confidence in the government earlier this year.
According to PCI general secretary Berlinguer, the abstention leaves the PCI room to 'pressurise' the Government. This is part of the strategy of the historic compromise, which aims to win the PCI 'effective participation in the political leadership of the country' in coalition with the Christian Democrats. So far the latter have not been willing to play ball, but this has not deterred the PCI from tailing slavishly behind government policy, specifically ruling out the project of a government of the left'.
In practice this means that the PCI is fully implicated in the present attacks on working class living standards. The day before the main austerity package was announced, LIWO economists were involved in talks with Prime Minister Andreotti. REPORT paid workers, which he had long been campaigning against himself!
clauses, which guarantee pay increases in line with a cost of living index, were an important victory for the Italian workers in the 1940s which they have been able to defend up PCI to the present day.
Of course they have many limitations; they do not apply to many lower paid sections of workers, nor do they Silviano Corvisieri, a leading member of Avanguardia Operaia since its foundation in 190o, nas resigned trom ine organisa tion.
Corvisieri was elected to the Chamber of Benuues in dune as a memperorine unrea far left Proletarian Democracy' slate. says he will not resign his seat but use it to guarantee unks berween the movemen and its representatives which the Proletarian Democracy group has not been able to build.
Only day before his Corvisieri had been the joint sponsor of a parnamentary bir on abortion would establish free abortion on demand agreement up to 22 weeks These automatic dated and, workers control. represent important paid" workers who voted for the party. a large part of the AO itself. what nes benine InIs reason for the resignation beneine ruston These are two He munistrary ror Fourth International, resignation, to derena ine manoeuvres comoines its and the decriminalisation SIne constitute a real sliding scale of wages since the cost of living index is outcrucially, is not under Nevertheless, they gains for the Italian working class which have been defended tooth and nail. The PCI's assault on these in the name of a *redistribution in favour of the lower is a massive betrayal of the - and the real is the imAO with the PDUP or ine mosT subsiantiar Mantlesto organistions to the left of the Italian ComAO, formed by dissident members of the assumes Maoist in- the bureaucracy.
ternational and theoretical positions but 1s in practice little more than a militant trade union organisation. Internationally it tends of the Chinese a centrist basis. bureaucracy in terms of the pressure of objective' circumstances. Domestically, it revolutionary party.
super Tace UNFOREST extreme sectarianism. During the period of big workers struggles from 1969 onwards it Instead of fighting for the extension of these clauses to the lower paid workers and for workers control of the cost of living index, the PCI produced an economic document on the eve of the austerity package which denounced opposition to the government plan as "corporatist' or "individualist.
But the PCI has not been able to get away with passive abstention on these anti-working class measures. Even begroup is the product of a fusion between a left split from the old PSIUP (itself a left split from the Socialist Party in ine carly 1960s] and a left split from the CP - InE These two elements co-exist uneasily within the PDUP: But it still has an important intervention in the trade unions, including representatives in The fusion is designed to establish a new PSIUP on what Corvisieri describes as He regAros correctly, as a step away from building the Corvisieri has called for the formation of another pole or attachon to ound a party would be the effective expression of fore the plan was announced, CGIL-UIL-CISL had been forcec call a two-hour general strike to cuss' the measures. The PCI suppo this strike in the name of a camp for "industrial reconstruction'. In r ity, however, the pressure of the n movement was already being brou to bear on the party and Spontaneous The strength of the workers' r tion became clear when the meas were announced. There was a st taneous strike at FIAT-Rivalto Turin. The following day the Inc Turin workers struck. A genera sembly of the workers adopted *The working class of Indesit opp and rejects a political line which demands sacrifices and which m
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