460
PARTISAN REVIEW
in which the material and industrial plant of a nation has be'en destroyed
and all the old social forms left intact,-at any rate in a country like
Italy that depends on foreign stuffs to keep its industries going. A social–
ist revolution, if it took over, could not possibly operate the economy,
wherea> the people who alone would be able to secure the necessary
foreign materials and capital are precisely those who hold all the bona
fides of the old social structure. (At this moment I am told, for example,
that there is hardly a ton of coal left in all of Northern Italy.) Any at–
tempt to shake up the old class structures in any fundamental way could
thus be promptly starved out by the powers of foreign capital.
Nor have any of the political parties shown themselves particularly
capable of carrying out a program that would escape being trivial. There
is not, in fact, any such thing as a really radical party in existence here.
The political journalism, while extremely articulate theoretically, is just
as equally retarded in social consciousness and revolutionary preparation.
The day after Roosevelt's death,
Avanti!,
the organ of the Socialist party,
printed an article calling him "The Man of the Century,"-this from a
party that claims to speak for the Left! More pathetic even is the fact
that there is no articulate anti-Stalinism from the Left, there is not even
a real understanding of Stalinism. One must remember that the Italians
who remained here under Fascism lived outside the whole drama of the
'Thirties' (which may, incidentally, have been, grimy as it was, a much
better school than we thought) : the significance of the Moscow trials,
the collapse of the Popular Front, the war in Spain,-all came to them
from that outside world to which, because they were Italians living un–
der Fascism, no matter how much they did not believe in Mussolini, they
did not belong. They had enough
anti-~ussian
facts given to them, but
these came with the wrappings ·of Fascist propaganda, so that the un–
conscious somehow rebelled also against the facts.
Hence, there is obvious excuse for the Socialist party line of col–
laboration with the Communists. At this particular historical juncture the
Italian working class (which in the North is one of the best prepared
in all Europe) would be completely confused and demoralized by a pro–
gram of anti-Stalinism from the Left.
If
Liberal intellectuals in America
during the '30s made amalgamations (any anti-Stalinist was a red baiter
and a Hearst hireling), how can the relatively uncultured populace,
amid the confusions and tensions of the present European situation, be
expected to avoid them: for them a Communist Party is by its very
name Marxist, red, Left, and they would be unable to understand the
intricate manoeuvers by which in the field of international politics the
U.S.S.R. can actually further reaction. European socialists are now com–
pelled to be conciliatory with Stalinism-though the final result of the
conciliation will probably be that they will die in the embrace of fra–
ternity.
Yes, the new cabinet is something of a victory, if a modest one, for
