REFLECTIONS ON ITALY
61
national structure and habits, to which process the piece by piece break–
ing down of the old bourgeois property relations, badly shaken already,
is to be subordinated. In short, for a socialist (not necessarily a member
of any party bearing the name) the present situation of Europe demands
a complete revision of Marxist tactics, based on historical perspectives
for Europe not accessible to the nineteenth-century parties.
To put it another way, I found myself bit by bit transferring my •
interest to the press of the Action Party-the only one from the reading
of which I can come away without a sense of moral uncleanliness. This
Party-of which Parri, by the way, may not
be,
his personal integrity
aside, the best representative-is recruited largely from the radical
intellectual elements of the lower bourgeoisie; does not profess to speak
exclusively for "the working class"-that pestiferous phrase of self-deceit
and demagoguery by which Nenni and Togliatti attempt to manipulate
the people into a new totalitarianism-but has a program well to the
left of the Socialist Party. And, of course, of the Communist Party, which·
has no program at all except the desire to come to power, leaving its'
program to the day by day improvisation from the immediate exigency
and the last Moscow order. But, of course, the Action Party is without
mass following, and one has a sense of hopelessness
in
watching it, except
that its very presence may produce some intellectual leaven among
the leaders of the Socialist Party.
From the start it had only been a question of time till Parri would
be forced out, and a new shuffle of posts attempted. His government had
done nothing-but absolutely nothing !-since coming into office. Poor
Parri a
faineant,
a Merovingian king without even an active Mayor
of the Palace! It was to be predicted: a government that fulfilled the
physicist's dream of an absolutely stable system in which the balance
of forces cancelled out the possibility of any action. The stalemate
might have been prolonged, but the Right, which had been bene–
fitting by it, had already acquired enough advantages to call the
turn. Will the new government swing to Right or Left? During the
past months the Right has been picking up its head, consolidating
its forces, preparing itself for an eventual show of strength. It has
lost some of its timid fear of the Communists, partly because the
latter
hav~
been losing popular favor by the Russian foreign policy,
particularly in the matter of Trieste, and now lately with Tripolitania
and the Dodecanese; partly, as the comforting protection of Allied occu–
pation continues; principally, perhaps, because of the Italian ability to
forget, to become guiltless. That has been my most depressing experience
in the country: nowhere among the bourgeoisie or lower classes did I
encounter a sense of guilt for the past: the Fascists? they were the other
people!; or, more calmly, as if acknowledging an error as trivial as some
passing social rudeness: yes, we were all Fascists. Centuries of Cathol-
