By Gaither Stewart
Monti and his ilk mirror the decrepit state of political independence of the European bourgeoisie and its figureheads.
[Rome] Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has enjoyed a triumphant reception in the United States, the traditional signal of the state of Italo-US relations. Time Magazine, Congress, the White House, the UN and Wall Street hailed him as the chief of Italy’s refounded good-standing. This time however the welcome was clearly to Europe’s outstanding capitalist leader.
This week’s Time Magazine cover poses the question whether Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti can save Europe? The response of official American Capitalism is a loud YES. The answer of European Capitalism has been, yes. Yes, he can. In fact miracles are expected of the man recently named European of the Year. Triumphant also in London and a celebrity in Berlin and Paris, Monti on his accession to power immediately joined German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy in an iron-clad austerity alliance at the helm of Europe. A statesman-capitalist in the traditional sense of de Gaulle or Churchill, Mario Monti is already credited for turning Italy around. His clearly stated goal is the creation of a new lifestyle in Italy.
No obstacle seems too great for Italy’s neo-Premier, appointed two months ago to replace the disastrous Silvio Berlusconi. His mission in the United States is to depict the portrait of a resurgent super capitalist Europe. To depict the Euro as a powerful and durable currency. And to paint Italian capitalism as an enticing territory for American investments.
Berlusconi is gone. His 18-year disaster left Italy in shambles. Monti quickly took his place. But the economic emergency has not ended. The European Union, aka Germany and France, first demanded sweeping reforms from Italy. More and more reforms. Monti provided them. While Italy’s left, extra-parliamentary parties are in disarray, both center-left and center right parties provide the Monti government what one once called “Bulgarian majorities” in Parliament. Monti and his cabinet of tried-and-true bankers, financiers and economists govern Italy with soft words and an iron hand.
In a relentless atmosphere of emergency, socio-economic reforms have already been legislated. The very first reform was to strike a blow against the pension system—as expected, at the expense of the working class. Now Monti aims at labour reforms, again biting into workers’ rights acquired after 60 years of labour-trade union battles with Rome governments of all political shades. Observers must be clear. One must not misunderstand the rhetoric. Thus far, Montian reforms have widened the gap between the extremely rich, that is, the 1% at the top, and the working class at the bottom of the economic scale.
While Monti speaks to Obama and Congress, the UN and Wall Street about new fertile markets in Italy for foreign investments, at home taxes increase and inflation is rampant with gasoline this morning at over $10 a gallon—over half of which is state tax. While Italy has become the most expensive country in Europe, one of every three young people is unemployed and many more underemployed. In answer, Monti and his ministers in a “Let them eat cake” attitude, gently scold the spoiled working class for being “inflexible and unwilling to change jobs and face up to change.” Times have changed, Monti and his ministers repeat. Young people must abandon the old idea of permanent jobs, unwilling to change their attitudes or to even leave the security of the parental home. Youth should be adventurous, go abroad if necessary, abandon their search for the “monotony of a fixed job for a lifetime.” While Monti in American spoke of the idea of rewards for excellence, that is, meritocracy—this, while nothing but part-time, precarious employment awaits even the best new university graduates—Monti’s ministers day in, day out, deride young people for their “fixation” on permanent jobs and for continuing to live at home with Mamma.
Meanwhile the economic crisis for the 99% remains. To paraphrase a Sartre quip that “when the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die” Monti has thus far shown that when Capitalism effects structural economic reforms, the working classes suffer and pay. Monti’s very first reform last December was a revision of Italy’s pension system, in effect reducing already meager benefits. while upping the retirement age. Now the Montian structural reforms are targeted on labour rights: reduction of the bargaining power of trade unions and elimination of most work contracts—rights acquired by the European working class after la century of labour struggles. The goal is the simplification of firing procedures.
In Italy, as in most of Europe, business enterprises are scaling down, searching for cheap sources of labour, and firing workers en masse, an apparently unstoppable movement accompanied by a simultaneous reduction of social benefits.
For the first time in 60 years labour bargaining powers have been reduced and trade unions excluded from the legislative process. Labour is heard but is no longer a negotiating partner.
Monti attributes each new incursion into the rights and prospects of the Italian working man to demands of the capitalist European Union on an Italy standing on the edge of an economic abyss. The European Union in fact charged that Italian workers enjoyed too liberal pensions, too many rights, too much protection. Not a day passes that Prime Minister Monti and his ministers do not remind Italians that the nation stood on the edge of disaster before his arrival last December and that sacrifices are required. “Save Italy” is the Montian slogan.
Italy’s economic crisis and Berlusconi’s loss of credibility had become so serious that the European Union pressed Italy for a government change and economic reforms. However doubts subsist that the appointed Monti government can really turn things around. Monti enjoys both an over 50% popularity and international prestige, something new for Italy after Berlusconi. But Monti is not a miracle man who can re-project Italy as an economic power.
Italy is a republic constitutionally based on labour. On the right to hold a job. Today, circulates a tendency to consider employment a privilege. Monti, European of the Year, is no guarantee that unemployed workers can find employment with a decent salary. Or that youth can acquire better future prospects. Nothing has shown that Monti and his capitalist ministers offer guarantees of social justice to Italians.
The grim reality is that Monti’s program of economic reforms is based on further infringements on labour. In his first weeks, a special tax on the rich, a patrimonial tax, was mentioned. Realists however know that Capitalism never permits such taxes to upset the proper order of things. Capitalism in every latitude exists to exploit, enjoy and benefit. The poor working class and today also the less poor exist to work, pay and provide.
GAITHER STEWART is a senior editor with The Greanville Post (TGP), and the publication’s Europe correspondent for TGP and Cyrano’s Journal Today.
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