CRISIS
We are publishing below extracts of a document drafted by a commission of the Political Bureau of Avanguardia Operaia (AO) entitled "The proletarian and popular forces prepare a left way out of the Italian crisis. " The document was published in the June 12 issue of AO's daily,
Quotidiano dei Lavoratori. The first part of the text analyzes the crisis of the "party-regime"
of the Christian Democracy and the evolution of the relationships of social and political forces, as well as the policies of the PCI and the PSI. It stresses that in the context of the electoral advances the left is expected to make in the June 20 elections, there is a tendency among the masses, "presently only implicit and expressed ambiguously in the vote for the reformists,
"see a left government as the only real and procticable alternative in the present situation."
We have selected excerpts from the central portion of the document. They highlight the meaning Avanguardia Operaia assigns to the slogan of the "left government" as well as this organization's conception of the relationship of the mass movement to the left government.
The last part of the document deals with the function of the left government," "not only as an instrument of defense of the workers against the economic crisis, " but also as a government that could "constitute a decisive phase in the development of the revolutionary process of the struggle of the masses for socialism. " In addition, the text presents Avanguardia Operaia's conception of the "development of workers and people's control and of the problem of power."
On the theme of workers control the document affirms: "The strategic value of workers and peo-
*In given situations, workers control is the instrument through which the realization of im-
*The growth of workers and people's control weakers and disintegrates the degree of control
*Finally, the experiences undergone on a mass scale in the struggle on this field and in the exercise of forms of control constitute a precious 'apprenticeship" for the future conquest and effective management of power.... But at the same time, it must be clear... that the effective influence of workers and people's control in terms of power can only be partial and precarious."
The subtitles are from the AO text, Deleted passages are denoted by ellipsis (... .).
PREPARE A LEFT WAY OUT ple's control can be synthesized in three aspects: portant partial gains is achieved; exercised by the class enemy over the entire social fabric; The resistance of the reformists The political period that will open up after the elections will be marked on the one hand by the Christian Democracy's inability to maintain its monopoly of government and power and on the other hand by its lock of willingness to really "share" this government and power with all the parties of the workers movement. Thus, there will be an objective thrust toward a government of the lefts as the only really practicable alternative to this situation. But the concrete realization of such a government, the content of its program, and the character of its relations with the mass movement will quotidiano dei Lavoratori PROLETPAN
" to have to be the object of a tough political and social struggle. In fact, neither a parliamentary base nor the fact that the government of the lefts is to a certain extent "historically ripe" will be sufficient to impel the PCI and PSI to decide to govern without and ogainst the Christian Democrocy. This line of the PCI and PSI will tend to manifest itself in the first instance in the attempt to include the Christian Democracy in any government formula at all costs. But even if this turns out to be impossible, the very at-
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ITALY tempt will nonetheless make itself felt in terms of both the composition and program of the DC-free government that the reformist workers parties will eventually be compelled to form, whether they like it or not. Once all possibilities of a government including the DC have been exhausted (DC-PSI and other such formulas), the reformist parties will nonetheless try to launch a sort of "historic compromise without the DC" (or, alternately, an "emergency government with what we have"). As far as the composition of the goverment is concerned, this would be reflected in the attempt to include "minor parties" of the bourgeoisie, in particular the PRI (the Republicans), which, in spite of its rather small quantitative weight, is actually significant in terms of representing the ruling class, for if embodies the ambition of important sectors of the big bourgeoisie to endow themselves with some representative other than the Christian Democracy. As far as program is concerned, this would probably lead to a program in which some traditional reformist objectives would stand side by side with the substance of the antipeople plans for "emerging from the crisis" upheld by the big bourgeoisie.... To be sure, the attempt of the reformists to demonstrate that they are the most effective administrators of the interests of the bourgeoisie will have to take account of the mass movement, with its now seasoned resistance to attacks on wages and employment and with the new expectations and impetuses created among the masses by the assertion of a left majority. Nevertheless, two factors of significant weight must be kept in mind. First, it is not certain that the great expectations that have been generated by a left electoral victory will be directly reflected in a new and more powerful upsurge of struggle, for such an upsurge will have to confront the tendency to "give the new government a
"a tendency the reformists will do everything they can to foster. Second and more important, the reformists hold a hegemonic position in the current relafiorship of forces within the workers and people's movement while the revolutionaries are in a minority position, capable of winning hegemony on certain important questions and during highpoints of struggle, but not yet capable of consolidating this hegemony into a strategic project of brood scope. Hence, the central problem with which we must come to grips will be how to "raise ourselves by our own bootstraps" through the fundamental impetus now present in the mass movement in order to make this impetus emerge and assert itself politically with a weight that goes beyond our present organizational strength. The factor that can allow us to overcome this gap is the objective weight of the class contradictions and their reflection in mass consciousness. But we will succeed in bringing this weight to bear in a politically precise and incisive manner only if we are able to orient it on the basis of a program, above all an immediate program on the most urgent and pressing problems of the situation, the problems on which a left government will have to pronounce itself from its very inception.... 12
Program of struggle, government program This program must be simulfaneously a program of struggle and a government program. In the first place, a program of struggle for two reasons: First because any polifical program of revolutionaries must grow out of the masses and their experiences in struggle and must then be able to return to the masses in the form of systematized propositions around which to concentrate the force of the struggle in order to make that force felt in a decisive political manner; second because, especially in the current phase, the independence of the class movement, its capacity to advance its own major objectives without subordinating them to the backward "political balances" within which the reformists would like to confine them, is an essential precondition for any polifical advance. But also a government program. In what sense? Certainly not in the illusory sense of those who already sense the possibility of influential "government strength" and believe they can genuinely influence the new government through the power of their own ideas or parliamentary presence. "Government program" means something else. Above all it means fully assimilating a fundamentally new fact that characterizes the phase of the left government: the possibility (not the automatic certainty!) that this will pave the way for a government that is, at least partially, an instrument that can be used by the popular masses in their struggle instead of an instrument entirely in the hands of their enemies. This means that at the very moment that the masses are struggling for some objective they must pose the question of how a government can act for the same objective. For example, if there is a struggle to create a given number of new jobs, it would be important at the same time to define the sort of government economic policy that would correspond to the achievement of this objective (in terms of direct public investment, credit controls, etc.). But this also means to work out a scale of priorities in the objectives of the mass movement which also (but not exclusively) takes account of the margins for action commanded by a left government in each given phase. We refer here not to the margins for action "self-limited'" by the reformists' desire to compromise, but rather to the margins determined by the relationship of class forces and by the certain degree of "rigidity" (economically and institutionally) that cannot be eliminated in the short term. Concretely, this means to define our program primarily in reference to the problems of the economic crisis now in progress, with a twofold order of objectives: on the one hand, to lend maximum force to the objectives of defense of the popular interest as it emerges from the struggles during this phase of the crisis, and on the other hand to determine the class content of the policy with which the left government will confront the crisis
- in other words, how the "costs of the crisis" will be distributed and what sorts of changes will occur, through the crisis, in economic structures and development. The fusion of the two levels of this program ("struggle" and "government") will occur fundamentally on the terrain of the development of forms of workers and people's control (although inevitably in partial and contradictory ways that cannot be generalized in institutional forms) . ... Mass movement & the left government In the overall struggle for the formation of a left government, the maximum and independent development of initiatives by the mass movement, which must in no way be subordinated to the restraining premises of the delicate compromise balancing the reformist parties will attempt, will be of decisive importance. This is true fundamentally because the motor force for the realization of our political project - a left government based on an anticapitalist program for resolving the crisis is the effort to transfer onto the institutional level the forces and objectives that have so far been expressed only on the social level. The development of the political situation after the elections will depend in large measure on the relationship that is established between the forces of the left in parliament and the struggle of the masses in the country. Nothing is more mistaken than the illusion that the road to a left government can be opened and that its measures of social transformation can be rendered acceptable by asking the masses to delegate their power to the government and by offering mass passivity to the adversary. This sort of deal has been proposed many times by the advanced sector of the bourgeoisie, with the political and trade-union leaderships of the workers movement obviously inclined to take it into consideration, and has been just as many times rejected by the reality of the mass movement. It will once again be posed, and in a rather more dangerous and subtle manner, in the event of an electoral victory and a direct PCI presence in the government majority. Of equal importance is the fact that once established the left government would be both pressed and supported by on external and strong mass struggle. This is the basis both for the guarantee of the very survival of the left government and for the possibility of its actually opening the way to people's power. The first reason for this is that government does not yet mean power. When the left government is formed, the class struggle will find itself facing its most difficult goals, and only the mobilization and organized presence of the masses can surmount the obstacles, ward off the counteroffensives, and also prevent indecision and back-sliding on the part of a government which, It must not be forgoften, will be born as a coalition government and will in any event be led by reformist forces, socially heterogeneous and with a bureaucratized organizational structure.
The second reason is that only an ever more active and broader mass movement will be capable of creating an atmosphere of mobilization, of transforming the orientation of hesitant social layers. If this is not done, the action of the government, which will inevitably have to upset presently consolidated balances, attack farflung interests, and pass through thousands of difficulties, would soon face a wave of corporative protest and would be compelled to give up, as has happened so often during past experiences. • .. A third reason, "looking further ahead, " is linked to the new quality of the present crisis, of the type of program needed to deal with it, and of the sort of revolutionary perspectives that flow from this. This third reason is as follows: The seizure and exercise of power can be conceived today neither simply nor primarily as a pure extension of the instruments of state intervention (even if they are in the hands of workers parties) or as a simple radicalization of the objectives of the left government. Rather, they must be conceived as a conscious and prolonged process of struggle for power through the realization of forms of workers and people's control of the entire social fabric, a process for which the left government may be pressed to become the instrument. This strategic perspective therefore excludes other hypotheses, along with their consequences as to the leadership one seeks to imprint on the mass movement. On the one hand it excludes the hypothesis that the left government would open the way to the revolution inasmuch as it would be rapidly "overtaken" by the contrast between its own policy and the mass movement. On the other hand, it excludes the hypothesis of a left government that would in and of itself constitute the precondition for a kind of "rising harmonic" of workers and people's power in society such that the class nature of the regime would eventually be altered through successive steps. A hypothesis of this variety overlooks two fundamental questions: the irreducible antagonism between proletarian power and bourgeois power, from which it follows that a grodual increase of the former within the latter is unthinkable, and the struggle between the two lines within the workers movement, from which it follows that it is unthinkable for a left government born under reformist hegemony to evolve "naturally" into a docile instrument of the revolutionary process. ... What sort of mass movement, around what central objectives, and with what relation to the action of the government?.. . What is urgent to assert here - for it implies a great theoretical and practical effort on our part - is the necessity of constructing a mass movement on a new level, able to be fully independent of the left government but equally able to grasp and utilize the novelty that would be represented by this government. In sum, a movement that refuses to hand a proxy over to the
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ITALY government, while of the same time not offering any room for corporatist agitation. From this standpoint the role of the trade unions is assential, for they are the only organizations that are capable - provided they are guided by a correct class line - of gathering together the immediate thrusts of the struggle of the masses and of providing an initial unification and systemization, capable of positively bringing the struggle to bear on the political level and on the policy of the government itself, while avoiding the risks both of exemplary struggles that remain isolated and thus open to a "new model of repression" and of struggles that remain shut into a corporatist framework and are thus eventually liable to being used by the reactionary counteroffensive. It is therefore necessary that:
a) effective class independence of the trade unions be reconstituted, rejecting the role of "state unions";
b) the unity of the working class stand of the center of this independence, the capacity to unify all the upsurges of struggle around o coherent strategy and not the simple scattered representation of the various upsurges of sectoral struggles (that is, the false dilemma between "a comprehensive outlook axised around social fruce" and "independence of struggle within corporative limits" must be rejected). This general proposal has a number of implications:
* in terms of objectives, the defense and expansion of employment must become the central and unifying element of trade-union action; the other major axis must naturally be the defense of wages, with particular stress on forms of social defense (the struggle against the high cost of living);
* in terms of the organizational structure of the unions, what is decisive is to relaunch the democratic rank-and-file structures where they exist and to construct them in new areas. In fact, these are decisive conditions for the achievement of three political gools: 1) construction of genuine class independence of the trode unions; 2) relaunching of a process of trode-union unity, which must not be based on paralyzing compromises and must counter the tendency to allow clashes and deals among the party leaderships to be reflected in the unions; 3) construction at the rank-and-file level of unity among the various layers of the proletariat and development, on the basis of this new capacity, of workers. control over choices in economic policy;
*in terms of the strategy of trade-union struggle, this means the capocity to invest general themes of strug gle with a conscious strategy: the only strategy that avoids limiting itself to putting general pressure on the government, the consequence of which would be to give the government free rein, and instead can construct forms of rank-and-file control over the process of realization of the desired objectives. Finally, it is obvious that the role of the trade unions is decisive in the defense and development of forms of democracy, against attempted reactionary attacks that will undoubtedly be developed. . .. 14
But precisely because of the decisive political importance taken on by the mass movement in the current phase, it is clear that our action among the masses cannot be limited to our commitment to putting forward a class line in the uniors, as necessary as that is. We must therefore commit ourselves to the construction of independent forms of mass movement and organization on various fields and levels:
a) On the very fields on which trade-union action is being developed today it is necessary to develop forms of broad and united organization of the vanguard of struggle capable, through their polifical orientation and, if necessary, through independent struggle initicfives, of strengthening the pressure of the masses on the unions. The point here is to gather together the experiences developed in the factories by the CUB (United Rank-and-File Committees), the Democrazia Proletaria collectives, and similar organizational forms, integrating them into a more consciously political perspective able to influence the line of the unions and the policy of the government;
b) Other forms of independent mass organization must be consolidated and extended on those fields and problems that have as yet not been directly taken up by trade-union action or have been taken up in inadequate ways: the struggle around housing, against the high cost of living, around the rates of public utilities, the struggle of the soldiers, of the lower officials, for the unionization of the police, etc. The objective here must be to directly win certain objectives that have not been taken up by the unions (welding them together with a coherent political conception of the function of the left government) and also to force the unions to really intervene in these fields, adopting the essential objectives raised by the mass mobilizations that have already developed spontaneously;
c) Finally, there exists an independent mass movement that can be tied into the unions only in very partial measure, even if the unions were guided by a class line: the women's liberation movement, Indeed, this movement is rooted in a contradiction within the proletariat, one that also extends into its revolutionary sectors and will certainly not be resolved simply through a correct class trade-union line since it relates to problems that concern the entire revolutionary process and the construction of socialism itself. ... All these independent movements at the mass level, on all their various fields and with their varying relations to the trode-union movement, nonetheless can and must have a strategic element in common: They are driving factors and political guides in the development of forms of workers and people's control. If is this development That will have to be the characteristic element of this new phase of class conflict and that will constitute a decisive terrain on which the revolutionary line can begin to develop its hegemonic capacity within the mass movement.
GOVERNMENT VOTA
Below are excerpts from two documents of Lotta Continua; the first was dated May 23, the secon
June 14. The title of the second is: "The