In the mid '80 the developer, media tycoon and owner of AC Milan football club Silvio B. (Knight Silvio Banana in Altan's cartoons) challenged the power of the old-money establishement by refusing to stop bidding for the gifted soccer player Roberto Donadoni, coveted also by Gianni Agnelli (the FIAT man) for his footbal team, Juventus.
In a revelatory moment of the shift of power from industrial to postindustrial or service economy, when Agnelli first threatened to stop buying ads on Belusconi's tv channels, shouldn't B. stop bidding , Silvio Banana responded by threatening not to sell any ads to Fiat, shouldn't Agnelli stop bidding for , who eventually became a pillar of AC Milan. Silvio Banana had it its own way.
A few years later, after the demise of his political patron Bettino Craxi, Berlusconi had to face the true, Brechtian ordeal of the ruling class: socialization of one's own corporate debts, which the incumbent centre-left governement allowed him to do by getting his heavily in debt main firm listed on the Stock Exchange and cashing in enough money to save it from bankruptcy (It should not be forgotten that at the time of the listing Silvio Banana was under investigation for very serious (even to Italian standard) offenses, ex quibus, well, bribing members of the judiciary...another sign that he was not yet a member of the ruling class. Poor man, he still had to pay).
Has he thus eventually managed to get the real distinctive hallmark of members of the ruling class, that is binding the destiny of the nation to one's own personal fate? I would say so, although his indomitable drive to showing off, to sweeping the board could cause him some trouble. He may still be not an insider of the elite circle, which, though, has to talk with him.
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