MARKLILLA
61
lie, the apparently democratic system of proportional representation
managed only to radicalize the ideological extremes of Italian politics,
rendering the liberal intellectual center untenable, and insuring institu–
tional stasis.
For a moment, if just a moment, it seemed that this political and
ideological paralysis might come to an end after the events of 1989-90. In
the fall of 1990 the Italian Communist Party voted to change its name to
that of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and replaced its tradi–
tional hammer and sickle with the pacific symbol of a tree. (However, in
a compromise with the old guard, a small hammer and sickle still can be
seen in the tree's roots.) Even
Unita,
whose subtitle had always been
"The Newspaper of the Italian Communist Party," now simply proclaims
"Founded by Antonio Gramsci." These were meant to be more than
cosmetic changes. Ever since becoming leader five years ago, Chairman
Achille Occhetto has consistently moved the party away from its
Berlinguer equivocations and more aggressively towards other European
social-democratic parties.
But the structures and habits of Italian political life are such that the
formation of a non-Communist reformist coalition seems as remote as
ever. Several new parties have cropped up in the past decade in the wake
of Communist decline, and each seems intent on asserting its indepen–
dence and sabotaging compromise. Even within the new PDS there is
hardly consensus on forming a center-left coalition that could oust the
sclerotic DC. One wing of the party, the so-called
miglioristi,
are willing
to try, even if that means abandoning the party's independent tradition
and joining with Bettino Craxi's Socialist Party, now the country's third
largest. But a left splinter group, called Rifondazione Communista, con–
siders Craxi the devil incarnate and has succeeded in calling a significant
proportion of the faithful back to the hammer and sickle.
So although the vast majority of intellectuals and a large fraction of
politicians loudly proclaim loyalty to the idea of
la sinistra,
they spend
most of their time knifing their party rivals. Meanwhile, the graft and in–
competence spread, the public debt accumulates, new scandals are covered
over, and public power is steadily ceded
to
the
antistato
of organized
crime. Andreotti just grins and rules.
*
Political responsibility can breed political and intellectual modera-
tion. This would seem to be the lesson of Spanish and French socialism
in the 1980s. Looking to France in particular one can trace how the so–
cialists' acquisition of power in 1981 led directly
to
a moderation of
their political program (mainly through that program's own failures). It
also produced a more general intellectual detente that eventually ex-
