ITALIA SINISTRA:REPORT FROM ROME

...On paper, these results look like the makings of an effective coalition government with support from both the right and the left, balancing a dominant partner with an internal opposition and ideally equipped to tackle the accumulated problems of years of nongovernment...

...But they don't win votes and lack the grass-roots organization that does...

...He is a politician seeking office in a democracy and is commited to preserving it...

...The shift of votes to the two major parties may be one component in the solution, as it has been in other European countries...

...For instance, once a Communist party opts for democracy, the democratic socialists become its natural allies...

...Given the Christian Democratic talent for sottogoverno, it may well be that such a coalition will take place invisibly, with the Communists holding no posts in the government but sharing power informally in exchange for tacit support, saving embarrassment to both parties...

...Segments of that society may still need a Communist party, but, in a generation, they will be ready for social democracy—if they are still free to choose...

...The PCI's present chairman, Enrico Berlinguer, is leading his party even farther in a democratic direction...

...The other alternative is that of an increasing collaboration between the DC and the PCI, fostering the growth of a broad democratic center capable of subduing the radical fringe on both sides...

...Berlinguer, with his Michael Harrington smile, his obvious earnestness and sincerity, inspires confidence...

...It is not unique to Italy...

...Certainly, the Democrazia Cristiana, for all its recent ills, is still an impressive political force...

...But the spontaneous response to the arrogance of wealth is emotional...

...but its roots, I am convinced, are 331 constitutional in the broad sense of the way a society constitutes and governs itself...

...Similarly, I do not believe that the crisis is psychological, even though the Italians love to dissect the flaws of their "national character" at great length...

...Czechoslovakia's Dub&ek in a stable, mature society, could transform his Communist party into a democratic socialist one—and, but for the armed Soviet occupation, could have succeeded...

...The possibility is attractive and their sincerity convincing, though old postures, habits, and associations repeatedly shake one's con330 fidence...

...He has commited his party to a regard for individual rights, to a respect and a support for 329 democratic norms and to an observance of the full rights of the opposition, including its right to become a new majority...

...They are often uprooted, bewildered, and confused, hardly ready for the responsibility that social democracy would entail...

...In Italy, unfortunately, it is not and will not be that for perhaps another generation...

...It may be the final irony but I hope that whoever will be America's new secretary of state will be, in this respect, at least as wise as John Foster Dulles...

...But that again is a symptom of transition...

...Certainly, the effective solution is nondramatic: a progressive taxation with special attention to ostentatious luxury, such as tax on personal property from which "normal personal belongings" are exempt...

...But Berlinguer's model of Communism within rather than instead of democracy may make that tool available without jeopardizing future growth...

...When the monarchies collapsed, their corresponding parliaments continued to represent—and one European country after another passed through a "crisis of democracy" while groping for a parliamentary system that would not only represent but also govern...

...Berlinguer's declaration of democratic principles was co-signed by Mr...

...It has had reason to regret Eisenhower's decision to override Dulles's recommendation of a similar policy toward Ho Chi Minh...

...After a few years in power, sottogoverno becomes malgoverno—and the Christian Democrats have been in power for 30 years...

...Parliaments represented, speaking to—or against—the monarch with advice, consent or dissent, but without responsibility for leadership...

...As long as the Communists remain a factor, the latter course, whatever its risks, is infinitely preferable...

...They did not vote for the spectrum of minuscule parties that might most faithfully represent their own personal political preferences and interests...

...Italy may be a country in transition, but it is not a backward country like Russia...

...Given the DC's resilience, the rejuvenation mandated by the voters may still be possible...

...It is a mandate for a rebirth of the Christian Democratic party, hardly for a coalition with the Communists...

...To control Italy's double-digit inflation, to overhaul its bloated administration, to reform its welfare system, to put its major industries, virtually all state-owned, on a sound footing, and to rationalize its chaotic small enterprises, to exact a modicum of civic responsibility from the labor unions and the arrogant rich, for all this even a thoroughly rejuvenated Democrazia Cristiana would still need support in depth on the left...

...Today Italy's socialist parties simply are not a significant political force and, barring a concerted effort on the part of other European Social Democratic parties, analogous to that mounted in Portugal, are unlikely to become so...

...But the sottogoverno, familiar to Americans as party-machine politics, has vices as well as virtues...

...On their own, the socialists never built up an extensive grass-roots organization...

...One Italian in three may vote Communist, but Italy itself is not Communist nor likely to "go Communist" if it can learn to govern itself effectively...

...Or it may be that such a coalition will prove impossible until both the Democrazia Cristiana and the Partito Communista each had their turn at failing...

...Now it is Italy's turn...

...Italy's crisis, finally, is not economic, even though its evident economic symptoms can seem overwhelming...

...One of them destroyed the socialists as a cohesive alternative...

...The great significance of Berlinguer is that he seems aware of this...

...The PCI, unlike, for instance, the French Communist party, has never been simply a blind tool of Moscow...

...To the Soviets, they were anathema...

...In one speech after another, including the speeches to his followers, he insists that democracy is a necessary condition of socialism...

...The Communists— heading the kind of quixotic "government of the true left" that some Spanish Communists recommend for Spain—could no more govern Italy than a Christian Democratic government of the right, even if either scraped together enough votes to hold office...

...Berlinguer is no rhetorical revolutionary grasping for a mystical "power...

...Italian needs, rather than East-West relations, are the decisive factor and Italy, more than anything else, needs to be governed...

...In practice, a grand coalition of Italy's two big parties is deeply problematic...

...The point at issue is not whether the Communists or the non-Communists will "rule Italy...

...The preservation of democracy depends first of all on effective governance and Italy cannot be governed effectively by the right or the left alone...

...the policy he proposes inspires hope...

...Another point...

...The rebirth of the Democrazia Cristiana as a mature, responsible political force could be the second...

...An extended interregnum with the attendant infrastructural breakdown serves no one except the hardest hard-liners waiting for a collapse to seize power and work their will...

...In this matter, the PCI is genuinely different...

...For the present, Mr...

...Is the mandate enough...

...His Euro-Communism is no brave new creed nor yet a respectable way for the aging exfaithful to recover their brave old creed with a newly clean conscience...

...Berlinguer defended his views before them, but his presence acknowledged his associations, which he could not break without losing his party's support...

...Certainly, Italian society does tolerate some extremely unlovely traits, such as a particularly repugnant combination of the machismo of a vain bully with the mamismo of a whining child...

...They turn to the Communist party precisely because it is not democratic, but disciplined and dedicated and so able to tell them what to believe and what to do...

...That is a great achievement...

...This contention, however, holds only on paper, especially if the author of that paper is a Communist...

...Those gains, however, were won at the expense of the splinter parties of the center, caused less by the DC's intrinsic appeal than by the repugnance that most Italians feel for the Communist alternative...

...The Communists receive such aid from the Soviet Union...

...For better or for worse, the significant force on the left is the Communist party (CPI...

...Berlinguer, no matter how democratic, must remain Communist to retain his following...

...Their first leader, Antonio Gramsci, wrote most of his works in one of Mussolini's prisons...

...Instead, he attended a conference of Communist parties, convocated by the Soviet Union in East Berlin and including such people as Czechoslovakia's Gustav Husdk or Roumania's Ceausescu, no friends of freedom...

...POSSIBILITIES ABOUND, but the long-range alternatives are clear...

...Unfortunately, rhetoric, dedication and discipline are not marginal to Communism...

...Finally, the shift of the PCI from rhetorical hostility to responsible participation in the democratic process could be the missing link...

...Traditionally, Italy has been overrepresented and undergoverned...

...Their strength is not electoral...

...Had that happened, today's Communist leaders would by now be martyrs like their East European colleagues...

...One is that of a sharpening confrontation between the right and the left, each dominated by its radical wing, leading ultimately to a clash in which democracy would be the loser, regardless of which side prevailed...

...Most of Italy's major enterprises are already state controlled, the Communists support minor private enterprise and as for social welfare and administrative efficiency, even the Christian Democrats support those...

...That is a realistic starting point for enlightened foreign policy toward Italy as well...

...YET THIS is only half the story...

...That, finally, is the other difference...

...His associates inspire neither...

...The point was not lost on the PCI...

...Unfortunately, the obvious partners, the various democratic socialist parties, cannot provide that support...

...In a country without a tradition of private support for public causes, it is virtually impossible to build a grass-roots organization without outside aid...

...Were it to give it up in favor of consistently democratic approaches, it would no longer meet that need...

...But given a sense of purpose, the Italians are capable of great achievements, as they have proved more than once...

...It is the world's seventh industrial power with a rich cultural tradition and a rapidly modernizing society...

...In an interview published in Corriere della Sera, he even admitted the need for the NATO shield to protect his democratic Communism against the fate of Dubcek...

...G. Marchais, chairman of the French Communist party that had obediently approved Soviet aggression in Czechoslovakia and now condejnned the Israeli rescue of skyjacked hostages at Entebbe...

...Contrary to their popular image and even their selfimage, the Italians are an ingenious, hard-working and versatile people with a tremendous potential— if they can forge an effective social framework that will enable them to unfold that potential...

...It is a way, probably the only way, to make democracy function in a community devoid of civic consciousness...

...But Berlinguer did not hold a round of consultations with Austria's Bruno Kreisky, West Germany's Helmut Schmidt, Britain's Harold Wilson, or Sweden's Olaf Palme...

...The parallel between Lenin's Communism and Mussolini's Fascism is too obvious— and the Italian Communists have had their experience with Fascism...

...Even Carlo Pajetta, a hard-liner in domestic matters, supports the struggle of individual Communist parties for independence from Moscow as did the postwar leader, Palmiro Togliatti...

...The Christian Democrats, for their part, received aid from America...

...Then, like all top-heavy movements that are excluded from practical politics, they suffered a series of theoretical splits...

...Nowhere in Europe are the rich as arrogant and as ostentatious as here...

...Had his jailer been Lenin, Gramsci would not have had much chance to write—or survive...

...The last thing Italy needs is a Bolshevik Putsch, which would bring the Communists to power and freeze social development at the particularly unfortunate stage marked by the need for discipline and dedication...

...The Americans, though used to a two-party system at home, did not have the insight to invest in a democratic opposition as well as in a democratic majority...

...The idea of a NATO shield protecting a government that includes the Communists may seem paradoxical...

...But such misgivings, while serious, may well be academic...

...They do include some of Italy's most respected figures—Giuseppe Saragat, for instance, is a social democrat—and they provide some of the clearest and soberest perspectives on Italy's problems...

...European parliaments simply were not geared to governing: that, for centuries, had been the prerogative and the responsibility of the monarch...

...But it meets a real emotional need—and wins votes...

...This posture may solve no problems...

...Similarly, while Berlinguer did acknowledge the need for NATO to protect Italy's Communists from the Soviets, the editor of his own party's daily, L'Unita, censored out that statement when reprinting the interview...

...As Michael Ledeen and Claire Sterling have shown, the form of that aid has shifted, in recent years, from outright grants to commissions on the lucrative Italo-Soviet trade, but the amounts remain substantial...

...Without it, the vacuum left by the collapse of the Fascist organization might well have been filled by the only other organization available, the Communist party...

...In the postwar years, it was the Christian Democrats' skill at the art of the sottogoverno— getting things done behind the scenes by a judicious balancing of favors and obligations—that may have saved Italian democracy...

...To tackle Italy's problems effectively, a government would need the support of both the Church and the unions, of both Western capital and Italian labor...

...But, while crucial to Italy's rebirth, that is not enough...

...The Italian voters have signaled as much in the last election...

...Instead, they are alive and well and free to run in an election...

...They are precisely what distinguishes the Communist version of "socialism" from the democratic...

...In Italy, it is not even a question of "supporting the Communists...

...A great percentage of its voters are people who have been abruptly deprived of their traditional truths and community constraints...

...The scale and the duration were more modest, but, as the ruling party, the Christian Democrats could augment it with patronage and business contributions...

...Some Italians need the Communists, but Italy as a whole needs the freedom to outgrow that need and to keep the future options open...

...Like all countries in transition, Italy is a land of dramatic social contrasts...

...But it is also notoriously vulnerable to corruption...

...The question is whether the West, American and European, will support Italy in its search for a mature democratic government or drive Italy toward a destructive polarization...

...This is the option for which Berlinguer, Segre, and other Italian Communist reformers argue persuasively...

...The potential senior partner, the Democrazia Cristiana, emerged from the elections with some requisite gains...

...THERE'S THE RUB.The PCI, for all the democratic protestations of its leaders, remains a problematic partner for a movement whose chief appeal has been that of an alternative to Communism...

...He cannot make the Communists into social democrats, but he realizes that, as Communists, they can make a positive contribution in office rather than in power, participating in rather than destroying Italian democracy...

...The fault is not altogether their own...

...Italy is a country passing through an incredibly rapid modernization...

...Unfortunately, the party he heads is far from democratic and, as Austria's Prime Minister Bruno Kreisky points out, would lose much of its relevance if it were...

...Unlike most European political parties, it is not an ideological sect but a highly pragmatic political organization subsuming a broad range of ideological preferences 328 brought together by a common, practical political interest...

...Its problem is to forge a system of self-government that would be both effective and democratic...

...The crisis is more acute because the Italians modeled their parliament on those of strong monarchies without ever having had a strong monarchy themselves...

...His party was fully behind him and often even ahead of him: in Czechoslovakia, Communism with its discipline and dedication is a farcical anachronism...

...With its mixture of dedication, discipline, and dictatorship, Communism will always be at best a necessary tool of transition, not a model for a mature society...

...There is nothing that can put the Italian crisis into perspective quite like a few weeks in Italy itself, riding the rickety buses, coping with the ineffectual officialdom, bringing fresh linens to neglected patients in state hospitals, eating in desperate little trattorias, and being hooted aside by the arrogant rich in their Alfa Romeos in the shabby, littered streets...

...The sense of frustrated impotence pervades all of Italy today...

...Or such a coalition might take place and produce a split among the Communists, with the democratic wing fusing with the socialists to form a new force on the left while the hard-liners continue to cater to the residual need for discipline and dedication, with possibly an analogous split in the Christian Democracy...

...It is not about the Defense of Christian Values or about the Rebirth of Communism: it is a search for an effective government that would, at last, govern and not simply hold office...

...it may even create some new ones, as with the vigilante committees to which the Communist municipal administration resorted in Bologna...

...Certainly, it would be much nicer if the left were democratic socialists...

...The unique appeal of the Communists, as of the Fascists before them, is their no-nonsense posture with its combination of rhetoric, dedication and discipline...

...The socialists were no one's sweetheart...

...The Communist party wins adherents by catering to the need for revolutionary rhetoric...

...But America has never had reason to regret John Foster Dulles's decision to support Tito in his defiance of Moscow...

...It is, rather, whether Italy will have to be ruled—or whether it will finally generate a viable system of democratic self-government...

...Berlinguer's democratic turn, again whatever its factual limitations, makes it a possibility...

...But Italy's economic house, while in great disorder, is structurally sound and the country's economic achievements are impressive...

...332...

...Even the Communist party program is anything but distinctive...

...The task demands more than a nominal parliamentary majority...

...Earlier, Mr...

...Some 40 percent of them voted for the Christian Democrats, some 34 percent for the Communists...

...The dialectical contortions of Marxist academicians and film directors are games of the privileged, irrelevant to any political reality...

...The change is profound: Mr...

...But a right-left coalition is needed, and the significant force on the left is the CPI...

...Instead, three-quarters of them cast their ballots for the two parties that may be strong enough to govern...