The Easter Crisis of Italian Politics
By Calogero Bellavia
The film “Young Karl Marx”, by the Haitian director Raoul Peck, is arriving in Italian cinemas during the week of Passion and the Easter of Christian resurrection and amidst the difficulty of setting up a new Italian government after national elections.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was only the beginning of the crisis of movements inspired by the author of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and of Das Capital. After the collapse of the USSR, the social democratic parties of the Western European Union and even the Italian Communist Party, which had a strong popular presence, entered into crisis.
In Italy as in the rest of the West, there has not been any ability to counter credibly and scientifically the triumph of neoliberalism and international capitalism. In fact, the leaders of the P.C.I. tried to cope with the crisis by changing the name of the surviving party several times (from PDS to DS to PD). The leadership of Matteo Renzi turned it into a centrist party, rendering it harmless and moving it away from the left wing of the movement.
However, all of this was rejected on March 4th by the voters, who gave first place with more than 32% of the vote to the party Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star Movement) led by the comedian Bepe Grillo. M5S highlights the fight against corruption and the privileges of the political class.
About 17% per cent of the vote went to the La Lega (formerly Lega del Nord), an ally party of the former Prime Minister Berlusconi – who remained in the minority with about 15% for his Forza Italia. Only 18% of the vote went to the Partito Democratico (PD) of Renzi. Finally the results for LEU (Liberi e Uguali) were very disappointing at 3.4%. LEU was the left split from the PD. The leadership of Renzi has more than halved the party, from 40% in a European parliamentary vote in 2014 to 18% today and for this reason the Secretary resigned. However he maintains strong control over the parliamentary groups, composed almost entirely of men nominated by him and considered faithful to him.
Despite their excellent electoral results, neither Grillo nor La Lega have sufficient numbers to form a government majority.
The Democratic Party is determined to remain in opposition, albeit with some internal disagreements. There is evidence of dialogue taking place between 5Stelle (Grillo) and Lega, which together have elected the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. However, it will not be so easy to form a majority by coalescing these two formations: their electoral programs and their electors are in fact very different. The electors of La Lega are on the right, and most of the electors of 5Stelle are center-left.
Unraveling this complicated tangle will be up to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who has the power to appoint a political personality, or a person from so-called civil society to set up a government capable of obtaining the majority of the two branches of Parliament. To this end, the President will begin ritual consultations with the political groups on Wednesday, April 4th.
The young Karl Marx, who wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party, developing the theories of the utopian socialists and Prudhon based on scientific materialism, would never have imagined such a profound crisis of the working class and that his motto “Proletarians of the whole world unite” would become “Capitalists of the whole world unite”.
