By Steve Taylor
A test of strength between the left and right of Italian politics takes place at the March 27 general election. Two major election blocs will confront one another.
On the right, racist and reactionary forces are grouped around the Northern League, powerful in the northern industrial cities, and the openly fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), which has enjoyed a resurgence in the south of the country.
On the left, a new electoral bloc has been forged, involving the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS), left-wing Greens, the anti-mafia Rate network, and the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC).
Recent opinion polls indicate that neither of these major alliances will gather enough votes to win an overall majority.
Two years of corruption scandals affecting particularly the right-wing Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party have totally recast Italian politics, as has the split of Italy's once huge Communist Party into two major groupings.
In regional elections on November 21, the Christian Democrats, long the dominant government party, got an average of less than 10% of the vote. In key southern cities, their votes went to the fascist MSI — a frightening 31% in Rome and 31.2% in Naples.
Similar figures were recorded by the extreme-right Northern League in Italy's largest city, Milan.
Cooperation between the Northern League and the MSI was thought unlikely — until the intervention of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who has pumped millions of dollars of his own money into bringing the two parties together in the racist and reactionary nationwide alliance Forza Italia, with himself as its leading spokesperson.
Berlusconi owns three TV channels which ceaselessly promote his campaign, as well as champion soccer club AC Milan.
The left electoral alliance, the "Progressive Pact", is headed by the PDS, led by Achille Ochetto. This party organises the majority of former members of the now defunct Communist Party.
The PDS has become a social democratic organisation, which has gone along with austerity measures such as the abolition of the scala mobile system, which linked wage rises to price hikes.
The most militant force in the left electoral alliance is the PRC, which has been at the centre of anti-austerity protests.
In the November 21 elections, the PRC recorded between 5% and 8% of the vote, and recent polls suggest it will gain up to 10% in the general election. This would give the PRC around 35 seats in the new assembly.
While an outright victory by Forza Italia looks unlikely, it has around 45% support against 40% for the left alliance.
But if the Northern League-MSI coalition were victorious, it would signal a huge attack on working-class living standards and democratic rights, bringing a fascist party, the MSI, into the government of a major industrial country for the first time since 1945.