In early October, Italy's Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) withdrew its support for the ruling Olive Tree coalition government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi because of the cuts contained in the government's draft 1997-98 budget. However, after much debate the party reversed its decision and, in exchange for equality of treatment for blue- and white-collar workers in the pension system and a government commitment to introduce a 35-hour week in 2001, reversed its decision. Green Left Weekly's JOHN PERCY spoke to PRC national executive member FRANCO TURIGLIATTO about the crisis. Turigliatto also edits Bandiera Rossa, a magazine orienting to the left of the PRC.
Question: Now that the decision has been taken to support the Prodi budget — which, among other things, includes a drastic attack on the pensions of public sector workers — what has been the response of workers, the media and the ruling elites?
There had been a big media campaign against the party and its initial decision not to support the budget. Now the bourgeoisie and the leaders of the Olive Tree are gloating. They wanted the PRC to accept the government's proposal and maintain the process towards Maastricht and the establishment of a common European currency.
Important sectors of the bourgeoisie want this government to remain in office because there's no guarantee that new elections would give rise to a clear majority: there would be a big risk of having a very unstable parliament. Also, the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS), the main component of the government alliance, and Prodi preferred an agreement with the PRC rather than a new election.
The popular reaction has been very different. First, there are those who, after a decade of defeats, think it's no longer possible to change things and there's no alternative to Prodi's centre-left. They opposed the PRC action. However, this sentiment was theorised and pushed harder by the milieu politiquePDS activists, the trade union apparatus and sections of the left media such as Il Manifesto.
Another sector was not clear: they didn't like the budget, but didn't want to open the way to a centre-right government and weren't immediately opposed to the initial stance of the PRC. They are open to being convinced.
The party withstood the pressure, even in the worst days of the crisis, but it was unprepared for the fight in opposition. Some local leaderships ran for cover, while others lobbied behind the scenes for the leadership to back down. Many local branches and individual comrades found they weren't very able to answer the media and attacks by PDS activists.
Yet party militants with a lot of experience were able to resist the pressure and influence workers to start to go on the offensive.
It was a "leopard skin" situation — resistance in spots. But at the national level, the party couldn't orient the people who were very influenced by the media and PDS supporters.
Question: You say the media pressure was very fierce. How extensive was the pressure from the PDS activists? Very, very strong. They were particularly effective, being former leftists and trade union leaders. Also, because some PRC activists still operate in the framework of the old Italian Communist Party (PCI), it's instinctive to support "stability" and the "national interest" instead of advancing an alternative. Because our party has never fully come to terms with its past, it's always exhibited a mixed sort of political thinking that makes it vulnerable in crises like this.
Question: What were the main arguments PDS members used against the PRC? Their first argument was: if the PRC doesn't retreat, we'll have new elections and the first left government in years will fall and we'll have a right-wing government.
The second line of argument was: we've already made a lot of sacrifices, now we're only asking for a few more. Your leaders, who have already agreed to previous sacrifices, must be splitting the government majority for some stupid political reasons of their own. Yet, if we all make these sacrifices, we can all be "part of Europe", and that means less unemployment and better working conditions.
We were in a trap of our own making. For a year and a half, the PRC leadership majority has been arguing against the left minority to support the Prodi government because, it said, preventing a victory of the right is an absolute priority and at the same time we can demand of it a program of real reform. As a result, we defended the Prodi government for 15 months, including some of its more negative financial and social decisions.
Moreover, the party was not politically or psychologically prepared for a split. A large majority didn't think the leadership wanted to split, or they hoped or believed that the split wouldn't occur. That's because the party has been unable to prepare its militants for an alternative.
Yet there were some working-class sectors who could have been prepared to split, who saw the danger for the whole working class movement's subordination to Prodi and Co. I'm convinced that if the party had been able to prepare its members, opinion among key sectors of the working class would have supported the party and helped convinced the waverers.
As things stand, people will find out through bitter experience what the agreement means. So far there haven't been any strong reactions within the working class, even from those sectors hardest hit, like teachers and public servants, who will have to put off retirement by five years.
But these are only sectors of an increasingly divided class. And what can people do when their union leaders and "the party of the alternative" agree with the government?
Question: What are the likely longer term effects on workers ability to resist? In Australia this was seriously sapped by 13 years of Labor's Accord.
I won't predict. The same dangers certainly exist, but a sector of the working class still knows about class struggle and has the ability to engage in new struggles. The general task is to link this older "vanguard" to the younger workers.
An important variable is the trade union apparatus, which is completely subordinated to the bosses, to neo-liberal ideology and politics. This applies as much to the "left" sector, which, in the hot days of the crisis, completely abandoned the PRC.
The previous trade union policy of the party facilitated this desertion. We had split the broad left class struggle current inside the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) in favour of an "area of communists" which could represent the party in internal union apparatus politics.
Come the crisis, our "allies" in the left sector of the CGIL apparatus disappeared without trace. This error has now been recognised, but it's not yet clear whether this will result in a new orientation by the CGIL militants.
Finally, another question needs stressing. The party leadership admits that we're accepting some negative financial measures, but insists that it has been able to extract important concessions from the government. However, these are still only symbolic — the 35-hour week by 2001, for example.
We will push to organise a real campaign in support of the shorter working week, but with what result remains to be seen. The PRC is still alive and kicking — it organised an October 20 demonstration of 200,000 in Rome for the shorter working week and the welfare state. But this brings out our contradiction: we can organise a big protest, but we were unable to fight in the factories and against the bourgeois propaganda offensive.
Question: How did the left in the PRC, which won 15% of the vote at the last congress, hold up during the crisis? The opposition in the PRC works at different levels. At the leadership level, we've tried to demonstrate that we're becoming increasingly subordinate to the government and we've striven to convince comrades that it's necessary to change. We've also organised petitions against leadership decisions, for example on new unemployment regulations and against the legalisation of contract labour and body hire outfits.
We're excluded from the executive bodies in many of the largest federations. We resist this, but unfortunately in Tuscany some important older leaders of the left, members of the old PCI, succumbed and left. We think this split was a mistake because the possibilities of building a real left organisation outside the PRC are very limited.
Today the fight for the revolutionary party is inside the PRC. The dynamic of discussion and recomposition is not finished: we're in the middle of fighting to change the PRC's orientation and having a broader left within it.
There are two possible lines of development. Either the party increasingly succumbs to the Olive Tree, or we fight their policies through mobilisations that will lead to further confrontations and crises.
To avoid subordination, it's necessary to prepare the party for new fights and splits from the government majority.
At the same time, the party's capacity to lead a social resistance and defend an alternative politics has to be developed. The experience of this short, sharp crisis shows what's most needed is a clarification of the party's political perspectives and a political discussion to arm members.
Question: What avenues are available for that discussion?
This is a big problem. While the opposition asked for such a discussion, the door of Liberazione [the daily PRC newspaper] has been almost completely closed to us. The next issue of Rifondazione [PRC monthly magazine] will have a short article by Livio Maitan about the PRC's perspectives, but it's not easy to have a public membership discussion.
This lack of discussion militates against the education and integration of young people. As a result, even though at 126,000 members the party has grown slightly, there's been a large turnover, especially of young people.
Question: Are any forces inside the Olive Tree coalition starting to have doubts about its direction? No. A very small number split from the Greens to form Red-Green Solidarity Alternative. But the overwhelming majority went in the "realist" direction, with the odd squabble on minor issues but always in agreement with the PDS on the key questions.
Question: Are there any sizeable left forces outside the PRC? What about the "social centres"? Some are semi-anarchist and ultra-leftist. Others have become "anarcho-reformist" service providers funded by the left municipalities.
The comrades in Tuscany who split from the PRC are trying to build a "new political subject" in alliance with the leaders of the rank-and-file "union" SLAI-Cobas.
Such a fusion won't be easy, because they want to bring together not only the SLAI-Cobas but also a more important "union" with some real, local public sector implantation called Rank and File Representation (RDB). These unions are strongly influenced by various left political trends, ex-Maoist-Stalinist in the case of the RDB.
Then there is Revolutionary Socialism, a split from the Morenist wing of Trotskyism, who present themselves as innovators but create social movements in a manipulative and bureaucratic way.
None of these forces have anything like the implantation and social weight of the PRC.