REVIVAL OF ITALIAN WORKERS' MILITANCY
Italy has been recently shaken by a series of pitched battles and a political strike. In Genoa the threat of an openly provocative neo-fascist congress aroused an impressive popular reaction that ended in a violent battle against police mobilized in the fascists' defense. Porta San Paolo in Rome, there next occurred a real battle in the streets, in which several thousand determined militants took part. the masses fiercely fought back against overt police provocation, and turned out a hundred thousand strong for the funeral of its victims. workers have repeatedly come out in highly combative demonstrations against their state of destitution. 8 July the upsurge was topped by a general strike in which the workers of big industry (except FIAT), of municipal services, and, in many cities, of transportation services, look part.
These events are exceptionally important in that this is the first time since 1953 that there has been a political strike of this scope, and the first time since the 1948-51 period that the masses, taking to the streets, have run smack up against government repression.
It should be particularly emphasized that, side-by-side with experienced political and trade-union militants, there youth, of the generation too young to have known either the Resistance or the 1945-53 period. The mobilization of this youth was important not only quantitatively, also because these young militants — not exclusively workers and often not organized in the mass parties were the most combative vanguard in these popular struggles. They have a bellyful of so-called "prosperity," and, as always, they turn first to the left. If the left fails to give them clear revolutionary leadership...
However justified the immediate motives of the Genoa protest, the real causes of the popular upsurge lie deeper, in profound economico-social factors that the "prosperity"
vaunted by the spokesmen of the ruling classes has nowise eliminated. Despite developments in recent years, social imbalances in Italy, far from diminishing, have increased: most of the proletarian masses have gone on living in hard precarious circumstances, while profits have
The governmental trend had gone rightward, politically and morally, till it ended up in the Tambroni cabinet backed by the neo-fascists. And this occurred within an international situation of increasing crisis for imperialism, resounding successes for the workers' states, and turbulent upsurge for the colonial revolution. Even in a
10 and workers had triumphantly erupted — an example without which perhaps Genoa and all that followed would not have been possible.
These July events in Italy have shown that vast sectors of the workers' movement are again ready to take action when the stakes are worth it and when the capitalist state is visibly heading for authoritarian and semi-fascist forms. It has bocome more apparent than ever that the pseudoMarxist supposition that there is a mechanical relationship between economic situations and political trends, that "prosperity" excludes militancy, is false, and that even in a period of high conjuncture, sudden flash-fires show a tinderlike inflammability suggestive of new prospects for the workers' movement.
The July movements had positive results: an unquestionable success in Genoa; and, in the fall of the Tambroni cabinet, a worker-imposed collapse of a particularly reactionary attempt at government. leaderships of the Italian Communist and Socialist Parties once more failed to take advantage of the situation, and precipitately retreated to the parliamentary level.
Since the collapse of the summit conference, whereas the Italian S P has stepped up its trend toward the Social-Democracy, the Italian CP has shown some "leftish" tendencies. During the struggles, some federations and sectors began to take the initiative in favor of carrying the movement forward. But there was a quick retreat to the old positions, a dubious "truce" was quickly accepted, everything was done to limit the mobilization of the workers auring the general strike, and further demonstrations in Rome and Milan for more advanced objectives were silently called off.
The whole CP policy fizzled out in parliamentary manœuvres about a new left-centre government — "justified" of course, by the alleged need to avoid "isolation" and "to broaden alliances."
The effects of the recent popular explosions on the complex Italian parliamentary and governmental situa. tions have clearly analyzed in a fourpage leaflet issued by the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari, Italian Section of the Fourth International, and the folly - even on the parliamentary plane — of the Communist Party policy duly
But, as this leaflet correctly points out.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tendency against another, but of posing a genuine class alternative: the struggle must hit the adversary al every level, wresting from him economic and trade-union concessions, forcing him to abandon the odious forms of repression which have been on the increase for years now, obliging him io restore in the enterprises the democratic rights of the workers,
I...J and preventing him from putting military bases for aggression at the disposal of the imperialists.
Such a struggle can have as its general objective only that of an entirely new government, a government based on the workers' parties and their trade unions, from which the representatives of capitalism would be excluded.
The Italian section also launches the timely slogan for the dissolution of the "Celere." The G CR leaflet correctly points out that they are "not a body of normal police to maintain public order — as has been seen once more in these recent days - but a real armed corps organized for class repression against the workers."
The G CR suggest that a new form of mobilization and organization at the present phase may well be the setting up of Resistance Committees in the factories, wards, and villages. While appealing to the unity motives of the Resistance, these committees would in reality have a much more advanced class content than those of the CL N
They should be composed of representatives of the various categories of workers, partisans, youth, and women. In no case, the G CR warn, should they be reduced to organizations run from the top, which would represent nobody and be reduced to Sunday oratory and the ambitions of certain "public figures." It should be a question rather of creating new organizations of struggle which would channel the masses' aspirations toward new class goals. The G CR also warn that haste is essential, without leaving time for the opportunist policy of the traditional workers' ieaderships to disperse fighting potential that has spontaneously burgeoned in these recent days. As its leaflet very correctly "The working class has not sacrificed ten of its militants only to bring about an nth deal in parliament!"
We hope that the Italian workers, who have just shown that "prosperily" has not dulled their fighting temper, stressed.
it is not a question of favoring a certain bourgeois