Italy: the same old song

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Last week th le grand opera of Italian looked as if it was about to enter a new act.

The story so far is that, siner last June's election the minorit Christian Democratic government (headed by Francisco Cossiga) has survived against the "opposition" of the second largest parliamentary party, the Communist Party, thanks to the abstention of the Socialist The Socialists are always on the point of changing their minds and going into opposition-because they don't want to lose support to the CP, by taking all the blame for the continued existence of the corrupt and reactionary rule of the Christian Democrats.

The Socialists, like the Communists, propose a broad national unity coalition--but there is general agreement that they would accept a centre-left coalition between themselves and the Christian Democrats as long as a Socialist is the Prime Minister.

But the Christian Democrats want to hold on to both the government and the Premiership.

Since there is no possible resolution of this plot which can provide the Italian bourgeoisie with a happy ending-the stable government it so desperately needs-Italian politicians have a very difficult life.

As each act of the tragi-comedy unfolds they must appear to be singing music which is different from the previous act.

But the weakness of the Christian Democrats and the Berlinguer unwillingness of the Socialist and Communist * leaders to mobilise the working class mean that all the tunes have to be basically the same.

In the last few weeks several of the singers seemed to be drawing breath ready for a new theme.

The Socialist Party leaders, under severe pressure from their "left" wing and from their working class base, announced it was going to end its parliamentary abstention altogether and go into opposition.

This threat, if carried out, would mean that the government would almost certainly fall through insufficient parliamentary support.

So that looked like a real change of tune. But when the Craxi singing began it turned out to be no different: Party Secretary Bettino Craxi said that the change to opposition would not be made until an alternative government had been arranged.

The second apparent change of tune came from the election of a new Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Party.

He is Flaminio Piccoli, leader of what is known as the "centre" 'faction of the party, though it has recently voted almost entirely with the "right" faction of Amintore Fanfani and Donat-Cattin.

What distinguishes "left" and "right" among the Christian Democrats is whether the CP should be kept out of the government on principle because of its ideology. (the "right" position) or on tactical grounds because of its present policies (the "left" position).

The "left" leaders, former Secretary General Zaccagnini and former Premier Andreotti, now appear to be out in the cold.

Rejected by a 58% majority at the party's recent Congress, they may now be damaged further by the fact that supporters of Andreotti were deeply implicated in one of the wave of financial scandals which have broken over the Christian Democrats in the past few days.

The Caltagirone brothers, rich building contractors who got richer through a fraudulent bankruptcy, are alleged to have given billions of lire to assist the Andreotti wing of the party. One government minister has already been forced to resign.

Twenty-four hours later forty prominent Christian Democrats were arrested for misappropriation of public funds via the national savings banks of which they were officials.

The eyes of the audience now turn to the Communist Party which has stood in awkward silence as the others do the singing.

Criminals

Now that the Christian Democrats have firmly closed the door in the face of the CP and shown themselves once again to be nothing more than a bunch of criminals, the CP must now decide whether to change its political line from its present insistence on being admitted to a grand 'historic compromise" government with the Christian Democrats.

It is this prospect, now definitely ruled out by the Christian Democrats, which the CP has held up before its increasingly impatient followers as a reason not to mobilise resistance to the government's reactionary anti-working class policies.

Previously forced to walk a tightrope, the CP bureaucracy is now obliged to walk on air.

Applecart

At present, so long as the financial scandals don't upset the present extremely unstable political applecart, all the party leaderships seem to have agreed that noone will do anything decisive before the May municipal and regional elections.

Meanwhile, as in Italian opera, the principal performers will be trying to sing encores of their old arias as long as possible.

It cannot be long, however, before the audience. begin to throw something other than flowers.

Zaccagnini Polish leader Gierek It consequently spends a lot of money on buying out private farmers and gives preferential treatment in terms of credit and orants socialised farm activity.

But this is a long term policy and not likely to solve many short or even medium term problems.

Meanwhile, food shortages and consumer good shortages continue. Regular and extensive queues for these products are common and living standards are low.

Officially the standard of living has risen by 8.5% between 1971-1980, but this is criticised by unofficial sources which claim that serious falls in real wages have occured recently.

They advocate that workers should fight for higher wages and better working conditions either through trade unions or in independent groups.

They also inform them how to find out whether real wages are rising or falling and advise on what can be legally done if the management takes disciplinary action against their demands.

Overall, the bureaucratically controlled economy shackled within the Stalinist confines of "socialism in one country" seems to be 'finding it: harder and harder to provide the Polish people with rising standards of living as time continues.

In this conflict of interests lies the key to the struggle for political revolution to overthrow the ruling. Stalinist