E' scomparso il PCI. Evviva il PDS!

(The Communist Party is dead. Long live the Democratic Party of the Left!)

In the last days of January 1991 the PCI held its 20th (and final) Congress at Rimini. It was presiding over its own demise, but certainly not over its disappearance. The Party would be re- baptized at the end of the historic Rimini conference as the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). Its new symbol a spreading oak tree, in its shadow the miniaturized image of the hammer and sickle. The transformation had been agonizingly under way for years, but the final announcement would be no less painful for the old time comrades, hard line Leninists, the survivors of Leghorn (1921), of the resistance, and the cold war battles against Catholic capitalism. Piloting the new Party into the 1990's is Achille Occhetto, a man of the postwar era who rose to political maturity in the 1960's. Intransigent members of the old Party, dismayed by what they could only see as a betrayal of fundamental principles and of the working class, have refused to go along, forming their own breakaway party (La Rifondazione Comunista). But Occhetto intends to present to the Italian electorate a party without ideological prejudice, dedicated to honest administration and social justice, which has earned the right to govern Italy directly in the future.

The evolution of the CPI from a theoretically revolutionary force into a moderate party of the center left has been slow but inevitable. One should remember the conciliatory strategy of Togliatti from 1944 onwards, and his insistence on co-operation with the Christian Democrats (see P. Ginsborg: History of Contemporary Italy, p. 43 etc. and p. 83 etc.). This policy of conciliation was followed by his successor, Enrico Berlinguer, the author of the policy of the "historic compromise." Berlinguer followed a far more independent line vis … vis the Soviet Union, and began negotiations with Aldo Moro on possible communist participation in a coalition (cut short by Moro's death at the hands of the Red Brigades in 1979). Berlinguer's sudden death (1984) dealt a harsh blow to the Communists who, in an Italy that has recently enjoyed growing prosperity, and tends to look more towards Europe than to its own leaders for guidance, have been unable to offer a distinct alternative to the seemingly eternal coalition between the DC, Socialists and lesser parties. Since Berlinguer the Party has had two general secretaries: Alessandro Natta, a rather ineffective, if amiable, academic, and Achille Occhetto. The latter has promised comrades and voters a "new course." As the articles reproduced below show, it remains far from clear what this "new course" offers. Doubt and dissatisfaction are the recurrent themes one runs across in recent commentary on the new PDS.

And now let's make a little smoke (or: Don't Let The Smoke Get In Your Eyes)

by Emanuele Macaluso (Interview in Panorama, February 10, 1991)

(Note: Emanuele Macaluso is a Communist senator, member of the CPI since 1941. Active in the resistance, and one time member of Unit…, he is a close ally of Achille Occhetto, a member of what is known as the "migliorista" or (reformist) wing of the old CPI. In order to defend in historical terms the evolution of the Party, he begins with a historical r‚sum‚ of the past.)

References to the Livorno schism of 1921...are distracting, and shed little light on the question before us. The PCI was re- founded by Palmiro Togliatti in 1944. Following the discussions at Rimini, I was reminded of the 1st general conference of the Sicilian communists early in 1944, before Togliatti's return to Italy. I was not yet 20. There were not many young comrades, and I considered men of 40-50 oldsters. Representing the Party leadership were Fausto Gullo, the distinguished lawyer who would later be minister of agriculture and justice, Velio Spano, a Sardinian, who after years of prison and exile had returned to Italy and would become editor of Unit…. The Congress of Messina was the first to take place in the South, which, like Sicily, was both liberated and isolated, and there were many Sicilian comrades there who had been present at Leghorn (where the CP had been founded in 1921). At that meeting I remember that many authoritative delegates called for the nationalization of mines, the redistribution of land, a republic based on the Soviet model. Gullo and a few younger members fought hard for the recognition of an entirely new situation, which then exploded with the return of Togliatti. The new direction of the party really began at Salerno ("la svolta di Salerno"). That change of direction put to one side the question of the referendum on the monarchy and endorsed the formation of a government of national unity with the ultimate aim of struggling for a democratic republic and a new constitution. This was quite a leap forward in the space of a few months.

(Macaluso goes on to recall an incident at Messina, when certain members refused to place the Italian tricolor - now the symbol of a new republic about to be born - next to the red flag. They were finally persuaded by a comrade who told them: "If we have to dress up as Harlequin to serve the cause let's do it!")

Now many will imagine that the Party is today what I saw at Messina in 1944. That is all foolery if one thinks what this party has meant to our national life. But what has remained of a one time "totalizing" vision of the party, of centralism, disci- pline and "diversity" from that time until today?

Undoubtedly the cold war and the harsh confrontation between government and opposition mis-shaped the political struggle throughout the world. This was particularly true in Italy and for two major reasons: (1) here there was a large Communist Party (with a history of support for the USSR); (2) there was also a long history of factionalism, intolerance and arrogance that have characterized the behavior of the ruling classes. It is not be chance that there has always been in the Italian working class an anarchic strain. It is also true that Italian socialism has bequeathed to the country a scale o civic, ethical and democratic values which have formed the base of a pacific challenge to those same ruling classes.

The Communist Party, born out of the October revolution - operating first under fascism, and later in the climate of the cold war, building on the principles of Gramsci and the strategies of Togliatti - has been a unifying and modernizing force in postwar Italy. It has also contributed to the growing rigidity of our political system. This latter I would largely attribute to ingrained prejudices of our ruling class. But the consequence has been that, while the CPI has always offered the most radical alternative to the monopoly of that ruling class, it has not constituted a fundamental cultural-political break with it at one crucial point: communicability [by which Macaluso means: the capacity to persuade the general public, beyond the faithful] and a democratic regulation of the transfer of power.

Now to reply to the first question [of the editors of Panorama]: I say that the moves by Occhetto bring the Party to a moment of truth. And the crucial, most knotty problem facing us, in my opinion, is the difficulty the PC has, with all its deep roots in the political, socialist, reformist strata of our society, in clearly defining itself in these terms. And this the founding congress of the PDS has not resolved.

The editors have asked me what I would not like to see in the new party. Well, I would not like to see anything that smacks of ritual in our deliberations. We have come a long way since Messina, and yet one senses in many of our discussions a real disparity between what we really need to do to solve our problems, and what we say. However far we have advanced from the plebeian primitivism of that early assembly, there is still a thread of tradition that binds us to it.

I no longer want to hear windy, demagogic speeches, followed by orchestrated ovations. I no longer want to participate in fruitless debates that fail to reach realistic conclusions. I no longer want to hear speeches exhorting us to identify with the Party or with Truth with a capital T. Italy does need a serious reformist socialist party ready to serve in government or in opposition. Capable of proposing serious solutions to problems and of governing honestly and competently. I am tired of hearing talk of "global alternatives," of the need to "fly higher," or that the question is "another," without that being defined; or that one must dig deeper, without really taking us beyond the dig; or that a question demands a "new approach," which, however, remains unmade.

But will it all be the same in the new party we have just re-named? I must confess to some rather serious doubts. But I would hate the new party to abandon many of the virtues of the old, without first freeing itself from some of its obvious limits and defects.