Italy, Europe, The Left

The Transformation of Italian Communism and the European Imperative

Vassilis Fouskas

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138323384
• eBook ISBN: 9780429836688
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Published in 1998. Was the Italian Communist Party (PCI) a typical Social Democratic party in tune with the programmatic principles of the Second International? What is the appropriate context within which the strategies of 'historic compromise' and Eurocommunism in the 1970s can be analyzed and understood? In what form and to what extent has the process of European integration and the crisis of Keynesianism contributed to the transformation of the party in 1989-91? What caused the collapse of the ruling political class of the First Italian Republic? Why did the transformed PCI, the PDS (Democratic Party of the Left), fail to lead the transition to the Second Italian Republic between 1992 and 1996? Is there any link between the party's historical factions and the current divisions in the Italian Left? Is it possible to theorize and speculate upon these divisions? Italy, Europe, the Left seeks to answer these questions, debating conventional views and examining the extent to which the end of the Cold War has contributed to a redefinition of the Left's identity in Italy and Europe. The exemplary methodological framework and the wider European perspective adopted throughout, make the book an indispensable reading in the field of Italian and European politics.

Part I
Roads to Modernity: The Post-War Strategy of the PCI 1943-1980

Experience of the working class movement in Turin was to lead Gramsci to abandon his attachment to nationalism as such, but he never lost the concern, imparted to him in these early years, with peasant problems and the complex dialectic of class and regional factors. A unique surviving essay from his schooldays at Cagliari shows him, too, already progressing from a Sardinian to an internationalist and anti-colonialist viewpoint, as vehement in his opposition to European imperialism in China as in his repetition of what (he recalled in 1924) was the favourite slogan of his schooldays: 'Throw the mainlanders into the sea!'

Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 'Introduction', in Hoare-Smith (ed.), Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. xix.

1 Modernisation or Populist Insurrection? Consensus Pattern of Reconstruction, 1943-1950

Trasformismo, fascism, modernity

Well before the foundation of the Italian State (1861), Camillo Benso di Cavour inaugurated a political practice which was known in the Piedmontese establishment as connubio (wedding). As political parties were deprived of any sound organisational structure, ideological principles and parliamentary majorities were formed on a day-to-day bargaining basis among political elites. Progressively, this sort of 'parliamentary centrality' came to depend on the consensus of civil society: the more the relationship between the public and social spheres was developed, the more their politicisation assumed a central role. The question of clientelism, that is, the exchange of favours between political class and ordinary people for the historical reproduction of dominance — the establishment of voting rights in 1919 for all male citizens underpinned this process — thus linked up with what Agostino Depretis and Giovanni Giolitti, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, named trasformismo.¹ These overlapping of functions between 'clientelism' and 'trasformismo' — Luigi Graziano defines clearly trasformismo as 'the parliamentary counterpart of clientelism'² — assumed a specific form in relation to the South. In point of fact, given the unfeasibility of the labour force being reproduced in the underdeveloped conditions of the South, state apparatuses and state parties took over this role on their behalf.

Having said this, trasformismo is a specific mode of political management of power and bears clientelistic networking and corrupt political practices. Accordingly, the very problem of modernity is how to get rid of these parasitic forms of governance which constitute real barriers for further advance. In other words, the requirement of modernity in this case is identified with the wiping out of clientelism in order to achieve growth.³ However, had this been accepted in full, it would have been almost impossible to explain the social and economic progress of Italy from 1861 to 1920.⁴ In addition, the thesis implies that there can exist a 'perfect' and 'moral' capitalism, purified from any sort of irrationality and mismanagement.

Drawing on the analyses of Leonardo Paggi and Massimo D'Angelillo, we consider trasformismo as a historically concrete form of hegemony which, in turn, does not pertain exclusively to Italy.⁵ Inasmuch as trasformismo was able to guide the first capitalist accumulation in Italy by way of excluding the labour movement from the leading role in this process (political power plus organisation of production), it was only a specific political form of historical development. Consequently, 'the fundamental problem of trasformismo was not how to govern by circumventing modernity, but how to modernise against the labour movement'.⁶ In this context, any sort of liberal criticism against trasformismo assumes the form of criticism against the elements of welfarism, the form which trasformismo takes under the pressure of the class struggle.⁷

We can now give substance to our historical analyses. I will survey the strategy of the PCI and the role of the Third International before and during the fascist regime. In this context, I will pay attention to Gramsci's thesis with regard to the specific form of modernity guided by fascism.

Italy's social economy experienced a deep crisis after World War I, despite its tumultuous and exuberant development during the wartime period.⁸ Decline, stagnation, daily bankruptcies and a huge wave of unemployment followed the golden era of imperialism in Europe:

There was a great failing off in the production of iron and steel which had boomed during the war and was suffering from the cancellation of war orders. In fact, the production of pig iron fell from 471,188 tons in 1917 to 61,381 in 1921 and that of steel from 1,331,631 to 700,433 tons in the same period. Imports, which were 26,8 million lire in 1920 as against exports of 11,6 million lire, fell to 16,9 million in 1921 as compared with exports of 8 million. The number of bankruptcies almost trebled from 1919 to 1921, gross national product went down from 114,8 million lire (value of 1938) in 1917 to 106,7 in 1921, and, along with rapidly rising prices, there were food riots (July 1919), because of shortages in supply.⁹

At the time, the electoral balance of forces was in favour of the Socialist Party, the Catholic Partito Popolare and Liberals.¹⁰ The fascists, even during the first half of 1920, were a limited phenomenon of little importance. However, no political party or politician had a clear view on how that critical economic situation could be confronted and solved.

When Benito Mussolini and the fascists had achieved their march on Rome — with the consent of King Victor Emmanuel III — the Communist Party of Italy had already been founded during an extraordinary Congress of the Socialist Party held at Leghorn in January 1921. The leadership of Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci (the former being secretary) accepted the Third International's twenty-one conditions. It had the name Communist Party of Italy; Section of the Communist International (PCd'I), and it kept this name until 15 March 1943 when the International dissolved. Then, Palmiro Togliatti gave it a 'new' name: PCI.

Despite the adoption of Leninism and the conditions imposed by the International, the party lacked both a concrete political strategy and a sound ideology for dealing with fascism. Serious theoretical and political disagreements existed between Gramsci's group of Ordine Nuovo settled in Turin, and that of Bordiga, whose group had been publishing the review il Soviet in Naples.¹¹ The inner-party conflict became sharper when Grigori Zinoviev, then President of the Comintern, intervened in order to convince the PCd'I and Bordiga to advance a policy of alliance with Socialists vis-à-vis the rise of fascism. Gramsci, for his part, supported Zinoviev's proposal and, reluctantly enough, this strategy was accepted 'within the spirit of international discipline'.¹²

As a result of this profound contradiction, the party took several sectarian positions at home, such as its attitude towards the spontaneous anti-fascist movement of the Arditi del Popolo. This is Togliatti's judgement on Bordiga's strategy: 'The decision not to participate in the Arditi del Popolo movement, which was taken in the first months of 1921 when the movement had only just appeared on the political scene, was a serious mistake of sectarian rigidity.'¹³ In short, the political attitudes which were adopted by the entire spectrum of the Italian Left and liberal-democratic forces during the crucial years 1921-1922, helped the fascist conquest of power. Neither the Left nor the Centre-right and liberal forces had a coherent political strategy to pursue. Thus, fascism was a combined result of the economic and political crises, accompanied by the failure of both the trasformismo and the Left to elaborate a viable democratic political solution. From then onwards, 1922 has symbolised for the PCd'I/PCI the 'terrible mistake' of democratic Italy, since all the democratic political parties had proved unable to present a united front to prevent the advent of fascism. Let us focus now on the PCd'I itself and the positions taken by Gramsci on the question of fascism.

The provisional arrangement between Gramsci, the Third International and Bordiga was resolved during the 3rd party Congress held in Lyons in France (January 1926).¹⁴ Gramsci's and Togliatti's theses were approved by 90 per cent of the votes. Bordiga and his followers, having no alternative, abandoned the gruppo dirigente (ruling group). Meanwhile, with the fascists gaining absolute power, the PCd'I had to deal with its own problems and, first of all, the imprisonment of Gramsci, secretary of the party after the split. Thus, in essence, Togliatti led the party from 1926 onwards.¹⁵ When the tenth Plenum of the Third International (1929) imposed the sectarian political strategy 'class against class' on all national Communist parties, believing the proletarian revolution to be imminent and Social Democracy to be the 'left-wing' of fascism, Togliatti was forced to obey.¹⁶

According to the Comintern, fascism represented a mere decline of capitalist society which, having no more possibility of developing its productive forces, was bound to collapse. In the characteristic spirit of 'economic catastrophism', the Comintern considered imperialism itself to be a stage of 'the general crisis of capitalism'. This thesis turned out to be utterly unfounded and misleading. In fact, fascism represented a development of social productive forces, advanced industrial development, technological innovation, and increased the productivity of labour.¹⁷ When trasformismo ceased to be a historical necessity for Italy's modernisation — so when it no longer represented that specific 'political form of historical development' (Gramsci), while the existing political forces as a whole failed to cover the void — fascism arose as the only political option. In essence, fascism was the successive political form of Italy's modernity, a fact which was recognised by Gramsci.

The leader of the PCd'I had no hesitation in formulating the idea that fascism was a progressive phenomenon because it had the capaci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface by Donald Sassoon
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I: ROADS TO MODERNITY: THE POST-WAR STRATEGY OF THE PCI 1943-1980
• PART II: POLITY CRISIS, THE EUROPEAN IMPERATIVE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ITALIAN COMMUNISM 1980-1992
• Bibliography
• Index