ITALY: no tears for Moro: no solution in terrorism

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Thousands demonstrated in London last weekend against thirty As the leading force of the Christian Democrats, certain to be elected President of Italy, Moro was the country's foremost bourgeois politician.

In a bizarre fashion, the Red Brigades highlighted the weakness of the ruling class by the spectacular kidnapping and then holding Moro prisoner for 55 days despite the massive search by police and military forces.

The bourgeoisie • seemed powerless to rescue its own leader from a small group of self-proclaimed enemies to the state.

But while the incident revealed, in an almost farcical way, the inadequacy of the tools at the immediate disposal of the ruling class, it also showed precisely what methods the bourgeoisie would employ to preserve its class rule.

The emergency measures to increase state repression have already been used with great effect in the arrest of many left-wingers and countless raids and searches of the homes of others.

Billed as a political cliff-hanger, the decision of Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council not to quit the 'transitional government' was about as unpredictable as the next episode of 'Crossroads'.

But the bishop described Sunday's 8-hour meeting as 'rough', and it was clear that forceful opposition has developed. within the UANC in protest at the dismissal of Byron Hove, black 'Co-minister for Justice'.

A rich shyster from London, with not even a flimsy record of struggle in Zimbabwe, Hove made the statements which led to his sacking out of a misassessment of the balance of forces, not from any tattered shreds of political principle.

This legislation is now be given permanent status parliament.

As undeclared martial law was introduced, the state's police, secret police, paramilitary and military forces received aid from the governing coalitions of Britain and West Germany.

Thugs

The social dem locrats who dominate in the se popular front formations sent their professional thugs to assist in the operation of urban warfare.

Despite their short-term failure, these initiatives have been used by the bourgeoisie to strengthen its position in preparation for the struggles to come.

It is above all the Italian Communist Party which has been crucial to the success of this wider 'security' operation.

Moro was himself the principal architect of the scheme which enabled the CP Even so, the response to these criticisms from the white settler regime was swift and unequivocal.

The bishop's party justifies its decision to continue collaboration with Smith and his racist colleagues as being 'in the interests of the nation and of the people'.

But Hilary Squires, the white Minister for Justice, made it clear just what nation and what people the interim settlement protects. He argued that the interim agreement:

... provides quite explicitly that there will be no political interference with the disciplined forces of the state, including the British South Africa Police, and that their high state of efficiency will be maintained.

I wish to make it as unmistakably plain as possible 9555 leadership to achieve its aim of the 'historic compromise'.

To drive home their point, the Red Brigades seized Moro as he was on his way to the parliamentary consecration of the deal whereby the CP has renewed the life of the Christian Democrat governthat any new governmental structure will be implemented in terms of that agreement or not at all"

This is the reality of the deal made with Smith by the 'internal' leaders in Muzorewa may talk now of a 'nasty political smell' left by Hove's dismissal.

But such bold understatements cannot conceal the unmistakable fact that the internal settlement' remains -as it has been from the start -stinking to the rotten core. ment by pledging its support in return for nothing, not even promises and honeyed words.

By this massive exercise in class collaboration, the Stalinists confirmed their determination to betray the working class in the defence of capitalism and geois state.

Their treachery has been compounded by the trade union bureaucrats who have devoted their energies to implementing the 'austerity measures' and every other attack on workers required by capitalism.

The depth of these betrayals was indicated by the obscene action of the labour leaders in calling general strikes in protest at Moro's seizure and his assassination.

Corrupt

Italian workers have no cause to mourn the death of this corrupt champion of their continued oppression. Yet they also have little reason to rejoice at his killing under such conditions.

For, although the Red Brigades acted to expose the betrayals of the labour bureaucracy, they themselves in another way exemplify that same historic crisis of working class leadership.

The People's Court which tried Moro, interrogated him "to clarify the imperialist and Italian police mount a roadblock anti-proletarian policies of the Christian Democrat party", , and sentenced him to death as "obviously guilty" of crimes against the proletariat.

Sectarian

But, contrary to their subjective intentions, the action of the Red Brigades has done nothing to advance proletarian revolution in Italy.

Like other similar groupings of urban guerrillas in the developed capitalist nations, the Red Brigades represent an extreme form of sectarianism.

Their political origin lies in the disillusionment and confusion which grew from the apparent ebbing of the revolutionary tide in western Europe and north America after 1968.

Faced with the immediate failure of their political ambitions and a concrete denial of their revolutionary perspectives, radical elements in those struggles were forced to make a re-assessment of their positions.

But some of these forces drew from their experience only negative and partial lessons as to the historic role of the working class and the necessity for a revolutionary One-sided Basing themselves on a fierce hatred of the treacherous labour bureaucracy and a one-sided analysis of its significance, they moved to a belief that the proletariat could not be roused to fulfil its historic tasks by the work of revolutionaries in the mass movement.

For them, the grip of reformist ideology and bureaucracy could be broken only by the most drastic methods.

It was necessary to launch a campaign of terrorism, which would force the state to reveal itself more clearly as the instrument of bourgeois dictatorship.

The inevitable collaboration of the labour bureaucracy in introducing new repression would be the final catalyst for the revolutionary explosion of the proletariat in the overthrow of capitalism and its own betraying leaders.

Proof

The first stage in this schema ot provocation nas certainly been achieved by the seizure and killing of Moro.

But the completely wrong orientation of the Red Brigades has been proved by the failure' of the Italian workers to respond to this challenge with spontaneous heroism and revolution.

The methods of the Red Brigades can deepen the political crisis of the bourgeois democratic state, but

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