Italy: the Impossible Happens

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Well, one of the great in the end it will be called in is that Spadolini will fail. to help. Last week's elecEven so close to the Vatican tions, however, produced there is a limit to political two signs that this plan may The question is not even been put into operation whether Spadolini's govern- at a national level. will fail, nor really when it abstentions which, at 20%, will fail but how it will fail- was very high for Italy, illuwhat scandal or policy strating a growing disilkision failure will bring it down and with politicians of any : The certainty of its in Naples, a 'city of astro: failure in the relatively short nomic levels of unemployrun comes not basically from ment and homelessness all these party political militant mass movement of manoeuvres but from the homeless and jobless people growing failure of Italian have clashed: continually capitalism to solve the con- with the Communist Party try's deepening economic dominated local council After a mini boom in the Communist Party suffered communism as it is, there is seat in any government it very severe recession has bourgeoisie will be wonder- economy in early 1980 a majör electoral setbacks. The of its being brought into an So, until the bourgeoisie not at present much chance: became part of: is almost certain that the munists wil be such good now set in. Next month it ing whether the Italian ComItalian government because .. decide that they cannot unemployment figure will policemen after alt. of its relative strength com-: avoid this solution-and CP joined Mitterand's adminis- away -the Communists are While the French CP has moment may not be far This represents almost - too obvious. iration after a major elec- content to influence the It looks as if the impossible, the unthinkable in politics-the solution the most powerful political figures said they. would never accept-is about to take place in Italy.

There now looks very little to stop Giovanni Spadolini, leader of the miniscule Republican Party, a nonCatholic bourgeois party, becoming Prime Minister of Italy's forty-first post-war Last weekend's regional election results for the large municipal councils had the effect in the topsy turvy world of Italian politics of strengthening *Spadolini's chances of surviving a vote of confidence in the parliament.

Impasse

This is because the Republican Party got about 2.5% of the vote. No, that's not a misprint but an expres sion of the terrible impasse of political leadership in the • Italian bourgeoisie.

It leads at present to the law: the smalier is your party the more likely you are become : Prime Minister.

The Republicans, although tiny, experienced the electoral advance in last week's poll which was common to all the parties which have been in alliance with the Christian Democrats in recent Italian Centre Left governments.

Advances

But by far the main gainer in the polls was the Socialist Party which made striking advances against the Christian Democrats almost everywhere and even in some places against the communist Party, though in most places the Communist Party held onto their share of the poll and even increased it a little compared with the partiamentary elections in 1979.

Everywhere the Christian Democrats, Italy's majority right wing party tainted by innumerable scandals and by its record in office were the losers.

At this low ebb in their fortunes therefore, even the Christian Democrats who had previously regarded it as •unthinkable are at the moment forced to accept that there shall be a non-Christian Democrat Premier.

And they prefer someone like Spadolini whose party can never expect to be a major electoral threat in the overweeningly ambitious Bettino Craxi, leader of the Socialist Party wno is clearly hoping to become the Italian Mitterand and whom, tor that reason the Christian Democrats fear.

And so for the same reasons do the Communists. The Italian CP nominally is in opposition to the recent Centre Left governments.

They are demanding to be let into government themselves and will make use of the French precedent to strengthen this demand.

Everyone in Italy remembers that the Italian Communist Party were excluded from the post-war national coalition government at the start of the Cold War in 1948 just as the French Communist Party wete. And now the French Communists -much nearer to Moscow than their Italian counterparts-are back in government.

Relative strength

But the Italian CP: also hantin that insinnoor nf Furnpared with the French CP.

toral se forced t the Ital that, adyances getting t many has the italia would th tback and is thus o take a back seat, ian CP. has shown despite Socialist i, it is still capable of wo to three times as ates. in. elections as in Socialist Party. It ¡erefore have a front leader Berlinguer feels that composition of the Centre Left governments through varying their degrees of 'opposition'.

And there is no doubt that they, like the Christian Democrats, have advised the Socialist: President: Pertini that Spadolini is a much more acceptable Prime Minister Than the ambitious Craxi.

So, for all these powerful if convoluted political reasons, ". barring another scandal it looks as if Spadolini is about to have his hour as much want him to fail quite soon.

And so, of course, does Craxi who more than anyone is in a position to precipitate Italy into new general elections, especially now that he knows that his party may_gain something from them.

certainties of italian pontics miracles.

ment even if it takes office which of the three larger shade. parties this will benefit? and social erisis.

rise above the 2 million mark even on official figures. one in ten of the workforce and in some areas of the South the figure is very much higher than this especially among the youth.

The bourgeoisie's only solution to the crisis, as everlashore else ' it more austerity and cutbacks and an attack on the limited sliding scale of wages won by working class struggle.

And there are growing signs that by parliamentary democratic forms of government they cannot control the social and political reactions which their policies provoke.

TE - Te-lia-AD Lanor that Ine lanan ur nupes uiar be going awry before it has One was the Tate of The second was the result.

where in recent months a It was here that the Perhaps i their plain clothes disguise. is already