State pensions enabled retirement in the forties while workers toiled past sixty-five

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

• XREF: The contrast between parasitic state dependents and aged workers is classic evidence for the North-South uneven development thesis central to framing later migration and colonial economy arguments.