PCI sinks deeper into
Coming to the left, Ingrao has focused in particular on criteism of the Socialist Party, whose hostility to the peace movement indicates the extent to which it is a "captive of the American imperial logic." In particular, for that reason it was "subordinate to the moderate forces." (Ingrao has not forgotten that the PCI itself is responsible for the demobilization of the antiwar move-
Criticism of the PSI was also the central axis of a letter from the plant
THE DEFEAT it suffered in the May 12, 1985, elections provoked a debate in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) that in its duration, breadth, and the scope of the differences that have been expressed has exceeded the one that took place in 1956 following the denunciation of Stalin's crimes at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist
Party. (1)
The debate was opened by the Central Committee immediately after the elections and continued in two subsequent CC plenums in July and December, and on the occasion of the festival organized for the party paper, l'Unita (in September). It has been totally public.
The daily and weekly press of the party has published discussion columns and long accounts of the CC plenums. The bourgeois press
- from la Repubblica to Corriere della sera - has also chimed in, opening its columns to statements, interviews, and articles by various
Communist Party leaders, as well as to commentary by leaders of other parties and well-known intellectuals. (2)
LIVIO MAITAN
To start with, let me sum up the main lines of the debate since July.
The right wing has sought to gain a clearer profile on the theme of a general solution. Luciano Lama, the main leader of the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGIL, the Italian General
Confederation of Labour) has emerged as the leading figure. On May 25, he already given la Repubblica an interview that created a stir among the party members who do not like to see their leaders using the bourgeois press to express particular points of
Lama said, among other things, that the PCI should henceforward itself toward a struggle to improve the present social system, and drop
"fuoriuscita" ("way out")
of capitalism. (3) On July 19, he was back on the attack in the party daily.
sang the praises of the German
Communists, they were in Germany, would be in
On October 4, in an interview in sera, Lama reiterated that there was "no sense, no meaning,'
"a way out"
in talking about
"I am established in this society," he said, "and there are values of this system that I do not want to lose - freedom, democracy, my rights as a person." The average average bourgeois could not have been expressed more
Another spokesperson of the right, Guido Fanti, presently vice president
European parliament, expresses the concerns of the elected officials, rejected the criticisms of the left municipal governments raised in the July CC. According to him, the reason for the electoral setbacks was that the party had not been able to outline "general orientations on the national governlevel" corresponding to the conceptions and practices that have become established in the municipalities, provinces, and regions. In other words, he was saying that the PCI had not carried integration into the institutions all the way. (l' Unita,
Also in the July 1985 Central European deputy, took to task those the idea of a non-aligned Europe (l' Unita, July 25). Italy's membership in NATO and loyalty to the alliance of Western.
must not in any way be put in question.
at Piaggio (Pontedera), which was also very harsh toward the trade-union leaderships. "If we want to an alternative to this be clear that in we have also to offer an alternative to the PSI, which is integrated into this system." (l' Unita, August 7).
Another representative of the left, than Ingrao in attempting to the main adversary of the majority's programmatic dance of the July CC, in response to "those comrades who explicitly center the debate on the question of whether we should give up any hypothesis of a struggle for a 'way out of capitalism," he denied contradictions capitalism have ceased to play a decisive role in social economic life." Thus, possible to give up the struggle to capitalism in Italy and in the West more generally. Gradualist line
Cossutta came back to this idea in an article that appeared a month later in l' Unita of August 2: "Nothing has become more outmoded than trying to improve society by accepting a role of manipulating the rules of the capitalist game. This is a deja vu that has failed."
On this subject, see my article "Election defeat sharpens internal conflict
Communist Party International Viewpoint, No. 80, July 15, 1985.
the T'Unita' festival, which lasted more than two weeks and was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, Italian Socialist Party leaders and those of other government parties (including ministers) were invited, along with trade. union leaders and leaders of the employers enterprison Foreign political figures managers state enterprises. and intellectuals also spoke. Among other things, there was a debate between the American Democrat, Mac Govern and a spokesperson of the Soviet bureaucracy, Kovalski (an advisor of the Central Com mittee of the CPSU on international politics).
The term "fuoriuscita" is used widely in the PCI. It means literally coming out." This sort of terminology has been introduced to express the gradualist conceptions. International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
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ITALY reformist mire
Unfortunately, in the same article, he confirmed his agreement with the "gradualist line that marks the history of the party," identifying with the ideas both of Togliatti and Berlinguer. Finally, at the I Unita festival, he declared that he was not convinced of the correctness of the "pact among producers" (that is, between the workers and bosses), which remains a leitmotiv of the majority's orienta-
For its part, the majority leading group around the national secretary, Natta, while it denies that the party is suffering from an identity crisis (l' Unita, October 8), has, nonetheless, concerned itself with reasserting this identity on three levels. First of all, it has reaffirmed the central role the working class: "the masses of dependent workers have not ceased to be the protagonists of the struggle for new social relations." (4)
place, the leading group is sharpening the party's present
"The PCI is and wants to be a modern democratic reform party and a genuinely socialist force, inItaly, to the life and destiny of the European left, emancipation, and progress throughout the world."
PCI defends liberation, justice, equality, and solidarity, " as well as do not present the ultimate in human
For an application of natural
In the third place, it has confirmed
"conception of as the party's strategic axis in the medium or even long term.
I will come back to the "alternative" in connection with the debate on the documents for the
It should be noted here that period I have been talking spokespersons conscious of the difficulties they have in explaining their strategy, have taken their stand mainly have indulged in veritable conceptual and verbal sleight-of-hand tricks. Achille Occhetto, who is the champion in the sport, deserves to be quoted.
In an article that appeared in Rinascita (No. 26, July 13, 1985) entitled "New Key Ideas for the European Left," taking as his starting point an essay by the German Social Democrat Peter Glotz, Ochetto came out for a "new appreciation of the market." But, this champion of the slippery phrase specified, this was on condition that "the real question of the age looming over our political options be faced, that is, that of a
International Viewpoint 10 February 1986 reconquest of use value, that could go beyond any neo-seignior-
I confess that I do not understand quite what he was talking about, but I suspect that I am in good company.
To be sure, the author does his best to give us some hints. He explains a little further on that it is necessary to "surmount the false alternative statism and neoliberalism" and to "introduce a new liberalism into the great processes of socialization that are underway."
"The solution of the new problems is not at all easy [we suspected as much!], it is not set down in the writings of Marx or those of Keynes either. If we do not want to be defeated by Reagan (and by Friedman), the Marx and Keynes cannot, as it were, gotten around." The synthesis offered is of unbeatable, but the claim that it represarticle 27, 1985), our ns that "go beyond the old revolutionism old re Even the assertion of the capitalism has to be presented in problematic form." seems clearer. The leading group or unequivocally that it is for "going would create difficulties for its present it wants. But it does not want either example, Lama has, for fear of overly watering down the party's image and disappointing activists and cadres who refuse fighting the capitalist system is only an outworn fad. Communists or social democrats?
In highlighting the that appeared in the PCIs positions after the establishment of the Jaruzel. ski regime, I pointed out its decision with all the communist parties on the same basis as with socialist, revolutionary, and progressive force, without any special links with anybody." (6)
It should be noted now - before analysis of the Seventeenth Congress - that the list of partners in the PCI's "new interalso includes "lay or Christian- and Catholic-inspired democratic forces, the peace and ecology movements."
The difference between the links that should unite workers' parties, and support to different sorts of progressive movements is further obscured. But this is not the essential thing. The main thing is that in practice and in the current political and programmatic debate, the PCI is not putting all the workers' parties on the same level. It is much more interested today in having relations with the social democratic parties than with the communist ones (for example, the French and Portuguese
In fact, a reading daily and weekly press leaves not the slightest doubt. The essential points of reference are the German (SPD) and Swedish social democratic parties. To the former, Rinascita devotes, for example, an article by its specialist, SPD's new program is an altogether favorable light (we have already seen, stantly to the theses of the SPD leader
This new SPD program is supposed to be characterized mainly by the idea of "a social alliance for jobs financed sacrifice in a spirit of solidarity" and by a broadening of not only the "three traditional sectors" (the SPD, the unions, and the bosses) but also the central bank (the concept of Globalsteuerung, direction, the author explains).
There is, nonetheless, a difficulty: "The private industries do not argue either with the priority goal [jobs], nor its sources of finaneing, nor its forms of realization." This is a small detail, whose cause Telo seems unfeatures," the German economy, like governed by profit, and everything else is only the trimmings, as such "social as the bosses and the banks
As regards the Swedish Social Democracy, the PCI press has waxed enthusiastic over its latest electoral exploits. In its September 14, 1985, issue, l'Unita devoted a whole page
4. Natta rejects the characterization of the leadership Os a "center, both on his own behe and that of hto prede colors historical political analysis," Natta writes, "it is purely arbi trary to define Togliatti's line, then Longo's, and finally Berlinguer's, as if what an inaccurate jargon terms their 'centrism, and what we correctly define as a constant struggle against extremism and opportunism was in substance a sort of static equilibrium, an absolute of resolute choices. (Unita, O Natt)
Natta's report to the July 1985 CC. ('l' Unita', July 23, 1985)
6. See the December 30, 1981 declaration of the PCI leadership cited in my article, "Les rapports du PCI avec l'Union sovietique," in 'Inprecor' (IV's Frenchlanguage sister publication), No. 121, March 22, 1982.
to Sweden.
issue, on heads."
Example,"
in tionalism,"
"the whether the
European
The only racy maintains a strategy," while clearly geoisies. (7)
More generally, continues to ormist"
the
Social income, challenged.
value,"
versal claiming"
ideal definitive that achieved
December 9).
The
"The reformists,' ented most capable,
8
September 17 elections the question of renewal for and not
"reform" party.
of the classic have only wants to
- which as a "uniis, to specify any reservaof society"
to the perspectives for working out movement has
(Unita,
"represthe most the alternative as an "alternative to the Christian Democracy"
were the historic rejected. Apparently, compromise has still not been buried.
Opposing positions were expressed once again on the question of the use of
The majority nuclear energy.
already adopted endorsed the line calling for
"limited and previously controlled" use. (9)
Finally, the majority rejected an
- the amendment calling for the party to its
"formal"
relations establish even with the Socialist International, and and its an amendment calling for replacing the formula "democratic centralism"
time,
- which a part of the right would the
- by "the method of like to drop democratic unity."
In reality, the debate on the amend-
Rather than to analyze the ments was a new round in the confrontation currents or sensibilities in the party.
the party amendments,
The
- some of whose spokesright persons abstained on the final vote
(10) - had little to say about international questions.
good reason that it thinks it has gotten its way on the most important points capitalism."
the United the attitude
"Looking at
States and the USSR, the question of
NATO, and the fight against disarma-
On the other hand, the right made it clear that it was not very happy about the domestic perspectives, that the past (in fact, is, the alternative and the "programmatic government." In fact, it was in this arena that the center was able to play its mediating role, imposing formulas that everyone could interpret as they please or to suit their needs.
The left - which abstained also
(in 1983, Cossutta voted against) - had three components. The ex PDUP
[Party of Proletarian Unity, a Centrist current that returned to the
PCI dissome years tinguished itself by putting amendon international ments
(Castellina) and an amendment on at the December the programmatic government (Magri),
Also rejected disarmament actions and
Tv. A8.
As I said already in my article
1985, the PCI
80,
July 15, in bothered by the balance leaders are visibly sheet of the Socialist governments in France under what and
Spain, whose strategy not different from theirs.
They qualitatively ever talk about
Spain, and they hardly are taking more and more distance from
France.
They consider, notably, that the of policy nationalizations is outmoded, ing positions and that the left has not made the necessary efforts to get the active support of the
They intimate that instead ste would cratic parties.
masses.
governing with a 52% majority, have been preferable to envisage broader alternative,"
this which numerous accords
On subject, see an answer by
Gilles Martinet in 'Rinascita", No.
46, interpretations appeared for example
December 7.
in the May CC, the debate has again
This is a program that should be
8.
carried out by an alternative government.
been rather sharp, without this how-
9.
Eighty-nine
CC members voted ever resulting in any clarity.
for, 22 against, and 33 abstained.
12 absten-
10.
In total, there were
It is significant, in any case, that tions on the theses and eight on the proall the proposals designed to present grammatic document. No one voted against.
International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
which went in the same direction as the one presented by Ingrao on the same subject.
Cossutta and Cappelloni continued a battle that has been going on for five years now, advocating a less critical attitude toward the USSR. They argued that this was justified now on the basis of Gorbachov's new course. Along with this, they criticized the trade-union leaderships and demanded more rights for minorities within the party.