Italian Bosses in Dilemma

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Last week Giulio Andreotti's caretaker : minority government finally ran out of pretexts to delay its formal resignation.

It had waited until the official positions in the two houses of parliament had been shared out as before the indecisive June 3 elections between the Christian Democrats and the Communist Party.

And it hung on until the Christian Democrats had elected their parliamentary leadership.

This second preliminary showed how far away was any hope for the Italian capitalists of finding a stable replacement to Andreotti's series of governments since 1976.

The Christian Democrats' leadership elections resulted in a sharp setback for the sections of the party which favours some sort of parliamentary deal with the CP (that is, Andreotti and party General Secretary Benigno Zaccagnini).

Not even top Their candidate Giovanni Galloni, the parliamentary leader (not necessarily the same as Premier) in the last parliament, failed even to come top of the poll let alone get the necessary absolute majority.

He was ousted by a representative of the far-right of the party, headed by ex-Premier Fanfani, which is opposed to any more compromise with the CP.

Italy's real political crisis, a crisis of bourgeois authority, opened many years ago.

The latest formal crisis began last week and will now develop with the effort to find a government which can gain a sufficient parliamentary majority.

Half of the Christian Democrats are now vehemently rejecting a deal with the CP.

The CP itself is insisting that if it does not have Cabinet Ministers it will stay in opposition.

Square root

And, with none of the smaller parties in retween Indreotti-seeking guidance? (Socialists, Social Democrats, or Republicans) apparently willing without the CP to take responsibility for keeping the Christian Democrats in office, a new formula looks about as difficult to find as the square root of minus one.

The crisis of Italian parliamentary democracy, which reflects the latent explosiveness of the underlying class conflict, may now be such that neither of the dominant political parties can be permitted to divert, and perhaps not even to be part of the next Ironically the only formula which can stave off total political crisis in the short run, may be for the government to be led by, and perhaps even composed by, the parties which gained least votes in the general election.

Decided to While some political commentators are congratulating themselves on devising this elegant solution of an imaginary government to lead Italy, few of them are offering suggestions as to what politician could pull off such a delicate trick.

Three months ago they would have suggested Republican Party leader Ugo La Malfa.

He, however, when presented with the same challenge before the elections, wisely decided to die of a heart In the face of this crisis the CP leaders seem as paralysed as those of the bourgeois parties.

Evaporating

Beyond mouthing their demand for a broad class-collaborationist coalition, they are unable to take any initiatives without losing even more of their mass base which, as the election results showed, is aready evaporating especially among the young.

The working class, however, is more insistently demanding that the political paralysis is ended.

Last week the Stalinist-led CGIL trade union federation could no longer avoid calling a long-delayed demonstration of metal workers in support of wage demands which were due for settlement nearly a year ago.

The CP leaders weakness in the face of mass pressure was shown by the turnout of 200,000 on a demonstration they had tried to keep as smali as possible.

Physical violence

It was also shown by the fact that their only answer to the growing number of "autonomist" workers (independent of the CP) who wanted to join the march was to instruct the stewards (working in close collaboration with the police) to keep them away with physical violence.

Dozens of autonomists were injured in this scandalous onslaught.

At the end of his speech Luciano Lama, the CGIL's veteran General Secretary was rushed off to hospital with what was rumoured to be a heart attack, later stated to be heatstroke.

It was in fact more likely blind terror at the sight of so many workers demanding that their organisations lead a fight against Italy's rotting capitalist structure.

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Following the downfall of the second Caribbean government this year, the smaller islands ANG JILLA Desmond Trotter, the well-known radical ' who was framed for murder five years ago and sentenced to