Berlinguer conjures up ghost of traitors past

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demonstratively losing the support of the living has invoked the dead in support of his rotten policy of "historic compromise" with the capitalist class.

Berlinguer, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party. was writing in the party's weekly joumal Rinascita ('Rebirth") on the fifteenth anniversary of the death of previous CP general secretary Palmiro Togliatti.

Agent

Togliatti. (under the name of Ercoli) was one rf Stalin's principal agents in Spain in the 1930s, charged with persecuting Trotskyists and preserving the Spanish CP's popular front alliance with the bourgeoisie.

After World War II Togliatti returned to Italy from his Moscow exile to play (like Thorez in France) a for divide the world into "peaceful existing" spheres of influence with the imperialists This policy involved the sabotage of the revolutionary possibilities which existed in France, Greece and Italy.

Togliatti himself supervised the literal and political disarmament of the Italian working class and then took Radical Party leader Pannella its largest party, the CP, into a class collaborationist government with the Christian Democrats.

• This lasted from 1946 to 1948 when the Stalinists were summarily thrown out of the government as the imperialist Cold War offensive gathered momentum.

"Opposition"

By then Togliatti had played his part in the reimposition of capitalist authority on the Italian working class.

He could from then on play a new role as a focus of fake "opposition" to the Christian Democrats during Italy's * much-vaunted capitalist economic "miracle" of the 1950s and early 1960s.

It is entirely appropriate that Togliatti has left his name to the most important symbol to date of the Soviet Union's economic collaboration with capitalism-the giant car plant set up by Fiat (owned by the Agnelli family and Colonel Gadaffi's Libya) in Togliattigrad.

It is also entirely appropriate that Berlinguer today should harp back to Togliatti's •. role and positions.

Berlinguer quotes in his Rinascita article from an article written in 1946 in which Togliatti justifies his policy of compromise between the two "great wings" of the anti-fascist resistance in Italy-"progressive" and "conservative" Togliatti's book Lectures on Fascism is one of the classic statements of Stalinism's reactionary policy of popular frontist alliance in which workers' parties are subordinated to supposedly "progressive" capitalist parties.

Authority Berlinguer is now trying to use the ghost of Togliatti for two purposes.

Pirst to invoke the authority of the dead leader to uphold his policy of class compromise in the face of growing opposition from communist workers in Italy.

Second, to remind the Christian Democrats that what they now describe "unthinkable"-the presence of Communist ministers in a Christian Democratic-led government -once did take place and, (by implication), the Communists were then loyal to the capitalist class.

Desperate

This delve into the past represents a desperate effort on the part of Berlinguer to escape from the irreconcilable contradictions of the latest turn of policy he has now been forced into-that of "opposition" to the new government of Cossiga (his cousin).

Cossiga's governmentwhich nobody expects to last long-comprises the Christian Democrats along with the small Liberal and Social Democratic parties.

. This ragbag government won a parliamentary vote of confidence in August against the votes of the CP -but only thanks to the abstentions of the Socialist Party (with about 10% of MPs) and the Republican Undermine present sliding scale is based should in future exclude the price of energy (which is, of course, rising faster than other prices, and forcing other prices up).

This is the latest proposal in the overall programme of "austerity" to which the Christian Democrats are committed.

Although the trade unions are at present opposing any monkeying with the sliding scale, the Stalinist leaders have for the last two years made the policy of 'austerity" their own.

Austerity

In his latest articles Berlinguer reaffirms to the bourgeoisie his devotion to austers hostity of the austeritv but aware of the same time attempts the impossible-to give it a working class content!

In the Rinascita articles he writes:

"An advance to socialism in freedom and democracy needs not only a political demands a clear definition mise tech the enemie.

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