On March 16, about two months after the beginning of the governmental crisis, and one day after the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the new all-Christian Democratic cabinet got a vote of confidence in Parliament. It was supported by four or five parties that had previously abstained, and by the fascists of the National Democracy. There wasn't even any debate.
The Red Brigades' action appeared to give substance to the cry that the government had kept up throughout the crisis that an emergency situation existed. It gave the reformists an excuse to abandon their final timid resistance.
The way in which the crisis began and developed and the way it ended, together with the ensuing events, give the clearest picture of the Italian situation today. This process likewise points up the contrast between a politically sticky situation for the workers movement and a social reality that is full of potential for anticapitalist struggle.
The governmental crisis actually started long before it officially opened. Its beginnings go as far back as November. The breakdown of the policy whereby the CP and other opposition parties gave tacit support to the government by abstaining on key votes had been shown by the resumption of workers struggles and by rising concern in some sectors of the bourgeoisie about the future of the Italian economy in the immediate period ahead. It was apparent that a turn was called for. The year 1977 ended with several disturbing developments for the bourgeoisie and the bureaucrats.
Capitalists Decide to Swing the Ax
During the second half of the year the economic situation took a sudden turn for the worse, and it became urgently necessary for the bourgeoisie to take on the workers on some fundamental questions (i.e., layoffs and control of wage demands in new contract negotiations).
A new level of militancy in the factories forced the trade-union leaders to threaten a general strike and to support the mobilizations called by the steelworkers union on December 2. Discontent grew among the ranks of the Italian Communist Party and even in its secondary leadership, as a consequence of a stalemate situation that was undermining the party's credibility and its very organization.
The Communist Party was also afraid that, faced with the problem of the referendums, the Christian Democrats—a heterogeneous power bloc with an unpredictable internal balance of forces-might try some strong-arm operations.
It is clear why the CP decided to speed things up if we look at the discussion that developed within the labor movement concerning the common document drawn up by the leaderships of the three trade-union federations (the CGIL, CISL, and UIL*) during the governmental crisis, and at the interview with the Communist secretary of the CGIL, Lama, that appeared in the daily La Repubblica.
There have been few other occasions that show so clearly how the bureaucrats prostrate themselves before the demands of the bosses. The key point in both Lama's interview and the union leaders' document was the acceptance of the massive layoffs that the bosses had been previously forced to put off because of the unfavorable balance of forces they faced in the big industrial centers. This capitulation was coupled with the proposal of a "labor agency" that would provide assistance to the unemployed for some unspecified period of time, probably not more than a year.
Both statements emphasize the need to hold back wage demands and space out the gradual increases. And above all they point up the limitations of the contracts signed for specific categories of workers, which have not been formally abolished but have been reduced to being essentially an application of deals made by the leaderships of the national confederations of labor.
Lama's bluntness in expressing ideas that the trade-union statement put more subtly and ambiguously, was not designed to reassure the bosses about the good intentions of the bureaucrats (about which they haven't had any doubt for a long time). Rather it was an indication that no further concessions would be made to the secondary layers of leadership in the trade unions, who up until now have represented the major obstacle to the social pact.
So the CP's demand to be included in an emergency government was a necessary counterpart to the commitment it was in fact making. Likewise, raising this demand was a way of answering the doubts of its own activists, to whom the leadership's line looked more and more like a dead-end.
A Dilemma for the Stalinists
The CP was trying to square the circle—to appease its own rank and file and at the same time meet the most pressing demands of the profit-makers. It was trying to get into a better position to make inroads into the Christian Democratic power structure, and at the same time achieve a consensus with the Christian Democrats. The benefits of this operation for the CP were meager. And there were negative results that sooner or later will cause the Communist Party worse problems than those it was trying to solve when it precipitated the governmental crisis.
In the first place, the goal of an emergency coalition government itself has proved to be more or less utopian in view of the stiff resistance put up by the Christian Democratic power structure. This structure is a tangled web of functionaries and favor-seekers, as well as corporate and parasitic interests. This whole network has a logic of its own, which is, to a certain extent, independent of the bourgeoisie itself.
The refusal to include the CP in the government, on which the Christian Democracy held very firm, without any bending or signs of weakness, illustrates two concomitant factors in the Italian situation:
1. The self-defense reflex of an established power structure that is more elaborate and far-reaching than any other in Europe.
2. The bourgeoisie's unwillingness to delegate defending its interests to the bureaucratic leadership of the workers parties. This is because they have good reasons to doubt the ability of the bureaucrats to control their own ranks. On several occasions, most recently at the meeting of Christian Democracy members in Rome March 29, the CD.has spelled out the extent and the ways in which it is willing to cooperate with the CP. It will acceptsince it has no choice—a temporary collaboration that does not challenge its monopoly of institutional power.
The differences within the Christian Democracy were revealed in a particularly clamorous way at the meeting of the parliamentary groups to decide whether or not to accept the programmatic accord. (The CP for its part had staged a rapid retreat on this question.) But these differences must be seen in their real context.
Debate in Christian Democracy
The conflict between the Christian Democratic right and the rest of the party throughout the crisis involved no more than a different estimation of the advantages of calling elections. What most influenced the lineup of the CD leaders was the realization that new elections would not alter the relationship of forces in Parliament, as well as their fear of undermining the social pact. Not a single one of them had the courage to support openly the revolt of the "peons," those nameless members of the CD who opposed the programmatic agreement with the CP.
Moreover, all that was needed was for Moro to make it known that he would not permit adventuristic behavior or any power plays, and the party fell into line quickly behind a statement lifting its reservations about the CP. The statement was approved unanimously.
However, it was notable that the Christian Democratic Senate leader Bartolomei made a particularly violent anti- Communist speech at that meeting. He was obviously not just speaking on impulse. And his speech went beyond what would correspond to the scope of dispute. It also expressed a certain spirit of "revanche" that is abroad among the conservative forces, and it laid out the line beyond which the reformists cannot step now.
Both Moro and Andreotti had maintained the need for a programmatic agreement with the reformists. But neither one viewed the formal registration of the CP's support for the motion of confidence as a step toward its inclusion in the government. The Christian Democratic leaders know that their adversary is not going to be able to follow a straight line of advance, and they fully intend to throw every possi ble obstacle in the CP's way, including special elections when the time is favorable.
Preparations for a Witch-hunt
While the reformists are helping to reestablish the credibility of the main bourgeois party by keeping any kind of criticism of the Christian Democratic government out of their press and their speeches, and while the Italian CP's newspaper l'Unità is denouncing the slightest criticism of the government or the state as backhanded support to the ultraright militarist groups, in its membership meetings the CD is whipping up a new form of anti- Communism.
The building up of a martyr cult around Moro, to which l'Unità has been the most zealous contributor, is being used to restore the credibility of one of Western capitalism's most corrupt power structures. (A book by a bourgeois journalist will be published shortly exposing the shady dealings of President of the Republic Leone, his family, and his circle of hangers-on.) The CD also is using the Moro case in its campaign against the CP, trying to imply that the Stalinists are the spiritual godfathers of the Red Brigades.
Raising a hue and cry about the alleged complicity of ultraleftists with the terrorists, in a style reminiscent of Strauss's campaign against so-called terrorist sym pathizers, Lama and another CP leader, Pecchioli, have made statements as abject as they are counterproductive.
For the Christian Democrats, the accomplices of the terrorists include not only the groups of the extreme left, but the whole radical-secular culture, sections of the CP ranks, and even part of the trade-union organization that the Christian Democracy itself controls, the CISL. The CD has called the CISL leadership to order and warned them to be on the lookout for troublemakers.
The confrontation between the two political machines has not only taken place at the approaches to the government, which the Christian Democracy continues to guard jealously. In recent years, taking advantage of the rise of the mass movement, the Communist Party has managed to gain a toehold in the fringes of the state apparatus. It has also brought about a certain shift of power in that direction within its own ranks, giving rise to a whole new layer of bureaucrats more closely linked to the state apparatus.
Moreover, the support that the reformists have given to efforts to keep a rein on the deficit in public spending, which amount to an effort to bring public spending more in line with the needs of capital in a period of crisis, have decreased the margin of maneuver of the Christian Democracy, whose power has been based on its ability to dispense patronage.
CP Electoral Gains Turn Sour
But even such crumbs of power are beginning to become a mixed blessing for the CP, because when the reformists take over local governments they inherit all the problems left unsolved by previous administrations. Furthermore, in the context of growing economic crisis, the Christian Democracy is keeping a tight grip on the central government and trying to direct the discontent of the social layers hardest hit by the crisis against the new local administrations.
Such hostility and resistance on the part of the Christian Democratic apparatus explains the paradoxical conclusion of the crisis. Only the kidnapping of Moro cut short the polemics against the foot-inmouth statement of CP leader Natta, who hailed the presence in the government of come "technicians" not linked to the Christian Democracy as the decisive achievement of the accord. That same day, probably violating a semiofficial understanding, Andreotti announced the composition of the new government, making it clear that there was no question of including any "technicians." To the contrary, the cabinet makeup looked like a topographical model of the various currents in the Christian Democracy.
The price the CP paid for its new parliamentary status was signing the programmatic accord; but in the days following the kidnapping of the president of the Christian Democracy, the price the CP ended up paying was far higher than it had originally intended.
Offensive Against Workers' Rights
The social pact has only partially settled accounts with the workers. The working class remains strong and the bourgeoisie cannot consider it defeated. So the bourgeois parties wanted to do something to get some immediate results in creating more favorable conditions for a new attack on the workers. The CP's acceptance of the governmental program, and the climate the media were able to whip up around the Moro kidnapping, enabled them to pass a number of law-and-order measures, the seriousness of which should not be underestimated.
The unionization of the police, long considered a fundamental plank of the left's program, has, to all intents and purposes, been blocked. The rank-and-file police organizations that developed in recent years, and were tied to the trade union federations, are to be dismantled and reorganized into an independent union with no links to the workers organizations.
The Reale public order law has been rewritten in order to avoid the referendum to abolish it altogether, and in several aspects it has been made harsher. Worst of all, a decree-law went into effect March 22, representing a whole body of emergency measures designed to increase the powers of the police and curtail certain basic civil liberties. The measures include allowing the police to detain anyone for any reason whatsoever for twenty-four hours, abolishing in part the right to confidential legal consultation in the first stage of trials, authorizing telephone wiretaps for unlimited lengths of time and on the basis of a simple order or even merely verbal authorization from a judge, and authorizing preliminary interrogation without the presence of a lawyer.
The Moro Kidnapping
It is obvious that the actions of the militarist groups have created a climate not only favorable to easy passage of emergency legislation but also one in which the parties involved in the accord can gain greater popular support for their appeal for national unity.
Recently in Italy we have seen cynical attempts to exploit the Moro kidnapping. The Christian Democracy and bourgeois media have sought to use it against the CP. In turn, the CP itself has tried to use it against the extreme left and against opposition currents within the political and trade-union organizations of the workers movement. At no other time in the history of the Italian CP has the leadership defended the bourgeois state and its institutions and its method of political expression with such overtness and with such repressive zeal. A vicious mudslinging campaign has been opened up, not just against the extreme left, or even mainly against it, but against all forms of opposition to the social pact and against the slightest hesitation to rally to the defense of the state.
The CP leadership's recriminations against intellectuals guilty only of failing to join in the chorus of condemnation, its refusal to renew the membership of CP members in Genoa who circulated a leaflet entitled "Against Both the Red Brigades and the State," the vulgar insults that the old Stalinist Trombadori hurled at the extreme-left groups when he appeared on television-these are only a few of the episodes in a bureaucratic campaign that echoes bourgeois propaganda and is apparently solidifying the basis for the governmental accord.
Here again, the reformists are unlikely to get what they want out of this campaign in the long run. They are running the risk of falling into a double trap. On the one hand, they are leaving themselves defenseless against reactionary attacks, helping to create a climate that is quite favorable to the right and will be used by the right against the CP. On the other hand, the CP's reconsolidation of its own forces, which it sought to accomplish by provoking the governmental crisis and waging the campaign against the extreme left, has too fragile and precarious a basis.
Trouble With the Ranks
This brings us to another political problem that the CP leadership has not yet resolved—what to do about its relationships with the working class and with its own ranks.
The unpopularity of the CP's line can be seen at different levels. It is shown by the results of some administrative elections in the south, where the economic crisis has aggravated the process of social breakdown; by the student organization elections in the schools, where conservative forces have gained considerably in strength; and by the astonishingly low level of recruitment to the Communist Party youth organization. These are some early warning signs of the difficulties the party faces.
This is the price the bureaucrats know they have to pay for their changed relationship with the masses: they cannot ride with the mass movements the way they did in 1969-1970, nor can they take them over and deflect the masses' energies toward winning only partial gains, as they did during the early 1970s. The sharpness with which questions are posed today and the political stance of the working-class militants leaves the CP leadership with no other choice but to try to avoid conflict wherever possible, to turn its back on mobilizations when they develop outside the bureaucrats' control, and in some cases to oppose them.
The goal that the CP could reasonably set in this phase would be to rally around its line a certain body of cadre who are convinced that the line is correct and are determined to carry it out, who could block any opposition in the workplaces, and who could provide some defense against a revival of right-wing activity. What in fact convinced the CP to press for an emergency government was the beginning doubt and dissatisfaction that had appeared among its own membership and reached the regional secretary level.
The CP conference of worker cadre, announced with great fanfare and held during the governmental crisis, was supposed to demonstrate to people both inside and outside the party that the CP was strong and in control of the working class. A careful weeding-out process assured that only supportive and enthusiastic voices were heard at the microphone when the leadership laid out its austerity line. This time it presented the line under the new cover of a perspective of "our class becoming the state," and a view that the role of workers is to make sacrificies. This view was defended most enthusiastically by Berlinguer.
In shouldering the political tasks they have assumed, the CP leader said, "Communist workers become transfigured, and solidaeryday litonies, this enables them to bear the agonies, sufferings and grief of everyday life."
The CP's reconsolidation campaign seems to have been most effective over the last few days. During the demonstration that followed the Moro kidnapping, there was a notable contrast between the disorientation of the workers who marched behind their trade-union banners, and even of the extreme left, and the militancy of the CP youth, all of which was directed against terrorism.
However, the climate the bourgeoisie is trying to create in Italy, the type of programmatic accord the CP was obliged to sign, and the economic policies of the government will all soon create new contradictions whose character can already be predicted.
There are above all two unresolved questions on which no compromise is possible-the problem of rents, on which the proposed law does not satisfy anybody; and the problem of abortion, which no longer lends itself to any type of compromise. It is above all on the latter question that the CD-CP accord will be put to the test.
The ideological framework of the Christian Democrats and their relations with the church and with large layers of the Catholic and conservative masses will prevent the Christian Democrats from yielding to the major demands of the women's movement. On the other hand, the reformists are under pressure from a movement that, while it goes through long periods of inactivity, wells up again and again unexpectedly, with exceptional strength and militancy.
The demonstrations of March 8, which brought tens of thousands of women into the streets (30,000 in Rome alone), and the success of the national conferences through which the movement is trying to reorganize itself place a certain limit on the concessions the CP can afford to make in this area.
Under the pressure of the more militant sections of the movement, even the women's organization tied to the reformist parties, the UDI (Union of Italian Women), has adopted positions that despite their limitations are incompatible with Catholic ideology and with positions on which the Christian Democracy seems to have decided to stand firm.
Besides this, the social pact and turn carried out by the unions have led to a worsening of the material conditions that are at the root of the difficulties and isolation faced by the CP's working-class cadres. No amount of propaganda can conjure this reality away.
When examined with the help of a computer, the data on the situation in the factories presented in the Communist workers conference itself appear less favorable than the glowing reports in the conference hall might suggest. And it may be easily predicted that when they see actual implementation of the policy whose general lines and ideological bases they have accepted, the Communist workers will not respond in the way their political leaders expect and hope.
Overtures by the SP
There is still another factor that goes against the CP's desire to "become the state." The Forty-First Congress of the Italian Socialist Party has only begun, and it is not possible to make a definitive judgment about it. But it seems to mark a turning point for a party that has always been out of step with European Social Democracy. The results of the local congresses and the speech by SP National Secretary Craxi indicate that in spite of internal differences and conflicts, the majority of the party is oriented toward a rapprochement with Western Social Democracy. It seems to be moving toward abandoning the flirtation with maximalism that it has been carrying on since the collapse of the center-left in particular.
L'Unità published a long summary of Craxi's speech, placing special emphasis on his attacks on so-called ultraleftism (including on the writers Sciascia and Moravia, who were supposedly guilty of taking an attitude of a "distressing detachment" as regards the events of the last few days). But it mentioned his attacks on the CP only in a few lines of commentary: "Along with occasional false notes that detracted from the general tone and some rhetorical affectations, the speech also had some polemical barbs directed against the CP."
Nonetheless, this part of Craxi's speech was one of the most significant. The SP secretary's attack on the slowness of the process of revision going on in the CP and his conciliatory tone toward the Christian Democracy represented an offer of the SP's services to put together a revamped cabinet. This will become a possibility as soon as the emergency is over and the Christian Democrats can get along without the formal collaboration of the strongest working-class party.
The events of the last few weeks have given a boost to the view in the far left that the period beginning in 1968 in Italy has now come to an end. There are a number of theories, with different analyses and conclusions, but they all start from the same premise and condemn their advocates to the same impotence. Some talk about a "Germanized" Italy, caught in the vise of class collaboration between the bourgeoisie and the reformists. Others see the workers movement as already defeated. In any case, the common denominator of these theories is their underestimation of the obstacles that stand in the way of the government's efforts to restore stability, which it is trying to do now with the CP's help as preparation for turning against the Communists later.
It is worth examining several of these obstacles in greater detail: the crisis of bourgeois leadership, the problems with the bureaucrats' turn, and the expectations of the youth. Although they may not prove decisive right now by halting the current trend of events in Italy, they can prove so in the longer run. The bourgeoisie has not yet been able to eliminate any of these obstacles.
The Crisis of Bourgeois Leadership
During the years following 1968 the social, economic, and political crisis in Italy resulted in a deep crisis of leadership for the bourgeoisie. The inability of the ruling class to regain its control and its previous power was revealed most clearly by the "strategy of tension" and its failure, by the defeats suffered by the Christian Democrats in the referendum on divorce and in the elections of June 15, 1975, and by the divisions that brought the party to the brink of dissolution.
Collaboration with the CP went directly against the interests, traditions, and ideology of the Catholic party, but the Christian Democracy was forced to accept this option, since there was no other practical solution. The fact is that such cooperation enabled the bourgeoisie to regain at least part of the ground it had lost. This was reflected in the recovery of big profit margins by the strongest section of the capitalist class and in the consolidation of new bases for conservative values in certain areas. It is also true that the partial resolution of the Christian Democrats' internal contradictions following the party's victory in the 1976 elections gave the bourgeoisie a stronger and more efficient instrument for running the government.
The CP deliberately helped to reconsolidate the Christian Democracy in deciding not only to subordinate its line to the most immediate needs of capital but also to avoid any confrontation with the main political representative of capital, which is what the Catholic party is.
Nevertheless, the leadership crisis will not be resolved so long as the Christian Democrats still need the consent of the CP in order to govern, and this consent could •be called into question by the next massive wave of attacks against the standard of living of the masses, before the Christian Democrats are ready to attempt a more permanent solution based on a changed relationship of class forces.
The fear that they will not be able to control the situation until the CP has been pushed back and isolated is what causes the decisive sectors of the bourgeoisie and its parties to continually try to speed things up. They are impatient for a restabilization, which still seems too far away and too uncertain.
The bourgeoisie knows very well that signing a pact with the CP does not necessarily mean signing a pact with the working class and with the mass movement. And as a result, it may be driven to try contradictory approaches in its search for a more reliable governmental framework.
Precisely in the present situation we are seeing an example of how precarious the readjustment of the bourgeois leadership is. The Moro kidnapping has upset the internal equilibrium of the Christian Democracy. It has thrown the party off balance by depriving it of an arbitrator who was often able to heal divisions. The party's right wing is becoming turbulent again, and Agnelli's paper, La Stampa, has come out with a proposal that seems to mean setting up a second republic [i.e., adopting a new constitution].
Since 1976 the working class, despite its strength, has taken some hard blows. Particularly severe setbacks were the taking away of seven holidays and the partial elimination of automatic cost-of-living allowances.
The case of Unidal, a candy factory that was reorganized to eliminate about 1,500 jobs, is the first concrete example of what the social pact is going to mean. In coming months, however, if the trade-union leaderships are going to live up to their part of the bargain with the bosses, they are going to have to launch much broader attacks against the strongest bastions of the working class. The way the bosses see it, this attack has to be violent enough to make up for every minute of the time they have had to hold back from launching it.
The rough reception the social pact is going to get in the big industrial complexes and in particular from trade-union activists is already clearly indicated by the extent of the unrest in the factories since November, and by the tenor of the discussion in the trade-union organizations over the document signed by the union confederations.
Danger Signals for the Bureaucrats
It is not by chance that the turn expressed so clearly in the interview with Lama comes right at a time when the trade unions have been once again coming to the fore as the most effective means of reorganizing the fighting potential that still exists in the working class. In fact they were threatening to emerge as the established opposition to the government.
After the December 2 demonstration, the trade-union leaderships had to come down hard in an attempt to halt the momentum before it got any further. They had to make a special effort to try to get the workers to accept the bosses' demands in full. So the bureaucrats called all sections of the labor movement to order and made it clear that the unions play a purely were to subordinate role in political life.
The contradiction between the forms of organization, the role, and the potential that the trade unions have developed in Italy in recent years and the turn the bureaucrats are trying to carry out was shown with particular clarity in the discussion that took place during the government crisis.
The statement by the trade-union leaderships met with opposition from whole sections of the working class, such as the workers in the chemical and steel industries. There was a particularly sharp response from the steelworkers. Their union is the largest single trade union and the one whose membership is most concentrated. It is also the most militant. For years every time the steelworkers' contract has come up for renegotiation, it has been an event of major political importance nationally. Whole local union bodies opposed the tenor of the statement. The most notable example of this was the reaction of the Milan District Council, where 30 percent of the delegates present, and perhaps more, voted for what was in effect—in its tone, its logic, and in what it proposed—a countermotion.
Whole factory councils, as well as a large number of local public-employees organizations, came out more or less clearly against the statement. The 12 votes against the statement and 103 abstentions in the final discussion at the confederation level were only the palest reflection of the feelings of the middle layers of union leadership. This vote was taken in a tightly controlled assembly, insulated to the highest degree from the real feelings expressed at the rank-and-file level.
The union leaders ought to be more worried about the type of opposition they are encountering than about its size. The organized workers are by and large indifferent to the discussion, since they think there is no way they can have any effect on what happens. This attitude is a result also of the way the bureaucracy tries to turn every meeting into a confrontation with the union activists, trying to beat them down and get them to accept its line.
Whole sections of the rank and file have abstained from the debate. Sometimes this represents a primitive form of protest against the leadership's line. Sometimes it is a result of the influence of those far-left groups that remain most unconvinced of the need to work in an organized way in the trade unions.
New Opposition Current Forming
No bureaucratic maneuver can erase the fact that despite all this, despite the damper put on discussion and the rigging of elections, a strong opposition made itself heard throughout the country.
Whether the bureaucrats like it or not, the accords signed with the bourgeoisie during the government crisis are going to have to face a test of fire from the union activists. These activists constitute a whole vanguard layer that has matured politically during the recent years of struggle and ferment.
During the last two years of converging economic, political, and social crises, the line of the bureaucrats, which may have been influenced by their analysis of what happened in Chile, undoubtedly has had a certain impact on the working class.
In the fall of 1976 the "abstention" government's antilabor measures produced an immediate reaction. But the response of the workers to subsequent blows has been confused. And they have had difficulty in finding ways to express their general rejection of the bureaucracy's policies in real, concrete struggles.
During 1977, despite some periods of sharp struggle toward the end of the year and continuing mass participation in strikes, the extent of the discussion and political activity was reduced. But at the same time there was a deepening realization on the part of many militants that they were facing a dangerous turning point.
The vanguard in the struggles have come to know the trade unions as organizations that could lead fights and win victories. They have no knowledge of their checkered past. Now for the first time these militants are in a position to draw up an initial balance sheet of the results of the line that has been followed for the past two years. They will be able to assess this line in still clearer perspective in coming months.
The workers who make up this vanguard come from different backgrounds. Often they have ties to the CP, much more rarely to the milieu around the far left. But frequently they have no involvement beyond their trade-union activity. In fact, a section of radicalized youth turned to union work as an alternative in the absence of any political outlet. They did not find the far-left groups credible. And the most radical sections of the rising generations have always found the CP too conformist and bureaucratic.
There is a good chance, however, that whole sections of the working class, particularly the most powerful, are going to try to break out of the constricting framework that the confederations are seeking to impose on these most unruly unions. And the struggle by these sections of workers to escape from the straitjacket represented by the deal between the bureaucrats and the government may give impetus to a new rise in combativity.
Such a possibility today depends more and more on the ability of the embryonic opposition elements, those sections of the far left that have not been dispersed by the crisis and that continue to work in the trade unions, to coalesce and take the initiative. The coming national contract negotiations in the major industries offer an opportunity that should not be missed.
The Time Bomb of Youth Unemployment
In Italy two-thirds of the two million unemployed are between sixteen and twenty-nine years of age. The great majority of them have graduated from secon dary school. Of the three million persons who work at below-minimum-standard and irregular jobs, it is hard to determine precisely what percentage are young people, but it is certainly very high. Four million high-school and university students vegetate in their classrooms with no perspective of getting jobs. These figures obviously cannot just be added up, since the categories overlap. Students are often workers with irregular jobs, and those who work at below-minimum-standard jobs often show up in the statistics as unemployed.
Nevertheless, they give a fairly clear idea of the extent to which young people are currently excluded from productive roles in society, that is, of the "marginalization" of youth. In the last few years, the boundary between education and marginalization has become very fuzzy. This is not only because the lack of jobs has made it virtually obligatory for young people to enroll in some school or university. It is also because the uselessness of diplomas and the economic crisis have forced students to try to get into the job market.
The term "youth proletariat" has been coined to describe this tendency toward the consolidation of large layers of young people who are reduced to a status somewhere between student and a semiemployed worker, unprotected by the trade unions and extremely mobile, living in the cities and around the fringes of the universities, with a life style of their own. This term points up a structural phenomenon (the marginalization of the young work force) and also a cultural one (a readiness to struggle, a tendency to coalesce, and a sometimes rather ambiguous rejection of petty-bourgeois myths).
During the 1977 struggles, the universities, particularly in Rome and Bologna, became rallying grounds for masses of young people caught up in a new wave of radicalization-high-school students, unemployed young people, and young workers. These youths created a movement of a different social character from the student mobilizations of 1968-69.
Collapse of the Universities
The specter of a larger and more violent mobilization obviously disturbs the sleep of the bourgeoisie. The ruling class has no solutions for the problem of unemployment of youth and intellectuals. Nor does it have any solutions for the problems of the educational system itself, where the obsolete structures are collapsing under the weight of a massive growth of the school population that can be neither directed nor slowed.
The youth employment law that was supposed to guarantee temporary employment (for not more than one year) to hundreds of thousands of young people was not passed. The CP is proposing to reintroduce the bill, with the proviso that all the necessary investment be made in 1978. But, in any case, what this measure could accomplish is very limited.
The projects to reform high-school and college education, which should be coming before Parliament in the next few months, are nothing more than an attempt to restrict the right to education by introduc ing numerical quotas and a rule that university enrollment cannot exceed what the available facilities can accommodate. But these facilities have already been dismantled or cut back because of the freeze in public spending.
Even if the government succeeds in passing its reforms-which is not very likely-the immediate result will be that the last safety valve will be removed and masses of youth will be thrown directly onto the job market. These youth will be deprived of even the limited assistance and the illusory hopes provided by universities up to now. It is no wonder that the gathering places of youth, the high schools and universities, as well as all the groupings that have proliferated in the big cities in recent years, are being kept under close watch today by the state repressive apparatus.
The bourgeoisie is trying to deal with student rebelliousness and the potentially explosive situation created by the marginalization of youth and intellectuals by the same techniques it is getting ready to use against the working class.
The reorganization of education has been preceded over the last few months by a step-up of repressive measures against the student vanguard. The new minister of education, Pedini, gave a committee of experts the task of updating the old fascist disciplinary code adopted in 1925, which is still in effect today. The revised code will then be given to the school authorities and they will be expected to take on responsibility for enforcing it.
Meanwhile, a veritable lynching campaign is being carried out in the mass media against students, youth, and the far left-all of whom are lumped together as juvenile delinquents and terrorists.
But it is precisely with respect to the youth problem that the bourgeoisie's attempts at reorganization and repression, in which it has the total collaboration of the bureaucrats, are most obviously futile. In fact, they come down to no more than trying to remove the threat by waving a witch doctor's rattle. The economic policies of the new government and the prospects for the Italian economy cannot help but reinforce and aggravate the material bases of the discontent and marginalization of youth. The biggest danger for the workers movement and for the class struggle in Italy is that the despair of the youth may make fertile ground for right-wing extremism and militarism.
Need for a Working-Class Alternative
The building of an opposition within the trade unions, of a pole of attraction within the working class, becomes all the more urgent because of this situation. Wherever an alternative to the bureaucrats begins to take shape in the unions, the tendency of masses of students and young people is to turn immediately toward it. Recently we have seen this demonstrated concretely on two occasions.
In Bologna, at the time of the March 11 demonstration commemorating the first anniversary of the murder of the student Lorusso by police, thousands of students rallied around a trade-union coordinating committee that had been formed a few months earlier in that city.
In Milan, where the opposition within the trade unions has been the strongest, the militant workers decided to attend the funerals for the two youths murdered by the fascists in the aftermath of the Moro kidnapping.
One hundred thousand workers and students took to the streets even though the official union leadership did not want to see the burials transformed into political demonstrations.
I think that this last episode offers the best conclusion for this article. On March 16, some 30,000 persons participated in a disoriented and divided demonstration against terrorism, seeking above all to block the threat of a right-wing backlash resulting from the actions of the Red Brigades. A few days after this, anger at the murder of two comrades, combined with the initiative of the militants and secondary union leaders, led to one of the most militant and united demonstrations we have yet seen in Milan.
Notes
*CGIL—Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (General Confederation of Labor). CISL—Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Liberi (Italian Confederation of Free Trade Unions); UIL-Unione Italiana dei Lavoratori (Italian Confederation of Workers).