New government crisis in t

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Italy has entered its 38th bourgeois Christian Democrats in reconstructing the capitalist state at the end of Warld War I.

The latest crisis, like its immediate predecessors. was provoked by a shift of tactics by the Communist Party under its General Secretary Enrico Berlinguer.

Last week the CP decided to withdraw from the parliamentary majority of five parties which has upheld Giulio Andreotti's , reactionary Christian Democratic government since last April.

The new situation means probably that Andreotti will be aked to search for some adjusted form of compromise between the Christan Democrats and the Stalinists on the basis of which he could continue to govern.

The much smaller Socialist Party has already made it clear that it will not agree to a renewal of the "Centre-left" formula of the 1960s. crisis is likely to be one of drawn eut negotiations with Andreotti to find a new formula involving a new coalition without CP ministers rather than provoke new elections.

Berlinguer is no longer pressing for CP ministers since he knows this is unacceptable to the majority of the Christian Democrats.

So he is almost certainly looking for a new secondgrade "historic compromise" like the one which broke up last week but established on the basis of a symbolic retreat on some minor question i by Andreotti.

This may not be too difficult to achieve since the CP has prepared the way for a new un. principled collaborationist agreement with the capitalists, by restricting its sometimes fiery words of criticism almost exclusively to administrative trivia.

It objects to Andreotti's decision to enter the European Monetary System without consultation in advance with the Stalinist leaders; it objects to the methods of appointing the top bureaucrats of nationalised industries by Christian Democratic nepotism; it would like to have a share of the nepotistic spoils.

But Berlinguer has scrupulously avoided any prin. cipled political or class criticism of Andreotti's anti-working class policies.

He has, of course, assiduous ly tried to play his appointed historical role of ramming these policies down the throats of the workers.

The underlying cause of Italy's new crisis is that the CP leaders can no longer perform that role to the satisfaction of the capitalist class.

The Stalinist leaders' advice to the workers to accept Andreotti's wage control plans in the "national interest' is being less and less heeded.

Workers have been demonstrating their determination to fight for better wages and against unemployment-despite the Stalinist bureaucracy..

Last week the trade union bureaucracy called a two-hour national strike in protest against the murder of a Stalinist shop steward who had previously helped the police to identify and arrest an alleged member of the Red Brigades.

But while the bureaucracy remains anxious to divert the organised strength of the workers away from class interests and towards defence of the capitalist state and its institutions, they are nonethe less being forced to support some wage struggles for fear of losing more workers to the "autonomous unions'"

These have been gaining strength in relation to the old Stalinist, reformist and catholic unions.

It is this erosion of the base of the Stalinist trade union and political organisations which explains why the Berlinguer leadership has been obliged once more to put on the mask of opposition:

But this kind of opposition is no more than a manoeuvre of a Stalinist leadership rapidly running out of ability to be effective in its role as policeman for the bourgeoisie.

Crushed

If the Italian working class is to be able successfully to resist the growing offensive of an economically and politically weak and desperate bourgeoisie, the existing Stalinist leadership must be crushed, along with Italian workers demonstrate their would-be substitutes in the reformist Socialist Party.

New leadership That requires the building of new Trotskyist leadership basing itself on a programme which must include:

*Uncompromising struggle to defend and advance the material interests of the working class.

*The fight in the labour movement to force the workers' parties and organisations to break off all collaboration with the capitalists.

*The defence of democratic rights and of anti capitalist "terrorists" from the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state.

*The struggle for a workers' government in Italy.

The present growing crisis of the bourgeois state and the Stalinist leadership raise unprecedented possibilities for the building of such a new revol utionary leadership.

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governmental crisis since the Stalinists joined the