BY DICK NICHOLS
[At its fifth congress, held April 4-7, Italy's 90,000-member Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) endorsed a radical left turn. This is the second part of two articles on the congress. The first part appeared in last week's Green Left Weekly.]
RIMINI — In his opening speech to the congress, PRC national secretary Fausto Bertinotti criticised the position of the party's main minority current for "an ideological fixity that would essentially alienate us from the events and even from the big contest that is taking place".
Minority leader Franco Grisolia replied that the choice before the delegates was not between an "outward-looking and concrete line and those locked into ideological and sectarian fixity, but between a leadership group that puts forward a reformist position and looks to the movement for a line of retreat...and those who put forward a line based on winning the masses in order to develop a revolutionary perspective".
For Marco Ferrando, another leader of the minority, the essence of the leadership's error was in its relation to the Left Democrats (DS), the main successor party to the old Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the main component of Italian centre-left governments: "For 10 years our party has rejected the idea of building an autonomous class pole to follow the line of 'conditioning' the DS apparatus and its coalitions on the basis of a 'program of reform'. It must be admitted honestly that this line has failed. Indeed, it has not obtained any results, neither from the point of view of building up the PRC and its electoral influence, nor above all from the point of view of the interests and prospects of the working class."
For the minority, Bertinotti's talk of revolution "outside the strategic call for a revolutionary break was only a fiery but empty phrase" and the hypothesis of a "shift to the left" a repeat of the policy that "failed so badly in our experience of support to the Prodi government". (In 1996 the PRC, with 8.6% of the parliamentary vote, agreed to support the centre-left Olive Tree government of Romano Prodi "from outside", allowing Prodi to govern, but without taking part in the administration. In 1998 the PRC withdrew support from Prodi, provoking the fall of the government.)
The minority's alternative point of reference was the Argentinian movement of piqueteros and people's assemblies, contrasted with the politics of the movement against corporate globalisation.
"Instead of starting from the Tobin Tax and non-violence, we have to start from the counter-power of the masses", said Grisolia. "Not a reformism that is lead in the saddle-bags of the communists, not a new neo-liberal government of the Olive Tree, but a government based on the workers and their strength, the only sort of government in which communists can take part." And, necessarily, rejection of coalitions with the centre-left at the city and regional levels, where political choices are no different than nationally.
The congress debate
The "orthodox communists" within the majority concentrated their fire on the most questionable parts of the majority position, the supposed obsolescence of Lenin's view of imperialism, the alleged downgrading of the working class's centrality and its abandonment of the concept of winning hegemony among the masses.
Already before the congress, national executive member Fausto Sorini had written in the magazine L'Ernesto that it was "stupefying that the funeral of the category of imperialism is being proposed at a time when imperialism not only exists but provokes and threatens wars in every corner of the planet".
For Gianluigi Pegolo, the abandonment of the concept of hegemony meant that "a question of great importance has been downplayed". Pegolo added: "It has a centrality that cannot be reduced to a slogan. There is a hierarchy of importance here, which we must recognise if we are to give the party a broader presence in society at large, and not be tied to the ups and downs of the movement."
Other speakers from this current stressed the need for a balanced and informed balance sheet of the history of the PCI, especially its role as the backbone in the war-time resistance against Nazi Germany's military occupation of Italy and the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
In the three days of discussion there were more than 60 interventions, covering all issues in dispute. Among these was the suggestion that the PRC should change its name, a thought that drew stormy condemnation, creating a rare moment of near-total unity.
Other oft-repeated themes were the need for the PRC to learn from the Young Communists, for the party to institute serious training and education programs, as well as solidarity with Palestine, Cuba, the people of the Sahara and Kurdistan. Hegemony and the relationship between party and movements were attacked from all angles, but in no way resolved.
It fell to national secretariat member Paolo Ferrero to clarify the majority line on the issue of relations with the centre left: "Many comrades have misunderstood the discussion about unity in action. On the right [a reference to the minority within the majority] the word is: 'At last!'. On the left: 'They're doing deals under the table.' None of this is true. The problem posed is different — that of providing the movement with a political outcome in order to defeat Berlusconi once and for all. Today, thanks to the relationship with the movement, politics can change, the feeling is there that united we can win. Politics as the involvement of the masses is back again. But to achieve this outcome we are convinced that we have to break with bipolar politics, in form and in substance. It's only along this path that we can construct a mass movement and give life to an alternative left."
Bertinotti's summary lasted two hours and was interrupted by applause 90 times as he sought the most trenchant replies to the critics: "Are we inside the movement or a little bit outside? I don't understand this question. Excuse me, but what have we been doing up until now. If we hadn't been inside the movement, we wouldn't be what we are here today. We must renew ourselves and open ourselves outward. We must build the alternative left, standing inside it as a party but also as a political agency which knows how to influence and be influenced."
And again: "Our 'what is to be done' is the engagement to build a new workers' movement, that is, a new social agent of anti-capitalist transformation. Comrades, we have thought about the category of revolution far too little. It's usually either understood as the attack on the Winter Palace, as the seizure of power — not on the cards today. Or we think that since revolution isn't possible, then we are just stuck with capitalism. We have to get out of this mind-set so as to thoroughly grasp the new agents of transformation."
The PRC national secretary concluded: "Really, comrades, if not now, when?" His summary was followed by an emotional singing of the Internationale and Bandiera Rossa from the fired-up delegates.
Final votes
In the final vote, the majority position received 70% support, the minority received 12.7%, while abstentions totalled 17.3%. This last vote was to be read as a protest by part of the minorities proposing amendments to the majority line. In the vote on the various amendments to the majority document proposed by these minorities, the highest support reached was 30-34%.
The majority came together again in the vote of the document summarising the results of the congress and tasks of the party, which was adopted by 87% to the minority document's 13%.
The closest votes of the entire conference were on the issue of women's participation in the PRC. Amendments from women delegates opposing a quota of at least 40% female representation on leadership bodies and proposing instead a sustained attack on the real causes of lack of women comrades' participation and a valuing of their work both lost narrowly (gaining 42% and 45% support respectively).
Unfortunately, the congress ended on a rather sour note. Delegates had earlier, and without great controversy, endorsed a constitutional amendment drastically slimming the PRC's leadership bodies. The unmanageable national political committee (CPN) came down from 378 members to 135, the national executive from 60 to 39, and the national secretariat from 11 to five.
However, the slate presented by the election commission not only left off all trade unionists but also failed to meet the constitutional 40% quota for women members. After a good deal of wrangling and heartburn delegates endorsed the slate by 74% in favour, 24% against with 2% abstaining, an indication of a good deal of discontent and rancour.
At its meeting after the congress, the CPN backed Bertinotti for national secretary, with a vote of 87.5% against the 11% for the minority leader, Marco Ferrando.
In the end, the PRC congress made little difference to the balance of forces within the party. The basic reason for this was that most were convinced that the majority had a feasible line for building the PRC's intervention in the present phase of Italian politics. Many weren't sure about ditching references to "imperialism" in favour of "globalisation" as the new all-explanatory concept, but then again in all concrete cases the congress adopted a clear anti-imperialist stance and international solidarity pervaded the entire event.
Likewise with the concepts of hegemony and the abandonment of "democratic centralism". Congress delegates' allergic reaction to these concepts derived from their association with PCI's practice of bureaucratic manipulation of mass movements and the Stalinist reading of Lenin. But if the PRC is to achieve the "hegemony of the movement in society" it will have to work out how to strengthen the influence ("hegemony") of socialist politics within the mass movements.
This will also necessarily mean ongoing debate about the forms of party organisation that best promote this influence. Many delegates I spoke to were already thinking that the PRC now needs an organisation conference, as well as conferences of its trade union, environmental and women's liberation movement activists, in order to thrash out the concrete application of the Rimini turn.
And what about the real content of that formula "pluralist alternative left"? Few delegates were convinced by the minority's claim that this represented a rerun of the PRC's external support to the Olive Tree coalition. Indeed, a section of the minority vote at the PRC's fourth congress (18%) deserted it this time on the basis of "left turn" proposed by Bertinotti.
Further, the amendments from within the minority position could be read as an attempt to impart some concreteness to a line which, while scoring points at the level of analysis, history and general strategy, largely failed to give convincing content to its proposal for an "autonomous class pole".
The content of the "alternative pluralist left" will largely be decided by the PRC's capacity to intervene in the rising Italian and European class struggle. Nothing is guaranteed and internal tensions can always explode the PRC project. But if the enthusiasm and commitment of many congress delegates means anything, there will be a serious effort made to implement the party's left turn and this will have a major impact on Italian, and European, politics.
[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, May 1, 2002.
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