Italy Bosses Need Cp Backing

Scan page 3

I demonstration by Iranian students recently took place in London in protest at the recent The leaders of the are haunted by the fear of losing their support in the working class.

Once they lose that then their principle political role as the maintainers of capitalist rule in Italy will disappear.

Once they are exposed as being of . no use to the working class then, by that very fact, they will be of no use to their patrons, the capitalist class.

The CP is now used by the capitalists to give essential support to its minority Christian Democratic government inside parliament and simultaneously hold back the working class outside parliament.

Disenchantment

That is why with every new sign of disenchantment of the Italian working class with its Stalinist leaders the Christian Democratic government is thrown into crisis.

And each time this happens the CP tries to use the crisis to get "concessions" from the Christian Democrats THE 28210: PRETENSULP ME KEY : 101 31062120000.0 fillings of students in Iran. in exchange for continued It must have somethingst that the bourgeoisie is being forced to pay for the privilege of being kept in power by a so-called Communist Party.

But this technique is fast losing its effectiveness.

More and more the workers can i see that the "price" the bourgeoisie pays is not merely worthless; it actually involves a worsening of their existing conditions.

The new crisis of the Andreotti government is the most serious it has yet faced.

That is why there is increasing speculation that the only measure which will prevent a massive social explosion is the participation of the CP in government itself.

The small parties between the CP and the Christian Democrats (all of them part of a six party programmatic agreement signed last July) appear to have reached this conclusion.

The CP itself has advocated this "historic compromise" all along.

It is calling for "a government of democratic unity and solidarity with the participation of the left parties"

Now the Christian Democrats, the main party of the capitalist class which has dominated all Italian governments since the war, is faced with the momentous decision as to whether to convert the unofficial popular . front government into a fully declared popular front.

This would bring back the CP into the government from which it was expelled on American orders in 1948 at the beginning of the Cold War.

Condition for loan.

What has suddenly brought this possibility to the fore are the proposals for the 1978 budget.

Originally the role of the proposed budget deficit was agreed at £10 billions with the International Monetary Fund as a condition for a loan. But the Andreotti government realised weeks ago that to cut government limits with a budget deficit of £26 billions, hoping that the IMF will agree to that as the-cost of avoiding a major political crisis.

Even that, however, would mean £34 billions of new cuts (roughly what Healey did in Britain in 1976).

The CP leaders are not opposed to these cuts as such. But they have no confidence at all of being able to force economies on that scale down the throats of the working class-unless perhaps they were able to get Communist ministers in the government.

Berlinguer This would be presented by the CP leaders as the replacement of bourgeois ministers by workers' ministers.

In that way they would hope to persuade workers to accept the austerity measures demanded for *economic stability".

Already it looks as if may be too late for such move to work.

Last week the CP organiser of a massive 200,000 demonstration of metal workers in Rome were unable to prevent the participants in the demonstration from raising slogans and demands hostile to the CP's collaboration with the capitalist class.

Mounting pressure

This demonstration combines with the mounting pressure on the union leadership to call strike action to protest against the unemployment-creating policies of the CP supported government.

It shows how difficult it has become for the CP to reverse the workers' growing rejection of its policies.

Both CP. and Christian Democrat leaders know that entry of the Stalinists might not work.

They also know that such a move would be almost their last resort for imposing capitalist solutions to the crisis while still maintaining the forms of parliamentary democracy.

This is why it is almost certain the present crisis will not be resolved quickly; and it is still not certain 'that it will lead. to a declared popular front coalition.

Deeper crisis

Whatever the immediate developments, bourgeois rule in Italy has entered a stage of even deeper crisis.

Italy shows perhaps more starkly than anywhere else in Europe the appalling consequences which face humanity if the crisis of working •class leadership is not resolved through the construction of a Trotskyist party based on an independent working class The opportunities for the building of such a party are obvious and develop every day out of the parallel crisis of the CP and the Christian Democrats.

The capitalist press gives ample coverage to reactionary 'dissidents' such as Solzhenitsyn and Bukovsky who make no secret of their relations with Tories and Fascists.

But little is heard of the Russian working class which bears the brunt of the oppression by the Stalinist However news has come of a protest to the Soviet authoReactionary dissident Solzhenitsyn One worker was beaten u by the militia in front of h family for defending someor who had exposed corruption and was jailed for fifteen day when he tried to : file complaint.

However despite this tb protestors have disassociate themselves from the "diss dents' , and insist that the are not opposed to the Sovi system but merely desi their rights as 'guaranteed' i the Soviet constitution.

'Socialist construction' The exact significance ( this protest is unclear but certainly reveals some of tl