The ideological crisis of the Italian workers
As in other countries of capitalist Europe the crisis of Marxism continues to be a widely-discussed subject in Italy. ' But it is more precisely an ideological crisis of the whole Italian workers movement shown by:
• the documents from congresses or leadership bodies of the workers
• essays or articles written by leaders and intellectuals reflecting the evolu-
• the strategic and tactical political positions that are subsequently adopted.
• The Socialist Party (PSI-Partito Socialista Italiano) has accepted bourgeois interpretations and solutions of the crisis and the prolonged economic stagnation. The party has abandoned any reference to Marxism
• The Communist Party (PCI-Partito Comunista Italiano) has systematically adopted social democratic ideas and positions.
• The trade unions have given up the principles they had upheld or reaffirmed under the pressure of the rising mass struggles in 1968-1969 and have explicitly accepted the economic framework imposed by the ruling
• The current defining itself as Marxist outside the big, traditional organisa-
First of all it is useful to briefly recall some previous historical instances
LIVIO MAITAN movement organisations;
tion of their ideas;
as a programmatic basis.
class and its governments.
tions has gone into a drastic decline.?
Here is a brief balance sheet of the last few years:
A look back to the origins of the crisis
42 International Marxist Review when Marxism was called into question and there was an ideological crisis of the workers movement.
The first great wave of revisionism, symbolised by the name of the German Social Democrat, Eduard Bernstein, took place at the beginning of the century. It resulted-over and beyond the theorisations and intentions of Bernstein himself—in the major political and ideological defeat suffered by the working class when the First World War broke out. The Russian revolution and the revolutionary crises which then shook up a series of European countries, produced an unprecedented radicalisation of the exploited masses, a powerful rise of the workers movement and a renaissance of Marxist ideas, relaunched and developed by Leninism.
In the 1930s there was a new boost for revisionism under different forms-in Italy this found its most significant expression with the criticism of Marxism developed by Carlo Rosselli, the theoretician of liberal socialism. 3 But at that time revisionist tendencies were counterbalanced by events with profound international consequences. The outbreak of the most serious economic crisis in the history of capitalism could only appear to be a confirmation of Marxist analyses of bourgeois society and its contradictions. The gains, albeit contradictory, of the Soviet planned economy, seemed to indicate that an alternative solution really existed. The workers' upsurge in France and the Spanish revolution also contributed to the mobilisation of significant sectors of the masses who became politically conscious. On a different level these events pulled petty-bourgeois layers and representative intellectuals gravitated towards Marxism in the United States and Italy, particularly in the second half of the decade. There was a radicalisation of small groups of young intellectuals who were to play an active role in the anti-fascist struggle and later on in the leadership of the workers' organisations.
In the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s the economic boom and relative stability in Western Europe led to a resurgence of polemics against the Marxist analysis of capitalism's contradictions and consequently on the workers movement's strategic perspectives. Criticism of Marxist ideas was made on two levels. On the one hand social democratic-inspired theoreticians successfully spread their ideas on the overcoming of the old contradictions of capitalism following the long boom and the establishment of the welfare state. For them this implied the abandoning of any perspective of overthrowing the system and the explicit adoption of the goal of perfecting it.4 On the other hand Marxist theoreticians or political groups no longer had confidence in the capacity of the working class in the industrialised capitalist countries to play its role as the motor force of the revolution. In this respect the victory of the Cuban revolution, the development of revolutionary struggles in other Latin American countries and the Vietnam war itself had at least partially contradictory effects-since third worldist ideologies and positions were encouraged. But at the same time the validity of the Marxist and Leninist analysis of imperialism and revolutionary ideas was also con-
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 43 firmed contributing to a resurgence of Marxism which also affected the industrialised countries. 5 It is self-evident that the decisive impetus for this was the May events in France and the workers' upsurge in several European countries up to the middle of the 1970s.
The specificity and depth of the present crisis are due to the fact that for ten years everything has seemed to create a dynamic against any idea of developing an historically concrete alternative to capitalism. The same dynamic has helped to undermine working class confidence in its capacity to play an hegemonic political role and to challenge the very raison d'être of workers' organisations.
A series of negative factors already began to come into play around the middle of the 1970s. The crisis of capitalist society opened up by May 1968 ended in political stabilisation, albeit relative, while the big mass movements only obtained very partial results unrelated to the depth of the social crisis and the strength and duration of the workers' upsurge. The situation in the Asian workers states had diametrically opposed effects to those of the previous period. Vietnam, the symbol of anti-imperialist struggle, appeared more and more with the hideous characteristics of a bureaucratised state aiming at imposing its interests on the other countries in the Indochinese peninsula. The "cultural revolution' was demystified by the Chinese leaders themselves and a war broke out between two 'fraternal socialist states' . The politically 'glacial' climate of the Brezhnev years in the USSR froze dead the last illusions of those who had dreamt of a gradual 'de-Stalinisation'.
In 1981-2 many political activists, including members of revolutionary organisations, interpreted the victory of the French left as the expression of a new upsurge of the working class and mass movements, as well as a delayed effect of May 1968. With hindsight we must conclude that the French Socialist Party's success and the victory of the PSOE (Socialist Party) in Spain was not so much the result of a favourable evolution in the relationship of forces between the classes, but rather the consequence of divisions inside the French bourgeoisie and of the intrinsic weakness of the bourgeois leadership which took over from the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
In any case the balance sheet continued to be negative. The retreat and stagnation of the mass movement has worsened in France and even the relative recovery in mobilisations in Spain has not up to now blocked the bourgeoisie's offensive. The French Communist Party has shrunk severely in size while the Spanish Communist Party has shattered into various fragments. As for the socialist parties, they have not only unreservedly accepted to work within the framework of the system but have even themselves championed all the bourgeois solutions for the economic crisis. They have therefore contributed to 'demonstrating' an alternative anti-capitalist solution does not exist and that the only credible alternative is to rationalise or 'democratise' the system. ®
Last but not least: from the beginning of the 1980s there was a new wave of technological innovation. It produced another phenomenon—a plethora
44 International Marxist Review of theorisations attacking the very roots of Marxist ideas. These people argued that the working class was doomed to inevitable decline, even to disappear in the short or medium term. To borrow a title from one of André Gorz's books, one had to resign oneself to saying goodbye to the proletariat. The PCI's process of social democratisation The last couple of years (1985-86) have marked a new stage in the PCI's political and ideological evolution.
At the start of the 1980s this party had to take note of the failure of its strategic projects, both Eurocommunism and the historic compromise.? Apart from that there were the defeats suffered by the working class and more generally by the mass movement which inevitably had deepgoing repercussions among activists, cadres and the leadership itself.
But it was above all the setback in the May 1985 regional and local elections that sparked off for more or less a whole year one of the most wide-ranging debates in the whole history of the party.
We cannot here list all the problems that were raised.® Certainly if one read the two documents adopted by the Twenty-Seventh Congress in April 1986 one could draw the conclusion that a mountain had given birth to a mouse, and after all there had been nothing substantially new compared to the previous congress. But a closer analysis leads to the conclusion that all the publicity campaign from the party press and its leaders on the turn represented by this congress was not merely a tactical operation or propaganda trick.
First, we just have to note that the perspective of going beyond capitalism, even in the very long term ('fuoriuscita'-literally, abnormal going outside of—Tr.) has been even more weakened, if not totally abandoned. By starting from the premise of rejecting the 'model' of the USSR and the other "socialist countries' the PCI has now completely obscured the problem of the historic alternative to capitalism. In fact it swings to and fro between the definition of a programme of immediate or medium-term aims (for example when there is a governmental crisis) and woolly formulations of a liberal-socialist type or vaguely idealist and neo-utopian. 9 Secondly, compared to the formulations accepted by the previous congress the party has come even closer to an evenhanded attitude to the USSR and the United States. The very concept of imperialism is either no longer used or it is gutted of all content. Those who continue to refer to Washington's imperialist policy have been called to order and accused of 'anti-Americanism' (this cheap polemical trick was used by the reporter to the congress).
But the real theme of the congress was the assertion that the PCI is 'an integral part of the European Left', which concretely means it aligns itself with the social democratic parties. In fact there is no longer any qualitative
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 45 difference between its ideas and strategy and those of the social democratic parties. The PCI has put the finishing touches to its social democratisation.
Furthermore in the social democratic parties its privileged interlocutors are no longer those of a few years ago. For a whole period the PCI made great efforts to build up relations with the French SP, thereby infuriating
Georges Marchais, the leader of the French CP. Today its attitude towards this party, as well as to the Spanish PSOE, is rather reserved and occasionally explicitly critical. 1° It is obviously embarrassed by the left government's failure in France and by the impasse of the Spanish Socialist Party's policies. After all its strategic perspectives were not and are not very different from those of the French SP and the PSOE. Indeed if the PCI leaders did as they claim to, and based themselves on real living experiences then, in the light of what happened in France and Spain, they ought to be asking if a gradualist reformist strategy can actually overcome the crisis and defend the essential interests of the exploited masses. But on the contrary they prefer to change the subject or more precisely to change interlocutors. Their privileged interlocutors today are the German and Swedish
Social Democratic Parties and not necessarily their most radical leaders
This year's first issue of the theoretical review, Critica Marxista, containing contributions to the pre-Twenty-Seventh Congress debate, provides us with some significant examples of the ideas circulating among the PCI's
First, some articles rather blatantly water down the concept of the class division of society. For example, according to Gavino Angius:
... it is more and more difficult to rigorously divide our society into classes.
The significance of 'class solidarity' in a rigidly divided society with relatively simple functions and generally unsatisfied basic needs . . . (was) ... evident, (as well as) ..
not have the same dramatic self-evidence except on a planetary level. What can be called the 'domain' of these values must therefore be radically enlarged with respect to their most
Second, continuing with the analysis of social reality, the phenomenon of the emergence of 'new social actors' is often presented with an objectively unjustified or even completely mystifying emphasis. When they descend from general proclamations to concrete enumeration of these forces the list is rather on the short side. For example, Ugo Pecchioli refers to 'technicians, intellectuals, researchers, independent workers in production and services' (ibid, p. 184) and Tortorella explains that 'the new social actors (...)
either."
The Ramblings of Critica Marxista leaders and intellectuals.
Aldo Tortorella argues along the same lines:
notions of "social justice' and 'equality' immediately perceptible significance.
(page 10, Critica Marxista)
... (whereas) ... today these differences do
(ibid, page 235)
interlink not only inside the family, which despite the crisis of this institution remains an important economic nucleus, but also within a single individual. (ibid, p.227). But where real phenomena are referred to they are not new in absolute terms, but emerged during other periods of crisis and technological transformations. While we must take these factors into account, particularly with respect to the tactical options of political and trade union organisations, it does not follow that the fundamental composition
As for evaluating the impact of technological innovations on the working class, Critica Marxista reflects the different approaches expressed in the pre-congress party debate and the trade union movement. On this Sergio
Garavini, general secretary of the FIOM (the metal workers trade union affiliated to the PCI-led CGIL union confederation) correctly stressed that:
We are today seeing an extension of the capitalist mode of production.
the question of alienation, of the separation of labour from its results on the one hand and that of commodity fetishism, of its domination over men and women, on the other,
Reichlin, on the other hand cooks up a real hotch-potch of ideas. Accor-
... will not disappear (thanks a lot! -LM) ... but the type of polarised class struggle
(specific to workers massed together in the big factories) will lose its centrality.
Consequently it is no longer possible to start uniquely from:
the condition of the working class and to end up with conflict by challenging the organisa-
It may be unpalatable for Reichlin but Marxists and Leninists have never thought the centrality of 'conflict' is reducible to the framework of even very big workplaces. Class conflict has had and must necessarily have an overall social and political dimension. This is all rather elementary stuff
Some authors also present the 'new mass movements' in an exaggerated manner. Nobody should underestimate the importance of the anti-war movement, the ecologist movement or the 1985 pupil and student movement.
But when Pietro Folena, national secretary of the Young Communists, writes
... seems to be the first force to mobilise capable of producing a protagonist role for youth both on the terrain of the innovation of work and of the socio-economic system (to the extent that contrary to other movements it also places itself) on the terrain of work
This is a fantasy analysis, very little or not at all based on any actual elements
The watering down of the materialist analysis of social classes and their
46 International Marxist Review of the social forces and that is tending to intensify.
ding to him the class struggle:
tion of the factory that the latter movement:
of reality.
inside and outside the factory, becomes decisive.
but apparently it needs to be repeated. '3 and of the modern opposition to all forms of alienation and their dynamic have qualitatively changed.
... The attitude of 'new social layers', technicians and administrators
(ibid, p. 104)
(ibid. p. 108)12
(ibid, p. 127)
(ibid, p.92)
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 47 dynamic has implications on the way the problematic of the alternative power is approached. In the article by Gavino Angius we have already quoted there
There is no longer any 'Winter Palace' to attack, but if we try and understand the fundamental reasons inciting millions of men and women, even beyond the traditional class frontiers, to fight for a more advanced society under forms and with means that are so varied and so very different from the past, then we will undoubtedly draw the conclusion that what motivates them is that they think the government and the state should be led
The starting point— which is certainly not a new insight by Angius, but a common argument of anti-Marxists and anti-Leninists of all hue-involves a dual mystification. The first lies in the fact he reduces the Russian revolutionary process to the taking of the Winter Palace, feigning to be ignorant of everything that had previously happened in Russian society and in the state structures, not to mention what happened afterwards during the civil
The second mystification is to forget that even in the Italy of today there is a capitalist system based on the private property of the means of production and regulated by the logic of profit along with a ruling state apparatus (in the broad sense) which over and beyond multiple mediations, ensures in the last analysis, the survival and functioning of the system as best it can. Whether Angius likes it or not, there is still something to launch at windmills. '4 All the rest of this author's line of argument, leaving aside the rhetoric about how 'new' it all is, is nothing less than 'hot air' structs an analysis blurring the frontiers between the classes where the alternative to the existing system appears as something quite nebulous ('more
In the Tortorella article we have already quoted he does not provide us with any greater clarification. He points out that one of the original up the socialistic idea' (ibid, p.230). It has to be accepted that doubt over whether the PCI has given up on the "socialistic idea' is not unfounded (notice the nuance with the use of the term 'socialistic'). But this is how Tortorella
This way (of not giving up etc) lies in the discovery and in the insistence on socialism as a possibility for today, but not as an absolute necessity, as an intentionality and not
Now this can only mean one of two things—either he is attacking a straw person, for only the most mechanical school of thought of the workers movement in a previous period, has envisaged socialism as inevitable, or he deliberately wants to dilute the perspective and very content of socialism in the hope of achieving the most ecumenical alliances and coming to power through more or less 'historic' compromises. The second hypothesis is surely the operative one here. Everything the PCI, its leaders and intellectuals say is the following passage:
by them in a more just way.
war.
advanced society' characteristics of his party is:
tries to reassure us:
as a norm.
an assault against and the struggle against the 'Palace'
', 'state led in a more just way').
•.. a certain particular way of not giving
(ibid. p.27-28)
is not at all tilting
'. He con-
(ibid. p.230)
aims to give a theoretical foundation to an extremely gradualist conception and leads to the abandonment of the very concept and perspective of a qualitative break between the capitalist system and what must replace it. 15
Nicola Badaloni, a philosopher with reforming ambitions and a Central entrepreneurs—that capitalism must base itself on consensus in order to exploit new technological potential. Starting from concrete cases we are go-
If consensus is sought by capitalism itself, even if this was only in some of its most advanced cases, one can then conclude that present industrial relations, from the capitalist point of view, impose the necessity of conceding, although out of self-interest, a part.
It cannot be expressed more clearly, all the pretentious speeches on theoretical innovations results in the most timorous and flat gradualist refor-
The hegemonic choice (in its combination with the class struggle) does not prefigure a change of rules leading to a catastrophic phase but on the contrary it functions by establishing a new stage of social relations and ways of living which prepares a superior model of civilisation where alienation and fear will no longer have its place. So we have to defend and sustain democracy conceived as the historic place where certain previously necessary functions, become superfluous and as such marginal or are eliminated by the theoretical
Behind the conceptual and terminological smokescreen, we find once again here the idea of a 'democracy' above classes in whose framework gradualist reformism could best act. As can be seen, it is not at all an original discovery.
One point still has to be clarified: what are these 'most advanced cases' referred to by Badaloni? Apart from a rapid allusion to Austria and the Scandinavian countries, such enlightenment comes to us from those whom the author himself calls the 'two oligopolistic colossuses' of the United States,
General Motors and General Electric. In particular the 'phenomenon called Project Saturn' developed by the first of these two oligopolies indicates the desire of the most 'modern' capitalism to seek consensus and therefore to introduce new elements inside the system. Unfortunately for Badaloni his interpretation is purely and simply wishful thinking, even a complete mystification. The Saturn project involves an agreement between the bosses and the trade unions that the most radical sectors of the trade unions have correctly criticised. It entails on the one hand a clear separation between permanent workers and so-called 'associated' workers who only get a temporary contract and on the other hand the elimination of trade union representation at shopfloor level. It is an operation aiming to fragment the working class, to link wages to productivity, to make employment unstable and to blunt the trade unions' teeth even more. Badaloni talks here of an 'American model', 'a phenomenon endogenous to capitalism' which according to him
48 International Marxist Review
Committee member, explains-or more precisely explains to the ing to look at further on, he writes the following:
albeit minimum, of its power.
mism. But Badaloni adds:
coming to consciousness and practical action of social subjects.
in Italy:
(ibid, pp. 31-32)
(ibid, p. 233) 16
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 49
... should get a response of the highest consciousness from the workers and produce a management of the workplace where workers' participation should be able to influence in a fruitful way the competitive capacities of the system and the power relations, by
This amply demonstrates to what point his analyses are deprived of an objective basis and how far his perspectives vacillate between abstract eyewash and efforts to pick up the crumbs at the table of the ruling class.
It is painful to note that this (i.e. the problematic he is proposing) is so little evident in the thinking of many political leaders and leaders of employers' organisations, despite
This is how Badaloni finally puts it in a half-pathetic, half-grotesque note.
Moreover, his memory of Marxism, while very dim, should bring him to ask himself whether this lack of take-up for his problematic is the result of an inexplicable aberration or if it has on the contrary, a very concrete
Armando Cossutta is on another wavelength. He correctly denounces:
An unlimited cultural pluralism where the only, uncertain frontier is the political reference to the party, or more generally to dialogue with the party when such cultural currents are substantially the same as those most propagated by the media and are closest to the cultural
He deplores the fact that one 'no longer talks of the working class vanguard'
(ibid, p.57). He regrets that 'very influential PCI leaders (think) Italian
Communists should no longer put forward the objective of going beyond
(or 'fuoriuscita', as Berlinguer said) capitalism' (ibid, p.51). For defending such positions Cossutta was in a very small minority at the congress and had later been dropped from the leadership (while remaining a member
His positions are in any case very much weakened, if not undermined from the start, by his attitude to the USSR (very uncritical and generally apologetic of the ruling bureaucratic caste) and because he presents himself as the defender of the Togliattian past of the party and even of the documents from the last-but-one congress which had been undeniably orchestrated by
Enrico Berlinguer. Therefore he ignores or feigns to ignore that the ideas and present practice of his party are only the culmination of a long march which began a half-century ago and which was progressively stepped up
We can be much briefer on the evolution of the Italian Socialist party (PSI)
which throughout the post-war period had in infinitely less important role than the PCI in the ideological elaboration of the workers movement and more generally in Italian culture. Its ideological role has increased in the establishing the basis of a new historic bloc.
all Enrico Berlinguer's reflections.
material origin.
positions now dominant in the capitalist world.
of the Central Committee).
after the last war.
The Italian Socialist Party Manages the Crisis
(ibid, p.36)
(ibid, p.34)
(ibid, p.55)
50 International Marxist Review last decade because its leaders and intellectual fellow-travellers played a front-line role in the battle against Marxism and the best theoretical traditions of the workers movement. The explanation is relatively simple-the PSI does not have the same social composition and the same electoral base as the PCI and therefore it has less scruples about tearing apart the traditional political and social fabric. Furthermore it needed to equip itself with an ideology which can justify its political practice of class-collaborationist government.
Just a short time after becoming party national secretary-through methods which have nothing to do with the internal democracy which should characterise a workers' organisation-Bettino Craxi pointed out in what direction he was going. Very probably he had never had real theoretical pretensions. But to justify the strategic and tactical approach he had already then mapped out he laid down the fundamental axes of his ideology in summer 1978. In his opinion the whole history of the workers movement and of socialism had been characterised by the opposition of two major currents, 'the authoritarian and collectivist statists' and the 'anti-collectivist. libertarian anti-statists'
Leninism which he alleges the PCI still adheres to, is representative of the first current and is therefore 'organically totalitarian' whereas the second current is said to count among its champions Proudhon, the young Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Plekhanov, Volodia Smirnov, Isaac Deutscher, Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio, Milovan Djilas, Gilles Martinet and comrade Cohn Bendit. It is an astounding list but Craxi is not really interested so much in the ideas of all these people, ' he is interested in the conclusion he can draw from it. He concludes that the PSI, having renounced all "authoritarianism' and all 'collectivism', ', can legitimately and fully participate in the management of bourgeois society whereas the PCI, still polluted by Leninism, should only have a right at the very most to a subordinate role in a government of national unity, but in no case could represent an alternative, even if associated with the PSI.
Everything written by PSI leaders or intellectuals since then has followed exactly the same line of argument advanced by Craxi. We must give them their due: they have won their stripes in the battle for the definition and imposition of a fashionable ideology with all its variants concerning the 'post-industrial' era, the rejection of any 'egalitarianism' and the benefits of 'flexibility' (in industrial/economic policies). Once again, the essential objective is to justify PSI action, and more recently the role of Craxi as prime minister. But to the extent the ideological debate has a relative autonomy it is especially PSI intellectuals or its intellectual fellow-travellers who have carried out the battle required by the bourgeoisie to consolidate the success it has gained in social and political confrontations and to prepare for new offensives. 18
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 51 Trade unions drop previous positions For a long time the Italian trade unions have not included in their programmes the strategic objective of struggling against the capitalist regime. '9 In recent years the logic of their overall ideas pushed them to go even further. The CGIL, still the most representative confederation of the working class and where the PCI is in a big majority, explicitly put forward at its last congress projects of co-management accepting the present socio-economic framework in Italy and on an EEC scale. It came out in favour of the Eureka project, recommended by important sectors of the European bourgeoisie, and committed itself to 'encouraging the formation of European multinational companies based on the technologically advanced areas of production.'
The positions and present action of the three confederations represent a full-scale retreat from the position they had defended from the end of the 1960s to the middle of the 1970s, although they did so to differing degrees and in a contradictory way and in any case under pressure from the mass movement. Everybody accepts that an offensive from the bosses and its governments can force a withdrawal to defensive positions. But one thing is to take account of a change in the relationship of forces, quite another is not only to give up mobilising available forces for the struggle but even to renounce and condemn the most significant gains of the past. Indeed, the trade unions gave in on the sliding scale by accepting an adjustment which very much reduced its effectiveness. They themselves whipped up a campaign against the reduction in salary differentials by accepting the dynamic of differentiation and sectoralisation of workers objectively stimulated by the crisis. They intervened to gut the workplace councils of their remaining powers. These councils had been one of the key gains of the 1969 upsurge.
In other words, even more so than the traditional workers parties and the PSI, the trade unions—over and beyond their formal or propaganda distinctions and different temporary projects—accept the logic of the capitalist approach to the problems arising from the crisis and the prolonged economic stagnation. They accept the 'laws' of the market economy and therefore the imperative requirement of competition. Less and less do they oppose measures of restructuring and rationalisation even when there are quite drastic consequences and they themselves raise the mystifying banner of 'flexibility'. These are not just paper positions, they also accept in practice all sorts of merger or concentration operations by national and multinational companies. 2° The grotesque side to all this is the fact that trade union leaders often play the role of advisors to the big entrepreneurs and their managers by trying to convince them that if their enlightened advice was followed then they could win out more easily over their competitors and get back to better profits and prosperity.
It would be interesting to list the names of the writers most cited in the
52 International Marxist Review debates of the Italian workers movement. To borrow one of Cossutta's expressions, there is an unlimited cultural pluralism. In the midst of this 'pluralism' the classic exponents of Marxism and Gramsci himself are being increasingly displaced by the most diverse economists, philosophers, sociologists and political scientists who are representatives of radical bourgeois and petty-bourgeois European or North American currents and the more or less direct source of inspiration of social democratic parties, of liberals or of sectors of the Democratic Party in the United States.
Here we will just look at two such writers who have very different origins, approaches and roles in their respective parties and countries but whose recent books have both become a privileged point of reference.
The first is Peter Glotz, a German social democratic leader. His book Die Arbeit der Zuspitzung (which originally appeared in 1984) was published in Italian by the PCI who made an extraordinary publicity campaign around the book. The idea from this book that is most picked up is that of the two-thirds society'. According to Glotz in such a society two-thirds of the population continue to be integrated into the process of production and to maintain or even improve their standard of living while the other third is condemned to being marginalised and to steady impoverishment. Others, without waiting for Glotz have already talked of the 'dual society', basing their analysis on the simple observation of what has happened or is in the process of happening in the industrialised capitalist countries hit by the crisis and prolonged stagnation. Such a theory does not sufficiently bring out the fact that these two different conditions it describes are the product of a single fundamental cause—-that is, the mechanisms of capitalism as they operate in the epoque of the decadence of the system and in a phase of prolonged stagnation. Furthermore, in most cases, including Germany and Italy, it is not true that the 'two-thirds' have been spared by the crisis and it is even less true that such a separation can be indefinitely maintained without a deepgoing and explosive renting apart of society as a whole.
Apart from this, Glotz only rehashes ideas already presented by others, for example by André Gorz. His political line is not substantially more to the left than the traditions and positions of his party. His perspective is an explicit rationalisation of capitalism in the framework of the market economy, rejecing any idea of nationalisation and accepting the economic policy imposed by the bourgeoisie for getting through the crisis. At the same time Glotz is unreservedly in favour of NATO, against unilateral nuclear disarmament and agrees with the policy of the former prime minister Schmidt on the question of installing cruise and Pershing missiles. He is favourable to a modus vivendi with Jaruzelski. As he said in a debate a few months ago, the strategic perspective of the left should be, according to him, the 'formation of a new historic bloc' which will break 'certain barriers' and 'leave old territory behind' (see Unità, 30 April 1986). In other words collaboration with the ruling class and its most dynamic sectors must be relaunched in forms more in tune with the present situation.
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 53
The fact that such a writer is considered to be a privileged interlocutor putting forward valid responses to present problems, reveals most starkly the loss of identity and the political and theoretical disarray of the Italian
We have to draw an analogous conclusion with respect to our second example, that of Giorgio Ruffolo and his book La qualità sociale published
This book, rich in references to, and quotations and paraphrases of, a great number of writers from the most diverse disciplines and positions, tries to outline a 'modern' interpretation of contemporary society and a new socio-political project. Marxist conceptions are explicitly rejected on several a) Marx was 'grossly mistaken' in saying that 'capitalism made society more and more homogenous'. The Marxist concept of social class must
... instead of a class in general facing a small concentrated nucleus of capitalists a ramified society has emerged with a multitude of classes, layers and groups. These groups are bearers of particular interests and not of a universal consciousness.' (ibid, pp.69-70). Furthermore, capitalism is 'dissociated from the concept of property' (ibid, p. 154). Ruffolo had already put forward the same argument twenty years before under the influence of 1930s American writers who had dealt with the phenomena of shareholding companies and the growing role of managers.
b) 'Classical Marxism' ignores the 'problem of the political system' (ibid, p. 148) while the idea of an 'imperialist state, dominated by the monopolistic hydra' is only an 'archaeo-Leninist cliché' (ibid, p. 252). 21 c) "The traditional Marxist response (...) has proved to be a failure; it has led not to social integration, but to state totalitarianism under the most alienating and oppressive form of institutional mediation' (ibid, p.148).
The only argument based on any 'reality' is the last one. But that does not mean it is correct or 'new'. It has been the fundamental argument of all the enemies of the workers movement and socialism for decades-if socialism means the USSR then Western 'democracy' is best!
Ruffolo concludes that any revolutionary perspective has no meaning at all:
For an epoque like ours, which tends to enjoy hyperbole (but on what does he base such a cursory generalisation?-LM) the word revolution has lost all operative sense.
And to deliver the coup de grâce to the very concept of revolution and to strip it of any operational value Ruffulo does not hesitate to throw out the
We have to recognise that our knowledge of the history of the world shows us that there were only two real revolutions: the neolithic revolution, which came to fruition in the
East ten to twelve thousand years ago and that of capitalism, which matured in the West
So we have to resign ourselves-basing ourselves on the optimistic hypothesis that the planet can survive-thousands of years will have to neverleft's leaders and intellectuals.
in 1985.21 occasions by arguments we can summarise as follows:
be challenged:
following historical or meta-historical generalisation:
from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
(ibid, p.7)
(ibid, p. 7)
theless pass before a third revolution. Better tread the more secure path
As one can see, beneath the floods of rhetoric Ruffolo discovers nothing at all. He repeats the traditional criticisms and polemical methods used against Marxism and Leninism which he presents in an arbitrary if not
But what does he propose as an alternative? His main thesis is that democracy is distinct from and tendentially opposed to capitalism:
A contradictory interdependence, requiring difficult compromises, develops between capitalism and democracy (ibid, p.71) (...) The action of the social forces modifies in the long term the distribution of income. Democracy modifies capitalism by democratising it and the Welfare State marks the culminating point of all this process.
Most of this thesis in different variants has been put forward on many occasions by social democratic or radical democratic theoreticians and it forms the basis of Carlo Rosselli's liberal socialism. At the end of the day the only difference is that Ruffolo is more woolly-minded than Rosselli and other liberal-socialists. For example this is how he defines the 'three key differentiation of the economy (re-oriented from the quantitative objective of growth to the qualitative goal of development: differentiation of politics (re-oriented from the statist conception to the diffusion of politics into society); and differentiation of the personality
(re-oriented from the conformist conception of private life to sociable individualism).
His perspective does not seem any more concrete when he talks about the have non-lucrative ends and directly produce use-values' and could constitute 'germs and elements of a real socialism' (ibid, p. 197 and after).
Finally here is a last quotation which seems to highlight the end result
In its first stage the Leviathan emerged from the magma of traditional society with a powertul vocation to unify it. In its second stage society has recaptured and submerged it in its process of differentiation and fragmentation. In a third stage, state and society can be recomposed in a finalised and differentiated system where the state is no longer superimposed on society or absorbed by it but rather will form its network, its nervous system, the brain
That is something we have seen before somewhere—it is nothing less than the venerable Hegelian triad! We plead guilty, we prefer our 'old-fashioned'
The polemic against the ideological mystifications that have gained so much ground is not in itself a response to the problems of analysis and perspective with which we are really confronted. We do not claim in any way to give such a systematic response here, but we think it is useful to outline
54 International Marxist Review of reformism then!
blatantly caricatural way. 23 concepts' of his project:
'activities and associations' of the 'third system' of the writer's methodology:
and nerves of power. (ibid, p.290)
Marx.
The Beginnings of a reply
(ibid, pp.38 and 103)
(ibid, p.332)
', that is, activities 'which
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 55 a few themes linked to the points taken up in our article.
First, the fundamental tendency towards industrial, commercial and financial concentration which has a central place in Marx's analysis, is working itself out more today and not less. All the ramblings of various economists or sociologists mobilised against Marxism come up against this undeniable fact. The multinational companies represent the extreme form of concentration involving the extortion of profits on a world scale, the imperialist plunder of the poorest countries and the imposition on such countries of economic options which more often than not have literally catastrophic consequences for the overwhelming majority of their populations. 24
We can discuss at length the fact that small and medium-sized companies are not disappearing and are even experiencing some new growth in certain periods and in certain sectors. We can raise the question of whether such a development corresponds or not to Marx's hypotheses. But it is still the case, we repeat, that the world economy is more than ever dominated by the economic giants which at one and the same time carry out mergers and an unrelenting war between themselves. Furthermore on the one hand, industry is still strategically decisive despite the decline of certain traditional sectors and, on the other hand, the industrialisation of other sectors of the economy continues at an increased rate. Finally, the small and medium-sized companies are most often dependent on the big companies or are in a complementary relationship to them or exploit those gaps and places where the major companies have no interest in operating. In addition companies that are classified as small or medium-sized in terms of the use of labour are characterised by a high intensity of capital.
On the level of social relations, leaving aside here the discussion (indeed interesting) on whether Marx's prognostic on a growing polarisation has come about, we can make the following comments:
1) A very small minority of the ruling classes, linked to the big industrial, commercial and financial concentrations of capital, have a growing economic power on a planetary scale and can mobilise the imperialist countries' formidable political apparatuses in defence of their interests.
2) While in recent years, particularly in the industrialised countries, there has been a quantitative contraction of the working class as a result of restructuring and technological innovations, the number of salaried workers has continued to grow. Now the essential distinction from the point of view of Marxist analysis (do we need to remind our readers?) is not between workers and white-collar employees or between industrial workers and service sector workers, but between waged or salaried workers and non-waged or non-salaried workers. Even if we accept the hypothesis of the introduction of new technologies on a massive scale and at an increasing pace (nobody can be sure things will work out like that), nothing allows us to accept the hypothesis of a decisive whithering away of salaried/waged work in the next ten or twenty years. 25
3) Despite the above-mentioned tendencies, the proletariat, both on a
56 International Marxist Review world scale as well as in nearly all countries, continues to be much greater in number-in absolute terms and as a percentage of the working population—not only in Marx or Lenin's time-but also for example in the 1930s. It would therefore be arbitrary to conclude the material basis of its role as the anti-capitalist motor-force is seriously eroded.
4) The fragmentation or 'diluting' of society that the writers we have referred to describe is a real phenomenon but it would be wrong to interpret it as an irreversible general tendency. To a large extent it is a typical phenomenon of phases of prolonged stagnation and restructuring or technological innovations on a large scale in the framework of a political downturn. Sooner or later, just as in other periods, there will be a unitary recomposition of the working class and of working people generally. The central problem today is to draw up the broad lines of a political approach which favours this by stimulating a new rise in class consciousness among the masses.
Our whole line of argument leads to the following general conclusion: new cyclical crises of the capitalist economy will break out followed by long phases of stagnation and the reappearance of massive unemployment and impoverishment of very broad layers of the population. Natural resources will be increasingly and catastrophically destroyed. Sources of energy will be used that are far from being adequately controlled and with effects that cannot be foreseen in the medium or long-term. Far from raising problems rendering Marxists and the revolutionary movement powerless and impotent these issues, in the last analysis, are a confirmation of the dramatic relevance today of the concept of alienation, the fundamental theory of Marxism.
As we recalled, the main argument advanced against Marxism and the revolutionary approach is based on the denunciation of the regimes existing in bureaucratised transitional societies. We repeat, this argument is based on a reality. In fact revolutionary Marxists were the first to begin to analyse this reality through the living application of materialist criteria and thanks to a direct experience of struggle more than a half a century ago. In any case this reality is not something new in the present phase justifying an overall ideological and political revision. In the 1930s the degeneration of the regime born out of the October revolution was not apparent or was ignored by the overwhelming majority of workers throughout the world due to the gains, albeit contradictory, of industrialisation and the role played later by the USSR in the struggle against Nazi imperialism. The striking feature of this reality today is that the bureaucracy is in the process of transforming itself from a relative brake on harmonious economic development to an absolute one. Significantly, unlike what happened during the great recession of the 1930s, the USSR has not appeared as a credible alternative model after the onset of the capitalist crisis in the middle of the 1970s. Furthermore, even if the rule of the bureaucracy today involves the use of less barbarous methods than in Stalin's time, thirty years after the CPSU's
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 57 Twentieth Congress and Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin's crimes, no step forward has been made to the establishment of socialist democracy. In fact it is precisely today that the devastating effects of Stalinism and of the bureaucratisation of the Soviet Union appear in all their national and international significance and represent a major obstacle for the development of socialist and revolutionary consciousness among the masses, especially in the industrialised capitalist countries.
At the very moment when capitalism, because of its intrinsic mechanisms has come to produce the ultimate irrationality and in an infernal logic could bring about the physical destruction of the planet, leaders and intellectuals identifying with workers' organisations are rehabilitating it by accepting its fundamental framework. At the very most they project so-called rationalising reforms and in the last analysis they have dropped any perspective of overthrowing it. Such is the paradox of the present ideological crisis of the Italian workers movement.
### Notes
1. This article first appeared in Cahiers du Socialisme (Montreal: 1986). 2. This current is now essentially represented by Democrazia Proletaria and the
Lega Comunista Rivoluzionaria (LCR), Italian section of the Fourth International. For an analysis of Democrazia Proletaria's positions see issue number
21 of Quatrième Internationale, September 1986. As for the ideological crisis of the 1970s see our article in Quatrième Internationale, No. 2 (new series),
Oct-Dec 1980. (This magazine is available from Quatrième Internationale, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.) 3. Carlo Rosselli's ideas are best developed in his book, Socialismo liberato. He was an anti-fascist assassinated in France in 1932 by a fascist-type group linked to the Italian secret service. 4. We should remember that those who at the time put forward the idea that capitalism would have new crises and once again there would be unemployment and impoverishment of significant layers of the population were treated with contempt and denounced as 'irredeemable archaeo-Marxists' 5. The PCI, although it has gone a long way down the road of social democratisation has not for all that severed its references to Marxism or dropped its socialist perspective. 6. We need to include in the negative balance sheet the evolution of the Iranian situation, where after the huge uprising that removed the Shah, a new authoritarian regime with mediaeval features has been established. Besides this there is the victorious revolution in Nicaragua and the struggle the Sandinistas are carrying out against imperialist aggression, but up to now this has not had
58 International Marxist Review the repercussions on a mass level comparable to those of the Cuban revolution or the Vietnamese revolutionary war. 7. On this see our articles in Quatrième Internationale Nos. 6 and 7. Oct-Dec
1981 and Jan-Mar 1982. 8. See our articles in International Viewpoint Nos: 80. 15 July 1985: 92. 10
February 1986; and 99. 19 May 1986 (available from same address as Quatrième
Internationale). 9. For example, Berlinguer had put forward the hypothesis at the 1975 Congress of a 'world government', which has recently been taken up again in an editorial of the party weekly Rinascita no.24. 21 June 1986. 10. The criticisms made against the left government and the French SP concern what is claimed to be the maximalism of the measures taken in the first phase.
particularly the nationalisations. 11. For example, some favourable judgements have been made about Rau. who is far from representing the most radical positions inside the SPD. 12. Unfortunately while Garavini develops more correct analyses, he does not propose any strategic perspective different to that of the majority of his party and of the CGIL. That is confirmed in the conclusion of his article: "The existing framework is therefore apt for proposing once again the actuality of a programme of reforms representing a correction of capitalist logic and an access towards a socialist perspective. (ibid, p. 112) 13. Natta himself has used 'median'-type formulations (taking a 'middle position' in the debate at last April's congress (see International Viewpoint no.99, op cit.) 14. Angius forgets, among other things, that in Italy the word 'palazzo' (palace or big building) is currently used to indicate not the seat of government or parliament but political power in general. 15. We can point to a rather peculiar contradiction here: on the one hand the PCI's leaders or intellectuals make an excessive use, practically daily, of the expression 'qualitative leap forward' to stress the least aspect of newness in their political approach or initiatives, even if they are very conjunctural, and on the other hand they eliminate it from their vocabulary when they refer to a transition to a new society-thereby emptying such a process of any meaning. We might add that they have now more or less explicitly abandoned even the expression 'fuoriuscita' from capitalism, which had been introduced into political terminology by centrist (in the Leninist sense of the term) intellectuals and groups precisely in order to water down the idea of a break or rupture implied by the term 'overthrow' (of capitalism). 16. Some quotations are a bit long but we wanted to avoid any suspicion of arbitrary lifting of quotes or of paraphrasing. Furthermore if words or expres-
The ideological crisis of the Italian workers' movement 59 sions seem incorrect or strange in English readers would be wrong to accuse the translator—the Italian style of these writers is often very arbitrary.
17. To be blunt Craxi does not have too many scruples in the philogical field either.
His 'reconstruction' is an example of the well-known falsification method of
18. Besides those Red Brigade and other terrorist organisation members who have repented of their past ways, here in Italy there is a whole body of intellectuals who have 'repented' from Marxism and are doing their best to sell themselves under new labels. The most indecent is Lucio Colletti, who was a rigorous
Marxist and a left critic of the reformist and neo-reformist parties in the 1950s and 1960s but has now become a real champion of the anti-Marxist and anticommunist 'restoration' and a regular correspondent with the main bourgeois
19. To be more precise, the CISL (led by a Christian Democratic influence leadership) and the UIL (led by a PSI-influenced leadership) have always explicitly placed themselves within the framework of accepting the capitalist system wheras the CGIL asserted its 'neutrality" in relation to the existing socio-
20. Recently the Italian trade unions have said they are in favour of a planned agreement between Alfa-Romeo and Ford while there also exists the possibility—
21. Giorgio Ruffolo, who supported revolutionary Marxist ideas after the war, today is a member of the PSI and has filled key leadership posts both as an economist and as a manager. At the moment he is an MP in the European
22. A rather frequent polemical method in Italy consists in pinning the label of
"paleo or archaeo-Marxist or Leninist' on those people defending Marxist and
Leninist ideas. This type of intellectual terrorism obtains the desired effect from
For example, as we saw earlier, he repeats the hoary old nonsense about Marxexplains that 'Marxist antipathy to the Welfare State continues even in the present period' and that Marxists welcome with "satisfaction'" the crisis of the
Welfare State (ibid, p. 107). He ought to know that Marxists have never denied the importance of the partial gains and conquests of the Welfare State which is more often the result of big workers' struggles than concessions from the
24. In his recent book Le classi sociali negli anni 1980 (1986) one of the most well-known Italian economists, Paolo Sylos Labini, while systematically making a polemic against Marxism, recognises that: 'Marx was right as far as the inevitable cyclical character of capitalist development and the tendency for the using bits of quotations torn out of context.
daily, Corriere della Sera.
economic regime in its 1960 congress.
less concrete it is true-between Alfa-Romeo and Fiat.
Parliament.
those obsessed with the idea of always appearing innovators.
23.
ism supposedly ignoring 'the problem of the political system' ruling class.
'. Elsewhere he
60 International Marxist Review concentration of unities of production were concerned.' (ibid, Pp. 138-139) 25. Here we are repeating in part what we have written in an article that appeared in Quatrième Internationale no.20, May 1986, where we made allusion, among other things, to the hypothesis put foward by Marx in the Grundrisse accor ding to which a situation could come about where the exploitation of humanit would no longer be 'a condition for the development of the general wealth'.
Unity and the Italian
In this letter we would like to explain our view of the present state of relations