The New Prince

By Ofir Haivry

Silvio Berlusconi and the Italian conservative tradition. A roadmap.

Berlusconi views the split in the conservative camp between the liberals and the Catholics as a major source of the bloc’s problems in the past. The collapse of the old liberal conservative regime and the subsequent rise of Fascism were due to that regime’s neglect of its Catholic component, and the collapse of Christian Democrat rule in the late 1980s was caused in part by their abandonment of the liberal free market idea. Berlusconi therefore sees his party as heir to all the different streams of Italian conservatism, as all have contributed to its ideological, cultural and historical roots. He asserts that though the annals of Forza Italia and the center-right alliance span only three years, they share an “intellectual heritage that comes from afar and has deep roots: The principles and values that inspire us are, in effect, those of all the great Western democracies. They spring from the various fertile cultural traditions ... of Western and Italian history.” Among these principles, Berlusconi cites the democratic-liberal tradition, the primacy of the individual and the citizen, the market economy, the freedom to express the aspirations of society, and even Karl Popper’s “open society,” all in opposition to the leftist tradition of collective totalitarian ideologies and the subjugation of the citizen to state and party. Moreover, he expressly notes four trends in Italy’s conservative heritage: Federalism—i.e., decentralization and the protection of local interests; the European classical-liberal economic tradition; a hawkish and pro-NATO foreign policy; and the nation’s Catholic heritage.³⁴

The contemporary observer cannot help but be struck by the Italian political and intellectual elite’s lack of faith in the ability of Italian conservatism to rejuvenate itself, even as late as 1993. The deprecation of any self-avowedly rightist party, and the more than four decades in which the right’s intellectual illegitimacy had compelled most of its members to call themselves centrist, gave birth to an overly cautious conservatism that failed to present an intellectual alternative to the left, and settled instead for just keeping it from political power. In the early 1990s, the great majority of even right-wing intellectuals held little hope for center-right politics in Italy. This led many leading anti-leftists to oppose Berlusconi’s entry into politics: They felt that even such a moderate rightist candidate stood no chance of acceptance by the public, and they therefore preferred Mario Segni, from the old, drab but safe center.

Berlusconi, on the other hand, sensed in the late 1980s that increasing numbers of Italian businessmen and professionals sought to shed the old stigmas and find a man who would represent their generation’s conservative ideal. Berlusconi felt that he was the leader the Italians were waiting for: The one who would free them from increasing state taxation and economic intervention, from leftist cultural hegemony and from the threat of an unrestrained leftist government.³⁵

Segni and many others fell victim to their own lack of faith in the possibility of a center-right alignment in Italian politics. Although Italy’s conservative tradition had never allowed the left to take power on its own, almost everyone misread the depth and stability of Italian conservatism. The Italians, it turns out, were waiting for a moderate, overtly rightist candidate to whom they could award their votes.

Italy’s intensely conservative tradition has come to the fore time after time in periods of tension and social crisis, when the threat of revolution and the left’s rise to power hovers in the air. Italian society has proven that it can handle far-reaching changes, as long as basic social conditions remain intact. Throughout the last century of Italian politics, encompassing two world wars, a dictatorship and an unstable, corrupt democracy, the country’s success has lain not in its form of government but in the social and cultural institutions that protected it from the most nefarious consequences of its governments. Italy’s cultural traditions and institutions have enabled it to weather severe governmental storms of the type which lead to the downfall of many other nations.

Thus Italy is not merely a geographic entity, but a cultural ethos from which other nations can profitably learn: The societal richness and strength which comes from allowing diversity and decentralization, the preservation of the economic and social freedoms of the individual, and the nurturing of cultural and religious traditions can enable a nation to survive difficult periods and, even more importantly, do so with a minimum of bloodshed. And a well-rooted conservative tradition, coupled with a political camp that protects that tradition, is crucial for the advancement and preservation of such a national culture.

As for Silvio Berlusconi, his popularity and ascent to power are a phenomenon no less cultural than political, and we may therefore expect it to continue. Like the colorful Renaissance military personae to whom he is compared, Berlusconi’s personality and abilities motivate him to set personal and political goals far more ambitious than those of ordinary politicians. Berlusconi’s strengths, however, became shortcomings in the political arena: His initial success fell victim to his own misreading of the political realities. Berlusconi was a lion but not a fox, and he charged ahead, oblivious to the traps that had been set in his path. His mistakes were the product of political inexperience and excessive optimism. He took the citadel of Italian government by storm, but time after time fell into the traps his opponents set for him.

However, Berlusconi continues to attract the support of a considerable portion of the Italian public, due to the very qualities that hurt him most in his first two attempts to gain power: His boundless self-confidence, optimism and ambition. It now remains to be seen whether Silvio Berlusconi has learned from his experience, and whether he will be able to hone his abilities and overcome his deficiencies to become the new prince sought by so many Italians.

Ofir Haivry is Editor-in-Chief of Azure.

Notes

1. Quotations from The Prince throughout this article are the author’s translation.

2. Like their Catholicism, which due to Italy’s extreme proximity to the religion’s centers and history never proved to be overly foreboding to the Italians (unlike other Catholic nations), being “left” (or “right”) in Italy has always been more a matter of communal affiliation and a social context than an ideology, a matter of symbols and ceremonies. The Italians have always remained fundamentally loyal to the practices and patterns of their society and prefer caution and common sense in the determination of their future—and this is the essence of conservatism.

An interesting detail of the Italian uniqueness in this respect is that, unlike all other Western countries, the Italians never experienced a “constitutional break” in which the sovereign governmental continuity was interrupted by an act of revolution or rebellion against the sovereign: The Italian state was established by means of an orderly constitutional process, so that the rise and fall of Fascism and the transition to democracy did not entail a revolutionary period. This is in contrast not only to states such as Russia, France or Spain, which underwent a revolution, but also to the breaking of the constitutional continuity by Oliver Cromwell and his soldiers in England and by George Washington and the American rebels against their legitimate ruler, the King of England.

3. As was described, for example, in 1849 by the Austrian Prime Minister Metternich. William Murray, The Last Italian (New York: Prentice Hall, 1991), p. xv.

4. There are many examples of such a sentiment in the works of authors and poets such as Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Niccolo Machiavelli and many others.

5. In the late Middle Ages, Italy was an exceptional arena for the search for governmental arrangements, both practical and theoretical, to a degree not known since the time of ancient Greece, if at all. Such a situation developed, in great measure, from the tradition of balances between rulers and subjects, with the authorities required to acknowledge the power of contexts of social identity (guilds or religious associations) or of local identity (neighborhood associations, urban institutions), in comparison with the weakness and relatively limited capability of the central government to impose its will by force. Power in Italy never resulted in political-social centralization and homogeneity, but rather maintained special-
interest groups within the general framework: The nobility alongside the artisans’ guilds, governmental administration alongside the rights of the Church, general laws versus local rights.

Thus was created a political culture with a relatively large degree of social, cultural and political flexibility, within a common geographic, religious (i.e., Catholic) and cultural (the strong Roman influence and the Italian languages which derived from it) context, with common rules, despite the existing differences.

6. Different versions of such a balance of power also existed in additional city-states, such as the republic in fifteenth-century Florence which was based on elected institutions and the periodic replacement of functionaries, although decisive power in the city was held by Cosimo de Medici (and by other members of the de Medici family in their turn), even though he held no governmental title and presented himself merely as a private banker to whom affairs of state were of no concern.

7. As can be seen from the fact that while the Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain and Portugal, in the name of the Catholic Church, similar action was not taken in Rome (or in the rest of Italy), the capital of the Church.

8. For example, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which has been active as a bank since 1472, and which had functioned for centuries prior to that as an institution for the management of capital.

9. Thus, for example, the Italians enjoyed an amazing selection and quality of food, such as the largest number (more than five hundred) of cheeses in the world, which developed and are maintained on the basis of local traditions, at times uninterrupted for more than a millennium (e.g., Parmesan cheese from the area around the city of Parma). The French (who rank second in the world) have only about three hundred types of cheese; at one time, two hundred years ago, the French boasted more than six hundred varieties, but the French Revolution and its consequences harmed this tradition, and the French lost close to half of their cheese-making tradition, like many other intellectual and material assets which the Italians preserved, and still maintain to the present.

10. Cesare Borgia and Francesco Sforza, two prince-generals whom Machiavelli regarded as possessing the potential to become the leaders of all Italy, did not realize the hopes which were placed in them; similarly, Lorenzo (“the Magnificent”) de Medici, the ruler of Florence to whom The Prince was addressed, succeeded for only a limited time in restoring peace and the internal balance in Italy but was unwilling to become, or incapable of becoming, the leader of a new Italian order.

11. Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 26.

12. The classical liberal regimes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were actually conservative in current terms. They favored a balanced regime with an aristocratic political elite, a capitalist economic system, and a conservative and elitist social outlook. They were called “liberal” because they championed parliamentary democracy and the preservation of liberties against the reactionary elements on the right and the revolutionaries on the left. In other words, classical liberalism was the opposite of the extreme democratic and radical views which are presently defined as “liberal.” After World War I and the entry into politics of the masses, the classical liberal regimes collapsed, to be replaced by dictatorships or the parties of the masses. Classical liberalism is identified, beginning with this period, with democratic conservatism and the conservative parties in the West.

13. The only problem of this regime was its relationship with the Church. The unification of Italy led to the elimination of the papal state. The Pope responded by going into seclusion in the Vatican, refusing to recognize the Italian state, and issuing an order to the faithful not to participate in the latter’s political life. The young state, however, overcame this problem with relative ease. Despite the issuance of mutual threats from time to time and the declarations of a Kulturkampf, the actual relations between the state and the Church were quite cordial in this period. Italy is almost totally Catholic, and this identity is so profoundly imprinted in Italian culture that the two cannot be separated. Thus even the members of the elites, who were not characterized by a distinctly religious identity, and who did not hesitate to send their soldiers to conquer the papal state, always remained part of the Catholic culture, and never made a serious attempt to undermine the Catholic identity of the country or even the Church’s influence within Italian society. The Italians are too intimate with Catholicism and the churches to be in awe of them. The church in Italy as always been more of a community center, marketplace, theater and school than an exalted and sequestered house of prayer. The Catholic God in Italy is not a judge with a severe countenance but rather an uncle with his sleeves rolled up, who winks at time and administers a complex system that sometimes clashes gears, but still functions.

14. Thus what Mussolini termed the “Fascist revolution” left intact the monarchy, the royal army and the majority of the social and economic elites, on both the national and local levels, and even reached a new and more comprehensive understanding with the Catholic Church. The “totalitarian” Fascists did not touch most of the organizations of the Italian civil society; in other instances, the mere changing of a name satisfied the Fascist regime. The “dictatorship” of the Blackshirts allowed a surprising degree of criticism to be heard, and even its system of repression was relatively moderate: Political punitive measures consisted mainly of pouring fish oil over its opponents; the imprisonment of only several thousand individuals, with some sent to internment camps (on islands in the Mediterranean—not exactly Siberia); and the number of executions during the twenty-year Fascist rule was, to the best of our knowledge, considerably less than 1,000. Thus Italian Fascism cannot be equated with the slaughter of millions by Stalin and the horrors of the Nazis. The means employed by the Fascist regime for internal repression were moderate even in comparison with the upheavals and bloody internal clashes that took place in most of the democracies during this period. This was primarily a consequence of the fact that Fascism and Mussolini did not impose their unbridled rule over the country, but were always forced to contend with independent sources of power within the society, which limited the actions of the regime and constituted a moderating influence upon it.

15. To a great extent, as an attempt to find a scapegoat: The left generally wanted the leftist trend within Fascism and Nazism to be forgotten; the Communists sought to bury the fact that, upon orders from Moscow, they did not fight the Nazis until 1941 (and in a not inconsiderable number of places even collaborated with them); very many who had been collaborators or even pro-Nazi functionaries or protיgיs attempted to clear their consciences and their past by their “joining” (in many cases, after the fact) the partisan struggle—whose wartime ranks suddenly swelled ten times over after the war.

16. L’Europeo, January 2, 1994, p. 16.

17. The Italian Mafia enjoys excellent public relations throughout the world. It is depicted as an organization of awesome power, a sort of state within the state. The reality, however, is much more prosaic. It is only one of several Italian crime organizations (such as the Camorra in Naples and the N’dragheta in the Calabria region), whose influence is concentrated mainly in certain regions of Sicily. Its influence or murderousness is less than that of similar crime organizations (in Russia or Colombia, for example), and even the influence of organized crime in America is greater and more significant than that of its Italian counterpart. Like everything in Italy, the Mafia is constructed of layers of local tradition and relationships, and therefore was, and will remain, a powerful force only in certain regions and circumstances; when it attempted to go beyond these conditions in the late 1980s, a period in which the state appeared especially weak, the crime organization was struck a major blow. Its heads were sent to prison, and the entire organization was greatly weakened.

18. Federico Orlando, Il Sabato Andavamo Ad Arcore (Bergamo: Larus, 1995), p. 200.

19. Murray, The Last Italian, p. xiv.

20. Panorama, September 5, 1996, p. 6.

21. Pino Corrias, et al., 1994 Colpo Grosso (Milan: Baldini and Castoldi, 1994), p. 67.

22. Corrias et al., 1994 Colpo Grosso, p. 94.

23. Orlando, Il Sabato, p. 130.

24. Orlando, Il Sabato, pp. 140-141.

25. The extent and depth of the victory caused general amazement, because Berlusconi—like Reagan and Thatcher—even succeeded in attracting voters traditionally identified with the left. Representatives of his party were elected to Parliament from districts such as the blue-collar Mirafiori quarter in Turin, which is a historic bastion of the unions and Communists. The reason for this was summed up in the response of a local worker who was asked why he voted for Berlusconi. He replied that in order to earn a living, he works on the side pasting wallpaper after finishing his regular factory shift. This work, he said, is worthwhile only as long as the government does not require him to be licensed. “If the left were to win, the familiar licensing requirements would be the winners,” he said. “Berlusconi promised ... not to deprive me of the possibility of continuing to put up wallpaper. That’s why I voted for him.” Corrias et al., 1994 Colpo Grosso, pp. 195-196.

26. The term has its origins in the 1966 movie by Mario Monicelli with the same name.

27. Susanna Agnelli, a member of the family that owns Fiat, served as foreign minister in the Dini government. Her brother Umberto is a former Christian Democrat parliamentarian, and their oldest brother Giovanni, the head of the Agnelli family, is a senator-for-life and a powerful force in Italy. Giovanni once acknowledged his close relationship with the old political elite by saying: “In a certain sense, we grew together, and I know them all.” Murray, The Last Italian, p. 193. Giovanni, however, was too smart and experienced to put all his eggs in a single basket. He provided behind-the-scenes support for Romiti and his sister in their efforts to form the new center-left alliance, but he publicly distanced himself from these steps, and took care to maintain good personal relations with Berlusconi.

28. The only actual charges brought against Berlusconi do not relate to political corruption, but to another matter entirely. It transpired that Berlusconi’s company—like every other Italian corporation—had been forced for many years to pay income tax officials to prevent harassing investigations that the latter threatened to conduct. Berlusconi, like the others, does not deny the facts, but says this was not bribery. Rather, it was the consequence of a reality in which tax officials engaged in systematic extortion of medium-sized and large corporations, threatening to initiate incessant tax investigations which would undermine companies’ business
activity if they did not receive their protection money. In practice, all the corporations so threatened, from Armani and Fiat to Berlusconi’s companies, made such payments. According to Berlusconi, this constituted extortion by representatives of the state, not acts of corruption by the businessmen themselves. It is noteworthy that no charges have been brought against the other corporations involved in this affair, such as Fiat.

29. In the elections to Parliament, the center-right bloc headed by Berlusconi received 44 percent of the votes, and the Olive bloc, 35 percent. This apparently was a smashing victory by the right, but, as was mentioned, the Olive bloc had made an electoral agreement with the Refounded Communists, who had received 8.6 percent of the vote, so that the extreme-left–moderate-left–old-center bloc succeeded in amassing 43.4 percent of the vote which, in a better territorial dispersion than that of its rival, provided the Olive bloc and the Refounded Communists with a small majority in Parliament. This was similar to the election results in Israel in 1992, when the right, which received more votes, lost to a better-organized and more united left.

Although Berlusconi had received more votes than the left, he nevertheless found himself with considerably fewer representatives in Parliament, mainly because the two problematic non-leftist parties, the Northern League and the Flame, ran separately this time, in contrast with the united front of 1994. The League garnered about ten percent of the vote (concentrated mainly in certain districts in the north and northeast of the country), and the Flame slightly more than one percent (mainly in certain regions in the center and the south). In both instances, the votes given to these parties ensured the defeat of the candidates fielded by the right in dozens of voting districts in which the election was decided by only a few hundred votes.

30. If the conservative bloc of 1994 is compared with the left and the old center in this election, the formal balance between the political blocs remained basically unchanged also in 1996, but not the percentages of the vote (the small increment brought by the former ppi voters who shifted to the right is balanced by Dini’s supporters who moved to the left and joined the Olive bloc). Consequently, the election results of 1996 significantly express the truly difficult situation of the Italian left, and the strengthening of the conservative tradition in this country.

All the parties of the center-right bloc of 1994 together (including the League and the Flame) received more than fifty-five percent of the votes in the 1996 parliamentary elections, which was a significant rise in comparison with the approximately fifty percent they had garnered in the preceding elections. In contrast, the left and the old center together, despite all the government aid, the support of the Strong Forces, and the presumed moderation and reorganization within the context of the Olive bloc, succeeded in 1996 in gathering less than forty-five percent of the vote (as compared with almost fifty percent two years earlier). If this is the best result that the Italian left has managed to attain, while disguised as the center, and aided by difficulties and division within the right, the picture that emerges is unequivocal: The clear preference of the overwhelming majority of Italians is still conservative, and if no dramatic change in this inclination occurs in the coming years, the left-center will have extremely grave prospects in the coming elections.

Furthermore, it should be recalled that these were the results of the elections to the lower house of the Italian Parliament. The results of the voting for the upper house, the Senate, were more favorable to the left because only voters twenty-five years of age or older were eligible to participate in the latter, while the minimum voting age for elections to the lower house is eighteen. The significance of this distinction is clear: The left and the old center enjoy greater support among “yesterday’s” electorate (the adult and elderly), while the support for Berlusconi’s center-right among the young is decisive, and much greater than his support among the population at large.

31. Especially suggested as a candidate to replace Berlusconi with good electoral prospects was the leader of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini. The latter is called by many “the Englishman from Bologna” (Panorama, September 23, 1994, p. 42) because of his reserved style. He is the most popular politician in Italy today, enjoying much greater support than his party, which still suffers from an extremist and somewhat problematic image. It is difficult to determine if the metamorphosis of Fini and his associates from post-Fascism to a legitimate party of the right with “Gaullist” ideas (Fini’s definition) is sincere and complete. The author of this essay was witness to an MSI rally in Milan in 1991, in which Fini’s entrance was accompanied by the shouts of a (small) part of the crowd: “Duce! Duce!” accompanied by the Fascist salute. On the other hand, Fini seemed to disapprove (albeit not in a forceful manner) of this response at the rally. At the present time, the attempts by Fini and the top leadership of his party to gain influence and their ambition to gain power are much more characteristic than any longings for the actions or symbols of Fascism. This trend intensified after the departure of the Flame, which had gathered about itself most of those who yearn for the Blackshirts and the raised arm. This gave Fini and his party a sufficient sense of legitimacy to proclaim formally that they are no longer committed to the Fascist principles or past.

Time will tell regarding the degree to which Fini and the National Alliance have changed, but someone who within only a few years has brought his party from the status of a minor and despised political element to that of the third-largest party in the country and a senior partner in the governing coalition is obviously not a fool. He is well aware of the fact that his candidacy to head the center-right bloc is especially supported at present by those who hope that this will lead to the departure of the more moderate elements in the wake of hegemony by the extremist Fini. Fini, who is only in his early forties, and whose party’s extremist past is still too fresh in people’s memories, realizes that he must, and can, wait so that in the future he will have the opportunity to become the leader of the entire conservative camp.

32. Panorama, September 12, 1996, pp. 28-29.

33. Panorama, September 5, 1996, pp. 6-7.

34. Panorama, August 22, 1996, pp. 28-29.

35. Even Berlusconi himself, however, vacillated for quite some time before taking such a step. He was influenced by the popular belief that right-wing politics would be “inconceivable” in Italy and found it difficult to act against the opinion of almost every “thinking person.” It was only the extent of support in Rome for the post-Fascist National Alliance which convinced Berlusconi that he was correct in thinking an accepted and moderate rightist candidate stood a good chance of winning in the general Italian elections. This led to his decision to openly declare, “I would give my vote to Fini,” thereby crossing the Rubicon into the political fray. Orlando, Il Sabato, pp. 234-235.

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