Rome
It is certainly not easy to chart in a precise way the developments that may take place in the coming Jear -- and especially in the next few months -- in the Italian situation, which is marked by constantly increasing and deepening tensions and conflicts at all levels. It is essential, however, to try to grasp some of the basic tendencies if we are not to fall into empiricism and resign ourselves to living from day to day, thus exposing ourselves to a whole series of harmful turns.
Since October 1968 the workers have mobilized with a scope and intensity unprecedented in the last fifteen years. It is needless to recall how many times we have been prompted to write on this so set to monta Be an agro for subject in the past. It is sufficien fot the last sion of the power of the wave of revolt which has swept practically every region of the country, every branch of industry, and every layer of the working class.
At this writing, general or industry-wide strikes are in progress or threatened in a great number of provinces, and it can scarcely be doubted that they will be successful. If we take into consideration, moreover, the fact that contracts are coming up for renegotiation in important industries (metals first of all), the urgent problems persisting even where contracts are not about to expire, and the constant pressure of more general problems on which an all-out fight has begun (e.g., pensions), then the inescapable conclusion is that a new wave of great struggles may begin almost immediately.
Let us not forget that the general limits imposed by the economic situation allow the government and the employer class very little leeway for maneuver. According to recent estimates by Confindustria itself [Confederazione Generale dell'Industria Italiana -- General Confederation of Italian Industry], no change in the employment trend is possible. Ihus, the new jobs created in industry or in the commercial and service sector will remain insufficient to absorb the manpower displaced from agriculture and the youth entering the job market. It is possible, in fact, that the inexorable process of concentration and rationalization will even reduce industrial employment, at least in certain branches. The social and political consequences of this may be easily imagined.
Moreover, given the logic of the system and the intensity of international competition (which it is more than ever essential for the Italian economy to meet), there cannot be even a minimal relaxation of the infernal rates of exploitation which are unquestionably a fundamental cause of the current outbreak of workers' struggles at every level.
It seems, furthermore, that in the present context it would be quite difficult for the unions to act in precisely the way they did, for example, in the 1966 metal workers strike. Antibureaucratic "confrontation" has now come to the factory gates, too. And among broad layers of the workers there is a spirit of clear hostility, if not always downright opposition, to the attempts of the bureaucrats to impose their authority.
The unions are facing an unavoidable dilemma. Either they must seek to apply the usual restraints (which in this case would have to be brutal) and risk sharply increasing the influence of the revolutionary antibureaucratio forces and tendencies; or they have to raise the ante themselves and yield to pressures from the ranks. And in this second instance, they would help to promote a process which they could not be sure of controlling. In either case, therelore, the objective possibility exists Ior broad struggles actively involving large masses of those categories of workers whose place in the productive process itself promotes firmness and decisiveness.
Moreover the extraordinary unrest which marked the intermediate social strata -- essentially the old and new petty bourgeoisie -- last year is by no means likely to exhaust itself. The most recent "confrontations," erupting in such an eminently reactionary sector as the legal profession, indicate to the contrary that the crises in these classes will continue and may even take the form of convulsions. Revolutionists will be extremely interested in following these developments closely, because measuring the fever of the petty bourgeoisie can provide very useful indications of the tendencies emerging and the outlets which the profound crisis of Italian society as a whole may take.
Needless to say, the course of the student movement will be a major factor. This is a growing social and political force, which can be classed as petty bourgeois only with all the qualifications and limitations that we have already had several occasions to point out. Despite the decline in the university student movement, which has recently worsened over it was two months ago, and despite what the impasse which already threatens the nigh-school movement, the potentialities of the student movement remain vast. And under certain conditions, there can renewed explosions in the educational system, and all the more so because the government's margin for demagogic reformist maneuvers is quite limited, if not nonexistent, here also.
• essential factor is the instability of the government. The launching of the new center-left government was an attempt to stem the tendencies toward dissolution in the government coalition. It is significant that Premier Mariano Rumor sought to involve all groups and factions of the coalition parties in this operation. but tnis capturing oi all potential internal oppositionists will only magnify the dangers if, as is probable, the new center-left experiment is not successiul.
The most probable perspective - to judge by the government's first acts and vicissitudes -- is alternating indecisiveness, hesitation, and arbitrariness, the objective result of which will be to increase the paralysis and confusion. The ruling class's political crisis seems insurmountable, and in fact a crisis of the political system can be considered to have begun.
The picture which I have outlined may seem, from the standpoint of forces opposing the system, too optimistic. But am "optimistic" in precisely because I distinguishing a whole series of objectively existing or underlying conditions and tendencies, I am -- or may appear to be -- "pessimistic" with regard to the realization of these possibilities, the actual outcome of the situation.
The working class mobilized impetvously in 1968 and there is every likelihood of an equal thrust in 1969. But the essential element in the dynamics of the situation is whether this mobilization can attain a more properly political level. It goes without saying that even an essentially economic movement, when it has assumed the proportions reached by this movement in recent months or to be anticipated in the near future, has a political content objectively and affects the overall social and political equilibrium.
But such a movement is inevitably condemned to exhaust itself once certain more or less satisfactory results are attained, unless it becomes more directly political, unless it assumes explicit political objectives. The mobilizations dia not do this in 1968. Will they do so in
1969? That will depend on the intervention of the workers organizations and on the influence that the revolutionary vanguard groups can exercise. A political solution arising solely out of the spontaneous development of the movement is by far the least probable possibility, and it is well not to include such a hypothesis in a realistic outline of the prospects.
The PCI IPartito Comunista Italiano -- Italian Communist party], more than ever paralyzed by the contradiction between its now profoundly Social Democratic inner logic and the need to engage in demagogic maneuvers so as not to cut itsell ofl from the living movement, will not and cannot take the needed course. And it is not worth bothering to discuss the possibility of any such action by the PSIUP [Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria -- Italian Socialist party of Proletarian Unityl. As for the revolutionary left, the fragmentation and lack of clear guidelines and orientation which it suffers from at present make it seem unlikely that it can respond in time to the demands of the situation.
More or less the same holds for the student movement (considering it here as a mass movement). Unless new orientations come to the fore in the universities -- unless inconsistent extremism (in the Ieninist sense of the term) and destructive sectarianism, or spontaneity-worship poorly concealed behind a variety of masks are overcome -- it will be difficult for any new mobilizations around particular developments to achieve better results than in 1968. And the high-school movement itself, if it is unable to avoid the same dangers, will go into a decline or stagnate at the present level.
In recent weeks, above all after the episode in Focette, * a new danger has arisen which it would be absurd to ignore. For the first time in a long period, in any case since the start of the big upsurge of the students and workers, the reactionary forces have unleashed an oflensive and shown clear intent to organize. In all likelihood, they nave been able to achieve very little up to now, and I do not intend to raise impressionistic alarms. But the important thing is that these forces have begun to move and are seeking to promote certain incipient processes.
The ruling classes cannot passively accept new upsurges in the mass movement, ever deepening crises of the society, and progressive paralysis of their
political institutions. They realize that they must act with caution, as their attitude after Avola* shows. And they are aware of the fact that they still have no alternative solution.
Certain sectors and groups, however, have now decided to prepare such an alternative and to create means for intervening directly. While not decisive, this could begin to affect the situation. The moves made after Focette; the propaganda being whipped up for full-fledged action squads; and certain moves by the police and Carabinieri [special riot police], such as the declarations of the police command in Lucca and the denunciation of the farm workers in Avola, point precisely in this direction.
These are some symptoms which indicate that certain conservatively oriented strata of the petty bourgeoisie are becoming attracted to such projects. Ii these tendencies crystallize we will see the beginning of a new fascist-type movement.
The revolutionary left must not only recognize this danger. It must take clear cognizance of its increased responsibilities. Despite its divisions, as a whole it is now a force which all must reckon with. Moreover, various groups in the revolutionary left may at certain times be capable of making moves that can have broad political repercussions. For precisely these reasons, the left must analyze the situation and its potential in depth and outline a strategy of action based not on a general need for confrontation or to express its own
rebellion (which was legitimate and necessary in less advanced phases) but on a realistic appraisal of what action is possible and productive at a given moment.
Clearly, the main line of defense
-- and counterattack (leaving aside the special measures which can and must be taken in the event of attacks by fascist squads or the development of reactionary propaganda inciting to physical violence)-- must be to assure the greatest success and continuity of the proletarian mass movement.
Anyone can see that if the workers mobilize, the extreme right will disappear from the scene, at least as long as the present relationship of forces endures. The major effort, then, must be concentrated on preparing the way for and broadening and deepening the great movements shaping up for the coming weeks and months. Everything must be done to facilitate and politicalize these largescale mobilizations. Everything that poses obstacles to these mobilizations, even other legitimate needs, must be rated as absolutely of secondary importance.
In this way we can minimize the negative consequences of the disastrous fragmentation of the revolutionary left. In this way we can create the preconditions for at least objectively convergent activity by these groups and, in the last analysis, for subjecting their positions to the test of reality. In this way we can pave the way for eventual regroupment aimed at organizing a revolutionary party, which remains the essential prerequisite for any social and political crisis to culminate in a decisive struggle for the conquest of power and the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Notes
* A place in Tuscany where a youth was shot when police opened fire on a student confrontation demonstration on New Tear's Eve.
* A town in Sicily where police fired on a crowd of striking farm workers December 2, killing two and wounding six. The government and the conservative press condemned this repression, trying to put the blame for it on individual policemen.