AFTER THE LCR CONGRESS Bandiera Rossa spoke with Giovanni Russo Spena, the general secretary of Democrazia Proletaria on the prospects for the integration of the militants of the LCR into DP. We publish some extracts below. DOCUMENT
HAVE a very positive assessment of the results of the LCR congress. I would like to remind you that we have been proposing that the LCR enter the DP as a group for some years. It is not simply a matter of tidying up the political
We respect the identity of every organization on the ideological as well as on the political level.
Nonetheless, in the present phase of crisis on the left and on the class struggle left as well, it seems to us that it would be a step forward if different experiences, characterized by their great intellectual and cultural worth, as well as by the value of their project and their political practice were to be brought together into a single collective effort. It would run counter to the disintegration, the fragmentation and the confusion, which, to be blunt, are prevalent on the Italian left....
Facing up to the PCI's new course
In the next period we will have to face up to the new course of the PCI which, in a certain sense, is trying to escape from the stagnation of recent years, by introducing an element of dynamism. Some parts of the PCI majority document offer inter-
ITALY esting aspects and positive elements that could allow us to work together. Among these are the theme of sexual difference, the transformation of the party through taking into account the issues raised by feminism, and the large scale turn towards the movement in defence of the environment. All this however is incorporated into a free enterprise programme that we do not share....
We must also pay more attention to what is going on in the Catholic and Christian milieus. We are very aware on this issue, but we must discuss it further, in order to fully grasp the consequences of the decision at the last congress of the Christian Democrats, which calls for it to continue to run the state apparatus, at a time when that organization is in decline. We have to try to grasp the social effects this will have.
"We want to be enriched by a collective heritage"
A big debate is going to start among the ecologists — indeed it has already started, partly as a result of our activity — between those who believe that it is possible to have a project for the environment that is objectively anti-capitalist (that is, a critique of production options, of the quality of work and of production) and those who place the Green experiment in the framework of purely institutional processes....
As I have said on other occasions, what is involved here is not the entry of the militants of the LCR on an individual basis. We want to be enriched by a collective heritage, a leadership, a group of militants that, although small in numbers, is an important element in the history of the international communist movement and is thus, if you like, also an element of DP's own history, insofar as it involves the struggle against Stalinism, that is to say, against bureaucratic or state capitalist def-
I do not want to deal here with the problem of the analysis of the countries of the East, a subject on which we are probably not in total agreement, and which mirrors a larger discussion developed by theorists such as Bettelheim, sometimes with chang es of position. This discussion is more than just historical or cultural. It is also a political question, as you often insist, because it involves one's attitude to what is going on now in those countries, and therefore, an assessment of the Gorbachev phenomenon, of the social forces which support him and the likely outcome. We will have to discuss all this together. But in any case I believe that it is of the greatest importance to grasp the dynamic of contemporary events in Soviet society, the results of which are not predetermined. One possible result is a straightforward opening to the Western market and to its laws, but there is also the possibility of the development of a social dynamic that will steplate and in a 17 to regroup the forces of the proletariat in a May 15, 1989 • #163 International Viewpoint