[The following article appeared in the Septemuer 13 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The Il Manifesto congress, held in Rome in July, paved the way for a fusion with the PDUP [Partito d' Unità Proletaria - Party of Proletarian Unity] and the formation of a new party, the Party of Proletarian Unity for Communism. The political situation in Italy gives added interest to an event that the entire press presented as quite important. Il Manifesto, it should be noted, is a daily newspaper with a circulation of 25,000 to 30,000. It is also an organization formed by former cadres of the Communist party who left the CP under the dual influence of the student radicalization and the Czechoslovak affair of 1968. Il Manifesto claims a membership of 10,000.
Nothing was overlooked by the leadership in their effort to use the congress as a vehicle for political maneuvering; free and democratic discussion among the delegates suffered accordingly. About half of those scheduled to speak were never able to do so, since each contribution to the discussion lasted an average of forty-five minutes and dealt more with problems of a general nature than with defining a line for the party. Thus, apart from a polemic on the question of women's liberation and a heated discussion on the role of antimilitary work -two points that seemed to be of particular concern to the militantsthe congress served more than anything else as the setting for a threefold maneuver:
• Toward the PDUP, with whom the process of fusion has finally been brought to a conclusion. The PDUP is a group that, while hardly militant, has a number of trade-union cadres in the CGIL [Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro- Italian General Confederation of Labor].
It represents what remained following the crisis in the PSIUP [Partito Socialista
Italiano d'Unità Proletaria - Italian Socialist party of Proletarian Unity] after the latter was torn apart by the Socialist and Communist parties. Its recruitment among radicalized Christian workers made it a less "rigid" movement than Il Manifesto and accounts for the fact that it is still hesitant about making explicit references to Marxism.
This meant that the Il Manifesto leadership had to fight to retain the word "Communism" in the name of the new party (the PDUP would have preferred "Socialism"). The Il Manifesto leadership also made several references to Lenin and Gramsci to establish the theoretical unity of the new party that is to emerge from thefusion. On several points-including participation in elections ("in all elections, even local ones"), the concept of the party and of the role of a revolutionary daily newspaper, and other tactical questions of a secondary nature — the numerically weaker Il Manifesto seemed anxious to make clear its political hegemony over the PDUP.
• In regard to Lotta Continua and Avanguardia Operaia, whose leaders spoke at some length at the congress, Il Manifesto in effect made an appointment for some time in the future using for this purpose discussing the"restructuration of the left." Scoring a direct hit on Avanguardia Operaia's opportunism and turns- and on the shortcuts and oversimplifications of Lotta Continua's analysis of the political situation, which reduces to zero the influence of the reformists on the working class — Il Manifesto seemed to have in mind the relative state of crisis in the two organizations.
Lotta Continua's interpretation of the crisis in Chile, and the tasks for
Italy it deduced from this, will undoubtedly keep this rather consistently ultraleft current at some distance from the centrism of Il Manifesto. It is not possible to be quite so categorical with Avanguardia Operaia. Il Manifesto can, without bragging, view itself as the pivot for the regroupments that will take place in the Italian far left in the months ahead.
• In regard to the Italian CP, the congress enabled the Il Manifesto leadership to pursue a dialogue at the top levels that is still scarcely imaginable in France. Two journalists from Unita the CP daily newspaper], who followed the discussion quite attentively, took note of the criticism of the "historic compromise" [the CP's offer to participate in the Italian government] and of the indictment against the CP's policy in the "red zones," such as Emilia.
Il Manifesto's aim is to play up to the hilt the uneasiness felt by many CP militants and cadres following the adoption of the "Berlinguer line" [Enrico Berlinguer, CP general secretary] of offering to collaborate with the Christian Democracy. Especially since the material conditions for starting to put this line into practice are lacking. The history of the social structure, of the Social Democratic organizations, and of the bourgeoisie's form of domination excludes any possibility of arranging an agreement with a reformist partner that would offer an alternative in the present crisis.
Furthermore, the grave difficulties of the Christian Democrats, difficulties that were made worse by the divorce referendum, have in no way led the bourgeoisie to lose sight of the extent of the social crisis. The widespread character of the crisis, the continuing high level of combativity, and the appearance of new vanguards in the very heart of the working class increase the weight of the far-left organizations and strengthen their role in the country's political life.
The initiative maintained by the working masses (summoned up in each response to murders by the fascists) provides a strong corrective for the effects sought by the "strategy of tension" [a series of terrorist acts carried out by fascist groups in the hope of provoking a reaction against the left].
This is the situation that was interpreted in a document from the ranks, "The New Character of the Crisis,"
which was written in preparation for the congress. But neither the report by [Luigi] Magri [a leader of Il Manifesto] nor the contributions to the discussion clarified what the tasks of revolutionists are. The debates, including those with Lotta Continua and Avanguardia Operaia, remained astonishingly abstract and general. The discussions on political line and the function of slogans in the mass movement, on the question of power and alliances, remained quite conclass:
fused. The term "workers hegemony," which seemed to turn up everywhere, did little to conceal the lack of precision in the analyses of Italian society.
It is true that according to Il Manifesto's theses, "the proletariat can no longer be defined as the producer of surplus value, since the boundaries between productive and nonproductive work are less rigid than in the past. •.. From a sociological point of view, the proletariat in an advanced capitalist system is not a precisely definable reality." Apart from these negative definitions, it must be said that Il Manifesto did not bring any rigorous contributions to bear on this question.
If the debates were so lacking in concreteness, it is because Il Manifesto's strategic hypothesis is one of a linear development of a political situation that has been evolving over several years, in the course of which it is hopeless to expect a significant change in the political relationship of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between the reformists and the revolutionists.
Il Manifesto explains that however deep the crisis may become, its forces do not permit it to "deal with the crisis." The task therefore "is simply to build a party that will shift the axis of discussion in the entire Italian far left." Intervention in every struggle and the unification of existing forces on the basis of a minimum agreement on "the analysis of the crisis of the system" will, it is thought, make it possible to accumulate experience and forces.
The lever vis-à-vis the broad masses envisaged in this policy is "pressure" and "influence" on the CP. Accordingly, the CP's coming to power is fore seen in only one variant the CP, recognizing the impossibility of a compromise with the Christian Democracy, forms a government with some secondary reformist forces and thus expresses, in a distorted fashion but for an entire stage, the conquest of a small part of state power by the working class. This failure to take a position on the policy of class collaboration in reformist coalitions weighs heavily when it comes time to define the tasks of revolutionists.
The roots of this lack of clear strategic perspectives on the question of state power and the revolutionary crisis can be better understood if one recalls the origins of Il Manifesto, its historical links with the leadership of the Italian CP. Magri wrote in 1970 (in issue No. 10-11 of Il Manifesto): "We do not view the building of a new revolutionary force as a split that would separate the healthy elements from the opportunist ones. We are speaking, on the contrary, of a 'cultural revolution,' of a 'transformation from the ranks,' carried out in the mass struggle and accompanied by a critical examination of the entire past, in such a way as to profoundly change the method of operation of the party [CP], and above all of its best elements." This is still the assessment of Il Manifesto, and it clearly defines the group as centrist.
There are, therefore, differences with the comrades in Il Manifesto on the nature of the period and on building the revolutionary party, on the balance sheet of the international workers movement, and on the tasks of revolutionists on a European scale. That is to say, there is subject matter for a debate. A debate that one should not be permitted to sidestep in France because of any definitive or disenchanted assessment of the Italian situation, a debate that the Rome congress gives one a desire to pursue.
Mao's Writings Next to Be Purged?
The writings of Chairman Mao may soon be revised to remove all approving references to Confucius, according to a document circulating among Western correspondents in Peking. Purportedly a directive of the Communist party's Central Committee, the document acknowledges that Mao's works contain many Confucian references but claims they were inserted during editing by Liu Shao-chi and Chen Po-ta.
A tally by Time magazine last February found that in Mao's four-volume selected works, "no less than 22% of his references to other writers are to the sage or his disciples - just short of the 24% devoted to Front-Runner Joseph Stalin."