ROME SNAPLE ENRICO BERLINGUER LA SOSTA HILI This polarisation of political forces reflects a European phenomenon. The crisis of the capitalist system and the rise of workers struggles tends increasingly to clear the electoral decks at the expense of all the smaller parties. The big confrontations which are on the agenda in Europe are forcing the working class and the bourgeoisie to cast their votes usefully without worrying too much about the programmatic content of the parties with which they identify.
But today nothing is decided, the whole of the Italian political system is paralysed, bourgeois parliamentary By ANNA LIBERA democracy has served out its time, In France, the big bourgeoisie settled its hash with De Gaulle's military coup in 1958 and the establishment of a 'new strong state', in which the major decisions were taken by limited groups outside the walls of Parliament.
In Italy, the big bourgeoisie is up against a powerful workers movement, and has so far not succeeded in doing away with the old moribund parliamentary system, which no class wants but which none can do away ite future.
One thing, however, is certain -only the Communist Party has it in its power to prolong this agony by participating in a government along side the bourgeoisie. All the necessary guarantees have been given. In no way does it envisage doing away with the old capitalist society, and socialism is postponed to the indefinIt will certainly take several months of convulsions before a section of the cluding all representatives of the bourgeoisie. This struggle will run up against the leadership of the CP who, somewhat embarrassed by their victory, want to avoid being dragged into the dynamic of a clash with the bourgeoisie.
Certainly, such a CP-SP government would not construct socialism But it would at least allow the workers to hold to account their parties. which would no longer be able to justify their class-collaborationist politics in the name of a governmental alliance with the bourgeois parties.