T IS above all the Lega Lombarda (LL- Lombard League) that represents the motor force behind the spread of Leaguism in Northern Italy. The Lega Lombarda was already on the scene in the 1970s. It was launched by Umberto Bossi - the charismatic leader of the League — with a vague program of autonomy for the North. It remained a marginal and insignificant force until the second half of the 1980s, when it began its surprisingly rapid ascent.
The original implantation and initial successes of the League occurred in the northern zones of Lombardy, where the recent economic growth had been based on the expansion of small and medium firms; that is, companies in which restructuring is taking place, characterized by the absence of unionism, where safety standards are not respected, and tax evasion is rampant.
These are also the areas where the employment situation and the quality of public services are relatively good. In sum, the League thrives in relatively favored areas where the processes of capitalist modernization have strongly marked the social fabric. The League registered a qualitative leap forward in the regional elections held on May 6 and 7, 1990 where it increased its score from 3% in 1987 to 18.9% in Lombardy and became the second largest party in the region.
### Middle class support
Beyond its Lower Alpine stronghold it made inroads throughout Lombardy, including Milan. An analysis of the Milan vote shows the class basis of Leaguism more clearly. The true core of the League is made up of the small and medium bourgeoisie, increasingly intolerant of a state which in their view taxes them too much and is too ineffi-
The Lega Lombarda's economics expert, Marco Formentini, expressed this mood among the middle classes thus: "Involved in economic management, in competition with private business and in cahoots with the unions, the state represses free enterprise both through heavy taxation and through the inefficiency of the infrastructure and services that ought to be the external support of the productive sectors. The League has drawn up a project which will reaffirm the values and express the demands of enterprise. The entrepreneurs want to work in a context of freedom without oppressive restraints".! This translates into the demands put forward by the League's leader and representative of the middle classes, Umberto
The rise of a new far
ITALY the diffused malaise and the protests it gives rise to, find solace in the Leagues; this support is given without worrying about whether the reasons for the protest and the League's political project are in right fact in harmony — except in the case of those social groups to whom the League has offered clear guarantees for their corporate interests" -
THE parliamentary elections held last April 5 and 6, 1992 signaled the full entry of Italy into Europe. They also reflected the crisis of the political system that guaranteed more than four decades of capitalist growth. And as elsewhere, the right has capitalized upon this crisis. The governing parties (the Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party and their satellites, the PSI and PLI) registered a loss of support - especially in the North — and the left has become marginalized. The growth of the far right is a trend which currently exists on a European-wide scale but the tendency to put all right wing parties and movements in the same sack without taking into account the diversity and specificity of their various contradictions must be avoided. This is particularly important in the Italian case. The traditional fascist right is represented by the Italian Social Movement (MSI), while the Leagues are not to be equated with the fascists of the French National Front or the
German "Republicans" of Nazi inspiration. They are rather, a reactionary and populist movement, as we will see below. It is therefore necessary to analyze in depth the origins, the growth, the social radicalism and the political character of the Leagues, especially considering that the readers of International Viewpoint have not yet had the opportunity to read about the new Italian right.
In 1987, the League had a mere 3% of the vote in Lombardy; in three years it climbed to 18.9%. This rapid expansion of support is mainly electoral. The League had no weight in the social movement, no links with mass organizations and its party organization was stretched to the limit by the elections. Thus it was faced with the need to make a qualitative leap forward, which implied developing an organized relation to society and extending its political horizons beyond Lombardy.
### Rejection of centralism
Already, at the end of May 1990, the Autonomous Lombard Union (SAL) was formed. According to internal sources, membership rose to 10,000 by the end of the year. A poll conducted by the FIOM union among Lombard engineering workers showed 43.1% of respondents having a favourable view of the formation of the League's union. The reasons included: "rejection of the centralist system and bureaucracy, which also exists in the union movement, desire for fiscal and administrative autonomy, job insecurity, prejudice against Southern Italians and foreigners, distrust of the party system and support for a "Lombard' policy as a remedy for social ills" 5
LUCIANO MUHLBAUER Bossi: "Only we truly represent the social revolution of the small and medium entrepreneurs. We have the same revolutionary potential as the corporations of 1926"2
The intolerance of the small and medium bourgeoisie and in general the failings of the state apparatus at a time of capitalist modernization are, however, not enough to explain the wide support obtained by the Lega Lombarda. Much of the League's vote comes from popular and working class layers. It is not only the Christian Democrats (DC), who have been at the centre of political life since 1945, that have lost much ground; the left, and in the first place the Democratic Left Party (PDS — the ex-Communist Party, has also lost many votes to the League.3
The League's capacity to win support among workers and the lower middle class with a cross-class outlook and to direct their social and political discontent against the central state ("Away from Rome"; "Rome robs, the League will win") and against the "Roman" parties in their entirety is beyond all doubt.
Underlying this capacity is the crisis of the workers movement and the left. The profound confusion in the workers' movement in the 1980s, characterized by such developments as the acceptance of a capitalist horizon by most of the former CP, the renunciation of class conflict and the explicit support for "co-management" by a section of the leadership of Italy's biggest trade union confederation, the CGIL, have deprived the Italian proletariat of any point of reference. As Vittorio Moioli put it: "in the absence of any other credible references,
Such a response is evidence of the widespread discontent of many Lombard workers with an increasingly distant union bureaucracy, which is increasingly reflecting the views of the bosses. In fact, the SAL has a cross-class programme for an "alliance of Lombard producers" which identifies the central state as the enemy to fight, the enemy both of the bosses and the Lombard workers, for example, through taxes that affect both. The state furthermore is accused of furthering the interests of Southerners and immigrants to the detriment of Lombard 1. Italia Oggi May 5, 1991, quoted by Vittorio Moioli, Il tarlo delle Leghe, Ed. Comedia 2000, 1991. 2. La Stampa, February 2, 1991, in V. Moioli, op. cit. 3. A survey related to the vote of April 5/6, 1992, carried out by DOXA, found that 24.5% of the Leaguist vote came from former Christian Democrats and 18.9% from the former PCI; in Avvenimenti, May 6, 1992. 4. V. Moioli, op. cit. 11 5. Ibid. June 8, 1992• # 230 International Viewpoint
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According to Antonio Magri, the SAL's secretary: "we must re-establish the correct relation between entrepreneur and worker, based on their real value; let us get rid of the negative past of antagonism and conflict so dear to Marxist ideology and replace it with a contractual relation based on dialogue between the wage providers and wage earners. The exploiter of both the worker and the entrepreneur is the Roman cen-
"The SAL must not fight so much through strikes, an instrument now outdated: it must act in a differentiated way towards its counterpart, the employers; hard struggle against big capital but a benevolent approach to the small and medium entrepreneur. We are an expression of the middle classes and we will not betray them as fascism did", Umberto Bossi has stated.6
Collaborationist unionism
In fact, just as with the fascists, we are talking here about a collaborationist unionism, opposed to class conflict, and this will also apply in the case of big capital. Furthermore, the SAL is demanding the reintroduction of "topped up wages" given that "workers in the North get less than in the South since wage parity does not take into account the lower cost of living in the latter" (A. Magri), and wants "to get rid of all laws which in fact give precedence to Southerners in access to public sector jobs" (A. Magri). The same individual has also proposed the expulsion of immigrants from employment.
Thus, the League calls on the Lombard workers to fight against Rome and Southern and immigrant workers. This is a risky operation, but its success should not be discounted. After two years the Leaguist union has obtained mixed
On the one hand, the League continues to reap a rich harvest of workers votes, but, on the other, its "unionism" has not really taken root. It is incapable of dealing with the realities of class struggle. This became clear during the recent big battles against attempts at massive layoffs in Lombard industry. It is especially true where vanguard groups are established in the factories, which are able to oppose both the bosses decisions and the collaborationist policy of the union confederations, the CGIL, the CSIL and the UIL.
However that leaves out the workers in small and medium enterprises, who are often not unionized and are subject 12 (and who enjoy the least legal protec- to constant blackmail from the bosses International Viewpoint # 230 • June 8, 1992 tion) and where there is no union or political intervention.
### Organizing business
However, the most important operation for the League has been the foundation of the Lombard Association of Independent Entrepreneurs (ALIA), which organizes people involved in small and medium business, shopkeepers, craftsmen, the liberal professions and company directors. The mission of the ALIA is to organize the League's true centre of gravity, the small and medium bourgeoisie.
The Italian bourgeoisie in its entirety is increasingly less inclined to support a state which no longer corresponds to its interests and still less to the requirements of the big capitalist Europe of
Under the combined effects of the economic crisis and a favourable balance of social forces, it is now stridently demanding the elimination of the gains won by the workers' movement - the right to strike is already severely limited in the public sector — cuts in social welfare, privatization, greater freedom of movement for enterprises and an authoritarian reform of the institutions that would strengthen the executive at all levels. These neo-liberal themes are repeated and expanded by the League.
While we do not dispose of complete figures, such a mood disposes parts of the medium and lower bourgeoisie of the North to increasingly solid support for the Leagues. This is particularly true of sectors that did well in the 1980s and now feel their privileges threatened. The big capitalists, while remaining firmly opposed to the Leagues, are also engaged in bitter debates within the bosses associations. This split in the bourgeoisie in Lombardy and throughout the North of Italy is not really about fundamental objectives such as making the workers pay the costs of the crisis but about political tactics and personalities.
Network of associations
The Lega Lombarda has other organizations; at the end of 1990 and the start of 1991 it promoted a number of other corporatist organizations such as the League of Artists, a landlords' union (SALPI), and the Association of Lombard Farmers (ALA). There is also a cultural and sports' association, ACLIS, which has about 1,000 sports centres at its disposal.
The League has a weekly paper, Lombardia autonomista, with an average print run of 45-50,000, controls a local radio and TV station in Varese and enjoys the sympathy and support of a variety of journalists from the national press. The League is now increasingly ambitious and in January 1991 the Pontidafin fund was set up with the aim of acquiring a daily newspaper and radio and TV stations in the medium term.
When we talk about the breakthrough in the elections of 1990, we do not only mean the big presence in the elected institutions in Lombardy or the construction of social transmission belts; we are also referring to the beginnings of a spread of Leaguism beyond Lombardy. In 1990 other regional autonomist movements did not gain impressive electoral scores, but they represented possibilities for development which have been confirmed in the recent nationwide elec-
In some regions of northern Italy, such as around Venice, autonomist movements existed for some time without succeeding in becoming more than local and folkloristic groups. In other regions of the north Leagues were formed on the model, and often on the initiative, of the Lega Lombarda.
In 1990 the latter succeeded in uniting the archipelago of old and new autonomist movements in the north under its own domination as the Lega Nord (North League). This started life as an electoral cartel but represents the birth of a political force representing the interests of the middle classes and capable of taking advantage of the mounting crisis of credibility of the mainstream parties, and able, in consequence, to put itself forward as a reactionary and populist global alternative to the system of parties.
The Lega Lombarda-Lega Nord does not have a clearly defined programme nor a well-worked out strategy. Squabbling over various points is endemic? and Umberto Bossi is capable of publicly contradicting himself from one day to the next. One should not be misled by such chopping and changing, however. The rapid growth of the League has overwhelmed its own leaders, and above all Bossi, who has had to try to keep pace with electoral success by making policy on the hoof. On the other hand, this very vagueness is useful for a force which shrouds its own base with demagogic and populist rhetoric. In fact, the majority of the League's electorate do 7. Here is one example: at the time of the war against Iraq, the Lega's leader Bossi spoke against military involvement in the senate, while his colleague Leoni took the opposite line in the lower house. 8. At the time of the last elections, the Lega's electoral material in Milan used slogans of the type: "Against the parties", "Against the Mafia", "No to the Racketeers". They have also opposed motorway tolls, which are considered as a Roman injustice.
not know what its main political proposals are.
Proto-fascist tendencies
This makes it very hard to predict the League's future development. On the other hand, we should be in no doubt about its reactionary and xenophobic
ITALY
N MARINO nature or its proto-fascist tendencies. In 1990 a helping hand in working out policy was given to the Leagues by the constitutionalist, Professor Gianfranco Miglio. He rapidly became a close collaborator of Bossi and is now considered to be the League's ideologist-in-chief. Given the influence Miglio has had on the League's theoretical development, it is reasonable to make use of his words to grasp that organization's thinking.
The first and best known aspect of Leaguism is "federalism" and "autonomism". In time, the League has gone beyond its infantile phase in which it insisted on the defense of the "Lombard nation" and its language. It should be stated without the slightest equivocation that the League's autonomist demands have nothing in common with national liberation struggles of the kind seen in other parts of Europe. In the first place, the League's "nationalism" does not correspond to any recognizable independent cultural identity. Indeed, despite all the Lega Lombarda's myth-making, there is a continual oscillation in its rhetoric between a "Lombard" and a "North" identi-
Secondly, Leaguism does not represent the desire for separation of an oppressed and disinherited nationality but the dissidence of a territory and social group that has benefited from the unification of the peninsula at the expense of the South. 10 The League's current federalist project was officially born at a congress of the Lega Nord held in February 1991; it envisages the transformation of the Italian state into a confederation of three republics (North, Centre, South) to be known as "macroregions". Bossi meanwhile threatens a unilateral declaration of independence by the "Republic of the North".
This is a federalism that aims at the separation of the richest and most economically advanced part of Italy from the rest, which is considered to be an albatross. The Northern macro-region, according to the League, would control all tax income, health and education and could thus proceed without delay to the creation of institutions suitable for capi-
On the economic and social level, the League is in favour of a form of neoliberalism that would excite the envy even of Mrs. Thatcher with all its atten-
MONACO ITALY Tyrhanis See dant onslaught on workers' social conquests carried out in a decade of
"We want to privatize everything that can be privatized" and "total privatization of services to conform to the rules of the market", says the League's charismatic chief. The enemy is whatever remains of the so-called "social state" Miglio, the League's ideologue, maintains that the "social state" is a remnant of "nineteenth century socialism" (for Miglio, socialism takes in everything from Communism to Social Democracy), the rise and decline of which demonstrates "a fundamental truth; it is not possible to imagine a society different from the one we live in".!!
"I believe that the end of Soviet communism means the end of an attempt to construct a model of society whose main features were: (1) the assurance of an income and a job for all; (2) a tendency to equality of wages." Since the Social Democracy, according to Miglio, is out of the same stable as Communism "the bankruptcy of collectivism has thrown into crisis the very foundations of social democratic regimes: a full employment policy and an incomes policy".
According to Miglio: "no economy can function without the stimulus provided by the negative possibility of losing one's income and the positive ones of becoming rich and improving one's own and one's family's standard of living. Without a strong dose of egoism,
Adriate 800 ariel Sea
• MALTA without the desire to be envied by others, there can be neither progress nor development, but only economic stagnation". The new 'social state' would undertake nothing more than to ensure a subsistence minimum for a limited time for those who, through no fault of their own, are not in a position to work and produce. Everything must then be done to ensure that they re-enter the productive circuit as soon as possible". 12
Similar anti-worker positions immediately raise the problem of the League's thinking on the question of democracy and the state, reduced to the role of a guard dog for unbridled capitalism. And on this point, as with the insistence on the Three Republics formula, we can extract some well-defined underlying conceptions. The sole elements at our disposal are the frequently not very coherent positions of the League on institutional reform, statements by League leaders and, above all, the organizational structure of the League itself. 9. Point 2 of the programme of the Lega Lombarda demands the recognition of a Lombard language, something which is not confirmed by even the most open-minded philologists, since the local modes of speech have never been more than dialects and have never achieved either autonomy or any official status, without this requiring any special effort of repression. 10. Sergio D'Amia, "il Leghismo in una società che schricchiola", Bandiera Rossa, No. 19/20, November-December 1991. 11. Gianfranco Miglio, "lo e la sinistra", MicroMega, 2/92. 13 12. Ibid. 13. V. Moioli, op. cit. June 8, 1992 • # 230 International Viewpoint
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Institutional reform
There is a diverse chorus of voices on all sides of Italian politics from the government parties, the neo-fascist MSI and the PDS - that talks of the need for fundamental institutional and electoral reform. While they differ with respect to the depth of the reform the line of march is the same in all cases. Grosso modo, the basic shared idea is more power for the executive, reductions in social spending and electoral laws favouring big parties — this latter also aimed against the Leagues. The Lega for its part has always stated that it wants to supercede the First Republic in the name of federalism. However, from 1990 on, it has repeatedly spoken out in favour of the most radical option — the presidential republic, supported by the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), the MSI and the former president Francesco Cossiga.
The Lega claims to be ultra-respectful of democracy, but a series of statements by its leaders throw doubt on this. To take some passages from a recent text of Miglio ("A Constitution for the Next Thirty Years") which express all the contempt of a reactionary intellectual for the masses: "In my view, participation is a myth... with this idea of participation — or the notion that the citizen has the obligation to take part in political life — and with the joining of parties and standing in elections — people are given an incentive to live off public funds, naturally at the expense of the productive elements of the population, devoted to private activity. Citizens who produce and work do not feel the need to take part in political competition".
"It is above all necessary to recognize that the popular will is in part a myth. Just like the idea that the people can govern themselves". "Parliament has thus been seen as an infallible subject, to which one could entrust the regulation of the entire political system (in just the same way as royalists saw the role of the hereditary monarch). This (wrong and dangerous) conception is still with us and constitutes the basis of parliamentary absolutism, as totalitarian as monarchic absolutism".
Four-tier structure
It is, however, the League's organizational structure that shows above all the Lega Lombarda's anti-democratic and anti-authoritarian outlook. The membership is divided into four categories: the Founding Associates (who play a major part in congresses); the Ordinary Asso14 part in congresses); the Militant Asso- ciates (the only other category to take International Viewpoint # 230 • June 8, 1992 ciates and the Sympathizing Associates.
In 1991, of the Lega's 30,000 members there were seven Founding and 180
Ordinary Associates — among the latter all of eight women.
To rise from the ranks of the Militants to become an Ordinary you have to be nominated by the leading bodies. Furthermore, the formation of currents is absolutely forbidden under pain of expulsion, a measure used frequently to eliminate discussion. The real centre of decision-making, in any case, is the head of the charismatic leader, Umberto Bossi, who has explained his own role thus: "a man, one alone, is needed to lead the ranks"14 And he is echoed by Miglio: "Democracy is for a moment, it cannot be a constant, otherwise political synthesis fails". 15
The final, and most repellent, aspect of Lega-Thought is its racism. According to Vittorio Moioli: "Leaguism does not in fact discriminate between races on the basis of pseudo-scientific theories of biological difference; instead it makes itself the champion of the privileges enjoyed by those it claims to represent, in opposition to all that is 'different and which can thus be considered as a threat to the tranquil enjoyment of the acquired
In reality the practical consequences of this kind of racism are not much different from those of its more classic variety. The targets of Leaguist discrimination are Southern Italians and above all immigrant workers from the Third World. In this spirit the Lega has conducted a campaign against recent immigration laws (the "Martelli Laws") which, although in fact in no way favourable to immigrants, were considered to be too permissive by the League. The Lega has furthermore promoted a whole series of anti-immigrant initiatives in its
Anti-immigrant strike
The noisiest of these was a - successful — action in May 1991 to organize a tram strike near a depot of the Milan transport department. The aim, which was realized by the actions of the police, was the expulsion of a group of immigrants, guilty of having parked their vehicles in the vicinity of the depot.
Let us add only that the same repressive logic has also been applied with respect to homosexuality and drug users, both considered as "illnesses" to be
The elections of April 5 and 6 showed, apart from general political fragmentation, a significant rise of the right. The fascist MSI party, which has been in decline in recent years, regained its position of 1987 (with 5.4% of the vote) thanks to an aggressive election campaign centred on racism, calls for a return of the death penalty and support for Cossiga's authoritarian visions. The Lega Nord got 8.7% of the national vote, with all its votes in the north. In Lombardy the Lega consolidated its position as the largest party, with 18.09%, in the city of Milan and in its historic strongholds it got between 25 and 30%.
Leaguism spreads across
The fundamental fact, however, is the spread of Leaguism to other parts of the north. In the electoral district of "Torino-Novara-Vercelli" (Piedmont) it got 15.3%, in "Venezia-Treviso" (Veneto) 17.3%, in "Genova-Imperia-La SpeziaSavona" (Liguria) 14.3% and in "Bologna-Ravenna-Ferrara-Forli" (EmiliaRomagna) 7%. Leaguism thus ceased to be a purely Lombardy-based movement, and has thereby shown its capacity to garner the protest vote against the "partyocracy".
This is all the more worrying if we look at the youth vote. According to a recent DOXA survey!?, it emerges that if only voters under 34 had voted, the Lega would have got 12.4% of the national vote. It seems that if the age limit were reduced further, the picture would look still worse.
It would be a dangerous mistake to under-estimate the Leaguist movement, or to simply view it as a passing phenomenon overlooking all the reactionary load that it carries with it. Without wishing to risk predictions, further expansion of Leaguism is possible (perhaps into Southern Italy).
Recent events in Milan, symbol of modernity, where a share scandal involving all the big parties has broken out, can only reinforce the crisis of the whole political system and the Leagues' facile but effective "anti-party" demagogy. Whatever happens, Leaguism reinforces the tendency to a rightist solution to the present political crisis.
It is up to the left, and in the first place the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC,) to rebuild a class opposition at both a social and political level which can become a reference point for a proletariat that is profoundly wounded after 15 years of bourgeois counter-offensive. There is no other antidote to populist demagogy and the League's reactionary 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Avvenimenti, May 6, 1992.
A SERIES of elections in Western Europe in late 1991 and early
1992 revealed a more
FRANCE out of three French people cite the FN, which means that one in three have not ruled out voting for them. Finally, the survey carried out by Le Monde in October 1991 shows that there is a clear advance in for Le Pen?
or less significant increase in the the influence of the FN, to the extent that one French person in three is in agreement with its ideas.
influence of reactionary, populist or fascist movements.
Even if the basis of these movements is not completely identical - given the importance of the regional question in, for example, Italy or Belgium - they have emerged in a context of a profound economic, social and political degradation common to all these countries.
Everywhere, there is a crisis of state institutions — as demonstrated in the farce surrounding the election of the
Italian president — which has reinforced the "protest" vote against the established parties, to the benefit of the parties of the far right.