ITALY • DOCUMENT
DOCUMENT
LCR
resolution
BELOW are excerpts from the resolution on the collective entry of LCR members into the DP, which was adopted by the July LCR congress. This congress also adopted a manifesto entitled "Crisis of the Left and Bullding the Revolutionary Party."
HE NEW COURSE of the ItalCommunist Party (PCI) clarifies definitely the ground on which the leading group wants to stand, as well as its strategic perspectives. The PCI now presents itself as a party that accepts the fundamental values of Western culture, and which takes its inspiration from the European social democratic parties in determining the social content political perspectives of its activity.
The propagandist activism pushed by PCI secretary Occhetto after the last congress may, in the medium term, fire up sections of the party membership by giving them the impression that the difficulties have been overcome. But the contradictions remain very sharp on many levels. The conflict is especially acute between the social needs of various sectors of society linked to the party and the concrete political choices made by the party leadership. There is also a contradiction between the traditional options and references of not unimportant sectors of the party and Ochetto's new course, which aims at dumping these options and references as soon as possible so that the PCI can play the role of a "modern European party."
A revolutionary, anti-capitalist alternative
Those who want to fight to create a revolutionary, anti-capitalist alternative, must continue to seize on these contradictions. They must try to be seen as people worth discussing with by those PCI members who are not lulled by the narcotic effects of the "new course" and who seek a left-wing 18 solution to their party's crisis rather than the liquidation of its class identity International Viewpoint #170 • October 2, 1989 undertaken by its leadership
Over the last two years, the difficulties experienced by the workers moveconsciousness, the crisis of the traditional left and the political success of the Greens have generated a crisis in
DP. This crisis threatens to disperse
DP's cadres and dissolve the political experience and links with the working class accumulated by DP over a decade, which still represent the most important gain of the great struggles in
A reference point for many sections of society
DP developed as a party in which different political experiences and orientations co-existed. The DP comrades themselves used the term "container party." The different political experiences and cultures that could have contributed to enriching and broadening its project have not, however, led to a political and programmatic synthesis, which there was, in any case, no attempt to achieve. Therefore, divergences progressively increased until the different sensibilities in the organization became irreconcilable.
DP has thus found itself in a very difficult situation with regard to the big questions that have accumulated within it over years. It has not managed to emerge as a credible alternative either with respect to the crisis and differentiations inside the PCI or to the rise of
By comparison with the unquestionable success of the Rainbow slates, DP suffered a definite setback. But at the same time, it held a major part of its voters, who represent a possible, although not automatically assured, basis for reinforcing the party and relaunching it as a reference point for substantial sections of society.
The essential discussion is on the party, the kind of party we want to build, on the aims of a class-struggle alternative party. But at the same time concrete strategic options have to be discussed, as well as the day to day steps necessary along this road.
It is necessary to discuss the problems of redefining DP politically and the means for the organizational relaunching we want. In fact, despite all the difficulties, we have recently seen a new ferment in sections of the working class and other social strata, a new potential for struggle and for fighting back against the policy of the ruling classes that offers the possibility breaking out of the social and political impasse in which the traditional leading groups of the workers' movement have ended up.
New forms of anti-bureaucratic rank-and-file organization have been tried out. New, more effective, objectives have been sketched out to counteract the attacks against living standards and on-the-job conditions. The need for direction and concrete forms of struggle has been recognized.
DP has to take account of this, if it wants to be able to relaunch itself and grow. DP's membership has to build a party able to accomplish these tasks.
The entry by the members of the LCR and OGR into DP is a positive first step in the fight to recompose the forces that still identify with Marxism and class- struggle conceptions and who retain perspective of an anti-capitalist alternative. Despite all their limits and weaknesses, these forces represent the best of what remains, both politically and organizationally, from the great
The focus of this recomposition has to be a fundamental clarification on the sort of party we need today, where it has to position itself, how it should be characterized essentially. Despite the ruling class's ideological campaign about the crisis of Marxism and the end of a society divided into antagonistic classes, and despite the attempt of the Greens to present the problem of the environment as the only contradiction on which an alternative project can be based, the struggle to overthrow capitalist relations of production and establish a qualitatively different social system capable also of attacking the problems of ecology at their root flows from objective factors that no ideological campaign can eliminate.
International links and an international dimension
This is why it is necessary to work to build a class-struggle, anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic communist party sensitive to the problems of the environment, rooted in basic sectors of the and other exploited and oppressed strata of society. It will thus become their political representative and defend their day-to-day and historic interests in the perspective of a struggle for a government of the working class, of all working people, for
The party that has to be built cannot fail to have international links and an international dimension. In fact, as everyone has to recognize for objective reasons, it is at this level that the problems of an alternative to the present political and social system are posed....
On all these questions, the members of the LCR think that they can make a contribution to the programmatic and strategic discussion that has begun in DP, which has to focus first on saving, relaunching and redefining the accumulated cadres and political and organizational experience. *
"Working class exhaustion is a danger for the revolution"
ON ITS TENTH anniversary the Nicaraguan revolution faces a catastrophic economic situation (see /V 169). Attempts by the
Sandinista government to control inflation have resulted in a rise in unemployment, a decline in living standards for many of the poorer sections of the population, and a retreat from some of the gains of the revolution in social policy such as