BRITAIN / ITALY Postwar regime begins to crumble INTRODUCTION THE results of the Italian elections of April 5, 1992, reveal tendencies like those in the other countries of Western Europe. The left lost ground, whereas the right visibly progressed, to the detriment of some of the traditional centre parties.
Even more than elsewhere, the picture is one of growing fragmentation: if the old governmental majority has been defeated, no alternative solution is apparent for the moment.
In contrast with the 30.8% of votes that it won in the 1987 administrative elections to the Chamber of Deputies, the left only obtained 26.4% this time, while its internal divisions sharpened. In comparison with the regional elections, the setback is still more evident. The balance sheet in both cases is is still more negative if one excludes from the left total the Rete (the Network), a new and fairly heterogeneous formation, whose most well-known leaders are the former Christian Democrat mayor of Palermo, Gianluca Orlando, and the former Communist mayor of Turin, Diego Novelli.
The PDS (Party of the Democratic Left), born out of the former PCI (Communist Party of Italy), lost 10.5% of its vote in relation to 1987 and 7% in relation to 1990. The Greens also suffered a defeat to the extent that, even if they slightly increased their score over 1987, they have palpably lost ground since 1990.
The most positive aspect for the left was the result obtained by the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) which, with 5.6% in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies and 6.5% in the elections to the Senate, not only gained a part of the votes of the old PCI and most of those of the former Democrazia Proletaria (DP), but also gained support from left electors who had previously abstained.
On the night after the count, everybody asked the question: who will govern now? The situation is all the more delicate in that, in July, the two chambers will meet to elect the new President of the Republic.The significance of this election has increased since the recent experience of Francesco Cossiga's presidency, which was marked by a slide towards a presidential regime.
Speculation is useless: big manoeuvres are under way and nobody knows what the final result will be. But one scenario appears fairly plausible for the moment: a majority favourable to a change in the electoral system will be formed and new elections held quickly in the hope that a new, non-proportional, system would allow the formation of a more stable government.
But such a project cannot be carried through without conflicts and ruptures at different levels. Given that the social situation is far from stable, the conclusion must be that Italy is about to experience, at the very least, growing political instability. * lity. * 5 April 27, 1992 • # 227 International Viewpoint
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Towards a grand coalition? THE underlying factor beneath the most striking aspects of the elections of April 5, in particular the fragmentation of votes, the loss of Christian Democratic hegemony and the rise of the Leagues, is a national and international economic scene marked by mounting contradictions and a significant decline in dynamism. FRANCO TURIGLIATTO CDANIAO THIDICHIATTO
N particular, a number of big Italian enterprises have suffered setbacks in their attempts to assert themselves on a European scale. At the same time, the intrinsic weakness of small and medium industry has been revealed.
Some of the core sectors of the bourgeoisie, disposing of more limited margins of manoeuvre, now consider that the old Italian political system, with all its clientelism, constitutes too heavy an economic burden. They want to replace it by less costly and more flexible instruments, more suitable for satisfying their current needs and imposing new sacrifices on the popular masses.
The parties which have now governed over a very long period are worn out and profoundly discredited. The centrifugal tendencies are multiplying and it is becoming more and more difficult to form coalition governments. There is a curious situation: on the one hand, the big bourgeoisie is at the summit of its ideological hegemony, on the other, it is increasingly less able to realize this hegemony in the political sphere, impose a homogeneous orientation and maintain the necessary social consensus by means of its traditional parties.
The crisis of the Christian Democratic
Party (DC) and the management of bourgeois power has taken a particularly retrograde form, with the rise of reactionary and racist forces. These have developed in the context of the defeats and the social, political and ideological regression suffered by the working class in the 1980s. The workers' movement is a significantly weaker social and political force which is not capable of creating a political polarization around itself or presenting a credible alternative.
Thus, the discontent and the indignation provoked by all the injustices, the swindles and the corruption of the system are exploited by the vulgar and xenophobic demagogy of the
Leagues. There is a danger of still graver regressions of Italian society, of new and more serious defeats for the working class.
The Christian Democrats lost above all in the north, as much among the petty and middle bourgeois layers as among the popular sectors who went to the Leagues. Their maintenance of their position in the south does not compensate for its loss of hegemony in the sectors which are fundamental for the political management of the country. But it is difficult to replace the DC in its leading role. The Italian Republican Party (PRI), which, above all after its exit from government, has been forced to express the interests of the big bourgeoisie more clearly and more openly than the DC, and which has been supported by a series of important newspapers, was not able to substantially change the relationship of forces in its favour, registering only a minimal advance (0.7%). It has paid the price of its prolonged presence in government. As to the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), affected by, among other things, the scandals in which some of its members have been implicated, it has regressed or marked position and has not attained its "historic" objective of becoming the biggest force on the left.
Growing support for far right
It is, then, the right, indeed the extreme right, which has profited from the decline of the DC - it now enjoys the support of around 15% of the electorate. The electoral score of the MSI, the avowed heir of fascism, which sent Mussolini's grand-daughter to the Chamber of Deputies with a large number of votes, is not only the result of the maintenance of traditional support. The
MSI has tried to relaunch itself through a violently racist campaign inspired by authoritarian principles (it applauds unreservedly the reactionary attacks made against the first republic by President Cossiga).
The existence of a fairly well structured fascist organization, which the bourgeoisie can use in the social confrontations to come, constitutes a danger which should not be under-estimated.
A still more important question is: what
International Viewpoint # 227 • April 27, 1992 is the nature of the Leagues, above all of the strongest of them, the Lombard League (baptized the League of the North for electoral purposes)?
It does not amount to a movement with typically fascist traits nor even to a fascist movement like Le Pen's in France. But its plebeian and populist nature has some very clear reactionary and xenophobic connotations. It is a force which acts, and is going to act, increasingly openly against the workers' movement in its entirety. Its protests are undoubtedly an instrument for the division of the working class: its target, very much more than Rome, the despised capital, is the immigrants.
Its social centre of gravity resides in the layers of small and middle entrepreneurs and traders. Beyond the rhetoric about federalism and the creation of a republic of the north, what is really at stake for these layers in their conflict with Rome is the defence of their economic privileges endangered by the crisis, and the will to obtain a new shareout of the cake.
They do not have the courage to seek to obtain this at the expense of the big bosses, but they wish to determine the allocation of state resources, the geographical repartition of the tax burden, and a solution to the problem of the budget deficit. In any eventual negotiations with the DC, the League would not concentrate on the issue of institutional reform, which it uses as a cover, but rather on the redivision of the spoils, the distribution of the costs of European unification and the cleaning up of the state budget.
The culmination of the League's dynamic
— either its integration into the political system as a moderated force, or its evolution in an openly reactionary-fascist sense
— is not given in advance: everything depends on the evolution of the economic and social situation and the political confrontations to come.
Serious problem for left
The more serious problem for the left, and notably the PRC, resides in the fact that the League has succeeded in exerting an influence on layers of workers. Thus, it is also with winning back those layers currently attracted to the League and its caudillo Umberto Bossi in mind that it is necessary to recommence the construction of a mass movement.
The game is not yet over: but on the condition that all the forces of social resistance and of political opposition, and all the potential components of an anti-capitalist front, can be won to the struggle of the workers' movement. The continuing ferment in
Italian society, partly reflected in the electoral success of the PRC, indicate that forces capable of counteracting the current tendencies still exist. *
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Italian election results (Main parties only)
of such a rapprochement will be other than this.
• You speak of a left united
Party 1992 DC 29.7 PSI 13.6 PDS+ 16.1 PRC =(ex-PCI) 5.6 DP PRI 4.4 PSDI 2.7 PLI 2.8 MSI 54 Lega Lomb/Lega Nord 8.7 Altre Lehge 1.2 Sole che Ride-Verdi 2.8 La Rete 1.9