Brescia massacre came just two weeks after the divorce referendum, which had resulted in a stinging defeat for the most reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie and had showed that the crisis of palitical leadership was more intense than ever. Brescia once more laid bare the conflict-laden character of the present situation in Italy and stimulated a frantic search for "new" solutions. The extremely negative economic outlook dramatized the situation still further, suggesting to certain of the most representative members of the ruling closs the perspective of a turn that could be concretized in a "Social Pact" similar to the one arrived at at the end of the second world war. Results of the strategy of tension More than anything else, the Brescia tragedy proved that there are sectors inclined to play the strategy of tension out to its most odious conclusions. As was easy to foresee, the failure of the "moderate" policy of seeking a bloc between the Christian Democracy and the right gave rise to an aftempt by the for right to turn to terror to bring the regime's crisis to a head. Everything that has come to light since the aflack as to the responsibility of clearly identified groups has clarified for everyone what the revolutionary loft has been saying ever since the attack at the Piazza Fontana in Milan: that the fascists could count on the connivance of the most varied sectors of the state apparatus and that their strength lay precisely in that connivance, as well os in the economic subsidies they were getting.
Italy. Once again, open polemics about what to do broke out among the bourgeoisie. Agneili, the president of Fiat and of the Federation of Industrialists, began speaking of a new "Social Pact, " explicitly referring to the national unity that was established at the end of the second world war. This new open political crisis was to lead to the resignation of the
Rumor government on June 10.
The Italian Communist party reacted to the new situation by relaunching its call for a "historic compromise" (that is, collaboration between Communists,
Socialists, and Christian Democrats).
We are publishing below the editorial on the Italian situation after Brescie that appeored in the June 5 issue of Bandiera Rossa, fortnightly organ of the
Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups), Italian section of the Fourth International.
INPRECOR
The response to the Brescia massacre, which took on enormous dimensions even emotionally, demonstrated another, no less clear, fact: The fascists are still very weak and any attempt to install a foscist or foscist-like dictatorship would inevitably run up ogainst a vigorous reaction from the working class and broad layers of the petty-bourgeoisie and could trigger a civilwar dynamic whose outcome would be uncertain. If is this ery fact -- and not any commitment to "democratic institufions" - that led the great majority of the ruling class to join in the condemning of the Brescia action and to seek to creale (through the medium of its best known spokesmen and press orgams) an anosphere of antifascist unity, taking up the thirty-year-old theme of nafional unity
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In the final analysis, the basic political question that is posed today is: Does the Italian bourgeoisie believe that it has reached the end of its rope and, given the impossibility of imposing a fascist or military dictatorship by force, is it prepared to carry our the sort of turn that it took in 194445; that is, to seek to create an alliance with all the components of the workers movement? Is the hour of the "Social Pact, "or, to use the words of Berlinguer (the head of the Italian Communist party), of the new "historic compromise" about to sound? Toward a new 'social pact? For our part, we have never excluded such a possibility. On the contrary, on several occasions we have pointed to important tendencies working in that direction. These tendencies have been strengthened to a considerable extent by the debasement of parliamentary democracy, the growing threat of an insoluble crisis for the regime, and the existing political relationship of forces that has been revealed by the divorce referendum and the mobilization after Brescia, to mention only the most recent events. The speech made by Agnelli to the Confindustria (the Italian industrialists federation) was the most important manifestation of this tendency. And for their part, the leaders of the Communist party have sought to utilize the referendum results and the response to Brescia in exactly this some sense. The bargaining power of the CP leaders has incontestably been bolstered, and certain international experiences during the past few weeks (in Porfugal) have contributed to discrediting the legend that the Communist parties are subversi ve elements, instead showing the inclination of the CP leoders to be a brake on mass movements, canalizing them just at the most potentially explosive conNevertheless, there are still very important obstacles to putting into practice the sort of policy that was implemented at the end of the second world war; that is, to bringing the Communist party into the government or into the parliamentary majority. On the level of the political forces of the bourgeoisie, the Christion Democracy and its right-wing allies have only recently reaffirmed their desire to continue on a center course, reserving for the CP the role of an apposition with which they can work, but without really integrating the CP into the governmental system. On the level of economic and social exigencies, these same bourgeois spokesmen who in past days have spoken about an explicit move toward a radical solution, have done nothing except demand that the CP and the unions show some "moderation, " renounce the struggle for a generalized defense of real wages, and call a truce. But they have offered nothing in return. It is for this reason that in spite of the inclination of the trade-union bureaucracy, and in spite of the concessions it made in holding bock a new rise of generalized struggles, the discussions between the trade-union leaders and the government have still not led to any concrete result and the union leaders have been unable to refrain from expressing their satisfaction, even if in a moderate fashion. But beyond episodic confrontations, the basic contradiction that continues to be an obstacle to the realization of the "historic compromise" is this: The bourgeoisie can extract itself -- or better, try to extract itself -- from the present economic situation only by reducing even further the standard of living of the brood masses, by making deep changes in the economic structure that in the final analysis will involve an increase in the rate of exploitation and a maintenance or reduction in the leve. of employment. They can try to prettify the situation all they want, but that is the reality. And that is exactly what the political and trode-union burea.cracies of the workers movement find difficult to occept in a situation in which the working class is still showing signs of a high degree of militancy and in which broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie are continuing to radicalize. On the more directly political level, it is hard to see how the much-desired "democratic" turn could be concretized, how the verbal declarations could actually be put into effect. Does anyone believe that it would be possible to "regenerate" all the state apparatuses from the police to the courts simply by affirming the desire for such a "regeneration" or of the most by changing the composition of the government? The workers will not pay for the crisis! Whatever may happen, revolutionaries must be absolutely clear on the fundamental orientation for the struggle of the workers movement during this period and on their crucial tasks. Above all, the working class must not be defeated in the battle that the bourgeoisie is ceoselessly waging against it to make it bear the costs of the economic crisis. On this score, all the speeches about "sense of responsibility" and "necessary sacrifices" must be rejected. That means that any idea of a truce must be rejected, and that the conditions for a general mobilization around goals that unite all layers of the laboring population must be created in the briefest possible fime. The employers and the government will try to attack the already insufficient system of adjusting wages occording to the cost of living. The working class must oppose this attempt with a mobilization for a real sliding scale of wages that would totally and immediately compensate for any reduction in buying power caused by price increases. This system must be under the control of the workers at all levels (from formulation of the cost of living index to control of prices in the stores). The employers and the government are preparing to ottock the level of employment. The warkers must oppose these plans with a struggle against every suspension or layoff so that the existing work may be shared among all workers with no reducfion in wages. If there must be reductions, they should be of working hours, not of wages. Finally, the working class must concern itself with the differentiations in its own midst. The least favored and least organized categories of workers are losing ground compared to the most militant categories, and they are consequently getting ever-lower wages. It is necessary to fight this tendency by demanding a guaranteed minimum wage. This total movement of the working closs must prepare for a national general strike, which must not be simply a repeat of the symbolic demonstrations of the past, but must take on the character of a test of strength. To do that, the strike must be prolonged for as long as is necessary to make the enemy class yield. No one should have any illusions about the difficulty of such a struggle. But there is no other choice. Either victory will be won on this field of battle and through these methods or the workers will have to resign themselves to paying the price, the very heavy price, of the crisis; and that would mean a serious defeat. As for the political battle -- whose urgency was demonstrated by the Brescia events -- revolutionaries must reject the solution of indiscriminate "democratic and antifascist unity. " Their line must be based on the necessity for a united front, but a workers united front, that is, a front based on the unity of the working class and all layers of the laboring population. This applies not only to the content of such a front but to its methods of struggle as well. The policy of antifascist unity tends inevitably to rely on constitutional mechanisms (demand-
OFFENSIVE ing the outlawing of the MSl, for. example and on putting pressure on the state apparatuses (the police, the courts, the government) to make them defend "democracy. " There is no longer any need to demonstrate how illusory such a perspective is. The policy of the workers united front implies the mobilization of the working class to repel fascist attacks and to defend the rights and freedoms that the workers movement has won through dozens of years of struggle. And that implies the necessity of forming workers self-defense detachments that are organized in the factories and neighborhoods and have ties among one another at the national level. This mears self-defense of local workers centers, pickets, and demonstrations. And that means fundamentally that the working class must not fall under the tutelage of the apparatuses of the class enemy, which has no desire to track down the fascist bands and has PORTUGAL THE WORKERS More than a month and a half after the "coup" carried out by the Armed Forces Movement, the aligrment of forces in the Portuguese political situation is emerging with ever greater clarity. The workers mobilizations that broke out on a big scale after May 1 are declining, but a series of "exemplary" but limited struggles ore keeping the general movement going. The Portuguese Communist party is stepping up its anti-strike, anti"ultraleft" campaign and continues to proclaim its support to the program of the Armed Forces Movenient. In addition, the CP is trying to set up a central trade-union apparatus, through the medium of the Union Federation, which utilizes the old corporatist "trade-union" structures. The junta-- which formally functions under the form of the Council of State, which hes sixteen military and five civilian members -- is initiating a policy of selective repression that is aimed at testing the far left's capacity to organize a brood response and at simultaneously preparing to take the strictest measures to limit as much as possible the occelerating decomposition of the bourgeoisie's decisive instrument: the army. This is all the more important in that on Tuesday, June 11, Spfnola indicated clearly that the "process of decolonialization will be a long one. " And that could produce new ferment in the army. Concurrently, the bourgeoisie is seeking through its many demonstrations of support to Spinola to releft a clear field for criminal bombers. The working class must rely on its own forces and its own organization. The prime task of revolutionaries is to fight so that ever more important layers of the working closs understand the necessity of this orientation and to become the direct protagonists of the anticapitalist and antifascist battles that are on the agenda. This means that all opportunist and centrist confusion about the class nature of the struggle against fascism must be avoided. All sectarian positions must be swept aside. The initiatives of the vanguard must not be seen as ends in themselves, but must constantly tend to mobilize the broadest possible layers of the working class. That is the concrete way to wage the struggle against the hegemony of the bureaucracy.
by A. UDRY construct an instrument of political rule that will facilitate its operations. If is in this general context, within which economic difficulties (unemployment, inflation, etc.) and the "colonial question" will play decisive roles, that the various demonstrations, political positions taken, and mobilizations now going on in