Italy: The Crisis Worsens by Livio Maitan Sment and the explosion of mobilizations of youth hit by the ince the end of January the new rise of the student moveeconomic crisis have shaken the political framework established in Italy after the elections of June 20, 1976. The formation of the Andreotti government last July marked an important turn: for the first time since 1947, the Italian Communist party (PCI) ceased to be an opposition party. It had accentuated its integration into the institutional framework of the country and henceforth gave support to the government. Some weeks after his inauguration, Andreotti launched the offensive against the working class which the bourgeoisie considered the precondition for an economic recovery, even if only a relative one. Indeed, the working class has paid a very concrete price for the progovernment orientation of its major party, for the similar attitude of the Italian Socialist party (PSI), and for the moderate positions that have been taken by the trade unions: considerable price increases, limitation of or outright freeze on wage increases, restrictions on the application of the sliding scale of wages, the major mechanism for defending the purchasing power of the workers against the ongoing wave of inflation. The culmination of the entire operation came with an agreement between the industrial employers' association and the unions, hailed by the latter as an example of direct negotiation between social forces, in contrast to the decrees the government had imposed during preceding months. From the employers' side, the agreement called for centering investment and employment on certain sectors with no other precise commitment, while the unions accepted the transformation of seven paid holidays into work days, as well as new restrictions on the application of the sliding scale. If the trade-union leaders had at least hoped to set limits on interference with the sliding scale and attacks on the living standards of the masses, they must have been very quickly disappointed. Some days after this agreement was signed, the government presented new decrees calling for reimbursing employers for their social security payments, non-application of the sliding scale in the case of price rises caused by increases in the sales tax (VAT), and a freeze on wage increases in the factories (employers conceding such increases would not have the right to be reimbursed for their social security payments). As we have previously indicated (see INPRECOR, No.65, January 13, 1977), this bourgeois offensive was not unopposed by the working class. During the first half of October 1976, immediately after the first government measures were adopted, a wave of strikes and demonstrations occurred in various cities, especially in the North. Protest actions continued during subsequent months, from new strikes and mobilizations to challenges to trade-union bureaucrats during meetings and the adoption by union assemblies of motions running counter to the official union line. During discussions about negotiating platforms for collective contracts there was serious resistance to the bureaucrats' desire to virtually completely renounce demands for wage increases. The most important example occurred at Alfa Romeo in Milan. Critical motions containing altemative proposals won majorities in eleven assemblies out of twelve in the Portello factory and in eleven out of twenty-five in Arese (where no motion at all was presented in thirteen of the other assemblies). But in spite of all this, and in spite of the fact that members of the PCI as well as workers influenced by it assumed critical attitudes, there were no explosions or instances of outflanking of the leadership of the type which occurred in 1968 and 1969. In fact, the government succeeded in imposing its policy without provoking major reactions, maximally exploiting the conciliatory attitude of the workers and trade-unions leaderships. The latter, under more direct pressure from the workers in the factories, were nevertheless compelled to issue proclamations about the inviolability of the sliding scale and hardened their tactical attitude. In reality, though, they accepted the opening of breaches in the application of the sliding scale. They organized no struggle of any real scope to break the attack of the employers and the government. It was only after the decree of February 4, 1977, widely felt to be a real provocation, that the trade-union bureaucracy had to give some expression, in its own way, to the indignation of the workers, raising the tone of its polemics and taking certain initiatives of struggle, or at least accepting them. Students launch the struggle again Once the reactions to the February 4 decree began to take shape, however, a new element came into play. After years of stagnation and fragmentation into sectoral struggles, the universities exploded in a wave of struggles which no one had foreseen and which recreated an atmosphere recalling the highpoints of 1967-68. In Turin, Rome, Bari, Palermo, Bologna, and, to a lesser extent, Naples and Pisa, increasingly numerous and combative assemblies were held including thousands of students, sometimes followed by massive street demonstrations. In nearly all the major university cities there were massive occupations of campuses, both "closed" occupations (during which all forms of activity are halted) and "open" ones (during which some classes and examinations are allowed to proceed). In some cities, such as Genoa and even Milan, there were not massive
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ITALY mobilizations, but assemblies and demonstrations took place anyway. Later the high-school students joined in the mobilization, either through actions in the high schools themselves or through joining into the demonstrations of the university students. The student mobilizations, which began during the first half of January, increasingly became a youth movement. The development of this movement placed it in the center of national politics. The following were some of the most important dates of the mobilization:
*On February 17, Lucio Lama, secretary general of the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL, the largest trade-union federation, dominated by the Communist party), who had tried to organize a meeting to "coopt" the students, the majority of whom instead wanted a discussion, was forced to withdraw from the campus of the University of Rome after a violent demonstration led by "independents. " During subsequent days, tens of thousands of Roman students and high-schoolers demonstrated, on the often competing initiative of committees led by the PCI or the "new movement."
*On February 26 and 27 a coordinating meeting was held in Rome of students from the major university cities. This meeting decided to call a big national demonstration in the capital for March 12.
*On March 5 a large demonstration assembled on the campus and marched through the center of Rome, in spite of a police ban. Very intense clashes between police and groups of young people broke out toward the end of the demonstration. The police and some of the demonstrators used firearms.
*On March 11 the student Francesco Lo Russo, a militant of Lotta Continua (one of the largest far-left organizations) was killed by police during conflicts at the university. Almost immediately, thousands of students and youth responded with a militant demonstration on the university campus and in the center of the city. There were violent clashes between students and police for hours. The railway station was occupied for half an hour, interrupting traffic, and small groups of demonstrators broke shop and car windows and sacked some stores. There were exchanges of gunfire.
*On March 12 protest demonstrations against the murder of Lo Russo took place in several cities. By far the most important demonstration was held in Rome, where more than andreotti's austerity measures
Last September, the Andreotti goverment, in office since July 31, 1976, with the de facto support of the PCI, presented a "Provisional and Programmatic Report" indicating the main lines of its economic orientation. Since that time the government has gotten various limited measures adopted which are intended to prepare the way for a broader attack on all wage earners. In September-October 1976, for example, an increase in oil prices and electricity and telephone rates was decreed. Freezes on the sliding scale were ordered for workers with yearly incomes above 6-8 million lire (about US$6, 0008,000). The freeze was total for incomes of more than 8 million lire and 50% for incomes between 6 million and 8 million, the additional 50% being distributed in the form of treasury bonds not redeemable before three years. In November 1976 an increase in indirect taxes was decreed in an attempt to raise some 50,000 million lire for the state budget. In addition, various measures have been taken in fiscal policy (early income tax payments) and monetary policy. In December the austerity trumpets were loudly sounded by the radio and television and in the press. The PCI and the trade-union leaderships accepted the necessity of austerity and made many speeches around the theme: Austerity, yes, but not only for the workers. On February 4, 1977, the government presented a draft decree calling for modifications in the social security system, a freeze on contract negotiations on the factory level, and revisions in the basis of calculation of the price index.
At the end of March, under the "guidance" of the International Monetary Fund and the pressure of the Common Market, the unions agreed to some of the measures announced on February 4. The IMF had made this a condition for granting the first installment of a loan. The agreement included the following points: reduction of the impact on the calculation of the price index of increases in the prices of newspapers, urban transit, and electricity; guarantees by the union leaderships that "in the present phase of crisis contract discussions on the factory level will not give rise to generalized demands for wage increases"; discussions are supposed to take place to revise the automatic increase in seniority compensation and other "automatic contract mechanisms"; the unions promised to adopt measures to "contain the overall dynamic of labor costs and to raise productivity" (which implies "flexibility" on the part of the unions on such questions as mobility of labor, overtime, holidays, and so on). This agreement thus appears as an initial attaintment of the Andreotti government's main objective: reduce "labor costs" and attack the sliding scale. One of the frequent characteristics of the government measures, however, is the gap between statement and application, at least for the moment. The British weekly The Economist has written: "The unions and left-wing parties, afraid of openly incurring the wrath of the IMF and the international financial community, have now accepted in principle (that means until their members tell them otherwise) that sacrifices must be made by everybody." (April 2, 1977) The latest opposition movements with in the unions clearly indicate that there are indeed many members who will not accept this agreemen
50,000 people marched. The second part of this demonstration was more or less a repetition on a broader scale of the events of the previous Saturday (March 5). For hours the center of the city was paralyzed by intense and prolonged clashes between the repressive forces and groups of youth, while the bulk of the demonstrators dispersed. Clashes accompanied by acts of vandalism also occurred in Bologna again. In Milan toward the end of a demonstration groups of youths attacked the Lombardy headquarters of the employers organization (Confindustria). (According to some Milan newspapers, some of the attackers were armed with .44 magnum revolvers, much more powerful than the .38 police specials used by some elements in Bologna and Rome.) The center of Bologna was occupied by tanks on the night of March 11; about 200 people were arrested. There were also dozens of arrests in Rome. The government banned all public demonstrations in Rome and Bologna (except for the large demonstration in Bologna which we will discuss further on) . What is at the origin of these mobilizations? What are the objectives and what is its dynamic? Immediate causes undoubtedly played a role in touching off the tinderbox and later in fueling the fire. The origin of the first university mobilizations lies in a circular distributed by Malfatti, the minister of national education, which aimed at limiting or annuling measures of partial liberalization dealing with the choice of course materials and examinations, choices which the students regarded as definitively won. At the same time, student anger focussed on a reform project of the same minister, the objective of which was to intensify selection criteria and disqualify certain diplomas. The struggle hardened and broadened after an armed fascist group committed an attack at the University of Rome, during which a student was very seriously wounded. Social roots of the movement All this incontestably contributed to the events of the past two weeks, but in seeking the real causes it is clearly necessary to go further. Moreover, significant indications had already been accumulated previously, during November and December last year, during demonstrations in Milan, Rome, and other cities of the "young proletariat, " particularly in some suburbs. (Thousands of youth had forced reductions in movie prices on Sunday afternoons and disrupted the fashionable opening of the La Scala theater season in Milan; there had also been many "proletarian expropriations.") It was during these demonstrations that the "Indians" emerged, groups which idealistically identify with the North American peoples massacred by capitalism. The "Indians, " who have since become more commonly known as "Metropolitan Indians, " raised slogans hailing real or imagined Indian chiefs, for example: "Kocis, Geronimo, Nuvola Rossa, tutti i giovani alla riscossa" (Cochise, Geronimo, Red Cloud, all youth on to revolt.) Since then a whole pseudo-sociological literature has flourished in the newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts attempting to explain the origins of these new forms of rebellion and "subversion" of youth.
Without going into a long sociological dissertation, I would like to stress two points here. In a recent editorial, the leading Milan daily Corriere della Sera strongly highlighted the fact that in the final analysis all these phenomena result from a prolonged economic crisis which has aggravated all social contradictions and struck youth especially dramatically, through the growing reduction of employment. A joint appeal of the three national trade-union federations issued around the time that this editorial appeared summed the situation up this way: "During the past fifteen years employment has not increased in industry and has declined in agriculture. Big industry concentrates its demand for limited labor on the unskilled work force. The only sort of employment which is on the rise is underemployment and jobs in the black market. " In any event, it is a fact that the number of unemployed young workers and youth seeking their first jobs totals around 2 million, and there is a constant upward trend. It must be added that under these conditions youth are becoming increasingly conscious of the inanity of their studies, the intrinsic value of which they can in no way esteem, since it lies very close to zero. These studies are carried on in completely outdated structures, even from the material standpoint. There are 170,000 students at the University of Rome, which was built in the 1930s; in Bologna there are 60,000. And all this, it need scarcely be recalled, occurs in the context of a general crisis of the system that has been dragging on for ten years now and a more specific crisis of all traditional values. These factors are at the root of the composition of the mobilizations that have occurred. From the outset, three major components have been involved: the traditional component represented by students in the strict sense (here again, however, the motivations are different from what they were in 1967-68, or at least the concerns are ranked in a different order); the component of students who are also part-time or seasonal workers or who are engaged in "black" labor; the component of so-called marginalized youth who are not in the universities but use the campuses as a place for meetings and organization during mobilizations. The varying incidence of the components, depending on the cities and periods concerned, exerts some influence on the forms of struggle and expression and on the sort of problems and demands which are raised. (The cases of Rome and Turin may be qualified as exceptional to some extent.) In the context of a crisis as sweeping as the Italian one, such a mobilization was inevitably and very rapidly marked by an anticapitalist inspiration and came into conflict with the existing political line-up. It was spontaneous to a large extent. Not only the reformist parties, but also the "historic" organizations of the far left were unable to gain hegemony or even to develop important influence. Instead, the major role was played by unorganized militants or former members of organizations, among them veterans of the 1968 battles. The mobilization had all the positive potential of spontaneous movements, but at the same time revealed their intrinsic limits as regards objectives and organization. If oscillated (and is still oscillating) between proclamation of very radical anticapitalist objectives tainted by utopianism and ob-
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ITALY jectives which fall within a reformist logic in the final analysis. Its "average" ideology is incontestably anticapitalist, but it is deeply marked by sectarianism and adventurism. The ultraleftist features are obvious. They appear, for instance, in a document presented to the national conference of metalworkers by students in Florence, or in the themes taken up by broad sectors of the movement in Rome. Reformist logic prevailed not only in the platform presented by the PCI youth, but also in a text drawn up at the University of Pisa and at certain departments in Milan (the agriculture department, for example). The most positive effort to overcome this dichotomy, within a logic of transitional demands, was made in Turin, but here the platform adopted was the result of the influence of militants of far-left organizations (among them Lotta Continua and the Fourth International) and was not really a gain of the heavy battalions of the movement. As the movement spread and gained in strength, it was unable to endow itself with a real perspective or take on its full significance as one component in a broader anticapitalist united front. Now, the general political context did not offer (and at the present time still does not offer) any real reference point for moving in such a direction. Consequently, precisely those forces which are most conscious of the necessity of integrating the movement into an anticapitalist bloc and therefore the necessity of a linkup with the organized workers movement have found their margin for action and their capacity for initiative reduced. On the other hand, the field became more propitious for the ultraleftist and adventurist fringes of "independents. " The latter acquired a specific weight out of all proportion to their real numbers, both because they seemed capable of more forcefully expressing the antagonistic potential of the movement and because they seemed in position to lend the movement an overall political perspective in the form of "armed confrontation" with the state and the system. This is why they left their imprint on the Rome demonstrations of March 5 and 12 and on the struggles in Bologna, even though they were only a limited minority and even though the majority of students disapproved of their acts. The Bologna events and their national significance Given the preponderant weight of the PCI, the relationship of forces in Bologna does not correspond to the relationship of forces nationally. Nevertheless, the events that transpired in the capital of the country's "red region" do have the value of a national indication. The new rise of the student movement in this area took on mass dimensions from the outset. The independents had acquired considerable influence within the movement, although they remained a minority. The murder of the militant Lo Russo precipitated a general test of strength. At least until more information is forthcoming, it is impossible to say whether the criminal initiative of opening fire on demonstrators with intent to kill was made in government circles or whether it was the result of hardline tendencies within the repressive forces themselves. In any event, as
6 soon as the shots were fired, the forces which got the upper hand were those which were determined to serve lessons on the student movement as well as real or imagined ultraleftists o to fried the flori on in blon that the over.
and to force the PCI to make a clear choice. This orientation ment and the Christian Democracy decided that the time was ripe to create a witch-hunt atmosphere, with the aid of the mass media, and to launch spectacular police operations, to arrest several hundred people, to shut down radio stations - illegally - and to prepare new repressive laws. It is understandable that the days of fire in Rome and Bologna provoked panicky reactions in bourgeois circles. But independent of this, the leadership of the ruling class seized upon the opportunity to shift the axis of the political situation to the right, or, in other words, to broaden the offensive against the working class and the popular masses to the more properly political terrain, going beyond the economic terrain to which it had hitherto been essentially confined. The fact that the immediate target of the repression was the student movement and sectors of the far left and that some actions of the independents had provided the pretexts for this repression made it that much easier for the bourgeoisie to win concessions or gain the passive acceptance of the PCI and the trade-union bureaucrats. Indeed, the PCI went further than the bourgeoisie expected. The PCI had gone through some difficult moments in Bologna on March 11, not only at the university, where Communist students ranged themselves on the side of those protesting the murder of Lo Russo, but also in the factories. Nevertheless, the local PCI leadership soon took a clear position, vigorously condemning the demonstrators and approving the police intervention. Corriere della Sera, without receiving any denial whatsoever, wrote that the sending of tanks into the city had been decided in agreement with the PCI and that Radio Alice had been shut down on the request of Bologna's PCI mayor, Zangheri, who thus attempted to advance his own candidacy as the little Noske of the "red regions. " Members of the national PCI leadership explicitly endorsed the attitude of the local leaders. The culmination was the demonstration in Bologna organized by the PCI, along with all "democratic forces, " on March 16. Some 150,000 people turned out, coming from all over the province of Emilia. This demonstration will go down in the history of the past several years as the symbol of a colossal operation of mystification and diversion. At a time when the bourgeoisie and its government were striving to take maximum advantage of the situation to push through a series of repressive measures, the PC and its allies made a bloc with the bourgeois parties, the goverment, and the "forces of order, " feeding the myth that there was an obscure conspiracy, an immediate danger of the destruction of democratic rights. During the Central Committee meeting held two days previously, Bufalini, spokesman for the National Secretariat, had taken yet another step backward in the theoretical-political regression of the PCI, stating that unlike the period of the 1950s and 1960s, when "the police were used to defend class privileges and when we fought
against this, ... the situation has now been reversed. Today the police are called upon to defend the democratic order against the attacks of gangs which are the enemies of the democratic system, of the republic born of the Resistance." The PCI in trouble The explosion of the movement of students and youth, beyond its specific features, expresses a more general phenomenon: It is less and less possible for the dynamic of social forces to be contained within the present political framework. The tensions fueled or aggravated by the persistence of the crisis have thrown Andreotti's project of gradual stabilization into crisis, along with the PCI's project of a gradual concretization of the historic compromise. Particularly for the PCI, it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue to appear as jointly responsible for the policy of the government without genuinely commanding the powers of a government party; to continue its defense of the so-called austerity policy without the emergence of any possibility, no matter how vague, of implementing an economic plan in the medium term. The March PCI Central Committee meeting, convoked two days after the events in Rome and Bologna, reflected this difficulty, taking note of the disappointment of those who had hoped that the PCI's electoral successes and the shift in the relationship of forces in parliament would give the masses something other than a tough employers' offensive involving a reduction in living standards for the first time in many years. Uncertainty, discontent, and a critical spirit were manifested in many forms. A few months ago, for example, some leaders of the party and the trade unions had complained that the cadres and members were not energetically defending the party's line. In October PCI members and voters participated in wildcat strikes decided on by the union rank and file. These phenomena have intensified. In Bologna PCI students, refused to distribute a leaflet prepared by the local party federation. During the demonstration of 150,000 in Bologna, to the great regret of the bureaucrats, the Christian Democratic speaker, who had been introduced as a former resistance fighter, was roundly booed, including when he professed his "Christian faith." (It should be noted that the people present in the square had been carefully screened and there were no "ultraleftists" among them.) In Turin many workers delegates at the Fiat factories did not want to participate in the defense guard organized "to protect a demonstration against ultraleftists"; those who agreed to do so declared that they would not participate if fighting broke out. Very lively discussions have erupted in PCI sections which have held local congresses. There were echoes of all this in the PCI Central Committee meeting. Although one cannot speak of counterposed lines or orientations, differences did clearly arise. For instance, many speakers emphasized the social roots of the ultraleftist tendencies. Others stressed the alleged analogy between the independents and the fascist shock groups of 1919, an analogy which had been introduced by Berlinguer after the incident in which Lama was driven off the campus of the University of Rome and had been forcefully defended by Giorgio Amendola, another member of the PCI Political Bureau. Some insisted on the necessity of Communist students being active within the mass movement in any event. Others insisted on the necessity of laying down conditions and taking distance from the movement. Some declared that the PCI's attitude toward the Andreotti government should not be changed. Others put forward the idea, albeit quite cautiously, that a return to the opposition should not be ruled out. In the speech quoted above Bufalini twice polemicized against those who spoke of self-defense, asserting that reliance had to be placed in the police. Amendola, Imbeni (secretary of the Bologna federation), and Villari expressed the most right-wing positions. Luforini, Lombardo Radice, and Ferrara (from Turin) exhibtied greater comprehension of the nature and dynamic of the ongoing mobilizations and expressed more or less explicit criticisms of the positions that had been taken by the party, or at least by some of its leaders. The effort to overcome these contradictions was reflected essentially in the adoption of this formula: The PCI must be a government party and a party of struggle at the same time. There is no need to demonstrate that such a synthesis is easier written down than carried out. Is it possible today to wage a struggle at the head of the masses without becoming involved in an antigovernment dynamic? In reality, the only concrete conclusion arrived at was the decision to exert growing pressure on Andreotti to force him to make some clearer programmatic commitments and to prepare the ground for a government commanding a broader base, which means a more direct integration of and greater weight for the PCI itself. The « general » strike of March 18 The evolution of the political situation since October 1976 and the events of the past two months have had varying effects on the working class. Schematizing a bit, one may say that the bulk of the working class has exhibited hesitation and is taking a wait-and-see attitude - not because it has exhausted its combative potential, but because it feels that the objectives and methods imposed by the trade-union bureaucracy are absolutely inadequate and that the PCI is now in a real impasse. The workers are continuing to participate in strikes massively, but they are mobilizing only very partially in the demonstrations which accompany these strikes. (There are sometimes meetings attended only by bureaucrats and dissidents who come to hiss and boo.) At the same time, vanguard sectors of the working class, especially in the big factories, have gone through a politicization and radicalization and, while not expressing alternative lines, have better understood the nature of the reformist leaderships, from which they have differentiated themselves in many ways (spontaneous strikes, radical methods of struggle in demonstrations and contingents within factories, support to demonstrations disavowed by the leaderships, etc.). The elections of workers delegates during past months have revealed important changes. The far left has sometimes scored satisfying results (at the Pirelli factory
ITALY in Milan, for example). PCI members and voters have sometimes voted for far-left candidates (some young militants of our Italian section were elected at Fiat in Turin and Alfa Romeo in Milan). On February 5 a demonstration was held in Milan against the govemment measures - the first action after months of demobilization - on the initiative of the coordinamenti* workers of Milan, especially in the so-called Roman zone and the Alfa Romeo area. Some 5,000 workers and students participated. One final phenomenon should be stressed: nuclei of vanguard workers - whose influence varies appreciably from one city to another - have radicalized in an ultraleftist and adventurist direction, finding relatively more propitious conditions for such an orientation in the forms of struggle of the student movement. The March 18 strike was important as an expression of the orientations and tendencies which are now operating. The trade-union leaderships confirmed their choices both as to objectives (emphasis on investment, especially in the South, on their well-known list of reforms, etc.) and as to methods (four-hour strikes for industrial categories, half an hour for transport, eight hours in the South). The result was just what could have been expected: very high percentages of strikers and relatively limited participation in street demonstrations (no more than 20,000 people in Milan and Turin, fewer in Genoa, a few more in Naples). The speeches of the bureaucrats were met with general indifference and sometimes provoked negative reactions (Lama was booed in Naples, as was Trentin in Bologna). The official slogans were taken up only weakly. The sectors of workers to which we have referred and the student movement participated in the demonstrations and put forward slogans that ran against the official orientation and expressed primarily the desire to struggle against the Andreotti government. The PCI and the trade-union leaderships themselves had to take account of this atmosphere, tolerating and sometimes surrepitiously introducing slogans on the need for a "new government, a people's government." In Florence, one of the strongholds of the PCI, the anti-government spirit predominated, with demonstrators singing Bandiera Rossa and the Internationale. But once again the most significant episode occurred in Turin. The student movement - which from the outset had elected an agitation committee - had spent a lot of time discussing with the union bureaucrats in order to participate in the rally with the right to speak. An agreement was reached, but at the last minute the bureaucrats broke it, demanding that the speech of the student representative be censored and that he include a passage against the use of violence in any form. (This condition was dictated by the Central Committee of the PCI.) To protest this discrimination, a broad sector of workers and students booed the speech of the trade union leader and left the square, marching to the police station to demand the release of the people who had been arrested in the previous demonstrations. No more than *The coordinamenti are coordinating bodies of militant vanguard workers in some factories. 8 a third of the demonstrators remained in the square to listen to the dismayed bureaucrat. The contingent then returned to the square, and workers and students (including two members of the Fourth International) spoke from the podium which the bureaucrats had been compelled to abandon. Differentiation in the trade unions We have seen how the unions, whose situation had been difficult for several months, reacted to Andreotti's new decree of February 4, 1977. Had they swallowed such a bitter pill without resisting, they would have suffered a serious loss in prestige and would have run the risk of serious tensions with the rank and file. To use an old expression, the new rise of the student movement detonated conflicts within the unions. It was primarily Lama's defeat at the University of Rome which acted in that direction. In regard to this incident, a certain cleavage developed among the leaders of the united federation, especially between those closest to Lama himself and some bureaucrats of the Rome CGIL on the one hand and the FLM (the metalworkers union) on the other. The latter rejected any idea of conflict with the student movement or of summary condemnation; it initiated a dialogue, inviting students to send delegations to its national conference in Florence (in fact, student participation was uneven and contradictory, but the problem posed by the new wave of mobilization of students and youth in general was the central axis of the discussion). The secretary general of the UIL (Unione Italiana dei Lavoratori - Italian Workers Union), Giorgio Benvenuto, also took his distance from Lama's report. (It is true that the competition between the PCI and the PSI, of which Benvenuto is a member, played some role in this.) The question is whether in a context such as we have analyzed, given the very great difficulties the PCI and PSI are facing on the field of overall perspectives, the trade unions have the possibility of taking on a more directly political role and becoming a channel of relative radicalization. After all, something like this occurred in 1969. In fact, there has been a sort of pendulum movement. The 1969 tendency (central role of the unions in political confrontations) was followed by a trend in an opposite direction, which took shape particularly in 1975-76 following the impasse of the strategy of the unions themselves, the impact of the economic crisis, which politicized social conflicts much more than before, and the electoral rise of the PCI. Now a new turn may be taking shape, especially if the PCI does not succeed in emerging from its present impasse one way or another. It is significant that for some months now polemics have been developing in the unions against attempts by parties to make their influence prevail, while critical voices about trade-union policy are being raised in the PCI. At the last PCI Central Committee meeting Amendola was the spokesman for the critics, from a rightist angle, while other speakers emphasized the greater role their party could play compared to the unions in defending the interests of the masses. There is also a question as to whether the unions, under more direct pressure from the workers, could be led to shift their line to the left or whether more clearly leftist currents could arise within them.
We have already said that in October the union leaderships were compelled to tactically harden their position after spontaneous or semispontaneous strikes. After February 4 they reiterated their decision not to accept Andretti's diktat, and after mid-March they even stated that if the government did not take their point of view into account, along with the orientations of the workers as expressed in the March 18 strike, a sharp confrontation was inevitable. Their margin for maneuver is nonetheless limited. On the one hand they do not want a real test of strength, and on the other they accept the logic of the austerity policy and the fundamental demand of the employers that the cost of labor be reduced. It is significant that even their rejection of the two central points of the February 4 decree was accompanied appeal of the factory councils
The statements made March 24 by the leadership of the union federations accepting an alteration in the method of calculating the cost-of-living index on which the sliding scale is based, as well as the agreement between the union leaders and the government reached at the end of March, have stimulated the emergence of serious opposition within the trade-union organizations. Once again, the modification of the relationship of forces within the organized workers movement is being asserted, and this is making it impossible for the leaderships to get their positions adopted without difficulty. Thus, on March 25, seventy cadres of the FIM-CISL. (a metalworkers union) and the FLM took a position against the orientation of the union leaderships. They issued a call for a national assembly of factory councils in order to discuss both the line of the unions and the question of internal democracy. After the announcement of the March 31 agreement, a call was issued in the northern industrial zone of Milan (see below) to delegates of all categories, factory councils, and these seventy unionists calling for a national assembly of delegates. This appeal, extensively discussed in general assemblies in dozens of factories, rapidly received the support of 300 factory councils and many trade-union cadres: Giorgio Tiboni, secretary of the FLM, explained the purpose of the initiative this way: "We are seeking to work ouf a united position on the basis of the factory councils in order to later extend this position throughout all levels of the union structure. The leaders of the confederation cannot presume to impose their unity from the top down. Either they respect the line worked out in the assemblies, or we, as intermediary leaders, will not consider ourselves bound by the decisions made at the top." On April 6 more than 2, 000 workers met in the Lirico Theater in Milan in response to the appeal. The delegates of the largest factories in the Milan region, along with those of important factories in other cities (Italsider in Taranta, Cogne in Aoste, etc.) affirmed the necessity for a national assembly of factory councils and for a battle for trade-union democracy. In addition, against the anti-union current represented by the so-called "workers independents, " they clearly stressed the importance of waging a fight within the mass organizations represented by the unions. This Lirico meeting, like all the initiatives which preceded and will follow it, confirms the exacerbation of the contradictions which the policy of the PCI and the union leaderships is generating within these organizations themselves, given the present relationship of class forces. Below is the text of the Milan appeal. Working men and women, The recent decision of the CGIL-CISL-UL national leadership to once again attack the sliding scale by altering the "household basket" is of unprecedented gravity. It is a decision which runs counter to the commitments made during the national assembly of January 7-8; it is a new capitulation on the problem of the trade unions' independence of political parties; it is a challenge to democracy and the class nature of the unions. All this can still be stopped. The factory councils and the undersigned delegates consequently propose the following objectives:
1) Convocation as quickly as possible of a national assembly of delegates, which had in any case been decided during the January assembly, to verify the objectives and line established during this assembly;
2) Immediate suspension of meetings between the unions and the government, since the national leadership, in its March 24 meeting, did not guarantee democracy and the decisions which had been made by the workers and the unions as a whole. In order to attain these objectives, the signers of this document propose to all the workers, all the factory councils, the delegates of all categories, and the unionists who signed the "document of the 70, " which expressed disagreement with the decisions made by the leadership on March 24, that a regional assembly be held on April 6 at 9:00 a.m. in the Lirico Theater in Milan. This initiative is issued by the factory councils of: Italmontaggi, Catenificio Lombardo, Passavant, Itesat, Caffaro, Veam, Coelletron, Crouzet, Fargas, Honeywell; and the delegates councils of: Fiar-CGE, Ilme, Fiat Sempione, Schindler, Le Cler, Morel Philips, Anceschi, Atkinson, Mercedes, Cassinelli, CGE Monteferro, Banfi, E. Arden, Otem, Italver, Carboloy, Bayer, Max Mayer, Bulgari, Cifa, Sir, Alfa Romeo, Triulzi, Svi-Standard, Zambeletti, Geronazo, Pierrel, Ceat.
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ITALY by an offer of important concessions in the decisive realm of the sliding scale (such as a change in the calculation of the "household basket" as concerns the price of newspapers and urban transit, in such a way as to limit the rise of the index). We have already mentioned differentiations within the unions at various levels. The FLM (the metalworkers union) as an organization has continued to support the "left." More significant: immediately after the March 18 mobilizations, dozens of unionists holding leading posts, primarily on the local level (though partially on the national level too) and belonging to various categories (metals, textiles, construction, etc.) signed a document requesting the rapid convocation of a national assembly of delegates, already decided on in principle, and rejecting the new retreat on the sliding scale proposed by the united federation. Comming weeks will enable us to judge the real import of this initiative. But apart from all this, it is nevertheless necessary to stress the major difficulty. In the present situation in Italy, given the axis of the policy of the government, what might be called quantitative differences can have only an extremely limited impact. What is at stake is the basic orientation of the economic policy of the government and the bourgeoisie. Even the trade-union left refuses to wage an attack on this field. In the final analysis not only the recent congress of the FLM, but also the critical text mentioned above accepted the logic of the so-called investment policy and of reduction in labor costs. They limited themselves to contesting the most serious practical consequences of these policies. That is why the battle of criticism and partial opposition has up to now been centered much more on • punctual tactical questions, on methods of struggle, and on problems of relations with the movements of students and youth than on strategic choices. Some axes of orientation There is not sufficient space here to develop the theme of the situation of the far left. We will therefore limit ourselves to stressing the current scope of its difficulties. Precisely at the moment that the PCI and the union bureaucracies were experiencing all the difficulties we have described, the crisis of the far left reached the peak of its intensity. After the October strikes and at the conclusion of its congress, Lotta Continua broke up as a national organization with any defined line or base in the student movement. The projected fusion of Avanguardia Operaia (AO - Workers Vanguard) and the PDUP (Partito di Unità Proletaria per il Comunismo - Party of Proletarian Unity for Communism) has broken down. This coincidence was not merely chronological. The fact is that the far left did not succeed in emerging as an alternative for the mass movements. It must not be concluded that the arena of the far left as a whole has narrowed. At its last Central Committee meeting the PCI itself was compelled to recognize that this is not at all the case. The events of recent weeks rather show the 10 contrary. It would be equally erroneous to pretend that the militants of the various organizations are not present in the current movements. They sometimes play an important role in them. But they have not assumed a leading role, especially not as the representatives of organizations. Which, we may note in passing, induces them to adapt to the movements and in turn become vehicles of neo-spontanéist conceptions. (This goes primarily for Lotta Continua, but it is also true for AO and a portion of the DUP). Obviously, the consequence is to intensify the lack of any central political perspective, with all the dangers this implies in the medium and even short term. In such a context, enormous responsibilities are incumbent upon the vanguard sectors and militants of the working class and the mass student movements. It is an absolutely vital task to rapidly conduct united mobilizations. From the strategic standpoint, the basis of this unity must be sought in the realm of employment (many student platforms included the demand for a reduction in the workweek with no reduction in pay) and, in a more immediate sense, in the struggle against the economic measures the government has adopted or is preparing, against all the projects of the employers association, and against the reform plans of Malfatti, the minister of education. Intransigent defense of the sliding scale remains the essential element in unity in action right now. At the same time, the struggle must be waged against the new repressive laws, for the release of all those imprisoned, and for the reopening of the radio stations that have been closed down. The women's movement - which confirmed its very great vitality after the March 8 demonstrations - must be prepared to mobilize against any attempt by the Christian Democracy to further empty the content of the abortion law now being discussed in the Senate. In order to wage these battles, it is necessary to force democratic functioning of the trade-union organizations and the delegates' councils and to organize the student movement democratically. Especially in the student movement, a battle must be waged against the adventurist conceptions of. the independents and against their anti-democratic practices in assemblies and demonstrations, for the respect of the decisions made by the majority, and for the right of expression for all currents and all positions (a portion of the movement, in reality the independents, do not allow PCI students to take the floor, under the pretext that they are "outside" the movement, "revisionists, " etc.). The project for which we must continue to work is that of a test of strength in the form of a general strike, with the participation of all categories of workers and all the anticapitalist mass movements, a strike which must not be purely symbolic or conceived simply as an instrument of pressure, but which must be maintained until its fundamental objectives are won. As far as the government is concerned, the perspective remains that of a government of workers parties - the PCI and PSI - based on the trade unions and all the other mass movements and organizations in order to implement an anticapitalist program. March 27, 1977