1.THE MEANING OF THE VOTE
ITALY AFTER JUNE 15: prepare for the autumn struggles The comments on the Italian elections made by the internotional bourgeois press are interesting more for the general state of mind they reveal than for the specific interpretations of the Italian scene they offer. Apart from a few self-consoling phrases about the peculiar character of the Italian Communist party (PCI — Partito Comunista Italiano), these comments betray deep concer; on occasion they even border on dismay. This is not surprising. During the past several months articles have been appearing abroad, based on worse than one-sided readings of the economic situation, presenting Italy as a country that has recovered after a long illness. Further, the limits of the workers struggles of last autumn and the insufficiency, If not nonexistence, of any response by the workers organizations to the blows dealt the workers by the recession gave the bourgeoisie additional grounds for confidence. But now there is burning disappointment. Capitalist Europe, already troubled by the eruption of the volcano of the Iberian peninsula, now fears that new leaks will be sprung in Italy. In any case, it is certain that June 15 further aggravated the continental crisis of leadership of the ruling class. Casting about for straws of hope, the Milan daily Corriere de la Sera wrote that June 15 was a victory for reformism. There is no denying that this assertion is partly true. The electoral revolt against the Christian Democracy has its root in the incapacity of succeeding governments to undertake any sort of reform. The success
CARZAN SCIOP by LIVIO MAITAN of the PCI represents a reward for the strongest force in the reformist lineup. But a big, and in our view fundamental, question remains: What meaning do the masses attach to the massive vote for the PCI and for the left more generally? What repercussions will the resounding results of June 15 have on the state of mind and political maturity of the masses? For the less politicized and radicalized sectors of the PCI's electorate, the vote most likely represents a generic protest and expression of a will to change things. As we have pointed out on many occasions, this sort of state of mind is also ar the root of certain hopes placed in the historic compromise, which is regarded as a way out of an intolerable situation and as o guarantee, even if only relative, that things will change. Nevertheless, the massive vote for the PCI has a more precise class significance, and there are good reasons why such a vote was registered in June 1975, but not in 1972, at the time of the preceding regional elections. Why the vote? There are two major reasons, on different levels, for the vote this time. The first relates to peripheral layers of the working masses and layers of the petty bourgeoisie more than to the working class in industry. The politicization and radicalization occurred later among these layers than among the working class in big indus-
The PDUP (Partito di Unita Proletaria - Party of Proletarian Unity) ran candidates in ten of the fifteen administrative regions in which elections were held on June 15. In some of these regiors - Lombardy, Campania, Latium, Venetia, Umbria - the PDUP participated in a bloc with Avanguardia Operaia (AO - Workers Vanguard), the bloc calling itself Democrazia
Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy). In Turin there was only one list, that of Avanguardia
Operaia, In some areas, the far-left list won more than 2 percent of the vote. But it was in
Milan especially that success was achieved: 3.7 percent of the vote was won and three delegates were elected to the eighty-member municipal council in this most important political center of the country. It is noteworthy that in some regions in which the electoral bloc was not established, Avanguardia Operaid called for a vote for the Communist party (PCI - Partito Comunista Italiano); the PDUP did the some in Turin, declining to support the candicates of AO. The Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (GCR-Revolutionary Communist Groups), Italian section of the Fourth International, called for votes for the PCI or PDUP-AO candidates.
ITALY
UNA CHANDEL
P.C.J les then 25%
25% -30%
30% -35%
35%-45% more than 453
ROME
ELSA the far left vote
More than 11 million voters cast ballots for the PCI on June 15. The PCI won 33.4% of the vote in the regional elections and 32.7% in the provincial elections. The map, taken from the Paris daily Le Mande, indicates the PCI's electoral strength by region. The PCI today claims 1, 683, 740 members (compared with 1,719,000 in 1945 and 2,145,000 in 1964) -
DC: Democrazio Cristiana (Christian Democracy); PCI: Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist party; PSI: Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist party); PSDI: Partito Socialisto
Democratico Italiano (Italian Democratic Socialist party); PRI: Partito Repubblicano Italiano
(Italian Republican party); PLI: Partito Liberale Italiano (Italian Liberal party); MSI/DN:
Movimento Sociale Italiano/Destra Nazionale (Italian Social Movement/National Right);
PDUP: Partito di Unito Proletario per il Comunismo (Party of Proletarian Unity for Communism).
*In 1970 there were o total of 690 seats in all the regional assemblies; in 1975 there were 720.
italian election results Regional Legislative Elections Elections 1970 1972 Parties Vote (%) Seats" PC 37.9 287 38.4 PCI 27.9 200 28.3 PSI 10.4 67 9.8 PSDI 7.0 5.2 PRL 2.9 18 2.9 PLL 4.7 3.9 MSL/ON 5.9 34 8.1 PDUP Miss. left 3.3 ..34. fry or among the students; for this reason, they were not expressed in the elections of 1972; but they were expressed, and strikingly, this time. The second relates to the working class more directly. In face of the attack on living standards and jobs — which was the central axis of the employers' offensive throughout last autumn - the workers increasingly understood that economic struggles and sectoral battles are not enough, that comprehensive political solutions are needed. This understanding, combined with the passivity of the bureaucratic leaderships, has acted as on impediment to mobilizations of the 1968-69 type. Consequently, as we have seen aiready, the mobilizations have not been very broad and combative, apart from some "general strikes" that hove increasingly assumed the character of sterile rituals. This fact was af the root of the analyses of those who claimed that the combativity potenfial of the working class had been seriously reduced, if not actually exhausted, by the demoralizing blows of the crisis. In reality, however, the working class was more cautious in its mobilizations precisely because it had gained a better understanding of the stakes involved; what could have appeared to be a retreat was actually a manifestation of widespread political maturity. The June 15 vote was also an expression of this The emergence of a spectocular change in the relationship of forces between the classes and of the politica! maturation of very broad prolearian masses will in tum constitute a very strong stimulus in two directions, both of them positive. The working class will acquire even
Regional Elections 1975 Vote (%) Number of votes Vote (%) Seats
10,707,682 35.3 277.
19,149,135. 33.4 247
3,636,947. 12.0 82 1,700,983 5.6 36 - 261,016 3.2 19 --.748,749 2.5 11 1,951,011 6.4 40 146,451 0.5 326,252 1.1 greater confidence in its own strength and will thus be more determined than before to take concrete advantage of its increased political and social specific weight. At the same time, there will be an intensification of the process of political maturation in the sense that all problems will tend to be reflected in general political terms, in terms of comprehersive political choices, and thus, implicitly, in terms of power. In this area the fies between the reformist organizations and the most dynamic layers of the masses are much less solid and more precarious in that the responses that these masses need (and of which they are beginning to become increasingly conscious) cannot be provided by the policies of the bureaucratic leaderships. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that this controdiction is already perceived among substantial sectors. Hence, a part of the PCI vote must be interpreted not as a vote of positive adherence, but rather as a vote for the strongest organization, in the absence of a solid alternative further left; this is also why the far left was able to make its presence felt electorally, a presence that was not at all irrelevant if considered not on a national scale but rather in a few crucial political centers. loward the contract battles The conclusion that flows from all these analytical considerations is that the battles shaping up for the next few months - especially the big battles around the renegotiation of contracts for the main industrial categories — will take place in a context favorable in many respects, with a confident working class conscious of
2. THE BOURGEOISIE IN
ITALY its own strength and of the weakness of its adversary and inclined neither to continue to bear the costs of the crisis nor to be content with crumbs. The difficulty will lie precisely in the factor that embodies the greater maturity of the situation: in the necessity of assuring a political outlet for the struggles and in the impediment to this goal that the minimalist and compromising perspective of the reformists will continue to represent. This will be the crucial point, and it is on this level that the contradictions between the reformists and growing sectors of the masses will be able to emerge most Thus, it is also for this reason that the autumn struggles will be very important, for they could constitute an imA