CROSSROADS

while the petty bourgeoisie is being "thrust to the wall" in the sphere of agriculture and industry, a "new middle socialestate", , as the Germans say, is emerging and developing, a new i stratum of the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, who are also finding life in capitalist society harder and harder and for the most part regard this society from the viewpoint of the small producer.

It is quite natural that this must inevitably lead to widespread dissemination and constant revival of petty-bourgeois ideas and doctrines in the most varied forms. "")

Trotsky wrote in a similar 'ein about the political relaions between these two social itrata:

'The Socialist Party (of "(Ibid, Vol.

France) is not a working-class party either with regard to its policies or its social compostition. It is the party of the new middle estate (the functionaries, civil servants, etc.)

and, in part, of the petty bourgeoisie and the labour aristocгасу. *30 Important In his 'History of the Russian Revolution', Trotsky, far from dismissing this 'new middle estate' as irrelevant, gives it a very important political role in the revolution:

'Lenin described Sukhanov as one of the best representives of the petty bourgeoisie, and that is the most flattering thing that can be said of him.

'Only in this connection it must not be forgotten that the 30('Whither France', p. 142.)

KARL question is here of a new capitalist type of petty bourgeoisie, of industrial, commercial and bank clerks, the functionaries of capital on one side, and the workers' bureaucracy • on the other - that is of that new middle caste, in whose name the well known German social democrat Eduard Bernstein undertook at the end of the last century a revision of the revolutionary conceptions of According to Trotsky, this 'new middle caste', by reason particularly of its incorporation of a section of the bureaucracy, grown up within the working class, has a unique political role:

'In order to answer the question how a revolution of workers and peasants came to surrender the power to the bourgeoisie (in Russia after February 1917), it is necessary chain and intermediate link :

the petty-bourgeois democrats and socialists of the Sukhanov type, journalists and politicians of the new middle caste, who had taught the masses that the bourgeoisie is an enemy, but themselves feared more than any thing else to release the masses from the control of that enemy• 'The contradiction between the character of the revolution and the character of the power that issued from it, is explained by the contradictory character of this new petty-bourgeois partition wall between the revolutionary masses and the capitalist bourgeoisie. '31 'Paradox' Trotsky also suggests that the failure of the German revolution of 1918-1919 can be laid at the door of the same social elements. The 'paradox' by which state power is handed back to the bourgeoisie by professed socialists, he says:

•. seems all the more striking, because the experience of the German revolution of 1918 did not then exist, and humanity had not yet witnessed colossal and still more successful operation of this same type carried out by the "new middle caste" led by the German social democracy.'* In the 1930s, Trotsky made a further contribution to the "political sociology' of these middle strata in his analyses of the Nazi movement ('Germany: What Next?'). By the 1930s, it was not simply a matter of its representatives dominating and misleading the working-class movement, but rather a question of all the 'middle' sections, new and old, providing the mass basis for the counter - revolutionary forces mobilized by Hitler.

Central to all these examples is the need for a specific historical analysis in each case of the actual constituents of the "middle classes', the actual extent to which their interests diverge or temporarily coalesce —all taken in relation to the main determinant of the political relationship of forces, the historic struggle between the two great classes in modern production: bourgeoisie and proletariat.

"(Trotsky, 'History Russian Revolution', pp. 184185.)

3°(Ibid.) THE CONFERENCE, which ended last week in the Appenine resort of Vallombrosa, of the Christian Associatons of Italian Workers (ACLI) was the scene of veritable orgies of 'dialoging' between Catholic clergymen and Stalinists.

No effort was spared by the observers from the Italian Communist Party in their attempt to present the opportunist phrases of Catholic bureaucrats under pressure as the gospel of class struggle.

ACLI, set up by the Vatican heirarchy to take over some of the tasks of 'Catholic Action' and thus to organize religious observance and discipline on a mass scale among the Italian working class, has become a close adjunct of the Catholic trade union CISL, itself being forced, under rank-and-file pressure, to lead militant action against the employers.

During the bitter struggles THE DECISION by Costatinos Fafutis, a junior member of the Greek judiciary in Piraeus, that millionaire shipowner Stavros Niarchos must face a charge of 'lethally injuring' his wife Eugenia is an almost certainly temporary obstacle to the plans of the fascist regime to bury the According to Niarchos' Paris lawyer, De Chambrun, Eugenia Niarchos took an overdose of barbiturate sleeping tablets when Niarchos made a phone call from the private island of Spetsopoula, where they were staying, to his ex-wife Charlotte Ford (daughter of the US car tycoon).

When she was discovered in a coma, Niarchos attempted to revive her, and this, says De Chambrun, accounts for the bruising and marks later found on thę corpse's throat.

The family doctor, Arnautis, was flown from Athens, but reSUNDAY last year, which drew millions of Catholic workers into action, and in the strikes to be expected this autumn, ACLI has been obliged to polish up its left face to pressure its support.

At the 1967 Conferenceidentified by the Stalinists as the beginning of its 'turn to the left'-it was sufficient to make ritual denunciations of 'the opulent society.

But in 1970 stronger meat is required.

ACLI has therefore ended its official links with Christian Democratic Party, and registered its independence of the Vatican heirarchy.

A number of delegates favoured support for a new political movement (set up by Livio Labor, an ex-President of ACLI the Workers' Political Movement' which favours collaboration with the CP).

Phrases such as *struggle against neo-imperialism', 'a class movement against capitalism' and so on were freely tossed All this fused to sign a death certificate because of these marks.

The body was then flown to Piraeus, where a police doctor signed a certificate attributing her death to barbiturate poisoning, but noting marks on the face and throat. The government then took the initiative by establishing a commission of six doctors to inquire into the cause of the death.

The job of the commission was to provide the 'expert evidence' to put an end to the judicial case against Niarchos.

Accordingly it was staffed with appropriate 'experts . The chairman was Dr Demetrios Kapsaskis, one of the main witnesses on behalf of the Greek regime before the commission of inquiry into torture in Greece set up by the Council of Europe.

Kapsaskis there gave evidence that there was no torture whatsoever in either the prisons or the police stations of the regime -evidence that even the reactionary democracy' found it im- representatives of Europossible to accept.

Earlier, in 1963, it was saskis who signed a report (FEAST & WEST (or nectar to the tonsils) of veteran Stalinist Lombardo Radice, archpriest of the Party's communion with 'progressive' clergymen.

At a 'round-table' organized at the conference he performed a duet in honour of 'structural reforms' with Jesuit priest Diez Alegria, according to whom:

"The Christian Community committed a social and historical sin in the 19th century: it accepted the bourgeois-liberal conception of individual private property as the basis of economic, social and political order.' (In extenuation of Mother Church it should be added that she 'sinned' under extreme duress; only when, in August 1870, the troops of the nationalist ing the finding of the Salonika police that the left-wing MP Gregorio Lambrakis had been killed in 'a road accident', whilst in the proceedings that followed it became clear not only that Lambrakis had been assassinated, but that high officials of the regime were implicated with extreme right wingers in the crime.

And more recently he has provided cover for the murders of the Centre Party MP Mandilaras ('by drowning') and the Communist Party MP Tsaruchas (from a heart attack'-whilst being taken to jail in a police Niarchos Having thus proved his credentials, he has also been chosen by the colonels to represent them at the inquiry into the murder of the Cypriot ex-Minister of the Interior, Gheorkadzis.

It was therefore no great surprise when his commission concluded that Eugenia Niarchos' death was due solely to an overdose of drugs.

Within a few days Niarchos signed an agreement with the government whereby he received exclusive rights to exploit the Aspropyrghos oil refinery (previously state property, a two-thirds share in the refinery itself, and a large reserved quota for the transport of crude oil from the Middle East.

In return he undertook to invest $250 million in the Greek was joined by Minister of 'Eugenia S. Niarchos'.

waters in his luxury yacht the lations.

STALINISM IN BRITAIN A TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS PRICE 22s Ed 18GA Clipham Hight St army were at the gates of Rome, did the Papacy abandon feudalism to its fate.)

ACLI's move leftwards has not been achieved without some dissention.

The Italian Bishops, led by Cardinal Poma, have opposed the separation from the Christian Democrats and the Church heirarchy, and a 'moderate' minority remains organized within ACLI.

But the blessing of His Holiness remains, if a little muted.

The official Vatican newspaper 'L'Osservatore Romano' reported the conference in neutral terms, and sources close to St Peter's throne indicate that no mass excommunications are to be expected. with a convicted murderer.

But if it should be politically impossible to have him back, he will not be short of places stay. As well as his pheasantinfested private island of Spetsopoula, he has a villa in Bermuda, a castle with all mod cons at Cap d'Antibes in the south of France, a large chalet three-floor luxury apartment in in St Moritz, Switzerland, New York, a palace on the plush Faubourg St Honoré in Paris and a long lease of half a floor of Claridge's Hotel, London.

And if exiled among the international flesh-pots, he will not be short of friends.

Through the late Eugenia (daughter of millionaire ship tycoon George Livanos) he is exbrother-in-law to fellow shipowner Aristotle Onassis.

After divorcing Livanos' other daughter Onassis passed, by way of an affair with Italian operatic soprano Maria Callas, into the arms of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Onassis has equally close (if less romantic) relations, via Boston oil millionaire Tom Pappas, and Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, with the Nixon regime.

Niarchos is also close acquaintance of the Greek royal family, now exiled in London.

He visited King Constantine in Rome in December 1967, shortly after the failure of his attempted palace coup, as a peacemaker from the colonels.

Eugenia Niarchos sode, Greek shipowners have (Panamanian, Liberian, Lebanese JUST OUT