[from Peking through Warsaw, Rome, Madrid, Paris and…]

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from Peking through Warsaw, Rome, Madrid, Paris and London to Washington.

Whatever their professions of eternal hated and incompatability, all those governments are in accord on one thing-the need for austerity.

And what that means is the need to raise the exploitation of the direct producers in society by cutting their real wages and raising their productivity through speed-up and intensifying work and cutting available social services.

Similar

Whether these measures are in the interests of Stalinist bureaucrats' privileges or capitalists' profits they are remarkably similar and get remarkably similar justifications from their advocates.

Long passages from the recent speeches of Deng Hsiao Leonid Arnaldo Forlani, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would be interchangeable.

And nearly everywhere the advocates of austerity are in trouble. If they ever had it in the first place they are in danger of losing their political means of support and power.

If Poland shows that most acutely in the Stalinist-ruled countries, Italy must be nearly the most severe case among capitalist countries.

Every new packet of austerity measures severs another strand in the thread by which the life of the Forlani government hangs.

Last week, after protracted negotiations with the unions, and in the aftermath The whoops of delight from the Reagan administration at the success of the space shuttle exercise last week has nothing to do with any new-found Republican interest in scientific advancement.

Reagan's government is busily slashing Federal spending on scientific research. But it is funnelling unlimited funds into a vast arms build-up as part of their plans to increase still further the military might of US imperialism.

The Shuttle may mean for many readers a further historic step towards exploration of the universe: but for Reagan, Haig and Bush it means the possibility of establishing orbiting weapons platforms, bristling with high-definition surveillance equipment and high power laser guns to shoot down intercontinental missiles in anv nuclear confrontation as d with the Soviet Union.

Reagan is seeking cuts in spending by NASA, as part reinforce the 6% devaluation and raising of interest rates four weeks ago.' They are designed to cut government spending by the equivalent of £2,500 million.

It seems unlikely, however, that this can be achieved since the government was unable to impose its major demand on the unions-the suspension of the sliding scale of wages.

Italy's workers won their sliding scale in the 1960s and early 1970s. It means that wages are renegotiated every two or three years and between that period rise automatically with the cost of living.

The protection which this gives against inflation is not complete and there are many ways in which the CP and SP leaders Berling scala mobile could be improved.

But nonetheless it was a tremendous victory for Italy's working class and for 'and Craxi a decade now it has been the gain most disputed by the capitalists and their government.

Italy's experience with the scala mobile shows how important is this demand in the struggle to prevent the capitalist class from inflicting the cost of their crisis on workers.

Divided

In the negotiations of the last few weeks the Forlani government has been trying to get the unions to agree to suspend the scala mobile so that prices would be allowed to decisively overtake wage rates at least for a period.

The three national unions -Catholic (CISL), Socialist (UIL) and Communist (CIGL)-were divided on their response.

The CISL was prepared to sell the