The Italian Constitution and the right-duty to work. A reinterpretation in educational perspective

Abstract

Why is the 1948 Italian Constitution so explicit in legitimizing the right to work while it is reluctant to affirm the duty to work for all citizens?
The author answers to this question contextualizing the constitutional choice made at that time: it is impossible to speak about the imperative duty to work of everyone when for too many people it only represents the place for alienation and estrangement of the human being. In this regard, the author reminds the responsibilities of Fordism that divided the workers into two categories: the small group of the “managers” and the very broad group of the “employees”. In this way the Fordism celebrated the traditional prejudice between the otium of intelligence and satisfaction for a few and the negotium of stupidity and vulgar
effort of everyone else. However, this paradigm is unacceptable within the new context of globalization and NTCP (New Technologies of Communication and Production). Indeed, the end of Fordism as an insurmountable horizon of the organization of work requires an educational system that aims to the promotion
of everyone’s talents (i.e. the physis). Adam Smith and Tocqueville had already realized the need for a transition from an education centred on what the human being has to an education centred on what the human being substantially is, in a complete and better way. On this premise, the author concludes that in order to restart the development of our Country it is necessary to regain the great Italian tradition of which the small enterprises, i.e. the mechanical, liberal and social
arts, are still the legitimate heirs. A tradition that has always wanted that everyone was always and actually “entrepreneur of himself”.