BY DICK NICHOLS
RIMINI — Since it was launched in 1991 by opponents of the dissolution of the old Italian Communist Party (PCI), Italy's Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) has not only kept the communist name alive in national politics, but has become steadily more radical.
It has drawn into its ranks nearly all the former organisations of the Italian radical left, it twice dumped MPs who refused to vote against the neo-liberal policies of "centre-left" governments, and most recently plunged into building the movements against neo-liberal globalisation and the Thatcherite policies of the Italian government of media billionaire Silvio Berlusconi.
Despite this trajectory, only now, after its fifth congress (held here April 4-7), has the PRC developed a "genetic code" that breaks the link with its Stalinist parent's cautious long-term parliamentary reformism and culture of purely symbolic mass rallies and annual party festivals.
The consolidated form of the PRC's mutation is still far from settled. However, at Rimini the PRC voted to "refound" itself once again, this time as an explicitly anti-Stalinist party which "builds social conflict" and "acts politically for the construction of an alternative left on the social, cultural and political levels".
There is no doubt as to the radicality of the turn and the urgency of the political message. In his opening address, PRC national secretary Fausto Bertinotti called on delegates to rethink the process of political change in Italy, "because we see the need for [revolution] when we look at the crisis of civilisation... and we see its possibility given the birth of a movement that aspires to a different future".
The congress — with some 500 delegates (representing almost 100,000 members), 139 foreign guests, hundreds of ordinary members, guest speakers from Palestine and local social movements — was covered by the entire national media only a fortnight after the biggest demonstration in Italian history. This was the March 23 2-3 million-strong protest in Rome against the Berlusconi government's proposed dismantling of the unfair dismissal provisions of the Italian labour code (Article 18).
This extraordinary event along with the general strike on April 16 (in which 13 million workers participated), and the preceding rise in social mobilisation, starting with the 2001 protest against the G8 summit in Genoa, set the congress in a unique political context. Everyone felt that here was a wave of struggle with the potential to reverse 20 years of working class defeats and social retreat. And the PRC's own interventions, especially the work of the Young Communists at Genoa, showed how party influence might grow with the movement.
However, delegates also knew that the PRC, as revealed in internal surveys, was suffering from many negative symptoms. A lot of branches are still stuck in the old PCI culture, incapable of organising the big influx of young people from the "anti-global" movement; lack of communication and information, of party control over city councillors and MPs and of leadership in campaigns are endemic; work-place branches discussed nothing but trade union business; only 30% of members and even fewer leaders are women; the PRC involvement in the movement against neo-liberal globalisation swings between manipulation and acritical acceptance of anything proposed by the semi-anarchist Tute bianche ("White overalls" movement); and the policy implemented in union work differs according to party members' union affiliation.
Here is an organisation which is actually losing social implantation, which had only 6-7000 activists out of 90,000 members and where membership turnover was 30% a year, bureaucratic methods still rife and internal tensions, often related to political origin, at times explosive.
Documents and tendencies
Congress delegates were faced with two documents, a majority position which had won the support of 87.3% of party members in pre-congress voting and a minority position, led by Marco Ferrando (dubbed "the Trotskyist opposition" by the media), which had won 12.7% support. But both camps contained their own internal minorities.
Within the majority, the main minority was formed by an "orthodox communist" current headed by outgoing national secretariat members Claudio Grassi and Gianluigi Pegolo, national executive member Fausto Sorini and Bologna university professor Alberto Burgio. This trend, grouped around the magazine L'Ernesto, advanced amendments opposing the dropping of Lenin's view of imperialism, affirming the centrality of the working class as the main agent of social transformation, rejecting a "simplistic" reading of Stalinism and PCI history and proposing a more detailed plan of party reform. In the pre-congress vote they won around 24% support.
A second minority within the majority, led by national political committee (CPN) members Giovanni Confalonieri and Saverio Ferrari, proposed amendments, which looked more favourably on possible strategic alliances with the left of the Left Democrats (DS) — the main successor party of the PCI and the main component of Italian centre-left governments — and less critically on the left within the main Italian union confederation, the General Confederation of Italian Labour (CGIL). Pre-congress support for their positions had varied because of "crossover" support from some within the Grassi-Sorini camp.
Within the minority, amendments from CPN members Claudio Bellotti and Alessandro Giardello, aligned with the Falce e Martello ("Hammer and Sickle") group associated with long-standing British Trotskyist Ted Grant, had covered Italian imperialism, the political conjuncture, the nature of and tactics towards the DS, fighting Berlusconi, tactics in the unions and the anti-globalisation movement, and party democracy. These received 1-2% support in pre-congress voting.
(The other main ideological trend within the PRC, Fourth International supporters grouped around the magazine Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) and led by Livio Maitan, Senator Gigi Malabarba and Young Communist leader Flavia d'Angeli, supported the majority document. Congress documents and amendments are available in English at <http://www.rifondazione.org>.)
While both of the main documents covered a range of theoretical and historical issues, it was clear from the outset that delegates would most be swayed by the debate over the "burning issues" of how to win the fight against Berlusconi, how to intervene in the anti-globalisation movement and the unions, how to harness the rising tide of struggle to shift politics to the left, and how to reform the PRC to meet these challenges.
The majority
Speaking for the majority, Bertinotti specified a twofold approach — "a radical locating of the PRC to the left and the promotion of social and political struggle in order to transform capitalist society". Its motor could only be "a new working-class movement".
For Bertinotti, March 23 was proof that the movement against neo-liberal globalisation could be a "regenerating factor for the labour movement in a similar way that the anti-war movement had been for the labour movement in 1968-69, especially as it is the social form in which a new radical generation is coming to politics".
The "anti-global" movement was no flash in the pan, but expressed "the deep-felt, long-term needs of a new generation, of humanity, of a struggle for alternatives", Bertinotti told the congress. The movement was not "explicitly anti-capitalist, not yet, but is latently so".
"That's what we're working on", he laughed, stressing the importance of the World Social Forum where this "people in formation" meets radical Latin American social movements like the Brazilian landless workers' movement (MST).
How should this wave of revolt relate to building the alternative to "bipolar" capitalist politics? First the clash with Berlusconi had to be won — the April 16 general strike had to be generalised to all social sectors. But the key to sustaining the mobilisation would be "defence and expansion of democratic rights, on the understanding that democracy is not a natural outgrowth of capitalist development but the result of working class struggle".
It should begin with intransigent defence, in parliament and in the streets, of Article 18 but be turned into a counteroffensive, beginning with a referendum demanding that Article 18 be extended to all workers (it presently applies to firms with 15 or more employees). Indeed, a "season of referenda" should be launched, covering such issues as a 35-hour work week with no loss in pay, restoration of the sliding scale of wages, a Tobin tax and a plan for boosting public spending in the mafia- and unemployment-ridden south of the country.
The many-sided struggles of the movement could also be the basis of a European-wide political alternative. Bertinotti stressed: "It's already time to give birth to a left European social force, whose core would be the relations with the movements and the rebuilding of class conflict: a political project for another Europe, for a Europe with a mission of peace and North-South cooperation, and an alternative to neo-liberal policies."
The rise in all-round social resistance also demanded (and made possible) a more active alliance policy. Under the formula of "an alternative left", Bertinotti projected an "offensive of engagement" with potential partners in an alternative political force, including not only parties like the Greens or the left of the DS, but campaigns, social movements and associations.
At the local government level, the PRC should champion the method of Porto Alegre's famous participatory budget as an "injection of a strong dose of direct democracy", making it and defence of the public sector preconditions for any alliances at the local and regional government level.
How should the party change to meet these challenges? Firstly, it was high time to "remove the lead weight of Stalinism from our saddlebags", said Bertinotti. "Stalinism is incompatible with communism. I repeat, Stalinism is incompatible with communism ... socialism can't be conceived of in one country: the great contest between socialism and capitalism is played out on a world scale."
But also marked for the scrapheap was the concept of "hegemony". Invoking the great Italian revolutionary communist — and exponent of the concept of hegemony — Antonio Gramsci, Bertinotti was blunt: "Today the stress has to go on renewal and the opening of the party towards the movement, towards society. With Gramsci, the party's vocation was that of becoming 'collective intellectual'. Today, however, we have had to understand that consciousness is not brought into the movement from outside, today it's the movement which puts forward the question of what social movement we want to build, so today that vocation has to be renewed and even developed. It's the entire movement that needs to become, for us, the 'collective intellectual'."
Finally, regarding the reform of the party, Bertinotti said: "To build a mass communist party we have to overcome hierarchical conceptions and departmental practices, we have to prioritise political action over simple propaganda work or assertion of our identity, we have to develop an internal culture of knowing how to act and not just knowing how to talk."
[Next issue: The PRC oppositions, the congress debate and the vote. Dick Nichols is a national co-coordinator of the Socialist Alliance, and a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
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