Retorts and rhetoric. posted by Richard Seymour

From over the pond, Doug Ireland vends what he advertises as a light "rap on the knuckles" for me regarding my post yesterday on the Italian elections. Well, as Gore Vidal almost said, I am all for corporal punishment as long as it is between consenting adults. Nevertheless, before I can even begin to take my whacks I am obliged to clear up some silliness in Doug's response. He says I have a "permanent disdain for 'bourgeois electoral politics'", as a way of framing my doubts about the PRC joining a Prodi government. The point would be more impressive if I had objected to them participating in electoral politics of any kind, even of a bourgeois variety, or if I hadn't spent an enormous amount of time on this blog commenting on and encouraging one or other player in bourgeois elections across the planet, particularly in this paltry slice of it. Or if, indeed, I hadn't been active in a number of election campaigns, including for Respect and the Socialist Alliance. I even voted Labour in 1997 and for Ken Livingstone in the GLA elections, which is about as bourgeois as it gets. Unfortunately, there is a considerable gulf between what Doug thinks about us Trots and what he knows about us. That point is illustrated by the following remark:

"Moreover, I doubt that you would have opposed the Popular Front against Fascism in the 1930s..."

I'm not about to re-hash the old arguments about the Popular Front vs the United Front , but the distinction exists and is important, and is glaringly apparent to those familiar with the subject.

That stuff aside, Doug offers some serious reasons to consider the PRC's membership of the coalition a positive step, which I'll map out ordinally:

1) The Berlusconi government is in alliance with fascists, it is a deeply reactionary and dangerous government, and Italian workers would benefit enormously from its defeat.

2) "The Rifondazione, in joining the Olive Tree, recognized these facts, and the need to form an alliance to evict Berlusconi and dismantle his most noxious works. The right choice, in my view."

3) Removing Berlusconi from power weakens conservatives in the EU, and helps European workers protect themselves from the onslaught of reactionary Eurocrats.

4) "Finally, those of us who live in Western democracies that have never been under the boot of real fascism should not be so quick to judge as "sellouts" those in countries which, in living memory have, when those folks decide its circle-the-wagons time."

5) "Don't forget that, as my friend Norman Birnbaum--an expert on European politics--has just reminded me, 'Bertinotti put Berlusconi in power at the last national election by rejecting a common candidates list for the Senate.' I, for one, am glad Bertinotti has seen the error of his infantile leftist ways..."

I agree with points 1 and 3, so we'll leave those to linger. Point two is exactly what is to be argued for, and I don't see an argument in there for a 'united front' between the PRC and the Olive Tree coalition in government. If the PRC is prepared to join Prodi's government and accept ministerial posts, which is what is being touted, and which is the policy Bertinotti recently won the party to on a 60% majority at the party conference, then I maintain my point. The PRC is compromising its independence and binding itself to a future government that will almost certainly retreat on even its most limited reform programmes. The PRC did support the last Prodi government between 1996-8, but was compelled by rank and file pressure to break with that administration precisely because of its savage public spending cuts, the casualisation of labour and privatisation. Joining in a united front against fascism is one thing, but being party to attacks on the working class is quite another.

Point four is so extraordinarily ill-conceived that I have had to read it again to persuade myself that an intelligent political commentator like Doug Ireland made it. If the Prodi government does what it did before and reneges on its promises, doing the dirty work of the right for it - what else will this be other than a sell-out? And why one earth would one abstain from criticising this because Italy was once governed by Fascism?

Point five gets one thing right. Norman Birnbaum, whatever else he is not, is indeed an expert on European politics. But I don't know how to defer to experts, and the suggestion that Bertinotti put Berlusconi in power by standing independently requires a bit more psephological analysis than Birnbaum's brief comment offers. For example, it is not necessarily the case that the 5% of the vote that went to the PRC in the May 2001 elections would have gone to the Olive Tree coalition. Suppose it is possible that those who voted for the PRC did so as much out of disillusionment with the centre-left? And suppose further that had the PRC remained part of that slate, they would have been similarly discredited and the votes would either have been abstained or dispersed among smaller parties? It is certainly a possibility worth investigating.

More importantly, what a recipe for reaction and timidity, if one must always align oneself with, encourage and vote for a government that attacks workers rather than risk its defeat by a party further to the right. What a way to ensure a ceaseless race to the bottom, with no pressure coming from the Left and both mainstream parties accelerating further to the right. To the Olive Tree coalition there is only one response to their whining about the defeat in 2001: learn your lesson. Never again use the votes given to you to impose a discredited neoliberal agenda. I am not saying we can afford to be indifferent as to who wins a bourgeois election, so far from that. But neither can we be emotionally black-mailed into never trying to break the electoral deadlock, never trying to shift the coordinates of the situation in which we are working.

Disappointing rebuke from Direland, then, since it engages with what I don't say, caricatures in a fashion I feel fairly familiar with and implies what really needs to be openly stated and argued for.