Strike wave grows Italy

Italy at the end of 1968 continues unabated. Now a new factor emerges: the unity of North and South.

Italy proves that a trade surplus is no solution to capitalism's • crisis. The favourable Italian export showing has been based largely on very low wages and a pool of nearly two million unemployed.

Large-scale investment in the rural and more politically conservative south certainly provided quick returns in an area where the working class is traditionally poorly organized.

But the most recent strike wave began in the South, in Sicily (scene of the recent shooting of two striking farm labourers) and in towns such as Battipaglia, where over 50 per cent of the population is out of work.

Now another southern town, Taranto, has taken action against the appalling living and working conditions that are the lot of millions of Italian workers and peasants.

Modern plants

Taranto is a steel town, where vast sums have been poured into some of the most modern plant in Europe.

In attempting to overcome the South's backwardness, the Italian ruling class only triggers off even deeper crises. Thousands of previously politically conservative and unorganized peasants are now drawn into class battles which reach across an entire continent.

More traditional centres of Turin earlier this year was the scene of worker-police battles. Here a blazing car-barricade is approached warily by police. The effect of these class battles is being felt throughout Italy.

Pompidou speaks for THE long - standing overcome them formed weaknesses in the the central theme of French economy and a President Pompidou's call to all sections and press conference on Sepclasses to co-operate to tember 22.

Class-conscious workers (like these immigrant workers at Renault) will not be deceived by Pompidou's attempt to appear more By Robert working-class struggle-Milan, Turin, Genoa and Florencehave now made their weight felt with telling effect.

The huge Fiat plant, with its 90,000 workers, has repeatedly seen bitter clashes between pickets and armed police.

In the last two weeks, engineering and building workers have joined with millions ot agricultural labourers in nationwide strikes for higher wages.

The main problem is clearly not one of militancy.

The Italian crisis simply cries out for revolutionary leadership. monopoly capitalism sophisticated than his predecessor.

The economic crisis has driven deep wedges between many of the partners of previous government coalitions. The parties themselves are racked with deep internal splits and disputes.

Six factions

The main ruling party, the Christian Democrats, nas no fewer than six factions, torn between a turn towards a regime of open oppression ans a continuatior of the past policy of coalition with the reformist parties.

The new working-class offensive has struck tremendous blows at the social democrats Pietro Nenni's 'left' Italiar Socialist Party unified five years ago with the ultra-right Unlike de Gaulle whose ignorance of and contempt for economic questions was well-known, his successor was obliged to make them the central part of his most important declaration since he was elected.

Despite the press conference form this was a carefully stage-managed affair and Pompidou had come well briefed with facts and figures.

With the railway strike hardly settled, other strikes breaking out daily, and growing discontent throughout the working class, the setting for it was one of tension and anxiety about the future.

References to insurrection and civil war and what the government would do in the case of a further blow-up like that of May 1968, show how the fear of sparking off another explosion of the same sort dominates government policy.

While pointing to the growth in income and production in the past 20 years, Pompidou emphasized all the time what was still necessary this year.

social democrats under Saragat, thus healing the breach created by Saragat in the early 'Cold War' years.

The centrist rump of Nenni's party regrouped to form the Party of Socialist Workers' Unity (PSIUP) and moved towards a closer alliance with the Communist Party.

Nenni and Saragat came together on the basis of an agreement to enter a coalition with the 'left' Christian Democrats, the so-called 'centre-left' soluWhen that combination is forced to act on behalf of Italian capitalism against millions of workers, the mass support for the reformists threatens to dwindle away.

A new split has now broken up the unity in the reformists' ranks.

Once again, a centrist-inclined group has broken • off from Nenni's Party under pressure from its trade union rank and file, combined, no doubt, with its leaders' desire to preserve their parliamentary careers.

This utter bankruptcy within the Italian social democracy has turned the coalitionist sections of the ruling class away from the Nennis and Saragats towards the Communist Party leadership.

This Party states openly that it fights not for socialism, but for a programme of what it terms "structural reforms' which boil down to the modernizing of Italian capitalism.

Terrified of the militancy breaking out in every major industrial area and southern village, the ultra - reformist Communist Party leaders are now trying to outbid the social democrats for posts in a coalition cabinet.

Seeking a change in the 'centre-left' tactic which had always favoured the social democrats to the exclusion of the Stalinists, CP leader Dino Pellicio recently boosted the Christian Democrat Aldo Moro to bring French capitalism up to the standards of technology and business efficiency achieved by its rivals.

In doing so, of course, he admitted that the 11 years of Gaullist rule had not achieved what many of its supporters had hoped or had even assumed had been done until the May-June 1968 events.

He referred to the existence of a multitude of small-scale inefficient units in production and in distribution. While calling attention to the growth in agricultural productivity and production with a smaller labour force, he underlined the still excessive size and inefficiencies of the agrarian sector The existence of a large number of small businesses, small shopkeepers and artisans and peasants who together make up a sizeable part of the electorate, means that Pompidou had to tread very warily.

From the whole tone of his speech it was obvious that his approach to these representatives of the old-style, petty capitalism was hypocritical. The government would do something for them (what, was not clear). It hoped that they would join together in larger and more emcient groupings.

His real solicitude, however, was extended to the big corporations, the representatives of large-scale, monopoly capitalism, the basis of his own political position.

In calling for increased productivity and effort, in warning against strikes and demands for higher wages, in calling for increased savings and investment, it was this modern sector of French capitalism which was clearly intended to benefit.

He called for increased profits, not, as he put it, as a matter of individual enrichment, but in order to provide a pool from which funds could be drawn for the expansion and modernization of French industry.

He did not say, of course, that such investment would automatically increase the wealth of the shareholders at the expense of the working class from whose unpaid surplus labour the pronts woulc be derived.

Instead, talk about participation, drawing the worker more closely into the enterprise and the community and profit-sharing was intended to pull eyes.

The most spectacular, of these proposals, of course, was that to distribute shares in the nationalized Renault enterprise to workers and employees.

Pompidou, at least in matters economic, tries to show more sophistication than his predecessor.

Class-conscious workers will not be deceived by this repetition in demagogic form of a policy designed to assist the big monopolies. In coming weeks they will go forward with their demands regardless.

In fact, behind the smooth talk and the 'reasonableness' of his propositions, Pompidou's assessment of the present position and problems of French capitalism was a confession of failure.

In the first place it could be asked why, after 1l years of the Fifth Republic, none of the fundamental problems had been tackled and France's relative position on the world market had shown no improvement.

Why was it now necessary to reveal all these shortcomings as though they had only been discove, ed yesterday?

FOUR PRESS