COMMUNIST PARTY & THE CRISIS by ETTORE SALVINI The Italian economy shows no sign of improving.* Industrial production is down 12-13% compared with last year and even down compared with several months ago. In a capitalist world whose overall situation is far from brilliant, Italy is locked in a battle with Britain for last place. The country is suffering not only from the effects of the crisis racking the entire capitalist world; it is also suffering from the aggravation of the effects of that crisis caused by the structural contradictions peculiar to its own history. The capitalist crisis is especially acute in Italy. If is virtually certain that Italy will emerge from the conjunctural crisis later than the other capitalist countries and that the Italian upturn will be of shorter duration than the others. The Italian capitalists consequently feel a special need to make the workers bear the especially high costs of the crisis, even though the relationship of class forces is not very favorable to the bourgeoisie. So it is not accidental that economic problems once again occupy stage center in the Italian political scene. An additional reason for this is the fact that contract battles are now shaping up, and the demands of the workers aimed at defending their living standards inevilably crystallize around such battles. The advances made by the left in the June 15, 1975, elections, the crisis of the Christian Democracy and the • See "The Myth of the Upturn, " INPRECOR, No. 30, July 3, 1975.
consequent crisis of the Christian Democracy's system of rule on the local level, and the situation of the Aldo Moro government, at the end of its rope but nonetheless buoyed up by the support of the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano - Italian Communist party), with its broad array of "red councils" (the local and municipal governments controlled by the PCI) constitute the political framework within which the economic debates go on. In this context, the regional conferences on employment (held in Turin and Milan) and the debate opened by PCI leader Napolitano in the pages of the CP weekly Rinascita do not represent unimportant factors or pure and simple maneuvers by the reformists; rather, they constitute an important political warning. They are initiatives through which the PCI intends to press for its major objective: the historic compromise, that is, PCI participation in the government along with the Christian Democracy. This objective, like the PCI's economic proposals, is a medium-term and not a short-term goal. More immediately, these initiatives are a means by which the PCI and the trade-union bureaucracy intend to work out a platform for the coming contract negotiations. The aim is to maximally reduce struggles, which in a social situation as tense as the one that now exists in Italy, could lead to "frontal confrontation, " the permanent nightmare that haunts the ex-revolutionary PCI. It is consequently necessary to convince the employers that the PCi is a "serious" and "responsible" party that
does not attack the sacred principles of "entrepreneurism." But it is equally if not even more necessary to convince the workers that the recipes of the PCI correspond to their interests. From this standpoint, it is extremely important to analyze the discussion that has been developing in Rinascita and also to take a look at what was said at the conference on employment. Some of the contributions to this discussion (not those made by members of the PCI) presented a critical examination of the experience of the "center-left" government. These contributions correctly stressed that the objective bases available today for broad reformist operations such as those put forward in the "medium-term program" proposed by the PC are much narrower than they were of the beginning of the center-left experience. In fact, the center-left government took office at the height of an economic boom. The unfounded hope that there could be a capitalism without crisis gave rise to the notion that extensive reforms could be financed without a redistribution of the national income and therefore without stepping on the toes of any social group; or, as it was rather pompously put at the time, by means of a "broad range of alliances." at even broader alliances today, during a period of extremely grave economic crisis? But thinking about the center-left cannot do away with the problem of the link in the balance of payments," that is, the phenomenon whereby with the smallest increase in consumption or investment (or both) the weakness of the productive base compels increasing resort to imports, which in tum generates a massive deficit in the trade balance, that is, the already delicate equilibrium between imports and exports. During the period of the center-left, this phenomenon, which was combined with exports of capital, periodically provided occasions for "tight credit, " which diminished investment, increased unemployment, and thus intensified exploitation. Naturally, this problem arises only if one has no intention of overstepping the bounds of the "free market, that is, the world capitalist market. And naturally, Communists are the first to assure the employers that this is not their intention. But the leaders of the PCI become a good deal less loquacious when it comes to defining how the reforms and the "mediumferm program" they advocate can be compatible with maintaining equilibrium in the balance of payments. Some PCI leaders mutter about an ill-defined plan to redirect exports toward "newly developing countries, " without bothering to explain whether they are talking about countries like Chad or Bangladesh, which would be happy to increase their imports but unfortunately have no money with which to pay for them, or subimpe44 rialist countries like Iran or Brazil, which have plenty of money and are eager to import - especially arms. Is that the industry on which the PCI wants to base its "new model of development"? Or perhaps they want to orient foreign trade toward the workers states? This solution would pose both economic and political problems that would not be easily overcome, especially while remaining within the framework of the market economy. (Economically, there is the problem of the lack of foreign currency of the workers states; politically, there is the problem of relations with the bureaucracies in power in the workers states.) In all honesty, it cannot be said that there is very much new in what the PCI is saying. More exactly, there is almost nothing new in what the Communist party requests from the bourgeoisie. There is, however, a good deal that is new in what the PCI offers in exchange, namely. mobility of the work force in the factories, a struggle against absenteeism, the taxation on the social security system. The novelty lies not in the vague abstractions that are requested but in the reality of what would be given in exchange. But let us not jump ahead; we will return to the offers of the PCI. As for the requests: "The struggle for democratic programming represents ... an essential moment in the initiation of the struggle... . There is difficulty in connecting the struggle against the increase in exploitation and the decline in employment to the attainment of measures of economic policy in the direction of structural reforms.... This is what must be achieved: full employment of the work force, reform of the fiscal system, reform of credit and public administration.. the formation of a democratic distribution network ... urban reform ... the formation of a transport network that aids in economic development. " Who said this? Napolitano in Rinascita, Libertini in Turin, Lama in Rimini? No, it is a quotation from the preparatory document for the 1965 congress of the CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro - Italian General Confederation of Labor). Today, ten years later, Napolitano, Libertini, and Lama are not saying anything more or anything better. Granted, they say that more attention must be paid to agriculture, technological innovation, and exports; but nothing more. Or better yet, as is usual in Italy, a few terminological innovations are tacked on; instead of "structural reforms" we have "new model of development, " "compatibility," "links," and the "retributive jungle. " It is also true that a few more steps to the right have been taken: for example, the rejection of the "definition of a great national plan" as a "road that failed during the 1960s, " in favor of "successive partial approximations. " But what must be examined above all is not each individual proposal, but rather the logic that forms the backdrop to all these proposals.
Logic of reformism Crises are inevitable under the capitalist system because they are provoked by the very functioning of the system itself, which, because of competition, the search for maximum profit, and the falling rate of profit needs a periodic destruction of value in order to be able to continue to function. This is one of the most important conclusions of the Marxist analysis of capitalism, confirmed by more than a century of empirical observation of the actual functioning of the capitalist system. But the reformists, from Bernstein to Berlinguer, reject this analysis, closing their eyes to reality and proposing a completely different schema. The "distortions" of the system, they claim, worsen the conditions of the toiling classes. Thus, the objective is not to destray the system, but to "correct" its functioning. When they are feeling especially euphoric (or when they are driven to the wall by the masses), the reformists add that this is the way to lay the basis for the transition to socialism, which obviously will be peaceful and parliamentary. This is how they justify their alliance with more or less broad sectors of the bourgeoisie, sectors that are willing to struggle against the "distortions, " but certainly not against the system itself. The reformists thus end up subordinating their own policy to that of the bourgeoisie, exactly as the PCI has done. More concretely, in Italy today the PCI's logic is based on the idea that all the country's troubles stem from one particular "distortion, " namely, Italian capital's "reluctance" to invest. This is a time-worn thesis which the PCI has borrowed from the bourgeois economists of the postwar Keynesian school. Seeing as the Italian capitalists, if left to themselves, will not invest in productive activity but will instead put their money into "parasitic" sectors (personal consumption, speculation, export of capital to Switzerland), it is up to the workers movement to spur them on, fo force them to become "modern" capitalists, and to overcome their "backwardness. " This is the "national function" of the workers movement. In reality, this reasoning is completely false and profoundly dangerous. It is false to consider Italian capitalism as "young" capitalism that can still evolve and thus correct its birth defects. Italian capitalism — like all capitalism in the epoch of imperialism - is an "old" capitalism, because the world system as a whole is "old"; the only way to modify this system is to destroy it. In other words, a bourgeois-democratic revolution is no longer possible; only a socialist revolution is possible. To see this it is sufficient to recall that in Russia in 1917 (certainly more backward than Italy today) the only possible revolution turned out to be a socialist revolution. The same was true in Yugoslavia, China, and Cuba. Or perhaps the PCI, in common with some members of the bourgeoisie, thinks that the socialist revolution applies only to backward countries?
Thus, there are general theoretical grounds (based on theory that has been confirmed by more than half a century of history) for being certain that it is impossible to correct the "distortions" of Italian capitalist development, including the "distortion" of the Italian capitalists! feeble propensity for productive investment. Another turn on investment But it is necessary to more concretely examine why the PCI'S thesis is wrong and harmful. In fact, we do not intend to utilize general theoretical conceptions (what is reformism and what is revolutionary policy) as magic formulas capable of exorcizing the bourgeois demon or as pass-keys capable of opening every door. We are sufficiently convinced of the correctness of our theoretical conceptions to believe that it is always to our advantage to deal with concrete reality. In its capacity as flattener of humps, the PCI wants to open the way to the development of a "clean" capitalism, a capitalism that, while preserving its most important virtue for the employers (a "fair" profit) would no longer be afflicted with the defects we know so well: unemployment, low wages, taxes at the expense of the workers, on-the-job accidents, and so on. And what about the root and basis of all the other defects of copItalism: exploitation? Here the PCI prefers to remain silent. We will not spend any time demonstrating that such a capitalism has never existed anywhere, not even in Sweden. Let us see what are the obstacles, according to the PCI, that bar the way to this brilliant future, a future that is so brilliant, while remaining capitalist, that it is hard to see what is the use of socialism. The obstacles have changed with time. Ten or fifteen years ago it was mainly the monopolies that were the bad guys, preventing the free play of the market. Today, however, it is instead the parasitic classes that are developing precisely on the basis of the spontaneity of the market. There is much less talk of the monopolies, although their economic strength does not seem to have diminished in the meantime. In attaining the objective set by the PCI, an essential function is supposed to be played by "public" capital, that is, state capitalism in all its forms. The method of transition must be control of investment, control that is increasingly democratic, parliamentary, and now even trade-union based. Public capital, says the PCI, is supposed to "shift the profits" from old sectors to the new sectors in which development is desired. The notional parliament, the regional governing bodies, and the municipal administrations create the conditions for this and make sure it actually happens. Voila, ladies and gentlemen, there is the new model of development! Easy, isn't it? In fact, investment plays a very important and delicate role in the capitalist process of reproduction. It is the
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AUMENT point at which the employers direct their profits (which they have appropriated through the exploitation of the workers) toward new opportunities of exploitation in order to make even greater profits. It is clear that the capitalists will invest in those sectors (not necessarily productive ones) in which they see the possibility of making the maximum profit. To attain this goal the capitalist is willing to walk over the dead body of his mother, would he stop at laying off a worker? Crises are precisely the moments in the capitalist reproduction process at which, the rate of profit having fallen, the capitalists decline to invest (look at the fall in investments this year, for example, much greater than the fall in production). In clarifying this, we clarify an important aspect of the problem that concerns us here: The capitalists invest only if there is an "interest" in investing, that is, if it is possible to extract maximum profif. Thus, when faced with two investment possibilities, the capitalist will choose the one that guarantees the greatest profit. The investment decision is tightly linked to the rights of capitalist property. Serious control over investment would thus mean decisive attacks on capitalist property rights, which would be fine. But the reformist parties and the trade-union bureaucracy propose controls that are a joke, that cannot possibly work. It is against this conscious mystification that we fight. In fact, it must be one of two things: Either "new benefits" are created for the capitalists to make them invest in the sectors proposed by the reformists, and in that case no struggle around investment is necessary; it is sufficient to stimulate profit rates in the desired sectors. Or else there is a struggle, but a struggle in 46
FROM BERNSTEIN TO BERLINGUER which it is clearly understood that to real control of investment requires the overthrow of the capitalist system. Since the second possibility - that of the struggle for power - is decisively rejected by the reformists, all that remains is the first, better known under the name "incentive policy. " Better known but not very effecfive. This is the policy that has been applied in Italy for the past twenty years in attempting to industrialize the South. And everyone knows how well that worked out. Who controls whom? Why did this policy fail as miserably as it did? A big discussion about this is now going on. There are those who say that the incentives techniques were mistaken because they favored only industries with high capital intensities and low numbers of workers; there are those who say that the fault lies with the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, which fell into corruption; there are those who blame the inefficiency and incompetence of the Treasury Ministry and the Ministry of Industry. There is some truth in all these accusations. But the whole truth, the truth that sums everything up, is that all the state structures — the Ministry of Industry, the Treasury Ministry, the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, the institutes, and the rest - are structures of a bourgeois state functioning (as inefficiently as the case may be) in the interests of the rule of the bourgeoisie and as instruments of this rule.
The tight linkup between the bourgeoisie and this state apparatus is effected through the Christian Democracy, directly on the level of personnel. The fact that this tight linkup is now showing signs of crisis (which should not be overestimated), that the state apparatus has fallen into such rack and ruin that it is not even able to effectively serve the interests of the bourgeoisie itself, in no way means that it is possible to use this state apparatus in the interests of the working class. It was not a revolutionary, but an intelligent reformist, Ruffolo, who, in making a self-critical analysis of the center-left, very clearly affirmed the "incompatibility of these projects of generalized programming with the structure of the state and with the interests of the parasitic social groups linked to this structure." If that is how things stand with the state apparatus, to speak of parliamentary control is simply ridiculous. In reality, the faith of the workers in parliament is continuing to decline. The prestige of this body is now virtually nonexistent. The PCI, while obviously not revising its strategy, now generally prefers to speak of "representative assemblies, "placing the emphasis on the regional and local administrations. In fact, however, up to now the local bodies have not done much better than the parliament, neither in terms of efficiency nor in terms of honesty, not to mention the interests of the workers. These local bodies are in debt to the tune of 25,000 thousand million lire - no small thing. And in general the workers see no results from the spending that has produced these debts. The PCI often claims that part of this debt is due to the centralizing policy of the Italian state, which has not granted the municipalities the necessary financial resources. In any event, this is only partly true (it is clearly not the case for the debts of Rome, Naples, etc.), and to the extent that it is true it demonstrates that the local bodies do not count for very much in determining the economic life of the country. It is true, at least in a general sense, that the performance of the administrations of the "red" cities and regions has been much better than the performance of those administered by the bourgeois parties. But has this prevented the economic crisis or layoffs from reaching Emilia and Tuscany? It is possible to use the regions and cities in which the left won the elections of June 15 to hold conferences on employment, but it is not possible to use them to resolve the problem of unemployment (and it is criminal to sow illusiors about this). Obviously, it would also be possible to use the local administrations in a revolutionary manner, for example, systematically requisitioning closed factories, supporting housing occupations, and so on. But this would rapidly lead to clashes with the central state administration, which is something the reformists absolutely do not want. Workers control & trade-union control If our criticism were to stop here, the reformists would certainly accuse us of completely disregarding the "novelty" that allegedly characterizes the present proposals of the PCI and the trade unions. What is involved here is the combination of control of the productive choices from above and "from below" (by the trade unions), which would supposedly be entailed in the implementation of the "medium-term program. " In this regard, PCI leader Lama assures the reactionary petty bourgeois readers of the magazine Oggi that he has shed his youthful illusions: "We don't believe in fairy tales any more; we have already been burned by them many times. Two years ago we drew up agreements ... for investments in the South, and then nothing happened.... These agreements became scraps of paper partly because the trade unions had no power to check and control the implementation of the commitments that were made. " It is exactly these means of control that the trade unions are now supposedly demanding in their contract platforms. In the meantime, the combination of structures of control "from above" and "from below" is not very convincing. It is not convincing because given the present structure of the state and given the weight and the ruinous condition of parliament, in the best of cases no control would be forthcoming from above; more likely, there would be systematic sabotage of the control from below. Our concern mounts when we read what A. Reichlin writes in Rinascita (editorial in No. 42, 1975): What we are confronted with is an immense and complex system of state monopoly capitalism; it would be silly to think that such a system can be controlled and opposed solely "from below. .." Here we have the usual bureaucratic reformist contempt for the stupid workers (and employees, technicians, and toilers in general), who are held to be incapable of ever controlling such an "immense and complex" system. What is possible, however, again according to Reichlin, is control by a manytentacled armada composed of some parliament deputies, a few director generals from the Ministries, and, why not, a dash of representatives of the State Council. The subordination of control from below to control from above must be rejected both for general political reasons (no dependence on the instruments of the bourgeoisie) and because of the disastrous and still declining state of the present Italian state apparatus. But even limiting ourselves to control from below, it does not appear that the trade-union control proposed by Lama would be adequate to the tasks proposed. The information that the employers would have to give the trade unions under the PCI's plan is scarce and insuffi-
47
cient; moreover, the most important thing is missing:
the workers right to veto employer decisions. If that is how things are, we could be asked why the employers seem so ferociously opposed to the trade-union requests, so much so that they consider withdrawal of these requests a precondition for the opening of negotiations. Is our criticism perhaps of the "typical extremist" variety, asking for the moon, while the employers, very well aware of their own interests, scream objections to the "realistic" proposals of the trade unions? First of all, it must be said that the employers always sfart screaming about any outside intervention in what they regard as their own sacred territory, that is, their "entrepreneurial activity. " They do so for reasons of principle, quite apart from the damage they actually fear. Then if we take a good look at what the employers are actually saying, we see that what they are concerned about is not so much the requests of the trade unions and the elements of trade-union control that would be introduced as the use that could be made of these demands by the workers of this or that factory who are too independent of the trade-union bureaucracy. This can be clearly seen in the statements of Walter Mandelli, president of the employers' federation of the metal industry, at a round-table discussion published in Il Sole/24 Ore (October 11, 1975). What bothered Mandelli was not so much the idea of supplying some information to the trade unions, but rather the "pressures, the manifestations peripheral to the trade unions, including certain aberrations that have been taken as examples and have therefore been imitated." And then, even more clearly: "There is a big gap between what Lama says and what will actually happen in the factory. " We want this gap to be closed too, but in the direction opposite to what Mandelli and Lama would like to see. We would like to see it closed in such a way that the trade-union leadership bodies would be under the tight control of the rank and file and would implement the policy of the rank and file, that is, a class policy. A class policy on the question of control of employer decisions means the right and possibility of everyone to have access to all documentation relating to the management of the firm, without any limitation. But even this is not sufficient, for a big part of the decisions of a company is determined by the financial situation of the company, and this is known orily to the banks. It is thus necessary to immediately abolish secret banking and give the workers the possibility of examining the bank accounts of their employers. This measure would, among other things, lay the basis for effectively striking at fiscal evasions on the one hand and exports of capital on the other hand. In this manner, the basis would be laid for real workers control of investments. The basis, but not the control itself; the latter, if it is to be real, must coincide with socialism and thus requires the prior seizure of power. 48
Costs and compensation Naturally, the demand to open the account boaks and abolish secret banking would touch off the most violent resistance from the employers. Naturally, in order to achieve these objectives it would be necessary to mobilize the masses for a determined clash with the employers, a clash that would rapidly pose the question of power. The reformists want to avoid these difficulties, the dangers and unpredictable elements linked to such a general line. To do this, however, they propose objectives that are illusory and mystifying (control of investments) so long as they remain within the limits of the capitalist system and are also totally insufficient to satisfy the most elementary needs in the realm of wages and employment. In exchange for these illusory and miserable concessions, they offer quite a bit to the employers. They give in on three extremely important problems: absenteeism, mobility of the work force, and faxation of the social security system. Absenteeism, as is well known, is in most cases a means of self-defense of the workers against superexploitation and the poisonous effects of the capitalist factory. Moreover, to give in on this question is to open the way for political repression against the vanguard, which is carried out precisely under the pretext of fighting absenteeism. Mobility, given the illusory character of the idea of increasing employment through controlling investment, is a prelude to layoffs and thus a means of increasing exploitation. Taxation of social security, in the absence of a radical reform of the tax system, means to make the workers bear the casts, through taxes, of an upturn in profits. Furthermore, there is general reference to "other costs" that the workers would have to pay. This is mentioned not only by the Socialists Ruffolo and Giolitti, but also by the Communist Trentin. When we reject paying these costs, we are not being demagogic, as the Socialists say and the Communists suggest. The fact is that we believe it is dangerous and wrong to pay these sorts of costs and especially to pay them in exchange for an illusory "new model of development. " When the working class takes power, it will have to carry through a profound reconversion of the country's apparatus of production, and this will obviously entail great costs, costs that will be all the greater if the delay in the development of the revolutionary movement in other countries leaves Italy in isolation. Then the workers will agree to pay the costs in living standards and austerity for a certain period of time. But only in exchange for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the power to control society themselves. October 30, 1975
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