ITALY Italian Communist Party: the crisis continues THE EIGHTEENTH Congress of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which was held in Florence, Italy, April 9-13, was preceded by debates and differences at all levels of party life such as have not been seen since the 1920s.
The theses finally adopted at the congress and the amendments debated in the sections and provincial federations go a long way toward providing an answer to the question posed in earlier articles: Is the PCI Communist or social democratic? (1) LIVIO MAITAN cratic alternative" and a "government based on a program."
Rather sharp debates took place on the content of these two formulas. As for the democratic alternative, Natta gave the following definition in his conclusions:
"We have talked about the alternative as a project, that is, as a scheme, a line of renewal that cannot fail to make reference to choices of fundamental values, as a process to be realized through a policy of reforms, as an innovation in the system aimed at confronting the problems posed by the technological challenge and at mobilizing all the energies and capacities that are essential to direct this change ... For us Communists, and no one can deny this, the basis for this labor of transformation is the values and principles of our republican constitution."
Thus, after so much baloney about renewal and the originality of the various concepts and formulas, we various concepts and formulas, we end up with a forty-year-old leitmotiv: The precepts of the constitution have to be put into practice.
More concretely the congress confirmed that the alternative is not necessarily an alternative to the Christian Democracy [DC], the main bourgeois party. Natta explained this by pulling the following formula out of his hat: "Our opposition to the DC is not inscribed in heaven." •He was careful not to raise the question whether it might not be inscribed in the social reality. In any case, it is the "government based on program" that is to be the intermediate objective on the road to the alternative. It should be said in passing that despite all the good will of the PCI leaders, there is not much chance that the "great alliance of reform forces" that the party advocates will take form. At least for the two years until the next legislative elections, there is no sign of decisive changes on the part of sectors of the bourgeoisie that could open up the way for PCI participation in the government.
P.C.I. See articles by Livio Maitan in 'International Viewpoint, : No. 77, June 3, 1985, and No. 92, February 10, 1986. International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
LIVIO MAILAN
The grassroots votes on the amendments had a significance exceeding their intrinsic scope. For example, the support for the amendment on Reaganism backed by Luciana Castellina [a former leader of a centrist party, the Party of Proletarian Unity (PDUP)] reflected a more general opposition to the party's support for Italy's participation in NATO. And the backing for the amendment of Pietro Ingrao, historically a leader of the left wing of the party, on the lack of democracy in the unions reflected a widespread discontent about the overall positions taken in the trade unions.
It was all the more significant that the Castellina amendment got a majority in about 50 federations (out of a total of 112) and the Ingrao amendment in about 30.
As for the amendment against building nuclear power plants, introduced by Antonio Bassolio and Fabio Mussi, it was adopted by almost half the federations. Even where they were rejected, the three amendments mentioned above got respectable votes.
The right wing of the PCI especially was worried about the success of the amendments in the provincial congresses. In fact, it criticized the center for making concessions to the left and not defending the Central Committee's theses vigorously enough. Seven of its supporters went so far as to demand a special meeting of the Central Committee before the Congress.
The majority had the ready comeback that it was now up to the party as a whole to decide on the various positions, and so the demand had to be rejected. This did not prevent the center from mounting its counter20 attack against the Ingrao and Castellina amendments. The signal was given by PCI national secretary Alessandro Natta himself in his speech to the Milan federation.
This riposte helped to assure the center the indisputable success that it gained at the national congress. And in the end, almost all the amendments were withdrawn. The theses were adopted almost unanimously (17 abstentions out of a total of a little more than 1,000 delegates), as was the programmatic document (3 votes against 72 abstentions). Not a single "no" vote or abstention was registered on Natta's report and conclusions. Left incapable of offering an alternative
Thus, the right wing had good reason to congratulate itself on the results of its tactic of putting pressure on the center. At the same time, the left, in withdrawing its amendments, confirmed once again its incapacity to offer an alternative to the majority orientation and its resignation to waging only partial or rearguard battles.
It should be noted that the only clear division of the congress over an amendment, the one against nuclear-power plants (440 for, 457 against and 59 abstentions), did not reflect the more general divisions over orientation. In fact, the center leading group was split itself in this vote.
The theses presented by the majority of the Central Committee proposed two key points - the "demo-
In this respect, the 1988 electoral battle will be a real test for the party.
Will it be able to take advantage of the weaknesses and contradictions of the present governmental coalition, or another that might succeed it, to broaden its influence and create a relationship of forces in the electoral and parliamentary arena that will make its inclusion in the government inevitable? Will it stagnate, or worse suffer a new setback?
We can wager that Natta will have more difficulty winning on that level than he had in getting his vote of approval in Florence.
Throughout the congress, the PCI daily stressed the turn that the congress was supposed to represent. But, in fact, the scope of the changes was quite limited. Once again the theme of this congress was the claim that the PCI is an "integral part of the European left." It became almost an agitational slogan.
In fact, when they talk about the "European left," the PCI leaders include in it movements of quite different origin: and character (environmentalists, peace forces, etc.). But they refer mainly to social democratic parties.
So, it is legitimate to pose the question: Has the PCI completed this process of social democratization whose origins go back two or three decades? PCI takes social democratic road
This is a debate that is taking place in Italy even in the big bourgeois press. For example, Repubblica has explained that the PCI now belongs to the Western industrial social democracy," while Corriere della sera does not share this view. (2)
We should recall that Natta's predecessors, not only Palmiro Togliatti and Luigi Longo but also Enrico Berlinguer, even after the breakup of Eurocommunism, were always at pains to stress the specificity of the PCI with respect to the social democratic parties. But this is no longer the case.
To those who point out that the PCI is taking up what the social democratic parties have been saying for decades, Natta answers:
"Today, the big socialist and social democratic parties and progressive forces in the west must also recognize that the path that they seemed to have marked out once and for all has to be extensively rethought. Of course, it should not be assumed that this means that the European socialist and social democratic forces are changing their fundamental option. But if this option is concerned above
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986 all and essentially with the democratic road in the struggle for reforms and with international detente inside the alliances to which one belongs, we do not see this as a reason for conflict."
To be precise, the PCI stands essentially - Natta only confirmed it -on the same ground as the social democrats.
First of all, it accepts unreservedly the framework of the bourgeois state and its institutions as well as the fundamental mechanisms of capitalism. In the regions and cities where the PCI governs, the PCI's whole activity is inspired by such a position.
Second, the PCI's strategic perspective, including its present incarnation of the democratic alternative, involves long-term collaboration with major sections of the bourgeoisie and with the political forces that represent it.
Third, the prespective of "overcoming" capitalism has not been explicity abandoned (some social democratic parties have not abandoned it either in their general declarations), but it is postponed to an indefinite future. Above all, it is conceived of as the culmination of a very long-term evolution of the socioeconomic structures. (3)
Since the party rejected the "model" of "actually existing socialism" of the East European countries, no programmatic project, even of a very general sort, for a workers' state or socialist society has been advanced. When the party leaders or intellectuals face such problems, they do not go beyond empty declarations about building a just, demo-
P. C. IThe seventeenth congress of the PCI (DR) cratic and free society where everyone would have the same rights and the same opportunities, or general predictions about the enormous potential for humanity offered by the new technologies. Their methodological approach recalls alternately the social liberalism of the 1930s or pre-Marxist socialism.
In the fourth place, the PCI accepts NATO without reservations; it upholds the "principles" of the alliance and its ideology, claiming that it is defensive. Its criticisms of one or another position or action or one or another member countries by no means put in question its respect for the political and military framework of the alliance. Its response to the US aggression against Libya is a significant example. The PCI condemned Reagan's action, but it approved unreservedly the line adopted by the Italian government. It called for respecting the "principles" of NATO and took the occasion to proclaim its hostility to any position of "open or camouflaged neutralism."
2. Even in 'Corriere, there are journalists who are rather in agreement with "Repubblica' For example, one of its reporters at the congress wrote: "It has to be recognized that here, in Florence, a speech by any German or Swedish social democrat delegate would have seemed rather ultraleftist." (April 13). It goes without saying that the journalists and politicians who reject the social-democratization thesis are not at all interested in "scientific precision." They belong in fact reject any perspective of governmental to the bourgeois tendencies that collaboration with the PCI and are looking for arguments they use to make their fight more effective.
3. See the theses for the congress, quoted in the article by Livio Maitan in 'IV, No. 92, February 10, 1986.
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OBITUARY
Finally, the PCI's attitude toward the Soviet Union is now analogous to that of the social democratic parties that stress initiatives for disarmament and detente, or for a relaunching of a policy toward the Soviet Union like Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the early 1970s.
The relatively favorable assessments made of Gorbachev's course do not involve any turn away from the "falling out" that followed General Jaruzelski's military coup in Poland. On the one hand, the analyses in the theses are similar to those made by many social democrats or bourgeois specialists. On the other, they reflect the general philosophy of the leaders of the PCI, who cannot contemplate any change - even in the Soviet Union - except in a reformist and gradualist context.
All this confirms unambiguously that the PCI is not qualitatively different from the social democratic parties from the standpoint of its ideological conceptions, its strategic perspectives or its current political practice.
It would be absurd in characterizing this party to refer to what it was in the 1930s or 1940s. This past is outweighed by 40 years of inte gration into the framework of bourgeois democracy.
At the Florence congress, almost half the delegates were between 30 and 40 years old, and 20 per cent were between 40 and 49. A third of the delegates joined the party between 1969 and 1974. That means that the political experience of all those cadres who make up the skeletal structure of the party is marked not only by activity conducted systematically and without any interruption in the framework of bourgeois democracy but also by the party's evolution in relation to Stalinism and the Soviet Union since 1956.
It would be wrong in our opinion to think that the completion of the social-democratization of the PCI that we are seeing now is inevitably going to lead to a major crisis in the PCI. Given the relationship of forces in the Italian workers' movement and the loss of credibility that the Italian Socialist Party is suffering because of its practice in government, the PCI can try to play the role of a credible reformist alternative for some time yet.
From this standpoint, it can reasonably hope to hold its influence and even temporarily reconsolidate the unity of its ranks. It is only with a deepening of the social and political crisis that its contradictions - which are the contradictions of reformism -can explode and create new conditions for the recomposition of the workers' movement. 22