[The following article appeared in the June 1 issue of Bandiera Rossa, fortnightly newspaper of the GCR (Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari- Revolutionary Communist Groups), Italian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
A number of positive features have marked the life of the Italian section of the Fourth International in the period since the November 1971 congress and leading up to the one scheduled by the Central Committee for the end of this coming September. We have been able to develop some central campaigns on a nationwide basis, such as the one against the state's slaughter [the Milan bombings of December 1969, which the government tried to use as a pretext for a witchhunt of the far left, our intervention in the elections, and the building of the May 12 internationalist demonstration [in Milan]. Likewise, we have been able to make a coordinated, systematic intervention into the struggles around the renegotiation of union contracts. We established our political presence in Milan, the city where we were most hard hit by the crisis that struck our organization in 1968. New local groups were established and others were strengthened. A good number of political cadres matured in various areas. Bandiera Rossa was transformed into a fortnightly. Our organizational structures were consolidated.
These achievements show that the growing interest in our organization is not a result only of the international crisis of spontanéism and Maoism (or the national crisis of centrist formations like il Manifesto) but is directly related to the political activities of our groups, to their increasing ability to influence the radicalized vanguard.
Nevertheless, it would be completely out of order to draw up a glowing balance sheet. Some projections for strengthening the organization have not been realized, or have been only 870 870
partially achieved. And the general relationship of forces within the revolutionary left is not yet favorable enough for us to be able to play a role commensurate with our analyses (which have proved correct and timely on every occasion) and with the tasks we have set out for ourselves.
The tasks of the coming national gathering of the GCR flow from the lessons of these past two years, from the critical balance sheet of our work, and from our newly acquired experience: to review and to enrich the line of the last congresses, to strengthen our ability to intervene and exert influence.
In order to facilitate the greatest development of the discussion and at the same time to compare and present concrete proposals, it has been decided that the precongress discussion should unfold in two distinct phases. The first will deal with the full range of questions we are faced with (from the general political situation to the analyses of the development of the far left, from the balance sheet of our activity to the creation of more suitable instrucarrying forward our ments for work). The second will discuss two more specific and detailed documents, one on organizational structure and one on the aims of the current phase of class conflict.
The Central Committee has opened the discussion by publishing two documents, draft theses presented by the majority of the national secretariat and another document by one comrade of this same body It is clear from these documents that an important aspect of the discussion will hinge around the process of building a revolutionary party. Already at the time of the 1970 and 1971 national congresses, this process was projected as a convergence of three factors: "the coming together of vanguard groups around a clear platform based on experiences of struggle preliminary to a process of more general political clarification; the polarization along the same lines of the worker and student forces emerging from struggles and able to assimilate basic generalizations; the breaking from the control and influence of the bureaucracy of those sectors of workers that are still th oco contore of workare that are still under its control and influence."
How is the Italian section of the Fourth International intervening and how must it intervene in this dialectical process? According to the theses of the majority of the national secretariat, "the process leading toward the building of a revolutionary party has in essence continued to develop in an ascending manner, but in rather conand at completely tradictory forms insufficient tempos with respect to objective needs. And it has been marked precisely by the three elements we enuin our preceding definimerated tion. ... The establishment of revolutionary Marxist hegemony over the revolutionary left will be the result of the development and deepening of the above-mentioned process and therefore cannot be postulated as a shortterm process. The task of our organization is to help this process along in the following ways: We must win the kind of positions among the workers vanguard that will enable us both to make an impact on the general struggles of the far left and to offer important practical examples of a revolutionary Leninist orientation and method. We must intervene in the student movement with the same goals and following the same guidelines. We have to offer precise political formulations and theoretical analyses that can clarify the most profound lessons of experiences.
"In setting standards for membership, we cannot disregard the objective fact that a large majority of those coming around our organization in the current phase are youths who have had no previous experience in political formations or in trade-union organizations, or have come under the influence of the far left, with all its ideological deformations. From this it follows necessarily that these elements will assimilate the general conceptions of revolutionary Marxism and our overall political orientation only after formally joining our organization, and not before."
This last section is what gave rise to the differences in the national secretariat. Here is how the minority opinion is presented:
"Through a special process of rapid education, politicized sectors of the vanguard may come closer to
Trotskyism more by reacting to Maoism and spontanéism than through an actual adherence to the methodology and conceptions of revolutionary Marxism. The most pressing task that we will have in this phase, therefore, will be to win over such sectors to our conceptions fully. A precondition for achieving this is a qualitative advance in the functioning of our national leadership. Crises of growth and lack of national direction are indissolubly linked; we cannot proceed on a case by-case basis as before. We need to establish basic norms for our development in the coming phase on a centralized basis. We must prevent the GCR leadership of the 1970s from taking a centrist attitude toward the various tendencies of opposition to Maoism and spontanéism and toward the local trends, already existing, that will inevitably combine with these various tendencies. For these reasons, in this phase we cannot count on winning important sectors of the vanguard to revolutionary Marxism directly to our organization. Instead, we need to plan for a series of sympathizer organizations in order to assimilate these currents politically and to initiate common work on the basis of our conceptions. At the same time, we must take steps toward achieving more complete homogeneity within our own organization, which can provide the basis in the coming period for the emergence of a larger secondary leadership cadre."
These, in outline, are the terms of the discussion that promises to be rich in contributions. Through a dialectical process, even before the time arrives for the congress the discussion can lead to a positive resolution of the differences and, in any case, will allow for a deepening of analysis and of perspectives not only for us, but for the whole revolutionary left.