Eurocommunist gangs up with Social Democrats

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In friendlier davs: Berlinguer (left) with Carrillo and Marchais The last two weeks have seen extremely significant developments in the further break-up of the internationand Spanish CPs.

The split is particularly between the Italian and the French CPs.

Even at the beginning of the three-way allance open differences existed between the parties on their attitude towards participating in the governments of the bourgeoisic-though these differences were transcended by the fact that all three parties worked to keep the bourgeoiste of their respective countries satoly in power.

The other difference, on attitudes to the Soviet Union, began by narrowing as the French Stalinists began to criticise the USSR's policies on "human rights".

But since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a new gulf has opened up between the French and Italian Stalinists.

The French CP has uncritically supported the invasion. while the Italian party has equally uncompromisingly opposed it.

In order to underline his clear alignment with the imperialists against the USSR, Italian CP leader Enrico Berlinguer has now launched a májor initiative towards European social democratic parties.

First of all on March 12 he held a meeting with leading German Social Democrat Willy Brandt.

The Sa Carneiro's right wing up its implementation of the law, originally introduced by Mario Soares' Socialist Party, which reverses the land reforms that followed the April The Agrarian Reform law gives the government powers to mceting hardly a mention whereas the Italian CP newspaper /. 'Unita culogised it as:

"a cordial and useful, as all forms of constructive dialogue should be between different components of the European left which is trying to reconstitute the workers movement in the Old Continent"

As Berlinguer and Brandt were talking, the Italian CP representatives in the European Parliament were voting for the reactionary resolution demanding "the consolidation of links of friendship and alliance within remove farmworkers by force from farms, mostly in the southern Alentejo region, which they seized from the landowners in 1974 and 1975 and on which they have since worked on a cooperative or collective basis.

They can then be handed back to the expropriated landowners . though usually in smaller units than those which existed before 1974.

About 2.5 million acres of land were expropriated after the revolution. Up to now 550.000 acres have been given back to the framework of Atlantic solidarity"

Only a few of them revolted and refusca• to vote for a resolution they regarded as too "Atlantic"

Two weeks later on March 24 an cven more significant meeting took place, between Berlinguer and Francois Mitterand. the leader of the French Socialist Party.

The official communique of this meeting talks of "a long and cordial conversațion" and the need for initiatives towards:

"disarmament, detente, private owners since the counter-revolutionary Act was passed in 1977-75,000 by the present Sa Carneiro government, the rest by the Socialist Party government of Soares and its two "technocratic" successors led by Mota Pinto and Pintassilgo.

The present government's policy is to step up the pace of this counter-revolutionary offensive.

Before the general election, due in October of this year it intends to hand back a further operation in Europe and the world, respect for human rights and preparing conditions favourable to the success of the Madrid conference."

(The Madrid conference, scheduled for next year, is designed as a successor to the reactionary agreements between imperialism and Stalinism taken at the "European Security conferences" at Helsinki and then Belgrade).

The Communique emphasise:

"the specific role which, in the difficult phase of inter625,000 acres-that is, more in the next six months than in the past three years.

This policy has led to an enormous build-up of resistance on the part of the farmworkers of Alentejo.

Numerous armed clashes have taken place in the past lew weeks between farmworkers and the paramilitary police, the CNS.

Three cabinet ministers were sent to Alentejo on March 12 to supervise the operation and were met with hostile demonnational relations today, can be played in realising the objectives of the workers movement by different parties which express those objectives and by the forces of the democratic and popular left in western Europe".

Aroused

The meeting predictably aroused the ire of French Stalinist leader Georges Marchais (already under severę pressure as a result of press allegations that he went as a voluntary worker to Nazi Germany in 1943).

Marchais's comments on the Berlinguer-Mitterand talks virtually broke all links between the French and Italian CPs.

He noted the "broad convergence" between the French Socialist Party and the Italian CP.

"They are both for austerity -we are against it. They are both in favour of the enlargement of the European Community to Greece, Portugal and Spain -we are against this in the interests of the peasantry and in the national interest. They are both for giving the Community supranational rights-we are against it."

Explanation After this reactionary declaration he added his explanation of Mitterand's motivesMitterand, he says, wants to associate himself with Berlinguer's policy of "historic compromise" with the Christian Democrats and to dissociate himself from the French Union strations.

Armed helicopters flew over the region in an attempt to keep the ministers out of trouble Eighteen farmworkers were injured in a police attack on a demonstration; several were arrested and face trial.

Dominated The leading political force in the area is the Communist Party which dominates the farmworkers' unions.

its policy in the face of the attack has been one of militant the Left with the CP.

Apart from the hypocrisy involved in putting all the blame for breaking the Union of the Left on the Socialist Party, this opposition to Mitterand is in no way based on political principle.

Marchais accuses Mitterand of seeking an alliance with the Gaullists and Giscard. He defines this alliance not as anti-socialist or anti-working class but as "anti social, anti-democratic and anti-national."

And Marchais goes out of his way not to criticise the principle of the "historic compromise" policy of the Italian CP. He simply declares it. "perhaps conceivable in Italy "but not useful in France.

Marchais diplomatically avoided analysing Berlinguer's motives.

Way out They relate, however, to the Italian CP's continued search for a way out of their enforced "opposition" to the crisis-torn Christian Democratic regime in Italy.

They hope to establish political credentials respectable enough to ensure that they are offered some kind of role in the bourgeois government.

Close links with European social democracy, they hope, would qualify them for such a position. :

But as we go to press it looks as if Berlinguer will be disappointed yet again.

Premier Cossiga seems to be heading towards a new "centre-left" coalition with the Socialist Party-but without the resistant to granting any of them.

But the ruling class is nonetheless showing increasing signs of disunity and long-term insecurity.

There is open hostility between President Eanes and Prime Minister Sa Carneiro's Eanes is trying to encourage an alternative governmental coalition of the Social Democrats not with the Christian Democrats as now but with the Socialists.

But the Social Democrats have no interest in the proposal and are publicly advocating that a civilian candidate replaces Eanes as President in the presi.dential elections due in December, a few weeks after the parliamentary elections.

This proposal, however, has brought them into public conflict with their coalition partners the Christian Democrats, who continue to favour a military president who would be "above party But even the Christian Democrats dont want Eanes, whom they identify with the Socialist Party.

So Portuguese capitalists and their lackeys and defenders in the leadership of the main workers' parties are as far as ever from finding a stable government formula.

They are publicly bickering only a few months before they will be forced to expose themselves to the masses in two national elections and at a time when working class resistance is once again growing to the counter revolutionary offensive of the government.

There is, therefore, every indication that Portugal is moving towards a new period of major class battles.

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al "Eurocommunist" line-up between the French, Italian

government, comprising Portugal's two main bour- geois parties, has stepped