Rome
Although firmly rejecting the bug bear of a fascist or military coup d'etat, raised to cover the opportunistic line of the traditional workers' parties, we pointed some time ago to certain tendencies in the Italian situation that are not without danger. In recent months especially, fascist or neofascist activity has been assuming more and more important proportions, as well as a consistency and aggressiveness never before possible. All this indicates that not unimportant groups of industrialists and landowners have decided to give financial support to the fascists. It confirms, more over, that the extreme right is being favored with increasingly extensive complicity in the state apparatus, the police, and the courts.
The tumultuous episodes in Reggio di Calabria, and to a lesser extent in L'Aguila, have, in certain respects, been still more alarming. For the first time since the end of the war, fascist groups have succeeded in dominating and exploiting movements of popular discontent arising even in areas where the left parties have electoral influence. Other incidents, although far less spectacular, have also revealed that a fascist backlash is developing among petty-bourgeois strata fed up with the protracted social and political instability.
The results of the June 13 elections, which come within this context, represent another alarm bell. Of course it was, after all, only a local election, limited for the most part to regions in the center and south of the country. The Genoa results were a small part of the whole and did not seem to follow the trend that shaped up in Sicily, Rome, or Foggia. But even taking all this into account, the signs are still clear, and the worst policy would be to pretend that nothing is happening.
In their comments, the bureaucrats of the PCI [Partito Comunista Italiano- Italian Communist partyl put the blame for the neofascist success on the sterility of the center-left government and the turn to the right made 654
in recent months by the DC [Democrazia Cristiana— Christian Democracy].
There is no doubt that the centerleft's inability to achieve its original objectives has been one of the main factors in the present crisis. In the years 1962-68 the Italian bourgeoisie proved itself incapable of a preventive reformist operation, thereby creating favorable conditions for the explosion in the last three years. Time after time it has failed to apply remedies- despite powerful pressures from below.
Certain laws passed recently, such as the rural-development-funds bill and the housing bill (the latter has not yet been ratified by the Senate) are textbook examples of rotten compromises that produce exactly the opposite of the desired result. Because of their inconsistent and contradictory character, such measures cannot satisfy the strata that are supposed to benefit from them. Therefore, these strata do not mobilize in support of them. But, at the same time, such reforms alarm more reactionary strata, which fear being hurt by them and which resort to any and all means to mount a counterattack.
The projected reforms in education, especially in higher education, have had the same effect. They are totally incapable of meeting the most elementary demands of the students. None theless they have aroused bitter re sistance from the more retrograde interests.
But we should note before going any further that the Communist party bureaucrats share the responsibility for this policy, inasmuch as they have provided important cover for the government (in the case of the housing law, it has been noted that the abstention of the Communist deputies was decisive in achieving passage).
Furthermore, the reform program that the PCI is advancing, primarily through the intermediary of the unions, would not in fact be free from difficulties similar to those associated with the reformism of the center-left. In the last analysis, there is no qualitative difference between the PCI and the government coalition in this area. The Communists' fundamental contradietion lies in projecting a reformist solution for the workers' movement at a time when the profound crisis of Italian society makes possible, in fact demands, a revolutionary perspective.
For precisely this reason, the PCI opportunists have also been unable to avoid a substantial sterility. They have given up revolutionary struggle against the system. At the same time they cannot implement their reformist policy. In the vacuum left by the lack of general political solutions, it was almost inevitable that retrogressive tendencies would set in.
The right turn of the DC was far from being an "error" or simply a tactical maneuver. It corresponded to a specific need of the ruling class in this phase. It was not by chance that only a few days apart the secretary of the DC, Forlani, and the chairman of the industrialists' association, Lombardi, expressed similar orientations.
The priority task for the bourgeoisie and the government is to bring about a return to "normalcy," first of all to reestablish the authority of the bosses in the plants, in order to permit a steadier pace of production. If this objective is not achieved in a relatively short time, the political and social crisis will worsen and disruptive tendencies will increase. Let us repeat: It was the vital need of the ruling class to avert this danger- and not simply or even primarily electoral opportunism - that determined the most recent positions of the Christian Democratic leadership.
The June 13 elections revealed - most of all in the cases of Sicily, Rome, and Foggia-that there are capitalist and landowning groups ready to use neofascism to achieve their objectives. At the same time, the vote showed that important strata of the petty bourgeoisie and urban middle-bourgeoisie, to say nothing of sectors of the popular masses in economically and socially disrupted areas, can now provide mass support for these maneuvers.
What are the prospects for the near future? The variant of the government enlarging its base by overtures to the PCI has become still less probable than before. On the other hand, the situation has changed with respect to the chances for a governmental bloc weighted more to the right. The fascist and neofascist organizations came out of the June elections strengthened. They will probably try to increase their role as an instrument of repression and reactionary violence operating outside of the "legal" state apparatus.
But the weight of the neofascists has also increased notably in the area of parliamentary politics. In the present context, the DC will be compelled to rely increasingly on support from the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano - Italian Social Movement, the neofascists] for its conservative projects and to counterbalance any balking by the Socialists (with Communist support). It is significant that in the statements he made immediately after the elections, the fascist leader Almirante made an overture in this direction, calling on his followers to demonstrate a sense of responsibility and restrain themselves from expressions of joy that might provoke incidents. It need scarcely be added that tendencies in the state apparatus toward complicity with the neofascists will receive considerable encouragement from the increase in the MSI vote.
The conditions for a complete aboutface by the DC and thus for a rightist bloc, to be sure, do not exist. Thus, the center-left still seems the only possible alternative. This is all the more true because the Christian Democratic losses were in part compensated for by the rather good showing of the Socialists, Social Democrats, and Republicans.
But in the aftermath of these elections, the center-left will be rent by still more acute conflicts. (We need only think of the fact that the Socialists will have to react to the increased strength of the extreme right in a way opposite to the direction in which the DC will inevitably seek to move.) Moreover, the center-left will now be strongly tipped to the right. The gains of the Republicans, and even more of the Social Democrats, represent a strengthening of the moderate wing.
It is not insignificant that in its comment on the elections, La Stampa, the mouthpiece of the FIAT company, although it has been in the forefront of the center-left and has flirted with reformism, called the Christian Democratic and Socialist left to order, de claring "all these rebellious speeches and gestures on the left gained no votes."
If, despite all these considerations, we must still avoid impressionistically drawing any pessimistic conclusions, it is essentially because the struggles in recent months and in these last weeks themselves-from FIAT to Zanussi-have proved that the workers' upsurge is far from running out of steam.
These battles have demonstrated that the workers in the strongest and most advanced categories are not ready to see the gains they made in 1969-70 wiped out by higher prices and a rationalization that results in increased exploitation. The workers have also shown that they are unwilling to return to "their place" and subject themselves once again to a rigidly hierarchical organization within the plants, or to yield to the threat of higher levels of unemployment. They are continuing to struggle for a system of organizing work that would be at least bearable and for consolidation of the relationship of forces established in the last three years.
Unless there are failures and setbacks in this struggle, the day of victory will never come for the conservatives, and the system will not overcome its crisis of disintegration. Demonstrations such as the one May 30 in Rome and the one June 12* in Milan are additional indications that there are ample possibilities for successfully meeting the offensive of the conservatives and reactionaries.
In order to achieve this result, however, certain definite conditions are required. The first is that the struggles in progress or in prospect be led with an understanding of the overall situation and the relationship of forces. In other words, it is essential to make every effort to assure a successful outcome of such important struggles as those at FIAT and Zanussi. But it is no less essential to prevent the proliferation of conflicts and to avoid provoking explosions light-mindedly, without worrying too much about their chance of success.
Similarly, we must be attentive to the fact that struggles that stretch out too long, or are started up again after too brief a respite, produce symptoms of attrition and fatigue. We need not waste many words on explaining how dangerous such phenomena are in the present context.
* The far-left organizations, including the Italian section of the Fourth International, organized a demonstration of 30,000 persons in Milan in support of workers struggling for better housing and in protest against police attacks on homeless people squatting in empty apartments.
The need for a strategy based on transitional demands- demands with an anticapitalist dynamic-is still more urgent. The points we have raised several times in Bandiera Rossa (as well as in the editorial in the first issue in the new series of the magazine IV Internazionale) on workers' control, housing questions, the sliding scale of wages, prices, taxes, etc., re main on the agenda. It is more than ever important for the workers to de fend the democratic bodies that arose in the great struggles- to defend them from all attacks by the bosses and from all bureaucratic distortions.
In the face of fascist and reactionary attacks, the left must free itself from all sectarian reflexes and must understand the need for a united-front policy. And if we want a united front, we obviously cannot leave out the unions-or the opportunist parties, either.
If the revolutionary left is able to move in this direction, it will not only help to prevent a dangerous evolution in which we would be the first victims. At the same time, we can begin to be seen by broad working-class strata as offering a real alternative solution, and we can start to take decisive steps along the road to building the Leninist revolutionary party.
Germans Tap British Asset
The British and West German governments are currently examining ways of controlling the flow of skilled labor from Great Britain to Germany.
There are already 15,000 British subjects working in Germany, and the German embassy in London reported that it has received a similar number of entry applications in the first five months of 1971.
Many of the emigrants were employees of Britain's ailing steel industry, which plans new layoffs during the next year.
The London Times of June 14 reported that "certain diplomatic sources in Germany" have expressed "surprise" that Britain seems so willing to allow one of its greatest assets- skilled labor-to leave the country. Far from being concerned about overpopulation, the German government has stated that it is ready to absorb as much skilled
British labor as is available.
Meanwhile, British capitalism, on whose empire the sun never used to set, has been put in the embarrassing position of choosing between two hardly world-conquering alternatives: allowing thousands of valuable workers to emigrate, or seeking to attract German investment to England so that British workers may be able to find jobs.