Left outside
ITALY PAUL COOPER
Rome—A year and a half ago the Italian Socialist and Social Democrat parties joined forces. The new allies lost over a million votes at the general election last May and they have been squabbling ever since. They are now threatening to split up again, and if they do the consequences will not be con- fined to the two partners. At the first national congress of the amalgamated group in October the delegates failed to elect a party secretary and were not even able to draft a common policy statement. The central committee subsequently elected a secretary by sixty-four votes to fifty-seven, but there was still no common programme. The '51 per cent margin' as it was sneeringly (and not very inaccurately) called repre- sented a victory for the Social Democrat wing of the party. Early last month it was overturned by a moderate-to-left alliance; but just as the new majority was on the point of voting itself into power, the Social Democrats threatened to secede and form their own party once more.
Italian political observers agree that if the Social Democrats and Socialists did split up there would have to be new elections. This is something which has not happened in Italy since the war. The Social Demo- crats' threat may well be a bluff: but it has been given veiled support by President Saragat (himself a Social Democrat by origin), and so far the new majority in the alliance has not dared to call it.
New elections might cost the Socialists another million votes. They are in no posi- tion, after a year of quarrelsome inactivity and political stagnation, to face the elec- torate. After the elections last May the Socialists withdrew into their shell to think things over, leaving the other members of the governmental coalition to run a care- taker regime in their absence for half a year. It was rudely nicknamed 'the seaside government': but in retrospect Sr Leone's administration seems to have been more decisive than the present Socialist-headed coalition. Leone at least forced the Vatican to pay tax on its share dividends—an issue which has always been evaded by the Socialists. Sr Rumor's cabinet has achieved a modest increase in workers' pensions, but the Communists claim (not without cause) that this was their victory. On the debit side there has been the failure to carry through an effective university reform; the killing of farm labourers on strike at Avola, and the more recent police shootings at Battipaglia, for which the Minister of the Interior bore a direct responsibility.
Another development, and one which may have helped to bring the dispute among the Socialists to a head, is the new tactic of the Italian Communist party. Since Feb- ruary they have abandoned out and out opposition, and since the failure of the centre-left at the last elections there has been talk of an eventual alliance between Communist and Christian Democrats.
Of course all Socialists still insist that no such alliance is possible at the moment, and members of the Social Democrat tendency in the party hold up their hands in horror at the prospect. Yet the publicity given to this topic suggests that all concerned realise that alliance with the Communists may, in a few years' time, become a necessity: and far-sighted Socialists are well aware that when it happens they will be left out in the cold—unless they can forestall the Christian Democrats, and meet the Communists half way.
The Social Democrats believe that the Communists should be fought tooth and nail, while the left-wing Socialists who now are not proposing parliamentary alliance with the Communists argue that handling the Communists is a side issue: what mat- ters is the acceleration of socialism. After all, they only entered the coalition in order to move the government decisively to the left, thereby outflanking the Communists and stealing their votes. In the event the opposite occurred. Welcomed in to Govern- ment, and sharing the spoils of office, the Socialists have become indistinguishable from their more powerful allies. On present form, they are as a result heading for annihilation at the hands of the two big parties.
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