Moving to the Left

In the Hall of Mirrors of Rome's block-long Quirinale Palace. Italy's 70-year-old President Giovanni Gronchi swore in his good friend Amintore Fanfani, 50, as Premier, along with a Cabinet of 19. Not since Italy became a Republic after World War II had an Italian government leaned so far to the left.

The new government could be expected to be as pro-West as before, but its makeup showed Fanfani's determination to break with Italy's postwar middle-of-the-road pattern. To his only ally in the coalition government, Giuseppe Saragat's anti-Communist Socialists, Fanfani gave four crucial posts in social experiment--the Ministries of Finance, Labor, State Participation and Communications. For the first time since the war, a trade unionist was included in the Cabinet: Giulio Pastore, the head of the anti-Communist labor federation, CISL, became Minister for Economic Development of Southern Italy and Depressed Areas. Fanfani dropped Giuseppe Pella, a leader of the Christian Democrats' right wing, as Foreign Minister and took the post himself.

With a majority of only one or two votes for his government in the Chamber of Deputies, Fanfani hedged his gamble by handing important Ministries of the Budget, Treasury and Interior to more conservative members of the Christian Democratic Party. Some of his critics grudgingly conceded that despite its leftward lean, Fanfani's Cabinet struck a "perfect balance." Absent from the government coalition were the Liberals, Italy's nearest equivalent to a free-enterprise party. Sighed Liberal Leader Giuseppe Malagodi: "Every nation in Europe seems to have tried the socialist adventure. Now it is Italy's turn."

No Brief for Capitalism. Fanfani's idea of socialist adventuring stems from his long espousal of Italian left-wing Catholicism. Ever since his first days as professor of economics at Milan's Catholic University, Fanfani has argued the moral responsibility of both church and state to look after the needs of the people, and has had little brief for capitalism--at least the type of capitalism that Italy has long known. Said Fanfani in Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism, one of the 16 books he has written: "Capitalism requires such a dread of loss, such a forgetfulness of human brotherhood, such a certainty that a man's neighbor is merely a customer to be gained or a rival to be overthrown, and all these are inconceivable in the Catholic conception . . . There is an unbridgeable gulf between the Catholic and the capitalist conception of life."

Fanfani is the youngest Italian Premier to take office since Mussolini in 1922. A teen-ager when Fascism began, he saw the corporate state as the ideal, and in what he calls a "temporary aberration" turned to Fascism. "Some day," he once wrote, "the European continent will be organized into a vast supranational area guided by Italy and Germany. Those areas will take authoritarian governments and synchronize their constitutions with Fascist principles."

Readymade Launching Pad. In an Italy where hardly an admitted Fascist was to be found the day the Allies arrived, Fanfani has never tried to hide his Fascist record; but unlike many of his countrymen, he freely admits that he was wrong. Turning his boundless energies to other causes, he worked for Catholic Action, joined the Christian Democratic Party. With a group of fellow intellectuals called "The Little Professors," he formed a New Dealish clique, known as Democratic Initiative, inside the Christian Democrats, a national party whose membership spreads across the spectrum from monopolistic right to socialistic left. As Premier, Fanfani will find a readymade launching pad from which to accelerate the state's intrusion into the country's economic life; as a hangover from Fascism, postwar Italy already has the highest percentage of state-run industry of any country outside the Iron Curtain.

"Fanfani has colleagues, associates, acquaintances and subordinates," says one politician. "But I have never heard much about his friends." In the eyes of his critics, 5-ft. 3-in. Amintore Fanfani is brusque, sarcastic and dictatorial. His indefatigable energy and his passion for efficiency have carried him far in twelve years in politics. But they have also left enmities.

No Time for Siestas. As a Cabinet minister, Fanfani, bounding in sharply at 8 a.m., was the scourge of Italy's late-arriving civil servants. Government workers still recall the time that Fanfani entered a division chief's office without knocking. The man, who was casually shaving, did not turn around but shouted rudely, "Who is it?" Snapped Fanfani: "I am the new minister, and you're fired." As Minister of Labor he once kept all the participants at a bargaining conference in a room without food for 48 hours until agreement was reached.

Having failed to get invested as Premier four years ago, Fanfani took note of some of the hostility towards himself. He now appears far less the martinet and displays increasing humor and tolerance. When he awaited the call to the premiership four years ago, he paced his room for hours. This time, he sat at the piano playing Verdi operas. A deeply moral man, Fanfani believes something must be done immediately to help the 2,000,000 Italians who have no jobs and the other millions who, even with jobs, live in poverty. "Even if we make only pots and pans, candy and children's night lights," says Amintore Fanfani, "we must give the Italian people work."

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