Socialist Resistance has offered this space for the newly-expelled comrades to put their views The "centre-left" coalition wnich komano froal pul together …LO OUSE Silvio Berlusconi covers most of the spectrum of Italian politics. It includes members of the Christian Democrats, party which misruled Italy for decades.
Lamberto Dini, a former director of the Bank of Italy and an member of Berlusconi's Forza Italia is there representing big capital. Democratici di Sinistra have a relationship WILD some unions which resembles that shared by the US Democrats and the AFL-CIO.
Also in the government coalition Ritondazione in the lower house and 27 in the Senate. These include a member of the Fourth International in each house.
Despite the breadth of this coalition in succeeded in winning barely 50 per cent of the vote. The other 50 per cent was also won by another part of the ruling class. On its side was a whole spectrum of bosses of small and medium enterprises, organised crime and many working class
Prodi fought a notably timid campaign against an increasingly deranged Berlusconi. He refused to oppose Forza Italia's neo-liberalism. He would not conduct a struggle around the Prodi: cynically playing Berlusconi card massive tax fraud and avoidance so dear to Berlusconi and his core supporters
His programme in government is as lukewarm as his electioneering. Yet Fausto Bertinoll, the leader of Rifondazione Comunista has alliance with Prodi.
The Italian workers' movement a dread of Berlusconi's return akin to that workers in Britain have of the Tories. Bertinotti will play on this fear to encourage "disciplined, responsible" politics.
This will mean a programme for Italian capitalism only marginally different from that of Forza Italia. Big capital was equally well represented in each electoral bloc.
Prodi has chosen to make his government's support for the war in Afghanistan the subject of a vote of confidence. Bertinotti is likely to support him in this and will win majority support among the party's senators and MPs.
On June 17, Rifondazione's national committee defeated by 100 votes to 57 a resolution calling for the party to adhere from Afghanistan.
This had been proposed by supporters of Sinistra Critica, a current which includes the supporters of Associazione Bandiera Rossa, the Fourth International in Italy.
Their choice is no choice. They can vote to support Italy's imperialist intervention in Afghanistan or they can make Prodi and Bertinotti pay the price for their capitulation to Bush. The political battle inside Rifondazione has now begun.
threat.
ators have started an petition in opposition to the leadership's capitualtion. Branches thoughout Italy have started to its five-year-old position of bombarding Bertinotti with withdrawing Italian troops statements and resolutions
demanding that he defend the party's anti-war position. Some of the young communists have begun taking mor militant action. Rifondazione minister Paolo Ferrero found himself heckled by a group of communist who the platform on stormed which he was speaking and hung up a banner saying "not in our name". With his support for Prodi's war Bertinotti is riskserious split 1n Rifondazione Comunista. order of the day, with the tactic of critical support categorically rejected, even in circumstances where the BNP posed a significant electoral
Workers Power issued a blanket call on the unions to simply disatfiliate from Labour despite the absence of a credible alternative. The leadership directed the group to act as footsoldiers for the Socialist Party's Campaign for a New Workers Party, a left reformist project that has had precious little resonance to date.
As in most every faction fight, comradely relations broke down and with them went the once healthy norms of the organisation's internal democracy. The LFI leadership increasingly resorted to organisational measures to marginalise the influence of the tendency/faction.
The British organisation on the eve of the expulsions was already effectively split into separate youth/adult branches - ones that represented different factions. This was done against our will and against the group's constitution.
The majority refused representation on the Political Committee to faction supporters, reducing Workers Power's executive body to a factional tool of the majority - disciplinary commissions were set up with ever wider remits to hunt faction members on trumped up charges
The expulsions have only brought forward the inevitable. It had become clear to the minority that the LFI leadership had no intention of allowing the fight to go beyond this month's planned congress, much less of attempting to reach a higher synthesis through collective working.
For us this is not a time for despair but for purposeful reflection and action. Our intention now is to launch a new organisation in the very near future - in Britain a new magazine Permanent Revolution will be on sale shortly - not least because we wish to defend and develop what was best in the tradition of Workers Power (Britain) and its international tendency.
This includes a commitment to international regroupment of the revolutionary Marxist left through a process of dialogue, debate, splits and • Permanent Revolution steering group July 2