PARADOXES IN EUROPEAN COMMUNISM: The Inner World of Italian Communism
Mancini, Federico
ROSSANA ROSSANDA is one of the keenest and most turbulent minds womanhood has contributed to international Communism since the death of Rosa Luxemburg. A long-time militant of the Italian...
...It is a corpulent, slow-moving, and rather perplexed party, more and more frustrated at being frozen out of the system, more and more eager to join the center-left parties in government and help carry out the far-reaching reforms Italy needs...
...Clearly, the intention of the editors was to warn the PCI leadership of the danger it would incur if it adopted the "collaborationist" line of the Finnish rightwingers, Aarne Saarinen and Erkki Salomaa...
...And from this premise he proposed the establishment of a new unified movement, neither Communist (i.e., revolutionary) nor Social Democratic (i.e., in the words of Leon Blum, available for a loyal management of the capitalist system...
...Our inept administrative class needs an injection of Communist know-how, Communist public-spiritedness, Communist singleness of purpose, even Communist toughness...
...1969...
...3 THE LEADERSHIP decided to counterattack...
...Organization of dissent ends by crystallizing and drying up the debate inside the party...
...the road now seemed open for a full acceptance of internal democracy...
...Disagreeable as this was, however, the party leaders might have put up with it...
...The atmosphere in the party is no longer as stifling as it was during the grisly postwar years...
...This reversal of positions was due to a number of factors...
...As already occurred in the Socialist party when it went into the government (1962-64), such a faction would attract all those baffilled by the new line...
...but the memory of those days should not dim our vision today...
...In practice, this means the enactment of 10 or 15 powerful laws: as experience has shown, Communist support in Parliament is indispensable to pass them...
...in 1968, Signora Macciocchi stood as a Communist candidate for Parliament in a plebeian constituency of Naples...
...201 9 Strada has engaged Vsevolod Kochetov, the notorious editor of Oktjabr, in one of the most vitriolic literary-political controversies ever to take place in the Communist world...
...The party could be said to have been administered, and passed, a severe test...
...The PCI of 1970 has little, if anything, in common with the 20th-century Prince dreamt of by Gramsci, slender, ravenous, possessed by the inflexible will to impose his "hegemony" on society...
...11 This is the opinion of about two-thirds of the Socialists and 30 percent of the Christian Democrats, though, of course, none of their leaders would at this stage dream of venting it openly...
...More, it is in contrast with the party's revolutionary nature...
...See La Stampa, October 3, 16, 17, 1969, and Rinascita, October 10, 1969...
...Then we saw golden locks move down the aisle toward the tribune: and there, grasping the microphone, her face strained, Rossanda started in a little, broken voice: "Not out of stubbornness, dear comrades, but out of 224 FEDERICO MANCINI a deep-seated conviction, I've come here...
...Co-opting" the party into the machinery of decision-making, pulling it closer to the point where the tensions are at their strongest, may be, among other things, a way of stepping up this process...
...228 PARADOXES OF EUROPEAN COMMUNISM culation is a necessary operation...
...Neither the Social Democratic nor the Communist solution," said the leader of the Right, "has so far revealed itself to be competent to achieve a socialist transformation of society...
...Does comrade Rossanda"—asked Napolitano, a softspoken right-winger, in his suavest tone— "insist on her amendment...
...For the first time in 40 years the voice of an internal opposition that dared to so define itself had been heard at a meeting of Italian Communists...
...Here, putting the CP back into cir19 Lettere dall'interno del PCI a Louis Althusser (Milan: Feltrimlli...
...I don't mean the faith in Communism, or, if you prefer, the confidence that our objects are attainable...
...On November 25 the meeting took place, this time a mere formality...
...very much along Luxemburgian lines, it should come to view itself as an "internal vanguard," whose task it is to translate into a political strategy the revolutionary initiative of the masses...
...2 Aldo Natoli, "Come, con chi, per the cosa," II Manifesto, September 1969, p. 5. 225 FEDERICO MANCINI civilized beyond all expectation was its outcome...
...The PCI has its feet in two worlds: international Communism, which is torn by powerful centrifugal forces, and Italian society which, in essence, is open and pluralistic...
...The Communist party in government would play the role of a fire department...
...Second, the industrial unrest grew considerably worse: which was bound to strengthen the view that the only nonauthoritarian way of restoring order is to let the Communists come closer to the center of power...
...226 PARADOXES OF EUROPEAN COMMUNISM grosse Koalition with the Christian Democrats and the Socialists...
...In 1970, obviously more relevant though often overlooked is the Finnish experience...
...Rumor has it that the shift in the leadership's attitude toward the Manifesto group was caused by the fear that a Stalinist faction might be organized with Soviet help and claim the privileges bestowed on Rossanda and her friends...
...it is, in fact, inconceivable...
...The latter affected indifference and probably thought that the existence of an inner New Left might soothe the outer New Left, the obstreperous groupuscules whose favorite pasttime indeed seemed to be accusing the party of having sold out to the establishment...
...4 IA/ HAT HAPPENED between October 17 and VT November 12...
...In Amendola's perspective, which calls for a number of decisions apt to discomfit the masses, it is not...
...Its members are discredited, half-forgotten...
...Leninism is no doubt at a low ebb, but, as things are at present, its essence is still there...
...After all, a few days before the Central Committee meeting, Roger Garaudy had been given hell by the French CP and Ernst Fischer, the distinguished Marxist philosopher, had been expelled from the Austrian CP...
...Here, helping the Communists out of the refrigerator in which they have immured themselves, is not only a possibly advantageous operation, one suggested by the convenience of strengthening the Left and restoring the political balance, or, simply, by the impossibility of keeping in a political ghetto one-fourth of the electorate...
...What to do...
...but they would have a chance to hit back and not be subject to "administrative measures...
...In the following months the situation grew more and more exciting...
...I HAVE DWELT at length on the Manifesto affair, its ups and downs and its gloomy ending because it reveals, in my opinion, far more poignantly than a conventional analysis could do, what the PCI is today...
...In fact, if a danger exists, it is that the Communists may be unable to bear the strain of collaboration and, as happened in Finland, split, thereby losing part of their value as allies...
...For a summary and appraisal of this fine piece, see Federico Mancini and Giorgio Galli, "Grarnsci's Presence," Government and Opposition, Summer 1968, p. 329...
...I mean the faith in the party as a church, as the Primal Mother—protecting, seducing, avenging herself...
...In the present situation, characterized as it is by a great revival of revolutionary forces in the West, launching again that old formula merely testifies to the depth and scope of capitalist integration...
...The first stage of the graduated process leading to a Communist entry into the area of power would be the establishment of a government composed of Christian Democrats and Socialists (i.e., without the Republicans and the Social Democrats) under the leadership of Moro...
...A long-time militant of the Italian party (PCI), she was appointed in 1963 head of the Cultural Division: not a slight achievement in a political organization that has never suffered from want of able and ambitious male intellectuals...
...In fact, what the Central Committee did was to rally the party against the dissidents politically...
...It believes, however, that in a period of social turmoil the PCI should remain in opposition and take care not to lose its sway over the masses, which have never been so restive and susceptible to the violent slogans of extremist groups...
...Dissent—the Manifesto group was reminded—can be vented in the PCI, but not organized...
...If the foregoing is correct, Berlinguer had the edge on Amendola in October and lost it in November...
...Both were charged with a crime that in Italian Communist circles is a common parlor-game: having gone somewhat far in condemning . the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...In short, the events following October 17 seemed to validate Amendola's hypothesis...
...The authentic thinking of many apparatchiks was disclosed by Amendola, in an uncommon outburst of sincerity, as early as in 1964...
...The Twelfth Congress of the PCI was drawing to an end in the huge and crowded stadium at Bologna...
...We shall not anathematize them," said Vice-Secretary Enrico Berlinguer in his final speech, "we shall challenge them to a stand-up fight...
...The real reason is far more serious...
...During the following months the 10,000 territorial sections of the party would resound with accusations against the Manifesto group...
...Its main feature was a sharp attack on Giorgio Amendola, the powerful leader of the PCI Right, who in August had urged Communist participation in government...
...The book is made up of the letters she wrote to her famous French friend during the campaign and of the latter's replies...
...but I don't think this group is strong enough to blackmail the leadership into recanting a momentous decision in less than a month...
...Of course, time and, above all, the great earthquake of 1956 have eaten into the original purism...
...The secularization of the PCI is advancing though painfully and with frequent relapses...
...November issue of Il Manifesto (Pertti Hynynen, "L'esperienza finlandese," pp...
...Today, the historian Paolo Spriano can expose the wretched role Togliatti played in the Comintern since its Sixth Congress and get away with it...
...On the other side, Berlinguer's center is not opposed in principle to a Communist presence in government...
...Unpalatable as it is, the fact that the Communists keep denying rights we hold to be basic does not necessarily make them a menace to the governments with which they associate...
...On the Communist side, this point was unblushingly made by Senator Bufalini at the last Central Committee meeting: "are there regions," he asked, "more orderly than the red ones, where the workers' movement is at its strongest...
...1 As a consequence of this outburst, she lost her job...
...Rossana Rossanda had spoken for a group of Communists that the newspapermen immediately christened "New Left...
...A political party that does not attain its objectives in fifty years, with three generations of militants, must 6 See L'Unita, November 28, 1969...
...Lip service is still paid by its leaders to their former revolutionary aspirations...
...More concretely, the Socialists have been quietly forming coalitions with the Communists in the councils of many cities, including Bologna and Ravenna...
...it counts among its contributors JeanPaul Sartre, Jorge Semprun, Edgar Snow, K. S. Karol, Regis Debray...
...9 Deputy Maria 7 Giorgio Amendola, "Ipotesi sulla riunificazione," Rinascita, November 28, 1964, pp...
...But, when the first issues of their new monthly, 11 Manifesto, began to circulate, the lull came to an end...
...12 12 An excellent essay on the plight of the Finnish party (SKP) has been published in the October— In any event, to draw from the Manifesto story only somber conclusions would, I believe, be a major error...
...Rossanda and her friends were even allotted three seats (out of 170) in the Central Committee...
...the Manifesto group had a larger following than had been anticipated, alarming the more lukewarm supporters of Berlinguer's line...
...The hint was clear enough and for a moment all the delegates and guests held their breath...
...Besides, let's be realistic...
...I am far from believing that the remnants of authoritarianism still clinging to the organizational philosophy of the PCI should be condoned as a minor foible...
...At the moment they are kept under control or they feel the time is not suitable for action...
...Spriano analyzes Togliatti's role in the second volume of his monumental Storia del Partito comunista italiano, (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), pp...
...In 1965, however, Rossanda dared to attack in Rinascita, the official weekly of the party, the policy in cultural affairs imposed for twenty years by the late Togliatti...
...It would sacrifice the revolution to a politics of reform thoroughly compatible with the system...
...For a few years, Rossanda disappeared from the limelight...
...I At the Central Committee meeting of October 14-17, the awesome word was often uttered: factionalism...
...In Kochetov's last novel, Benito Spada (a transparent allusion to Strada) is the typical Italian Communist intellectual as a Muscovite Zhdanovist must see him: decadent, enthralled by Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, filled with hate for the Soviet Union, teetering on the verge of open treason...
...11 Manifesto is a much better journal than the official publications of the party, the drab Rinascita and the heavy Critica Marxista...
...229...
...It also means the creation of several agencies: if they are to be efficient, we must have Communist officials to staff them...
...Here is his strongest and politically most significant statement: "Kochetov may not know that the Italian working class doesn't aspire in the least to be saddled with a dictatorship of bureaucrats like himself, so ponderous that could not be removed even by great winches...
...Still, I'm persuaded that Italy's left-democrats should do nothing to oppose, that they should actually support, the PCI's bid for participation in government...
...Obviously, a grosse Koalition in Bologna, Emilia's capital, would be a way-station toward Amendola's ultimate goal: a grosse Koalition in Rome...
...We need the PCI in order to effect what has not been, and can no more be, effected by our traditional center and center-left coalitions: a drastic reallocation of resources from private to public ends, a more equitable distribution of the benefits accruing from our "economic miracle," a less authoritarian society...
...it would gain strength and eventually split, depriving the party of valuable cadres...
...They seemed to be celebrating the rites of a faith in which, in their heart of hearts, they believed no more...
...At first, these views did not excessively disturb the PCI leadership...
...Still, the discussion was civilized...
...What they must have found unbearable was the editors' obvious tendency to shed the few vestiges of circumspection and respect for the Communist rules of decorum they had shown at the outset...
...In short, all civil liberties have come to be recognized and guaranteed in the PCI, except one: that of associating with a view to carrying out dissident political actions...
...It is sprightly and well-written and alternates with taste political and cultural topics...
...and 2 Giorgio Amendola, "Partito di governo," L'Unita, August 21, 1969, and "Richiamo alla realta," ibid., August 29, 1969...
...It had been surmised that Rossanda and her friends would be ousted from the Central Committee or ordered to discontinue their venture...
...The September 1969 issue smacked of deliberate irreverence, as if the Manifesto group sought an open confrontation...
...But the Italian party—already regarded as the most independent and worldly-wise in the West—had been confronted by a group to which the Red Guards seemed to have passed on Mao's exhilarating order: bombard your headquarters...
...The decision had obviously been made in advance: it amounted to the ejection of Rossanda and her friends for "political incompatibility" (a ground that, unlike "moral indignity," leaves the door ajar for re-entry if the ousted member repents...
...Antonietta Macciocchi may bring out a book that is a devastating attack on the party bureaucracy and suffer no greater harm than a few nasty reviews...
...The Rossanda group is merely the upper part of an iceberg, which emerged because the times and the circumstances (the explosion of the student movement, the unexpected combativeness of the working class) were favorable to the open organization of New Left-oriented dissent...
...Both within and without the party, liberals were exultant...
...The party simply cannot protect its sections from the tensions that rend these worlds and forever shield the chastity of its flock: all the more so as Doubt, as Rossana Rossanda has suggested, is worming its way into the hierarchy of the Church and infecting its priests...
...in other words, it tends to act as if, instead of organizing 1.5 million people who represent different interest groups and have different ideas as to how socialism should be realized, it still were the tightlyknit army of professional revolutionaries (the "two thousand iron men") envisaged by Lenin in 1902...
...by the same token, they spelled ruin for Rossanda and her friends...
...but even lip service is increasingly rare and faint...
...Clearly, for the latter strategy—a PCI giving priority to its ties with the working class, including the latter's outermost fringes—the existence of a left-wing faction is tolerable and even useful...
...5 See "Manifesto: dura sentenza," L'Espresso, November 23, 1969...
...38 if...
...Said Rossanda half sadly, half ironically, but surely without acrimony, to a non-Communist interviewer: Yesterday, as I watched the comrades compunctiously voting in favor of our condemnation, I felt there was something paradoxical in the whole story...
...Instead, he announced that an amendment had been proposed by comrade Rossanda...
...2 The Popular Front strategy, it was argued, was dictated in the 1930s by the necessity of warding off the Fascist assault on the working class...
...and the sponsorship of the Soviet Union, though still fairly weighty in the eyes of the Communist rank and file, has no longer the power to make an old jade look like a thoroughbred...
...Below the surface, other dissident groups, not necessarily New Left- or Spartacist-oriented, are champing at the bit in the factories, the universities, the editorial boards of still obscure monthlies, or simply in the offices of some local leader...
...Neither Fischer nor Garaudy were spokesmen for any faction: they were isolated intellectuals, expressing at most the discontent (or agony) of their fellow intellectuals...
...back that could not have been more resounding...
...Indeed, some traits commonly associated with new-leftist sentiment seemed to characterize these men: a bias, though not uncritical, toward the antibureaucratic mood of the "cultural revolution" in China, an open dislike for the policies of the Soviet Union, a deep anxiety over the fate of the Czechoslovak experiment and, above all, an obvious sympathy for the spontaneous mass movements agitating Italian life...
...7 Though dedicated to a strategy of reforms, the PCI sticks to the doctrine of democratic centralism...
...The Prague coup of 1948 was a turning point in postwar history and in the life of many of us...
...5 To be sure, the Stalinists did threaten to issue a journal of their own if Rossanda were not made an example of...
...Since the beginning, the fate of the Manifesto group has been contingent on the vicissitudes of a debate in the leadership as to the question of Communist participation in a 4 See Il Giorno, November 28, 1969...
...Hence, the need to drive it out now...
...Strada calls Kochetov a "liar" and an "expert slanderer...
...But these are hard times for the liberals...
...The motion of the Political Committee, a long document epitomizing the middle-of-the-road line charted by old Luigi Longo, had just been read and everybody expected the chairman Giorgio Napolitano to put it to the vote...
...Then, in February 1969, she staged a come1 Rossana Rossanda, "Unita politica e dibattito culturale," Rinascita Contemporaneo), August 28, 1965...
...On November 12, in the thick of the debate in the party sections, a dry communiqué of the Directive Office announced that the Central Committee would convene at the end of the month to pass a final judgment on the dissidents, whose obduracy was beyond cure...
...A country in a delicate international position, Finland is proving that two democratic parties at variance on many issues may form a coalition with a large Communist party, not especially imbued with liberal traditions, and may not be crushed...
...But the group also had a Spartacist soul, as its rejection of Lenin's organizational model clearly showed...
...others urge the need of a "constitutional covenant" with the PCI or of a "shift to the left of the political axis...
...The party— its members suggested—should cease to be an "external vanguard," guiding the working class in a pedagogic relationship...
...If the monolithism of old has to be shunned, unity and centralism—which indeed presuppose a plurality of opinions and a rich democratic life—must be upheld...
...11 In Italy, it seems to me, the problem posed by Irving Howe has one more dimension than in France...
...First, the debate promoted by the Central Committee in the party's sections showed that in some cities (Rome, Naples, Cagliari, Bergamo, etc...
...227 FEDERICO MANCINI search out the reasons for this failure, must know how to transform itself...
...Yet, its members had not been ostracized...
...8 Vittorio Strada, the critic and student of Soviet literature, can write that his work sometimes calls to mind that of a toilet-cleaner and have the editor of L'Unita countenance him...
...but sooner or later they are bound to come out into the open...
...6 Third and last, the Christian Democrats of Emilia showed an all but avid interest in an offer made by the local Communists to set up a common government in that reddest of all Italian regions...
...In the Catholic party, former Prime Minister Aldo Moro has spoken of a "strategy of attention" to the Communists...
...As pointed out above, Amendola's right wing views participation as a short-term prospect: the industrial chaos, the political paralysis, the widespread feeling that the center-left parties are no longer able to bridle the tensions produced by the impetuous growth of Italian society, all these are factors affording the PCI an excellent chance to enter the area of primary political power...
Vol. 17 • May 1970 • No. 3
