Big Shift in Italy
TORTORA, VINCENT R.
Reunification of the two Socialist parties on a democratic platform would create a powerful 'third force' between the Christian Democrats and the Communists Big Shift in Italy By Vincent R....
...Unity on a democratic platform would isolate the Communists, injecting a formidable third party between them and the governing Christian Democrats...
...Pietro Nenni and his Italian Socialist party (PSI), long relegated to the shadows of Italian politics because of their "unity of action" pact with the Communists, have suddenly taken center stage...
...Nenni's party, on the other hand, gained heavily at the expense of the Communists—sharply reversing the 1946-53 electoral trend...
...One of them, Unita Popolare, led by former Premier Ferruccio Parri, disapproved of Saragat's collaboration with the Christian Democrats...
...From 1952 through July 1955, a strong faction headed by Rodolfo Morandi threatened to split the PSI and go over to the Communist party...
...L'Unita published a rather mild article advising Nenni not to follow "wicked roads...
...Not until the summer of 1955 did he feel that he had real control of his party...
...Obviously weary of watching national policies unfold without him, Nenni late in August proposed rapprochement with the Social Democrats (PSDI), who had left the PSI in 1947 in protest over Nenni's pro-Communist orientation...
...In the administrative elections last May, the Socialists, Social Democrats and two Socialist splinter groups garnered a total of 5.5 million votes...
...Senator Mariani, a die-hard follower of Morandi, told me that the party leadership was then teetering precariously between Morandi and Nenni...
...The Socialist International, through Senator Commin, began its efforts to bring Nenni over in July, after the scathing denunciation of Soviet practices in his critique of the Khrushchev "secret" speech...
...Under such leadership, the Christian Democrats would be more likely to cooperate with a united democratic Socialist party than with rightist groups...
...Conditions in 1956 are certainly not those of 1949...
...In the past, the Social Democrats have always seemed more conciliatory toward the PSI than vice versa...
...Since the 1953 elections, and more concertedly since the PSI Congress in Turin in 1955, Nenni's party has preached an "opening to the left...
...The Communists got 6 million, and the Christian Democrats 12 million...
...Even the Atlantic Pact, which Nenni had denounced since its inception as a "tool of Western militarism," now leaves him indifferent...
...His most recent reference came in the article attacking the Khrushchev report...
...Government measures against them had sharply reduced their power and wealth...
...But almost certainly it would drive the neo-Fascists, Monarchists and other extreme Right groups into virtual isolation...
...Socialist unity would, quite likely, include two splinter Socialist parties which, because of disagreement with both the PSI and PSDI, have remained independent...
...This may have been the final stroke which pushed Nenni into the momentous meeting in the Alps...
...The other party, Unione Socialistica Itali-ana, was formed a few years ago by two disaffected Communists, Cucchi and Magnani, who found the PSDI too bourgeois and the PSI too Communist...
...Italian Communists were startled by Nenni's action...
...Nenni criticized the tendency to dramatize the meeting, and insisted: "Any Socialist reunification must be very gradual, taking place in a succession of parallel phases, constantly cognizant of the realities of the situation...
...Nenni, a 65-year-old veteran of many political wars, took the initiative, inviting Social Democratic leader Giuseppe Saragat to his retreat in the French Alps...
...After the meeting, Commin told reporters he felt "good progress" had been made...
...During the last year particularly, they have spoken of the Nenni Socialists as prodigal brothers...
...Hitherto conservative leaders of the governing party, like ex-Premier Pella, have shifted perceptibly closer to Nenni...
...Commin was assigned to this task by Britain's Morgan Phillips, President of the Socialist International...
...His most hopeful comment was: "We have been examining a program that would regulate in a new way the relations between Socialists and Communists...
...Nenni told his party's central committee that formulation of a new pact with Togliatti would be "useless," and that their relations would have to be based on "realistic facts...
...This decision, he noted, came as a result of "growing discomfort and coldness between us...
...He has written for numerous publications, including the Reporter, the New Republic, the Progressive and the Socialist Call...
...Nenni's views on an "opening to the left" have made a serious impression on the Christian Democrats as well as the Communists...
...At the same time, conservatives within the Christian Democratic party might bolt and join other rightist parties as a defensive measure...
...Saragat declared: "Solid bases for reunification have been established...
...The two men discussed the future of their parties for almost an entire day, with French Socialist Senator Pierre Commin acting as mediator...
...Nenni has always been an ardent Francophile and he was enraged by Soviet support of Nasser...
...There was only one way to read these returns: a distinct swing toward moderate leftism...
...While Togliatti was racing to France to talk to Nenni, a disorganized polemic raged in Communist headquarters over the position to be taken by the party newspaper, L'Unita...
...Obviously, it took Nenni a year to acquire enough confidence in the loyalty of his followers to attempt rapprochement with Saragat...
...This seems quite probable because the Christian Democratic party itself has shifted toward the left, largely under the gentle coaxing of President Giovanni Gronchi, Premier Antonio Segni and Party Secretary Amintore Fanfani...
...This group, incidentally, may have set the merger process in motion when it tightened its relations with Nenni in July...
...Nenni defined this as "offering the Christian Democrats the support of the Socialists in Parliament in order to carry out a series of social reforms...
...Meanwhile, Togliatti, who had been expecting such a rupture for some time and expressed fears of it in a May 16 speech at Turin, requested and was granted several other meetings with Nenni...
...In cities like Milan, Leghorn and Avellino, Nenni's party has also cooperated with the Social Democrats...
...When no one party or bloc had a sufficient majority to organize the city council, the Nenni Socialists and the Communists (on the former's initiative) threw their support to Saragat Social Democrats...
...The party's leaders and programs were being challenged frequently by the membership...
...In any event, should Socialist unity he achieved the Christian Democrats seem destined to lose the predominant position they have held in the Italian political Center for a decade...
...Speaking of the cooperation between the two Socialist parties on the local level, Nenni says: "We have learned that, before putting the emphasis on organic reunification, the problem of a series of communal political struggles must be faced and resolved...
...Most important, probably, were the results of the local elections last May...
...It is necessary to wait —but not too long...
...It must be assumed, from the optimism of Commin and Saragat, that Nenni made significant concessions on at least three points on which the Social Democrats have been firm: (1) that a unified Socialist party would never aid or support the Communists...
...Quite understandably, the Communists are deeply troubled...
...In 14 out of 16 regions, the Communists lost votes...
...In it, Nenni said: "The concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' must be reconsidered and reassessed in relation to a society where the influence and weight of the proletariat and workers in general have become the determining factors in public life and where the state reflects, in the democratically and socially more advanced countries, a relationship between the classes which is in continuous evolution...
...Only in July did the Nenni Socialists begin to make encouraging statements...
...At the same time, Communist leaders in many areas have looked the other way when certain PSI measures paralleled those of the Christian Democrats, particularly in trade-union matters...
...Still another factor has given Nenni new freedom of action...
...Reunification of the two Socialist parties on a democratic platform would create a powerful 'third force' between the Christian Democrats and the Communists Big Shift in Italy By Vincent R. Tortora Vincent R. Tortora is a free-lance American journalist who has just returned from one of his frequent visits to Italy...
...Both these splinter groups have expressed interest in unifying the entire Socialist movement...
...A final factor, according to Tullio Vecchietti, editor of the PSI organ Avanti, was Soviet policy in the Middle East...
...The best summary of Nenni's views on the Atlantic Pact appeared in France Observateur, which quoted him on August 30 as saying: "We shall remain neutralists, but our position with respect to the Atlantic Pact has undergone an evolution, much as the Pact itself has...
...He added: "We have never expected that an agreement made with us would be automatically extended to the Communists...
...Extreme rightist parties also lost popular support...
...Early this year...
...One of Sara-gat's aides has predicted that the Communist party, on its own, will lose more than a million votes by the next election...
...2) that it would continue to evolve through democratic processes, and (3) that no effort would be made to direct Italy's foreign policy against the West...
...The threat subsided only with Mo-randi's death...
...Finally, Giancarlo Pajetta, a follower of Togliatti's possibilismo (the belief that almost everything can be achieved by persuasion and patience), won out over "give 'em hell" comrades...
...But Khrushchev's attack on Stalin, whom Nenni had seemed to idolize, was not the only important factor in making Nenni amenable...
...How great an impact a unified Socialist movement would have is unpredictable...
...Party leader Pal-miro Togliatti was on vacation...
...But on October 5 the PSI directorate summarily abrogated the "unity of action" pact with the Communists...
...Without the PSI, the Communists can no longer impress thousands of Italian voters with a massive monolith of the Left...
...After the conference, however, the two parties appointed a committee of policymakers (now meeting daily in Rome) to work out common ground for eventual merger...
...As a result, Communists and extreme leftists within his own party have charged him with "obscurantism" and "right-deviationism...
...His impetuous second-in-command, Luigi Longo, burst out with a declaration that Nenni was splitting the working class and becoming a lackey of Saragat...
...In fact, it has been a long time since the Communists have provided the PSI with the financial help it had previously come to expect...
...While Nenni's house seemed in order, the Communist camp was not...
...Although a later announcement declared that "consultation" would continue between the two parties, Nenni appears to have satisfied Social Democratic leaders that the united front is over...
...They had come to rely on the 3.5 million popular votes and 75 Parliamentary seats (not to mention the aura of respectability) which Nenni's party provided...
...At the same time, the Social Democrats, almost obliterated in the 1953 national election, made impressive gains...
...According to Social Democratic Party Secretary Matteo Matteotti, Nenni feels strongly about this point and has argued it repeatedly and heatedly with the Communists...
...Little has been said since in Communist journals...
...To all intents and purposes, the "unity of action" pact, which was formally dissolved on October 5. was already a dead letter...
...They conceded that "the European Social Democrats were tending to liberate themselves from politics," and that it was "possible and conceivable" that the unity of the working class would not be imperiled by reunification of the two Socialist parties...
...An agreement between the two parties, mutually antagonistic for almost a decade, would considerably alter the political lineup...
...Nenni's present position has evolved from four major modifications of his viewpoint over the last three years: -In a number of speeches and articles, Nenni has expressed himself in opposition to the concept of "dictatorship of the proletariat...
Vol. 39 • October 1956 • No. 43
