* Eurocommunism Last week's Madrid summit of the caders or me opanisn, Hallan and French communis raries seen as an attempt to boost the question ca. ine soanish turn organised its own propajanda coup by arresting a member of the Soviet trade delegation for While the bourgeois press waited tor some sensational manies to' of Eurocommunism, the rea accomplished.
Spanish party wanted
esiaoiisn nis orcanisation s or internationa connections. of the criteria for legalisation must have no affiliation. spanisn sympatisine section ine -ourin international. nas deer denied legal status.
But if this is a tactical considerGEORGES MARCHAIS deeper issues. It has been useful for the larger oi wester CuroDe to lane oistance rom ne MoscoW eaucracy over repression of However, it is not possible for these parties to make nistorica oreak with une workers states. Their supposed continuity with the Communist Internationa WOTACTS existence separate To sever those links be to remove their central political feature in the eyes of the so une sourceois commentators were disabbointed. -NO movement' emerged. surprised that TOTTEE made workers states and oniy caree tor Was was lact HOne SANTIAGO CARRILLO tactical. It would do them no galy ISsUe maor bourgeois Domical caobis against the Soviet Union.
* Sweden More in the Eurocommunist saga. A minority crous. caseo mainy Göreborg and Malmo Swedish has become increasino y ced from *Eurocommunist' split is similar to that of CP into pro-Moscov oroanisations cow tried the same rick in Spanish party setting up head of the new organi sation. ine pro ect hopped, mam ly because of the mass support of the Carrillo party the leader of the minority split, describes the alignment in this way: 'On one side the conscIous workers and even intellectuals, petty bunch mouthed bourgeois never do anysis.
Line new does ake win it a sizeanie par o VPK's class it is be raniament Ton nas to nave at least four per cent of the vote.
more than this at the moment. The split EUrOThe Moscow bureaucrats direct ly intervened to torce Greece and Spain. Perhaps they The Belgian strike wave, reported nası week s keo weexy. na nitiated a political crisis for the of Leo Tindemans leader of the Rassemblement wallon. ne arees or inc purely French sneaking barries withdraw the party's support unless nere are immediate concessions on ine devolution or bower to the French speaking regions.
for the Government, which carry on as a minority with Libera aostentions But tnis problem is compounded by working class action.
in the French pet areas All French speakine bourgeois ticians are afraid that this will lead The work a ces parties. Thus Vanguard], majority of AO!
This centrist square dance is the practical culmination of the longneralaca rusion the two organisations as a whole. The PDUP split was preceded by a long internal crisis which came to a head with the split of the party's Milan federation into two. Mariano Capanna, a prominent oppositionist with majority of the Milan federation, left the organisation.
Capanna charged that the right wing of the PoUr was actively preparing a split, Magri responded accusations of 'maximalism'. cording Magri, minority and the majority of AO were attempting to create a force which was a parasinc intentioned expression of social extremism'. up with the have more than a purely local sig- sutunese minicance. me unree man centris nas soili oistan Greel MOS STUloud. organisations in Italy are not tiny who grouplets but have a total membership of around thirty thousand. organisation The issues at stake are crucial ones for revolutionary strategy, partibase. cularly in southern Europe at the to the party's The PDUP, as constituted at the time of the split, was the product of the fusion between the group around the paper /l Manifesto and of its La section or ine old slur.
Manifesto group, led by Magri and SolT In Kossana Kossanda. ent mne com munist Party (PCI) in 1969.
It remained a small grouping of dissident intellectuals until. 1974 when it ioined up with the forme left wing of the PSIUP. The latter Socialist Party in 1964. In 1972 the HeadershID enter the PCI and the minority formed the PDUP.
IMPLANTATION
The new organisation had a substantial implantation trade unions. From the PSIUP it inherited leaders of a number of metal workers. core of intellectuals it was also more theoretically developed than There the other groups to the left of the PCI, nut the split emerged openly in recent weeks was always latent.
Broadly speaking, the main class divisions over trade union work THE PARTY of Proletarian Unity [PDUP], one of the three large organisations of the Italian far left, has split in two. It seems likely that the majority of the organisation will organise a fusion conference with the minority of Avanguardia Operaia [Workers while the minority is preparing fusion the vocabulary SOrOCESS DCLWCCI little more.
routine trade larded phrases.
the support of the while Lucio Communist Party. fuming Acsharply in the other direction and illexchanee. eliminated in the short term' PDUP majority For the "historic compromise by the PCI. decided to parties snould au In including the With its leading to the PCI with the Trotskyist movement it inherited of Leninism but Like its long-time fraternal organisation in Britain its union work was high-sounding Its strategy was based on the immediate formation of rank and file workers committees on a revolutionary programme, thus dodging for years tne crucial queston of trade union unity and the united tront and me relanonsmp to tne But, again like the IS/SWP, it proved itself capable of swinging election programme last year talk ed ot a twofold programme ol struggle' and programme of government'. The limits of the latter are determined 'by the relationship of class forces and by the certain degree of "rigidity" (economically and institutionally) that cannot be mists, elections.
crucial problem which is unresolved by any of the congress. inree centrist organisations. To a greater or lesser extent the strategy of all three is based upon pressurising a government in which the PCI would be the major party. The does not even specify whether this would be a government of the workers parties the Christian Democrats envisaged Manifesto group When AO talks about economic and institutional rigidity' it can only be referring to the structures PDUP. of the bourgeois state. In the last analysis all three organisations will be thrown back upon the PCI SPLIT Because they have no strategy for dealing with this problem and therefore no clear guidelines for what a government of the workers For all its left bluster AO presents a programme for two tion of the PCI programmes) which is little more than a radical-sounding version of the PCI's. The PDUP, including its Bles left wing, is reduced to pressurising Rossana Rossanda and Lucio Magri the 'revisionists' of the PCI. Lotta Continua relies on the spontaneous desire tor alonomy Oh He barl of the masses when they see the betrayals of the PCI.
COMMON LACK Although these have in common the lack of a programmatic alternative to the refor their differences have proved an insuperable obstacle to the formation of a united organisation. In the case of the PDUP the lack of programme has led to an overt tail-ending, while LC. and to a lesser extent AO, conceal this gap in their central political perspectives with recourse to ultraLotta Continua was in practice the most enthusiastic exponent of this unification, being prepared to take a distinctly subordinate position on the Froletarian Democ racy" joint slate in last year's but this sacritice was also an attempt to insert itself herween the omer wwo organsa tions, whose fusion process seemed well advanced. Like the others, LC was thrown into an internal crisis or spontane suas women and nei members slugged it out at the last LOC The crisis of AO was also one of internal regime. It was long regarded as the most Leninist' of the three. Bv this was understood a rigid commandist" structure and the practical banning of tendencies! But there emerged a grouping, led by the national secretary Campi, in sympathy in the PDUP, which rejected this favour of the laissez-faire indiscipline which characterises the This was balanced out by the emerging split in the PDUP. The against the Government's austerity measures ane ine craven cablua -which continues to support the Government by ab stention in the Chamber of Depu— exposed the bankruptey oi the Manifesto grouping's perspectives: its tailing of the PCI and its neglect of the trade union struggle The old PSIUP group, led by Vittorio roa struggled toward some alternative. But all that Foa could come up with on the ques tion of the left government was the need to pressure it, by struggle every time it accepts (capitalist power) as unchangeable'.
With the latent splits in each organisation deepening, even those sections of the leadership least sold on the lace saw need te accelerate the PDUP/AO fusion. Events proved that they did not act quickly enough Now it's all change partners.
Every indication is that neither of the new organisations - if indeed their fusions come about -will be capable of meeting the tasks of leadership posed by the Italian crisis. Already both organisations have lost large numbers of members, particularly from the workers movement.
DEBATE For revolutionaries today the central debate is around the tactics for a working class united front which can point the way forward workers government and organs of an alternative workers state power.
These are not on the immediate agenda, but they are the questions which determine all practical ac tion at the moment. one one organisation is correctly directing itsell towaras inese issue - the GCR, Italian section of the Hurth nternatona is ta smaller. However the clear assessment of the present political crisis which emerged from its recent congress will arm it to intervene effectively into this flurry of re alignments on the left Many workers have been lost to the centrist parties and may now be lost to left politics unless a clea programmatic alternative emerges The GCR, the only organisation not to have suffered these massive breaches and haemorrhages, pro vides such an alternative. Neithe AO/PDUP nor PDUP/AO is even asking the right questions.
RICHARD CARVER
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NCE AU IMME CON
Party [VPK]. Moscow wing of the party which
plicit mention of dissidents in the have done the same in Sweden. * Belgium