The General
Secretary of
the Communist
Party of Italy (Partito Comunista), Marco
Rizzo,
gave a very interesting interview to the International
Communist Press:
ICP:
Before starting, could you inform our readers about the discussions
within the Italian Communist Movement that led to the founding of
your party, the Communist Party of Italy?
Marco
Rizzo: The
ideological and political origins of our Party refer to the political
area of the legendary organizer of the Italian Communist Party
(PCI) during the Resistance, Pietro Secchia, who was an opponent of
Togliatti for what concerned its moderatism according to the "Italian
Way to Socialism". This area kept living through the
magazine Interstampa and
the Marxist
Cultural Centers,
born in Italy during the ‘80s. This area was, in fact, the backbone
of the struggle of the pro-Soviet opposition within the PCI and the
establishment of the new party, Rifondazione Comunista, after the PCI
dissolution in 1991.
During
the first period of Rifondazione Comunista, that area always
supported the struggle to keep the communist question open in Italy.
At that time, unfortunately, took up the political deviation,
embodied by Bertinotti and his total abjuration of communist history
and tradition. In 1998, after the final break between Cossutta and
Bertinotti, that area played a major role in the birth of the Party
of the Italian Communists (PdCI).
The
war in Kosovo (which I tirelessly and in vain tried to oppose to,
subsequently practicing a severe self-critique over that period)
marks the beginning of the cracking of the relationship between me
and those political leaders.
Our
political area – the only one critical in the national secretariat
of the PdCI – claims the need to review the relationship with the
center-left government (which the PdCI was involved to) and to work
for the unity of Communist and anti-capitalist forces, in a totally
alternative perspective to the bipolar logic of the Second Republic.
In fact, we had built an area for all the communist dissatisfaction
with the center-left government and the so-called leftist unitary
process.
On
July 3, 2009, we announced the founding of the Popular Leftist
Communist (CSP) political movement, a party whose aim was to rally
the communists on the basis of their presence in the actual social
conflicts.
Meanwhile,
the economic crisis breaks out makes in Europe. In May 2010 CSP
responded to the call of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). From that
moment on, the relationships between CSP and KKE intensify more and
more. On January 21, 2012, the party decides to modify its symbol by
adding the words "Partito Comunista" under the sickle and
hammer. On 6 April 2013, the European Communist Parties,
Marxist-Leninist, were called in Rome; among others, the Greek
Communist Party, the Communist Party of Peoples of Spain (PCPE), the
Russian Communist Party (PCOR), the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP),
respond to the appeal. The Committee also participates in the
Communist- Youth Front (FGC).
In
Brussels on October 1, 2013, CSP-Communist Party participates in the
assembly of the Communist Party of Europe convened by the Greek
Communist Party. From the assembly will be born the "Initiative
of Communist and Workers' Parties", which thus officially
sanctions international cooperation with a document signed by 29
communist parties.
With
the congress of 17/18/19 January 2014, the COMUNIST PARTY revives in
Italy.
On
21st and 22nd January 2017 was hold in Rome the second National
Congress of the Communist Party, with the renewed unanimous election
of the outgoing leaders of the Party.
ICP:
The communist movement in Italy has a very long and honored past.
During the decades full of struggles he witnessed brilliant
victories, as well as devastating defeats. Have the weaknesses that
led to the liquidation were examined and understood by communists and
avant-garde workers? Today, what are the main lessons stemming from
this story? Can you tell us something by taking examples?
MR: The
situation when Palmiro Togliatti headed the PCI after the Resistance
was undeniably adverse to the possibility of "starting the
revolution" in Italy. In 1944, the PCI, with the North of the
country occupied by the Nazi-Germans and their Fascist servants and
the South "freed" by the Anglo-Americans, worked to
marginalize the positions of those who wanted to delegate the
liberation of Italy to the allied armies and, on the contrary, tried
to involve the popular masses in the anti-fascist struggle, even
military. This "temporary compromise", however, lost its
character of transience and ended in obscuring revolutionary goals
relating to the issue of the State and the conquest of political
power, which is pivotal for the Communists. We believe that
deviations from the revolutionary path originated from many flawed
assessments of the situation by Togliatti and part of the PCI
leadership group.
Once
the Fascist state has been defeated, it was to be replaced with a new
type of State, not the simple re-issue of the old liberal state. All
the States that came out of the war and of the Resistance had not a
well-defined shape, the power was not firmly and definitively in the
hands of any of the two classes. The battle for institutional
arrangements in Italy was still on the way. During the Resistance,
the PCI grew a lot, becoming the first popular party and counting 2,5
million members. The National Liberation Committees (CLN) could
become, as a broad popular front, the basis of a new state and
replace the old state. But in May 1947, left-wing parties were
excluded from the coalition government. Regarding the lack of
adequate conditions for a proletarian revolution, Pietro Secchia, at
that time organizational responsible of the PCI, wisely noticed (for
those times a statement like those sounded like a very criticism):
"there is a huge gap between doing an insurrection and doing
nothing ...". It is clear that the statement was directed to
Togliatti’s policy, who chose the institutional path as a strategic
line since 1944, while the experience of popular government of the
CLN could have provided other perspectives. The new policy, suggested
by Cominform, is brought in Italy at the Sixth Congress of the Party
(January 1948). The political relation is strongly self-critical and
"it recall the criticism that came from outside". Neither
after the lockout from the government, nor after the attack on
Togliatti’s life, in July 1948, PCI tried to force the situation.
The tactical and evaluation mistakes of Togliatti and the majority of
the PCI leadership group of those years are understandable only in
the light of this analysis, and not simply as betrayal. The first
mistake was the a-priori acceptance of the forms of bourgeois
democracy.
The
second mistake, consequent to the first, was the magnification of the
compromise, which would have been temporary and limited to the period
of belligerence, until the final acceptance of bourgeois democracy
and institutions as the only ground of struggle. We believe that the
causes of these two deviations must be identified in the
overestimation of the party's ability to resolve the power duality in
favor of the proletariat by acting primarily on the slippery ground
of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and, on the other hand, the
underestimation of the strength of the party and its ability to
resist and deter any reactionary action on the ground of mass
struggles, where it was most conspicuous, that never diminished, even
during clandestine and armed struggle.
The
story of the following years shows that the Italian bourgeoisie,
which became the absolute holder of state power in 1947, uses it with
the open purpose of bending the working class and of undoing and
putting the Communist Party on the corner. In this political
situation, the PCI was limited to defending its right to the
existence and the "democratic" legality, incapable to
counterattack in an incisive manner. Over the years, the fetish of
unity has always spoiled the debate about line and program, causing
divergences to appear in muted, hidden, muffled forms, never seen as
contrasts of principle, in an erroneous application of democratic
centralism, only aimed to perpetuate the ruling groups. Thousands of
militants, who devoted their lives to the Cause, had more and more
serious difficulty to understand and act.
On
the other hand, it is undeniable that the PCI played a decisive role
in the conquest of workers' rights in the aftermath of WWII. It
improved their living and working conditions. It achieved significant
rights on the social and economic life. After the war, there was
considerable economic and political room for a reformist politic,
thanks to the balance of the international forces between socialist
countries and imperialist countries. The PCI was able to use them
successfully for the benefit of the working class and the workers,
but was unable to link these achievements with the political goal of
the seizure of power. It behaved like a good social-democratic party,
but a revolutionary party should look like something different: a
truly communist party that, always keeping in mind the existing
strength correlations, keeps the push towards the ultimate goal
unchanged. Certainly, the PCI accumulated in that long time an
immense and qualified heritage, made of militancy, passion and honest
human relationships, which made it the most precious heritage,
unfortunately betrayed and subsequently dissipated.
ICP:
After the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which was
once the largest communist party in Europe, what is the state of the
art of the communist movement in Italy today? Is there still a
significant presence of the current Eurocommunist and opportunistic
stream?
MR: After
the dissolution of the PCI, many branches were derived from
Rifondazione Comunista. In addition to that of the PdCI and then,
from that one, our Party, there was a right-wing split of "Left,
Ecology and Freedom", now melt down to a cauldron of the
Democratic Party. This last stream cannot even be called
"opportunistic" or "revisionist", given its
abyssal distance from Marxism. It participates in the power
distribution at central and local levels, as PD allows it to.
On
the left wing, we find an organization which has resumed the
historical name of the PCI and which inherited, in our view, the
traits of electoralism, pushed by their desire to "unite the
left" (not better specified). It magnifies Berlinguer's
character, more as a personal and political reference, focusing on
the less compromising moments of his political experience. It looks
carefully, even with admiration, at the Chinese and BRICS experience,
considering it as an example of "class struggle between
nations", which, in our view, reveals a flawed understanding of
Leninism. There are, as many other countries, other fringes, selfish
Marxist-Leninists of Maoist inspiration, and small Trotskyite ones.
All of these organizations, however, do not be really rooted in the
working class and limit their diatribe to crumpled debates in narrow
circles.
ICP:
Are you planning to restore one day the historical name of the
Italian communist movement? Or should we ask: How far are you
thinking about achieving this?
MR: For
political reasons we will keep the present name. We want to separate
us from the historical name of the PCI, which was changed from the
historical one of Gramsci, Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) in
1943, because we intend to represent a real break with regard to
Togliatti’s and Berlinguer’s politics. We could resume the
glorious name of the PCd’I, but we believe that the name we have
assumed at the present represents our identity at best (even if
sometimes it poses some identification problem). One day, we would
like to add to our name an additional statement: "Italian
Section of the Communist International"
ICP:
How do you evaluate your political influence and your organization to
date? Can you give us some examples of PC-Italy-led fights?
MR: Our
country has to re-establish the presence of communists in the
workplace from the roots. The goal is a difficult one because, in
addition to the destruction of the Italian Communist Party, we have
also witnessed the degeneration of the trade union movement. In
Italy, the historic CGIL, the pugnacious trade union once led by PCI,
currently fully manages the power jointly with bourgeois forces.
There are several trade unions in Italy, including very few with a
(more or less) class ideology. Anyway, they are divided into various
political currents: the class movement is very backward. Our Party
has long promoted the “United Front of Workers”, to unite the
struggles of workers, especially those based on political attacks and
not just merely defensive ones. We work in the trade unions to
support the most coherent areas. We struggle in some workplaces to
build the party in there. We work with youth, relying on the
Communist Youth Front, with whom we experience an ideological and
political unity. We work in some popular neighborhoods to regain the
political spaces left abandoned by the left and to reject the rampant
racist right-wing derives.
ICP:
We see there is a very active and militant youth organization called
the Communist Youth Front (FGC), founded by your young militants.
What do young Italians think about communism? Young people are
interested in politics?
MR: The
Communist Youth Front is a distinct organization with respect to the
PC, but we recognize it as a coherent Marxist-Leninist youth
organization and it recognizes us as the organization that is
rebuilding the party of the working class in Italy. We have a solid
organizational pact, transposed in our respective statutes and an
identical ideological vision.
The
FGC has been working hard and meritorious for some years to overturn
the wave of ideological disorientation that overwhelms young
Italians, workers and students of the popular strata. Their work of
ideological and political education is precious and makes us look to
the future with hope. Today, the bourgeoisie's victory on the
ideological front tries to exclude the communist issue even from the
debate, to bury the memory once and for all, so many young people
have never even heard of communism. The interest in politics of young
people today is very scarce, because they are nauseated by rampant
politicians, and so many of them are often prey of false sirens, like
the "Five Star Movement" (Movimento 5 Stelle). The FGC
penetration in schools, especially technical schools, and among young
workers, serves to reverse this trend. For example, in Milan the FGC
has won the student elections in upper secondary schools (15-19
years) for the second consecutive year and a FGC representative has
been elected President of the Student “Consulta”. Similar
successes occur in other parts of the country, where the FGC acquires
growing reputation and accessions, as it’s highlighted by its
electoral success.
ICP:
What struggles are you focusing on these days?
We
work to be present in the major class conflicts, such as, for
example, the ILVA factory (one of the leading steel industries in
Europe), from Genova to Taranto, which is about to fire more than
4,000 workers.
Another
very important fight involved the transportation strike, which
paralyzed Italy last month and where our militants have spent a lot
of energies. Other struggles, in logistics, in healthcare, in other
manufacturing companies, see the presence of first-rate communists.
One of the struggles to which a peripheral organization of the party
has committed during last weeks, has been a mass campaign in a
popular neighborhood in Rome to isolate the intervention of
xenophobic fascists against foreigners and refugees. There have been
demonstrations that have seen a great deal of citizens alongside our
militants.
In
such occasions, our Party always tries to recall the classical nature
of fascism and to tie the anti-fascist struggle to the
anti-capitalist one.
Another
activity carried out by our Party is the defense of the communist
historical heritage and the ideological counterattack against
anti-communism, which also rages in Italy.
During
the summer we also held numerous "communist parties", like
every year, to make our Party more and more known; and this year the
theme of the Centenary of October was the starting point for debates
to link it to the tight news.
This
year was also characterized by mass internationalist demonstrations
organized by our Party in Rome; the first we made on March 25, on the
occasion of the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. We also organized
an internationalist event (with the KKE and the PCPE to which various
communist parties in Europe joined) and then with the participation
in the rally that took place in Sicily in May against the G8
organized in Taormina. Last but not least, on November 11 in Rome,
our Party and the FGC held an important mass rally with the
participation of more than 5,000 militants under the slogan "It's
your Revolution" to transform a simple commemoration into a
fight act and to tie the memory of the past to today's tasks.
ICP:
Italy is at the center of the issue of refugees. There are tens of
thousands of refugees arriving in your country every year and there
are some discussions about the borders between neighboring countries
and Italy. Can you explain your position on this issue? What kind of
actions do you make to strengthen solidarity with the refugees?
MR: The
action of our Party is first of all aimed at denouncing the "war
among poor people" (or “robbing Peter to pay Paul”) caused
by the constant flow of refugees in Italy and to contrast the
consequent xenophobic wave that arises from that. We recall that the
problem could only be resolved by interrupting the imperialistic and
exploitation wars in the Third and Fourth World countries, resulting
in the use of a large number of workers, without rights, as a
“Reserve army of labour”. We promote the slogan "equal work
with equal salary", which unifies the workers' front and
opposes all divisions: between different races and cultures, gender,
age, etc.
Then,
as we have already mentioned, where we are more present, as in Rome,
we are taking mass action to support the reasons of refugees but also
those of Italian citizens, claiming the right to home and work for
all, recalling that it could be possible in a socialist society but
not a capitalist one.
We
oppose to the bourgeois left focused only on the so-called
“individual rights”, remembering that without social rights
sustaining them, civil rights are worthless and useless.
We
are also in close relationships with foreign workers' communities and
support them in their difficult struggle here in Italy.
We
would also like to have a more intense humanitarian action, but the
economic and human resources conditions of our Party urge us to focus
more on political and ideological facts than deploying a concrete
humanitarian action, although we recognize that this is also an
important and necessary field of intervention.
