Turmoil Among the Italian Communist

...In February, reporting again to the Central Committee, Togliatti said: The credit is mainly ours, because it is we who have led the working class of Italy...

...This political uncertainty troubles the party militants—those who lead the local branches in the day-to-day work —more than the prominent leaders...

...These heresies have brought an intervention from Maurice Thorez, the Stalinist leader of the French CP, who has written that "the thesis of polycentrism [in the Italian party] surprises and disturbs...

...What shook the relationship between PCI and PSI to the very roots however, was the Khrushchev revelations at the 20th Congress of the CPSU...

...On the "right" there has appeared a faction headed by Giorgio Amendola, a veteran party leader who was head of the organizational apparatus until 1960, when he was replaced by Berlinguer, a Togliatti disciple...

...He also proposed a somewhat conciliatory attitude toward the recently formed left-center government...

...And at the moment he remains in command...

...Meanwhile the aging party leader Togliatti, an extremely skillful politician, tries to play a role as the grey eminence above the various factions...

...To a large extent, it depends on how effective the new government proves in carrying out its proclaimed intentions...

...The PCI, then, will continue to vote against the government in parliament but in its propaganda will claim that whatever reforms it undertakes are the fruit of Communist pressure...

...In certain cities, especially in central Italy, and sections of the Italian federation of labor there is still close cooperation between branches of the PCI and PSI...

...With his characteristic skill at political balancing, Togliatti, after attacking Amendola's general view on the nature of Communist organization, put forward a position on domestic politics that are rather close to the "right...

...This leadership of the PCI has helped stimulate all movements of a democratic nature among the popular masses...

...Similar criticisms have appeared in Ulbricht's organ Neues Deutschland, and when Luigi Longo, vice-secretary of the PCI, recently went on a tour of eastern Europe he returned with the statement that the Communist world disapproves the kind of discussion going on within the Italian party...

...At one point there was a lack of understanding, conservative and sectarian in nature, of the 22nd Congress...

...The party as a whole, and most of the Communist voters, do not seem to be very worried, however, and so far as one can tell, are still prepared to accept orders from above...

...We can only congratulate those Christian Democrats who have come to understand that the old expedients will no longer do for solving today's problems...

...At the PCI Central Committee meeting of November 1961, the most agitated meeting since the end of the war, Togliatti supported Scoccimarro simply in order to cut off discussion, and harshly attacked the two critical factions, the Amendola "right" and the youth federation "left," Amendola had said that "polycentrism imposes itself" in the present political situation, and Nuova Generazione has gone so far as to describe Trotsky as "one of the most original personalities of the October Revolution about whose ideas debate has reopened...

...Berlinguer's report at the December meeting of the Central Committee offers frank evidence: There have been unfortunate experiences...

...On the other hand, there are to be found, here and there, misunderstandings of an opposite kind: tendencies to stray far, not just from our political line, but from the very base of our ideology...

...After that, and still more so, after the Hungarian revolution, the PSI renounced the pact of common action and agreed merely to regular consultations between the parties...

...Meanwhile, an internal crisis has developed in the Communist party...

...An appearance of unanimity is preserved, largely through the authority Togliatti still commands in the party...

...Amendola is still a member of the CP leadership...

...At the January 1962 congress of the Christian Democratic (Catholic) party, a left-center faction prevailed and the consequence has been a possible major shift in Italian political life...

...In mid-January Scoccimarro attacked the left-center government as a capitalist maneuver, while Amendola urged a pragmatic approach...

...Discussion has enabled us to overcome, though not entirely, this kind of misunderstanding...

...but on a national scale the PCI has suffered a notable defeat as regards its policy of making the Nenni party a kind of semi-autonomous appendage...

...At the opposite extreme is a wing of the PCI still linked in sentiment to Stalin and led by Mauro Scoccimarro, a party veteran who spent many years in jail during the fascist period...

...It has partly been a matter of confusion, disorder, sometimes excitement...

...They have enjoyed a pact of common action with the PSI since the popular front days in the mid-thirties...

...It has not been an untroubled union since, for one thing, the Communist leadership of this alliance coincided with severe defeats for the Italian workers in the years between 1948 and 1955...

...Among all the Communist parties outside the Soviet bloc, the Italian one (PCI) is probably the most skillful and adaptable...

...In 1961 the pro-Communist wing of the PSI gained a temporary victory, but now that the Nenni Socialists have been courted by the left Christian Democrats, the "alliance on the left" is to all effects and purposes ruptured...

...The ties between the two parties have further been weakened as the Catholics, who have lately begun to take root among the workers and peasants, have consciously and with some success pursued a policy of wooing the PSI...

...Clearly the attitudes of a "conservative and sectarian" kind are those of the Stalinists, while the "tendencies to stray" are those usually called "revisionist...

...Scoccimarro wants to limit the criticism of Stalin to the barest minimum and looks upon the new government with open hostility, describing it as a maneuver of Italian capitalism to weaken the labor movement...

...When in full force, this alliance enabled the Communists to influence nearly 40 per cent of the Italian electorate and to gain partial control over local town administrations, trade unions and cooperatives...

...On the level of party organization, the creation of a majority and a minority becomes a possibility, which means in practice a return to sects and factions and an abandonment of the Leninist conception of the party...

...And by a unanimous vote —Togliatti can still manage themAmendola's views concerning the permissibility of factions was rejected...

...b) the new political situation in Italy...

...This last view of his brings the party "old guard" close —at least on domestic policy—to a "new left" which has its center in the youth federation of the PCI and its journal Nuova Generazione...

...Within the PCI, however, the adoption of this line has not brought peace...

...The Catholics have joined the Social Democrats and Republicans in forming a new government which proclaims its intention to introduce economic and social reforms—and which, for the first time, gains the support of the Nenni Socialists (PSI...

...Since the 22nd Congress of the CPSU he has been the outspoken critic of party policy and has campaigned persistently for "polycentrism," a thesis first advanced by Togliatti but given a much more deep-going interpretation by Amendola, who argues that majority and minority factions—banned in the Communist movement since the triumph of Stalinism—should now be permitted...

...Within the ranks of the PCI there is considerable confusion and uncertainty...

...but how long this will continue remains to be seen...

...Its characteristic flexibility has been brought into full play during the past half year, when it has had to face two major problems: a) the rifts in the Soviet bloc and the international Communist movement after the 22nd Con gress of the CPSU...

...Nevertheless, the discussion continues and the differences remain...

...Let's begin with the second of these problems...

...At the December meeting of the Central Committee Togliatti did succeed in blocking Amendola's plan for convoking a party congress while simultaneously attacking Nuovo Generazi one for "interferences" in party life which are "mistaken, confused, unacceptable...

...Togliatti, in effect, proposed that the PCI abandon its previous negative criticism of the left-center coalition and even claim that the very establishment of such a government is the result of pressure from the left...

...Where the "new left" diverges sharply from the Scoccimarro group is that concerning the Russian developments it offers the most far-reaching criticisms that any tendency has yet ventured within the PCI...

...In that way the PCI hopes to profit in the 1963 general election...

...Flexible though he is, Togliatti does not propose to tolerate deviations from either the party line or its rigid structure...

...It has even published an article entitled "The Bureaucratic Degeneration of the Socialist State...

...This obviously creates serious difficulties for the Communists...

...It is in this context that the results of the recent Christian Democratic party congress must be seen...

...It is upon this tradition of discipline that Togliatti counts for suppressing the critical ferment within the party and for carrying out his new domestic policies, likely to be popular among the workers...

...Similarly it will denounce the limitations of the new government as the result of ties to the conservative tendencies within the Christian Democratic party...