ABSTRACT: Uncertainty prevails in Italy. PCI-DC agreement. The new political-social system does not seem clear. Acknowledgment of the PCI (1) as a government force. The risk of a detachment of the electorate. A "party of parties" is born, without an inner debate, which corresponds with the State. The historical compromise (2) is necessary to legitimate the PCI, but to the detriment of the alternative. The Radical Party should be a party of alternative, thanks to the instruments of nonviolence and of the referendums.

(RADICAL SUBJECTS, POLITICAL BI-MONTHLY FOR THE ALTERNATIVE, August-November 1977, No. 3-4)

"The democracy of the new times (...) is, by its very nature, extremely decentralized, thin, permeated in every most delicate joint of the economic mechanism. For this very reason, it calls for an extremely centralized political directive power: it calls for a party containing in itself and regulating in a unitarian order that dialectic, which expressed itself, in the bourgeois society - once strong of creative resources that are now exhausted - with the variety of parties. The current return to the parties is a momentary, perfectly justified reaction. It is a temporary revival, the own inner impulse of which will lead to a unitarian process. This process will be called antifascism. It is obvious: having overturned fascism, one cannot but speak of antifascism. But since Mussolini, in his personalistic degeneration, had ultimately achieved a reversed fascism, completely based on its head and not on the social body, it is obvious that by overturning it one does nothing but replace it on its feet. A pun? It see

ms like it, but it isn't. Time will prove I am right."

Giuseppe Bottai

(From a page of his diary of 28 May 1945, quoted by G.B. Guerri, "Giuseppe Bottai un fascista critico", Milan, Feltrinelli, 1976, p. 253).

It often occurs, when a page of history is turned and contemporaries perceive it, that a widespread sort of uncertainty arises: one perceives more acutely than normally that there is no pre-established and guarantied sense of history, that one is exploring an unknown territory, and that ignores where this path leads to. If I am not mistaken, this is the sort of atmosphere that prevails today in Italy.

It is beyond question that the six-party agreement signed by the parties of the constitutional range is a historical event, whatever standpoint one considers it from.

The PCI has attained the objective it has been pursuing for thirty years: the end of the discrimination against the Left, the reprise of that cooperation with the forces of the centre and centre-left which had been interrupted in 1947, somehow picking it up from the point in which it had been dropped. (And wasn't the PCI's main allegation against the DC (3), the core of its opposition, that of having "illegitimately" rescinded the pact issued from the Resistance? Thus, today, having set aside the old thesis according to which fascism was a parenthesis in the history of the democratic-liberal Italy, a new, updated version seems to be arising, that tends to view the thirty years of Christian Democratic rule as a parenthesis in the history of the popular and antifascist Italy). From a different standpoint, the agreement marks a considerable improvement in a long-coming process: while the PCI, formally at the opposition for many years, was at the opposition far less than it seemed - as the radicals maintained fo

r fifteen years - today a new, unprecedented equilibrium is officially born: a parliamentary democratic regime without an opposition in Parliament. It is by now clear that this was the result of the fall of the traditional regime system, the Christian Democratic monopoly of power, brought about by the elections of 1976.

In a certain sense, therefore, the future seems to be clearly outlined. The Communist Party could legitimately claim to have been capable of orienting, with a patient and tiresome work of several decades, Italian history on tracks established by a clear-cut political project: bringing the party of the working class in power again thanks to an agreement with the other major popular force, the Catholic one. It is almost natural, therefore, to presume that this is a forced direction, that a scheme so clearly conceived and enacted throughout such a long period of time is bound to be successful, for the very force of things; and to be successful also in the following, clearly outlined stage, of establishing, in far greater proportions, the hegemony of the party of the working class by continuing the progressive work of shifting the political, cultural and economic equilibriums.

And yet, a subtle uncertainty prevails. Not so much for the controversies and contrasts among the parties which have emerged after the agreement (and that are not such, for the moment, as to spoil the general situation), nor for the attitude and statements of those Christian Democrats who tend to illustrate the agreement as an attempt to "centre-leftize" the PCI in order to weaken it, as already for the PSI, and soon throw it back in a position of opposition (a project which for many reasons does not seem a project which can be easily achieved). The feeling of uncertainty depends on the fact that it is not clear (probably not even to the communists, despite the medium-term project) what sort of political-social system can issue from a compromise between the Leninist tradition and the democratic centralism, and the democratic-Western tradition in the lobbyist and corporative version of the Christian democratic regime, in a country characterized by strong phenomenons such as those of an abnormal parasitical pa

ra-State, a strong union power, a State which is somewhere between Napoleonic centralism and a weak regionalism. The only certain thing is that it is a totally new experiment (no matter how traditional the transformist convergence of opposites in Italy), an experiment for which there are no precedents that can suggest reliable forecasts; thus, it is difficult for everyone, including those who are guiding this process, to imagine how our future way of living will differ from the past.

The PCI's reasons

At any rate, it seems certain - provided the agreement isn't called off for factors that can't be foreseen at the moment - that there will be some changes, in the short term; and these changes are already partly taking place. Whatever the faults the PCI is blamed of (with reason from a certain point of view), we cannot think that this party, with its history and force, can accept the fact of being in the government area without leaving a deep mark in Italian life. On the other hand, it can hardly be imagined that the PCI's new, explicit position will not transform its relations with the country.

But how is the new, decisive government force, the Communist Party, moving? It is essential to clearly perceive the real intentions it is pursuing in this stage in order to judge its behaviour with an appropriate criterion. The fundamental value of the six-party agreement, for the PCI, lies not in its programmatic contents (which are, among other things, modest and ambiguous), but in the acknowledgement that all the parties of the traditional political range are giving it as a democratic party, a party like all others, with which convergences and divergences can exist, but that, like any other party, is entitled to rule the country without scandal. This is what is referred to as the fall of the anti-communist prejudice, the PCI's full "legitimation": inside the party, vis-à-vis those sectors of the public opinion and of the leading class that would once have viewed its access to power as a step toward the apocalypse; and outside it, vis-à-vis the Western allies-controllers. It is an achievement of incalculab

le value for the PCI, which has been pursuing it for thirty years as its primary objective. It would be so for any party that has remained confined to the opposition for decades, as the German social democracy was throughout the sixties; the latter, after pursuing the path of the alternative, chose the path of a temporary agreement with the CDU-CSU in order to "legitimate" itself as a government force; but it is all the more so for a communist party, which bears the signs of a "choice of civilization" which is radically different from the one adopted by the whole historical-geographical area Italy belongs to. (The historian of the "civilizations in the sense of structures", Fernand Braudel, sees the "refusal that separates the West, emancipated from Marxism and from the totalitarian solutions of the socialist republics", as a demonstration of the deep structures of the civilization of this part of the world).

Why wonder and scandal, therefore, if the PCI is willing to subordinate every other consideration to the maintenance and consolidation of this result - which needs to last in time in order to be real? As much as they care about contents, about reforms, the communists think on the long period: the fact that their legitimation will become a definitively acquired fact, that their presence in a government will cease to be a traumatic fact, represents a vital condition in order for them to be able to use all their force in terms of contents in a subsequent stage.

There is a single limit in this direction, marked by the danger that, in the absence of concrete and tangible achievements, the deception of the base and of the electorate could cause its dangerous detachment from the party. This is why the communists feel the need to act now, and visibly; nor can it be denied that they are partly acting in this sense. The story of law No. 382 is extremely significant, from this point of view. No doubt the communists have struggled on it, clashing with the Christian democratic and clerical system of power, and despite the fact that the result is scarce and bears the visible signs of a compromise, it nonetheless remains a fact of great relevance, which changes many things in the Italian State (though it is not evident that the transfer of so many centres of power from the State to those centres of patent carve-up - the regions - will imply all the democratization effects one might expect). This is how one should interpret the PCI's - real - resistances on the controlled rent

or on other issues. But if we want to understand the PCI in its logic and its needs - which are not those of the PSI, so that the comparisons with the experience of the Centre-Left could prove inappropriate - we need to realize that these battles remain marginal and manipulated, compared to the fundamental fact mentioned above. The true shortcoming, the true incoherence for the PCI would be that of gambling that.

The new single party

The problem of the relations between the PCI and its traditional area of consent, the working classes, the leftist public opinion and the variously low classes, remains totally unsolved. In this case too, the new events which are appearing are radical - and lead directly to the consideration - more generally - of the relations between institutions and country.

The PCI, as the only, major opposition force in the eyes of the public opinion, has always carried out the essential role of channeling discontent and protest in the institutions (remember, for example, La Malfa's (4) controversies against the nonchalance with which it collected all sort of protests, even ones that were conflicting). Today its aspect, which has definitively changed, has become that of a government party, and it seems hard to give credit to the formula of the "party of government and party of struggles". On the other hand, for its very features such as they have been historically determined, the PCI can hardly become the expression of the alienated classes that are spreading more and more every day in Italy, and that find less and less outlets and hopes.

What will happen now, since the forces of the remaining, marginal opposition of the Left are too scarce in terms of quantity and quality, of poverty of ideas, of leading groups, of intermediate officials, to authorize any deceptions that they can replace the Communist Party in the role which it is less and less capable of covering? The spectre of a social opposition that cannot find a party in the institutions capable of expressing it lurks more and more menacing in the Italian life; of an opposition that nonetheless exists, grows, and that must express itself somehow...There is the risk is appearing monotonous repeaters of obsolete formulas, of old, nineteenth-century liberal schemes, when we recall the physiological need, for a democracy, of an alternation and opposition between the parties, the majorities and minorities. But how can we not insist, when there is the risk of a block of all institutional parties creating an opposition not against the government, but against the institutions and democracy?

Here we encounter another essential core of the situation: the fundamental ongoing transformation in the nature of the political and institutional life. A new political system is being created, in an explicit way; a super-party is arising, a "party of parties", in which there is a political dialectic (single party doesn't necessarily mean monolithic party), but in which the political struggle occurs necessarily only through a negotiation, and never through an open confrontation of clear alternatives. It is inevitable, therefore, not for the wickedness of human beings, but for the very logic of such a system, that the parties joining the pact prevail as such over everything; because, in order to guarantee positions of strength for themselves in the negotiations, they must occupy all possible spaces. It is a universal carve-up: it is more and more evident in the daily experience that in order to count, to have a role in society, and often even simply to work (an aftermath of the ration card!), one needs to jo

in or to be solidly connected to one of the six branches of the "party of parties".

The fact that a necessary consequence of this six-party agreement is this prevalence of the parties on every demand of civil society, appears logical and consequent, considering that the two pre-eminent members of the six-party government have always had, in different ways, a tendency of this kind between the centres of their formulation: the DC, cynically, without the light of ideals, for its thirty-year practice of carve-up and exploitation of the public heritage for private purposes; the PCI, for its vision based on Gramsci (5) and Lenin of the party as an avant garde, a modern prince, a collective intellectual, who is entitled to the task of guiding and directing social development. The translation of this deep process also in direct institutional terms (we mentioned it in the previous issues of the magazine, and elsewhere in this issue) is already in progress: we need only remember the decadence of the role not of Parliament vis-à-vis government, but of Parliament and government vis-à-vis the parties as

such; and the grave attempt to stifle the only institution - the referendum - in which citizens express can themselves personally, and not through the forced mediation of the parties.

The compromise, the alternative

The "big party" thus identifies itself with the institutions, with the State, which becomes a State-party; the six-party agreement becomes a new, key article of the constitution, or in fact the first basis of the non-written "material constitution" which regulates the life of the institutions. Thus, the use which is prevailing in the papers and especially on TV, of calling "constitutional parties" tout court parties that were until now called "parties of the constitutional range" - with the implicit opinion that the parties that are not part of their coalition is for this very reason excluded from the constitution - does not appear void of a certain sinister validity in its involuntary irony.

What is consolidating and asserting itself, therefore, is a new type of consociative and controlled democracy. And why not recall - without wanting to take the comparison too far - that there are regimes in Eastern Europe, such as that of Eastern Germany, where there formally exists a variety of parties that coexist, each with a strictly pre-established political-social role and numerical force, in the framework of a major coalition under the hegemony of the party of the working class established by the constitution - a coalition outside of which every political debate is forbidden? Those who for this or for other reasons criticize the ongoing historical compromise could be faced with the objection, that this is the forced route for the Italian Left and for its decisive force, the Communist Party; that otherwise its indispensable "legitimation" is impossible; that any other attempt on its part to conquer and administer power would clash with irresistible Chile-style reactions; and that therefore even every p

ossible prospect of a left-wing alternative calls for a transition of this kind. In part - we might as well face it - these are valid arguments, or at any rate arguments that are not easy to question. But this does not change the fact that the risks we mentioned are extremely serious, looming, and that there is the danger of an irreversible degenerative process - authoritarianism not so much in terms of police repression, but in terms of suffocation - such as to definitely upset the spirit of the republican constitution, lay and concerned about civil liberties, and such as to transform even a possible, future left-wing alternative in something different from the great occasion of growth and freedom we all hoped for.

The task of the radical opposition today becomes evident. Clearly it cannot, deceiving itself into thinking that it has a force it lacks, charge itself with the tasks that are typical of the "normal" oppositions operating in the liberal-democratic regimes, of the parties that, as a minority, can realistically set themselves the aim of upsetting the relations of force, subtracting consent to the majority. It cannot, in other words, compensate for the lacking opposition.

Nor, obviously, should it simply be a demonstration of existence and of self-enhancement - a fatal temptation and sometimes a need for every small minority that is excluded from the substantial legitimacy (think not only of the fascists in the thirties, but also, with a more appropriate comparison, of the Italian republicans and early socialists of a century ago).

The radical opposition should, on the contrary, succeed in making politically effective and influential the resistances which large portions of civil society, and several individuals or groups also in the political society in the area of the super-party, are trying to oppose to the degenerative factors which the six-party pact implies. It must activate, with the nonviolent instruments of democracy, the resistance of the "spirit of the laws", of the mechanisms which are typical of the liberal-democratic State versus their deformation in the logic of the State-party.

Can it succeed? The bet would be lost from the beginning, were the fundamental instrument of the 700,000 signatures for the eight referendums already not acquired. Useless to insist here on the meaning of such fact, and on the vital importance of the struggle to defend the referendums: the matter is handled elsewhere in the magazine. But it is worth repeating that they are the best antidotes, perhaps the only ones, against the partyist-consociative-authoritarian involution of the republic; and that through them, the radical minority can become the opposition which, once again and more than ever, carrying out its role completely, enables the large majorities to rule: without tutors.

Translators' notes

(1) PCI. Italian Communist Party.

(2) Historical compromise. Political project pursued in particular by Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), based on a cooperation between communists and catholics.

(3) DC. Italian Christian/Catholic party. Founded with this name after World War II, heir of the Popular Party, created after World War I by a Sicilian priest, Don Luigi Sturzo. After the elections of 1948, in the climate of the cold war, it became the party of relative majority, occasionally coming very close to obtaining the absolute majority. Key component of every cabinet, it has been detaining power uninterruptedly for half a century, strongly influencing the development of Italian society in a conservative sense. At the elections of 1992 for the first time it dropped below 30% of votes.

(4) LA MALFA UGO. (Palermo 1903 - Rome 1979). Italian politician. Among the founders of the Partito d'Azione (1942), he then joined the Republican Party (1948), transforming it in an attempt to make it into a modern liberal party connected to the productive forces. He was secretary of it between 1965 and 1975, and then President. Former minister and deputy Prime Minister (1974-76). One of the fathers of the liberalization of trade after the war.

(5) GRAMSCI ANTONIO. (Ales, Cagliari 1891 - Rome 1937). Italian thinker and politician, socialist at first, editor of "Ordine Nuovo" and promoter of the experiments on "factory councils", in 1921 he was among the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he was appointed secretary general of in 1924. Deputy, he was sentenced by the fascist regime to 20 years of prison, where he died. His "Quaderni dal carcere" represent an original contribution to the theoretic development of Marxism in a Western sense. He also founded "L'Unità", organ of the communist party.