With Some Examples From Chile and Portugal highest crystallization of anticapitalist consciousness. The emergence of organs of this type is essential to lead to a leap in consciousness of the need to overthrow the bourgeois state (a consciousness that we would remind the LC comrades does not yet exist among the broad masses), or to lead to the formation of adequate structures to counterpose to the bourgeois state and to administer the new workers power.
In Portugal, the strength of the workers movement has undoubtedly been very great but it has not yet found the capacity to develop independent councils based on the masses in the factories, the only instruments that could enable the class to free itself from the paralyzing tutelage of the reformists, and still more of the MFA. (Although unless the workers can do this, sooner or later the bourgeoisie will regain its strength and inflict a defeat on them.) The LC thinks that working-class independence has taken its highest form in Portugal, although no force on the far left is able to provide the "tactic" (as the LC would be doing in Italy). Thus it is not by chance that the LC has come in the last analysis to believe that a positive development of the revolutionary process can be assured by the MFA!
These considerations bring us to the other aspect of the L's fundamental theoretical weakness, which at bottom reveals the organization's spontanéist origins-the conception of working-class self-guidance. In an election rally not long ago in Turin, the birthplace of many spontanéist theories, Sofri [an LC leader] spoke very clearly on this question. According to him, workingclass self-guidance in both strategy and politics has been an accomplished and constant fact since 1969. As for the possibility that such self-guidance could be re versed, no attention was given to it. In fact, Sofri explained that the working class has a complete proletarian program that is already being carried forward in today's struggles.
No one denies that in these last years, through an almost uninterrupted series of struggles, the consciousness of the working class as a whole has grown and reached a level unparalleled in Italy in the last thirty years at least. No one denies either that a substantial vanguard has developed that has a strong anticapitalist and antireformist consciousness, that is trying to systematize the experience it has gained into a strategy so as to achieve a rounded view of the class confrontation. These are essential facts that enable us to characterize this situation as highly favorable for a positive outcome to the crisis of capitalism, for the formation of a revolutionary party.
However, these developments cannot be mistaken for a general collapse of the reformists' hegemony over the proletariat in the fields of strategy, politics, and organizaocations iNe have no doubt adv tion, even if this hegemony is no longer as firm as it once was. We have no doubt that on many occasions in these last years the vanguard has been able to take initiatives that have led broad masses to throw off the control of the reformists. But these developments, which are very important and should be extended, have so far been only episodic.
There is also another question-that is, whether the levels of consciousness achieved to date can be considered as attained once and for all, whether the bourgeoisie and the reformists still have the means for making a comeback, whether, for lack of an adequate response, the crisis and the rise of unemployment may not provoke dangerous symptoms of a retreat and a general ebb in class consciousness.
Proclaiming the existence of a development that is still limited and partial is no help whatever. What does advance the process is striving to assure that this anticapitalist and antibureaucratic consciousness, widespread today, finds a political and strategic framework that can give it form, finds the way to a new leap forward This new leap must take the form of organizational structures for the vanguard and the masses that can impel a qualitative advance in struggles and pose the question of power. Otherwise, there will inevitably be a retreat from the levels already attained.
In order to promote and stimulate a process of this type, to close ranks politically and organizationally with the advanced workers and the whole of the class, the tasks of the revolutionary vanguard today are to carry forward these objectives, to give impetus to the struggles, and to develop the necessary organizational means.
However, the L's basic contradiction consists in the fact that, on the one hand, it thinks that working-class self-guidance has been achieved and the workers already have a strategy and program, and on the other hand, it has made the obvious observation that the bureaucracies still exist and are substantial enough to force it to deal with them and develop a tactic toward them. The fact is that although the movement has come into conflict with the established bourgeois framework and thrown the reformists off balance on a number of occasions, it has not been able to develop an overall strategic view or a political solution. And so it has finally come to follow the path laid out by the bureaucra cies.
The cause of all this lies precisely in the fact that the break with the reformists took place in empirical and episodic forms and did not lead to the formation of an alternative strategic leadership.
The contradiction in which it is caught has led the LC to distort reality and to commit a series of opportunist errors with respect to the PCI [Partito Comunista Italiano-Italian Communist party]. In fact, the LC has come to see as demonstrations of working-class self-guidance events that were exactly the opposite, that in reality reflected the PCI and the unions regaining or maintaining their control. You need only think of the episodes in the antifascist mobilization in Milan on March 7 that was sparked by commando-squad attacks in Rome during the Lollo trial, and the tradeunion demonstration in Milan on April 22.
Obviously, if every development is seen in the light of working-class self-guidance, initiatives by the reformists come to be mistaken for actions brought about by the strength of the movement. The rapprochement with the PCI gets its theoretical and political justification from the presumed working-class power that the PCI is supposedly bringing to bear behind the LC's own strategic schemes. If we consider that the LC has come to think that once in the government the PCI will be forced to advance the objectives of the working class, we can see what opportunistic backsliding the L's present political conceptions can lead to.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that the LC has been duplicating a series of attitudes and slogans projected by the PCI in the past. The resolution of the LC national congress says explicitly that it is necessary to pick up everything the revisionists have dropped by the wayside. This would be quite correct if it referred to the past of a party that had not already succumbed to Stalinist and reformist degeneration. But the slogans picked up are those of the 1950s, when the PCI was advancing a line not fundamentally different from the present one; a different national and international context simply led it to give a tougher tone to some of its positions.
Now, let's take up a third question.
The LC maintains that the development of the social crisis and the working-class movement must necessarily go through a phase with the Communist party in the government. As the resolution referred to above puts it: "A change in the system of government in our country before the conditions are ripe for a struggle for workers power is inevitably destined to involve the ouster of the Christian Democrats by a left government whose axis can only be the PCI."
This formulation leaves room for some equivocations in defining the governmental formula, because the LC has suddenly found itself facing a rather pressing question-the problem of the PCI entering the government through the "historic compromise." Doubtless it might not be very clear for activists and vanguard workers how the alliance between the PCI and the main bourgeois party could promote the dynamic of the working-class movement.
This question was resolved in too hasty and incomplete a way by the LC. It has ruled out the possibility and practicality of the historic compromise, based on the belief that the bourgeoisie and the Christian Democrats have taken the contrary option and on the view that because of the crisis the capitalists today are unable to offer any substantial reforms.
While all of this is true, it suffers from incompleteness (in fact, in the Turin rally Sofri ended up by formulating three govern mental possibilities, government by the PCI alone, by the PCI with the left, by the PCI with the Christian Democrats).
It is a fact that' for an entire phase, because of the absence of the political and economic prerequisites, the bourgeoisie cannot implement an extensive policy of reform in alliance with the PCI that could assure control of the masses. But this does not mean that in the medium term we should exclude the possibility of another version of the historic compromise. By this, I mean the possibility that the crisis may throw the bourgeoisie into an untenable position, to the breaking point, where the only way it could try to gain time and survive, to prevent a direct confrontation at a time when its apparatus was disintegrating, would be by allying itself with the PCI, which would seek by every means to confine the movement within legalistic bounds.
This version is also a possibility. The conditions for it do not exist today and the bourgeoisie is doing everything possible to avoid such an eventuality. But it would be absurd to maintain that a sharpening of the contradictions and the class confrontation could not impose a variant of this type.
We firmly believe that a governmental alliance between the Christian Democrats and the PCI would by no means be a favorable development for the workingclass movement or one that could facilitate the workers' struggle. Nor do we think that a reformist government of the left forces would necessarily promote this struggle, and it is still less likely that such a ne would do so. Wielabe unstable shamelessly class-collaborationist government would do so. We have no doubt that such a situation would be unstable and would create other maladjustments. We have no doubt that the mobilization of the masses would tend continually to upset the framework in which the PCI operates and bring strong pressures to bear on the party.
However, if the PCI were in the government in such conditions, this would be a strong source of confusion; it would create great illusions among the masses. The power that the reformists could then exercise over the working-class movement could entrap it in an entangling alliance. This power could hold back the struggles and contain them, if only for a brief period. But this would be a period in which the bourgeoisie could muster its strength to get over the most critical moment and to develop new instruments, while the workers movement on the other hand would go into a phase of disillusionment and decline. We cannot forget the repressive role the reformists themselves can play, even though, in view of the present relationship of forces between the masses and the bureaucracies, they can hardly become the hangmen of the revolution that they were in Spain in 1936 or in Germany in 1918.
The LC comrades cannot forget that this, in general, was the role played by the PCI in the postwar government, and that this was the role of the reformists in Chile. There is no doubt that the reformists' presence in the government, in the last analysis, sharpened the contradictions, and that they proved unable to confine the working class within the limits imposed by the political and economic agreement with the bourgeoisie that preceded Allende's election.
But the reformists and their associates ended up suspended in midair between the bourgeoisie, which no longer was willing to make deals with them, and the masses of workers, who had broken through the dikes and were on the march for their own objectives, without any leadership, politically and militarily disarmed by their own parties. Finally, the lack of an alternative strategy, the result of the lack of a revolutionary leadership within the class, precipitated the confrontation in the worst possible conditions and led to a catastrophic defeat.
And today in Portugal, isn't the manner of the reformists'
participation in the government an element of severe weakness and confusion for the workers movement? Couldn't this give the bourgeoisie time to reorganize itself?
However, the L's analysis is all the more undialectical, lacking in perspectives, and thus dangerous, insofar as it gives no indication of the need for the workers to develop their own organs of power in the factories and in society. It is such organs that would make it possible to deepen the crisis in the relationship between the masses and the state apparatus, between the masses and the reformists, to reinforce an anticapitalist consciousness. Such bodies would be the indispensable support of any workers government; they could take the initiatives suited to breaking all the bourgeoisie's strong points.
Finally, I want to call attention to a further bit of schematism in the LC's analysis. The analysis of the economic and political crisis in progress today in the country is often linked simply to the crisis of the Christian Democracy. At times the crisis of the state is seen only as a result of the Christian Democrats' problems. The emergence from the political primitivism that characterized the LC for many years, when it could not see beyond the factory, has now led this group to another oversimplification. Starting from the correct observation that today the Christian Democrats are the main party of the bourgeoisie, it ends up by confusing this party with the bourgeoisie as such and by interpreting the political struggle against the bourgeoisie exclusively in terms of a struggle against the Christian Democrats.
There is no doubt that weakening the Christian Democrats today means sharpening the contradictions of the bourgeoisie. But reducing the political struggle simply to fighting the Christian Democrats suggests an underlying theoretical and analytical weakness regarding the relationship be tween the means of production, social classes, and their specific political expressions. It suggests a lack of understanding that the crisis capitalism has been experiencing in these last years is a general crisis of social relations striking bourgeois society at all its levels.
All the Comforts of Home
Officers in the navy and marine corps are provided with government-paid servants to fix their meals, do their laundry, make their beds, and shine their shoes. According to the General Accounting Office, 8,416 enlisted men are assigned to pick up after the officers. A ship's commander sometimes assigns himself as many as six personal servants. The GAO report notes that the servants cost taxpayers $84 million a year.