Yurii Colombo - Elections and the crisis in the Italian left

pubblished in Socialist Alternative (june 2008) www.sa.org.au

After only two years of centre-left government, Silvio Berlusconi is back in office. In 2001 Berlusconi promised a new economic boom and put himself forward as a champion of neo-liberal policies. Now he's more circumspect. The Italian crisis is graphically evident: in the last five years GDP has only grown by about 0.1 per cent a year, and the unemployment rate is steady at 8 per cent.

Of course the cabinet will emphasise law and order issues and will try to close the borders to immigrants; but we need to understand the nature of the Italian right, which built a strong coalition between small and medium entrepreneurs, the middle classes and the northern working class. The bankers, the big industrialists and most important media supported the Democratic Party.

So it's a mistake to describe the new Berlusconi government as a "neo-liberal" coalition. Berlusconi's coalition is populist, openly protectionist, cries about the defence of the Italian worker against the "Chinese danger", and declares itself "anti-globalist". Berlusconi has announced a big Keynesian program of social spending. And the minister for the economy, Giulio Tremonti, declared recently, "The crisis should be paid for not by the poor, but by the bankers and petroleum bosses."

The Democratic Party failed because it put itself forward as a "right with a human face" and also because Prodi's government failed to raise the living standards of ordinary people.

The defeat of the left is historically significant. Until 1989 Italy had the biggest Communist Party in the Western world, with hundreds of thousands of members and millions of voters. Italy also had the most combative working class in Europe; the 1968 revolt was not a rebellion of few months but a "long autumn" that endured for 12 years.

In the April elections, the "Left Rainbow" - a coalition between Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation), the Greens and two other left parties - collapsed, receiving only 3.2 per cent of the vote, as against 10.3 per cent in 2006.



What happened?

The left began its support of Prodi's government in 2006 with huge ambitions. Fausto Bertinotti, the leader of Rifondazione Comunista said: "With the help of the social movements, we'll shift the centre-left coalition to the left."

In two years, the government, with the support of the left ministers, approved a tax cut for the bosses of 8 million euros ($12.4 million), a cut in pensions and an increase in the defence budget for the military campaigns in Lebanon and Afghanistan.

There was deep disillusionment among people on the left; the movement against the new NATO military base in Vicenza and the women's and gay movements were in the forefront of opposition to the government.

The decline of Rifondazione Comunista should give the international left cause to reflect. For some years Rifondazione was the model of a broad "new workers' party". But it didn't represent a mix of revolutionary and reformist politics; rather it was a reformist party that responded to an upsurge of class struggle and the rise of the movement against corporate globalisation by moving quickly to the left.

However when these movements declined, Rifondazione moved quickly to the right and spread the illusion among the working class that it is possible to change the very nature of a capitalist government. Moreover Rifondazione became a "soft" party: its membership declined from 150,000 members in 1996 to 60,000 disenchanted members today, and active members are a very small minority.

The two Trotskyist election lists (Critical Left and the Communist Workers Party) received a combined vote of about 1 per cent in the elections - about 350,000 votes. If they presented themselves together, they could be a serious alternative to Rifondazione and the leadership of the Rainbow. But we have to work very hard against the sectarian background of the far left.

Of course the far left couldn't fill the vacuum that opened up with the crash of the "Rainbow Left". They split from Rifondazione only a few months ago and many people decided to abstain or to vote Democratic Party against the right.

It's crucial in the next few months to build not only a necessary united front against the right, but also a political alternative inside the left. The Rifondazione conference will be held in July. There will be five different motions discussing the way forward.

We can easily forecast the decomposition - to the right as well to the left - of Rifondazione. But we need the most combative layers of Rifondazione to rebuild the left. We need an authoritative socialist organisation - quickly.

But only a serious balance sheet of the rise and fall of Rifondazione can lay the basis for a sustained revival of the Italian left. We need a principled revolutionary socialist organisation that will rebuild itself in the grassroots of the workplaces, communities and neighbourhoods. A left that tells the truth to the working class, even when it is a bitter truth.



Yurii is a long-term activist on the Italian left. He recently toured Australia as a speaker in the Socialist Alternative event, 40 years since the revolts of 1968.
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