Italy: Regular Catastrophes

• Share

From the Alps to Sicily, 12 million workers walked off their jobs in a one-day general strike that paralyzed Italy. With Communist and anti-Communist unions allied in protest for the first time in twenty years, demonstrators poured into the piazzas of Rome and Milan to demand higher pension and social security benefits and to curse the rising cost of living. Outside the Fiat automobile plant in Turin, police broke up a riot with tear gas.

All over the nation, students left high schools and universities to march alongside the workers and shout their own protests against an antiquated and inadequate education system. In Rome and Bologna, students occupied the universities to drive home their point. Next came the turn of state employees to demand more pay and social benefits. For 24 hours, trains halted, mail distribution stopped, schools were deserted and telephone service snarled. Reflecting the crisis of confidence, capital once again began to flee from the country, and the Milan stock market slumped to a three-year low. In the middle of it all, the government resigned.

Like a Phoenix. Thus last week, for the 29th time since World War II, Italy lapsed into governmental crisis. On the surface, this crisis seemed a bad one, with no solution in sight. "Siamo pronti per i colonnelli" ("We are ready for the colonels"), cried a young Roman in disgust at the nation's squabbling politicians. Indeed, in another, less patient land, the kind of chaos and confusion, disillusion and dismay gripping Italy would long since have provoked the army to take over. But appearances are deceiving in Italy, a country with its own peculiar laws of logic. As Luigi Barzini wrote in The Italians: "They rage against their fate today as they have always done. They have been on the verge of revolution for the last hundred and sixty odd years . . . The unsolved problems pile up and inevitably produce catastrophes at regular intervals. The Italians always see the next one approaching with a clear eye, but like sleepers in a nightmare, cannot do anything to ward it off . . . They console themselves with the thought that, when the smoke clears, Italy can rise again like a phoenix from its ashes. Has she not always done so?"

Yes, so far, always. Doubtless the Italians will also escape from the present cliffhanger. They are bound to come up on the other side of disaster with a patchwork government that will last until the next one, pointing again to their great miracolo, the economic miracle that the nation's leaders always cite as proof that there is really no cause for concern. The lira is so strong that some rumors speak of an upward revaluation. Gold reserves increased by $383 million in the twelve months ending Oct. 1, the largest increase of any country in the world for that period. The Italians must be doing something right. But they must be doing something wrong, too. While the miracolo has translated itself into cars and television sets for the working man, this has left him impatient for more—and newly aware of the staggering inequities of Italian life. The rich can dodge taxes, the wheeler-dealers can buy their way with graft. The little man is frustrated at every turn by a monstrous bureaucracy that seldom offers him redress from injustice.