Italy: Right wing gains from centre-left betrayal
[LRCI Reporter, Milan. 21 April 2000]
Italian prime minister Massimo D'Alema, former Stalinist bureaucrat turned liberal, has resigned. This follows a major blow to the credibility of his centre-left national government in the wake of the regional elections of 16 April. The right-wing coalition - made up of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, pro-Haider and racist Lombardy League led by Umberto Bossi, and ex-fascist Alleanza Nazionale led by Gianfranco Fini - had a sweeping victory, taking 50% of the national vote and 8 of the 15 regions (it previously had only 6).
Berlusconi's campaign was strongly anti-immigrant and was aimed at attacking workers' historical gains. A general election in the near future would probably see Berlusconi come back to government with his reactionary allies. The only thing holding up an imminent general election is the fact that the present electoral law is undergoing change, and 7 referenda have to be voted on 21 May. These have been proposed by the so-called Radical Party. Amongst other things, they propose the removal of union rights from the Italian constitution, thus giving the bosses an unlimited freedom to sack.
All told, the political horizon is not promising for Italian workers. The only party in any way representing its interests and the interests of immigrants is Rifondazione Comunista (RC). The present regional elections went quite well for RC, and it was the only left party to gain votes, recovering 1% of the loss it suffered in the European elections. It now stands at 5.3% nationally. Moreover, the Party of Italian Communists, the latest split from RC under the leadership of hardline Stalinist Armando Cossutta, continues to hold a solid 2%. When RC's and Cossutta's votes are put together, the total is less than 1% lower than Rifondazione's vote before the split.
But as we have shown elsewhere, RC's role in the class struggle in Italy has always been to cover the bourgeoisie in its crisis of political regroupment since the corruption scandals of Tangentopoli. Its campaign in the present regional elections was strictly reformist and it supported all the bourgeois candidates it possibly could (14 in 15 regions) as preparation for re-entry into a centre-left coalition
in the next general election.
In 1994, the Italian working class showed that Berlusconi's mob can be sent packing by massive demonstrations and strikes. But that movement was led into a parliamentary blind ally by the union bureaucracy, by D'Alema and by RC. The task of Italian revolutionaries is to break with reformist-style diplomacy and to place the emphasis on the elaboration of a revolutionary programme of action and on the only type of organisation which can show the way to victory: a Leninist-Trotskyist party of international revolution.
These regional elections have shown for the umpteenth time that right
reformism (DS), left reformism (RC) and centrism (Proposta) lead only to disaster.
