A tenth of Italy’s population lived off the state budget

Evidence

Another source of absolute parasitism has always been the State administration. Renato Spaventa has reckoned that in Italy one tenth of the population (four million inhabitants) live off the state budget. Even today it happens that men who are still relatively young, not much above forty, in excellent health and at the height of their physical and intellectual capacities, after twenty-five years of state service cease to devote themselves to any productive activity but make do with more or less substantial pensions. However, a worker can only enjoy his pension from the age of sixty-five, and for a peasant there is no limit to the age up to which he may continue to work. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1054

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: State-dependent middle strata prefigures the bureaucratic-administrative apparatus readings the Islamophobia field draws on for how states distribute status and livelihood.