Turn to the Right

Outside the Iron Curtain, Italy has more state-run businesses than any other European country. When Italy became a nation 96 years ago, her government inherited a Genoese shipyard from the old kingdom of Sardinia, and that was the state's start in business. Under 21 years of Fascism, the government got more and more deeply mixed up in the economy, and has never since got out of it. Today the government mines all of Italy's coal and 80% of her iron ore; it produces more than three-quarters of the nation's pig iron and half its steel, enjoys a monopoly or near monopoly of rail, sea and air transport, and competes with private industry in the manufacture of scores of products ranging from chocolates to Alfa Romeo cars.

Most of these diverse interests are managed for the government by enti, autonomous administrations which today number more than 1,000. (Exactly how many more nobody knows.) Perhaps 200 of these corporations, e.g., the Imperial African Transport Society and the ente in charge of Albanian banks, have long since outlived their functions and represent a net loss to the Italian taxpayers. But even more of a menace to Italy's economic health are such aggressive, purposeful enti as E.N.I., the burgeoning oil and gas corporation which, under the leadership of hard-driving Enrico Mattei (TIME, Nov. 29, 1954), has waged a determined fight to prevent private capital from sharing in Italy's oil development.

Quivering Left. Three months ago wispy, white-maned Premier Antonio Segni won parliamentary approval for his plan to put all state-owned corporations under a single "Ministry of State Holdings." The right was worried: in the hands of a zealous left-winger, the new ministry could spearhead an all-out assault on Italian free enterprise.

Last week Italy's free enterprisers abruptly stopped quivering. In a move that surprised friends and foes alike, Segni gave the new Cabinet post to brawny, brawling Giuseppe Togni, 53-year-old founder-president of CIDA, the Italian business executive union. A onetime marble cutter who worked his way up to a top management job in Italy's vast Montecatini chemical company, Christian Democrat Togni is a vocal exponent of free enterprise. He is also one of Italy's most unrestrained antiCommunists, two years ago set off the worst riot in Italian parliamentary history by bellowing at Communist deputies: "I would like to know how many ex-spies of the OVRA [Fascist secret police] there are in your ranks."

Profits & Losses. Togni's appointment outraged the Italian left. Vice Premier Giuseppe Saragat was hard put to hold his Social Democrats in the government coalition. (Their departure might have toppled the Segni government, which won its last vote of confidence by a majority of three.)

Togni could also expect to hear plenty of opposition from the enti themselves, and their entrenched hangers-on. "We object to the new minister," said an E.N.I. spokesman flatly. Much as he might like to, Togni will probably be unable to turn the government's profitable businesses over to private enterprise, and thus leave the government to run only those which need to exist but cannot be self-sustaining. What he does hope to do is to eliminate obsolete enti, organize the rest into one coherent and responsible whole. Even so modest an achievement would reverse a dangerous trend.

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