Il lavoro nel Codice di Camaldoli. Un fondamento per l’impegno sociale dei cattolici in Italia

Per la Città Cristiana. Principi dell’ordinamento sociale (1945), better known as the “Camaldoli Code”, is a document written by a variegated group of Italian Catholic thinkers and economists during the dramatic two years between the dawn of fascism and the liberation of the country, to provide the basic principles upon which a new democratic regime could be built and give rise to a new form of civilisation, inspired by Christian anthropology and the social teaching of the Catholic Church. In doing so, the Camaldoli Code examined a wide range of economic topics, including industrial relations, economic planning, full employment policies, minimum wage regulation, health and welfare policies, gender discrimination, migrations, productivity growth and labour organization. This paper aims to highlight the main thesis of the Camaldoli Code concerning the nature and the role of labour within society, its ability to preserve human dignity and promote its development, the importance of proper labour policies and regulations to foster social progress, democratic participation, and economic modernisation. In analysing its main ideas and proposals, the paper aims to compare the Code with other contemporary economic and juridical approaches and to retrace the continuities and discontinuities with previous documents within the catholic social tradition. Moreover, the paper aims to show similarities and differences between the Camaldoli Code and the Italian Republican Constitution and to assess how and where the former may have exerted an influence on the latter.