25. See International Herald Tribune, 9 November 2007. Demographically, Germany as a whole has one of the lowest rates of reproduction in the world. In the 2009 federal elections, voters over the age of fifty will be as large a bloc as all other age-groups combined.
26. For the emergence of Die Linke, see Dan Hough, Michael Koss and Jonathan Olsen, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics, Basingstoke 2007, pp. 134–53, a study also covering the evolution of the PDS under the Red–
27. See, respectively, David Conradt, ‘The Tipping Point: The 2005 Election and the De-Consolidation of the German Party System?’, German Politics and Society, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 2006, p. 13; Hermann Schmitt and Andreas Wust, ‘The Extraordinary Bundestag Election of 2005’, German Politics and Society, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 2006, p. 34. For the statistics, see Table 1 in Oskar Niedermeyer, ‘Parteimitglieder in Deutschland: Version 2008’, Arbeitshefte aus dem Otto-Stammer-Zentrum, 13, Berlin 2008.
28. For a lucid analysis of the systemic obstacles to the taking of radical measures by any German government to date, and a pessimistic forecast for the Grand Coalition, see Wolfgang Merkel, ‘Durchregieren? Reformblockaden und Reformchancen in Deutschland’, in Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Zukunftsfähigkeit Deutschlands, Berlin 2006, pp. 27–45.
29. In the words of a satisfied historian: ‘Joschka Fischer embodies the integrative achievement of Federal Germany’s successful democracy: beginning as a rebellious streetfighter, he rose through various posts to the summit of the Foreign Office, where he won respect beyond partisan frontiers. Fischer marched so long through the institutions that he became an institution himself’: Wolfrum, Die geglückte Demokratie, p. 479. For a more astringent portrait, see Michael Schwelien, Joschka Fischer. Eine Karriere, Hamburg 2000. Schwelien is a writer for Die Zeit who spotted in advance the likely successor to Fischer in his favourite, the ‘eel-smooth’ Cem Özdemir, current Green chairman: pp. 62, 65–6.
30. For vigorous raising of this alarm, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s intervention, ‘Wird Berlin doch noch Weimar?’, Die Zeit, 5 July 2007.
31. ‘The Coming Powers: How German Companies are Being Bound to the Interests of Foreign Investors’, Financial Times, 1 April 2005. Lower down, the Mittelstand remains traditionally patriarchal, with 94 per cent of all German companies family-controlled, some of them large concerns: Financial Times, 9 December 2008.
32. Financial Times, 30 March 2007.
33. Rainer Hank, ‘Angekommen im Globalen Kapitalismus. Die Manager der Berliner Republik’, Merkur, No. 689–90, September–October 2006, p. 909.
34. Financial Times, 28 August 2008.
35. In the summer of 2007, nearly three-quarters of those polled thought the government was doing too little for social justice, 68 per cent wanted to see a minimum wage enacted, and 82 per cent a return to retirement at the age of sixty-five: Thomas E. Schmidt, ‘Demoskopie und Antipolitik’, Merkur, No. 709, June 2008, p. 532.
36. For a pungent version of this complaint from the chief editor of Die Zeit, see Josef Joffe, ‘Was fehlt?’, Merkur, No. 689–90, September–October 2006.
37. The Seduction of Culture in German History, Princeton 2006, p. 128.
38. Schmitt’s juridical influence is documented in Dirk van Laak, Gespräche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens. Carl Schmitt in der politischen Geistesgeschichte der frühen Bundesrepublik, Berlin 1993; and his wider intellectual impact in Jan-Werner Müller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought, New Haven 2003 pp. 76ff, which as its title indicates, extends beyond the German field itself.
39. Habermas: ‘Eine Art Schadensabwicklung’, in Piper Verlag, ‘Historikerstreit’, Munich 1987; Wehler: Entsorgung der deutschen Vergangenheit?, Munich 1988.
40. Within a year of the Historikerstreit, there had appeared sociologist Claus Leggewie’s knockabout tour through what he took to be the emergent forms of a new conservatism, Der Geist steht rechts. Ausflüge in die Denkfabriken der Wende, Berlin 1987. In this constellation, the most significant figure was Armin Mohler, secretary to Jünger and friend of Schmitt, famous as the author of Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 1918–1932. Grundriss ihrer Weltanschauungen, which had appeared in 1950, on whom see pp. 187–211.
41. ‘Kann keine Trauer sein’, Merkur, No. 367, December 1978, p. 1180: Paeschke took the title of this beautiful farewell to the journal he had edited from Gottfried Benn’s last poem, written a few weeks before his death, published in Merkur.
42. ‘Vorbemerkung’, in Merkur: Gesamtregister für die Jahrgänge I–XXXII, 1947–1978, Stuttgart 1986, p. x. The phrase comes from Burckhardt.
43. ‘Die Missverstandene Rebellion’, Merkur, No. 238, January 1968.
44. ‘Surrealismus und Terror’, Merkur, No. 258, October 1969.
45. ‘Die ausverkauften Ideen’, Merkur, No. 365, October 1978.
46. ‘Der gefährliche Augenblick’, Merkur, No. 358, March 1978; themes developed in Plötzlichkeit: zum Augenblick des ästhetischen Scheins, Frankfurt 1981, of which there is an English translation, Suddenness: on the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance, New York 1994.
47. ‘Die Ästhetik des Staates’, Merkur, No. 423, January 1984. For a striking analysis of Bohrer’s style of attack in this and later texts, see Gustav Seibt, ‘Vom Bürgerkönigtum,’ in Deutsche Erhebungen, Springe 2008, pp. 142–54.
48. ‘Die Unschuld an die Macht’, Merkur, No. 425, March 1984; Merkur, No. 427, May 1984; Merkur, No. 431, January 1985.
49. ‘Provinzialismus’, Merkur, No. 501, December 1990; Merkur, No. 504, March 1991; Merkur, No. 505, April 1991; Merkur, No. 507, June 1991; Merkur, No. 509, August 1991; Merkur, No. 510, November 1991.
50. ‘Ästhetik und Politik sowie einige damit zusammanhängende Fragen’, Merkur 451–2, September–October 1986.
51. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 January 1990; for an English version of this text, see New German Critique, Winter 1991, No 52. Its translator, Stephen Brockmann, would later describe Bohrer’s arguments as ‘a foundational discourse for the triumphal conservatism that emerged on the German right in the wake of reunification’. For this judgement, see his Literature and German Reunification, Cambridge 1999, p. 57.
52. ‘Die Ästhetik des Staates revisited’, Merkur, No. 689–90, September–October 2006. The title of the special number alludes, of course, ironically to the official daily of the former DDR.
53. For a mocking tour of the fixtures and fittings of the new Bundestag, and of the government district at large, see Gustav Seibt’s deadly squib, ‘Post aus Ozeanien’, Merkur, No. 689–90.
54. ‘Was heisst unabhängig denken?’, Merkur, No. 699, July 2007, p. 574.
55. ‘Acht Szenen Achtundsechzig’, Merkur, No. 708, May 2008, p. 419.
56. ‘Hans Paeschke und der Merkur. Erinnerung und Gegenwart’, Merkur, No. 510–11, September–October 1991.
57. For a penetrating critique of his major recent work, Imperien, which came out in 2005, see Benno Teschke, ‘Empires by Analogy’, New Left Review II/40, July–August 2006.
58. Münkler, ‘Der Selbstbehauptung Europas. Fabelhafte Überlegungen’, Merkur, No. 649, May 2003.
59. ‘Die selbstbewusste Mittelmacht. Aussenpolitik im souveränen Staat’, Merkur, No. 689–90, September–October 2006.
60. ‘Heroische und postheroische Gesellschaften’, Merkur, No. 700, August–September 2007.
ITALY
I · 2002
Italy has long occupied a peculiar position within the concert of Europe. By wealth and population it belongs alongside France, Britain and Germany as one of the four leading states of the Union. But it has never played a comparable role in the affairs of the continent, and has rarely been regarded as a diplomatic partner or rival of much significance. Its image lacks any association with power. Historically, that has no doubt been one of the reasons why Italy has long been the favourite country of foreigners. Germans, French and English alike have repeatedly expressed a warmth of affection for it they have rarely felt f
or one another, even if the objects of their admiration have differed. Few of their comments are without some contemporary ring. Escaping from the pruderies of Weimar to Rome, Goethe found it ‘morally salutary to be living in the midst of a sensual people’.1 In Italy, Byron decided that ‘there is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them’.2 Stendhal, who knew the country better, felt at times that ‘music alone is alive in Italy, and all that is to be made in this beautiful land is love; the other enjoyments of the soul are spoilt; one dies poisoned of melancholy as a citizen’. Yet Italians were also, paradoxically, masters of another practice: ‘Never, outside Italy, could one guess at the art called politics (way of making others do what is agreeable to us, when force or money is not to hand). Without patience, without absence of anger, no one can be called a politician. Napoleon was truly small in this respect, he had enough Italian blood in his veins to be subtle, but was incapable of using it’.3 The list of such fond dicta could be extended indefinitely.
In diametric contrast stands the characteristic tone of native commentary on Italy. Most languages have some self-critical locution, usually a word-play or neologism, to indicate typical national defects. Germans can cite Hegel’s contemptuous description of local identity politics: Deutschdumm; the French deplore the vauntings of franchouillardise; Peruvians term a hopeless mess una peruanada; Brazilians occasionally mock a brasileirice. England seems to have lacked such self-ironic reflexes: ‘Englishry’—the gift of Tom Nairn, a Scot—is without currency in its land of reference. Italy lies at the opposite pole. In no other nation is the vocabulary of self-derision so multiple and so frequent in use. Italietta for the trifling levity of the country; italico—once favoured by Fascist bombast—now synonymous with vain posturing and underhand cynicism; bitterest of all, italiota as the badge of an invincible cretinism. It is true that these are terms of public parlance rather than of popular speech. But the lack of self-esteem they express is widespread. The good opinion of others remains foreign to the Italians themselves.
In recent years, this traditional self-disaffection has acquired an insistent political catchword. Starting in the late eighties, and rising to a crescendo in the nineties, the cry has gone up that Italy must, at last, become ‘a normal country’. Such was the title of the manifesto produced in 1995 by the leader of the former Italian Communist Party.4 But the phrase was a leitmotif of speeches and articles across the spectrum, and remains an obsessive refrain in the media to this day. Its message is that Italy must become like other countries of the West. Normality here, as always, implies more than just a standard that is typical. What is not typical may be exceptional, and so better than it; but what is not ‘normal’ is infallibly worse than it—abnormal or subnormal. The call for Italy to become a normal country expresses a longing to resemble others which are superior to it.
The full list of the anomalies that set Italy apart vary from one account to another, but all highlight three features. For forty years of continuous Christian-Democratic hegemony, there was no real alternation of government. Under this regime, political corruption acquired colossal proportions. Intertwined with it, organized crime became a power in the land as the operations of the Mafia extended from Sicily to Rome and the north. Other national shortcomings are often noted: administrative inefficiency, lack of respect for the law, want of patriotism. But in the widespread conviction that the condition of Italy is abnormal, immovable government, pervasive corruption and militarized crime have had pride of place. For a careful and balanced account of them, there is no finer study than Paul Ginsborg’s Italy and Its Discontents, the work of an English historian in Florence, originally published in Italian, the latest monument to critical admiration of the country by a foreign scholar.5
Long-standing occupation of office, of course, has not been peculiar to Italy. Swedish Social Democracy was in office for over forty years, Red–Black coalitions in Austria for nearly as long; the government of Switzerland is virtually unchangeable. Far from suffering grave ills, these societies are usually regarded as among the best administered in Europe. Japanese political corruption long exceeded Italian; while French and German have not come so far behind. The Mafia is truly sui generis in Sicily, but in a less ethnographic sense has its counterparts throughout most of Eastern Europe and, famously, Russia. Northern Ireland, the Basque lands and Corsica are reminders that in Western Europe itself more than one regional periphery is haunted by endemic violence. Many distinctions would have to be made, in each respect, for real analytic comparison. But it can still be argued that it is less any one of its maladies that has marked Italy out as abnormal, than a fatal combination of them to be found nowhere else.
In any case, if an idée fixe takes hold in a society, it is unlikely to have appeared from nowhere. In Italy, fascination with foreign models—the desire to emulate a more advanced world—was from the start bred by the belated unification of the country, and ensuing weakness of the national state. Piedmontese attachment to the French prefectural system, imposed down the peninsula regardless of regional identities, was an early example; somewhat later, Crispi’s admiration for Germany as an imperial power another. In that sense, the anxious looking abroad for institutions to imitate, so pronounced in recent years, has deep historical roots: it is the re-emergence of a recurrent theme. Contemporary versions, moreover, are reinforced by the unhappy experience of the one period when Italy did not follow any external model, but in originating Fascism pioneered a major political innovation that spread to other states. To many since then, Italian native invention has seemed damned: better to revert to the safety of imitation. By the 1980s the way in which Christian Democracy came to be imagined by its opponents mapped it onto the disastrous alternative pattern of national singularity. It was the Balena Bianca, a monstrous sport of nature, akin to Melville’s murderous denizen of the sea.6 According to legend, it was the final harpooning of this beast that ushered in the Second Republic.
1
For such is the usual way Italians label the political order today. In this version, the First Republic that emerged at the end of the Second World War collapsed, amid dramatic convulsions, in the early nineties. Out of its demise there has emerged a more modern configuration, still incomplete, but already a critical improvement on its predecessor. It is the full accomplishment of this Second Republic, for which there remains some way to go, that would at last render Italy a normal country. So runs the official interpretation, widely shared on all sides, of the past decade. Here too, of course, a foreign paradigm is in the background. The passage from the First to Second Republic in Italy is conceived by analogy with the transition from the Fourth to Fifth Republic in France. There were, after all, striking similarities between the regimes created after 1945 in both countries: rapid economic growth, strong ideological polarization, large mass parties, constant changes of cabinet with little or no change of political direction, increasing discredit of the governing class, inability to control violent crises in the Mediterranean periphery.
In each case, there was a supervening international context for the fall of the old Republic: the end of European colonialism in the case of France, and the end of the Cold War in the case of Italy. Umberto Bossi’s Lega Lombarda, merging in 1991 with other parties to form the Lega Nord, the battering-ram that weakened the struts of the traditional party system in Italy, even had its petty-bourgeois precursor in the movement of Pierre Poujade, whose emergence hastened the final crisis of the Fourth Republic. In all these respects, a French reference could seem to make much sense in the Italian situation of the early nineties, legitimating hopes of a cathartic purge of the accumulated ills of the old order, and reconstruction of the state on a sounder basis. The task of the hour was to emulate the historic achievement of De Gaulle in founding a stable Fifth Republic to the north. But who was to figure as the Italian equivalent in such a repro-scenario?
In April 1992 the ruling coalition—dominated since the eighties by Giulio
Andreotti, the perennial ‘Beelzebub’ of Christian Democracy, and Bettino Craxi, the taurine boss of the Socialists—was once again returned to power at the polls. Bossi’s movement, a recent entrant into the party system, had made startling advances in the north, but not enough to affect the national outcome.7 It seemed business as usual. But a month later, magistrates in Milan issued the first official warnings to leading figures in both dominant parties that they were under investigation for corruption. At virtually the same moment, the motorcade of Giovanni Falcone, the prosecutor who had become a symbol of determination to root out the Mafia in Sicily, was blown up in an ambush outside Palermo. Hit by these two thunderbolts, the old order suddenly disintegrated. Over the next months, the Milanese magistrates unleashed a blizzard of further investigations against the political class and its business partners, now dubbed by the press Tangentopoli—Bribesville. Within little more than a year, Craxi had fled to Tunisia and Andreotti was charged as an accomplice of the Mafia. By the autumn of 1993, more than half the members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies had been served notices that they were under suspicion for corruption—taken by public opinion as tantamount to guilt—and a referendum had abrogated the system of proportional representation that had elected them. In this whirlwind, the traditional rulers of Italy were swept away. By the spring of 1994 the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties had vanished. Lesser allies were consumed along with them.
From the wreckage, only one major party emerged unscathed. The logical candidate for the role of renovator appeared to be the descendants of Italian Communism, recently refashioned as the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS). Like Gaullism in France, Communism in Italy had been excluded from the stabilization of the post-1945 regime, forming an opposition in waiting, with a mass following, undiscredited by the degeneration of the system. Like De Gaulle in 1958, the PDS in 1992–3 was not responsible for the fall of the old order, and just as he had used the colonels’ revolt in Algiers, which he did not inspire, to come to power in Paris, so the PDS sought to utilize the magistrates’ assault on Tangentopoli, with which it had no connexion, to force open the doors of office in Rome, barred to it since 1947. In constructing the Fifth Republic, De Gaulle drew in a heteroclite range of allies—Antoine Pinay, Guy Mollet and other strange bedfellows formed part of his first coalition, helping him to push through his new constitution, before he discarded them. So too the PDS teamed up with a variegated array of outsiders and opportunists—the self-important notable Segni, from Christian Democracy; the Radical maverick Pannella; the still Fascist leader Fini—to push through the referendum of 1993, undermining the proportional electoral system on which the First Republic had been based.8
The New Old World Page 37
