Interviews a leader of the Italian left
Bosetti, Giancarlo
MASSIMO D'ALEMA became the secretary of Italy's Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in 1994, when he replaced Achille Occhetto, the party leader who, five years earlier, began the...
...It was Marx who put them together and created a system out of lines of thought that were distant from each other...
...Things are not like that.The left conducts the processes of economic recovery differently than the right, even when the left seems to be practicing "the same craft...
...The Olive Tree's victory brought the Catholic moderate Romano Prodi to the head of the government and Walter Veltroni, the number-two man in the PDS, became vice premier...
...Delors-style infrastructure policies (not just material but nonmaterial infrastructure, networks, telecommunications, and vocational training...
...This is the center-left...
...M.D'A.: An identity is being formed, and there are strong similarities in the cultural debates [within different European left partiesEds...
...Now that would be very beautiful, but I would hope that the church does not contemplate a scheme in which the right governs while the left, together with the priests, organizes solidarity...
...G.B.: The economy, however, moves rapidly beyond state confines...
...But there is more to be said in favor of the left: an ability to plan, to renew, and once again to pursue new ways of building society...
...This is a very traditional division of labor, and it has already been tried...
...It is a criticism of the left "by the left...
...G.B.: The major component of the Italian left is heir to the tradition of the Communist Party...
...In substance, the center-left represents a form of government that answers the needs of complex societies...
...We have been the government in Italy for a year and a half, and the immigration law we fostered was not what the right wanted...
...Let's face the hardest aspect of this "new social compromise," the question of unemployment...
...M.D'A.: Let's say that European public opinion and the left met halfway...
...In these conditions, what does "the left" mean now...
...At the same time we have proposed constitutional reforms that would allow immigrants who are not Italian citizens but live in Italy to vote in local elecPOLITICS ABROAD tions...
...M.D'A.: In Italy the center-left has taken shape as the Olive Tree, and the reason is very simple: the Catholic center wants to maintain its independent political identity for historical reasons, and will not be absorbed into the left...
...The objective of full employment in the traditional sense of having the same job in permanence no longer seems realistic...
...So the goal we must set is for everyone to have a role in society through work...
...G.B.: The PDS does not govern alone...
...Indeed, the opposition in Parliament has been obstructionist on this score...
...M.D'A.: The center-left is not just a coalition of political forces...
...M.D'A.: This is not the first time I have heard the thesis that the left has become the sole heir to political ability, techné politiki...
...It's also the evaluation by many politicians of the European left...
...Naturally the left confronts formidable problems in these pursuits...
...Our law is concerned with crime and public-safety measures, certainly, but it also creates new forms of inclusion and recognizes newcomers' rights, including welfare rights, that did not exist before...
...it responds to the fact that the traditionally left bloc of society no longer composes a majority...
...Our law protecting poor children is totally innovative, and I don't think the Berlusconi government ever contemplated anything like it...
...On one hand it is surely necessary to think deeply about the past errors of the Italian left, the responsibilities of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and the maintenance beyond any tolerable limit of links with "real socialism": Togliatti's Stalinism, Berlinguer's limitations...
...The center-left is a project of social alliance that goes beyond the traditional welfare state bloc...
...M.D'A.: There are several kinds of action: a policy of support to industry that will stimu12 n DISSENT / Spring 1998 late growth in traditionally underdeveloped areas, such as southern Italy, Ireland, and Wales...
...Here I agree with Delors, who is ahead of Blair, because he understands that the margin for action grows narrower not only for the left but for politics in general without the supranational dimension...
...So they have seen an increase of 3.3 percent (for the first time since 1992...
...but "how much room does politics have...
...I wonder if anyone wants to go back to it...
...There is a substantial, even brutal difference between left and right that I have summarized in these figures...
...G.B.: Nevertheless, Antonio Gramsci really was a communist—he was the PCI's founder...
...M.D'A.: No, but politics—unless you forgo a commitment to govern—aims at winning a majority of votes...
...It is no accident that European socialism does not perceive Gramsci as a totalitarian thinker, as did Augusto Del Noce [the Catholic spiritualist philosopher who inspired the ideology of the Christian Democratic Party in postwar Italy—Eds.], but as a heretical Marxist, even more than Karl Kautsky...
...My point is that the center-left is the social and cultural formula for governing complex societies, a standpoint that is open to globalization but attentive to the interests of labor and solidarity...
...It is part of a center-left coalition, the Olive Tree, which includes Greens and liberal/Christian centrists...
...If you compare our positions on welfare state reform with the British Labor Party's "Report on Social Justice" you will find much accord...
...The new government acted decisively to enable Italy to join the European Monetary Union, an objective that seemed almost out of reach in the past because of the country's financial difficulties...
...There are two reasons...
...M.D'A.: The differences are along an axis running from the most conservative defense of the traditional social compromise to the most liberal positions...
...How many people view continuity positively and how many negatively...
...For the first time the Italian government has allocated a trillion lire for some 1.5 million children living below the poverty level...
...From this standpoint, Blair is the most conservative, the most nationalist, although he is the most innovative figure on the liberal-conservative axis...
...The liberal left and the traditional social democratic left are also, on another axis, part of a political debate about a "national left" versus a "European left...
...M.D'A.: Yes, we have been looking at how the public feels about continuity between the PDS and the PCI and, on the right, between the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which dissolved in 1995, and its heir, the right-wing National Alliance (AN...
...In Italy we have taken action to balance public accounts in a way that has won the recognition of the International Monetary Fund, but since we have been in government, salaried workers have seen their pay rise 4.9 percent while inflation rose 1.6 percent...
...It is also a cultural project, based on a new syncretism joining the left with currents of religious thought and of liberal thought...
...We are not uncaring about "the latecomers," but it is true that we try to deal with outsiders within a framework in which solidarity is one piece of policy, not its center...
...On the other hand, there was a left that, partly because of its defeats, did not just continue twenty years of defensiveness, but wanted to try something new...
...I am convinced that Italian bipolarity will keep this new form...
...education policies...
...In the subsequent elections, D'Alema fashioned a new center-left alliance known as the "Olive Tree," including the Catholic People's Party (born from the dissolution of the Christian Democrats), various left groups, Greens, and liberal centrists...
...G.B.: From time to time Gianfranco Fini, the AN secretary, seems close to accelerating his Party's reconsideration of the past...
...The right would have acted differently, that is for sure...
...And, at least for us in Italy, it is indispensable that the welfare state be reformed...
...Make no mistake: shorter working hours are neither a magic wand nor a new Moloch or false god that can take on the past role of growth...
...G.B.: Is the left still politically interesting for the European voting public...
...Our governing political coalition reflects a social alliance that includes the forces of the middle class, the self-employed, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the higher levels of skilled labor, the most open and innovative parts of the business world, the masses of women and the young who are traditionally outside the labor market, and hired help...
...Discussion continues, but it is no longer a matter of political abjuration...
...G.B.: The left spent many years building and then supporting postwar Europe's model of a welfare society...
...A dual move: voters' fatigue and fear of neoliberalism, plus the offer of a modern and flexible form of social wellbeing...
...Reducing working hours is helpful, but if we count on that alone we are bound to fail...
...There is a structural difference, different jobs, not a difference of culture...
...At the same time we must avoid at all costs the formation of a dual society...
...G.B.: A survey...
...The first is fear...
...That is why they turn to a political force with the antibodies to meet this threat...
...G.B.: So what positive action can be taken...
...He argued that both the "so-called progressives" and the "so-called conservatives" seem insensitive to those on the margins of society, powerless outsiders, immigrants...
...There will still be unemployed people, but there must not be long-term unemployment and people excluded from the community...
...How would its program differ from that of the current coalition...
...In other words: Blair, Jospin, and D'Alema are probably better than their adversaries, but then what great difference does it make...
...G.B.: Does today's European left have a shared culture of political and social innovation...
...The prime minister of Portugal wrote to the PDS congress: "Dear comrades of the PDS, welcome to European socialism, you who have contributed the innovative thinking of Antonio Gramsci...
...M.D'A.: And indeed, nation-states must act within the framework of transnational macroeconomic strategies: the need for compatibility acts as a constraint and can undo policies...
...G.B.: So you think that there is something irreversible in this combination...
...Structural unemployment can be partially converted into mobility...
...They seem to be growing smaller in an era of global economy and competition, in a Europe that abides by the Maastricht standards, when government programs are all subject to very strong constraints—reduction of the publicsector deficit and spending cuts for pensions, health, and social security...
...There were more opportunities but more anxieties as well...
...But let there be no mistake about it, the role of nation-states is still important and will continue to be so...
...M.D'A.: That is not true...
...It implies a corresponding idea—that the right is composed entirely of idiots...
...In short, some people say "repent" for your past, while others say, "be thankful for it...
...this is just an epiphenomenal and secondary aspect, so to speak, of what is happening...
...M.D'A.: That's true...
...Naturally I think they should be encouraged, not discouraged...
...In 1994 the PDS ran in national elections at the head of a coalition of "progressives," but was defeated by an alliance led by the television tycoon Silvio Berlusconi...
...I'm not the only one convinced of this...
...The fact that the June 1997 summit of European governments in Luxembourg finally talked about unemployment and decided to institute Europewide monitoring of national policies and to make more resources available is due to pressure by and discussion among European socialists...
...G.B.: Is the left in power less sensitive to outsiders than the left in opposition...
...M.D'A.: There will be a center and a left in this alliance for a long time...
...G.B.: Everybody who has studied the problem believes full employment is a thing of the past, that solutions must be found that permit populations to live with less work...
...It is no accident that Blair, who has a single party and is allied with no one, also describes his policy as center-left...
...If attempts to reform and rebuild society are not merely to be the management of globalization, they will have to transcend the limits of the nation-state...
...Otherwise politics would become only a matter of bearing witness...
...There are those in Italy who stress the role of coalition per se and those who stress the role of the left within a coalition...
...M.D'A.: Here, too, negative feelings about continuity are decreasing...
...OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] forecasts contemplate a phase of expansion, but its effects on employment will be minimal if entrusted to spontaneous mechanisms...
...I think that syncretism is useful for the evolution of political thought in moments of crisis, while ideological purity is a sign of sclerosis...
...So you start to wonder why European voters, after the neoliberal phase of recent years, are turning to the left in Great Britain, France—more or less everywhere...
...Some positions are a bit more liberal and others a bit more conservative, but there is greater awareness that, in the end, only transnational struggles can meet the employment problem...
...The mirage of a global competition that would "make us all rich" produced contradictory results...
...Naturally this does not mean that unemployment can be reduced without growth, which is still a necessary though not sufficient condition for creating jobs...
...Let's first make it clear what a strategy for fighting unemployment cannot be...
...We are conducting a survey on it...
...He rebukes policies that fail to sustain institutions and agencies of human solidarity, leaving the task solely to the church...
...European public opinion is afraid that the logic of global competition will destroy the forms of social and civil organization that have characterized our continent, the part of the world where life is best...
...But it is also true that the PDS's strength partly comes from its communist heritage, and this made it possible for the party to become the linchpin of a new governing majority...
...We lack the means first to provide a worker in a crisis sector of the economy with a subsidy in a transition phase, then give him the necessary training, and finally to find him a place in another sector...
...But there is another line of differences: the line that concerns European union...
...The claim is that, increasingly, there is no great difference between the two sides...
...The left was accused of being conservative, defending a status quo, while the right seemed innovative...
...G.B.: What do you mean by "mobility management...
...M.D'A.: They are groping along, exploiting situations and improvising...
...I see a difference here not between the left and the church but between politics and social commitment...
...for instance, between the more state-activist line DISSENT / Spring 1998 n 13 POLITICS ABROAD of the French Socialists and the more liberal line of British New Labor, and within the German SPD between Oskar Lafontaine ("the left should mind the business of the left") and the innovative Gerhard Schroeder, who is aspiring to the party's leadership...
...It made a new social pact necessary...
...The PDS is often asked to "repent" for the errors and crimes of communism...
...And that reform movement had a cultural originality of its own that did not come from orthodox communism...
...On one hand, society felt the pinch of insecurity after ten to fifteen years of neoliberal revolution...
...Does the AN's past hurt its legitimacy...
...A political program has to be concerned with development and the production of wealth, too...
...Likewise a new culture of the left is being formed in Europe...
...M.D'A.: Here we touch on a sore spot for rigid systems, as in Italy...
...When it was formed, there was a splitoff that formed the Communist Refoundation Party...
...A portion of the public, about 10 percent or 11 percent, has good feelings about the PDS because they see its continuity with the 16 n DISSENT / Spring 1998 Communist Party as positive...
...For that matter, even Marxism, when it was originally conceived, was a form of syncretism...
...G.B.: The European left, including the Italian left, has been criticized for minimizing the differences between left and right, both in political practice and in thought...
...M.D'A.: Yes, I know full well that he was a communist...
...The second reason is political: the European left knew how to find a new life for itself and was willing to revise the social compromise that characterized social democracy in this century...
...Only 9 percent of our citizens perceive the relationship between PCI and PDS as a negative...
...G.B.: But how much weight should the left have and how much the center...
...In the past the center did not want to be forced to choose between alliance with the left and alliance with the right...
...The central objective of a new European welfare state must be to avoid this breach...
...Clearly, this barb hurts the left more than the right...
...We already tried that road, when we created the progressive electoral front in 1994, and we lost...
...policies for reducing working hours...
...The alliance among a European liberal-socialist left, a moderate democratic force that is basically Catholic, and an environmental force is now a strategic fact...
...The curious and even charming paradox is that this resurgence has happened just when doubts have been raised about how much room the left has to act...
...Well, it can not be based on traditional policies of expansion...
...MASSIMO D'ALEMA became the secretary of Italy's Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in 1994, when he replaced Achille Occhetto, the party leader who, five years earlier, began the transformation that led to the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the establishment in 1991 of this new political organization...
...it is static, corporative, and presumes that a given worker will always have the same job...
...This is a serious problem for AN, I wouldn't say of legitimization but of recognition...
...But there is also a left of solidarity, of nongovernmental organizations and of volunteers, who are also of the left, not just the church, and that left does another job: organizing solidarity...
...That would have been a real qualitative leap forward, which is what Delors asked for, but the time was not yet ripe for it...
...We might call it a line running from Lafontaine to Tony Blair by way of Lionel Jospin...
...So to understand the European left, you have to consider two coordinates...
...In 1993 a White Paper by Jacques Delors, then president of the European Community, outlined the problem on a Europe-wide scale...
...Or is its commonality today, among the different parties across borders, really just a matter of descent...
...But the AN has another problem, a problem outside Italy...
...G.B.: So is there a divorce between a government of the left and solidarity politics...
...Europe has a significant functioning model in Holland, where many of the policies I suggest have been introduced, including part-time work, a strong system of training and retooling workers, and welfare support for mobility...
...MASSIMO D'ALEMA: I will try to answer the question by modifying it: the issue is not "how much room does the left have...
...What is crucial in defining the left's room to move and the nature of the new social pact is this: creating an inclusive system in which a citizen who is jobless for a certain length of time will still remain "inside" a system that in this phase provides economic support, vocational training, the tools for finding a new job possibility, and a chance, if not today, then tomorrow...
...Whether it takes form as a single party or as alliances will depend on the different historical realities in each country...
...What probably arouses the greatest curiosity about a leader of the left is how much room he or she has for action...
...The summit did not, however, address the reduction of unemployment as a criterion of convergence for European unity...
...The same criticism has come from the Catholic Church, by one of its most important figures, Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, archbishop of Milan...
...But since then individual governments and the European Community as a whole have been unable to solve the problem of structural unemployment...
...This is the great challenge, the greatest challenge that the left, political parties generally, and European governments have so far been unable to meet...
...Without that it is hard to practice solidarity...
...But the very fact that the parties and unions of the left fought for the welfare state led in the end to a long chain of DISSENT / Spring 1998 n 11 POLITICS ABROAD defeats...
...Berlusconi's government fell in 1995...
...M.D'A.: I am convinced that what is needed is a universal, extensive, and neutral form of welfare, and this cannot be achieved by corporative means...
...So one must construct a balanced platform that is attentive to the interests of outsiders but cannot be centered on their interests, otherwise one cannot govern, that's all there is to it...
...What are the prospects of a project that unifies and coordinates social democratic parties across Europe...
...that is, to moving workers from job to job, shifting them from declining sectors to growing sectors...
...M.D'A.: There is some truth in both...
...G.B.: There are also strong contrasts...
...It now seems certain that Italy will be part of the "Euro" from the beginning...
...G.B.: But it had the features of systematic doctrine from the very start...
...M.D'A.: Everyone goes his own way, but one might say that in the present phase different routes are being compared...
...Paradoxically, the cultural tradition of the PCI was more open to liberal thought than were some European social democratic parties...
...There have been many fantasies in response, but it is clear that the main instrument will have to be the idea of "citizenship income...
...Strategies of employment and welfarestate reform move together, for only by operating together can they combat the danger of a society split in two...
...The European left is already discussing this, and possible common objectives are emerging, so there is a certain link...
...There is also a socially committed left that is certainly much more attentive to the problems of the marginalized...
...All these have to be combined and accompanied by mobility management...
...You can't say that the problem was unforeseen...
...the numbers are higher than twenty million...
...All this makes for a complex relationship between the PDS and its own heritage...
...What practical margins are available these days to a political party that is in government and still considers itself "left...
...GIANCARLO BOSETTI: Today thirteen out of the fifteen Western European countries are governed by parties of the left or center-left...
...The formulas vary, as do the ways they are applied, but once European monetary union is a reality, once pension systems are brought in line with demographic trends, once public acPOLITICS ABROAD counts are no longer in imbalance—at that point conditions should allow a new page in welfare policy, at least in Europe: to guarantee every citizen a minimum for survival, thus permitting also the utmost mobility...
...The Olive Tree thus encouraged a split in the center, allowing the development of democratic bipolarity in Italy...
...Can it still speak to the soul of Europeans, or is it just more capable of producing clever and pragmatic leaders...
...It is no longer a political theme, in the sense that it is no longer a decisive problem for any substantial part of public opinion...
...G.B.: What about the right...
...That is not something Del Noce invented...
...While the Italian bourgeoisie has been rather generous with the AN, the broader European political world is less so, because the mainstream European right is antifascist...
...If we want to speak of the political space of the left we have to talk about this...
...The Olive Tree was a great innovation, because it gave the center a chance to maintain its independence within an organic alliance with the left...
...M.D'A.: Let's be clear that the standpoint 14 n DISSENT / Spring 1998 of a political force that intends to govern is different from that of someone who wants to perform acts of solidarity...
...I would not go farther than that in advancing or rejecting parallels...
...In any case I maintain that the relationship of the PDS to the old Communist Party—and this may sound banal—can be considered a burden and an opportunity at the same time, for there is no doubt that even the Italian Communist Party had its own reform movement within, and not just for propaganda...
...Society must make sure that everyone can survive the passage between the different phases of employment, unemployment, and new employment thanks to citizenship income and, together with that, the right to vocational training, which is decisive if we don't want the unemployed to remain "outside" forever...
...The European and the American models are both flawed from this point of view, because both produce dualism: in Europe it takes the form of long-term structural unemployment, while in the United States it takes the form of a division between a medium-high-skilled working world and a world of occasional work, poverty, and social marginality...
...Politics must include solidarity but within the context of an equilibrium that must take account of the interests of the whole society...
...M.D'A.: Yet it arose from a mixture of heterogeneous elements: classical German philosophy, the tradition of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the French Revolution, and British economics...
...Who is right...
...However much room there is in Europe for politics (be it little or much), it is in fact almost totally occupied by the left...
...Some intellectuals scorn what they brand the excessive opportunism of left leaders who take over "positions of the right," the culture of economic competition, and so forth, in order to win votes...
...Instead of cutting welfare spending, we introduced a highly progressive tax for entry into the European monetary system, with most of the burden on the medium-high brackets...
...To take just two examples, Perry Anderson's review of Norberto Bobbio's book Right and Left (in the Italian periodical Reset, January 1997) and Mitchell Cohen's essay "Why I'm Still `Left' " (Dissent, Spring 1997...
...But what if the left governed alone...
...The communist past and the past of the Italian communists are still rather hot issues...
...G.B.: Here we get back to my initial question: how much room is there for the left...
...policies for fostering flexibility in the labor market...
...Within this coalition, my aim is to foster a political formation that embraces the different components and traditions of the DISSENT / Spring 1998 n 15 POLITICS ABROAD Italian left, increases its representative potential, and can win over 30 percent of the electorate...
...And Gramsci still seems to me to have something vital to say...
...But Gramsci's thought helped to break with communist orthodoxy, not just because of his criticism of Stalinism, but also his criticism of statism and the economics of POLITICS ABROAD social democracy...
...There cannot be serious talk of combating unemployment without social policies like these...
...G.B.: This may be the medium-term main thrust of a new economic and social policy according to Massimo D'Alema, but can we say the same thing for the European left...
...After the elections in Germany [scheduled to be held by fall 1998Eds.], we shall probably have to delete the "almost...
...I won't say that we have already made all the possible criticisms...
...The latter now accounts for about 9 percent of the votes (as against 20 percent for the PDS...
Vol. 45 • April 1998 • No. 2
