Dae Marianne Arens
http://www.wsws.org/
April 14, 2009 This article was previously published in English on 8 April 2009.
In late March, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has founded a new right-wing party in Rome. He joined his party, Forza Italy, who had originally founded in 1994 by the neo-fascist National Alliance (AN), led by Gianfranco Fini, to create the right-wing party People of Freedom (PDL).
The two right-wing parties of Berlusconi and Fini, who worked together over the past 15 years, have already used the same name-the People of Freedom-for election campaigns and as a coalition partner in government. In addition to Italy Force and the National Alliance , belongs new training a number of smaller parties, including far-right Social Action led by Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The foundation of the party took place in Rome in a large room usually reserved for pop concerts. Berlusconi was "elected" the only leader the new party by some six thousand cheering delegates. There were rival candidates. The so-called "conference" was a media event constructed entirely around the figure of Berlusconi. The crowd repeatedly shouted "Silvio, Silvio" waving flags and tricolored Forza Italy, while echoing the melody of the amplifiers Forza Italy , Already used in the election campaign as a hymn to Silvio. In fact as the refrain: "President, we are with you, luckily for Silvio."
The procession has cost three million euro, was attended by 750 journalists and was broadcast around the country for at least three national television stations.
The internal structure of the new party is entirely subject to the "president"-preferred title from its leader. The PDL is devoid of any democratic structure. "The President" shall appoint the members of the Presidency and the Executive Committee as well as the three coordinators of the party and has the last word when it comes to selecting candidates for the party in European elections, national and regional.
In his speech at the conference, Berlusconi called for a "liberal revolution, civil and popular." He explained what he meant, referring to the need for "a better government for Italy" and "more power to the prime minister." In the future, as head of government is empowered to appoint and dismiss ministers and the right to arbitrarily dissolve Parliament. Both powers are currently within the purview of the authority of the President.
Berlusconi's contempt for the parliamentary rules and conventional rules was already clear before the convention, when he proposed that only the parliamentary group leaders should be present during the vote and should vote in Parliament on behalf of all their parliamentary group.
The only person to criticize the attack on the democratic procedure of Berlusconi was Gianfranco Fini, leader for many years National Alliance and current president of the Chamber. In his speech to the congress, Fini reminded delegates that the government has a duty to respect the opposition and rights of foreigners: "We should not be afraid of foreigners, just that we are children of a nation of immigrants," said Fini.
Fini's comments are not motivated by any concern for the future of democracy in Italy, but rather reflect a power struggle that takes place within the leadership of the new party. Purpose is not only a traditional political ally of Berlusconi, but its main rival. Fini sees himself as the political heir of the leader of the party, who is fifteen years older, but is concerned that the autocratic tendencies of Berlusconi might ruin his chances.
Fini's National Alliance has emerged in 1994 from the ashes of Italian Social Movement, which had its roots in Mussolini's Fascist movement. In the course of a long process that culminated in his visit to the shrine of memory Yat Vashem in Israel in 2003, Fini has sought to distance themselves from the fascist elements more extreme in his party and make it more acceptable political all'establishment AN Italian bourgeois. Shortly after his trip to Israel, was appointed foreign affairs minister Berlusconi.
Today, once again Fini can stretch his hand to his hardline fascist. As in the case of Alessandra Mussolini, these elements are welcome in the new party.
Other members of NA to speak at the Rome Congress were Gianni Alemanno, a former driver and current mayor of crazy fascist in the Italian capital, and the Minister of Defense Ignazio La Russa Benito. Alemanno has boasted that it has taken control of Rome for the first time after fifty years of government of the left. La Russa has used his speech to announce a doubling of the number of troops to be used for internal security operations in the coming months. La Russa has been appointed coordinator of the Executive Committee of the PDL, a place that is second only to Berlusconi.
few weeks ago, Russia and Berlusconi issued a decree authorizing private citizens to carry out patrols (called "rounds") during the night time, so as to legalize the violent activities of gangs virtually right racist towards immigrants. The government is deliberately using refugees without a residence permit as scapegoats to divert attention from the social crisis of the country and at the same time deploy the army to civilian use.
Social tensions
With his new party, Berlusconi has obtained a level of personal authority that clearly violates the most basic democratic norms and embodies clear Bonapartist tendencies. He is one of the richest men in the country, has a huge media empire and controls the six largest national and private television stations. At the same time, is the head of the government and controls the largest party and currently the most influential of the country.
The centralization of all these roles in one man, however, rather than a sign of strength indicates a deeper social and political crisis in the country. The democratic mechanisms used in past to reduce the class contradictions have been exhausted. The so-called opposition parties, including the so-called "left" of Rifondazione are completely discredited by years of collaboration in the government led by Romano Prodi. Berlusconi is poised like a circus performer on the growing social contradictions and is trying to maintain control of the situation with a combination of deafening propaganda, compliant and subservient media, campaigns, and sheer power of racist police. It is a policy that will not succeed long term.
Italy has a long and unbroken tradition of militant Labor disputes and is currently experiencing the deepest crisis in its economic history since the war. Immediately after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the country has slipped into recession. In the first two months of this year, more than 370,000 jobs have been lost. The OECD predicts that this year the Italian economy will shrink by 4.3 percent.
Even before the crisis, the Italian public debt was among the highest in Europe and threatened to become unmanageable. The only contribution of Berlusconi to resolve the crisis was completely underestimated its consequences. In early March, he announced: "Enough with the disaster, the situation is heavy, but not tragic."
Meanwhile, the country's social crisis has deteriorated dramatically. In the south of the country one in four households lives in poverty. As was the case in the seventies, hundreds of thousands of people head to the north in search of work, even if unemployment is also increasing in industrialized regions. The increased
Italian industry, Fiat has announced that it intends to close a factory. The company, heavily in debt, has already lost several thousand jobs over the past five years, through a combination of "restructuring" and "streamlining". In late March, workers reacted to the plan to close the headquarters of Pomigliano D'Arco near Naples with a block of the street which was then interrupted forcibly by the police.
Opposition without claws
The new Berlusconi's party is so strong and powerful only because the opposition official policy is absolutely weak and useless. Merely a place begging to Berlusconi at the negotiating table to find "joint solutions" to exit from the economic crisis.
On April 4, just a week after the creation of the new Berlusconi's party, up to 2.7 million people demonstrated in Rome for a week against the government's economic policy. The message given to the demonstrators by the head of the CGIL, Guglielmo Epifani, was a pathetic call for a "round table for the fight against the economic crisis. "Berlusconi scoffed at the requests of the event and said sarcastically that it was useless," as a strike against the rain. "
Epifani is an important member of Democratic Party, whose president is Walter Veltroni has resigned in a state of frustration a month ago following a major defeat at the polls of the party in Sardinia. Veltroni, a former member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and for a long time mayor of Rome, he founded the Democratic Party in 2007, using as model Americans, Democrats led by Barack Obama.
The new party president is Dario Franceschini, a Democrat related to Margaret, a minority of the current PD. This means that for the first time Democratic Party, which has its roots in the former PCI-powerful, now led by a Democrat.
before the return of Berlusconi to power the country was ruled for two years by a so-called center-left coalition led by Romano Prodi. These two years have been sufficient to remove large sections of the working population, more and more disappointed by the conservative policies of this coalition in which the parties successors PCI formed the largest parliamentary group.
A particularly insidious role was played by the organization Refoundation Communist Which took place in the Prodi government and ministerial support all the shameful activities of the government. In the elections of 2008, then the party has lost all its seats in Parliament. Its policies are largely responsible for opportunistic impressive success of Berlusconi. Today, the party is in a phase of autoframmentazione public.
The working class responded with militancy in the financial and economic crisis. The class conflicts have reached unprecedented intensity. The forms of parliamentary government and the forms of compromise developed in the post-war period to reduce social conflicts have proven to be increasingly ineffective. The country is on the verge of great class struggles.
At the same time, there are huge dangers posed by the decline and by the treachery of the old workers' organizations. Berlusconi's new party has a blowhard spectacle of itself, but hides a deep conflict in the superficial impression of harmony. However, the influence of fascist elements in growth, who have never won more than 12 percent of the vote in elections and now are considered the heirs of Berlusconi, is a warning signal. The Italian working class has suffered at the hands of the fascists because it lacked a clear and specific guidance.
The task of establishing an alternative Marxist articles from the needs of working class independent of all bourgeois interests and defending the Socialist International and a program has never been so urgent. To this end, it is necessary to construct a section of the Fourth International in Italy.
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