As part of the joint campaign of all the European sections of the Fourth International for an internationalist answer by the workers to the capitalist crisis, the Italian Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Communist Groups (GCR) organized an assembly in Turin May 19-20. Delegations from all the European sections participated.
About 1,500 persons took part in the twoday gathering. Half were from Turin, and most of these were workers. More than a hundred workers came from FIAT. There were also many trade-union activists, in particular members of the Piedmont regional leadership of the steelworkers union. They made their presence felt in all the discussions.
The rest of the participants came from other cities in Italy and from other coun tries. The largest delegations from abroad came from France, Switzerland, and Germany. Comrades were also present from the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and from as far away as New Zealand and Iran.
The large participation of Turin workers reflected the strong base our comrades have in the big plants in this city and in the local unions, as well as the growing interest in the answers offered by the Fourth International. Another reason for the large turnout was that the assembly was designed for debate. The Fourth International invited all the forces in the Italian workers movement to take part in the discussion, to present their orientations, and to discuss ours.
This concept of diseussion was far from being shared by all the forces in the workers movement. We saw an example of this in Turin itself. The bourgeois press and l'Unità [the Communist Party] reported on the assembly, as did the radio. The only papers that said nothing about it were the dailies of the centrist organiza. tions (even though representatives of these organizations were invited and took part in the discussions).
Out of pure sectarianism, Democrazia Proletaria announced three days before the assembly that it was holding a national meeting on terrorism Saturday afternoon and Sunday [May 19-20] in Turin and tried to draw away the trade unionists who were to participate in the GCR assembly.
Democrazia Proletaria, it is to be hoped, learned that sectarianism does not pay. Only a few dozen people turned up at its meeting on Saturday afternoon, and it had to call off the Sunday sessions. It should be noted especially that many DP activists rejected the sectarian attitude of their organization and participated in the Fourth International assembly.
Ernest Mandel introduced the main debate on Saturday afternoon, which was on the strategy for building a workers Europe. Other participants in this discussion were Leo Rota, Italian Communist Party candidate in the European elections; Pino Ferraris, from the leadership of DP; Alberto Tridente, national secretary for international affairs of the Metalworkers Federation (FLM); a representative from the Italian SP; and a representative from the Party of Proletarian Unity (PdUP).
Mandel outlined the analysis the
Trotskyists make of the situation in Europe. He said: "Ten years after the onset of the social crisis and five years after the onset of the second great economic crisis of capitalism, there is no reason to expect that this situation will be resolved quickly in a way favorable to the bourgeoisie."
He dwelt on the grave attacks on the workers in all countries that have been a result of the capitalist crisis. But along with this, he pointed out that the workers have responded differently to this crisis than they did to the one in the 1930s. It is obvious, he explained, that every economic crisis represents an attack on the working class, and may disorient sections of workers. But two fundamental features have to be highlighted in order to get a real picture of the situation in Europe.
In the first place, the workers have not accepted the crisis as something inevita. ble, and they are defending their past gains tooth and nail. Secondly, the fact that the workers are not counterattacking is not the result of any lack of combativity on their part. It stems essentially from the policy followed by their political and tradeunion leaderships, which have accepted the "social pact," "austerity," the "Mon. cloa Pact,"
and the Barre Plan, all of which were designed to make the workers pay the costs of the crisis.
Despite all these attacks, Mandel said, the bourgeoisie "has failed to achieve a decisive increase in the rate of exploitation." They have not even been able to blunt the combativity of the workers enough to move on to the subsequent stages of the offensive they are determined to carry out.
In the initial discussions, the organizations taking part presented their positions with a frankness that surprised more than a few of the representatives from abroad. This was the case when the Italian CP representative explained his party's respect for the imperialist military alliances, in particular NATO.
Ferraris of the DP explained that the capitalists were carrying out a plan designed to break down the working class. This was to be done through massive automation in the advanced capitalist countries and through shifting other aspects of production to the countries of Southeast Asia. The present crisis, therefore, would deprive the working class of its ability to play the key role in transforming society. This role would henceforth have to be played by "new social forces"-the youth, nonunionized workers, and so on.
The most interesting debate was with Tridente from the Metalworkers Federation, who had just returned from the congress of the European Confederation of Trade Unions in Munich. He dissociated himself from the standard speeches that are made in the union movement, "which talks about internationalism but does not practice it." He stressed: "I would rather see an international struggle by workers in the various plants of some big corporation than ten resolutions on internationalism at a congress." He pointed out, correctly, that only practical experience would raise workers' internationalist consciousness.
Mandel amplified this point. He said that it would be enough today, for example, if 500 union activists in the various Europe-wide corporations developed a
"telephone habit," that is, if they had contacts with activists in the different plants owned by the same corporations and picked up their telephones as soon as a problem arose.
Such possibilities were illustrated in the discussion on trade-union struggles in Europe. Trotskyist activists at FIAT in Turin and SEAT in Barcelona (owned by the same corporation) who are also members of the union committees in their plants, explained how they developed links and organized meetings between unionists in both factories-despite the reluctance of the leaderships-in order to wage a joint struggle against Agnelli. (The discussion among trade-union activists begun at the assembly in Turin was continued at the Fourth International workers conference in Antwerp on June 2-3.)
On Saturday evening, discussions were held on the struggles of women and youth in Europe.
On Sunday morning, the assembly was concluded with a rally. A FIAT comrade opened the program by describing the present situation in the struggle over the renewal of union contracts. Then Deosdado Toledano, a member of the Spanish section of the Fourth International and of the Workers Commission at SEAT, talked about the situation in Spain.
Lidia Cirillo from the Political Bureau of the GCR described the political battle the Italian Trotskyists were waging in the campaign for the parliamentary elections. Ernest Mandel gave the concluding speech. A comrade from the Iranian Socialist Workers Party, who was passing through Italy, gave greetings to the rally.