On Italian Communists
Barkan, Joanne
The Italian Communists have finally tied the knot. Led to the altar by a new secretary general, Achille Occhetto, the party (PCI) has unmistakably espoused West European social democracy. The...
...The PCI seems ready to move...
...The Socialists hold the balance of power in Italy (with just 14.3 percent of the 1987 parliamentary vote...
...This means a coalition led by the Communists and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) with support from other progressive forces (such as the Greens) who agree to a rigorous reform program...
...Occhetto did well...
...The PCI has taken a tougher stance in parliament as the main opposition party...
...At local conventions in early 1989, party members gave Occhetto their blessing—although some leaders suspect that the new line was not so much understood and absorbed in this first round as accepted in the long-standing tradition of obedience to leadership...
...But no one can say if the party will find the allies necessary for full participation in Italy's political life and Europe's democratic left...
...Occhetto never answers no...
...As an initial step, he proposed that the PCI leave the communist group in the European parliament and enter the socialist group...
...The PCI took 27.6 percent of the vote, an increase of one point over the 1987 Italian parliamentary elections...
...As soon as the results were in, the party's organizational secretary, Piero Fassino, declared to the press that the time was ripe for the PCI to join the Socialist International...
...Even the genealogy of the party is under review...
...He's pursued a single-minded strategy to strengthen the PSI since 1978...
...The contest served as a referendum on domestic politics...
...Now that the Italian Communist party has divorced the communist movement, everyone asks if the PCI will change its name...
...Upon his election in June 1988, Occhetto laid out the tenets of the PCI's new line: democracy above all else, pluralism, mixed economy, and loyalty to Western alliances...
...and desperately needed reforms are stillborn...
...432 • DISSENT Occhetto's team knows exactly where it wants to position the PCI internationally...
...The leadership was divided, the membership aging, and electoral support slipping away...
...At its March 1989 congress, the party validated its democratic credentials by abolishing the last vestiges of democratic centralism...
...No one can govern without Craxi's party...
...The prenuptial maneuvers had dragged on for years, with a squeamish part of the PCI still clinging to the notion of a terza via—a third road that ran somewhere between revolutionary communism and reformist social democracy...
...These PCIers sound more and more like Swedish Social Democrats...
...Unfortunately for the PCI, the way is blocked on both the international and domestic fronts by Bettino Craxi, secretary of the PSI...
...Immediately after his election, he contacted the West European socialist and social democratic parties, proposing that the PCI meet with them to discuss ways of bolstering the European left...
...Such a force is also needed to safeguard and expand rights in a united Europe where capital will know no bounds...
...He then installed a group of much younger party leaders who quickly began to spruce up the PCI's image...
...Instead, the party traces its lineage to the principles of the French Revolution...
...Craxi holds the international socialist franchise for Italy...
...Occhetto's rehabilitation program came not a moment too soon...
...As for politics at home, the party is calling for a "left alternative...
...In international affairs, Occhetto is hurrying to meet the new socialist relatives...
...By January 1989, he was in Bonn, receiving a warm welcome from Willy Brandt, president of the Socialist International, and Hans-Jochen Vogel, head of the West German Social Democratic Party...
...Yet the PCI still counted over 1.4 million members and had the backing of 10 million voters...
...According to Occhetto, neither the October Revolution nor Jacobin tradition sired the PCI...
...In other words, when the benefit clearly outweighs any negative fallout, the name could go...
...The party was languishing— becoming comatose, some say—after a half-decade of internal debates on strategy and identity...
...the PCI has been wasting away in the opposition...
...The first nationwide test came on June 18 when Italians voted for deputies to the European parliament...
...That notion has been abandoned...
...Nonpunitive antidrug legislation and proposals to reduce military service are designed to attract young voters...
...On the domestic scene, Craxi has made it clear for years that he will not ally with the much larger PCI until the Italian left has been "re-equilibrated" —that is, until the Communists are no longer strong enough to dominate the PSI...
...He's openly irritated to see Occhetto accepted abroad as a legitimate representative of the democratic left...
...A coherent socialist force in the West could support the development of democracy in the East...
...But along the way, the PSI lost most of its left characterization...
...Occhetto and company recognize that the collapse of communism in the East and the coming unification of Western Europe offer new opportunities (and perils) for democratic socialists...
...A campaign against anti-union policies at Fiat helped reconnect ties to industrial workers...
...Instead he says that a name change is part of a process that matures over time...
...For now, Craxi refuses to budge...
...The meeting was a diplomatic triumph—the first official encounter between these leaders...
...In the past year, Occhetto's team has wooed environmentalists and feminists more intensely (the party now requires that women make up 30 percent of all leadership bodies...
...FALL • 1989 • 433...
Vol. 36 • September 1989 • No. 4
