JOINT APPEAT -
On May 30 Avanguardia Operaia and the Partito di Unita Proletaria per il Comunismo (PDUP), the two organizations that originally founded Democrazia Proletaria (DP - Proletarian Democracy), the electoral bloc established for the regional and odministrative elections of June 15,
1975 (see INPRECOR, No.30, July 3, 1975), issued a common platform to serve as the basis for DP's campaign in the current elections. This platform was then to be discussed by the organi-
On June 8 Quotidiano dei Lavoratori, daily newspaper of Avanguardia Operaia, published a document including very large sections of the initial platform. It was signed by four organizations: AO, PDUP, the Movimento dei Lavoratori per il Socialismo (ML5 - Movement of Workers for Socialism, a Mao-Stalinist tendency), and the Lega dei Comunisti (League of Communists, an organization created in 1972 by the fusion of the League of Communists of Tuscany and the
This document was not published in Il Manifesto, the daily of the PDUP! Lotta Continua has asked to sign it, but had not yet done so as of June 18. The four signing organizations explained
"The line expressed here and the objectives presented are those around which DP must develop its propaganda during the last days of the electoral campaign and on which DP will have to put the emphasis after the campaign. In addition, it is a concrete exposure of the distortions of the
Communist party press, which is seeking to present the DP as an assembly of heterogeneous forces having no common orientation and united only by electoral pressures. For this reason, the document we are publishing here, which must also be distributed as a national DP leaflet, should be used as much as possible not only in political discussion, but also as an instrument of propaganda."
We are publishing below major excerpts from this text. Deletions are marked by ellipsis; the sub-
Rome-based Workers Unity group) • the meaning and purpose of this platform as follows:
titles appear in the original.
OF
PDUP
•AO
MUS
•LDC zations included on the electoral slate bearing the DP designation.
Gitizens, men and women comrades,
It is Finally possible to put an end to the Christian Democratic regime; it is possible to open a new phase, to place the forces that represent the working class and the popular masses at the head of the country, to initiate a phase of struggle for power to those who labor. This is the meaning of the June 20 elections: to defeat the Christian Democracy not only in order to replace the political personnel of the government with new and honest people, but to give life to a new and different mode of governing, to a system in which the government will be under the constant check and pressure of the mass movement and will have a program based on the needs of the masses and not on the exigencies of copital. Democrazia Proletaria is the only electoral formation that clearly poses the objective of providing a positive way out of the crisis of the regime through a government of the left in which the historic parties of the working closs, the PCI and the PSI, will have decisive weight, a government open to Catholic forces that free themselves of the domination of the political Catholicism of the Christian Democracy, open above all to the movements of struggle within society, whose strength con impose a program based on the popular interest and devoted to its realization. Democrazia Proletaria considers illusory and dangerous the proposals that have been advanced to somehow assure the continuation of the Christian Democratic presence in the government. The proposal of the PCI for a coalition government which would see the initiative of the left paralyzed and the workers movement torn apart would thereby allow freedom of maneuver to the capitalist power in the country and would leave room for the reorganization of the right. The proposal of the PSI, 8
AGOVERNE VAMPIRE once the smokescreen in blown away, boils down to a DC-PSI government somehow acceptable to and tolerated by the PCI. Regardless of the many protestations to the contrary, this would be simply a new edition of the center-left. How to respond to the present crisis The crisis of the Christian Democracy is the fruit not only of its own internal disintegration and more generally of the crisis of Imperialism, but also of the impetvous movement of struggle which began in the factories and has since extended, in new and original forms, to so many aspects of social life, It is out of this movement that the need arises today for a government of the left that would prevent the Christian Democracy from doing further damage to the economy and civil life of our country, from organizing financial terrorism, and from seeking obscurantist and reactionary revenge in the field of community life. To forcefully and coherently confront both immediate problems and those of longterm perspective, a substantial turn is indispensable, a break with the political system that has reigned for thirty years. What is necessary foday, through the June 20 vote and through uninterrupted pressure of struggle, is an odvance of the left, of the whole left. But within this general advance a clear political qualification is necessary, and only Democrazia Proletaria is capable of pffering it, The advance of the left must not conclude with compromises that somehow perpetuate the Christian Democratic regime, but must have an outlet: the full assumption by the united left of the responsibility of running the government of the state on the basis of a program that accords with the objectives expressed by the movement in struggle....
The only possible and necessary response is to agree unhesitatingly to confront the difficulties, to respond to the blackmail with the mobilization of the masses, and to have a clear action program both for perspectives and for the immediate future. What distinguishes Democrazia Proletaria from the Communist and Socialist parties is not only the objective of the government of the left, but also the sort of program and mobilization that must back the program up. The context in which the government of the left may arise, in fact, finds all the centers of economic and administrative decision-making in the hands of the capitalists. Only constant mass pressure can bring the government of the left to reject any role of normalization of the workers struggles and of stabilization of the capitalist system; only thus is it possible to initiate popular control over the decision-making centers in order to open the road to power for the working class. Our objectives On the international level the objectives of Democrazia Proletaria are:
1. Out of NATO and for a nonaligned policy that achieves a closer connection with the countries of the third world and favors the construction of a new international order. Rejection of the counterposed blocs heoded by the superpowers and of the increase in military spending that results from their existence. Withdrawal of the American and Soviet fleets from the Mediterranean.
2. Initiation of a new international division of labor in which Italy establishes economic relations not only with the industrialized countries but also and ever increasingly with the countries of the third world, guaranteeing trade conditions that favor the development of the more backward countries.
3. Radical redrafting of Common Market agriculfural policy so as to be able to pursue an independent development of agriculture, limiting the penetration of the multinationals and thus beginning to balance the agricultural deficit; support to public spending and credit with this objective in view.
4. Introduce elements of selection and control of imports, which, while maintaining the market open to abroad, prevent speculation by the big importers, limit luxury and superfluous imports, and guarantee an adequate quantity and egalitarian distribution of mass popular consumer goods as well as raw materials for the productive apparatus.
5. Link foreign investment (of the multinationals) to precise imperatives of job stability and intervene with nationalizations against arbitrary shutdowns. On the internal level, Democrazia Proletaria proposes:
1. Absolute priority to the objective of full employment on the basis of intransigent defense of current employment by means of a ban on layoffs and the intervention of the state and the local state bodies to prevent the closing down of productive units. Expansion of the productive apparatus, directing control and ufilization of private industrial investment, credit, and public spending toward this objective. Private and public productive orientation on a priority basis toward the development of agriculture, production of mass popular consumer goods (thus tending to substitute for the greater part of imports), socially useful services (housing, hospitals, schools, transport), initiatives to clean up the big southern cities. All this must be done by implementing a policy that strives for full employment and the elimination of the waste of human and material resources, thus also modifying the very quality of collective needs.
2. Development of warkers and people's control over working conditions (against poisonous conditions, use of the labor force with the perspective of a radical challenging of capitalist organization of labor), control over the search for and assignment of jobs. Extension of the 150 hours (the yearly amount of paid time for workers education), not only in the direction of the transformation of the schools, but also as a basis for concretely challenging the technical division of labor. Intransigent defense of individual and social real wages and introduction of price support for indispensable consumer goods and to assure adequate quantity. Drastic reduction of profits as a decisive factor in this policy.
3. Mobilization of the local bodies and peripheral democratic structures (factory councils, zonal councils, neighborhood councils, etc.) in support of a drastic reorganization of the fiscal system hinged around direct and progressive taxation. Only thus is it possible to bring the methods of assessment up to date, strike drastically at the big tax evaders, and block the flight of capital. ...
4. Maximum broadening of democracy beginning with full implementation within the sphere of the present constitutional order. Abolition of the fascist and antidemocratic laws.... Democratic rights in the armed forces and the police. Opening of the magistrate system at the local level and the local state bodies to popular representation. Democratic and popular control over the means of mass communication (public and private radio and television, freedom of the press, etc.).
5. Commitment to accept the demands raised by the feminist movement, understanding the male-female contradiction as an expression of political conflict and creating the conditions for the maximum generalization of struggles, of independent organization of women, and of the demands they themselves express (control of their own bodies and lives, and in this framework, medi-
9
ITALY cal care for women, free abortion on demand, clinics controlled by women.
6. Commitment to support all those movements (students, youth, women, etc.) tending to modify socialideological relations (in culture, morals, and clerical and reactionary ideology) -This barle, which tends to be today's harbinger of a deep proletarian cultural revolution, is a qualifying element, an essential precondition for the political, social, and economic transformations now on the agenda. Some of the above-mentioned objectives will have to be pursued immediately:
1) Political control of the banking system in order to reduce the export of capital to a minimum and to direct credit toward employment and development.
2) Immediate removal of corrupt and reactionary elements from the main decision-making nerve centers, especially in the banks, foreign trade, and the financial administration.
3) Initiation of an investment policy aimed at the sectors listed os priorities.
4) Ban on layoffs.
5) Redrafting of the restrictive clauses of the Common Market, especially as regards agriculture.
6) Price supports for large-scale consumer goods.
7) Elimination of inequalities in pay scales.
8) Urgent measures and rank-and-file mobilization against tax evasion.
9) Repeal of the Reale laws and the fascist codes. But no immediate measure, no matter how modest, can be realized without an extensive and deep popular mobilization. This is even more true for the medium- and long-term measures. Democrazia Proletaria upholds the necessity of unreservedly supporting the mass movements that, beginning from popular and proletarian needs and expectations, aim at a modification of the relationship of class forces, at the construction of organs of control and contestation of capitalist power. Develop workers control It is exactly these instruments of workers and people's control (workers control in factories over the organization of labor and investment, tenants" control over housing assignments, workers control over the schools of the 150 hours, popular control of reconstruction of Friuli (site of the recent devastating earthquake), etc.) which prepare and bring closer the real conquest of power by the masses. 10
Democrazia Proletaria firmly supports a strategy and tactics that constantly lead toward the unification of the proletariat of the big and middle-sized factories with the layers of workers whose jobs are marginal and precarious, with the great forces of the unemployed, with the enormous mass of people who stand outside the labor market only because they know they cannot find work. Unemployed youth, whether intellectuals or not, emigrant workers returning to the country, the great mass of workers laid off by the small industries, and the great number of workers whose jobs are precarious are all, together with the workers, technicians, and those whose jobs are stable, the protagonists of the transformation of society. For this reason, Democrazia Proletaria, which sees the trade union as the essential intermediary between the mass movement and the government of the left, considers itself fundamentally committed to struggle for the unions to be linked to the masses and not to operate as instruments of social stabilization. The unions must place themselves at the head of struggles and must carry through with their unitary reconstitution, begun with the formation of councils; they must thus become ever more capable of drawing together and not curbing the upsurges that arise from the movement itself. Democrazia Proletaria, while distinguishing itself from the other left parties by its different analysis of the phase through which we are passing and by its different political desires in regard to the struggle for socialism, is committed to putting forward a policy of unity of the Tep win the wovement and whilin the foertortones it addresses its proposals (and it is open to discussing them) to all the politico-social components of the movement of workers, in the profound conviction that the sphere of revolutionaries includes not only the vanguard but also, as a concrete potentiality, the brood masses. Democrazia Proletaria fights for a government of the left not as a pure cover for the movement of struggle or as an opportunity to expose the revisionist line, but as an active instrument in a general process of transformation of society. Democrazia Proletaria will feel itself committed to support this government of the left and at the same time to stimulate it through struggles for ever more advanced objectives. It thus puts itself forward as an independent force within a unitary framework. A vote for Democrazia Proletaria is a vote for the renovation of the entire workers movement, for the construction of an advanced line that begins from the needs and experiences of the masses in order to place socialism on the agenda, as is possible today. L
OF THE ITALIAN