Why Is There
No Fuss About the Italian Communists Taking
Power?
By JONATHAN POWER
MADRID--Nearly two weeks of communist government in the
heart of western Europe and hardly a whisper of complaint.
The media has barely remarked on it. It makes one long for
some old Cold War warriors to step out, gird their faithful
chargers, shoulder their lances and create some mayhem.
Where are the hard questions and the hard knocks? Indeed,
where's the blood on the floor?
After all, not very long ago, (a short 20 years), Aldo
Moro, the former prime minister of Italy and, at the time,
the country's most influential politician, was savagely
murdered by a group of communist fringe militants (the Red
Brigades) in what in all likelihood was an attempt (it badly
backfired) to propel the communist party into power, as part
of the so-called "historic compromise".
Antonio Gramsci, the great founder of Italian communism,
wrote in 1920: "Italy is truly prey to demoniacal spirits,
impossible to control or comprehend". Has nothing changed in
Italy in nearly 80 years? There's still the feeling of
events uncontrolled. There is still a rigidly run communist
party. One thing, of course, is different. An offshoot of
the communist party, the Democratic Party of the Left, more
professing social democracy than communism, has taken power.
Nevertheless, many of its leading lights are former card
carrying members of the communist party. The new prime
minister, Massimo D'Alema, was editor of the party's
newspaper, L'Unita.
Another way to look at it is to conclude that there is
nothing uncontrolled about this--perhaps it's nothing more
than placating almost every faction on the political
spectrum, just one of those intricate games of Italian
political musical chairs that no outsider can ever hope to
understand--Henry Kissinger never could, so why should
we?
In Europe, they are producing a modern grand opera--the
creation of the single currency--and all the Italian
political system can throw up is a cast of understudies from
a libretto scripted long ago by a rejected playwrite. To
have or have not capitalism is no longer a fit subject for
modern discussion; to have communal ownership of the means
of production is equally passe. So why on earth does Italy
need communist government, even if it has changed its name
and apparently its credo?
It is amusing--and instructive--to read back and look at
what the more liberal Eurocommunists were saying 20 years
ago. For example, the eminence grise of the Spanish
communist party, Manual Azcarate, who spelt out in an
interview with George Urban in "Encounter" "that once the
contagion of a liberated Eurocommunism spreads through
western Europe into eastern Europe, the U.S. and the Soviet
Union will find themselves removed from the battlefield for
the European mind. A Europe that is under socialist rule
with the Eurocommunists dominant in eastern Europe and in
alliance with other left parties in the west would remove
the primary causes of east-west tension."
This was a brand of socialist transformation inspired by
Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of German communism in the early
years of the 20th century. (It was she who warned Lenin that
his type of communism would make the Soviet Union the most
tyrannical regime in the world.) Azcarate believed this
would lead to Soviet power crumbling and the Warsaw Pact
disintegrating. "NATO, no longer necessary, would be
disbanded."
Of course, nothing like this happened. The Soviet system
simply rotted from within without ever being touched by
Eurocommunism, that never mounted to much of a determining
political force anyway. But it was a good idea. At least it
had the ring of originality.
Indeed, it had everything that the new prime minister of
Italy and his party do not have. By comparison, they are
merely warmed up soup.
Are they dangerous? Clearly the perceived accepted
wisdom, both within Italy and apparently without, is that
they no longer are. Somewhere along the line of evolution
their fangs have been pulled and the poison sac removed.
However, nothing can obliterate the fact that Mr D'Alema and
his closest colleagues are part of a pedigree that can be
directly traced back to a communist party that after the
Second World War was run by Palmiro Togliatti who organised
in Karlovy Vary, near Prague, a guerrilla training school.
The Italian communist party of the Eurocommunist era and
after may have been embarrassed by and even detested what
came out of that school--the Red Brigades--but it can never
fully disown them because they were its children.
Italian communists have always been opportunistic, even
Machiavellian. Should we trust them now? Do we forgive and
forget and wipe the tapes clean without any more thought or
debate?
October 28,
1998, MADRID
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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