Skin of the teeth. posted by Richard Seymour

How close was that? 0.01% is how close. The centre-left Olive Tree-led coalition took 49.8% and the Forza Italia-led coalition took 49.7%. First question to Italian voters: are you nuts? Berlusconi's collection of neo-fascists and crooks should have been squashed into the dustbin of history. The irony is that it is a new electoral law introduced by the Berlusconi coalition to consolidate the power of the right that gives Prodi 55% of the seats in the new parliament. Hoist on their own petard. Suffice to say, Berlusconi is refusing to admit defeat and demands a recount - his campaign has been characterised by ultra-right demagoguery, including comparing himself to Jesus Christ and his opponents, whom he called 'dickheads', to Stalin and Pol Pot.

In past elections in 2001 (general) and 2004 (European), the Rifondazione Comunista got 5% and 6% of the votes respectively. It seems reasonable to conclude that without RC in the coalition, Berlusconi would not be fighting for his political life. Last year, the left swept up the local elections in Italy after RC joined the centre-left coalition. I was, and remain, extremely sceptical about the decision to join the coalition, albeit one could hardly be dissatisfied with seeing Berlusconi so vigorously kicked to the ground. In the previous RC coalition with the centre-left, a Prodi government engaged in mass job casualisation, privatisation and supported imperialism in Yugoslavia. If Prodi succeeds in getting together a majority in the two Italian houses, he will presumably implement his proposals to cut labour costs, which is what the good folks at JP Morgan are asking for. This will set his government dead against Italian workers. To fight the election with any chance of winning, Prodi had to pledge to turn back some of the regressive 'temporary labour' reforms of introduced by the right-wing Berlusconi coalition, which he described as "worse than the French CPE". He has also pledged to reintroduce the inheritance tax, scrapped by Berlusconi, for the very rich. It's worth pointing out, however, that the centre-left's criticisms of the tax breaks were precisely those of international capital, as represented ideologically in the Economist, Newsweek and the Financial Times - namely that it was fiscally unsound and created debt, not that it transferred huge amounts of cash from the poor to the rich. There was also some criticism of Giulio Tremonti, the Minister for the Economy, when he tried to plug the gap created by his neoliberal reforms (salivated over by Business Week when he first got his post), by granting tax amnesties to the rich - they would pay a small fee to repatriate sums illegally deposited in overseas accounts, or a similar charge to change illegal buildings (with violations of building regulations) into legal ones. Government spending was also cut to cut the national debt. In the international system, only the United States is allowed to sustain massive debt. The right-wing government also forced through a plethora of labour and pension 'reforms'.

Prodi's record is not so nefarious and crooked, but is hardly more encouraging. His free market reforms, pension cuts and labour market deregulation, were what caused the RC to split from the centre-left coalition in the first place. A former EU Commissioner, he supported all the necessary neoliberal measures to get Italy into the Euro. As EU head, he led the charge for neoliberal reforms across Europe, encouraging would-be entrants such as Poland to slash protections for labour. When France rejected the EU Constitutional Treaty, he was the first to bemoan what he called the "fall of Europe". He has pledged to cut unit labour costs, mainly through tax cuts for employers, and is committed to 'liberalising' key markets. The modest welfare improvements he proposes (perhaps difficult to fund if he intends to cut taxes and the national debt), are intended as part of the neoliberal policy mix to underpin liberalisation by alleviating some of its costs. This happens to be almost precisely what is recommended by international capital and its paid monkeys (economists).

It isn't such a surprise then that Prodi failed to inspire voters with his neoliberal growth formula despite a huge turnout: these same voters have seen the rough end of such a programme for decades. I shouldn't be surprised, either, if RC's share of the vote has fallen. Strapped into the centre-left coalition like a bespoke straitjacket, it will presumably have found it quite difficult to criticise the right-wing measures proposed by Prodi. The right-wing RC leader, Fausto Bertinotti, argued that the centre-left had been undermined by the anticapitalist and antiwar movements and would therefore not be the same old sell-outs that the movement experienced in the late 1990s. Well, it isn't looking good on that front, even supposing Prodi does finally pull through with a sufficient majority to govern.