No solution to Italian crisis

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up even sooner than predicted in his efforts to form a new government, excluding Communist ministers but with the needed CP support in parliament.

The task was hurriediy entrusted by Socialist. Party President Pertini to veteran bourgeois politician Ugo La Malfa, leader of the tiny Republican Party.

This party was formed after the end of fascist rule by a section the bourgeoisie opposed to the clericalism of the Christian Democrats.

At 75, La Malfa has been on the stage of italian parliamentary politics for over 30 years.

He has many times before been a vocal spokesman for some of the most unpopular anti-working class policies of the Italian capitalist class.

But this is the first time since the war that the ruling class has called him-or any other non-Christian Democratin to take the head of a proposed government.

This is a sign of the twin crises of Italian politics-the crisis of bourgeois parliamentary rule and the crisis of the Communist Party.

The present government crisis sprang from the CP's refusal to go on supporting the Andreotti government in parliament.

Berlinguer The reason for this shift of • tactic lies in the Berlinguer leadership's increasing problems in keeping the support of its base at a time when the government it supports imposes growing burdens on workers and threatens even more.

The CP leaders, of course, dare not admit that they have changed their line under intolerable pressure from the working class since their increasingly difficult job is to control this pressure.

"National unity"

Their withdrawal of support was publicly justified not by reference to any working class criteria but just the opposite.

Enrico Berlinguer accuses Andreotti of betraying not the working class but the policies of his murdered predecessor Aldo Moro, architect of the CPChristian Democratic alliance.

And the CP's solution to the government crisis is, of course, not the formation of a government representing the interests of the working class but. the admission of CP ministers to a coalition government of ''national unity"

Despite the novelty of La Malfa it looks very unlikely that he can get the Christian Democrats to agree to a form of CP participation in the government new enough for the Berlingüer leadership to try to use it to hold back their rank and file with promises of a "partly Communist government".

In fact the traditional working class supporters of the CP are showing less and less interest in the charade which goes on in parliament.

They are showing themselves determined to move into action irrespective of the wishes or the appeals of their leaders.

Strikes

This week saw a sudden re-acceleration of inflation to around 25% a year and the beginning of what is planned to be a series of short country-wide strikes in the all-important engineering industry in support of: a. new •three-year wage contract.

It is in this sharpening atmosphere that either La Malfa -known for his strong views in favour of wage policy and the ending of Italian workers' limited "sliding scale" which gives some compensation for inflation-will try to start a government, or else elections will have to take place.

Either way, the options of the Italian capitalist class, and of their Stalinist protectors at the head of the CP are now more limited than ever.

There is no sign in this situation, however, that the leaders of the so-called autonomous unions or the dissidents in the CP are capable of offering a programme on which to lead the working class against Stalinist class collaboration.

This underlines yet again the urgency of constructing working class leadership which bases itself on the Trotskyist Transitional Programme. Andreotti

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Italy's Prime Minister for the last two years, Giulio Andreotti, has had to give