The new Communist project
TITO
VISIN
The Refounded Communist Party (Rifondazione communist) can be proud of its first five years of existence. No-one writes it off as a bunch of nostalgics, clinging to the flag or the hammer and sickle logo any more. Instead, the party has won the support of large, radicalised sectors of society. It has widened its electoral base. Without the Refounded Communist parlia mentary group, the present government coalition would no longer be able to rule the country. Livio Maitan reports from the party's December congress, and presents extracts from the main documents and speeches. Italy's most important newspaper, Corriere della sera, recently commented that "Beyond all the praise of the various heresies, and the various orthodoxies, and all the party's institutional conservatism (which certainly benefits the party, in a touching, revivalist way), Communist Refoundation is also something quite new, and important... The grouping is essential for the survival of the government, but remains independent of the malition.
Corriere della sera recognises the problems facing the party. "while they praise
91 6 31 Fidel Castro, and cry out that we must not loose our vision of the communist future, the programme and main area of activity of the party is filled with regular trade union demands... the party is struggling to win a dominant position on the left, and is basing itself, correctly, on the trade union field, much more than on the ideological confrontations about class antagonism and reformism.'
Massimo D'Alema of the Democratic Left Party (PDS), which is part of the Prodi government, was rather more sarcastic. *I'm happy to watch Refounded Communists vote for Prodi on Friday, spend Sunday discussing the prospects of utopian communism as against barbary, and then on Monday vote for Prodi again. Of course, all this risks to provoke a double identity.? Ambitious task
The challenge for the Refounded Communists is how to combine Communist propaganda, in its authentic sense, with an anticapitalist perspective, and an active presence in the social and political struggles at every level.
Party leader Fausto Bertinotti strives to realise this massive task, setting a high workload for the party, and keeping up a constant pressure, virtual blackmail, on the centre-left Prodi government. The goal is to score points against the government, defend the accumulated privileges and social gains of the working population, and win new concessions.
Rifondazione is still perceived as the political force which best expresses the in-
Italy * terests of the most powerless sections of society. But the party is engaged in a very dangerous activity, in as far as it supports the minority government with its votes, and recently even allowed the government to push a fairly severe financial law through the parliament.
The texts on the following pages reflect both the dynamic work Rifondazione is doing, and the dangers the party faces. What kind of congress?
The Party leadership was well aware of these dangers when they opened the pre-congress debates. Rifondazione president Fausto Bertinotti, and veteran Communist leader Armando Cossuta succeeded in establishing a broad consensus around the majority draft resolution. But they failed to convince delegate that the success of this general line was so evident that the party would be better off reflecting on its strategic axes for the next period, and the long term communist goal, rather than discussing the details of the leadership's record over the last few years.
Many delegates felt that the BertinottiCossutta project is long on lists of demands, and full of good intentions, but short on systematic ideas, and genuinely new thinking on the key strategic and ideological themes. And it was inevitable, at a moment when parliament was clearly divided in its views on the Prodi government's finance law, that the divergent views inside Rifondazione about the nature of the party's support for the government would come to the fore.
An alternative draft resolution was prepared by four members of the leadership,?
February 1997 #285 27
"Social progress has been defended"
* Italy and signed by 24 members of the outgoing National Political Committee. They accused the majority text of. • failing to recognise that the process of Communist refoundation has become bogged down. "The majority's statement that we must 'go back to Marx' is inadequate, since it is not accompanied by any re-appropriation of the notion of revolutionary rupture with capitalism. • avoiding discussion on the nature of the party, and its organisation. "In reality, Refondazione functions in a top-down manner." • avoiding the crucial issue of the orientation of the party's trade union work. Italy's trade unions are divided politically, and Rifondazione members, including supporters of the majority, are present in a range of different union groupings.
The minority text also argued that the party should vote against any budget law which is conceived in the spirit of the Maastricht Treaty on European integration. By doing so, Rifondazione would place itself clearly in the opposition. Mutual respect
While it was impossible for delegates to present amendments to the draft texts, the pre-conference debates, and the conference itself were marked by real mutual respect and democratic debate. The minorities did not descend into outrageous and over-simplified polemics, and the majority often accepted the good sense of particular minority proposals. Some minority interventions were warmly applauded.
In the end, the minority won 15.4% of delegate voices, scoring highest among delegates from the main cities, with the exception of Milan. Youth, and blue-collar members of the party have reacted more favourably to the minority text that the older and white-collar members.
Even Armando Cossuta recognised that this was a "respectable" score. Thanks to this result, the minority has doubled its position in the leadership bodies of the party. The radicals demonstrated that they were present in most parts of the country, both in the circles (local branches) and in the provincial and regional federations. Trotskyists? Not quite
The mass media, which had followed the congress closely, usually described the minority as "Trotskyist". But, while three out of four of the original signatories are from Trotskyist backgrounds, the minority current is in fact a convergence between a Trotskyist core, a much larger group of former members of the
Italian Communist Party, some leading members of the defunct Proletarian Democracy
(Democrazia proletaria), and a group of young people, most of whom have only become politically active in the last few years.
1. Corriere della sera, 21 December 1996
2. Corriere della sera, 20 December 1996
3. Giovanni Bacciardi (Florence), Marco Ferrando
(Savona), Franco Crisolia (Milan) and Livio Maitan
(Rome).
Majority text Karl Marx is a resource to be reactivated. Not just as a critical method of analysis, but also because the category "revolution" -- the historical passage to a different social and political order Is more highly developed in Marx's thought than elsewhere (...)
With this latest budget law [Rifondazione voted in favour] old age pensions and public health care have been protected. Italy has escaped the embrace of a rightwing government and, for the first time in a long time, we have sent to the country the message that rebalancing the budget can be done without attacking the welfare state, by putting an increased burden on the richer layers in society.
(...) Communist Refoundation should continue the renovation, and bring a new vigour to the stock of socialist ideas which has accom panied the history of the social classes, and the life of the country, be it in cultural and artistic production, or in the behaviour of the masses. (...)
The 1980s were a time of parallel political histories, parallel Marxisms. The point is not to justify any particular one of these experiences, but to analyse them all critically, historically, with an eye to the new cement we need to deal with the problems of democracy, self-government, liberation from wage labour and liberation of the individual, in this new historical phase of the class struggle. (...)
Reformism has suffered a mighty shock. It faces a structural crisis Reformism - the progressive, evolutionary system through which even in times of conflict, the fruits of economic growth could be redirected to widen and deepen the concept of citizenship - has been swept away by capitalist modernisation. This crisis of reformism has not meant an end to the importance, and the possibility of partial victories. These objectives are still valid, as the resistance of various social realities touched by restructuring shows clearly.
Such partial goals tend to be in contradiction with the process of restructuring. This means that the partial objective does not represent an equilibrium which already exists, but a rupture with a new equilibrium which "they" are trying to impose on "us" (...) The task, then, is to link these objectives to an element of innovation in the social model of development, and the model of accumulation on the base of which the initiative of struggle is also organised (...) The goal which we propose to this party is one of refoundation; and of a new relationship with society; based on a great process of openness and dialogue. Ihe struggle against all forms of sectarianism and conservatism is a living element of the challenge we declare; a challenge for hegemony, and for the construction of the alternative. Our criticism of sectarianism is not a means of subjective struggle against a different political line than our own, or a way of selecting leading groups which can be considered worthy of our confidence. We recognise that sectarianism can mix itself into any political line, and any particular position in the party (.) *
"Our project is a social alternative!"
Minority text The Prodi government is in the process of achieving the integration of Italian capitalism into Maastricht Europe, and transforming the Second Republic [introduced after 1993, following the "clean hands" investigation that exposed the corrpution of the old political establishment.] In this sense, this administration represents • The strategic choice of the overwhelming part of the Italian bourgeoisie which, under the pressure of the crisis and international competition, is convinced that only open collaboration with the PDS and the trade unions will make it possible to impose new sacrifices. • The governmental "vocation" of the Party of the Democratic Left, which has become the political guarantor of social accord
These last six months have proved that the Prodi government is going against the social interests which Communist Refoundation wishes to represent. Obviously, we must bear in mind the expectations which the workers had and have. But we should not make concessions to their illusions. Our participation in the majority would transform us into a simple instrument of pressure on the PDS and, to the extent that we would no longer be perceived as supporters of a global alternative, it would strip our criticism of the PDS' [cross-class alliance policy of all credibility. We should put ourselves back in the opposition, and strive to create the most favourable conditions possible for winning the battle for hegemony in the working class and the popular sectors. We must deny the right a monopoly of opposition to this government!
All hypotheses suggesting that Communist Refoundation support for the Prodi government might lead the Olive Tree coalition to make concessions in our direction over electoral and institutional reform are absolute illusions (...)
Communist Refoundation has had some real successes. But this has not been accompanied by deeper social influence and roots, or by a greater ability to build mass movements.
We have tended to concentrate on exploiting our image, and this has encouraged passive behaviour. "Top-down" functioning has consolidated executive bodies and administrative structures over which the National Political Committee and the federal committees have no real control. To take one example, the selection of our electoral candidates was done without the local leaderships, never mind the circles [branches] having any choice in the matter (...)
The crisis of reformism can be explained by the exhausting of the material conditions of the relative gains won. In today's world, resistance against the savage capitalist offensive should carry the stamp of the search for a new, alternative society.
The idea that the new society could develop alongside capitalism ("non-market transactions" ", "third sector") is an illusion, an utopia.
In a society dominated by capital, a non-market sector cannot exist for long. All that can be created is a precarious parking place, where workers who have been expelled from the process of production can be stocked. Or, of course, one of the many "private social initiatives" which have sprung up using a social camouflage to hide speculative interests and justify low-paid employment.
Of course, the labour which is expressed in this sector should be given its true recognition. And organised. But it is truer than ever that the defence of the accumulated social rights and benefits of the working population requires us to develop the capacity to have an influence the distribution of revenue.
Italy * Including the revenue of capital (..)
Unity, for us, means the unification of the working class, and the construction of the historic bloc [which will give that class hegemony in society]. All unity in action with other left and democratic forces should be conceived as something which enables us to widen the resistance against the class enemy, and sabotage the construction of the enemy's bloc Supporting the Prodi government does not correspond to this approach (...)
"Going back to Marx" is not about renouncing the communist theory of Lenin Gramsci and the others, nor is it about renouncing the revolutionary ruptures of the twentieth century. Rather, it is all about re-launching Marx's political thought on the character of the proletarian revolution.
An thorough historical and political evaluation of the errors and the degeneration of Stalinism, and the tribulations of the East European countries is essential. We must approach this subject without any trace of "continuity" [with the previous positions of Italian communism].
All the errors, and all the degeneration cannot exhaust or negate the experience of communism in the twentieth century. Nor can they lead us to abandon ine revolutionary perspective, and bury ourselves in the search for solutions to the problems of the current state power.*
February 1997#285 29
Two lefts: "The struggle for hegemony"
* Italy The General Secretary The centre-left Party of the Democratic Left (PDS) has suggested that, one day, Italy's country's two lefts (them and Communist Refoundation) could come together in a single party -the PDS. Refounded Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti says his party "can't accept the invitation. There are, in Italy and in Europe, two lefts. More different today than at any time since the Second World War! Including during the sharpest conflicts between communists and socialists. Because, in those days, this kind of conflict took place within a common cultural framework of class struggle. Today, the existence of two lefts is not just the result of divergent political orientations, but also different political cultures. To a growing extent, each of these two lefts has in mind a different coalition of social forces which it
Maastricht Treaty, and supports the first while rejecting the second. This is possible! In our compromise over the budget law, and the introduction of an exceptional tax to enable Italy to meet the criteria for monetary union, we have proved that it is possible to work towards a common currency, without attacking the welfare state (an attack they wanted to impose all over Europe, but especially here in Italy, using Maastricht as
We argue for a national and European campaign to mobilise people in favour of a 35 hour week without reduction in salary. And we are certainly in favour of the creation of an all-European labour market (...).
The world-wide working class is more numerous than ever before. And yet it is still suppressed. This makes it essential to add an international dimension (...) starting with a broad campaign to win certain minimum rights for workers everywhere. After all, commodities circulate all over the world.
They must, it is essential for their very existence. We should exploit this necessity, by proposing a pact, which should become part of international law. Only merchandise with a certain social content should be allowed to circulate internationally. Only products which respect a basket of minimum values in terms of minimum wage, salary level, age of workers, and environmental conditions (...)
We are the first to recognise the need to reflect critically, as deeply as necessary, and however painful it may be, on the errors and the causes of the historic defeat... which pushed the new states born of revolution onto the long, tragic road followed by this century's post-revolutionary societies. But, at the same time, the truths of the October 1917 revolution, the truths of equality and liberation from capitalist exploitation remain, for us, the only truths which seem capable of giving sense to political activity, at the beginning of the third millennium.
The left opposition responds hopes to unite behind its strategy. (...)
The critique of capitalist modernisation, "Social progress has been defended" the construction of a new mass political movement, and the rebirth, here and in the rest of Europe, of a new phase of social and democratic reform - the struggle for a new social model and a new model of development — these are the elements of an alternative kind of politics; opposed to the idea that we must adapt to the process of capitalist modernisation, and concentrate on developing the most dynamic elements of that system. The contest between these two lefts — neither of which is in the process of disappearing - has begun. A contest in the political sphere, and in the movements. A contest for hegemony. (...)
Europe is becoming more and more like North America (...) because this model better fits the process of capitalist modernisation, and offers some solutions to the crisis which has pushed the capitalists to search extreme forms of flexibility and adaptability (...)
A common European currency can be established on the basis of the orientations set out in the Maastricht Treaty, or on the basis of some other set of values. After all, the Maastricht Treaty doesn't include a section on the creation of a common currency. The two things are separate, and should remain so. Otherwise, we will face a deadly choice (...) accept the socially reactionary policies of the Maastricht Treaty or, in rejecting Maastricht, break away from the European locomotive, and suffer the negative consequences for our development.
The only way to overcome this dilemma is to prepare an economic and social alternative for the European Union as a whole. An alternative which separates economic unification from the policies contained in the 30 International Viewpoint
Livio Maitan disagrees with Fausto Bertinotti's views on European integration The General Secretary has just sketched out an argument about Maastricht which we hadn't heard here before. He says that if we enter Maastricht Europe, defending the welfare state as we go, and imposing some new criteria for convergence [between the economies of EU member states], then Maastricht will no longer be what it is at the moment. In that case, he suggests, a single currency would be acceptable.
Convergence criteria don't represent the nature of the community which we want to create. According to the governments which signed the Maastricht Treaty, these criteria fix the conditions which make it possible to create a common currency with the strongest possible guarantees for the general equilibrium of the continental industrial, financial and commercial system. A system which is, and will remain, even in [Bertinotti's] scenario, organically
Since we created this party, our opposition has been based on the view that the project of European union established in Maastricht is a project of the dominant classes. A orolect conceived and tailored to help them face the challenge of increasingly supra-national competition
As for the new [social] convergence criteria, [Bertinotti] only mentions unemployment. Yes, we could make propagandistic use of this concept But it is difficult to define Would we demand that member states may not let their unemployment rate exceed a certain level?
The Irish unemployed movement has suggested fixing the limit at 3%. Of course, setting the bar that low would mean that non of the West European countries would be ready for Europe" for the indefinite future.
If, on the other hand, we said that 10% was to be the maximum permitted level of unemployment, then anything lower could be officially considered as "normal". This isn't a very convincing
As for the common currency, the only plans existing at the moment are for a new currency designed to fit a unified, capitalist Europe. There are no other projects in the bag at
I'm not trying to root out the heretics. But surely everyone can see that the Italian government is an intra-class coalition. The Employers' Federation comes and goes, but the coalition nevertheless includes im-
### TITO portant sectors of the ruling classes. Most of the prominent politicians in the coalition, including Prime Minister Prodi, are recycled leaders of the last, most decadent phase of the First Republic [which collapsed several years ago]. What incantation is supposed to transform this grouping into the engine of a radical transformation?
It is an illusion to suggest, as Lucio Magri and others do, that we could see some kind of New Deal, or something like the reforms introduced in France during the Popular Front years. In the current situation there are too many objective and subjective obstacles to such a course. Never mind the fact that neither the New Deal nor the Popular Front reforms were able to overcome the long wave of economic stagnation. Both ended in a rapid decline.
(...) We agree on the importance of the objective of reducing the working week, without wage cuts
But we should remember that this is not one possible measure among many, but a fundamental choice. It should be linked to a radical change in macro-economic objectives, in which the relations of production and of property will no onger be untouchable (...)
On several occasions over the last half century, the workers move-
Gramsci would have been proud ment has put forward a strategy which has not been based on real analysis, but weakly-grounded hypotheses, or pious wishes.
Just after the second world war, there was talk in the movement about the likelihood of a long period of collaboration with the ruling classes, and the Christian Democratic party.
In the 1970s, there were arguments for a "historic compromise" based on the supposed existence of a current open to "national solidarity" within Christian Democracy. This period is now remembered as the beginning of the decline of the Italian Communist Party.
Looking at this motley party of ours is like looking at the accumulated history of the workers movement. Too many of the elements which have weighed us down in the
But also the most productive elements in our history; a real attachment to our heritage of ideas; commitment to the cause without hope of personal gain, a natural spirit of sacrifice, and a legitimate party patriotism.
Without forgetting the most important, hope. Without hope there can be no great mass movement, and no leap forward in the consciousness of the social classes and political forces. *
Italy * o History repeats? Don't let the right in!
Social democratic government in France and Spain paved the way for the conservatives. PRC
Minority leader Marco Ferrandi thinks it can happen in Italy too.
Some people in the party respond to our arguments by stressing the danger of the right: "the alternative would be something worse," they say in general. I understand and respect this argument. Nevertheless, it is a reversal of reality. Let's be clear — no-one in the leadership of the part has suggested that the centre-left and the centre-right are the
The problem comes when, in the middle of a crisis, the left accepts responsibility for the government's increasingly "tough" social policy, and thereby risks delivering the country into the hands of the right.
Isn't this precisely what happened elsewhere in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s? Chirac' isn't the same as Mitterand, but it was Mitterand who opened the door for Chirac! Aznar is not the same as Gonzales,* but it was Gonzales who prepared the way
This is what we are worried about. The Italian right has grown constantly during the 1990s, as the result of the policies of social massacre followed by the Amato, Ciampi and Dini governments, which had the support of the [centre-left] PDS and the trade
The difference was that the existence of a communist opposition helped limit the right's ability to exploit the crisis. Today, surely our non-opposition to a government which is in continuity with those previous administrations risks to lift the final barrier to a rightist victory!
Far from using its first six months to consolidate the democratic victory of 21 April 1996, this government has accelerated the country's shift to the right.
Look at the re-emergence of the Northem League. Look at the huge right-wing demonstration in Rome recently. There is a real risk of the strongest right-wing electoral victory in post-war history (...)
The first step towards liberating the labour movement is to free ourselves of any illusions in a new reformist social pact. We should link our opposition to Maastricht policies with the strategic perspective of an anti-capitalist rupture.
We should renew the communist perspective as the only real, progressive solution to the crisis of humanity at this decisive moment between two periods, between two centuries. * 1. Conservative French president Jacques Chirac 2. Socialist former president Francois Mitterand 3. Spanish conservative Prime Minister José-Maria Aznar. 4.Socialist former Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales.
February 1997#285 31