully
understand one of the elements we will recall one of the
most acknowledged economist of the nineteenth century
which has theorised with a clear description why objects
are exchangeable, becoming thus commodities, and why
others are not tradable although they are present in our
world, the same as the exchangeable ones. These objects
are tradable because they have two relevant
characteristic: they possess use-value and exchange-
value. In other words: the first type of value is
associated to its usefulness, its utility, that a certain
objet might have in a precise historical moment: let us
think how many object had a value in their use (floppy
disc, compact disks, VHS, etc…) but they have been
substituted, because of the technological advancement, by
other commodities (1Tb hard-disk, Spotify, multimedia
movie store, etc…) and the same goes for other objects
and their lost value. On the other hand, what concerns
the exchange-value means that an object has value because
its presence on earth is rare, unfindable almost, thus
with more value with respect to a common object. What is
meant by exchange-value, or simply value, is the fact
that its availability is almost inexistent hence we will
have an object of huge value: gold, diamonds, petrol,
perhaps, within a century, it will be water to have a

26. huge value, contrarily to the value it has now: oceans,
rivers, seas are full of water, it falls from clouds. The
same doesn’t go for metal for which hard work is required
in order to extract it.
A brief digression is on the symbology of gold is needed
because it highlights a characteristic of the human
being:as we have just mentioned for the entire western
world gold possess great value because almost unfindable,
and the same goes for other metals although with
different measures; however, for other cultures gold is
considered to be part of the Sun, seen as God, though
symbolically bestowed differently and it is the case of
pre-Columbian civilisations such as the Incas: the
chronicles of the conquest of the Americas are packed
with narrations about gold and its different
interpretations. Natural elements’ symbology, whether it
be associated to value or religion, conveys one of the
most characteristic aspect of the human.
The confrontation between valuable object and valueless
object is essential to highlight that goods in modern
economy are classified because of theirs availability on
earth. The most unaccessible; the highest its value,
gold. The most findable: the lowest its value, water.
Another element is included in the analysis: the
commodity, a tangible or intangible object, that
satisfies a particular necessity and it is considered to
be part of the economic circuit.
The present analysis focuses on the concept of economy
and its component. Its aim is that of unearthing the most
significant elements of which the notion is composed by:
from this investigation’s point of view, these elements
are relevant because belong to any western citizen that
actively partecipate to the creation of national wealth
through alienated work. The economic structure,

27. considered to be the vertebral column of the State in its
dialogue between private sphere and public affairs, it is
nowadays the essential condition for the human. Not only
the western citizen, of which its creation is to be
attributed, but recently it is a condition, also, of
those asian countries that have been always considered
economically inferior although in the past decades they
set up their economy on the capitalist mode of production
and now they represent a threat in the declining western
world’s eyes because of their exponential growth. It is
certainly claimable that the economic structure is
present in many countries, many more than the past fifty
years.
One of the most essential elements on which economy
stands its value. Value is considered to be a
metaphysical entity, differently tangible in respect of a
tree’s leaf or a rock of a mountain, it has been thought
to favour human cooperativeness. Its etymology obviously
comes from the Latin language, valere: in the Italian
language remains the same; in Spanish becomes valor and
in French is valoir. For what concerns the germanic
languages, it is value for the English, directly coming
from Latin via French; and for the German is wertsein or
to be worth. The lexicographic investigation is useful
because take us back to the epoch in which the word
started to be utilised in connection with the practice
itself: it didn’t end with the fall of the Roman Empire
but it was acquired also by different cultures such as
the Germanic tribes.
Two different commodities are exchangeable because their
supposed value is ugual, hence creating an equivalence
(A=B). The value is conveyed to the commodity through a
specific process: work. Gold and water will suffice us

28. for other examples in which value is investigated. Gold
and water are placed at the extremes of the value
hierarchy because in order to find gold it is itself an
extraordinary deed, indeed it requires time to sift it,
to check stone by stone. An ideal enterprise must dispose
of many means in order to find gold: machines, workers,
cars, houses, food, cloths and so on. If the enterprise
believes that in a certain place on earth there might be
gold it would set up an operation that would cost a huge
investment in terms of money with the uncertainty of its
results and material losses. However, let us suppose that
the enterprise finds gold. Its value would be equal to
the necessary work utilised in the operation or searching
in addition to what we normally consider investment
because also any means of production is itself the
embodiment of work hence a carrier of value. To sum up
the example, it suffices to say that now gold has a value
equal to the work, quantified in hours, performed in the
operation.
Not only metals are labelled with value, any object on
planet earth might possess a value if it respects the two
essential characteristic: utility and exchangeability.
Let us now take wood for another example. Wood is
utilised in different industrial and domestic sector
because of its many useful characteristics: its
sturdiness and its malleability, for instance, and being
a practical material it has a value. This value, however,
is different from gold’s value, although are both natural
elements, because wood is definitely more accessible and
available that gold. The same enterprise, that above has
tried to look for gold, now takes on a different path and
covey a value the wood through work that will be less
impegnative and expensive with respect to the gold’s
operation. For water there is no need of explanation.

29. The investigation started with the processes of
production and consumption united by the trade of
commodities which possess a value. Value is abstracted
human labour possessed by an object which makes it
exchangeable. Now, work, the job, labour has been
mentioned and it constitutes, probably, the main element
of economy: the key element because it is movement,
change of state. The word itself, though the concept, is
present in the first article of the Italian constitution.
If the action is abstracted with have what Marx defined
as the natural metabolism between man and nature as long
as man has find its purpose in his existence. It is also
interpreted as the operation that ennobles, saving man
from vices and donating him pride and virtue. Nowadays,
the job represents the center of any persons’ life: on
the one hand it is the main action a person performs,
towards which much intellectual and physical energies are
used; on the other it is the operation that create
national wealth, indeed presently we speak of
distribution of work necessary for the sustainment of the
commonwealth.
And lastly, money. One of the most common daily practises
of western citizens is that of trade. Previously
mentioned was the fact that the exchange of commodities
represents an equivalence. During ancien times, the step
from an economy based on the practice of barter to an
economy that utilised metals as the universal commodity
for exchange was almost immediate when one of the
characteristic of metals was recognised, namely, the fact
that they can be separated and melted many times, giving
them an universal utility for the practice of exchange.
Hence the Governances, such as the Roman Empire, begun to
coin metals which become, lately, a symbol: money.

30. Money is a commodity because it has the two fundamental
characteristic of any tradable good, moreover it is the
socially accepted commodities for exchange although
composed of paper. It mainly represents, it symbolises
quantity of gold or metals in general.
This short analysis has come to an end. Again, its main
purpose was that of unearthing the underlying notions
that constitutes the concept of economy in order to
highlight its own structure. Economy was chosen because
it shapes our lives.

31. An analysis of The Capital’s first nine
chapters - english
Opera colossale pubblicata nel 1864, il Capitale rappresenta ancora
oggi il libro che meglio teorizza l’industrialismo e l’economia politica nel
suo insieme. Marx nasce nel 1808 a Bonn in Germania e per la storia
culturale dell’occidente rappresenta uno dei principali intellettuali ad
aver marcatamente segnato la sua epoca e le epoche a venire su quasi
tutti i campi del sapere. Infatti lo stesso autore non rientra in una
categoria precisa del conoscimento sennonché, attraverso i suoi studi,
seppe capire moltissimi aspetti della sua epoca, tra cui anche quello
politico testimoniato della pubblicazione assieme ad Engels del
Manifesto Comunista.
Di seguito, sette slides sono proposte in cui vengono evidenziati i
passaggi fondamentali del ragionamento di Marx che costituiscono, a
loro volta, le basi su cui poggia il sistema di produzione capitalistico e
l’essenza dell’industrialismo. La formula della produzione, il lavoro, il
valore, l’oro, il pro
fi
tto ed i soldi sono elementi presenti nella vita di
qualsiasi cittadino cui Stato ha adottato il metodo di produzione
capitalistico per generare ricchezza.

32. M —
L
↑
C
↓
mp
… P … C′ — M′
M → money advanced
C → commodities purchased
L → labour utilised
mp → means of production
… P… → production (
fi
xed capital)
C′ → product
c → objecti
fi
ed labour
M′ → money containing pro
fi
t
m → surplus value
{
C
+
c } {M
+
m }
This formula represents the process of
production to which any enterprise might be
reduced in terms of symbols. It also stands for
the smallest segment of an ideal complex web
of intertwined and identical actions aimed at the
transformation of natural elements into products
with values and their consequent exchange. The
production and exchange of commodities
constitute the economic structure which points
to the creation of national wealth.

33. M —
L
↑
C
↓
mp
… P … C′ — M′
Let us suppose that M (money) is owned by X. M is equal to 100.
X (Protestant thus restless*) is eager to produce C′ (a chair).
X buys an hammer, a saw, a sander, nails. X buys also a person’s labour quanti
fi
ed in hours such that of carpenter, for example.
X rents a place in which the actions of production are performed. X has exchanged the value of M for the value of C → (M-C).
C (commodities) is equal to the values of the hammer, the saw, the sander, the nails, the rent (mp) and the wage (L)
Time elapses and production is accomplished. Now…
X possesses C′ (a chair) created out of the combination of the commodities purchased and united though labour (C’= C+c =
mp+L);
X sells C′ to Y for an higher value (M′) than the sum X has spent to purchase C.
C′ is converted into the value of 121,5 (M′) of which 100 (M) is replaced back in order to activate another cycle of production,
while 21,5 (m) goes straight into X’s pockets. However, at the same time, labour (L) which has a value (wage) is paid in as much
as it allows the preservation of the worker because, tomorrow, X is going to produce another chair with the help of the carpenter.
*Max weber - The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, Penguin Classic.
X ➙ ➙ Y
— ——————
Stage II
——————————————
Stage III
——————————
Stage I

34. M - C - M′
100USD 100USD 121,5USD
↓
[ L + mp ]
➡︎➡︎
L = labour-force produced by the carpenter → 60USD
mp = wood, hammer, saw, nails, rent → sum of 40USD
[M-C or value of money transformed into value of commodities ⇄] = 100USD
M′=121,5USD (18h*6,72USD) or labour-time objecti
fi
ed in the value of the chair multiplied for the value of gold*
produced in one hour.
But, alas! A question arises! What kind of values does the 60USD (daily payment due to the waged labourers, the
carpenter in this case) contain?
Let us enucleate it →10USD of daily nutrition; 20USD to the landlord for the rent or to the bank for the
mortgage;10USD of gas, he drives a car to go to work; 5USD of cloths, he cannot go around naked;5USD of
entertainment and sport, let the man have some fun; 10USD in savings, inconveniences are just around the corner.
Finally the sum is: 60USD
The sum is egual to the values of means of subsistence necessary to preserve the worker’s life so he can come back
next day to work, again! for the pro
fi
t of someone else.
*For the explanation of the value of gold see slide 7

35. The idea of value emerges from two inherent characteristics of any commodity (C): exchangeability and utility.
X commodity A = Y commodity B
(900 lbs of cotton* = 300 lbs of copper**)
in which X and Y refer to the quanti
fi
able quantity (i.e. weight, length) while commodity A and B refer to the quality
(cotton and copper).
𝛂
possesses X commodity A and exchanges it with
𝛃
: the owner of Y commodity B.
𝛂
➝ X commodity A ⇄ Y commodity B ←
𝛃
Nevertheless, being quantitatively and qualitatively di
ff
erent (900 lbs of cotton is not 300 lbs of copper), exchange
takes place because of a common feature: value (v).
A commodity (C) has an exchange-value, or simply value (V), because abstract human labour (L) is objecti
fi
ed in it.
Value = abstract human labour; V=L
Precisely, both cotton and copper belong to nature; however if cultivated, the former, and extracted the latter
(labour-force applied - L), they become commodities (C = Nature + L) which are, then, exchanged, or sold, and
utilised as means of production (mp) or means of consumption. (Cotton and copper are, of course, used as mp).
Thus,
𝛂
exchanges 900 lbs of cotton, whose production occupied, say, 15 hours of his labour, for 300 lbs of copper
whose production occupied the same quantity of time of
𝛃
’s labour.
“they are merely congealed quantities of homogenous human labour, i.e, of human labour expanded without regard to form of
its expenditure”
* https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/cotton-price
** https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/copper-price

36. The exchange of values lies behind the exchange of two completely di
ff
erent commodities:
X commodity A = Y commodity B and W commodity C = Z commodity D, and so on
900lbs of cotton=300lbs of copper and 500lbs of zinc = 650lbs of aluminium and so on.
This examples of trades date back to the very
fi
rst stages of economy. Then, the need of a socially accepted and
universal commodity, which function was that of expression of any other commodity’s value, surged.
The commodity designed for this purpose was gold* so much so that:
900lbs of cotton = universal commodity (x quantity of gold)
300lbs of copper = universal commodity (x quantity of gold)
500lbs of zinc = universal commodity (x quantity of gold)
650lbs of aluminium = universal commodity (x quantity of gold)
Henceforth, the commodity-gold, bearer of value (itself a product of labour- L) and of use-value (the equivalent of
any commodity’s value) was then turned into money** (M).
The money-commodity, be it coins or notes, symbolises the value of gold with which the product’s price (or the
money-name of the quantity of social labour objecti
fi
ed in it) is expressed.
Consequently, money (M) became the mediator between the selling (commodity transformed into money, C-M) and
the buying (money retransformed into commodity, C-M); indeed the two actions might be also viewed as an
exchange of two commodities (C-C) although the entire circuit is (C-M-C or commodities-money-commodities).
John sells 20lbs of apples, receives 5 dollars, uses it to buy a t-shirt for the same price.
(10lbs of apple ⇄ 1 t-shirt).
*The things which have the greatest value in use (water) have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest
value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use (gold) [Adam Smith - the Wealth of Nations p.131, Penguin Classics].
**Historical processes have made the separation of money-name (pounds, for example) from the weight-name (the objecti
fi
ed labour or x quantity of
gold) so that money and gold have become two di
ff
erent commodities although related.

37. In the exchange process, money (M) [the representative of gold] is introduced and; even though a commodity, it takes on a di
ff
erent
direction, parallel to the others commodities’ direction although with point-bridges in common (the exchange itself ⇄).
Money as mediator, money as the circulating agent, money as the
fi
nal end of any production/exchange process and consequent
hoarding.
Hoarding, the existence of commodities and division of labour are the three
prerequisites for the foundation of any entrepreneurial activities.
“When the circulation of commodities
fi
rst develops, there also develops the necessity
to hold fast to the product of the
fi
rst metamorphosis (C-M). This product is the
transformed shape of commodity, or its gold chrysalis. Commodities are thus sold not
in order to buy commodities, but in order to replace their commodity-form by their
money-form”.
The circuit of commodity-exchange appears, also, as an everlasting series of
transformations in the value-form: C-M-C-M-C-M-C and so on; however, of the entire
continuous metamorphosis the two fundamental units are:
1)C-M-C → commodity-value becomes money-value which becomes again commodity-value or in other words, X sells because he
needs to buy (clothing, for example):
John sells 20lbs of apples, receives 5 dollars, uses it to buy a t-shirt for the same price. (C-M-C)
2) M-C-M → indeed, even though not in its natural form, the circuit can also begin from money (M): money-value becomes commodity-
value which becomes money-value at the end →[the contracted form of the extended formula] or, in other words, Y purchases in order
to produce a new commodity (yarn, for example):
Y purchases three commodities (cotton, spindler, labour-force) to produce yarn (C’). Or,
our restless Protestant, that bought wood, an hammer, a saw, a sander, nails and paid the carpenter to produce a chair.
(M-C-M)
M —
L
↑
C
↓
mp
… P … C′ {
C
+
c
}— M′ { M
+
m
}
↑
Extended Formula

38. Because M-C-M’ is the raison d’être of any enterprise, it follows that the money-owner needs a commodity which allows him to
valorise M, its starting point (the change in value cannot take place in the money itself). Hence, he throws money into the
market and buys commodities with which he will realise M’, its ending point; through the utilisation of peculiar source of value:
labour-force or the creator of value. How does he performe such an extraordinary deed?
First of all, the price of gold must be borne in mind. To produce 1LBS OF GOLD, which is worth 26.895USD*, it takes,
supposedly but realistically, 4.000 HOURS of labour(of which 3000 objectified in labour-force and 1000 in means of production)
1lbs OF GOLD = 26.895USD→ 4000H; in one hour: 0,00125lbs OF GOLD = 6,72USD**→1H
In order to produce 800lbs OF YARN (C’) the commodities that must be purchased are: 800lbs OF COTTON, A SPINDLE,
LABOUR-FORCE. Each commodity has a value, or a price, the entrepreneur has paid for them. The three values of the three
commodities are transferred directly into the final product (C’), so that:
800lbs OF COTTON is worth 1.140,8USD produced in 1.600 HOURS OF LABOUR;
SPINDLE (THE INSTRUMENT) passes fractions of its value in as much as it wears off; its value incorporated in the final product
is that of 4,16USD (value supposed) 1HOURS TIME objectified ;
LABOUR-FORCE= 54USD (6,72USD*8H→minimum wage) purchased for the time of 8HOURS (the standard working day).
The production of 800lbs OF YARN costs 1.200USD; 1.610HOURS of labour objectified in it.
The substance of value is given by labour and the measure of its magnitude (price in USD) is given by labour-time:
800lbs OF YARN = 1610HOURS multiplied for the value of gold 6,72USD→1H (gold is to supply commodities with the material
for the expression of their value) is equal to 10.819USD.
The trick has at last worked: M’ is realised 10.819USD: the value has been valorised through the agency of labour-force.
10.819USD − 1.200USD =… pro
fi
t
*https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/gold-price - 22.05.2022
** The minimum wage in the US is 7,5 USD (23.05.2022)
***https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/cotton-price - 22.05.2022

39. Commonwealth and individuals - english
Bene comune ed individui è la dicotomia su cui si basa lo stato Nazione
e che fu teorizzato da illustri studiosi che vengono citati nelle seguenti
pagine: John Locke e Thomas Hobbes.
La presenza dello stato Nazione è fondamentale per intuire la
contemporaneità in quanto l’organo amministrativo-governativo è
presenza forte sul territorio ed promulgatore di direttive necessaria
verso il conseguimento dello sviluppo culturale e sociale di una
popolazione. Potremmo identi
fi
care lo Stato come il fautore della
civilizzazione e della modi
fi
ca dell’essere umano in favore del progresso
civile.

40. The key word is commonwealth. OED defines it as: independent
state or community, especially a democratic republic/ An
aggregate or grouping of states or other bodies.
The State is an over-structure, a system, a code under which
thousands of individuals, human beings, belong to. The State
is represented by individuals whose vision is that of
civilisation, social unity, national cohesiveness, identity
and commonwealth. The State is governance, administration,
strategy, planning and organisation. The most outstanding
result is highlighted by the fact that, again, thousands of
persons, almost tacitly, agree to be part of it and, most of
times, unaware of the underlying reasons; indeed anyone born
on earth is identified with a precise State simply because he
or she has seen the light of life under a national
jurisdiction. The State and its most natural form of
governance, democracy, are bourgeoisie inventions since when
the French revolution broke out and overturned Royal
absolutism. For two century any State has moulded its
citizens through education, it has prepared them to be the
very identification of the State itself and instructed them
to work for the benefits of the State which within its
boundaries, has built a civilisation: indeed, the human being
had to be taken from its state of nature, from its savagery,
and instructed to be an unity of an immense web of relations
that constitute the State in all its small details. The State
is a commonwealth. There exists a shared wealth accessible to
any adult citizen through exchange: food, water, electricity,
security, health, education, retirement.
Machiavelli’s the prince, Moore’s Utopia, Rousseau’s Social
contract are just few of the most acknowledged works written
on the gathering of men and women under an authoritative
power. Also, concerned with this argument were Thomas Hobbes
and John Locke, two seventeenth-century eminent english
scholars; rationally and methodically fascinated by human
nature’s analysis and its relation with the common-

41. good. Hobbes and Locke were contemporaries, the former was
forty-eight years older than the latter; both shared and
supported the same ideas and arguments regarding learning
which both associated with body’s sensorial parts. Hobbes
argued that: “the cause of the sense is the external body or
object which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either
immediately as in the taste and touch, or mediately, as in
seeing, hearing, and smelling; which pressure, by the
mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of the
body continued inwards to the brain and heart”. Hobbes
physiology was strictly mechanical. While Locke, proposing a
more philosophical denotation, stated that: “The
Understanding… is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so
it is employed with a greater and more constant. Its searches
after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the
very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure”, and agreed
with his fellow-colleagues with the learning’s sensorial and
mechanical view: “For the understanding, like the eye,
judging of objects only by its own sight cannot but be
pleased with what it discovers”. In theirs all-embracing
argumentations they discuss, firstly, human nature as the
base for their logical reasoning to individuals’ gathering in
communities, states and societies. Particularly interesting,
was their mechanical and rational method of inquire expressed
in the analysis of the human learning.
In ‘Of Two Treaties Of Government, An essay concerning the
True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government - Chapter
IX. OF THE ENDS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT’, Locke
firstly considered men’s liberty as a natural right:“ if man
in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be
so absolutely lord of his own person and possessions, equal
to the greatest and subject to nobody”; then inquired: “why
will he part with his freedom? Why will he give up this
empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of
any other power?” which answer lies in the fact, as held by
Lock, that a single man prefers his possessions’ preservation

42. (liberty, property and life) attainable by his uniting, or
composing, with a community or a society abandoning his state
of uncertainty. “The great and chief end therefore of men’s
uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves and
government is the preservation of their property”. Community
erected by the willingness of men in the preservation of
their property still characterises present times. “Thus
mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of
nature, being but in an ill condition while they remain in
it, are quickly driven into society”. Society or commonwealth
regulated by shared and comprehended laws with the aim of
securing every individual’s physical form and of protecting
his possessions while bestowing to an authoritative organ
their administration. Belonging to a society individuals,
moreover, accept its jurisdiction and its legislature.
Nevertheless, the author claimed that if all men were to
accept solely the law of Nature they would constitute “one
society distinct from all other creature”, “were it not for
the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men [he refers
to royal despotism], there would be no need for any other, no
necessity that men should separate from this great an natural
community and associate into lesser combinations”. In Locke’s
view men’s preservation and perpetuation are values worth
abandoning his natural liberty; his conservation is secured
by a community that enhances the common-good and “whoever has
the legislative power of any commonwealth’s bound to govern
by established laws, promulgated and known by people”.
Thomas Hobbes’ works influenced Locke’s; the former, in fact,
also theorised the idea of commonwealth which, in his main
work the leviathan, compered it to the human body:
“Commonwealth or State is but an artificial [made by art]
man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural,
for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in
which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life
and motion to the whole body”. Hobbes argued that men are
all mentally and physically similar, they share the same

43. hopes, illusions and fears of others. In the state of Nature
men are at war with each other which causes a perpetual state
of apprehension and uneasiness; he describes him as
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; to avoid this
state he is willing to join into an established sovereign
government. In his ‘Leviathan, Part 2: Of Commonwealth -
Chapter 17. OF THE CAUSES, GENERATION, AND DEFINITION OF A
COMMONWEALTH’, he opens the chapter stating: “the final
cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love liberty and
dominion over others, in the introduction of that restraint
upon themselves in which we see them live in commonwealths,
is the foresight of their own preservation and of a more
contented life thereby - that is to say, of getting
themselves out from their miserable condition”. The sentence
recalls Locke’s view. Furthermore, Hobbes shares observations
regarding society itself and the meaning of safety and
security: “the multitude sufficient to confide in for our
security is not determined by any certain number but by the
comparison with the enemy we fear” highlighting another idea:
identity, which was not yet completely formed but it was on
its way of being shaped, in relation to otherness, most of
the times seen as the enemy. Hobbes’ view on the litigious
and warrior-like side of men is telling; he opposes
commonwealth to the state of war hence holds that societies
might conflict and when the common adversary is defeated they
turn to one another: “For they obtain a victory by their
unanimous endeavour against a foreign enemy, yet afterwards,
when either they have no common enemy or he that by one part
is held for an enemy is by another part held for a friend,
they must needs, by differences of their interests, dissolve
and fall, again, in war among themselves” and “they do not
help but hinder one another, and reduce their strength by
mutual opposition to nothing; when there is no common enemy,
they make war upon each other for their particular interest”.
Following the thread of the quarrelling aspects that seems to
be so marked in individuals, Hobbes takes into account two
social creatures: ants and bees (“have no other direction

44. that their particular judgments and appetites, nor speech
whereby one of them can signify to another what he thinks
expedient for the common benefit”) which Aristotle numbered
among political creatures. But, although the comparison is
appealing, “men are continually in competition for honour and
dignity which these creature are not” and “ among these
creatures the common good differs not from the private; and
being for their nature inclined for their private, they
procure thereby the commonwealth. But man, whose joy consists
in comparing himself with other men, can relish nothing but
what is eminent”.
Bibliography:
Paul Poplawski, English Literature in Context, Cambridge University
Press
The Norton Anthology of English literature, Stephen Greenblat general
editor, harvard University - (Restoration and Romanticism volumes)

45. A thin thread from Englishness to
identity - english
Propongo una investigazione nell’ambito dell’amministrazione
veri
fi
catasi in Inghilterra, territorio di nascita dell’industrialismo, in cui,
dopo la guerra civile avvenuta verso la
fi
ne del seicento, il parlamento,
rappresentate di nuovi gruppi sociali emergenti, riuscì a conquistare il
potere esecutivo posseduto della monarchia che sino a quel momento
fu la dominatrice indiscussa politiche interne inglesi. Tale conquista fu
sancita dall’istituzione del Prime Minister,
fi
gura che tutt’ora ricopre un
ruolo fondamentale conferitogli anche dalla longevità storica della
carica pubblica.
Durante gli stessi anni, inoltre, si sviluppa l’empirismo ossia il metodo
scienti
fi
co con il quale l’essere umano decide di accomunare tutta la
sua conoscenza: è infatti attraverso il metodo scienti
fi
co che il sapere
deve emergere dalla realtà esterna. Francis Bacon è colui che teorizza
l’empirismo, seguito da Isaac Newton che mette in pratica tali teorie.
É chiaro che l’empirismo e la scoperta vanno di pari passo con
l’avanzamento tecnologico che impulsa la produzione a livello
industriale, cominciando quel processo, l’industrialismo, descritto da
Marx, che ha riformato, completamente, la realtà.

46. The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed a
shift in the english political power with the consolidation
of new social groups that aimed at obtaining their fair share
of power.
In 1642 Civil war broke out and lasted until 1660 when
Charles II, son of the beheaded Charles I and exiled in
France, was enthroned King of England. The country
was suffering an eighteen-years-long royal absence and the
devastating effects of the Civil war. The event, known as the
Restoration, pacified the country even though it didn’t end
religious and political quarrels. In this period, the english
Parliament and its parties, Tory and Whig (responsible for
the king’s beheading and Civil war), achieved its main
purpose: gaining political power over the Monarchy. This
result was the materialisation of new social forces emerging
from different spheres of society. In 1688-89 William of
Orange and Mary Stuart, protestants, were invited by the
House of Lord to intervene in the english political life
because the Parliament detested the possibility that James
II’s son, raised as a catholic and heir to the throne, would
have declared, in his maturity, Catholicism as the State’s
religion degenerating what, at that time, seemed a never-
ending struggle upon religious faith. England took its
decisive turn towards Anglicanism as the State’s first
religion even though, in the following years, when the
Toleration Act and the Bills of Rights were promulgated,
catholics, dissenters, puritans were accepted in
institutional positions. In 1707 with the Act of Union,
England and Scotland were jointed together; the Scottish
earned seats in the english Parliament and together with
Wales, composed Great Britain.
Consolidating the idea of the Parliament’s prominence, in
the political sphere of England, was the institutionalisation

47. of a new political role: the Prime Minister, in 1721. Robert
Walpole, a squire from Norfolk, was elected head of the
Parliament for his ability in dealing with the South Sea
Bubbles and consequent market crash. Coping with both
economic participants, Monarchy and investors, his actions
highlighted the necessity of that particular figure after an
unexpected and surprising economic crisis that brought severe
consequences in 1720, when capitals were invested in the
South Sea Company. The South Sea Company was formed to trade
with the ports of the New World but also, considered its
monetary weight, it had to counter-balance the Bank of
England and the East India Company’s financial power.
Nevertheless, investments were made upon the assumption of
the english Army’s victory over the Spanish Army for the
control of the asientos, the American ports. The war lasted
until 1711 when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, delaying
the company’s operations. The company was not able to return
the shares invested: this caused a grave economic and social
crisis in England, partly solve by the Prime Minister.
As highlighted above, from 1660 to 1721, the role played
by the Parliament was becoming more and more influential
over decisions concerning the country. The monarchy
represented conservatives ideas, dogmatic concepts, unmoving
views useful to hold its power and authority; focused,
mainly, upon a domestic reality and its past; unable to
foresee the processes of evolution unleashed after the
discovery of the New World. On the other hand, we see the
Parliament, the Tory and the Whig parties, conservatives and
liberals opposed to the royal absolutism. The House of Lords
elected the Constitutional Monarchy that has lasted until our
days; and became a central institution. Its strengthening
represented a general progressive metamorphosis, both in
England and Europe.

48. The eighteenth century was entrenched with the ideas of
Enlightenment and the questioning of religious dogmatism;
what begun with Martin Luther and its thesis, in 1516, became
a more rational process of inquiry: philosophers,
intellectuals and scholars were concerned with the question
of knowledge and the most rational way of achieving it. The
birth of empiricism is datable to this period of history when
eminent scientists (the term ‘scientists’ was coined in the
first decades of the eighteen century) such as Francis Bacon
and Isaac Newton, formulated and theorised, the
former, practised and experimented, the latter the scientific
method; later utilised to systematically deepen the natural
world’s knowledge. Moreover, in 1660 the Royal Society was
establish: it invested money in scientific researches, it
kept records of discoveries and results and, above all, it
institutionalised empiricism. Empiricism and methodism were
processes thought to pacify man over its search for
knowledge: systems based on observations, experimentations,
gatherings of data and information, proofs, thesis and
antithesis, discussions and debates; they claimed and succeed
in furthering one and common knowledge avoiding
misunderstandings, misleadings and inconveniences.
If, on the one hand, scientific inquires and discoveries
expanded human learning and helped him ameliorating his
understandings; on the other hand, inventions were applied to
the upgrading of the productive system. Industrialism was
about to take off. It would have structurally transformed
European economy and society. The term ‘mode of
production’ was meant to define the process (unity of
organised, either intellectually or manually, actions) that
transforms raw materials into items or commodities. As Karl
Marx theorised (The capital, 1867) protagonists of this
system are: the capitalist (possessor of richnesses and means
of production), the buyers, labour-force, machineries and raw
materials. The capitalist is who buys commodities in order to

49. produce other commodities and sell them at a higher price
than the sum of the prices spent for the commodities (raw
material, labour-force, machineries, energy, rent) used to
transform raw materials into commodities. Hence, the surplus-
value created exploiting labour-force, it’s the capitalist’s
earning. The labour-force or the workers create value for the
benefit of the capitalist while exchanging labour-force for a
value or a commodity (labour-force) exchanges for another
commodity (money). The mode of production organised around
itself the nineteenth-century english society that, in these
years, saw the light of life for the first time in its modern
twentieth-century concept.
English men, women, children, entire families were
utilised as labour-force. With the Enclosure Act, the English
parliament collected lands and territories destining them to
the agricultural production of food utilised to sustain a
booming urbanisation of cities, such as London and
Manchester, and to fuel citizens and labor-force. Masses of
peasants were usurped of their ancestral home and relocated
in cities. Hence, with the promulgation of two thousand and
five hundreds Enclosure Acts between 1762 and 1844, the epoch
of industrialism had just begun. Industrialism have defined
decades starting from the last part of the eighteenth century
until present days (our economy is still based on labour-
force/value exchange which contributes, on the one hand, to
produce commodities for the consuming market; on the other,
to sustain global economy. We organise our life around
working activities; we coined the term free-time conforming
time’s intrinsic value as commodities. Western civilisation
has extensively progressed with industrialism. But! At what
price?).
The technological advance of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century helped the english Navy to discover new

50. territories and cultures. At the very first stage, was
exploration that, later, turned into colonisation and,
lastly, it self-transformed into slave-trading. Nevertheless,
this process of expansion contributed to broaden England’s
views of the globe.The encounter with the ‘other’ and with
completely different civilisations formed the concept
of englishness and identity which is relatable to the concept
of social-class identity triggered by industrialism. Inside
englishness, a variety of identities unfolds reflecting
english social structure. With the mode of production, the
division of labour and the valorisation of labour,
individuals, instinctively almost, generated groups based on
moral values and purchased commodities. Single units of a
greater family (class) that belong to a structured body:
society. Thus, on the one side, we have identity/
englishness generated by the opposition with otherness
(whether it be historical rivalries such as the French or
Spaniards, or the Maori of New Zealand or the Aborigine of
Australia); while, on the other side, we have social identity
framed by ideological or material values.
Monarchy and Parliament. Religious dogmatism and
scientific inquiries. Industrialism and leisure time. Society
and Identity. Dichotomies whose elements conflict with
themselves for their very opposing nature and upon
which transformation is rooted.

51. Poems and novels: reality’s mirrors -
english
Il diciottesimo secolo inglese, dal punto di vista letterario, testimonia la
nascita di un genere nuovo che ri
fl
ette il cambiamento sociale
attraversato dalla Nazione: è la novella, genere mai scritto sino alla
fi
ne
del seicento, decolla dopo la pubblicazione della prima opera in cui la
protagonista è una persona comune in cui il lettore si identi
fi
ca.
Dalla novella si passa poi alla poesia romantica inglese che i suoi
celebratori, i poeti romantici, vedevano come strumento per
l’educazione civile della società utilizzandola anche come strumento
per la denuncia sociale.
Da mondo è mondo, l’esistenza della cultura è associata alla divisione
in classi sociali: in questo speci
fi
co caso quasi tutti i poeti romantici
provenivano da classi sociali alte, nonostante sia stato documentato la
varietà delle professioni delle famiglie dei vari poeti.
La letteratura e la poesia agiscono anche in modo da conferire
un’identità culturale, in questo caso un’identità nazionale.

52. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, identity, whether
it be national or social, was a most-exploited theme in
english literature; particularly, because of the rise of a
new literary form: the novel. Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders,
which is referred to as the very first novel, alongside with
Richardson’s Pamela and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones share a
common characteristic: titles are normal names and surnames,
not proceeded by any rank or order marker, nor recalling any
historical figure and neither referring to mythological
heroes or heroines. Just ordinary names. This, jointed with
other characteristics, was the novelty: protagonists were
common members of different english social classes in which
the reader recognised, and sympathised himself or herself.
Characters inhabited the reader’s same spaces and places;
fictional figures existed in the very temporal period in
which the reader read the novel. This created the effect of
reality, so powerful in any narrative technique. The genre
welcomed many other types of literary forms that in
the modern english romance (the novel) had found an habitat
of coexistence. Generally, the romance is defined as an
hybrid form, complicated to define in terms of structure and
composition; however identifiable for its prosaic style that
attained importance over poetry and the epic,
consequently the explosion of scientific, religious,
philosophical debates and thus publication of essays, in the
late sixteenth century. Novels’ authors adopted prose because
their narratives, in most cases, exposed a life-long story
and, furthermore, they avoided the chaining prescriptivism of
poetry and its structural codes and forms. A society that
satellited around a mechanical process, whose intellectual
and manual work aim at the production of any kind of
commodity, had to be allowed to self-regeneration. Capitalism
considered time as value; therefor workers, in order to be
highly proficient, had to return to theirs daily activities
in an acceptable state of mind and body hence workers’
resting was comprehended in the concept of labour-force and
it was more profitable than a continuous change (an

53. improbable and continuous substitution of workers would
deficit production because new operators had to be instructed
at the very beginning of the day). Individuals had to
preserve themselves through fulfilment of primary needs such
as food, water, shelter and heat. However, workers of the
industrial society, had to be authorised to leisure time,
that society itself offered. Thus, the intertwining between
leisure-time and ‘the rise of the novel’: because it was
during free-time that readers had the chance of enjoying the
realty effect of novels, whether it be in coffee-houses where
the audience was predominantly masculine; or in bourgeoisie
estates or houses that gathered female readers. Moreover,
novels seemed to satisfy a new necessity, more relatable to
the psychological sphere: cultural self-narration and
identity’s construction. Novels were especially read and
discussed in coffee-houses (in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, the
author mention the episode: a gentlemen reading his novel and
commenting on it, in a public space). Spaces in which
individuals would assemble to discuss public affairs which
were not only political and economic but also social, with
private histories made public. Coffee-houses became the
forerunner of the public sphere of daily life and journalism:
the addiction to news.
In Defoe’s novel, the main character is a woman and this is
already an unexpected aspect of the book considering the
patriarchal frame of mind of the late eighteenth century. The
plot is related with ‘first person narrator’ which powerfully
establishes a strong bond while silently reading it and,
furthermore, it creates a surprisingly reality-effect. The
novel is a total analepsis, or flashback. The protagonist,
Moll Flanders, tells, and unburden herself, her story of
repentance (this constituted another element of amazement)
which, at the time of its publication, was unlikely to be
heard anywhere by most of the readers that, largely, belonged
to literate social classes: educated individuals, although
novels welcomed different levels of literacy.Moll Flanders is
born in Newgate, London’s prison; daughter of a convicted

54. woman that as a result of her pregnancy, avoids death
sentence and is transported to plantation fields in Virginia.
She is raised by a governess that teaches her her craft but
the infantile protagonist, after an encounter with a future
gentlewoman, decides that she would behave as such; even
though she formulates an erroneous concept of gentlewomaness.
She is alone and independent and must cope with a largely
masculine society. The protagonist can be seen as an early
figure of the feminist movement towards the emancipation from
the patriarchal society but, at the same time, as a
virtueless member of society that deals with robberies,
thefts, and sinful deeds all committed in the name of
independence and social climbing.
However, some decades after, someone would have written: “For
a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now
acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating
powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary
exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage
torpor”. Wordsworth wrote this in his ‘Preface to lyrical
ballads’ (1800-1802), seventy-eight years after Defoe’s Moll
Flanders’ publication (1722) and, especially after, an
enormous diffusion of the genre in the literary english
market. In his essays, he discusses poetry and its duty
towards a society that gravitated around production in its
industrial form and the effects it might have caused upon the
human mind which, in his view and analysis, describes as
“capable of being excited without the application of gross
and violent stimulus”; pointing out these deterrents to be:
“The great national events which are daily taking place, and
the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the
uniformity of their occupation produces a craving for
extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of
intelligence hourly gratifies”.
(This last sentence is particularly striking because it could
have been read by any attentive observer just some decades
ago. However, it was written in the eighteen-hundred and it
creates a strong parallelism between then and now).

55. Wordsworth, moreover, pointed his finger against the rapid
proliferation in England of daily newspaper and the activity
of journalism, hence, against coffee-houses that were places
of public discussions. Furthermore, he blamed literature for
its adherence to the conformism of general rules that were
injuring the ideal figure of Wordsworth’s human being: “To
this tendency of life and manners the literature and
theatrical exhibition of the country have conformed
themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had
almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven
into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German
tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in
verse”. With this last sentence he condemned the novel and
its frivolous contents. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a
romantic poet (the term romantic refers to a specific period
of history named after a literary form i.e. the romance: it
goes from the 1789 to the 1832). In his “Preface to lyrical
ballads, with pastoral and other poems” in the paragraph
“What is a poet”, he gives the definition of his professional
figure as “a man speaking to men” (he was not self-referring
but describing the poet’s role). Romantic poetry was full of
elevating illusions, vivid dreams and ever-lasting hopes
that’s why, still to these days, poems are entrenched with
powerful feelings (see Percy Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy)
transmitted by language. “while he (the poet) describes and
imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and
mechanical compered with the freedom and power of real and
substantial action and suffering”.
Nineteenth-century transformations and romantic poetry were
tied together. In the background, the French Revolution
agitated minds and hearts of who hoped in the ancien
régime’s dissolution, while upholding the values and ideas of
equality and liberty, seen as men’s guidance to common
justice and wealth; but it solely conveyed illusions, at
least in the very first stages of its development, that were
overturned in threats as soon as Napoleon, from liberator,
became the conquerer, throwing all Europe and, especially,

56. England in a state of apprehension and uncertainty. At the
same time internal political affairs concerned romanticists.
They sided with the population against the oppressors’
tyranny and were led to compose poems in which expressed
their indignation against unprecedented episodes. It’s the
case of the Peterloo Massacre, on the 16th of august 1819,
when a crowd of sixty thousand people pacifically gathered to
support the reform of the system of political representation;
it was organised by Henry ‘the orator’ Hint to display
numerical strength and discipline. Nevertheless, the
magistrate sent troops to persecute and arrest the organiser
and, at the same time, killed eleven people and injured many
more. When the episode’s tale reached Italy, where Percy
Shelly was living at that same moment, in his indignation he
vehemently composed Mask of Anarchy in which he accused the
political parties of negligence, hidden behind the masquerade
of non-governance, and exhorted people to unite with his most
popular and most known lines:
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few.’
The French Revolution and England domestic affairs were only
a couple of arguments treated by the romanticists. William
Blake (1757-1827) in his Songs of innocence and Songs of
experience, which in his view symbolised the two states of
human development, dropped lines denouncing nineteenth-
century industrialism’s children exploitation in the roaring
urbanising and industrialising Great Britain. Children aged
between four and ten years old were used as cheap or
gratuitous labor-force and predominantly utilised, because of
their minute body’s structure, as chimney sweepers considered
to be one of the most degrading jobs available at that time;
furthermore, they were employed in the mode of production as

57. extensively documented by Marx and Engels in their studies
and analysis on which they based their works. Blake’s poems
are very evocative through words and their association,
recalling Wordsworth’s writings: “by the act of writing in
verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will
gratify certain known habits of association”. Blake’s chimney
sweepers' first stanza runs as follow:
When my mother died I was very young
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “ ‘Weep! ‘Weep! ‘Weep! ‘Weep!”
So your chimney I sweep & in soot I sleep.
In this lines he denounced poor children’s destiny after
their mother’s deaths, presumably by the very act of
deliverance for lack of adequate assistance and for ill-
living conditions while their fathers, unable to economically
sustain themselves, had to exchange the child at a
prematurely age. Nevertheless, Blake, which was a romantic
poet and engaged with Nature, proposed an idyllic way-out
from the nightmare alluding to emerald-coloured grasslands
crossed by crystalline courses of water under the bright
light of the sun where the children played:
Then down a green plain, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Blake was also an attentive observer of the thundering
urbanism and its value:
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
in which the repetition of the word charter’d spotlights the
privateness of what was previously public stressing the idea
of in-the-hands-of-a-few capitals and richnesses; and, while
aimlessly wandering the witness observed despair, misery,
wretchedness and exclusion:

58. In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban
Lastly, the concluding line of the stanza, powerfully
evocative, recalls Wordsworth and Lock's statements about the
minds of men and their incapacity of immaturity if
distracted:
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
To conclude, two phases of the ‘long eighteenth century’ were
hinted at through the perspective of literature and which
fall under the labels of the rise of the novel and
the romantic age: from Defoe and the early novelists that
contributed to the invention and the diffusion of a new
literary form that mirrored and narrated an emerging
individualistic society to the romanticists that witnessed
and related the first effects of a transformed society
emphasising its problems (Blake), defending the oppressed
(Shelley) and enhancing human nature (Wordsworth); all this,
witnessed a fervent literary production concerned with its
surroundings and its vital forces.

59. The economic structure and alternative
ways of living - english
Il seguente testo parte dalla descrizione, a grandi linee, della struttura
economica presente nei paesi occidentali come condizione essenziale
della quotidianità e viene, successivamente, confrontata con scelte che,
parzialmente, eludono la sua ferrea presa sulla vita di certe persone. É il
caso di una coppia del Nebraska che, dopo anni di vita spesi all’interno
della stessa, decisero di proseguire per sentieri di
ff
erenti.