[The following article is translated from the June 14 issue of the Belgian revolutionary socialist weekly La Gauche.]
A New Explosion in Southern Italy
After the explosion in Battipaglia last April, the anger of the southern population has just boiled over again impressively in Caserta in the Naples region. Once again, this explosion naa all the leatures oi a virtual local insurrection. The workers occupied the city hall and the center of the city, and battled the police and riot troops furiously. The government was compelled to send a veritable occupation force from outside into the rebellious town.
The cause of the explosion in Caserta must be sought in a lag in the development of jobs, accumulating unemploy-
Teral workers, woo are employed only part
La Gauche has already pointed out how mythical was the pretended reconversion of the southern Italian economy on the initiative of the public holding companies (see the article by Ernest Mandel in the May 24 issue). La Gauche cited the statistics on this for one of the main provinces [compartimenti] of southern Italy, Compania. Here are the corresponding figures lor the province of Apulia.
• The number of unemployed went from 100,000 in 1951 to 181,000 in 1961, to 214,000 in 1965 and 400,000 in 1968.
Some 20 percent of the workers in the region are forced to emigrate.
• Some 344,000 agricultural wage earners have an average annual income of 18,500 Belgian francs LUS$362.50_ and car get work on the average of only 104 days out of the year.
• Of 890,000 dwellings in the region, 457,000 - or more than half - have neither running nor potable water.
In these conditions, it is by no means surprising that explosions of popular anger should occur. On May 23 more than 30,000 workers gathered in loggia, the capital of the province, to protest against the declining number of jobs. It is certain that the workers will not be satisfied with just demonstrating. Moreover, it must be pointed out that examples of factory occupations are multiplying in secondary industrial centers.
Lopain
AMENDOLA: Thinks leftism is danger No. I.
Struggle for Workers Control
Begun by the Ranks
In the big northern Italian factories the class struggle, which has
• been intensifying for more than a year, is taking new and more radical forms. The example of the Pirelli factory in Milan, where the workers changed the tempo of the probeen widely sported a road. But tine less been widely reported abroad. But a no significant battle has just developed in the FIAT automobile plants in Turin, the biggest industrial complex in Europe. For twenty years no general meetings of personnel have been held inside the FIAT plants. But since April and May a new type of movement has emerged in these plants. This movement originated in the general strike that took place throughout Italy last April 11 in solidarity with the workers killed at Battipaglia.
In the Auxiliaries section of FIAI, an assembly of 1,500 workers was held which listened to a fellow worker explain the reasons for the strike. The management immediately shifted this comrade into another sector where he was isolated.
But the workers in the Auxiliaries fought back. A new general assembly was held in the cafeteria, which demanded the return of the transferred comrade and adaed a series of demands formulated at the previous meeting.
For the first time, the boss had to permit a transferred comrade to return to his post. Ihe boss gave way in the face of the evident combativity of the workers. The struggle shifted over to the demands that had been formulated. In the Auxiliaries the workers revived the most advanced tradition of the struggles at the beginning of the twenties, electing group and shop delegates. These delegates began to challenge the authority of the foremen and straw bosses in head-on fashion. They did not accept any form of collaboration with the management, considering themselves responsible solely to the workers, who gave them their instructions in general assemblies.
In this way a power, challenging the power of the employer, began to develop from the ranks. The movement in the Auxiliaries department joined in the organization of a staggered strike which successively halted different departments of the factory toward the middle of May.
Public Service Employees in Motion
Simultaneously, the public service workers unleashed a series of spectacular actions which drew layers as "marginal" as the magistrates into the fight! By "work-to-the-rule" strikes, in which they observed all bureaucratio regulations to the letter, customs officials blocked traffic at of the personnel in education struck. The railway workers carried on a campaign that led to a twenty-four-hour general strike.
The most spectacular of these actions, however, was the postmen's strike. It assumed such proportions that regular mail delivery was halted for several weeks and enormous pileups of letters and packages developed in the central post offices. The big commercial firms began to use special couriers to take their foreign correspondence to the French, Swiss, and Austrian border posts.
The participation of high-ranking functionaries, even magistrates, in this general agitation profoundly disturbed the bourgeoisie. It saw in this -- and correctly so! -- a disintegration of the bourgeois state, a sign of maturing conditions similar to those which led to the revolutionary explosion of May 1968 in France.
The Crisis of the Center-Left Government
In these circumstances, the centerleft government (a coalition between the the United Socialist christian Democracy. Christian Democrac, ¿aragat, and the small party of Nenni and Republican party) is passing through a grave crisis.
It is torn between more and more irreconcilable objectives.
Originally the center-left government, set up six years ago, was intended to strike a major blow against the combativity of the workers by breaking up the united front between the Nenni Socialist party and the CP and by splitting, the most nilitant unions, which were affiliated to the CGIL [Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro -- Italian General Confederation of Labor. The Nenni Socialists and the Communists worked together in this federation]. The purpose of the centerleft government was to
"reintegrate" a section of the Socialist workers into the bourgeois state and class collaborationism.
At the start, this project seemed to have been crowned with success. The unity in action between the SP and the CP was broken (although there was no tradeunion split). The Nenni Socialist party fused with the right-wing Social Democracy of Saragat. It drew a good section of the Socialist cadres into class collaborationism, not only at the national but also at the regional and local levels.
Under the pressure of this drift to the right, the CP, which sought at all cost to maintain its contact with the Nenand moratoc, a benerant rientatimore ni apparatus, also began to follow a more wnen the economic planning program (which involved an incomes policy) came before parliament, the CP leaders abstained from calling any trade-union actions opposing it.
The center-left policy was shaken, nowever, by a resurgence of mass combativity.
This resurgence was sparked by the students and young workers and impelled by the workers in southern Italy and the vanguard groups in the northern Italian factories. In its first six months the revival resulted in two twenty-fourhour general strikes in which more than 15,000,000 workers participated.
The results of the growing combativity of the masses were expressed even in the electoral arena. While the CP held its ground, the PSIUP [Partito Socialista Italiano d'Unità Proletaria -- Italiar Socialist party of Proletarian Unity -- a left Social Democratic formation]
achieved significant gains at the expense of the United Socialist party, which was the major loser in the center-left operation from the electoral point of view. Immediately, voices were raised in the United Socialist party for a shift to the left in order to recoup the party's electoral losses.
As for the Christian Democracy, once it saw that the center-left had not succeeded in undermining the class consciousness of the Italian worker vanguard, it was confronted with the following alternative: It could try the same operation again on a broader basis, extending the rovernment bloc to include the CP (whicl then of course would have the task of "calming" the workers). Or it could return to a more hard-line policy oi repression and replace the center-left government with a center-right one.
The Crisis of the Workers Parties
The second possibility is by no means an imaginary one. In Rome, lists of prospective ministers have already been circulating for some time for such a cabinet, which might be headed up by the leader of the right wing of the Christian Democracy, former Minister of the Interior [Mario] Scelba. The government bloc would then of course include the Liberals (a conservative party like the formation in Belgium) but also the right-wing soial Democracy, which, under the leadership of its chiel lanassi, would agai split off from the United Socialist party.
In fact, the SP is torn among seven tendencies. A Central Committee plenum called for June 20 is to make a last attempt at conciliation under Nenni's aegis. Ine right nas already set up the macninery for a split. It will certainly not retreat unless the "respectful left" capitulates entirely and, despite the clear left majority, leaves control of the party apparatus in the hands of the right.
The social crisis which has convulsed Italy has not spared the Communist party. It also is deeply divided. Let us say nothing about the Maoist tendencies which broke off from the PCI [Partito Comunista Italiano -- Italian Communist party] yet are divided among themselves. Let us say nothing either about the 100 percent supporters of Moscow led by D'Onofrio, who have little influence. The regular party leadership is presently split among four tendencies -- a so-called leit, led by Ingrao; a so-called right led_by Amendola; a so-called center led by Longo and Berlinguer; and a so-called centerright led by Paletta.
None of these tendencies -- and Ingrao's least of all -- really countenances
Соан
LONGO: Has "calm"; will take cabinet post.
any challenging oi the bureaucratic centralism governing relations within the apparatus. But while Ingrao and Berlinguer show more sensitivity to militant currents among the masses and are worried that the CP may..be outflanked to the left, Amendola and Paletta consider that "leftism" represents the No. 1 danger and that to fight it, the breach between Moscow and the PCI must be repaired.
The tragic side of the Italian sitvation lies in the fact that while all the objective conditions have coalesced for a mass assault on Italian capitalism, the necessary leadership is lacking. In the absence of a revolutionary leadership that could unify these struggles and focus them on a clear objective -- a general strike with the occupation of the factories, the overthrow of capitalism, and the seizure of power -- this enormous combative energy threatens to be dissipated without any tangible result.
However, the apparatus of the ICI
than that of the PCF [Paris much weaker ti Communiste Français -- French Communist party]. It must be anticipated that facing a much more independent Communist vanguard, one able to take the initiative, this apparatus will not have the same capacity as the PCF to canalize a spontaneous explosion like that of May 1968 toward purely reformist objectives, if it should occur.