When speaking in generic terms about the “extreme left” in Italy, one perpetuates a serious misunderstanding. Almost all of the formations included under this label are plagued by the ideology of the dominant class and cannot but act accordingly in defense of the established order. Very moderate in ideas, accustomed to musing over clichés and prejudices, they are extremists only when they have to combat revolutionary Marxism, which they rightfully fear as a mortal threat to their dubious political practice.

For example, now that there is a government of “the right”, they do everything in order to divert onto the sterile and slippery terrain of anti-fascism every manifestation of discontent from the workers in order to prevent them from struggling for their own economic interests. The goal is a “less right-wing” government.

The slogan “we are all anti-fascists” wants to make believe an outright lie, that the vile “left-wing” of capital would be less hostile to the working class than its “right”. In reality, the bourgeois political class, whether “right” or “left”, differs only in a few exterior aspects, but in substance is tied together by the same interests and is always united in a permanent war against the workers.

Whoever in trade union demonstrations shrieks “we are all antifascists” pleads the bourgeoisie to assume a more democratic facade and deceives the workers by distracting them from pursuing their own immediate interests – higher wages and fewer working hours – and their historic one, the abolition of wage labor.

Internationalist communists do the exact opposite of the so-called “extreme left”, not making one bourgeois faction prevail over the other, but rather ditching them both. The bourgeois “extreme left” is not only unable to conceive of the overthrow of the ignoble and rotten regime of capital, but is not even capable of sustaining the economic struggles of proletarians for higher wages and reduced working hours.

Electoral Fairy Tales

The fairy tale says that finally the Italians had expressed the firm will for a strong, compact government legitimated by popular vote. The Woman of Destiny, invoked by popular will, was preparing to give a decisive signal on the institutional front by appointing the presidents of the Chambers. And here is a couple of aces falling from the sleeve of the premier in pectore as further confirmation of the historical attachment of the deep belly of the Italians to the traditional values of God, Fatherland and Family.

Then, however, something is wrong in the “family” of the center-right, the natural majority, they say, that exited from the polls: a miserable “personalism” is impeding the birth of the right-wing government!

In effect, this hindrance has profound reasons, more than in the character of the ex-premier in the substantial web of interests over which the fellow finds himself at the head. Capital for us is an impersonal force, despite the fact that the zealous functionaries who want it and must serve it often end up having to lend their own face to what they are enslaved by, even if their nominal wealth makes that of Croesus fade away into obscurity.

We don’t have to trouble ourselves with complex and unseemly conspiracies when, at the peak of funny disputes, the “young” premier goes to say in front of the reporters’ microphones that she “can’t be subjected to blackmail”. Maybe she is utterly convinced she’s saying the truth, believing in her character as a champion of the “sovereign people” against the omnipotent and odious “strong powers”. But the blackmail exists, in fact, and she will end up giving into it.

What is this “blackmail” to which she-who-cannot-be-blackmailed will not be able to fail to substantiate? They are precisely the slices of power in the new executive to be partitioned among the representatives of the mighty web of bourgeois economic interests, i.e., the temporary holders of the position of mere bystanders whose sole purpose is painting as impudence what is instead, covered by a thousand veils of mystification, always at the head of our world: its Majesty, Capital.

This final little word allows us, without offending some knights, to exit from the fairy tale of the enemy class and enter into our own. It is capital, which others call “the powers that be,” but which we call by its real name, which managed the electoral campaign, by voting by proxy, directing towards the act of subjection to the ballot box the indistinct amalgam of different classes which goes by the name of “the people” and which, due to its heterogeneity of interests, does not know and can never express a common will.

Now it only remains to be understood which course capital will want to impart on the formation of the new government. But only the lovers of fairy tales and simplifications can see it as a unified whole, when, due to its nature, it is an ensemble of contradictions which also make it live and allow it to keep together its thousand ruffled limbs.

Then considerations are made on the nature of the “challenges” of the future government to better serve the interests of the Italian bourgeoisie. First of all, there is worry about rising energy prices which “will penalize families and businesses”, or, in other words, the latter will be less competitive while the former risk spending a winter in the cold. Hasn’t the filthy job of adopting strongly anti-popular measures been assigned to the “left” for at least 50 years now? Why burden the “right” and, above all, the most eminent representatives of the “social right” with such a nasty errand?

Then there is the other crux, not to be neglected, which demands ductility and wisdom at the same time: how to deal with Russia, today pariah of the international community, and which for many years has been one of the most important economic partners of Italy? What a mountain of business was put at risk by the war, by the sanctions and marginalization of Russia! But above all what harm to the economic strategy of a country whose competitive edge on the world stage was based in large part on the low cost of Russian gas! Perhaps the election of the President of the Chamber, who loves to proclaim himself a fervent Catholic, homophobe, and friend of Russia, is a way to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, one Moscow and the other Washington.

Needless to say that the Italian bourgeoisie cannot and will never solve old dilemmas and get out of the basic ambiguities of a second-rate power always ready to sell itself “on the spot” to the highest bidder.

We are therefore inclined to see in the new government, which at the end of an exhausting labor will still have to be born, a substantial continuity in the worst tradition of the country’s history. Only a small portion of the members of the political class have changed; others have risen from the background to the role of protagonists.

The popular and bourgeois “left” cries fascism at their profaned democratic institutions. Exactly 100 years ago, that same liberal “left” voted confidence in the government of Benito Mussolini. Twenty years later it rewarded those stalwart ones with the presidency of the Republic and the government. Now they pretend to be scandalized while they prepare for collaboration in the name of "the best interests of the Fatherland".

- From Il Partito Comunista, N. 414, January 2023