Italian Cp: Where "opposition" Means

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CHAU AUDI MACGARESE VOTANO COMUNISTA It might be supposed that when a political party which was vehement about its opposition to government policies found itself in a majority in the parliament it would vote to bring down the government it professed to hate.

Not, however, when the opposition party concerned is the Italian Communist Party!

That was exactly the situation in a recent parliamentary session when the coalition government forces were depleted through the decreasing level of committment of coalition MPs.

The Italian CP, however, seeing that it was in a majority on an important issue proposed the adjournment of the session until the next day!

Goodwill

This is one example, among many, of the true content of the Communist Party's continued position of "opposition" to the centre-left government led by the Christian Democrats. Despite the "opposition" the Christian Democrats know that they can only rule with a certain amount of goodwill from the Communist Party.

In fact the Christian Democrats are only too well aware that in the short term it is only the CP's "opposition" which saves them from an acute social crisis on a nationwide scale.

Because the CP's stance of "opposition" is necessary for the CP to maintain at least a modicum of control over its increasingly radicalised rank and file and to offer it some perspecC. Larry French, president of the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, and chairman of the board of the Shipbuilders Council tive to compete the various "autonomous" movements among workers, the unemployed and students.

These movements tend to be erratic and geographically dispersed-but in some areas, like the city of Naples, they have presented a real challenge to the state authorities.

Naples today is the scene of daily protest demonstrations and occupations of public buildings by groups of unemployed workers and homeless people.

The unemployment rate in the city is over twice the national average of 9% and a whole generation of the city's youth is failing to find any work at all.

At the same time the chronic housing crisis in Naples has been made suddenly more acute by the migration which has followed last winter's earthquake.

Upheaval

"Three months after the earthquake," said local CP secretary Antonio Bassolini, "Naples is in a vast and confused social upheaval."

In Naples itself, the CP has already lost control of these, the most militant and oppressed sections of the masses.

This is because in Naples the CP is itself (along with the Socialists and Republicans) part of the coalition of parties which govern the municipality.

Naples' social upheaval is therefore beginning to show what can happen in the whole of Italy if the political control over the masses is lost.

On a national scale, therefore, CP "opposition" serves the interest both of the CP bureaucracy and of the Italian capitalist class.

"Opposition" is to all appearances in direct contrast to the CP's earlier plan for a government coalition between itself and the Christian Democrats-a government embodying the "historic compromise" "Opposition" ; however, is a logical continuation of the same policies of class collaboration and policing of the labour movement which under earlier different circumstances expressed themselves as the "historic compromise"

The change, however, shows that the social and economic crisis in Italy makes it increasingly difficult to contain the Socialist League (DC) of the United States of America. Italian CP demonstration working class within the confines of the traditional postwar political structure.

And after this tactic of "opposition" is exhausted there is no further logical step.

It remains, therefore, quite possible that the Italian CP will need to revert at some stage to a new version of the 'historio compromise"-though this time it would have to demand more concessions from the Christian Democrats than in the earlier version.

And remains Salvadorean masses.

The halting of military shipments to El Salvador by the ILWU should now be combined able section of the Christian Democratic leadership which believes that in the end it will be necessary to take the step of bringing the CP directly into the government.

Even the strongest opponents of this are now almost openly admitting that there is no future in the continuation of the current crisis-torn conditions-and still less on a minority monocolour Christian Democrat government.

"Non-political"

In the absence of the immediate possibility of military takeover then other "non-political" solutions are being mooted.

The latest of these proposals is for a government of technocrats-a so-called "institutional government"-to be led possibly by the president of the Senate Amintore Fanfani, the veteran leader of the right wing of the Christian Democrats.

This is seen by many politicians-by the small but influential Republican Party for instance-as a way of bringing the CP into the government in a more indirect way, by including CP echnocrats.

The currency of ideas of this kind reflects the despair of much of the bourgeoisie about finding a solution to their problems of rule in the present parliament.

Refused

The ideas are also encouraged by recent words of the President of the Republic, the Socialist Sandro Pertini in refusing point blank to dissolve parliament and call early elections:

«We've had enough. I am no longer willing to dissolve parliament. I have already warned: this parliament must die by natural causes. Don't expect me to dissolve it again. I will go to

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Reprinted from 'Labor News' , paper of the