ITALY'S OLD TROUBLE
By lsillstETTA S. JUCKER Rome
IN one of the last of his brilliant articles in &faille, Georges Bernanos observed that the forces which govern the world today have annexed democracy, lock, stock and barrel, institutions, procedure and vocabulary, much as one might imagine some American or Asiatic millionaire of the future buying up the Academic Francaise with its academicians, ushers and furnishings, down to the famous fauteuils. Serious attempts have been made, in England notably by Professor E. H. Carr, to analyse the causes of the diminished prestige, the weakening of effective control over national destinies, which is noticeable in most modern parliaments, and which has been variously attributed to the over-development of the party system, to the preponderant power of the trade unions, or to the excessively technical nature of the discussions, the loss of time, the material impossibility for the same body to perform its legislative functions and keep check on the executive. Whatever its causes, the malaise is latent in almost every European and extra-European demo- cracy, nearer the surface, no doubt, where there has been a more or less prolonged interruption of democratic tradition, most to..be feared in those countries where a state of national bankruptcy and the consequent partial reliance on extraneous sources, renders the Government, in many instances, financially independent of Parlia- ment. In Italy recently there have been signs that this organic dis- function is likely to enter a more acute phase.
An immediate cause of friction between Parliament and Adminis- tration was furnished by the protracted strike of the agricultural labourers which, after six weeks of agitation, has been resolved on appeal to the Presidents of the Chamber and Senate. It would seem that Signor Scelba, Minister of the Interior, advised thc Government that in the long run the strike, which in this case was purely economic, could not succeed in its object. Offers of mediation from the Ministry of Labour, where Signors Fanfani and La Pira repre- sent a left-wing Catholic tendency, were turned down by the Government, which decided to allow the strike to run its course and more or less publicly washed its hands of the dispute. Political attitudes in Italy today are often directly inspired by historical reminiscences of the pre-Fascist period, and Scelba is sometimes thought to ape Giolitti, who once declared that he could govern Italy with forty-thousand Carabinieri and the parish priests, and who, in a much more dangerous agrarian controversy in 1904, adopted a similar policy of apparent neutrality. It was a clever move on the part of the unions to force an issue by transferring the sphere of mediation from Government to Parliament. Signor Gronchi, President of the Chamber, is a leader of the least clerical of the left-wing branches of the Christian Democrat Party. He is supposed not to be displeased at being approached by the workers. The dispute has produced embarrassment to Signor dc Gasperi, accen- tuating divisions in his party which have been with difficulty smoothed over at the congress in Venice.
A question which is likely to prove more important than labour disputes for its bearing on the relations of Parliament and Executive is that of the industrial credits which raises the point of the proper sphere of parliamentary action. Through the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction (I.R.I.) set up by the Fascist Government to meet the post-1918 crisis of over-production, a great many Italian indus- tries, particularly in the North, are either wholly or partially subsi- dised by the State. These so called "parasite " industries have for many years absorbed State funds, although the financial position of many of them is beyond repair, their costs of production too high, their prices kept at competition level by the vicious process of increasing their subsidies. The artificial bolstering up of North Italian industry through the "nationalisation" of credit was typical of Fascist economy, aiming at show and popularity without thought of how costs must ultimately be borne. It was under pressure from the industrial magnates, who prophesied political disorders if they were forced to cut down production, that the Italian State first embarked on a policy which superficially resembles " planning." To reverse
this policy now would cause much hardship, and no democratic Government would care to face the consequences of the dislocation of labour which would ensue if these industries were suddenly to be put on a self-sufficient economic basis. • It follows that pressure of various sorts is constantly brought to bear on the Government by all manner of people in favour of this or that branch of this or that particular industry, and inevitably credit is often distributed for political or even less respectable motives rather than in obedience to a strictly economic criterion. Marshall Aid itself is in danger of being engulfed in this bottomless pit, and a paradoxical situation has been created in which the subsidised industries compete unfairly with those which are financially sound. Conversely, many potentially sound enterprises fail mysteriously to obtain the credits which would put them safely afloat.
The distribution of credit through I.R.I. represents a vast field of Government action which practically escapes parliamentary con- trol. Hitherto each political party in turn has been so much attracted by the hope of eventually controlling this important branch of in- dustrial " patronage " that none appear to have perceived that the institution itself, in its present form, is contrary to the spirit of parliamentary government. The point has, however, at last been raised in the Senate in an important speech by Signor Teresio Guglielmoni, who, after referring to anomalies in the allocation of credit and other industrial aids, and pointing out the necessity of cutting off the dead branches of Italian industry, suggests that Parlia- ment be invested with full powers to examine in detail this whole sphere of Government activity so that the electorate, who are pre- sumably the real owners of the subsidised industries, may be kept informed of operations "so delicate, so complex, and so important for the productive economy of the country." .
Meanwhile, the question has been raised of the physical impossi- bility for Parliament to get through the mass of business before it. At the end of the first year of the Republic, 292 Bills still awaited discussion, while 319 had been passed. To meet this situation the Government put out a feeler in the form of a semi-official article by Signor Andreotti, Under-Secretary of State in the Prime Minister's office and a sort of liaison officer between de Gasperi and Parliament, suggesting the advisability, for the sake of expedience, of resorting to legislation by decree. The suggestion, which recalls Fascist methods (for twenty years decrees were issued at the rate of one every two hours), has stirred a hornet's nest. The feeler has been withdrawn, and the question temporarily shelved with the appoint- ment of a committee for co-ordinating the work of the two Houses.
Though apparently technical, the controversy is, in fact, political. In substance, the Government accuses the Opposition of factiously
obstructing any project sponsored by the Administration, while the Opposition charges the Government with disingenuously delaying the passage of reforms by creating technical difficulties, and with generally misusing the mechanism of democratic government for the purpose of eluding parliamentary control. The difficulty arises partly from the political necessity of treating the Communists as a legally constituted party on the same footing as any other, but actually neither side is playing quite loyally the parliamentary game, and there is a sub-stratum of truth in the charge of Jesuitry levelled against the Christian Democrats. It has been suggested that the speed of modern industrial production outpaces the legislative capacity of our assemblies. In Italy, however, the piling up of Bills and projects is due in great measure to the unwillingness of the present Govern- ment (as of its predecessors) radically to cope with the necessary reforms. Historical parallels are often misleading, but there is surely more than fortuitous aptitude in the warning issued by Cavour to the Piedmontese Parliament just a hundred years ago in the debate, on March 7th, 1849, on the proposed abolition of the eccle- siastical courts. Speaking of the Government's slowness in actuating the reforms which were expected to follow the recent passing of the constitution, he said : "In the minds of many has arisen a doubt, a discouragement,
since it is believed that our constitutional forms are incapable of producing the effects and the reforms which public opinion demands. Thus in certain people is born disaffection for our representative forms. This certainly cannot be said of the more
enlightened, of those who can distinguish transitory causes from lasting causes ; but in the masses who judge more by effects than by causes I believe this disposition of mind is undeniable. . . . The Party which before tho passing of the Constitution was satisfied with the old order of things and accepted the new fundamental pact only with resignation, this Party, seeing that we may live under the constitutional regime and yet reform nothing, remaining in the status quo, has come little by little to believe that we can maintain the Constitutir and even go back a little. . . . If it (the Ministry) continues in a semi- negative line of minor reforms, of more or less homoeopathic ameliorations, what will happen ? This twofold movement of men's minds in one direction and in the other will draw them ever further away from the constitutional principle . . . and we shall see the nation divided in two camps, both of them extra-legal, and the constitutional party reduced to a few men of culture who will be powerless and derided with the name of doctrinaires."
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