"This Ship Is Leaking"

Italian democracy last week was staggering toward a political crisis that may well prove to be the worst since the Communists were narrowly defeated 15 years ago. On the verge of entering the government was a Marxist party that, at its worst, is openly allied with the Communists and, at best, is only a lukewarm and neutrality-minded adherent of the West.

Seeking Permission. When the original apertura a sinistra (opening to the left) was engineered a little less than two years ago, it happened largely because the long-ruling Christian Democrats felt themselves slipping at the polls and generally declining in vigor compared to their early postwar days. The solution advanced by left-wing Christian Democrats, with the zealous backing of Washington, was a series of reforms in education, agriculture and taxation, all involving large measures of government planning. Since this program was opposed by the rightist parties in Parliament, including the free-enterprising Liberals, the Christian Democrats needed support elsewhere to be able to form a majority. They sought it from Pietro Nenni's left-wing Socialists.

According to the apertura agreement, the Nenni Socialists did not enter the government but supported it in Parliament. In the process, some Christian Democrats hoped, the Nenni Socialists would be wooed into breaking their longstanding alliance with the Communists. As it turned out, the apertura failed to accomplish that--or anything else except the unnecessary nationalization of Italy's electrical industry. It also paved the way, at last spring's elections, for heavy gains by both the Communists and the Liberals. Since then Italy has been ruled by the caretaker government of Premier Giovanni Leone. But both Pietro Nenni and the majority of the Christian Democrats under Aldo Moro wanted to revive the apertura, this time with the left-wing Socialists actually in the government. Last week, Pietro Nenni turned to his deeply divided party to get its permission to negotiate such a deal.

Outside Rome's massive marble Palace of the Congresses, 600 Socialist delegates parked their Fiats, looking for all the world like bourgeois conventioneers. But inside, suggesting that you can't teach old dogmatists new tricks, the stage was bedecked with red flags and the Socialist emblem: a hammer, sickle and a rising sun. Eyes grew misty with tears as the affluent crowd broke out in emotional renditions of The Internationale and Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag).

Spouting Jargon. Today, said Pietro Nenni frankly, "Socialist participation in a coalition government is not a question of principle but of political opportunity." Then he launched into a precarious balancing act. He denounced the Communists' "arid theories of power," and urged the party to drop its rule demanding cooperation with the Reds in local elections. But he did not--as the Christian Democrats had wanted him to--ask that such electoral alliances be specifically ruled out. In foreign affairs, Nenni advocated a vague policy of "positive neutralism," which means unenthusiastic adherence to NATO and opposition to the U.S. plan for a multinational surface fleet equipped with Polaris missiles.

The powerful pro-Communist wing of Nenni's Socialists denounced the proposed coalition government as "unacceptable to a working-class party." The balance of power rested with the Socialists' No. 2 leader, Riccardo Lombardi, who only joined the party in 1947 (before then he was a leader of the leftist Action Party, which died in 1946) and feverishly tries to make up for lost time by spouting archaic Marxist jargon. He also made neutralist noises, and unlike Nenni, he hinted at further nationalization schemes. Still, while he denounced the "menace of capitalism," Lombardi admitted that within a decade the capitalists might solve Italy's social and economic problems--so the Socialists had better get into the government now to share the credit and influence events.

Thus, in the end, Lombardi threw his support to Nenni, but with so many qualifications that Nenni might yet find it impossible to work out a coalition with the Christian Democrats. Of 101 seats in the party's central committee, two went to independents, 49 to proCommunists and 59 to delegates favoring the coalition. Of these 59, however, 16 are held by Lombardi supporters. Viewing his shaky victory, the aging (72), ailing Nenni declared: "This ship is leaking on all sides."

More Moderate? Right-wing Christian Democrats, who had opposed the apertura in the first place, warned direly against taking the Socialists on board at all. Said Liberal Leader Giovanni Malagodi: "Collaboration with the Socialists signifies the abandonment of the struggle against Communism, abandonment of solidarity with the West, abandonment of a free economy and an open democratic society."

U.S. policymakers, although they no longer support the apertura with the same old enthusiasm, perceive no such perils; they argue that Nenni & Co. would become more moderate as members of the government than if they remained on the outside looking in. Besides, insist defenders of the apertura, the alternative to a center-left alliance is a center-right coalition which could not command a majority in the present Parliament without the votes of Monarchists and neoFascists. Many Italian right-wingers actually want the apertura government formed, hoping that it will fail, thereby forcing new elections in which the right-wing parties expect to make further gains.

As for Comrade Palmiro Togliatti, he chided Nenni for his anti-Communist talk and sweetly urged both the Socialists and the left-wing Christian Democrats to accept cooperation with the Communist Party.

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