Of the many books dedicated to Craxi on the twentieth anniversary of his death, that of Claudio Martelli (L'Antipatico, published by La Nave di Teseo) it is perhaps the most beautiful. It is neither a hagiography nor a meticulous reconstruction of the political events in which Craxi was the protagonist. Instead, it is a careful and at the same time affectionate political and cultural biography of the socialist leader who died unjustly in exile.
Martelli's Craxi he is above all a tenacious reformist socialist who gained experience in Sesto San Giovanni, in Italy's Stalingrad, and who actively participates in the life of the workers' movement without any inferiority complex towards the communists, then hegemonic. He is a fighter for the freedom of peoples, be they Palestinians, Latin Americans or dissidents in Eastern countries and he is also a sincere patriot who loves Italy and does not hide it, as in the PCI only Giorgio Amendola did.
But Craxi is above all a "Garibaldino", who wages war on the great powers that were clipping the wings of the country: to the communists above all, whose hegemony over the workers' movement condemned the Italian left to be an opposition for eternity; to the DC which, aware of the position it enjoyed, tends to transform itself, with Fanfani, into a sort of Party-State and creates that inextricable weave between politics and the economy and between companies and the State which will contribute, more than anything else , to fuel corruption in our country starting from the 50s up to 92 and beyond and, finally, against what Martelli calls the 4th Power, i.e. the large industrial and financial groups that willingly they adapted to that system, which was so favorable to them, only to then renounce it when it ceased to be so.
It took courage and a considerable amount of self-confidence to wage such a war from a minority position. But Craxi was not moved by arrogance (which, moreover, did not belong to him) but rather by arrogance a “deep political and moral conviction”. The same that had animated in the past the men he most admired and who inspired his action: Garibaldi, Mazzini and Bixio. In this sense Craxi was truly, as Martelli rightly remarked, "a profoundly moral man, in the Crocean sense of the term".
But what happened to his political battles? Martelli focuses on three of these battles: the one for Socialist Unity which aimed, to quote the words of Norberto Bobbio who was the architect of that proposal, to "recompose the scattered members of Italian socialism on a clearly reformist basis"; that for alternation with DC, to be achieved through a "major institutional reform", and, finally, that for a new development of the country, to be achieved through reforms and a democratic planning of the economy (not the Gosplan but the planning conceived by Antonio Giolitti and Giorgio Ruffolo).
Extensive program! which would certainly have changed the face of Italy if only it had been realised. But this did not happen. Each for their part, the PCI on one side and the DC on the other, have decreed its failure and the consequences still weigh on the country. Socialist Unity failed because the PCI opposed it with all its strength and it was not Togliatti's old guard who opposed it with greater determination but it was the Young Turks who had taken his place: Occhetto, D'Alema and Veltroni.
D'Alema, in retrospect, acknowledged that Socialist Unity was the only way forward but, he added, it could only be taken if Craxi had stepped aside. It is a question of political meanness and an obvious lie: in 92 Craxi was actually forced to step aside following the intervention of the Milanese judiciary but his "forced removal" did not make the project of the Socialist Unity. Indeed, he archived it definitively. The truth is that Occhetto, D'Alema and Veltroni they wanted everything, except to transform the PCI into a modern social democratic party.
From 89 onwards we witnessed an exhausting but vain metamorphosis of the old PCI (politically dead but never definitively buried) into PDS, then into DS and now into PD. Tomorrow we don't know! But if today the Italian left, rather than the "big field" of which Zingaretti and Bersani fabled, resembles an arid “desert of the Tartars”, the main fault lies precisely with the heirs of the PCI. Even the great institutional reform that should have favored the alternation of the left united with the DC has not been implemented.
And here too the PCI's opposition was, if possible, tougher and more determined than that of the DC itself. For the PCI, speaking of governability, alternation and semi-presidentialism was equivalent to questioning the very structure of the Constitution, the essence of which is to "force" the political forces to consortium rather than to divide. On this basis, the break to the left was inevitable, but the manner in which that break was consummated was not. The PCI accused Craxi of being an adventurer and of his government he said it represented "a threat to democracy".
Of the PSI Berlinguer denounced the irreversible genetic mutation while D'Alema decreed that the PSI had turned into a business group clinging to the Christian Democrat power. The rupture was dramatic and its consequences for the left and for Italian democracy were disastrous. From there, in fact, it originates the campaign to delegitimize the party system which will then culminate, also thanks to the intervention of the Judiciary, in their practical destruction. Since 92, Italian democracy has undergone a perennial transition towards a new institutional structure which it has not been able to achieve for the simple reason that there are no longer any political forces capable of managing this transition.
Only idiots can rejoice in the disappearance of parties and only an irresponsible judiciary can rage against any form of political and even cultural organization, such as foundations. But the indisputable truth is that without parties, representative democracy simply does not exist. As the Americans say: "there is no America without democracy, there is no democracy without politics and there is no politics without parties" and this also applies to Italy.
More controversial is the assessment of the Craxi government's economic policy. Here, curiously, Martelli, instead of underlining the positive results achieved in the fight against inflation and in the growth of the GDP (these are the years in which Italy overtook England), emphasizes two facts which, in his see, would have undermined Italy's chances of growing, namely: the divorce between the Treasury and the Bank of Italy (early 80s) and privatizations (early 90s). In his opinion, the former would have caused an explosion of the public debt, due to the interest expense to be paid, and the latter would have led to a de facto liquidation of the significant industrial assets of the State.
Frankly they seem to me two unfounded allegations. The divorce between the Treasury and the Bank of Italy was necessary to limit the bad habit of the governments of the time of financing current expenditure (especially that relating to welfare) by printing money rather than by raising taxes. The accumulation of debt up to today's 134% of GDP is due to a very large extent to the increase in current expenditure and the interest that the country had to pay on that debt. If the debt had been contracted to make productive public investments, those investments, albeit over time, would have paid off and the debt would not have grown.
The problem therefore is not whether to go into debt or not but for what to do it, and this is always true, whether there is a divorce or not. Even on privatisations, the judgment should be more calibrated. As much as it costs to admit it, it must be remembered that, beyond a nucleus of companies of excellence that needed to be safeguarded in every way, the public industrial heritage was overloaded with decayed enterprises and chronically at a loss. Companies that should have been restructured, restored or abandoned before the fateful 31 December 92, the opening date of the single European market.
We didn't do it and, consequently, we had to do it later, with water in our throats and paying a steep price (just remember the forced liquidation of Efim, the dismantling of Gepi, the sale or closure of the chemical plants of ENI and the iron and steel companies of IRI). Of course there have been mistakes. the most unforgivable of which was the privatization of Telecom (totally different from the opening to the market of Eni and Enel). But politics is responsible for all this and not the strong powers which, in this case, have little or nothing to do with it.
In general, looking at that period and the way Craxi operated, one cannot fail to recognize his political stature and the ability to govern that Martelli rightly attributes to him. However, it would be right for the country as a whole to do so now, also because it would desperately need politicians of similar caliber today.
