"Communist refounders" meet half of the 1970s and the begin-
On May 3 and 4, the debates at the MCR conference only very partially started to deal with the important political questions.
The appeal which was adopted is very general and implies no precise orientation. On the other hand, some conflicts flared up around organizational questions, notably on the composition of the provisional
THE MOVEMENT for Communist Refoundation (MCR) — created in February 1991 after the split which took place at the Rimini Congress of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) -held its first national conference in Rome from May 3-5, 1991. The conference had two parts; an ning of the 1980s. It is difficult to evaluate the weight of the one or the other current, but overall this phenomenon is undeniable.
The debate which has marked this new formation since beginning — whether to immediately launch a new party or maintain a movement until a later time — was settled at the Rome conleadership and on the responsibilities of those elected to it.
Important decisions already taken elsewhere
The fact that the daily Il Manifesto had published, before the opening of the conference, a diagram of the new leadership structure - which turned out to be that internal meeting with 400 delegates during the first two days, then a public meeting.
T HE refounders prepared for this
event in a climate of euphoria. Since mid-February they have cards, and it would seem that between 400 and 500,000 former members of the PCI have not yet joined the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS — the renamed Commu-
PDS leader Achille Occhetto certainly had not foreseen this situation when he launched his initiative in November 1989 - the refounders themselves could barely have hoped for it at that time.
Given the number of votes that the unitary motion of the opposition had obtained during the election of delegates to the Rimini congress (around 120,000), and given that the Ingrao current stayed with Occhetto, it appears clear that a good number of the people who have joined the MCR had already left the PCI before the split, individually, during the last decade if not before. They believe today that there is a new chance to build an opposition inspired by an anticapitalist spirit.
The same goes for the militants of the 22 far left, who had withdrawn from politics after the disappointments of the second International Viewpoint #209 • June 24, 1991 ference, with everybody agreeing around the second choice. Thus, the refounders will continue their activity as a movement until the congress of foundation of the new party?, which will not take place until November 1991. A coordination committee of 49 members has been established; this body will take any necessary decisions prior to November.
A commission of 98 members, charged with preparing the texts for the congress, has also been set up; Sergio Garavini? will take charge of the political questions in particular, and Armando Cossutta* the organizational problems.
It has also been decided to produce a weekly newspaper, Liberazione.
### Public meeting an undoubted success
The public meeting on May 5 was an undoubted success, with 15,000 people attending — on March 16, 1991, Occhetto had attracted a visibly smaller audience in the same place. The MCR has 12 representatives in the Senate (including the daughter of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic leader killed by the Red Brigades, who has left the Christian Democrats) and eight deputies.
These latter have formed a common group with the four deputies of DemocraMagri, former leader of the Manifesto group, who has left the PDS without joining the MCR; he will chair the unified finally approved - made the pressure
Numerous delegates felt that decisions already taken elsewhere imposed on them; in particular, the partisans of Cossutta judged insufficient the place reserved for their current and their spokesperson.
After several meetings of its national
Democrazia Proletaria has finally decided to link itself with the MCR. After its national congress of June 1991, DP will no longer exist and its members will join the MCR.
This decision was taken virtually unanimously, although differences appeared on the form of this fusion and on certain parts of the text which will be submitted to the June congress. * 1. See International Viewpoint no. 203, April 1, 1991. 2. The refounders wanted to adopt the name and symbol of the former PCI, against the wishes of the PDS. After many judicial wranglings, a tribunal decided in favour of the PDS; the MCR then announced that the new organization would be called the Communist Pary and would have its own symbol 3. Sergio Garavani was for a long time the leader of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL). 4. Armando Cossutta headed a battle for the "destalini-. zation" of the PCI in Milan in the 1960s. Later on, on the other hand, he was opposed to the PCI's "break" with the Soviet leadership after Jaruzelski's coup d'etat in Poland. 5. During a meeting of the DP leadership at the end of April 1991, a draft for the congress was adopted with 20 for and 13 abstentions. Different amendments were presented; the two most important — one an analysis of Gorbachevism, the other on the significance of the agreements and political and theoretical divergences with the MCR — were rejected. They will, however, be discussed in the provincial congresses and, eventually, at the national congress itself.
The strength to change
WE publish below a speech made by MCR leader Sergio Garavinl at the movement's meeting in Rome on May 5, 1991, together with an extract from an article by another leading MCR spokesperson, Armando Cossutta, published in Il Manifesto on May 3.
DOCUMENT
S ergio Garavini: To have the
strength to change, it is necessary not to destroy, but to cherish and recuperate the values originating from the tradition of the PCI, which are the constitutive elements of our experience. This involves a project of change within the framework of democracy, founded on the historic process opened by the wartime Resistance and whose premisses are found in the constitution; on the mass character of the party and on the class and popular nature which has always been the hallmark of the movewhere the Communists engaged themselves; on the need to translate a great ideal of social and cultural transformation into a concrete political arrangement within society and the institutions; on the refusal of any ultraleftism in action, which must always have a democratic and mass character; on the choice of non-violence which becomes relevant once more today, in the face of new elements which provoke violence.
It is with these references that, as Communists, we can attempt to answer the big questions of today. In the first place, of course, those which are posed by the crisis of actually existing socialism. We have no intention of extricating ourselves from the affair by simply proclaiming that it is nothing to do with us and accent on the critical distance that the PCI regimes, albeit belatedly and in a conceptually limited way.
We must approach this crisis through an optic which includes our own problems, and by a critique which we address to others but which also concerns our own expe-
We criticize the statist character of these regimes, the fact that private property was abolished only to become state property with which the party in its turn became identified, through the imposition of a bureaucratic and authoritarian hegemony which has led to tragedy. Moreove from equality of conditions imposed above has created in fact a new inequality between those who command and the majority which is commanded.
But it is necessary to ask if a form of statism has not also marked our political and social attempts and those of the western left in general. Rather than being concerned with a dialectic between society and institutions and stimulating within democracy and social management, we have demanded from the state the solution of the social problems and the fulfillment of cultural orientations. Going beyond a statist approach, the need to return to society and, starting from that, to relaunch an intervention in the institutions, demands a profound revision on our part; a revision which is not just conceptual, but also
Let us consider an aspect which is amongst the most worrying. We find ourselves confronted with a trade union which suppresses forms of direct democracy in its relations with the workers, which operates as a very bureaucratically structured semi-institutional body outside of the workplaces, and is permitted exercise tutelage over the workers due to the recognition it enjoys from the government and the employers' organizations. There are the signs of a corporatist regression, which can lead to the installation of an authoritarian domination of the state over the decisive social relations and the absence of a real dialectic between society and institutions.
On the other hand, in the countries of "actually existing socialism" we see both statism and economic crisis. The model of production and exchange stemming from capitalism have proved impossible to manage in the context of state property and planification, because this model is based on a logic of profit, not a bureaucratic logic. One can either accept this or contest the model in question.
But if actually existing socialism has proved bankrupt, the Western left has renounced any challenge to the model of production and exchange of the capitalist system. In practice, and, moreover, in theory also, respect of the logic of the system and the primacy of the enterprise has determined the orientations of the left and, at least in the course of the last few years, of the PCI itself. And if one accepts
ITALY this model, one cannot hope to adapt to its different demands simply through softening its forms.
The dissolution of the alliances in the East should also have led to the bypassing of the political-military alliances of the West. This has not happened. These latter have been renewed and reinforced by a new orientation, above all directed towards the South of the world. Italy is increasingly implicated in this. Its role is that of a forward post of this coalition and it is redirecting its own military orientation with plans for a professional army and giving itself the means to launch an offensive beyond its frontiers. Counterposed to pacifism is a militarist culture, which is at the same time a culture of order, with a president who plays the patriot in the name of Gladio (see /V 199).*
Armando Cossutta, another leading figure in the MCR commented in the left daily Il Manifesto
(May 3, 1991): OUR movement must deal with the problem of the East, immediately and in depth. On this question there are no disagreements or divergences amongst us. So far as
I am concerned, I consider some of my positions outmoded, conceptually even more than sentimentally.
The polemic on the "break" had a sense, perhaps, only as a denunci-
Nation of the abandonment of a class identity, of an anti-imperialist tradition, of an important part of our historic patrimony Today, I am amongst the most critical militants. In Berlin and
Prague, the regimes fell without a single stone being thrown or a window being broken, meaning that these regimes had no foundation in the consciousness of the workers, the people, the youth. A crisis so profound is not produced by a single blow, it has causes and roots in the past. A very critical and very free discussion helps also to underline what was positive in the great turn of Gorbachev and to explain what is unconvincing. The German events remain amongst the most worrying for Europe and the world
The Soviet Union did not exist during the Gulf war, despite its diplomatic efforts. In short, 1989 has not
"freed" the world as Occhetto and
This PDS comrades said; today there exist an obvious unipolar domination, a strong capitalist domination. * 23 June 24, 1991• #209 International Viewpoint
masses against the system will be enhanced by the activities of these newly elected members of the people.
Our council members will pursue an independent revolutionary line while fighting together with other oppositional parties both inside and outside the