Behind the Italian Crisis

...The Communists are tirelessly at work filling the political vacuum thus provided...

...The Italian Government has long been aware of this situation, but has so far failed to come up with a formula which would cut off the Communist party's income at the source...

...Yet basically the vast majority of the Italian nation is honest and freedom-loving, ready to rally around any alternative which would offer them a better life on a democratic basis...

...The Soviet Embassy gave 40,000...

...They much prefer to spend their money on luxuries, with a flashy opulence and ostentation un-equaled in more prosperous lands...

...The law proved a prime contributor to the defeat sustained by the minor democratic parties...

...Quite apart from "Moscow gold," the Communists have two legitimate sources of income...

...The trouble with this is that rich Italians are not only reluctant about paying their taxes...

...In the pre-election days, when the Government commanded a thumping majority, it dragged its feet on vital reform measures, tolerated abuses and corruption, and pandered to the over-privileged, especially in matters of tax evasion...

...Though by no means a single cohesive entity, it is composed of various groups and leaders, all of Catholic confession, who feel the urgency for a positive program devised to combat unemployment, raise living standards, reapportion wealth and income, and thereby present the underprivileged Italian masses with a Christian and democratic alternative to Communism, which has been steadily gaining ground of late...

...The difference is between a job done by professionals and by amateurs...

...Behind the Italian Crisis While the need for social change pushed Italian voters left, Pella's regime moved right By Edmund Stevens Giuseppe Pella was turned out of office by the democratic and labor elements within his own Christian Democratic party...

...This obstinacy forced CISL into united-front strike actions with the Communist CGIL, which in most instances easily captured the initiative...

...The excuse given by Ministry of Foreign Trade officials is that it is all entirely legal and above board...

...Pella had offered Gronchi the post of Coordinator of Economic and Social Policy, but Gronchi turned it down...

...of all those whose shortsighted, selfish greed has played into Communist hands...

...Awareness of this urgency is not confined to the party's left wing, but is felt to some degree by all the party leaders, including Party Secretary and ex-Premier Alcide de Gasperi...

...Should Italy succumb, it would be mainly the fault of the wealthy privileged classes—of the big industrialists who, rather than help build up the free trade unions as a bulwark against Communism in their plants, prefer to play footsie with the Red labor bosses in order to keep the workers divided...

...And everywhere the gains are mainly at the expense of the Social Democrats and the other two minor secular Center parties, the Liberals and Republicans...

...The rate of growth is uneven and seldom spectacular—a few hundred votes added here, a few thousand there...

...of the landowners who, rather than see a sturdy class of peasant owners established as a stabilizing force in the countryside, have fought land reform tooth and nail...

...But everywhere the tide appears to be running in the same direction...

...His political nose told him there was little future in such a post in a cabinet which would continue to lean on the Monarchists, a sure obstacle to any serious attempt at social reform...

...As with off-year trends in the United States, the Communist advance in Italy is revealed by the random samplings of local elections...

...This awareness was coupled with the realization that, whereas the masses (including the Christian Democratic rank-and-file) were moving leftward, the Pella Government was tending more and more to the right...

...This gives them a tremendous advantage over the democratic parties, whose local organizations are for the most part casual affairs, staffed by part-time volunteers...

...The main revenue is in the form of commissions on Italian trade with the Soviet bloc, amounting to somewhere around $50 million a year...

...The Communists follow up their propaganda with thoroughgoing house-to-house canvassing by trained full-time party functionaries...

...While this is largely true, it is also true that the democratic Center today is suffering because of previous mistakes and wasted opportunities...

...The Christian Democrats are aware of this handicap and have long talked of putting their party work on a regular precinct basis with full-time functionaries...

...The Christian Democratic left wing controls approximately half the party's Parliamentary seats...

...The democratic parties enjoy no regular sources of income, but are entirely dependent on voluntary contributions...

...If this is the case with the powerful Christian Democrats, picture the plight of their "poor relations," the minor Center parties...

...This time, the list of donations to the Christmas-gifts-for-the-kiddies drive held every year by the Communist paper Unit...

...The Pella Government was either unable or unwilling to make the Confindustria yield an inch, despite the desperate pleas of Giulio Pastore, CISL Secretary, and other Christian trade-union leaders...

...Last winter, one entire legislative session was completely taken up with sterile wrangling over the highly debatable majority-premium electoral law, which the Christian Democratic leadership was bent on ramming through in defiance of public opinion...

...Every trade transaction between Italy and the Communist world, including China, is channeled through import-export firms specially established for the purpose and Communist-controlled, which pay into the party treasury commissions of 1 or 2 per cent of the total value...

...Recently the Confindustria, the Italian industrial employers' organization, obdurately refused to grant even minor concessions in response to the moderate requests advanced by CISL, the Christian free-trade-union organization...

...This, it is contended, built up" Nenni's prestige and forced the Government to seek the support of the Monarchists and to raise the Trieste issue to divert attention from economic problems...

...They are equally close-fisted when it comes to financing those parties which stand between them and destruction...

...They alone, of any Italian political party, could afford a new national campaign at this time without straining their resources...

...The party is still about $3 million in the hole as a result of last spring's election...

...But they have so far been balked by lack of funds, which at present do not even suffice to meet barest running expenses...

...Their propaganda activities are sporadic and mainly confined to election campaigns, whereas after elections is when the Communists really go to work...

...Invariably in these recent contests the Communists have bettered their score in the same locality in the Parliamentary elections of last June...

...It all sounds so plausible and sensible that even the skeptical are lulled into agreement...

...The lesser of these is the dues paid by some two million members...

...Despite the increasing note of urgency in some quarters, not all those concerned have learned from these past mistakes...

...in practice, this would have meant bringing into the Cabinet the Communist Trojan Horse, Pietrd Nenni...

...was headed by President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi and movie director Vittorio de Sica, each of whom gave 100,000 lire...

...The growth of Communism is largely ascribed to the tactics of Social Democrat leader Giuseppe Sar-agat and his insistence on an "opening to the left" as the sine qua non of Social Democratic support for the Government...

...Thus, for example, when the Fiat automobile concern sells several hundred trucks to Poland, the Italian CP takes its cut...

...The gap between Pella and his party's left wing was strikingly illustrated when Giovanni Gronchi, Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies and a left-wing leader, refused to enter Pella's reshaped cabinet...

...Together, these two factors tumbled Pella...

...The Communists, by contrast, are in excellent financial shape...

...The growth of Communism is not all just a matter of governmental do-nothingness and disunity or of the lack of purpose, program and direction which prevents the democratic forces from appealing to the workers and underprivileged...

...Moreover, when the Communists launch a drive for funds for some ostensibly charitable purpose (and in their case one may be sure that charity begins at home), they enlist sizable contributions from many non-Communist sources, including rich industrialists who view this as a sort of insurance premium against trade-union trouble and who-knows-what-the-morrow-may-bring...

...Day by day, week by week, month by month, they hammer away with slogans, demands, appeals, couched in practical terms, attuned to the immediate interests of their audience, soft-pedaling or avoiding broader political issues until the proper opportunity...