Massimo Pini
Craxi

"[Craxi] Understood better than any other politician how Italian society was changing. His foreign policy was great. There was the Sigonella episode but also the choice to keep Italy in the Western sphere, without impairing the country's autonomy and dignity"

_{(W. Veltroni, interview with "Corriere della Sera", 15.7.2009)}

"Craxi will be remembered as a great statesman and a great politician, who due to the financial management of the party ended up ruining himself and paying also for others. His name is always written below the innovations of the '80s. I particularly like to remember one: Milan, 1985, Craxi of the Single Act, who outvoted Thatcher"

_{(G. Amato, interview with "Corriere della Sera", June 2, 2008).}

It is well known how, during the 20th century, following the dramatic split of the Livorno Congress in 1921, the Italian left forces lost their traditional unity, splitting into socialists and communists, with the additional presence, from 1947, of further social-democratic forces, having less electoral weight but not insignificant relevance within the institutions.

The distinction between socialists and communists can, in fact, be synthesized by referring to some fundamental points: more moderate on the economic level were the socialists, who never wanted to give up the market economy, more linked to Marxist logics were the communists, at least until the late '80s; openly critical of the political and international role of the Soviet Union were the socialists, more attached to it despite its totalitarian nature that emerged dramatically in the West after 1956, were the Communists; inclined to government responsibilities were the socialists since the early '60s, always linked to a staunch and anti-Atlantic opposition were the communists, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transformation of the PCI into the "Thing" masterfully described by Moretti in the early '90s.

Epitome of the two opposing mentalities, and of a different socio-political approach, were the major representatives of the two parties at the turn of the '70s and '80s: Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984) for the PCI, Bettino Craxi (1934-2000) for the PSI. The story of these two leaders, their struggles, successes, and failures of their not very long lives are probably the symbol of the internal dialectic within the Italian left in the second half of the 20th century, as well as a fascinating human story that would not have displeased Plutarch of "Parallel Lives".

Nearly a decade after his death, with the controversies related to the judicial events of his last years of life partially calmed down, the figure of Bettino Craxi has been the subject of careful reconsiderations by illustrious political figures from the same Italian left, who, after neglecting the political, social, and symbolic importance of the socialist statesman for years, seem to have reevaluated his institutional role in Italy in the last forty years to the point of elevating his figure in the empyrean of the fathers of contemporary left , in a role even more prominent than that reserved for Gramsci, Togliatti, and even Berlinguer himself.

Thus, there has been a proud claim of the socialist-Craxian roots of the current Democratic Party by old members of the PSI (Giuliano Amato) and it has been acknowledged, by the same leaders of the current PD, already members of the dissolved PCI raised by (and in the cult of) Enrico Berlinguer, the importance of the Craxian example in the construction of a center-left political leadership that does not renounce to proudly claim the existence of a third way between Atlantic pro-capitalism and Soviet pro-communism: that of a liberal socialism that can combine market economy and social services, civil rights and economic solidity, breaking down any form of monopolism and rent-seeking position within the Italian system, whether capitalist or union-oriented.

A more considered reevaluation of the figure of Bettino Craxi also includes the monumental biography reviewed here (published by Mondadori), which retraces, among private and public events, all the traits of the life of the Milanese statesman of Sicilian origin.

His political beginnings in the economically growing Milan of the '60s, where the socialist choice was seen as a choice of field in favor of the weak and excluded, without however embracing the utopian abstraction of anti-democratic communism; the growing national importance as the "dolphin" of Pietro Nenni in a '70s Italy where Craxi himself - according to recent testimonies from his son Bobo - was a reference figure for the youth culture of that era, hosting at his home reference artists such as Dalla, Ron, Caterina Caselli Sugar and Fabrizio De André; the definitive apotheosis following his rise to the secretariat of the PSI in 1976, through the electoral affirmations of the early '80s and the epoch-making assumption of the office of President of the Council of Ministers (1983-1987), leading the first Government headed by a left-wing representative following the post-war, giving maximum stability to the country and initiating structural reforms destined to endure over time ("scala mobile", Government reform), and reaffirming Italian autonomy both from the USSR and from the USA and their respective imperialist strategies; the decline of the '90s, both due to the geopolitical transformations of the time, which prevented the PSI from remaining, on the left, the "balance needle" for the country's democratic policies in alternative to the PCI, and due to the Judiciary's investigations aimed at unveiling the party's financial mismanagement, the correlated reliance on a large-scale bribery system that guaranteed the political structure's economic survival in exchange for favors and assistance to businesses and public administrators; the sad abandonment of Italy and the withdrawal from the political scene until his death from a severe form of diabetes, in the absence of proper medical care in the Tunisia that hosted him.

We certainly cannot hide, especially to the younger readers of this site, that Craxi's figure is still frowned upon to this day, in the left of the so-called "moral superiority" of Berlinguer, for having been involved in the Judiciary investigations and marked by heavy convictions for the offences committed by the Milanese politician at the height of his political success.

However, it should be noted that in a historic speech to the Chamber in '93, Craxi never denied the political responsibility of the events, acknowledging that the entire Italian political system, including the PSI, participated, out of obvious necessity, in the sharing of bribes, and how the same moral superiority on which the PCI and its heirs partly merged into the PD was based is, probably, the result of an hypostasis and a self-representation of the Party in "virtuous" terms, to differentiate its political offer from other leftist forces: statements that are not always true, as confirmed by various judicial inquiries, even in recent weeks.

This book, in summary, does justice to a historical figure of utmost importance and explains, also to those who wish to question the present of the left, the reasons for many electoral failures of the alignment: perhaps it is the hasty severance of the Craxian roots, the absence of genuine Craxi heirs in the current opposition the root of a leadership crisis and of alternative ideas to those of the opposing alignment that determined the same crisis of the left.

A crisis that everyone hopes will be overcome in the future by figures similar to Craxi, invoked today by the same leftist politicians.