BANKRUPT Italian capitalism moved on Tuesday night to cement the dictatorship of the bankers over the country when the president Sergio Mattarela unilaterally appointed Mario Draghi, the ex-head of the European Central Bank (ECB), as the country’s new Prime Minister.
This dramatic appointment follows the chaos in Italian politics following the resignation last month of the previous Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
Conte’s coalition government collapsed when its coalition partner, Italia Viva, pulled out in a row over the distribution of EU coronavirus ‘rescue’ funds in Italy.
Italy has been hit the hardest of all the EU nations by the coronavirus pandemic with 90,000 deaths recorded from Covid-19 and with the country gripped by the biggest economic recession since the end of World War II.
The Italian government expects to receive 200 billion euros from the EU Recovery Fund but the row broke out over government plans for how this money would be spent.
EU laws dictate that the fund must be spent on ‘substantial reforms’ and investment and this apparently caused the falling out in the coalition.
In fact, 200 billion euros is a drop in the ocean for Italian capitalism. It would amount to just 0.7% of the country’s GDP.
Italy’s national debt stands at 160% of GDP.
Arnaud Mares who worked with Draghi at the ECB told The Telegraph: ‘We do not see it as a historical agreement heralding a re-foundation of the EU or the euro area. Rather than a “game changer”, we see it as another example of the same “game” that has prevailed for the past decade under Angela Merkel.
‘Whenever the cohesion of Europe faces clear and present danger, European governments agree to the minimum demonstration of unity to keep the risk of break-up at bay.’
In reality, it is a Trojan Horse for austerity and it was not deceiving the Italian working class who have suffered decades of austerity forced on them by the ECB. The collapse of the coalition should have led to an immediate general election but this was out of the question for the bosses and bankers who run the EU.
In the past, the Italian workers and youth have demonstrated their hostility to the capitalist EU and the eurozone by voting overwhelmingly for parties that have promised to reverse the austerity demands of the ECB and German bankers and pledged to leave the eurozone completely.
All these parties have reneged on these promises but the great fear of the capitalist class is that any further elections would inevitably produce a devastating result that would threaten to bring down the entire eurozone and EU.
The hatred of the EU amongst Italian people has only increased during the pandemic when from the outset not a single EU country came to the aid of Italy with only China responding to requests for assistance.
The EU and Italian bourgeoisie didn’t dare to hold an election and instead are attempting to impose Draghi.
This is the man credited with ‘saving the euro’ when he ran the ECB from 2011 up to 2019 and oversaw the bank imposing the vicious austerity cuts and privatisation on Greece that inflicted poverty and massive deprivation on Greek workers.
Now Draghi is being drafted in to save the entire EU by ensuring that the Italian workers and youth suffer similar treatment to keep the third largest economy in Europe from collapsing and bringing down the entire euro bloc.
Ditching even the pretense of bourgeois democracy by bringing in the direct dictatorship of the EU banks will revolutionise Italian workers who are determined not to be dragged into the gutter to rescue a bankrupt and collapsing capitalist system.
With the EU being torn apart economically and politically the only way forward for the workers of Italy and Europe is to put an end to the capitalist EU by taking power and going forward to building a united socialist states of Europe.
The issue of the hour is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead this struggle to victory.
