Double Trouble (2022)

Book Review from the April 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Norms Under Siege: The Parallel Political Lives of Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi. By Edoardo M Fracanzani, Zero Books, 2021. 244 pages, £14.99

Edoardo M Fracanzani has used his background in studying Italian politics and society to make a comparison between Italy’s and America’s most prominent leaders of recent years. The similarities he finds between the careers and approaches of Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump are cogently described in Norms Under Siege, and go much further than them both being slimy right-wing populists.

As Fracanzani explains, the parallels between Berlusconi and Trump began before they entered the political arena. Both started out in the real estate business and later moved into the entertainment industry, with Berlusconi’s empire of television channels and Trump as co-producer and host of The Apprentice. Their business careers were built on ‘a heavy reliance on cronyism, a proclivity to bending (and occasionally breaking) the rules, the adoption of a rather low ethical bar in the pursuit of their objectives’ (p.33), tendencies they continued to employ in their subsequent political careers. These were new vehicles for increasing the power they gained in business, with neither entering politics aiming to improve wider society. Before they became heads of government, each played around with political affiliations which would serve them best at the time. Trump had been a member of several parties, including the Democrats, before settling with the Republicans, while Berlusconi had allies in National Alliance, a party with roots in fascism, as well as Italy’s so-called Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano).

Berlusconi, as head of the Forza Italia (‘Go Italy’) party, was first elected as Prime Minister in 1994, following a period of reform of the electoral system and public dislike of the centrist establishment. His influence over the output of Italy’s TV stations meant that he could win over the support of a large chunk of the populace, in particular those who were anti-left. He was re-elected in 2001 and 2008, and was prevented from running again in 2018 by his conviction for tax evasion. Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States in early 2017, after decades of the Republican Party shifting further to the right on social policies and promoting a stance of tax cuts, which didn’t really translate to reductions in state expenditure. Norms Under Siege was completed before Joe Biden moved into the White House, denying us Fracanzani’s views on Trump’s handling of the pandemic and his presidency’s turbulent end in January 2021.

As Fracanzani convincingly argues, with patiently explained examples, the two leaders used similar approaches to attract public support. Generally, this was among people with lower levels of mainstream education and a higher than average income. He writes that ‘possibly the most important element of Trump’s, as well as Berlusconi’s, extraordinary success with a certain class of voters is a rooted resentment toward the elites’ (p.135). They channelled this resentment into support by somehow giving the impression to many people that they are against the elite, despite them firmly being part of it because of their wealth and power. They are distanced from others in their privileged position, though their personalities (particularly their lack of taste, according to Fracanzani) made them unpopular with their peers, and their loose way of behaving differentiated them from other politicians. Berlusconi has the ‘manners of a TV loud-speaking salesman’ (p.25), which many voters could still relate to more than their usual staid politicians. The resentment towards the elite which Trump and Berlusconi used wasn’t only directed towards leaders but also to a perceived ‘cultural elite’ driving social trends leftwards. As Fracanzani says, ‘no one exploited political correctness fatigue for political gain more than [Trump]’ (p.107). His and Berlusconi’s disregard of ‘political correctness’, or even just basic decency, is exemplified in their sexist attitudes to women, which escalated to sex scandals which failed to derail them. Their behaviour is marked by a lack of shame, which indicates that they aren’t concerned about acting ethically. Despite, or even because of, their transgressions, they maintained a base of supporters whose loyalty is perhaps ‘the most striking aspect of the Trump and Berlusconi phenomena’ (p.124).

Of course, the two leaders had their critics as well. Their stock response to complaints against their behaviour has been to childishly play the victim and portray their accusers as enemies to get revenge on, a trick which apparently works. ‘The most striking similarity between Berlusconi and Trump is the way they were able to shape the public debate in such a way as to escape accountability from their unprecedented, unethical, and illegal behaviour’ (p.175). When challenged through the legal system, they used their position to avoid censure in ways which, according to Fracanzani, have caused ‘institutional damage’: ‘Possibly, the most apparent dents inflicted regard the law enforcement institutions these leaders choose to denigrate in order to bully their way out of criminal investigations’ (p.219).

Norms Under Siege’s account of the parallel careers of Berlusconi and Trump is a catalogue of the rules they have broken. Among these rules, there is a distinction between laws (which are, of course, set in legislation) and norms (social expectations, including ethical values), which is where we find the book’s title (although surprisingly, the word ‘siege’ never appears in its text). For Fracanzani, a combination of laws and norms ‘governs all systems’ (p.142), and because norms are less enforceable, a system which relies too much on them is vulnerable to being misused by any politicians there for their own benefit. So, his stance is based on believing in capitalist tenets like laws and that government is a machine which can be run responsibly, if it has sufficient safeguards against self-serving politicians. But his own opinions aren’t prominent in the book: his clear dislike for Berlusconi and Trump is tempered by his methodical tone, and he prefers to let his detailed analysis of the context in which they rose to their positions speak for itself. His book is a warning about how our political culture and system enable contemptible people like them to get power.

Mike Foster

Of Wars Hunts & Elections (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was Bismarck who said: "Never are so many lies told as during wars, after the hunt and before elections". The greatest electoral liar in Italian history, Giovanni Giolitti, the Prime Minister (1900-14) who gave his name to a whole era of political crookery, would have been in his element in this year’s Italian election campaign. The methods of persuasion he used to acquire votes were, it is true, somewhat more forceful, infinitely less subtle than those used by contemporary politicians and political parties. Now the crude threats of violence and electors supervised as they voted have been replaced by electoral dinners for a thousand, professionally designed propaganda posters and politically inclined actors, pop singers and sports personalities[1]. But, if you are a politician, your end remains the same: to win a share in the administration of the capitalist system. And no matter how much wool you have to pull over your electorate’s eyes in the process.

Let’s pull the wool aside for a moment and look at the way the sheep, the Italian working class, have obediently followed behind their leaders’ perennial promises of reform, employment, prosperity and a full and happy life.

In a rundown of Italian parliamentary politics since the war, no fewer than nine parties emerge as serious contenders for a share in government. Percentage votes gained in General Elections are as follows:

Held in the shadow of the Cold War and the Soviet-inspired coup in Czechoslovakia, the elections of 1948 easily lent themselves to billing as a straight fight between Christ and anti-Christ, Western freedom and Eastern tyranny. The Christian Democrats found it useful to issue propaganda posters showing a voter filling in his ballot paper with the caption ‘God sees you, Stalin does not’, while Pope Pius XII’s appeal to the faithful to vote for those candidates "who guarantee the right of God and the soul" fell on anything but stony ground. For their part the left-wing front of PCI and PSI could only mutter feebly about the DC wanting to restore the hardships of Fascism.

Yet in spite of all this no party managed (or has managed since) to muster enough votes to run the show itself. What has resulted therefore is a series of coalition governments with Christian Democrat majorities propped up either by ‘centre’ parties (Republicans, Liberals, PSDI) or by the right wing (Monarchists and Neo-Fascists) or, more recently, by the left (PSI). The monotony with which these coalitions rise and fall is matched only by the recurrent lameness of the excuses proffered for their failure by the politicians involved.

The first government set up after 1948 constituted an intransigent “anti-Red” front, utterly hostile to all contact with the PCI and its allies. But times changed. The storm clouds of the Cold War began to pass, the era of Common Market capitalism dawned, the Italian economy strained at the leash to expand into its new European markets. So after a series of disastrous ‘centre’ and ‘centre-right’ governments, several years of negotiation saw the inauguration in 1962 of the ‘opening to the left’, a new line-up of centre and left-wing parties (DC, PRI, and PSI) considered more capable of meeting the new requirements of Italian capitalism. As many governments before it, it declared its first priorities to be economic growth and social reform.

In the event the economy expanded rapidly, but despite its excuses and protestations to the contrary the new governing clique proved no more capable than any other of delivering its promised paradise of reforms in housing, education, health, transport, employment and Southern development. The reason for this, according to the present leader of the PSI, Francesco De Martino, is that “a real Socialist economy has never been tried”. There can be no quarrel with this statement, except that De Martino’s ‘‘socialist economy” turns out to be not a moneyless system of production for use in which reforms, the palliatives and crack-paperings of capitalism, are rendered unnecessary, but some bizarre, dreamlike contortion of capitalism in which ‘‘the importance of the consumer must be recognised while at the same time preventing the speculations of the capitalists”. (Interview in Corriere della Sera, 3 May 1972).

The ‘opening to the left’ cast a ray of sunshine across the largest Communist party in Western Europe, out in the icy political cold for so long. Since the entry into government of the PSI, a ‘friendly’ party, and the subsequent establishment of contact with the disaffected left of the DC, the PCI has pulled out all the stops to destroy its image as a bolshevik, totalitarian party and to meet the left of the ruling coalition half way. It gained local control of certain areas in the 1970 regional elections and since then, sniffing the sweet smell of power, has popularly screamed for law and order just as loudly as the next party and quite openly stated its readiness to enter a government coalition with the PSI and willing elements of the Christian Democracy, a party officially described in the 1968 election campaign as an ‘‘objective class enemy, an instrument of bourgeois repression”. Like Communist parties everywhere it would dearly love its record to vanish from the face of the earth. How can it convince people that from being a puppet of Stalin’s foreign policy, it has turned into a respectable, non-violent, reforming capitalist party no longer tied to the apron strings of the CPSU? This year’s election campaign consisted largely of desperate protestations to the effect that Russian-style, one-party state capitalism is not its aim. [2]

It had a certain measure of success too, in as much as the PCI, as in all General Elections since the war, registered overall gains. But give or take a few votes the balance of political power among the parties remains very much the same. A number of general conclusions can be drawn from the results (see chart above).

Although as yet undecided amid the wheeling and dealing now taking place, a centre-left coalition seems about to be re-formed. Since during the election campaign, however, the PSI had committed itself to a "more advanced balance of forces” (a euphemism for a left-wing coalition to include the communists) it will very likely continue to provide a bridge between Communists and sympathetic Christian Democrats. Perhaps, given the internal disarray of the DC [3], a half-way meeting along it will not be too long delayed.

In the bleak economic situation (last year investments slumped by 10.3 per cent, industrial production by 2.7 per cent, and unemployment soared to over 1 million) and the climate of uncertainty and apprehension created by the terrorist activities of various right and left-wing extra-parliamentary groups, the new union of right-wing forces (the National Right-Wing Front) made the gains everyone expected. But the 56 seats it now holds can hardly be said to constitute the same danger to the parliamentary system as Mussolini’s Fascist Party did in 1921. The effect of the socialisation of industry policies advocated by the MSI, unsurprisingly reminiscent of the programme of the ill-fated Republic of Salo, would be to put a brake on capitalist development. Hence any attempt to bring the Neo-Fascists into the government would meet with the strongest opposition from Italy’s capitalist class. Besides, the largest party representing the interests of this class has declared against any form of union with the right.

A right-wing coup of the type mooted for so long by sensation-hungry journalists seems equally out of the question. Any political regime in charge of an advanced economy needs the active cooperation of its workers, the geese that lay the productive golden eggs. It seems improbable, therefore, that a working class which, despite an atmosphere of social and economic chaos, has just declared itself only 8 per cent in favour of Fascist-style totalitarianism will be panicked overnight into supporting the interests of a tiny minority.

Over 90 per cent of the Italian working class — and make no mistake about this — is just as thoroughly committed to capitalism as ever it was.[4] It has shown this by a massive vote of confidence in the various parties lined up along the capitalist political spectrum. Now for its trouble, until the time comes for it to be hoodwinked again, it will suffer another term of broken promises, insecurity, bad housing, unemployment, struggle to maintain living standards, and all the other features of misery associated with capitalism.

In the political struggle which has just taken place, the word which tripped most freely and most frequently from the lips of demagogues, right, left and centre, was democracy. The election results themselves were variously described as "a triumph for democracy”, ‘‘the maturity of Italian democracy”, “the democratic process vindicated”, etc. And, with a few reservations, these elections were indeed democratic. What is pseudo-democracy, however, is the use the results will be put to by the parties who touted for votes and power. They will need of course to be more watchful than governments in the one-party state capitalist countries like Russia, Cuba and China which have not yet reached the stage of free elections, but this will not remove the ruthless cynicism and total disregard for human, social priorities with which the administrators of capitalism operate. Not that they can do otherwise. They are merely obeying the laws of a system of production for profit which cannot, by its very nature, be run in the interests of the working majority.

None of this is to deny the value of the ballot-box. The right to vote, on the contrary, constitutes a potentially revolutionary instrument which the majority of workers, once they understand where their true interests lie, can use to take over the state, preparatory to the changeover from Capitalism to Socialism. In Italy, without a parliamentary party putting the case for Socialism, the only true democratic way for a worker to use his vote, is to write “Socialism” across his ballot paper. For only with the end of the wages and money system will it be possible to extend true democracy to all departments of life.

Howard Moss

Notes

[1] Concetto Lo Bello, a famous football referee and successful DC candidate in Sicily, came out with a novel solution to social problems: “A youth raised in the traditions of sport will never be a hooligan, a drug addict or at a loss for something to do. What we need are sports fields, gymnasiums and physical training instructors”. (Election speech reported in Corriere della Sera, 4 April, 1972).

[2] To emphasise their ‘Europeanism’, the PCI sent their present leader, Enrico Berlinguer, over to London last year to plead with Harold Wilson not to oppose Britain’s entry into the Common Market. In 1958 the Italian Communist Party had declared its implacable hostility to the Treaty of Rome.

[3] At least eight ‘currents’ can be traced in the DC. The recent passing of Italy’s divorce law aggravated the situation, for although the party’s official attitude reflected the fierce opposition of the Vatican, it by no means received carte blanche for this from all its deputies.

[4] Voting figures are high in Italy — 92.8% in 1968, 93.0% in 1972.

Letter from Italy (1965)

From the February 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political situation and economic conditions in Italy were not entirely new to me when I arrived in 1963. My first move was to contact the local branches of the various parties in Trieste. I had “unofficial” discussions with the Communist Party of Italy and the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (more of these later), and can say right that they are Socialist in name only.

My contact with workers here is limited, political meetings are of the mass type and individual argument is difficult. The only activity of value was among my fellow students in the University and I was fortunate in meeting one young fellow who became particularly interested in the Socialist case. We used to discuss heatedly in between lectures and in our free time, and he certainly kept me busy answering his objections one after the other. After a winter of argument, he was becoming very sympathetic, but my hopes of his help in forming a Socialist group in Trieste were not fulfilled, as I left there that summer and he was due to graduate anyway,

Travelling about Italy for a while gave me a good chance to get to know something of the Italian working class and its political movements, but before going further, it would be best to name the main parties: so here they are.

Christian Democratic Party: The party in power at the time of writing. Conservative, hand in glove with the Church. Gets about 32 percent of the votes.

Communist Party of Italy: The major opposition party. About one third of supporters are religious (this was admitted to me by the Trieste Secretary). After the war joined by many ex-Fascists, some of whom have become M.P.’s. Despite its professed hatred of Fascism, the party has much in common with Fascist ideas and methods, e.g. violence and dictatorship. Most of its supporters know little or nothing about Communism, or Socialism, and many of them vote C.P. more as a protest against present government policies than for any positive reason. Gets about 24 per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Democratic Party: A reformist party. Exalts the Scandinavian brand of “Socialism.” Recently joined the Christian Democrats in a coalition, fearing a Communist majority. Gets about eight per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party: Breakaway from the Communist Party in the fifties. Policy is like the weather—very changeable, sometimes supporting the communists and sometimes the Christian Democrats. Gets about six per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity: Breakaway from the Socialist Democratic Party when the latter joined the government. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Liberal Party: Has similar policies to the Liberals in Britain, but also spends much of its time attacking the Communist Party and castigating the government for not dealing more severely with them. Gets about 10 per cent of the votes.

Italian Republican Party: Minor organisation, advocating a republic. Favours economic development, high protective tariffs, extensions of state power etc. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Social Movement: Composed of riff-raff and remnants of the old Fascist Party. Puts forward the sort of policy you hear from the Fascists in Britain and gets an alarmingly high proportion of the votes cast —about twelve per cent.

Italy is a political chaos. I am aware of about fifteen political parties, eight of which are represented in Parliament, and no less than seven claim to be Socialist. One of these, the Socialist Democratic Party (not to be confused with No. 3 above) is a splinter from the Italian Communist party and operates in the Trieste area, supporting the actions of the Yugoslav government. Needless to say, Socialism is the last thing any of them could be accused of supporting. They are a bunch of power-thirsty careerists, struggling to get control of Montecitorio (equivalent of Westminster) to run Italian capitalism.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, Italian capitalism has been going through an economic crisis in the past year or so. The government has been forced to nationalise the privately owned section of the electricity supply and this has been followed by an increase in the price of electricity. But this has not been the only price rise. The cost of living increases substantially each year and strikes for higher wages are very frequent At the time of writing, it is somewhat quieter but at one stage there were three or four strikes a day. And strikes in Italy are no genteel affairs.

The Italian working class are forced to struggle, but there is no evidence of any growth of socialist ideas amongst them. Anyway, more or less militancy is not a measure of Socialist knowledge and while wishing workers all power to their elbow in these fights, we should not let ourselves be dazzled by it, as Trotskyists and other political idiots are. We should not forget that even the most daring strikes are only really a struggle against the downward pressures exerted by capitalism. I was forcefully reminded of this point when reading Carlo Sforza in his L’Italia dal 1914-1944. He says that there were 1881 strikes registered in 1920 and 1045 in 1921. So after more than forty years it is the same old story; the struggle goes on. If nothing else, this is a telling point in favour of Socialism.

Remy Starc

Italy’s New Brand: 5-Star Movement (2013)

From the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The breakthrough achieved by a new political movement, the 5 Stars Movement (its official name is Movimento 5 Stelle, abbreviated as M5S), was a key result of the election that took place on the 24/5 February in Italy. For the Chamber of Deputies the M5S got 25.55 percent of the votes.  The figure for the Senate of Republic was similar. This resulted in 109 seats for M5S in the Chamber of Deputies and 54 seats in the Senate. For the old political establishment this outcome is quite drastic, but what does the M5S stand for, and will the Italian workers benefit from this electoral outcome?

Corrupt from the start

In order to understand Italian politics we need to go as far back as the artificial creation of Italy by the dominant European powers of that time (i.e., Great Britain, France and Prussia). Since its very foundation in 1861, Italian capitalism and its political establishment have been deeply linked to corruption and collusion with secret societies, such as Freemasonry and illegal organizations.

Italian schoolbooks still teach that about 1,000 men led by Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the southern part of the peninsula, dominated at that time by the House of Bourbon that could field an army of 150,000 men. Even with the addition of rebels and help from Savoy and Britain, Garibaldi’s army could not count on more than 15,000, ten times less than the Neapolitan army (as Marx pointed out in the New York Daily Tribune 23 August 1860). How did they do it? Corruption was the main weapon used by Garibaldi’s army.

The weapon of corruption worked very well and has dominated Italian politics since. ‘Unlike the rest of Western Europe, the disintegration of feudalism in southern Italy failed to produce an independent entrepreneurial middle class’ (Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy, 1982). This was in large part due to the colonial politics of the northern Italian bourgeoisie (Antonio Gramsci, Ordine Nuovo, La Settimana politica, Operai e contadini, 1919-1920). The banks of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were being systematically robbed by the new elite. From 1863 to 1866 the Bank of Naples lost 37 million lire (Gigi Di Fiore, Controstoria dell’Unione d’Italia, 2007). The Bank of Sicily’s director, Emanuele Notarbartolo, who tried to save it from bankruptcy, was murdered on the orders of Raffaele Palizzolo, another Member of the Italian Parliament and member of the management board of the same bank. Palizzolo was also a known Sicilian mafia boss, who took advantage like many others of the unification of Italy to make dubious investments (trafficking) for his own personal profit. The same year, 1893, another scandal involved another bank, Banca Romana, which to extinguish its debts printed fake money.  This scandal involved very important political leaders like Giovanni Giolitti and Francesco Crispi, founding fathers of Italy. These historical facts are just some early examples of how the Italian political system worked from the very beginning.

Things did not change during the Fascist dictatorship and after WWII the main party, the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), refined this rotten system even further. Their political machinery was based on clientelism and patronage. Amintore Fanfani, leader of the DC in the 50s, while advocating against clienteles and personality politics set up a scheme to recruit DC members called tesseramento which took clientelism to its extreme. Judith Chubb describes how these tessere (party membership cards) were crucial to get power within the DC political party. ‘The tessera of the DC is like a blank check: it can be given out to anyone – to relatives, to the deceased, to persons chosen at random from the telephone book or from health-insurance list’ (Corriere della Sera 7 November  1973). The trick was quite easy: you provide me with tesserati and I provide you with jobs in provincial councils, local government offices, agencies of the public administration. Of course the public sector grew like crazy with no equivalent growth in the private sector.

Organised crime was another very convenient partner for the political establishment because it controlled a part of the private sector, in particular the construction business. This system soon extended to the rest of Italy, in particular when ‘at the beginning of the 70s, Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian mafia) itself began to become a company. A company because, by getting a more and more hefty share – which sometimes became almost a monopoly – of the drug market, Cosa Nostra began to manage an enormous amount of capital’ (last interview with Paolo Borsellino, 1992).

As we have seen with Palizzolo, the connection between political class and organised crime has always been there, but now in the 50s, 60s and 70s, it became obvious, with people like Giovanni Gioia, Fanfani’s political secretary, Salvo Lima, a collaborator of Gioia with important connections with Cosa Nostra who was murdered by Cosa Nostra itself in 1992, and Vito Ciancimino, DC politician, mayor of Palermo and mafia member. To confirm Borsellino’s statement, we could just consider that Silvio Berlusconi started his empire by getting a surety from the Bank Rasini of Milan that was involved in Cosa Nostra money laundering. The best buddy of Silvio Berlusconi, Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian ‘Socialist’ Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), became clearly important when Cosa Nostra and the DC were having some ‘marital’ problems in the early 80s. It was known that this traditionally small party (9.6 percent of votes), which still carried the hammer and sickle logo until 1985, at once became ‘important’ and notoriously corrupted to the core.

To an extent, the Italian political class underwent a transition in the period from 1969 to 1977, which in Italy was characterised by intense social and political unrest connected with the first serious economic troubles since the end of WWII. At the conclusion of this phase, the national political class represented not only a relative obstacle to the healthy development of Italian capitalism, but started to act as an absolute brake: the public debt boomed and in 1985 reached the warning level of 80 percent of GDP (in 1970 it was only 40.5 percent).

If in the past Italian politicians were not so different from their counterparts in other European countries – maybe just slightly more naive and less concerned with an effective capitalist industrial policy – from the first ‘pentapartito’ (i e. five parties) government in 1981 they began to act as a simple parasite clique who prompted an artificial economic development making use of what Marcello De Cecco referred to as ‘criminal (or bastard) Keynesianism’: unbalanced and unproductive public expense, generalised political corruption at all levels, competitive devaluation of the currency, high taxation rates on salaries together with widespread tax evasion in the self-employment sector, and, finally, heavy reliance on the protected export of low-technology goods related to the existence of the European Common Market.

Enter Beppe Grillo

When in 1986 Beppe Grillo, a successful comedian from Genoa, made a joke about the PSI being corrupt he said what everybody knew already. Grillo was banned because of this joke from Italian television. This showed how little people were then allowed to say in the mainstream media and how bad the political situation was.

Grillo’s activism against the political establishment became even more pronounced after that. At that time he was working in theatres, touching upon topics like corruption, pollution, consumer association matters, unemployment, bank scandals, etc. People who did not follow him in theatres could still see him on television on Tele+, where his live performances were broadcast every now and then. Grillo’s performances got mainstream media coverage when he talked about scandals like Parmalat’s, which broke before the media and justice system knew about it. The internet was the real breakthrough for Grillo. He could finally reach many more people, and his blog became the most popular in Italy.  Through Grillo’s blog, meet-ups were and are organised to allow ‘Grillo’s friends’ to meet face to face, discuss local problems and organise action groups, for instance against a local council that wants to build a new incinerator. In this way Grillo’s friends or followers started to become more and more proactive. In 2007 on the 8 September, a very symbolic date for Italy, a V-Day (Vaffanculo = Fuck off) was organised to gather as many followers as possible to protest against the political establishment. This was a great success, connecting 220 cities at the same time. On this occasion Grillo declared that he did not intend to create a political party but rather to eliminate them.

Grillo specified later that the M5S is in fact a movement and not a party. At the end of 2009 the M5S was founded. For some, Gianroberto Casaleggio is the real mind behind the M5S. It does not matter to us if behind Grillo there is Grillo or Casaleggio or Grillo and Casaleggio. What matters is what this political movement is about. They claim that they want to empower the citizens, getting rid of the old caste of politicians and their old systems based on clientelism and patronage. That’s reasonable and necessary in a country like Italy. We can sympathise with such a movement over this point, in the same way that Marx did with liberals like Garibaldi and Francesco Crispi in their battle against the Bourbon monarchy (Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, 8 August 1860), without this meaning that Marx was a liberal.   

The Five Star Movement’s platform

So let’s have a brief look at the M5S political platform. M5S complains that the state is disjointed from the citizens, that the constitution (which represents bourgeois law) is not applied, and that the state’s cost far outweighs its efficiency. Here a cry for bourgeois legality was expressed through the M5S.  Of course this message also appeals to workers, who have experienced years of abuse from the political class. M5S also proposes that the salary of the members of parliament be in line with the national average; this point has been seen as socialist, but in fact is just a sign that when a capitalist economy is in crisis politicians should get the blame too. Nothing socialist there! We think that the capitalist system itself should get the blame and not just its servant politicians.

An interesting proposal is to make debate available to all citizens with internet access via the live streaming of public meetings. This is not direct democracy, but the principle that workers could participate more closely in political debates is interesting. Following the same line, there is the proposal that new laws should be online three months before they are approved to get citizens’ comments. It is not clear if these comments will be enough to change the proposed laws or even stop them, but again the principle of participation is interesting. M5S asks for referendums without a quorum condition and for the obligation on Parliament to discuss laws proposed by a people’s initiative. All these efforts to make Parliament more accessible to the workers are welcome, however very limited they are by the fact that economic power will be still in the hands of a few who will be influencing the political world anyhow. A more transparent way of doing politics in Italy is the main reason why the M5S got such a large vote. This expressed a feeling amongst many, even some of the upper class who rely on the bourgeois legality of the constitution, that the current political system was not representing them. 

The M5S political platform includes several points about sustainability. Capitalism is not sustainable so to try to reconcile this with the health of the planet raises contradictions by definition.  In terms of economic policy the M5S wants to introduce class actions, abolish the dummy corporation system in the stock exchange, and abolish the so-called Biagi law in which workers with temporary contacts have no rights for holidays, sick leave or maternity leave, and have restrictions on their pension payments. Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute (Statuto dei Lavoratori, 1970) says that an employer ought to have a fair reason to fire an employee. Several governments have wanted to modify it, so allowing the employer to fire their employees quite easily, to create what they call ‘flexibility’. Grillo in his blog proposed that this article should not be changed but that instead the taxes on enterprises should be lowered. The fact that the M5S is against Biagi’s law and does not want to change Article 18 was a crucial point to gain votes from the working class. In principle not changing this article is good. Unfortunately the real problem is that the worldwide free labour market has considerably reduced the working class’s bargaining power. Instead of hoping that lower taxes on enterprises would solve the problem, workers should get involved in international movements to fight against capital. Instead, M5S national reformism seems to be the preferred way.  

Moreover the M5S tries to counter the anarchic nature of capitalism by proposing to forbid the closure of food and manufacturing industries which have the internal market as their main market and to ban cross share-holdings between the bank system and the industrial system; also that financial advice  institutes should share responsibility for losses; that a salary limit be established for the CEOs of corporations in which the State is the main shareholder; abolition of stock options; abolition of state monopolies such as Telecom Italia, Autostrade, ENI, ENEL, Mediaset, Ferrovie dello Stato. This is the part that seems to interest the Occupy Movement. M5S wants to reduce the public debt so as to reduce the costs of the State. As the Italian State costs a lot, the money will also need to come from somewhere else. Benefits to unemployed people are also mentioned in M5S’s programme.

M5S reached political power rather quickly as an anti-establishment movement, because in Italy politics, corruption and crime are so interconnected, and public opinion, influenced by bourgeois ideology, can no longer stand it. In economic terms, the M5S response is a Keynesian mixed economy, with the old illusion that government intervention will be able to control or even cure the anarchic nature of capitalism. Unfortunately, the mixed economy already proved to be ineffective in taming capitalism. But can the M5S at least get rid of corruption and collusion? We shall see. 

It may be interesting, from the social science point of view, to notice that reformist movements are becoming more and more hybrid and decoupled from traditional left and right alignments. The internet has become a powerful medium for people organization, but still people need human contact and public speeches to get convinced. For many people representing the old establishment, this has been a real revolution.  For the working class this is yet another reformist movement. The Italian bourgeoisie is in such bad shape that this quite moderate movement, which aims at a capitalist system regulated by the government with no obvious links to organised crime, seems to be asking a lot. The need to apply bourgeois legality is so urgent that voters from all sides were attracted to the M5S. Workers voted for the M5S with the hope that cuts to state expenditure and the abolition of Biagi’s law could improve their condition. Unfortunately, capitalism does not have a good face or a bad face, it follows profit. And although it is very appealing to kick the old politicians up the arse, the situation for workers is unlikely to be improved by M5S political reforms.

Cesco

Avanti populisti (2018)

From the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the elections in Italy in March the collapse of the Democratic Party combined with the lack of confidence in Berlusconi’s party (Forza Italia) paved the way for the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and Lega Nord. Compared with 2013, M5S gained about 2 million votes, while the Democratic Party lost 4 million. Berlusconi’s party also shrank by about 2 million. Lega with 17 percent of the votes (5.7 million), a little bit less than the Democratic Party, was the real winner of the elections.

M5S and Lega together represent only 35 percent of the registered voters, yet, according to the voting system in use, this is enough to rule. The problem is that these two populist currents were traditionally opposed to each other, and were not above exchanging cheap shots during the electoral campaign. Thus for many, given the outcome of this last election, the only way out would have been yet another general election in the late summer or autumn.

However, M5S and Lega have managed to agree on a political contract to form a government together. It is evident that many who voted M5S to protest against the Democratic Party right-leaning policy – Matteo Renzi, its leader, was mocked as a younger copy of Berlusconi – will not be happy with this coalition, nor will those who voted M5S for its anti-establishment position. Conversely, Lega with only 17 percent of votes is in power and for the first time has managed to rebrand itself as a national party. Not bad for a party that once wanted to split the North of the country from the rest.

We analysed the M5S after their first electoral ‘success’ in 2013 (Socialist Standard, May 2013). At that time as now, this movement – they do not like to call themselves a party – played the moral card. This resonates very well with Italians who are sick and tired of being governed by a corrupt elite. This is a problem that Italy has had since its artificial foundation back in 1861, and made the fortune of several parties in the past, including the Communist Party in the 1970s and the Lega itself in the 1990s.

Lega Nord was badly hit when it was involved in a series of scandals. Amongst others one involved its founder, Umberto Bossi and his son ‘the trout’, for stealing money from the party’s funds; another linked Lega to the world’s most powerful organized crime syndicate, the Calabrian Ndrangheta. Matteo Salvini, the new leader, managed to dissociate the party from all of this and recycled the usual anti-EU, anti-immigration, and anti-establishment mantra. Salvini tried to get some international visibility lining up with Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and of course Donald Trump (jokes in Italy made much of the fact that Trump did not know who Salvini was, while the latter was proudly going around with a selfie they took together).The 5-Star Movement also had to rebrand itself somewhat to gain distance from its founder, comedian Beppe Grillo. Luigi Di Maio emerged as a main figure..

M5S and the Lega have several things in common. Both are anti-EU. In the European Parliament the 5-Star Movement lined up with Nigel Farage’s UKIP. Both want or at least wanted a referendum similar to Brexit. This also created some uncertainty around whether they would be able to form a coalition government, since the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarela, could in principle veto it.

Both M5S and Lega promised lower taxes. Lega based a large part of its campaign on the flat-tax, which would be 15 percent for all, poor and rich. M5S defined it as a ‘flop-tax’, because it won’t work and would not encourage spending; on this they are right, it wouldn't. M5S proposed to simplify the tax system reducing it to three levels of income: 23 percent for low income, 37 percent for average income, 42 percent for income above €100,000 a year. Eventually M5S and Lega will probably compromise with two levels.

Both M5S and Lega want to abolish the current hated pension law (legge Fornero). They seem to agree on the 'quotient 100'; this would mean that if a person starts to work at the age of 30 they could retire at the age of 65 (65+35=100), but if one has started working at the age of 20 one could retire at the age of 60 (60+40=100). They also promised to increase the minimum pensions.

The iconic warhorse of the M5S was the so-called 'Reddito di cittadinanza' (basic income). Many believed that this was a vote-catcher, particularly in the south of Italy. The basic income is the unconditional right to have an income; this is often confused with the minimum income, which is a subsidy to provide a basic standard of living but is conditional on having a wage. To be precise, M5S proposed something in between these two. Lega, however, is not in favour of such a basic income and proposes an 'autonomy and inclusion income' which would provide very meagre benefits for the poor.

Claudio Borghi, Lega’s economist, is pushing the idea, which is not even his own, of establishing treasury mini-bonds (€1 to €500), to create an alternative money to the euro within the EU regulations. These, according to Borghi, will be used to pay off the public arrears; people would be able to use them to pay taxes or buy services offered by the state. This mini-bonds will not pay interest nor have maturity. Borghi sees it as a first step towards Ital-exit. This is a monetary measure, which as such does not address the structural problems of the Italian economy. If anything it just aims to mimic a monetary devaluation.

Finally, the M5S movement also promised to establish a Public Investment Bank similar to the Bpifrance to help banks and enterprises and finance public works.

We are facing the usual Keynesian economic strategy to encourage economic growth and promote spending, where the state tries to boost the economy via lower taxes for enterprises and entrepreneurs (Public Bank and flat tax), and more money to low income people via basic income, an anti-austerity policy. As we know, it will not work, but this is all that in a time of crisis the bourgeoisie can come up with apart from austerity.

Cesco

(See the blog of our Italian group: http://socialismo-mondiale.blogspot.com)