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Towards the end of August last ycar "Il Manifesto"", one of Italy's best known leftwing dailies, carried a headline on page one which read, "Andreotti (the Christian Democratic Prime Minister| has decided on a policy of high prices; the left-wing councils will put it into practice: the peopic will have to pay for it." At the end of December official government statistics showed that Italians took fewer and shorter holidays in 1976, and the Christian Democrat Minister of Labour announced that unless something was cone urgently another 600,000 Italians would be thrown out of work. Already 200,000 adults in Naples alone have no work, or work only on in occasional basis. In addition, 5%a of the total Italian work-force art obliged by the desperate job situation in the South to seck wark in Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. Inflation last ycar was running at 20%. Pensions are to be increased by 5%. Petrol costs £1.40 a gallon. In the pipeline are increases in car insurance (20%), rail fares, ras, clectricity and telephone charges. House rents, which have been, in theory. frozen for the last 30 years, are to be modified to give "a fair return" to the Endlords. Whatever else that phrase might mean its principal effect will be impossibly high rents for working people at a time when they are least able to pay them. In the face of this massive attacked what are the unions and the main party of the left. the Italian Communist Party (PCI) doing to. defend working-cluss living standards? After all, at the last elections the Italians not only gave 35% of the vote to the PCI's policy of reform, but also 5%-and a number of seats in parliament to the revolutionary policies of Democrazia Proletaria (DP) This, however, did not serve to shake the PCI into militant action to defend the class
ENEY BERUIMCUER
it represents — quite the opposite. Enrico Berlinguer, General Secretary of the PCI, announced that his party would not oppose the actions of the minority Christian- Democracy government, in return for behind the scenes consultations and vague promises of reforms. So fur the only major have been of the highway code. A recent cartoon in "L/'Espresso" shows. Berlingner crawling through a long pipe to join up with the Christian-Democrats in the centre. When he arrives he is astonished to discover that the Christian-Democrats have, in the meantime, moved to the right. For the moment the majority of workers interpret this as typical Christian-Democratic trickery, and are surprised that Berlinguer has fallen for it. The teal problem will arise when they begin to question Berlinguer's honesty rather than his wisdom. The price the PCI have to pay to get into government could well be the unity of the working-clas in Italy.
R.M.J