Italy's Temporary Solution
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
THE 'MONOCOLORE' Italy's Temporary Solution By Silvio F. Senigallia Rome The history of Italian Socialism is an endless series of conflicts, divisions and mergers. And the century-old clash...
...For all their harassment of democratic governments since 1947, the Communists have been revolutionaries in name only...
...In reality the Party's attitude, as outlined by Berlinguer first at its national congress in Bologna and later at the Communist summit conference in Moscow, was one of the major factors precipitating the July 1969 Socialist schism...
...Most foreign correspondents covering Rome during the July crisis voiced considerable pessimism...
...These people are certainly opposed to any sudden and radical reversal of policy...
...The danger from the Left, on the other hand, is real if still only potential...
...That could take the form of a split and the consequent formation of a conservative Catholic party or of a massive shift to the Right by the entire organization...
...Yet their shifting to an anti anti-Communist stand is quite visible...
...While it is true that large sectors of the middle class, worried about striking workers and rioting students, pressed for national and city administrations based on law and order, it must be remembered that there is no Italian de Gaulle or group of ambitious Army officers planning another Fascist adventure...
...Later, he became convinced that the pci could conquer positions of power within the bourgeois state and bring about the basic transformation of the institutions from the inside...
...And the century-old clash between reformists and revolutionaries, which in 1921 led to the formation of the Italian Communist party (pci), has brought forth another split...
...They felt that sooner rather than later an authoritarian regime would emerge from the absurdly complex situation brought about by the irresponsible attitude of the political parties...
...Oddly enough, although most of the dc electorate is basically conservative, the party's membership and especially its upper echelon has been leaning increasingly toward the Left...
...The maneuvering is still in an early, nebulous phase...
...And the July events put the spotlight on the failure of the Center-Left coalition formed in 1962 with the idea of bringing Pietro Nenni's Socialists PALMIRO TOGLIATTI permanently into the democratic fold, isolating the Communists, and enacting urgently needed social legislation...
...Those Christian Democratic and Socialist politicians who are beginning to believe that the revival of the Center-Left coalition is impossible and that the only way out of the present mess is some kind of agreement with the Communists, continue to be very ambiguous in their public statements...
...After six weeks of complicated and fruitless negotiations, totally incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of the Italian people, a temporary solution was found...
...Basically ambivalent, it nevertheless had a definite impact on Italian public opinion...
...But a trend is clearly developing, and it could snowball into reality unless there is a return to ideological consistency and firm leadership by the Christian Democrats, coupled with the end of Socialist fragmentation and factionalism...
...It remains to be seen whether a true revitalization of the formula is still feasible...
...But the change, if it comes, will be very gradual...
...cannot and will not last more than a few months...
...But it is premature to speak of a clear and present danger to this country's democratic institutions, even though the recent events were indeed a cause of serious concern to all those who want Italy to have a stable and efficient government...
...The Monarchists have disintegrated into virtual nonexistence...
...The pci, moreover, has made steady electoral gains in the past 20 years despite an unquestionable decline in membership...
...This solution, the only possible one even though it was at first ruled out by the dc's themselves, was accepted out of desperation, but it Silvio F. Senigallia, a previous contributor, is Rome representative of Farrar...
...The new government, seated in the middle of August, is a minority Christian Democratic (dc) formation, a so-called monocolore, supported from the outside by the two Socialist parties...
...The new schism, stemming from diverging views on the advisability of political relations with the Communists, triggered a long, chaotic government crisis...
...As a matter of fact, the Italian Right wields very little power these days...
...The Communists and the Proletarian Socialists (psiup), a Left-wing group born after a 1964 Socialist Party split, control one-third of the national vote...
...At present, however, there is no indication whatsoever that either is likely to occur in the foreseeable future...
...Actually, the bulk of Italy's conservative electorate votes Christian Democratic and a sharp swing to the Right would require a major upheaval within the dc...
...While avoiding any mention of the possibility of including the Communists in the government, they do say that the time has come for a new relationship between majority and opposition...
...At the same time, a growing number of DCs, aware of the intrinsic weaknesses of the Socialists, would not oppose a modus vivendi with the Communists if it meant the continued exercise of power by the Christian Democrats...
...The possibility of a Rightist coup was frequently mentioned, as was the inevitability of a deal with the Communists...
...The Christian Democratic Right wing has become powerless and its leaders, in order to play an active role, have had to accept as an irreversible formula the alliance with the Socialists that they so fiercely opposed for so long...
...In the years immediately following Italy's liberation, their old leader, Palmiro Togliatti, ruled out a coup because he was convinced the British and above all the Americans would not tolerate the establishment of a Communist regime in Rome...
...Conditioned by Togliatti's thinking, the pci's objective remains conquest from within achieved through "the unity of the Left"—that is, an alliance of the Communist, Socialist and progressive Catholic forces...
...Some of them add that the Center-Left program cannot be enacted without pci support...
...Last July 5 the former Social Democrats, Giuseppe Saragat's party before his election to the Presidency of the Republic in 1965, broke away from the Socialists, with whom they had merged five years ago...
...The Liberals, respectable conservatives supported by big business and the upper middle class, are also out of the picture...
...It should be clear by now that the danger from the extreme Left does not stem so much from the pel's course of action or electoral performance, but from the appraisal of its role by the Center-Left leaders...
...The large majority of the voters who in 1968 cast their ballots for Christian Democrats and Socialists did so in the belief that these two parties would represent the oftenpublicized dam against Communism...
...As the major opposition party, it gets the support of a large protest vote cast by deeply dissatisfied non-Communist citizens...
...their opposition to the Center-Left formula, the Christian Democratic-Socialist alliance that had been in power since 1962, proved futile...
...Straus and Giroux...
...The new deputy secretary and virtual leader of the pci, Enrico Ber-linguer, is a firm advocate of this long-standing policy of legality and respectability...
...Direct or indirect pci participation in the government is contingent upon the end of the exclusion policy established by Alcide De Gasperi in 1947...
...Eventually one of the Socialist groups will bring the monocolore down and another round of negotiations will ensue, clarifying nothing and ending with the usual temporary compromise...
...No deals are being arranged at the moment, and no future price for Communist support is being discussed...
...It remains to be seen whether this game of toppling and re-forming governments, played by the party leaders outside the halls of Parliament and without the support of public opinion, can go on indefinitely...
...A Center-Left government as envisaged in 1962, with a large and stable majority in Parliament and firmly anchored on democratic positions, is the only sound prospect...
...Furthermore, many Socialists seem convinced that the process of democratization within the pci is gathering irreversible momentum-hence the Social Democratic split...
...Some political observers went so far as to term it undeniable evidence of the liberalization of the pci and of its gradual shift to a strictly national role...
...The pci stand on Czechoslovakia —its open disapproval of the Soviet military invasion and rejection of Leonid Brezhnev's theory of limited sovereignty for Communist national governments and individual parties —was specially tailored to fit this overall strategy...
...The neo-Fascists are a discredited lunatic fringe, unsavory yet in no way dangerous...
Vol. 52 • September 1969 • No. 16
