Rome
At this writing a governmental crisis has opened in Italy and a solution is not yet very near. However, the essential elements of the situation and the lines of action for the working class and for revolutionists at this stage can be seen clearly as of now.
First of all, it must be said that the operation attempted by the reactionary forces following the tragic Milan bombing of December 12 has failed. The offensive by the extreme right and even the attempts of the bourgeois moderates to capitalize on the incident have had only marginal effects. The relationship of forces between the fundamental classes has not changed. The working class has not been disoriented by the enemy's propaganda, and the reactionary backlash among the petty bourgeoisie has affected only very limited sectors.
This failure is a result essentially of the fact that the mobilizations of 1968 and 1969 profoundly revolutionized Italian society, and a noisy propaganda campaign, centering even on a tragic event, was not sufficient to reverse this development. It should be added that the division in the bourgeoisie at the level of its political apparatuses has prevented it from maneuvering with the necessary adroitness (from its point of view, needless to say).
The clumsiness of the bourgeoisie has been especially evident in the campaign of repression that was unleashed in the aftermath of December 12 and which is still continuing. This campaign would be far more dangerous and insidious if it were carried on in a selective fashion. On the other hand, extending it to thousands of people, including hundreds of trade-union officials, could not help but provoke a massive counterattack, broad unity in action, and even a mobilization of sectors previously passive (among other things, the protest movement of the journalists, which has attained considerable proportions, must be noted).
All of these facts were already clear March 16, 1970
a few weeks after December 12. However, the demonstration against the repression which took place in Milan January 31, in which 50,000 people participated, gave the clearest demon- . stration of this development, to the great despair of Corriere della Sera and the forces for which it speaks.
This demonstration - which the students of the Statale (the State University) can be credited with initiating - was significant in several aspects. It was marked by a mass mobilization which was automatically to make the march held the next day by a few hundred fascists look ridiculous. It was distinguished by the participation of a high percentage of workers (young workers in particular). It exhibited an effective system of self-defense (which one would be tempted to compare with the Japanese model). And, finally, it proved to be a very successful demonstration of a united front.
I cannot share the estimation of some ultraleft leaders and intellectuals who, obsessed with the bogey of "co-optation," did not hide their unhappiness over the participation of the traditional workers organizations. I cannot share this estimate, first of all, because in the given circumstances, the primary need was precisely a mass mobilization - and there is not a shadow of a doubt that the calls supporting the demonstration by the traditional parties contributed substantially to achieving this result. Secondly, the tone was not set by the line of the opportunist leaderships and in practice all the left and extreme left tendencies were able to raise their own slogans. Finally, January 31 in Milan once again showed the potential of the student movement when it acts as a mass movement.
The success of the strikes in January and the first half of February - coming after the conclusion of the great wave of contract struggles in the fallconfirmed, moreover, the fact that the combativity of the industrial working class and other strata of workers has remained undiminished. At the same time, even in the plants involved in the fall struggles, strikes and mobilizations have developed rapidly whenever the bosses have made the least attempt to reduce the meaning of the new contracts or impose a speedup. The bosses, then, cannot entertain any illusions. Following the 1968-69 upsurge, a new relationship of forces exists in the plants which they cannot expect to alter in the short run.
All of this forms the background of the February governmental crisis. As I have said, the specific outcome of this crisis is doubtful. What is clear, in any case, is that the crisis of the ruling class, of the system, is continuing or even deepening. An extraparliamentary solution of a rightist type seems more problematical than ever and I do not believe either that there is a real possibility of a Greek style coup d'etat as long as the mass movement retains its present power and consciousness.
In the parliamentary arena there are not many alternatives. While a right-wing solution is excluded, PCI [Partito Comunista Italiano - Italian Communist party] participation in the government-either directly or indirectly - remains equally impossible both because of the opposition of the decisive layers of the bourgeoisie and because of a lack of interest on the part of the PCI leaders in putting themselves in a position which in the present conditions would seriously compromise their relations with the masses.
The only road, therefore, seems to be an agreement between the so-called center-left parties (Christian Democrats, Socialists, Social Democrats, and Republicans), no matter whether this takes the form of a four-party government, a two-party government, or a resurrection of the formula of a so-called monocolore government (that is, a cabinet composed entirely of Christian Democrats supported in parliament by the other allied par-
223 223
ties), which was adopted after the new Socialist split in July 1969.
As for resorting to new elections, the immediate consequence of this would be to increase political tension both in the country and among the center-left allies. Very likely the results of this would provoke still more dangerous fragmentation and instability than exist now. In any case, the most likely perspective is for a continued deepening of the political crisis, which will tend to become chronic.
In this context, the working class must continue to mobilize in the struggles that remain open; prepare for the battles over plant and industrywide accords complementing the national contracts; and counterattack without the slightest hesitation against any attempt by the bosses to wipe out the gains of the fall (either by intensifying the rate of exploitation, or by broader measures of economic policy, or by using both methods at once).
At the same time, the workers must strive to consolidate the new relationship of forces in the plants. The essential task in this area must be to organize and broaden the movement for shop delegates, which represents the most important experience of the 1969 upsurge.
This area is the focus of the efforts of the Italian revolutionists in the present stage. Parallel to advancing this task, they stress the need for a transitional program adapted to the needs of the masses and designed to have a dynamic of anticapitalist struggle.
Finally, the Italian revolutionists are striving to win acceptance of this orientation by the revolutionary left and they are preparing a national conference to clarify their perspectives and strengthen their means for intervening politically and organizationally in the process that is going on.
It goes without saying that the need for a united front against the repres sion remains a vital one. For this reason the Italian revolutionists associate themselves with every initiative capable of broadening and strengthening the counterattack against the assault of the governmental machinery, and firmly combat all forms of sectarianism.
February 19.
'As a Combat Leader, Ray Was Outstanding'
Memorial Meeting Honors V.R. Dunne
Friends and comrades gathered at Skoglund Hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 3, to pay tribute to Vincent Raymond Dunne, pioneer American communist and founding leader of the Socialist Workers party, who died on February 17.
Present at the meeting were a number of participants in the famous 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes, of which V.R. Dunne was one of the principal leaders. The memorial address was given by Farrell Dobbs, national secretary of the SWP, who was himself a participant in the 1934 strikes and a lifelong friend and political collaborator of the Trotskyist leader.
Messages of solidarity were sent to the meeting from throughout the world Trotskyist movement, and from branches of the SWP and locals of the Young Socialist Alliance across the United States.
"Comrade Dunne," the United Secretariat of the Fourth International declared, "has become for the world Trotskyist movement the very symbol of those we try to gather around the banner of Lenin and Trotsky: a revolutionary working-class cadre. World revolution will be victorious and mankind will have a glorious existence open to it when there will 224
be enough Vincent Dunnes everywhere."
Letters and telegrams came from Trotskyists in Japan and Ceylon, from the International Marxist Group in Britain, the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari in Italy, the Ligue Communiste in France, to name only some.
Peng Shu-tse and Chen Pi-lan, pioneer members of the Chinese Communist party and founders of the Chinese Trotskyist movement wrote: "Just as Comrade Dunne took great interest in the youth of our movement, his work stands as a heritage toward which the young comrades can look."
Farrell Dobbs described Ray Dunne as he first met him 1934:
"As a youth, just entering the tradeunion and revolutionary movement, I looked to him as my leader and teacher, as a captain in combat, a political mentor and an educator in the task of building a revolutionary combat party.
"I quickly found Ray to be the kind of educator who reinforced his teaching by the example that he set. He was one of the most selfless persons I ever knew. He tried to avoid subjective reaction to people and events, striving instead to see things objectively, wholly apart from his own personal feeling in the matter...
"As a political mentor Ray played a key role in the trade-union strug-
This derived from both his ingles.
ternationalist outlook and his ability to relate national factors to the local scene. He had an intimate grasp of the trade-union movement. He knew it up one side and down the other. And he knew the score about union bureaucrats and social democratic and Stalinist misleaders. Add to this a basic grasp of the antilabor role of the capitalist government, and it comprises a vital body of political know!- edge. . :•
"As a combat leader, Ray was outstanding in many respects. He had the vital quality of keeping a cool head in a critical situation. And we went through some rough ones, not only in 1934. He never shirked hazardous duty as a leader. Nor did he disdain minor tasks. From his teaching and example in this sphere we learned important lessons. 'Never dabble in anything you do,' he used to say to us over and over again. 'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right....
"I learned a lot from Ray about the team concept in leadership. He taught and demonstrated in action what a team means, how vital it is, how a combination of men and women working as a team can act unitedly in such a way so that they emphasize their collective strengths as a totality and through the collaboration compensate for one another's weaknesses..
Ray
Farrell Dobbs discussed Dunne's understanding of the revolutionary dynamic of workers struggles:
"While fully aware of the inherent revolutionary power of the working class, Ray knew that only time and events would bring the class to revolutionary action. And that along the way it is the task of the revolutionary party to help the workers through the developmental processes of acquiring political class consciousness.
"His knowledge in this respect stems from rich class-struggle experience. And this knowledge, this know-how, gained in part from what he learned as a party man and in part from his experiences in the class struggle, equipped him admirably to participate in discussions with Leon Trotsky, as he did in the late 1930s, through which were shaped the concept of the transitional program of the Trotskyist world movement.
"This program, of which Ray was in a real sense a coauthor, is designed to help revolutionary militants pro-
India mote mass development of anticapitalist political consciousness. It takes as its point of departure a reaching out to the masses at their present level of political understanding."
Dobbs read to the memorial meeting a letter from Jack Barnes, the organizational secretary of the SWP, who was trained by Ray Dunne in the early sixties.
"It would be impossible to measure the profound influence which Ray Dunne had on those revolutionary youth who came to know him over the past decade," Barnes wrote, "who worked and collaborated with him and learned from him. His whole life and personality stood as a challenge to us to be part of the most genuinely human and fulfilling endeavor possible - the struggle for socialism...
"I know of young students from social backgrounds and experiences as different from Ray's as could be imagined who because of the force of his character decided to join the revolutionary movement long before they totally understood the political meaning of their actions. Ray's impeccable revolutionary character was the powerful initial argument persuading many of us to throw our lots in with the struggle of the working masses to advance mankind."
a result of this unprecedented united strength of the workers, jotdars and other rich peasants of Banshkopa, Athkara, Sidabaaid, Bhedua, Pathanchla, Krishnapur and some other villages have now conceded the demands of the village workers, and have agreed to pay them, instead of two-and-a-half kilograms of paddy (threshed unmilled rice), four kilograms of paddy and two square meals a day towards daily wages for all the seasons.
Though the distriet SWP is being approached from distant areas for holding meetings and organizing the movement, it is not able, with its limited manpower, to meet the growing demands of the movement. While the CPM leadership is opposing this movement of village workers for their bare existence, a section of their rank-andfile workers are coming forward to join the movement. Numerous enthusiastic youth are coming up. Comrade Anil Roy, secretary of the Krishnapur unit of the party, along with Comrades Fakir Singhababu and Laxmi Kanta Roy are leading the movement.
Big landlords with the help of other political parties have filed dozens of false complaints against them and other leading workers, without much success so far. On December 14, leading workers of about twenty-five villages including Comrades Anil Roy, Fakir Singhababu, Laxmi Kanta Roy, were taken to Simlapal Police Station. But the utter falseness of all the complaints against them was proved. Te