Blanco.
The Peruvian Embassy in Washington received a delegation May 25 and accepted the petition. The action was initiated by the U.S. Committee for Justice to Latin American Political Prisoners, P.0.Box 2303, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10001.
MILITANT YOUTH A PROBLEM FOR ITALIAN CP
By Sirio Di Giuliomaria
Rome
One of the chief characteristics of the present antiwar movement in many countries is the fact that its vanguard and most militant sector is the youth. In Italy as elsewhere, this involves primarily the students. The current issues to which they are most responsive is the war in Vietnam and the revolutionary orientation of the Cuban leaders.
The growing radicalization of the students is causing great embarrassment to the PCI (Italian Communist party). On the one hand it affects the rank and file of their own youth; on the other it stimulates the rise of an independent left movement among the students which the PCI, owing to its opportunist line, is incapable of controlling.
This trend is beginning to stand out with increasing distinctness. Since the April 12 demonstration and the first teach-in at Rome University [see World Outlook, May 19, p. 511], some new incidents, rather unpleasant for the Communist bureaucrats, have occurred.
In Florence, a national youth mobilization for Vietnam turned into a leftist demonstration over which the PCI had no control. The participants hissed the speaker representing the Socialist party; and when a Catholic speaker started addressing the meeting, they left the square and marched towards the American consulate.
Many copies of Che Guevara's mes-— sage were sold at the demonstration. (The message was published as a pamphlet by La Sinistra, a radical monthly magazine.)
In Venice a public meeting and a demonstration were organized despite the opposition of the PCI.
The PCI has reacted in the traditional Stalinist way. At a session of its Central Committee on May 17 most of the speeches were against the left minority groups. Such expressions as "groups which, rather than extremist, I would define as defeatist" (Amendola) "groups which are carrying on a poisonous fight against our party" (Ingrao) punctuated the various speeches. Even the PSIUP (Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity) was referred to in this way. For instance, one of the speakers said: "Recently the actions of these groups are being echoed in the PSIUP press, even in contradiction with its political orientation."
In the same session of the Central Committee, Amendola, the reporter, attacked the position of the Cuban revolutionary leadership. He said: "There are people who demand three or four Vietnams, which other peoples ought to support. For such armchair strategists it is always the others who ought to move. And what about us? What should we do? This is what should be clarified.
"We rejected a long time ago," he continued, "the theory of a ‘leading country'; now certain groups want China and Cuba to be referred to as leading countries."
This position with regard to the leftist groups and the Cuban line was applied at a public meeting in support of Vietnam organized by the Rome Chamber of Labor, the provincial council of the CGIL (General Confederation of Italian Labor). The program included a march May 18 to a meeting place and speeches by union leaders (a Socialist and a Communist).
At the assembly point, groups of pro-Chinese tried to carry their own banners and distribute their own leaflets. They were immediately attacked, beaten and even knocked down by special squads organized for the occasion. Their banners and leaflets were burned. They were called all sorts of names to incite the crowd against them. "Fascists," "provocateurs," "who pays you?" -- this was the way they were addressed by squad members. The same expressions were used everywhere, showing that they had been suggested by the organizers of the squads.
Leftist militants intervened and protested that the march and the meeting had been called by the unions and this conferred a united character to the denonstration.
The reply was that the slogans had already been set; i.e., "peace for Vietnam" and "freedom for Greece," and that if they wanted to use other slogans, they could organize their own demonstration.
The political basis of the hooliganism was evident: the Communist and Socialist leaderships of the unions had agreed on a very weak political orientation for the demonstration. The political line of the PCI on Vietnam is to exert pressure on the Socialist party, which is in the government, and thus obtain a change in the policy of the Italian government.
During and especially after the meeting, the squads went into action. This time those who protested, including
some PSIUP militants, were also beaten.
It was noticed by many that some of the members of the squads were not even members of the unions (for instance, some PCI full-timers were in the forefront). Even girls were beaten.
In spite of this hooligan atmosphere, members of the Fourth International distributed a leaflet explaining the case of Pfc. Howard Petrick and appealing for solidarity and contributions to be sent to the Petrick Defense Committee.
The distribution of the leaflet was marked by opposition and discussions but no real incident occurred. The Trotskyists were not attacked for various reasons: (1) Their policy is to participate in meetings and other political demonstrations with material which fits in with the character of each meeting and with slogans understandable by wide sectors of those involved. The pro-Maoist groups, due to their sectarian concepts of political action, intervene in all meetings and demonstrations with practically the same slogans, regardless of the purpose of the meetings. Thus, in the Rome meeting, they displayed banners with Mao's portrait and distributed leaflets accusing the CGIL, which had organized the demonstration, of being "opportunist.
(2) Up to now the PCI bureaucrats have been reluctant to attack the Fourth International sharply and openly. They know that there would be a reaction among their own rank and file; and even people who do not sympathize with Trotskyism would react to an attack against Trotskyism launched in the old Stalinist style.
However, it soon appeared that what the PCI bureaucrats had to check was not "groups," but a whole situation which developed against their orientation. A single fact spoke volumes:
On May 18 the squads came into action against groups who, among other things, pressed for organizing a more militant march after the meeting to go to the U.S. embassy. On the following day, after the news reached Rome that the U.S. had opened an attack in the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam, the PCI was obliged to publish a special issue of its daily, inviting everybody to demonstrate at the U.S. embassy.
The PCI leaders were worried that sufficient persons might not show up and so they made the invitation a wide one, including the pro-Maoists. This demonstration was a success. No squads came into operation. Thousands demonstrated in -621-
a militant way. The police limited thenselves to protecting the embassy and no serious incident occurred.
Different slogans were shouted alternatively. Some chanted, "Free Vietnam" and "Peace in Vietnam"; others chanted, "Red Vietnam"; "Ho Chi Minh"; "Che Guevara"; "Quit NATO" and "War, no; Guerrillas, yes!"
When the demonstrators marched to Palazzo Chigi (where the office of the prime minister is located), people at the windows of the Rome office of the PSU (the United Social Democratic party, which is in the government) in a nearby building waved their flag as a way of greeting the march. Part of the crowd started shouting, "Unity," while another part shouted, "Quit the government!"
This division of supporters of the Vietnamese people between a left and a right wing, with the youth joining the left in bulk, has become a major charac-— teristic of the antiwar movement during the past few months. Other significant facts can be cited which took place after the May 19 demonstration.
On May 22 a very militant meeting was called at Rome University in support of Vietnam. Among the speakers was Professor Cini, a Communist who had just returned from Vietnam where he had gone in behalf of the Russell Tribunal. Professor Cini granted an interview to La _Sinistra, causing great embarrassment to the PCI leadership which expelled the editor of this publication not so long ago. A very militant demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy concluded the meeting.
On May 24 a Vietnam "veglia" (wake) was organized in the central square of Piazza Navona in Rome. This time two means were adopted to prevent a left orientation from coming to the fore. (a) Speeches, songs, films were planned to last until late at night in order to exhaust the participants and cut down the crowd to such small size as to make a march impossible; (bd) the usual squads went into action to destroy "unofficial" banners and prevent groups from distributing leaflets.
The effort was unsuccessful. The PSIUP youth had brought banners with slogans such as "Two, three, four, five Vietnams"; "For the Freedom of Vietnam"; "Let's Quit NATO"; "No to the American peace."
They also distributed a leaflet which said, among other things: "Let's tell the 'pacifists' of all tendencies that as long as they do not distinguish between aggressors and those assaulted, their ‘pacifism' smells of deception and equivocation....Solidarity with those fighting against imperialism in Bolivia,
Venezuela, Peru. Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia and Guinea. Long live the revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral!...Solidarity with Communist China....Let's quit NATO."
The squads immediately went into action. However, this time they encountered a compact front of militants from all left tendencies (PSIUP and PCI leftwingers, Trotskyists, Maoists) who lined up in front of the banners ready for battle.
The squads lowered their belligerency to the verbal level. They were inmediately out-numbered, blocked and pushed back to where they had come fron.
The square was half empty by 11:30 p.m. Those remaining were mostly youth. The bureaucrats had forgotten that youth can get along on occasion with surprisingly little sleep.
As soon as the meeting ended, as many as 2,000 persons, chiefly youth, started a push towards the police barriers shutting off the street leading to the Senate. This was an obvious diversion, for suddenly a score of young men started running and left the square through a side street. All the others followed and in five minutes the square was empty. The whole crowd went down the street, shout-— ing slogans in favor of Vietnan.
The march went through the center of the city and reached the U.S. embassy at about 1 a.m. A united spirit was established as the march proceeded. Everyone was free to shout whatever slogan he wished and to swell the volume of slogans started by others. No PCI leaders were to be seen with the exception of minor figures. The PCI had been caught by surprise, not foreseeing that a march could be organized in that way.
The U.S. embassy was besieged. The police had blocked off the Via Veneto, putting buses across the streets to increase the strength of the blockade.
The demonstration continued in a peaceful way although its tone was very militant. The police for a time simply guarded the embassy while the demonstrators sat in the streets around the building, singing revolutionary songs and shouting anti-imperialist slogans.
At about 3 a.m. the police charged very brutally, using their belts. Many were injured. More than 100 were arrested and taken to a police station. Some of them were held over for trial on charges of conducting an "illicit demonstration."
The bourgeois press claimed that about thirty police were injured during the charge. The U.S. ambassador to Poland, who was walking along Via Veneto, showing some American students how demonstrations are permitted in a "democratic" country, was mistaken for one of the demonstrators. He was unmercifully beaten by the police.
It seems that the U.S. ambassador to Italy remained unconvinced about the "efficiency" of the Italian police and called for the marines from the nearby base in Naples. According to L'Unita&, the daily newspaper of the PCI, the call was for an emergency contingent of 1,500 marines to defend the embassy.
The May 24 march proved once again that the PCI leadership, with its present political line, is incapable of leading or even controlling large sectors of the youth. Graduates of the school of Stalinism, the thought that perhaps it would be well to change their line does not even occur to them. Their first idea is to resort to the use of violence against those standing to the left of then.
In an assembly of the active cadres of the Rome Federation of the PCI, Enrico Berlinguer, the regional secretary, harshly attacked the left groups. They should not be "underestimated," he said, "especially in Rome, where the centers of anti-Communist provocation are located."
The left groups, he continued, from a social point of view are "small groups of petty-bourgeoisie who base themselves on a phrasemongering revolutionism." However, "they should not be underestimated, but on the contrary fought against and isolated, for they could cause serious damage if we did not reply to their actions."
According to Berlinguer, the damage would be: (1) disturbances and even provocations during united demonstrations as occurred in Florence, Venice and Rome 62) denigration of the PCI and the CGIL; 4) spreading an atmosphere of nonconfidence in mass political action in sectors that are not politically firn.
"The fight against these pressure and provocation groups," Berlinguer concluded, "is a prerequisite therefore for the success of a united policy. (United with the Social Democratic party. -- S.D.G.) It should be firmly carried out, as we have done in the past weeks and days with very good political results."
With such a line can the PCI overcome its current difficulties with the youth? This is quite doubtful despite the strength of the PCI apparatus and the mass support the party enjoys.
The events at the recent National Congress of the UGI (the association of radical students which includes members of the PCI, PSIUP and PSU) is quite in-
dicative. The Communist leadership found itself in a minority within the Communist tendency on the political line as a whole. On a special issue the division was very sharp -- whether to make an alliance with the PSIUP or the PSU.
The left was for the PSIUP, while the national secretary of the Communist Youth, Petruccioli, was for an alliance with the PSU. He got only a small minority.
The left Communists and the PSIUP could have won a majority at the congress if the PCI and PSU bureaucrats had not resorted to one of their old tricks -they invalidated the mandates of all the delegations where the left held a majority. They were able to do this by applyi a very antidemocratic statute that permits the outgoing leadership to vote.
The result was that the left Communist and PSIUP tendencies walked out of the congress. After this, the congress approved the line proposed by the Social Democrats and elected a leadership composed of nine socialists of various tendencies (the PSIUP was excluded) and only four Communists. An alliance between the Communists and the PSIUP would have given the left a strong majority!
An interesting recent turn in Italy is the attractiveness of the Cuban
THE LESSONS
By Ernest