86 drafting of his manifesto L’ordine politico delle Comunità9, given to prints in 1945. And finally, the end of the war. The return to Ivrea, the return to the company. And there it was, the subversion. From 1946 to 1960, year of his untimely death at the age of fifty-nine, the growth of Olivetti has been, to say little, textbook. Those were the years that embraced the launch of the Divisumma on the international market (1948), first electromechanical calculator with negative balance, capable of making divisions automatically; of Lexikon 80 (1949), and especially of Lettera 22 (1950), Golden Compass in 1954, the most beautiful object of the century according to the Illinois Institute of Technology. Two hundred thousand sales a year for a cult object entered into history and, like the Divisumma and the Lexikon, into the art collection of the MoMA in New York, fully complying with the dictates of the Artistic Capitalism. But there is more, introduced here by the words of another, gigantic, subversive: «There are two words that often return in our conversations: rather, they are the key words of our conversations. These two words are growth and progress. […] Those who want growth are those who produce; that is the industrialists. […] The consumers of superfluous goods, on their part, irrationally and unknowingly agree in wanting growth (this growth). For them it means social advancement and liberation, with a consequent repudiation of the cultural values that had provided them with the models of being the “poor”, the “workers”, the “savers”, the “soldiers”, the “believers”. The “masses” are therefore for growth: but they live this ideology only existentially, and existentially they carry the new values of consumerism. Who, instead, wants progress? Those who do not have any immediate interest to satisfy through progress: workers, land labourers, intellectuals. It is wanted by those who work and therefore are exploited. When I say “it is wanted” I say it in the authentic and total meaning (there may be some producer who wants, beyond anything else, and maybe sincerely, progress: but his particular case does not count). Progress is therefore an ideal notion (social and political): growth is instead a pragmatic economic fact. Now it is this split which requires a synchronicity between growth and progress, as true progress is not conceivable (or so it seems) without creating the necessary economic premises to achieve it» Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari, 1975 Pier Paolo was certainly thinking of Adriano, writing about some haphazard and luminous entrepreneurial case which unfortunately does not count. Adriano who, out of text and context, knew how to synchronize growth and progress, arithmetics and ethics. Who knew how to be subversive. So, let's talk about growth: from 1946 to 1960, assuming a starting index equal to 100, Olivetti's exports rose to 1,787, internal turnover to 600, employment to 258, average real wages to 386 points. The company became a multinational: in fourteen years, the foreign subsidiaries rose from four to nineteen. Five factories in Italy, as many abroad. From five hundred, the employees became twenty-four thousand. Sales increased by 1300%, productivity by 580%; in 1960 alone, year of his death, Olivetti distributed ten points to its shareholders, increasing sales in Europe by 47% and those in America by 42%. And now, let's talk about progress: the exponential growth of Olivetti's revenues was matched by the constant improvement in the working conditions of its labourers, aware, as Adriano was, that nothing is more motivating than a good life. In 1957, one of his employees earned sixty thousand lire a month, against the forty thousand lire of national contracts, to which numerous benefits – in terms of assistance and services by him thought and strongly wanted – must be added. The quality of life of an Olivetti employee turned out to be 80% better than that of employees in other comparable industries. We are not just talking about an assistance service to help employees with health care bureaucracy and about an infirmary, but about an occupational psychology center directed by the pioneer of Italian psychoanalysis Cesare Musatti. About shuttles to get there and back from the factory, about marine and mountain colonies to allow his workers to go on vacation at very low costs. About a cooperative financing half of the loan to employees who wished to buy a house. About splendid nurseries for the children of both workers and managers, side by side in the fundamental education of beauty. About free Saturdays and a reduction in the number of weekly working hours from forty-eight to forty-five, nine months of paid maternity leave as opposed to the two provided by the national contract. Olivetti, in the words of its treasurer Mario Caglieris, is «a factory founded on a precise moral code, for which profit is destined first of all to investments, then to salaries and social services, lastly to shareholders, with the constraint never to create unemployment». 9 tr. The political order of Communities (Ed.’s Note).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUzNDc=