ITALY/DOCUMENTS the far left assesses
We are publishing below four brief commentaries on the results of the June 20 elections. The first is a statement of the National Secretariat of Avanguardia Operaia, published in the June
23 issue of Quotidiano dei Lavoratori, daily of AO; the second is a declaration of the Political Bureau of the PDUP*, published in the June 26 issue of il Manifesto, daily newspaper of the PDUP; the third consists of excerpts from a long editorial published in the June 23 issue of Lotta Continua; the fourth is excerpts from a resolution adopted June 27 by the Central Committee of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (GR - Revolutionary Communist Groups), Ital-
Tan section of the Fourth International, and published in the July 1 issue of the GCR's journal,
Bandiera Rossa. Both Avanguardia Operaia and Lotta Continua have published texts adopted by their Central Committees (held June 27-28), but we had not yet received copies of these docu-
Hence, we are publishing only documents indicating the immediate reac-
*The Partito di Unita Proletaria per il Comunismo (PDUP — Party of Proletarian Unity for Communism) has its origin in the split from the Communist party in 1970 of the group organized around the newspaper il Manifesto. (The major leaders were Rossana Rossanda, Lucio Magri,
Luigi Pintor, and others). They formed an organization and began publishing a daily newspaper in 1971. In 1974 they fused with the Partito di Unità Proletaria (the new group retaining the initials PDUP), which had arisen from a split from the Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria (PSIUP - Italian Socialist party of Proletarian Unity), which had iself split from the
Socialist party in 1964. For information on the origins and evolution of Avanguardia Operaia the elections ments at press time.
tion of these organizations to the electoral results.
and Lotta Continua see INPRECOR, No.54, June 24, 1976.
Operaia
Milan, 21 June, 11:00 p.m.
1. The results of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, still very partial, confirm and strikingly accentuate the trends that have already emerged in the Senate results:
quotidiano dei lavoratori
PROLETART
Avanguardia a further, stronger advance of the left compared with
June 15(1975), which brings it close to an absolute majority. This is the first and fundamental element that characterizes the June 20 vote. The second element is the staying power and recovery of the Christian Democ-
ITALY racy, in particular compared with the collapse of June
15. This strengthening, obtained at the expense of both the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano - Italian Social
Movement, the fascish) and the secular parties, occentuates the DC's character as the "party of the right."
Further, it highlights two additional elements: first, the fragility of proposed alternative bourgeois leaderships to the Christian Democracy (such as those advanced by the Republicans); second, the objective strengthen-
-ing and solidifying of the DC inherent in the various proposals of the reformist workers parties, all of which considered the DC as an "indispensable component" of any new majority. Finally, the noteworthy decline of the PSI (the Socialist party) shows what a heavy price this party pays for its uncertain policy, its slick tactical oscillations, accompanied by high-sounding but nebulout strategic formulas.
Be ora 2. Several political points clearly emerge from these facts. To be sure, the new parliament will not automatically have a left majority in both of its houses; thus, the left government is not posed as an immediate result of these elections. But at the same time, none of the other solutions proposed, whether by the DC or by the reformist workers parties, is practicable today. Even less so is the proposal for an emergency goverment, which proved to be unrealizable in the old parliament and will be even more excluded in the new one, given the "polarization" around the DC and the PCI as expressed in the elections. What is therefore on the agenda is a phase of acute political instability during which the parties of the workers movement - if they want to point to a way out - will have to be able to profoundly rethink their own strategy and the government formulas they put forward. It would be useless to seek a solution in some sort of complicated parliamentary alchemy; in particular, the lesson of the vote should teach the PSI how suicidal it would be to support a new edition of the center-left, even in the guise of a "preferred axis. 12
AO
3. In this situation, the prime motor-force political function of the mass movement in determining future developments on the political scene is clearly reconfirmed, the function that we have always stressed, often in polemics with the reformist leaderships of the workers and trade-union movement. On the political-institutional level, experiences such as that of the left council in Naples offer an embryonic and politically valid lesson (although they cannot be mechanically transferred to the national political field): Today only the left - if it is supported by a vast popular movement - can develop a policy that deals with the urgent problems of the crisis. This is the decisive factor, which goes beyond strict parliamentary arithmetic. 4. Given this perspective, what specific weight and role can Democrazia Proletaria exert? In their general lines, the electoral results strikingly confirm our political analysis and the proposals we have advanced. But this was not reflected in a commensurate electoral success for our formation. There are many reasons for this. First, a force that was barely present at the institutional level (and here only locally) does not automatically transfer its credibility to the national political- institutional level; it thus suffers the effects of the "polarization" that characterized these elections. In addition, a process of transformation of our social base is under way (which we consider positive). This transformation separates us from troditional fringes of the "left reformist" voters (who move toward the reformist parties of the workers movement) and from the radicalizing petty bourgeois voters (who move toward the Radical party), without the growth of our influence (which is developing among the proletariat) yet being consolidated in terms of votes. But it is important to draw correct political conclusions for our future development from these elections and from our own results within them:
a) We definitely paid the price for the still insufficient level of political unity of the revolutionary left; the conclusion that should be drawn from this is certainly not to deprecate the value of the electoral unity but rather to consolidate it politically.
b) The results (and the impossibility of immediate government solutions) confirm the political primacy of the mass movement, but this does not mean bending to "movementism"; on the contrary, it means that we must make maximum use of our political-institutional presence (i.e., in parliament and the local councils - INPRECOR) to augment the political influence of the mass movement.
c) Finally, the confirmation of the government of the left (which all the reformist parties refuse to choose up to now as the only workable perspective accentuates the political role of a sector of the workers movement that is politically independent of reformist hegemony; we must thus strengthen our polifical independence. The struggle against the DC is more than ever on the agenda today; but it is more closely linked than ever to the objective of the government of the left. It is on this rood that we must firmly develop our initiatives.