The Narrow Apertura

From now on, when the Italians switch on the light, they will be doing business with the government. This is, after almost eight months, the one tangible achievement of Premier Amintore Fanfani's center-left coalition, the much-heralded apertura a sinistra.

Finally ratified by the Chamber of Deputies. the bill nationalizing Italy's electric power industry was about as urgent, economically speaking, as introducing a new type of pasta. Nearly 30% of Italian electric power was government-owned anyway; buying up the rest of the industry at prices profitable to the private owners was scarcely a creative economic move. Eventually it may bring cheaper electricity to the underdeveloped south, but only at the cost of higher rates elsewhere in the country.

The whole thing is simply a political payoff to the Socialists, who are not in the government but whose 88 votes in Parliament Fanfani needs to keep his coalition in office. The Socialists demanded nationalized power because it is part of their political dogma and because Pietro Nenni wants to prove to his own left wing and to the Communists that he is not being taken into camp by the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile. the things that Italy really needs --schools, roads, tax reform -- remain vague promises.

Dreams of Solidarity. The big question about the apertura is whether it will be able to pull the Socialists away from their longstanding alliance with the Communists. Nenni apparently now wants this, but his formidable powers of persuasion are currently handicapped: he is still recuperating from a near fatal fall in a ravine this summer. Many of his party comrades are hypnotized by the idea of "working-class solidarity." Today, Socialists and Communists jointly run numerous local governments and agricultural cooperatives that are difficult to unscramble.

In Milan and ten other cities, the Socialists did move away from the Reds even before the apertura, and since then the process was repeated in two more cities. Mantua and La Spezia. But a real split between the parties is a long way off. Last week Fanfani's Christian Democrats demanded that the Socialists officially break with the Communists and ratify the move at a party congress. The Socialists shook the coalition by refusing even to hold such a meeting.

Test at the Polls. Meanwhile, Socialist leaders talk of more nationalization (cement and drugs) and of pushing a plan to create a series of 15 semi-autonomous regions in Italy--another scheme that fits in with the party program but would only mean proliferating bureaucracy if carried out. All this has caused jitters among Italian businessmen, who have begun to hold back on investments and blame the apertura for contributing, if only psychologically, to a slight slackening of Italy's still impressive boom (the annual growth rate has slipped from 9.8% in 1961 to 7% this year, which parallels what is happening in the entire Common Market).

The real and risky test of the apertura will come with the general elections early next year. Current betting is that the Socialists will then enter the government. It remains to be seen whether they will cooperate with democratic parties in preserving Italy's ties with the West and responsibly divide the fruits of prosperity, or whether they will keep their close links to the Communists, raising the fear of neutralism and economic decline.

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