Italian Stalinists Wobble on Tightrope

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Italy's paper-thin veneer of political stability threatens to tear in the face of irreconcilable class contradictions beneath the surface.

The most acute source of conflict is the growing struggle over wages, now erupting as new three year wage contracts fall due for renegotiation for 10 million workers throughout Italian Most workers receive some protection from inflation (now 12% a year)

from the limited sliding scale which Italian capitalists tried unsuccessfully to abolish last year.

The dire situation of Italian capital is illustrated by recent calculations by the ex-Governor of the Bank of Italy that the rate of return on industrial investments has fallen to 6% compared with a 16% effective interest rate.

•This situation has led to a severe decline in industrial investment.

In order to prevent unemployment from rising even further than its present level of 1½ million, the government is running a gigantic deficit equal to 16% of the National Product.

Decline in The only apparently healthy aspect of the economy is the balance of payments surplus-but that is largely the result of the decline in the demand for imports caused by the slump in investment and real wages.

As part of a proposed 3year 'economic recovery programme", , the minority Christian Democratic government is now trying to prevent workers from getting any wage increases or reductions in hours beyond the continuation of the partial sliding scale.

The working class has other ideas, which are most clearly reflected in the claim lodged by the engineering unions for a £20 a month wage increase and a cut in hours to 36 without loss of pay.

This claim has incurred the public hostility not only of the government but also Berlinguer, is now further out along his political tightrope than ever and showing signs of slipping.

His slavish support for the right-wing Christian Democratic government has now evidently lessened the CP's control of its trade unions, whose bureaucratic leaders are finding it impossible to restrain their own rank and file and who are rapidly losing members to the autonomous unions.

Yet at the same time Berlinguer finds . that however pleadingly he stretches out his hands along the wire to Andreotti and his Cabinet they will not grasp it.

They will not give him the ministerial positions he wants.

Caught in this way between his disillusioned base and a less than completely grateful ruling class to whom he gives essential support, Berlinguer has once again started making noises about leaving the parliamentary majority and returning to parliamentary opposition.

This is, of course necessary part of the myth Berlinguer has to try to build up that his support for the Italian Tories is "conditional"

If the CP really went into opposition that would almost certainly precipitate early general elections.

The opinion polls at present suggest that the Christian Democrats would make large gains at the expense of the CP In spite of this both parties seem anxious in the current crisis to avoid elections, probably because they would give an expanded opportunity for the expression of mass hostility to the pro-capitalist austerity policies of the undeclared m CP/Christian Democrat coalition.

The safest prediction at present is still that the agreement between the two largest political parties will once again be patched up in the interests of avoiding the threatened complete breakdown of social stability.

At the present time it is not only the growth in the wage struggle which is undermining the "historic compromise" but also a sudden new outburst of terrorist actions from the right with retaliation from the left, and the new prospect of an open struggle on the issue of abortion.

Last year an open fight on this explosive question Berlinguer was avoided by a parliamentary deal between the CP and the Christian Democrats for a new law which granted extremely limited rights to legal abortions.

Neither of the main parties wants to revive the issue.

But the small petty-bourgeois Radical Party are trying to collect the half million signatures needed to have a referendum on their proposed complete liberalisation of the abortion law.

While the major parties of the historic compromise' certainly want to avoid a general election they may before long be forced to call one simply to forestall the even worse prospect of a referendum on Either way, Italy's political atmosphere rapidly becoming more explosive

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of its main prop, the CP. CP leader, Enrico