Berlinguer seeks scapegoats to maskCP bankruptcy

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Confronted with rising disillusion among his members after the italian Communist Party's electoral setbacks, Party Secretary Enrico Berlinguer has predictably moved to head off a revolt.

In a speech to an important meeting of the Central Committee, Berlinguer indulged in a lengthy "self-criticism" of the CP's recent practice.

He denounced a certain "bureaucratism". • excessive centralisation, the misuse of the mass media, and the systematic alliances - with Christian Democrats at all local levels instead of evaluating the forces in each area.

The last criticism is particularly pernicious.

It is a scandalously hypocritical effort by the Stalinist leaders to devolve the responsibility for the hated policy of class collaboration (the "historic compromise") away from the top leadership to the lower echelons of the party.

In this way along with an apparently ruthless (but really cosmetic) reshuffle of the top leaders, Berlinguer hopes to redirect the anger of the rank and file towards a lower section of the party "Self-criticism" turned out to be criticism of everyone else, including by implication the party's rank and file for not understanding the policy. Berlinguer Nonetheless, this is still a dangerous line since if lesser heads can roll, then why not the greater ones too?

It is a sign of the depth of crisis in the party that Berlinguer regards it as necessary to allow or even encourage the rank and file to rid themselves of even a lesser section of the bureaucracy.

Berlinguer, however, has taken pains to give no sanction to any attack on class collaborationist policies themselves.

To make them more palatable however he has rechristened the "historic compromise" as "giving the labour movement a part in governing the nation' All the "self-criticism" was a smokescreen to cover up the fact that, despite its move into "opposition" the CP envisages only one route into the government of the nation-through an alliance with the bourgeoisie.

"You don't govern Italy", Berlinguer says, "with 51% of the votes"

The opposition to the alliance with Christian Democracy has grown particularly fast in recent months as the massive material costs which it imposes (and is designed to impose) on the working class have become apparent.

Unemployment

The policies of the Christian Democratic government which the CP in parliament supported until a few weeks ago, have produced a rise in unemployment, a sharp cut in real wages and an enforced delay in the long postponed round of wage negotiations.

In the last two weeks, however, there has been rapidly growing action by workers (strikes, go-slows and demonstrations) in support of their demands for wage rises and reductions in working hours.

25 million hours of strikes were reported in the official figures for Maynearly three times the level in recent years.

These actions have been widespread throughout the engineering and metal working industries.

They have increasingly escaped the control of the They are signs of the difficulty which the ruling class and its allies, the CP bureaucrats, now have in reestablishing the political alliance through which Italian capitalism. has tried to survive the economic crisis. for the past three years.

The difficulty expresses itself in the apparently complete impasse in the formation of a new government.

As expected, it was Giulio Andreotti, the outgoing Premier, who was first asked by State President Pertini to form a new With the CP leaders unable to give him the support they would like to for fear of worsening their own crisis with the rank and file, and the smaller parties not daring to move without the CP, Andreotti seems doomed • to fail.

And at a moment working class demands are becoming more insistent, Italian capitalism seems condemned to a long period without a government.

There is no doubt that the more conscious sections of the ruling class are beginning to look for non-parliamentary solutions to their crisis, but there is no obvious route towards this at present.

A decisive opportunity now exists for the building of a new revolutionary leadership of the working class.

Only with such a leadership can the working class defend its existing conditions and launch a united struggle "against Italy's politically weakened bourgeoisie which will culminate in the taking of power.

Autonomous

The Trotskyist Party needed for such a leadership will have to be built not only against the still dominant Stalinist leadership of the labour movement but also against the "autonomous" currents in the labour movement.

Though these forces reflect the rejection of the Stalinist leadership in favour of policies more in the interests of the working class, they are led by anarcho-syndicalists and others who are deeply hostile to the building of an authentic revolutionary Wi ca