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This month marks a year of downfall of the Mussolini regime and the unleashing of the forces of the Italian revolution.
The disintegration of the Italian army a year ago, the military catastrophes, the outburst of tremendous strikes throughout Italy’s industrial north, brought the Mussolini regime, and with it, the rule of the capitalists and landlords, to the brink of disaster. The ruling class dumped Mussolini and hastened to surrender to the Allies. They knew that only by the aid of foreign bayonets could they hope to prop up their disintegrating rule. The hope of all military resistance had ceased. There remained nothing left but to attempt to salvage the system of capitalism itself.
The masses of Italy, who a year ago rose up in their majesty and might, who took to the streets and ran the Fascists into holes and hiding places, desired not the perpetuation but the destruction of the rotten system of capitalism. They desired not the continuation of the imperialist war, but peace. They desired not the retention of power on the part of the old upper class capitalist and landlord scum, who for 20 years locked them in the vise of the fascist dictatorship, but the complete destruction of the rule of the exploiters and tyrants.
ALLIED AIM IS SUBJUGATION
But from the very first day of Allied occupation of Sicily, up to the establishment of Allied control over Naples and occupation of Rome, the Anglo-American capitalist powers have revealed, so that today even the blind can see, that their real aim is to subjugate the peoples of Italy. They come not as liberators but as conquerors. They intend to establish themselves as imperial overlords over Italy and exploit for the greater wealth and power of the Wall Street and the Lombard Street bankers. They intend to prop up with their bayonets the same upper class scum who formed the warp and woof of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
The Italian masses are learning today that the Allies are fighting the Nazis only to replace Nazi exploitation and tyranny with Anglo-American exploitation and tyranny.
The Italian masses demanded an end to the slaughter into which Mussolini had thrust them. Italy has been converted into an imperialist battleground.
PLIGHT OF MASSES WORSE THAN EVER
The Italian masses wanted bread. Pietro Nenni, the Social-Democratic, pro-Allied leader of Rome, has just revealed what Allied rule has accomplished for Italy in this respect. “If eight or ten more Italian cities get into the state of Naples, where three-quarters of the citizens live by beggary, prostitution, peddling and black marketing, Italy will cease to exist,” stated Nenni.
Allied occupation of Rome has immediately brought similar “blessings” to its people. The cost of living in Rome which rose 749 percent between November 1940 and June 1944, registered a further sharp rise since the city has been taken over by the Allies. The daily food allotment for Italians in Naples under Allied rule is reputed to be the lowest in Europe, lower even than the food allotment in Warsaw under Nazi rule. The Italian masses are starving.
OLD RASCALS ARE KEPT IN POWER
The Italian masses determined to wipe out root and branch every vestige of the butcher Fascist regime. Under Allied rule, the self-same rascals, crooks and profiteers who tyrannized over the Italian people for twenty years have been returned to power. The Allies shield the black shirts from the wrath and vengeance of the people, while they disarm the anti-fascists. Such is the sum and substance of Allied “liberation” of Italy.
From their own bitter experience, the 1talian masses are learning the stark reactionary aims of the Allied invaders. Their present disillusionment with the Allies will soon turn to hatred and then to ferocious opposition.
NAKED FORCE STILL RULES
As for the native upper class landlord and capitalist cliques, the Italian masses were completely opposed to them even before the downfall of Mussolini. In its last years the Fascist regime was bereft of all mass support. Every institution associated with the Mussolini regime, the monarchy, etc., faced the hostile opposition of the popular masses. In its last period, the Mussolini regime could rule only as a naked military dictatorship. Since the downfall of the Mussolini regime, the Allies and their shadow governments are likewise forced to rule by naked force alone.
With the smash-up of the Mussolini regime, 1taly entered a revolutionary period. The revolution has by no means been smashed by the blows dealt it by the Allied and Nazi armies. Temporarily arrested, it is today again gaining strength, ready to march forth with redoubled determination and militancy to achieve the aims for which the Italian masses demonstrated in Milan and Turin one year ago. On June 15th the London Times correspondent wired his paper from Rome that “Persons who were recently in northern Italy say that the whole country is solidly Communist—both the peasants and the workmen in the towns.”
REVOLUTION HAS GATHERED NEW STRENGTH
The political atmosphere in Italy is white hot. The masses are rapidly learning. They have not simply turned away from the institutions, political parties and political representatives who were smeared with direct support of the Fascist dictatorship, but have in large measure turned away even from the traditional capitalist parties and capitalist politicians of the Sforza-Croce stamp.
Of the six parties that comprise the Bonomi coalition government and the “Committee of National Liberation,” only the so-called working-class parties, the Stalinists and the Social-Democrats, have any significant mass following. The Sforzas and Croces continue to walk the political stage only by virtue of Allied support and because of the perfidy of the supposed representatives of the working class.
TREACHERY INSIDE LABOR’S RANKS
Italy, as the testing-ground of the unfoldment of revolutionary events in Europe, has already revealed in most unambiguous fashion the utter treachery and perfidy of the traditional parties of the working class—the Social-Democrats and the Stalinists. The Social-Democrats, in line with the policies of the “yellow” Socialist International, have added in I& y one more working class sell-out to their already long list of betrayals of the European proletariat. It is the Stalinists, however, who exercise the most extensive influence over the Italian working class today. They dominate the so-called working class representatives both in the government and in the six-party coalition, the “Committee of National Liberation.”
From the very first days of the formation of the Badoglio government a year ago, the Committee of National Liberation, with the Stalinists playing the leading role, worked to deflect the working class revolutionary struggle, and used its influence and prestige to uphold the Badoglio government. They simply demanded that the Italian ruling clique change war partners and join the Allied camp.
STALINISTS IN VAN OF REACTION
When the Badoglio government finally exhausted itself, it was the Stalinists, under direct instructions from the Kremlin, who stepped in to break the deadlock for reaction and strengthen the Badoglio government under a facade of a six-party “coalition” government. Today the Stalinists are in the vanguard campaigning for acceptance of the Allied “armistice” terms, which are reported to be more onerous and draconic than those Hitler imposed on prostrate France in 1940. Following their international role of policemen for world capitalism, the Stalinists in Italy have emerged as the very spearhead of reaction inside the working class movement.
The Italian masses want to get out of the imperialist war. The six-party coalition, under Stalinist leadership, tells the masses to enlist again in the army under the leadership of monarchical and Fascist generals to fight under the banner of the Anglo-American imperialists.
The Italian masses want bread, jobs and security. The six-party coalition under Stalinist leadership tells the masses to accept the Allied brigands’ “armistice” terms which aim to convert Italy into a colony of the Anglo-American powers.
LEADERS AND MASSES CLASH IN AIMS
The Italian masses want to wipe out the rule of the Fascist scum, they want freedom and their democratic rights; they want to establish a new government genuinely representative of the people and one that will fight for their interests. The six-party coalition, under the leadership of the Stalinists, tells the masses to support the Bonomi shadow government which is nothing but a tool of the Allied powers, who are determined to re-establish the dictatorship of the rich.
The Italian masses want to wipe out the black market, to wipe out profiteering, they want bread. The six-party coalition under the leadership of the Stalinists confines itself to begging for a few crumbs from the Allies who are supporting and propping up the profiteers, the black market operations, the capitalist exploiters.
Masses learn quickly in revolutionary periods. In the white hot revolutionary Italy of today, the masses are sure to learn from their own experience that the Stalinist-dominated six-party coalition is an organization of treachery and betrayal At the next stage, the wrath and anger of the people will turn against these traitors.
NEED OF NEW PARTY BEING RECOGNIZED
Already advanced groups of workers have come to the realization that it is necessary to create a new revolutionary party in Italy which will work to organize the Italian proletariat for revolutionary struggle against all their enemies and oppressors. The revolutionary working class party of Italy which is sure to arise and grow strong will be organized around the tested program and methods of Lenin and Trotsky, the program and methods of the great Russian revolution of 1917.
The revolutionary workers’ party of Italy will be a Trotskyist party, because Trotskyism is the only genuine Marxist Socialism today. The revolutionary workers’ party of Italy will challenge the Stalinists and their allies of the six-party coalition in every sphere and on every front. They will expose the crimes and treachery of these misleaders and point the road to the Socialist revolution.
MASSES WILL RALLY TO TROTSKYIST BANNER
Against the Stalinist scheme to drag the 1talian masses more deeply into the holocaust of the imperialist war, the Trotskyists will unfurl the banner of the struggle against imperialism and imperialist war, the struggle for peace through socialism. Against the Stalinist proposal to kowtow before the Allied invaders, to accept their overlordship and become subservient tools of the Allied war camp, the Trotskyists will raise the cry to clear Italy of all imperialist invaders.
Against the Stalinist program of begging for crumbs from the Allies and the Italian capitalists, the Trotskyists will call the masses to struggle against the black market, against the profiteers and exploiters. They will urge the masses to organize their own working class consumers’ committees and by their own class action to fight for jobs, for lowering of prices, for destruction of the black market, for food control. Against the Stalinist program of begging the Allies and the Italian capitalists for jobs, of whining against unemployment, the Trotskyists will raise the demand of nationalization of all industry under workers control of production.
TROTSKYISTS WILL INSPIRE SELF-CONFIDENCE
Against the Stalinist program of relying on the Allies to give the Italian people a “free” government “after the war,” the Trotskyists will teach the masses that only their own independent class organizations, only their workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils, only their own revolutionary struggle can win for the masses their democratic rights and provide them the opportunity to elect a government of their own choosing. Against the Stalinist program of Italy remaining under the rule of the capitalists and landlords, under the imperial overlordship of the Allies, the Trotskyists will explain that only a Socialist Italy can truly give peace, bread, and freedom to the Italian masses, that the only road to avoid enslavement and destruction, is the road of struggle for a Socialist Italy.
WILL FIND TRUE ALLIES IN EUROPEAN MASSES
In this struggle the Italian masses will find allies, not in the Anglo-American rulers, who aim to convert Italy and its peoples into an exploited colony, not in the Italian capitalists and landlords, who have kneeled before the foreign invader in order to preserve their privileges and power, nor in the Sforzas, Bonomis, Social-Democrats and Stalinists who would deliver the Italian masses into the hands of their oppressors. The true allies of the Italian revolution are the insurgent masses of Europe, who like the Italians, aspire to drive out the old tyrants and exploiters, to destroy for all time imperialism and its wars, and to rebuild Europe on new socialist foundations. Arm in arm with these allies the Italian working class will fight for a Workers and Peasants Republic as an integral section of the Socialist United States of Europe.
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