government of the left and popular power." In its introduction to this declaration Lotta Continua noted: "It is a special duty to introduce clarity on political perspectives; in fact, this may be the most important duty the revolutionaries have toward the masses in this final phase of the electoral campaign." The document thus appears as an important element in the discussion that has been opened among the various components of the "revolufionary left, " united in these elections under the designation Democrazia Proletaria.
OF THE LEFT & POPULAR POWER
A historie turn is on the agenda We in Italy stand on the eve of a great political turn which the June 20 vote must render definitive. This turn consists of the liquidation of the Christian Democratic regime, that is, of a system based on corruption (Gava, Christian Democratic deputy from Naples, and Crociani, an industrialist, implicated in the Lockheed scandal; Leone and the oil companies), on the Mafia, terrorism (the far-right bomb in Milan's Plaza Fontana in 1969, fourteen dead; the fascist attack on the Italicus express train; the acts of the secret services), ignorance and prejudice (the garbage on television and in the schools; the pervasive clericalism, and repression (the "anti-wrecker" law, the fascist penal code, the special police, the carabinieri). The Christian Democracy has governed Italy for thirty years, occupying all the centers of power and all the state institutions, to the benefit of big capitalists (like Agnelli of Fiat and Cefis of Montedison), big speculators and bankers (like Sindona and Carli), and NATO, that is, American and German imperialism. The defeat of the Christian Democrocy, the liquidation of its regime; the establishment of a government of the left having a program that reflects the objectives of the workers' struggles, combined with a big vote for the revolutionaries (which means the slate of Democrazia Proletaria and the candidates of Lotta Continua) - those are the three big obiectives of these elections. All three are interlinked; none of them can be achieved without the others....
LOTTA CONTINUA Through the struggle & through the vote. build the strength of revolutionaries During the course of the past year, while the workers and unemployed, women and students, youth and old people have built in struggle the force that brought down the Aldo Moro government and made it impossible for the Christian Democrats to form another government, the leoders of the PCI have come up with a new proposal: a government of national unity, o government of unity with the bourgeois parties - the DC, the PRI (Republicans), the PSDI (Social Democrats), the PLI (Liberals) - a government odopting the interests and economic program of the Confindustria (the employers' association), linked to those who drowned freedom and democracy in blood in Chile. The sort of government proposed by the PCI threatens to be only a miserable repetition of the Moro government. That is why this project must be defeated, above all in struggle, but also in the vote. This implies giving the broadest and most active support to the slate of DP which assembles all the revolutionary forces and all those organized forces that want a genuine and radical turn. Revolutionaries are not running in these elections simply to take stock of themselves. They want to be elected to parliament and they want to get into the government in order to carry the objectives and demands of the masses into these institutions. But only on the condition that the class struggle creates the conditions and relationship of forces in the country that allows them to play a decisive role. That is why for us the relationship between the vote and the struggle is a very close one.
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Government of the left, bourgeois elections, and people's power The society in which we live is a copitalist society in which the bosses and the exploiters rule. The Italian state is a bourgeois state, that is, an organization of bosses and exploiters created to oppress the workers and the exploited. Even a very odvanced left government like the one we are struggling for will never be able to change the nafure of this state, will never be able to completely satIsfy the interests of the proletarians. The state is not the government. The state power is founded on the army, the police and carabinieri, the system of justice and the prisons, the big banks and the great economic groups — institutions that were never elected but instead created in order to defend the interests of the employers. They will constitute - in fact they alreody have in large part - the base on which the bourgeoisie, Imperialism, and reaction rely in their attempts to recover lost ground, if necessary by force and with bloodshed. Workers power must not be delegated, not in the factories nor in society, nor in the government. The force that is needed to continue to fight the bosses and the exploiters, to prevent and ward off fascist coups and the maneuvers of reaction is and always will be the unity, organization, and political clarity of the masses. This will result in the construction and growth of a network of mass organs in the factories, barracks, and neighborhoods, directly controlled by the proletarians. It is and will be the development of "popular power, " both today and in the phase to come, It is from here that the new proletarian state will have to arise, after the seizure of power, that is, after the subversive bourgeois military apparatus is destroyed.
A politically advanced left government can and must be an important instrument for the construction of popular power. It can and must support the program, struggles, and development of the organization of the working class. It can and must serve to disorganize and disorient the ranks of the class enemy. It can prevent the bosses and exploiters from using the laws and instruments of the government in the interests of speculation, for their attack against wages and jobs. It can prevent the rectionary and subversive elements from worming their way into the ministries or from using the state apparatus to carry out their own projects, as they are doing today:
It can prevent the exploiters and reactionaries of all stripes from using state money and facilities (like the radio, television, schools, and newspapers financed from the public budget) to slander the struggles of the worken and establish a consensus around their own projects. That is our "government program, " It may appear rather limited, but the workers who have direct, experience in struggle know how important it is.
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GOVERNMENT OF THE LEPT & POPULAR POWER The first question ground which revolutionaries" ability to orient themselves must still be much more developed is that of the relationship between independent mass movements and the odministration of government institutional instruments by the left parties. We know very well that the government of the left will not be the automatic result of June 20 and that a hard and difficult struggle will be necessary in order to impose it. Revolutionaries commit themselves to fully wage this battle both among the masses and in parliament. But precisely because of the fact that we place the will of the masses and the tenacious initiative of revolutionaries in the direction of this will in the center of the solutions to the crisis, we believe it necessary and correct to begin discussing the most general perspectives right now, including those of a "strategic" character. Up to now the organizations of the revolutionary left have developed a discussion, although not always clear and explicit, around the problem of the relationship between the struggle of the masses and the instruments of the government, between the construction of popular power and intervention in the state institutions. This discussion has sometimes been reduced to facile schemas, with some forces stressing "the movement" and the "maximum program" and others instead lending priority to the "institutions" and the "minimum program." We believe we can contribute to odvancing this discussion by posing the problem on the basis of its rational kernel, which is the question of power and its foundations.
The struggle tor power after June 20 After the conquest of the government by the left parties, an objective that will still be far from achieved immediately after June 20, the phase of the struggle for power opens. That is, a period opens during which there will be an intensification of pressures and class initiatives in opposite directions, both socially and within the institutional apparatuses. This is already a sharp Feature of the phase we are now coming out off workers control in the factory lover the organization of labor, the work pace, the number of employees, the plans for reconversion of companies) against the "freedom of the enterprise" and the despotism of the employers, clashes within the armed forces between democratic soldiers and NCOs on the one hand and the reactionary hierarchy on the other; clashes between the unemployed and the Christian Democratic Mafia over management of the labor exchanges, and so on. Obviously, in this sort of "diffusion" of the confrontation over control and power (which will take root in the major work places and in the community life of the masses, as well as within the state institutions), the various "centers" of conflict cannot all be placed on the same level. This is true not only becouse both revolutionaries and the masses wage the social confrontation in "their own home" (the factory) and wage the confrontation within the institutions "away from home." The real reason is deeper and more substantial. The deepening of the thrust of the masses toward selforganization and the construction of "popular power" in the major centers of community life inevitably implies a direct confrontation with the freedom of initiative of the employers and the hierarchies of the Christian Democratic regime. This will provoke the accentuation of a process (which has already been under way for some time) in which the centers of reactionary initiative will seize hold of the major executive and repressive institufions, in particular the financial (the big banks and the central bank, which constitute the pillars of financial and imperialist command in our country), military, and judicial institutions. The orientation of revolutionaries, whose center of gravity lies in unreserved support for the independent initiotive of the masses and the construction of popular power, can find expression within the institutions (not only the elected ones, but also the executive organs controlled by the government), in a precise direction. in the armed forces, in the courts, in the banking institutions, and in the state apparatuses that control the economy (the ministries and the various central and regional bodies), one can struggle to break the centers of command, the vehicles for the class violence of the bourgeoisie, in order to dilute their functioning, paralyze their capacIty for reactionary counteroffensive, and advance democratic and popular control within them. In this sense, these institutions must be "bent" to the service of the construction of popular power. That is what we mean when we say that the new source of legitimacy that will be asserted in the struggle for power is ever more the fundamental will of the masses organized in independent structures of power (embryos of the "workers state") and ever less the "law, " understood as a form of self-perpetuation of the institutions of the state. (On this subject, the struggle waged by the movement of democratic soldiers against the disciplinary rules of the armed forces is exemplary.) Left government and unity It is within this framework that the discussion on the role of the left parties must be situated, in particular the question of the relations between revolutionaries and reformists. It is obvious that the latter, who occupy the majority and leading positions within the possible left governmental formulas, will be subjected to violent pressures in opposing directions; it will be necessary for them to make a choice in one direction or the other, that is, either the consolidation of the internal "efficiency" of the institutional apparatuses (hierarchical discipline in the armed forces, selection in control over the labor market and in the orientation of public spending, authoritarion efficiency in the work places, etc.), or the utilization of the internal contradictions of these opparatuses in order to extend proletarian control. It is around this concrete and decisive question that one must pose the problem of the unity of the left parties. What choices will the PCI and the PSI be inclined to make? The examples we have up to now... indicate a marked preference for the first option, that is, an assertion of the continuity of the state and of its institutional leadership apparatuses. This is a line the content of which corresponds to an acceptance of some kind of incomes policy and social truce (even today the irrev-
ITALY ocable character of the sliding scale of wages is being placed in question), of reduction of public expenditures of a social nature, of an increase in productivity through greater labor discipline, of the maintenance of Italy's international ties (Common Market, etc.). We know very well that the phase now opening will be a very turbulent one, that diverse prospects are on the agenda, and that the violence of the pressures to which the traditional left parties will be subjected will produce very deep controdictions within them. The struggle for the hegemony of a revolutionary line with in the government of the left must be waged to the hilt, using all maneuvering room and all possible measures. The political and programmatic unity of revolutionaries is especially urgent in this situation. We have many examples of the ability to win revolutionary hegemony that such unity has succeeded in establishing (the extensive unity that included broad layers and well-known personalities linked to the reformist parties during the campaign to outlaw the MSI (the fascists) and during the struggle against the Reale Law; the electoral unity recently achieved). Such are the more complex and dynamic terms of the question of the "unity of the lefts, " a formula which, in its general aspect, cannot discriminate against any force, but which must be seen in relation to the concrete content of the political confrontation within the state institutions, a confrontation that reflects and extends the confrontations that are manifested in society Thus, it is not a matter of lending priority to "the movement" or "the government"; rather, the need for a presence of and struggle by revolutionaries in the institutions will have to be especially pressing and crucial. The fundamental question lies in the manner of "being" in the institutions (and the manner in which their funcfions are conceived), which depends directly on the manner of "being" in the movement (and of the way its role as protagonist and source of all new legality is understood). What instruments for transforming society ? In the Democrazia Proletaria appeal published five days ago in Quotidiano del Lavoratori (see the text above - INPRECOR), it is said that the goverment of the left must be the active instrument of a general process of transformation of society. This assertion, while acceptable, is insufficient and remains very general unless it is explained in the manner outlined above. In order for the government to be an "active instrument, " it is necessary for revolutionaries to win hegemony within it on the basis of a content that arises from the needs of the masses. This constitutes a battle that remains to be waged in the concrete, on all the aspects of the program and administration of institutions in the short and long term. 18
Let us consider just two aspects of the institutional crisis in Italy, two absolutely central aspects for the management of the economy and the application of any program of transformation of the structures of production and distribution of income: the banking system and public administration. When the defeated planners of the center-left complain that their bold projects of social justice and class conciliation failed because of the lack of instruments, they forget that it was precisely during the years of the center-left that we saw the completion of a process of systematic monopolization of the financial levers by big capital (above all through the monopoly of credit and the special credit institutes) and by the DC (public finances, ordinary credit institutions, savings banks). The technocratic and elitist orientation of the centerleft ended up strengthening the corporatist and selective concentration of the financial system. The PCI's devotion to the crucial center of Financial power that is the Bank of Italy. recalls the worst myths of technocratic efficiency. On the other hand, the orientation toward the abolition of secret banking represents both the axis of a fundamental break with the antiproletarian function of the banks and the backbone of proletarian control of credit in order to assure the implementation of measures aimed at orienting credit in the right direction. It is frivolous to ask that credit "serve the development of employment" outside of this basic clash over the breakup of the internal mechanisms of the private, separate, and antiproletarian function of the banking system. Flight of capital, tax evasion, and fraudulent speculation are systematically carried out in the shadows of secret banking, jealously guarded by the powerful banking corporations, beginning with the governor of the Bank of Italy. ... To make the whole network of banking activity public and transparent, to give the workers organizations the right to inspect financial activities of national interest., and to open the meetings of the interministerial committee for credit and savings to the control of the workers represent the preconditions for a radical reform of the banking system. • .. It is known that Italian companies are able to function thanks to loans that run as high as half the value of their liquid assets and that the special credit institutions control the major part of credits for industrial reconversion. Without examining the functions of the banking system and placing them under the fight control of the workers organizations, many demands around defense of jobs, increases in employment, and reconversion are destined to remain futile. Those, then, are some examples of the way in which class struggle takes place and will take place ever more violently within one decisive instrument of the government's economic policy - the credit system - through the confrontation between proletarian control and privatization of the institution. D
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