The vacation period and the first weeks of the fall in Italy were marked by the opening up of polemics between the general secretaries of the Communist and Socialist parties over major political and theoretical questions.
It was the dispute over "Leninism" and a so-called third way that produced the hottest debates and led the participants to take the most significant stands.
The positions defended in these debates are more deserving of analysis for their political implications and the tactical objectives involved than for any intrinsic theoretical interest. They had virtually no serious theoretical content.
The objective context in which these debates took place has to be kept in mind. It is characterized by social tensions and conflicts that remain very acute. Although the policy of national unity and austerity has led to an erosion of the strength of both the Communist Party and the unions, the relationship of forces between the contending classes has not changed qualitatively since the upsurge that began at the end of the 1960s.
It is in this context that we have to look, for example, at the attempt of the Socialist Party under the Craxi leadership to get back into competition. It is trying to ac complish this by identifying itself more closely with "European socialism" and by differentiating itself more sharply from the CP. In order to demarcate itself from the CP, it is using both traditional right-wing arguments and arguments that are meant to appear left (the SP not being overly troubled by any scruples about consistency).
The bourgeois politicians and intellectuals have taken advantage of the polemics between the SP and CP to demand additional "guarantees" from the CP of its loyalty to "the democratic system." They are pressing the CP to make more and more extensive revisions of its ideological heritage.
Those elements that, while going along with the policy of national unity, want to keep the spirit of "togetherness" from getting too liberal are striving to show that the CP
, despite everything, remains a qualitatively different party from the others. It cannot, they argue, be admitted to the game of the democratic "alternation" of parties in power.
Other forces, more conscious of the stabilizing role that the CP can play, even in the long term, are taking this opportunity to step up their admonitions to the Communists. Their aim is to force the CP to
SP "THEORETICIAN" CRAXI
integrate itself thoroughly into the system and to remove the last vestiges of a revolutionary cutting edge from its ideology.
"It would not be helpful at all if there were a reversal of the process under way in the Italian CP and the party turned backward toward Stalinism or Marxist-Leninist dogmatism," the Christian Democratic Party official in charge of international relations, Granelli, recently declared in New York.
Craxi's 'New' Theories
The first round of the debate on "Leninism" goes back to the beginning of August. In an interview given to the independent daily Repubblica, which is close to the SP, Berlinguer said:
"If when you say Leninism (or Marxism- Leninism), you mean a kind of handbook of doctrinal rules that are seen as unchanging, a body of positions fossilized in scholastic formulas that are supposed to be applied uncritically regardless of the time and place, that would by no means do justice to Lenin (or to Marx). ... In that sense, we are no Leninists." But would anyone acknowledge belonging to such a category of "Leninists'"?
Berlinguer said that as far as he was concerned he favored reformulating the article in the Italian CP statutes that refers to "Marxism-Leninism." Then he went on to specify what he considered still valid and relevant in Lenin's legacy. It was "the lesson that Lenin taught us in developing a real revolutionary theory, in going beyond the 'orthodoxy' of reformist evolutionism." It was the lesson that
Lenin taught "in looking at the subjective factor represented by the initiative taken by the party acting as an autonomous agent, the role played by the party in fighting the positivism, vulgar materialism, and messianic atheism characteristic of the Social Democracy." It was "the role of the party in opening up a breach for the proletarian forces of renewal and liberation that were struggling in Russia and throughout the world."
In 1917, moreover-according to Berlinguer-Lenin had envisaged the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in which several parties would be involved. He had conceived of socialism "as a society that would bring the full flowering of democracy."
Berlinguer attacked the SP as having a tendency to try to serve as "a rallying point for a whole array of neoliberals, neo- Social Democrats, and even ultraleftists." Then he went on to conclude by reaffirming that the CP is against the Social Democratic road as well as the road represented by the countries that are supposed to exemplify "real socialism." He said that the Italian CP believes that there can and must be a "third way," the road of democratic transition to socialism.!
Craxi accepted the challenge and answered about three weeks later in the weekly magazine L'Espresso. The main idea in his article was that the entire history of socialism and of the workers movement is marked by the conflict of "two broad currents," that is, "the statists, authoritarians, and collectivists" on one side, and the antistatists, libertarians, and noncollectivists on the other.
Craxi focused his fire on the first current and sought to paint up the second, in which he included the Italian SP. In support of his argument, he did not hesitate to try to enlist all sorts of witnesses in a helter-skelter fashion, even though he could not do this without resorting to the well-known method of taking quotations out of context.
Craxi brought out Proudhon, the young Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Plekhanov,
Smirnov,
Martov, Volodya
Isaac
Deutscher, Carlo Rosselli, Noberto Bobbio, Milovan Djilas, Gilles Martinet, and even the brothers Cohn-Bendit. (I hope I will be excused if I have forgotten someone!)
Craxi defined the current represented by Leninist communism, to which he claimed the Italian CP remained tied, as "inherently totalitarian." This current, he said, could be combated effectively only by "democratic, secular, and pluralistic" socialism. From this he concluded-and this point was made explicit in the polemics that followed publication of the articlethat while the CP might be accepted as a partner in a national-unity government or parliamentary coalition, it could not offer a governmental alternative to the existing regime either on its own behalf or in alliance with the SP.
Finally, Craxi argued that, contrary to what Berlinguer maintained, there are not three roads but only two-the road of "totalitarian" Communism and the road of "democratic" socialism.
Needless to say, Craxi's arguments were picked up widely by the big bourgeois press and television. Even figures or parties that are certainly no experts in Leninism got involved in the uproar, cheering for Craxi. On the other hand, the SP secretary was criticized by some wellknown figures in his party, including De Martino and Achilli, while others, such as Signorile and Lombardi, who are part of the left wing that supports Craxi, limited themselves to dotting a few of his "i's."
The Italian CP responded cautiously, stressing the danger that such polemics might provoke a split between the two workers parties. Rinascita, the CP's weekly magazine, correctly denounced the method used by Craxi in selecting his sources:
"Such procedures are suited to the political indoctrination of paratroopers, but they do not promote informed debate, the confrontation of ideas, political democracy, or pluralism."
After making this comment, Rinascita offered an editorial entitled: "Leninism, Democracy, and the Italian Communist Party." This statement stressed among other things that "since the founding of our party, it functioned as a member of the Third International in a way that, for better or worse, was marked by implicit and explicit manifestations of independence."
Let's pass over a style of writing history that is no less agile than the free and easy method of Craxi, which Rinascita condemned. This is not the first time, and you can bet that it will not be the last, that the Italian CP's scribes have tried to convince us that Togliatti was never a Stalinist or that this party never heard of the "third period" or "social fascism."
The most interesting thing about this editorial is that it reaffirms the conception of the "third way" and explains that "adherence to democratic methods is a common feature of the two major currents
• Сорот
CP "DIALECTICIAN" BERLINGUER
in the European socialist movement." Could this common feature help in mapping out a "third way?" But as to what concrete forms such a third way might take, we are given little indication.
The author of the article, Badaloni, tells us that "the political tasks facing the working class in a phase of transition can be summed up in a plan for gradually reducing the social functions of the old ruling classes (this is not the same as decreasing their will to command), which can bring about a shrinking of the need for, and the usefulness of, the role they play."
Over and above the deliberately nebulous phrasing in this statement, what it offers is the most vulgar kind of gradualism. There is nothing original about this, moreover. The Social Democrats themselves have already helped several times to promote a shift of the relationship of forces in favor of the exploited classes within the framework of capitalist society. The Italian CP wants to do exactly the same thing, and in fact has been doing it for many long years.
It should be noted in passing that those intellectuals with whom the CP is so fond of engaging in dialogue have openly taken the side of Craxi. This is true for example for Bobbio, the advocate of a "broad expanse of socialist opinion." He has written that there is no third way, and if you don't accept the road of the USSR and "real socialism," you have no other choice but to take the road of Social Democracy, "which does what it can within the limits of the democratic method it says it wants to follow." (La Stampa. September 3.)
This is the same ground on which Lucio Colletti has chosen to stand. Despite his age, he wants to gain the laurels of an "Italian new philosopher." After having rid himself of such encumbrances as materialism, the theory of value, and other mere baggage of this sort, he now says that there is no need to look for a third way. He sings the praises of the "European left," which, unlike the left in Italy, understood long ago that the most practical system is a "mixed economy"; that is, an economy with two sectors-one public, one private-held together by the setting of general goals. Let's not have any of this chatter, he concludes, about the need for "a way out of the system."3 Berlinguer's 'Left Turn'
It was an adept tactical ploy on Berlinguer's part to open up his counterattack in a speech given before hundreds of thousands of persons. He was able to show in this way that he is ready to deal with even the most delicate subjects in front of the masses. At the same time, he showed his readiness to combine the discussion of theoretical and historical questions with a definition or redefinition of short-term political needs and perspectives.
Berlinguer is clearly very much aware of the difficulties his party has been experiencing for some time now, of the erosion of its credibility, and of the dangers that flow both from the end of illusions in the Soviet model as well as from the position of the Communist parties in capitalist Europe. This is why he put a lot of stress on the party's identity and at the same time projected a less accommodating attitude toward the Andreotti government and the Christian Democrats.
Berlinguer was anxious first of all to reaffirm the historical legitimacy of founding the Communist parties and breaking with the Social Democracy. Between the CPs and the Social Democratic parties, he said, there is a fundamental difference. Opting for the democratic road does not mean that Communists are abandoning "the anticapitalist content of their political struggle and their ideological battle."
On the other hand, "the common feature of all the Social Democratic parties is their refusal to fight to break out of the capitalist system and transform the bases of society in a socialist direction."
This argument is not new. Togliatti used if often in the debates that followed the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. But it is a doubly false argument in any case.
1. The classical Social Democratic parties did not, on paper, reject fighting to "break out of the capitalist system." Rather they argued that this could, and had to, be done by the democratic and parliamentary road, by "successive approximations" (or, to use the language Berlinguer is so fond of, we could say by the gradual achievement of "elements of socialism" within the framework of the existing system).
2. Ideological declarations are by no means enough to guarantee that the Italian CP will not integrate itself into the system through the reformist logie of trying to rationalize it. This is all the more apparent since, despite its statements about the urgent need to find solutions to the acute problems created by the general crisis of capitalism, it envisages the "transition to socialism" as something taking place in an indefinite future.
Nonetheless, it is important from the political standpoint that Berlinguer felt the need to defend the identity of the Communist Party as opposed to the Social Democracy and to declare emphatically that he was not prepared to make any concessions on certain basic principles or to "renounce our history."
It is no less important that at the same time he was reaffirming the need to take a third way different from that of the Social Democracy and from "real socialism," he made a choice of camps. He lined up in the camp of the Soviet Union by refusing to put the experience of the Social Democracy on the same level historically as that of the October Revolution and the USSR.
In the last part of his speech, the CP secretary took a slightly tougher stance toward the Christian Democratic government. He declared that some concrete decisions had to be made, that the Christian Democrats had to clarify their attitude, and that "the burden of cleaning up the mess and bringing about renewal cannot be borne solely by the working class while the rest of society sits back."
At the same time, Berlinguer raised a cry of alarm. The problem was becoming more acute regarding the fate of "enormous masses of youth and women, of people in the cities, in the agricultural regions, in the mountains, of the subproletariat and underprivileged of all sorts in every city in our country. ... There is a danger that great sections of these masses and social aggregations will fall victim to reactionary operations, if only after they have gone through the frustrating experiences of blind rebellion."
What Berlinguer apparently failed to realize was that this danger has increased markedly precisely as a result of his party's policy.
The adjustments made in Berlinguer's speech in Genoa in no way involved a turn by the Italian CP. Not only is it continuing to support the Andreotti government but it is striving at the same time to present a favorable balance sheet of this government's accomplishments.
In discussion in recent weeks of the platform of demands for the new round of collective bargaining, in particular the new contract for the steelworkers, the CP and its current in the unions have fought to keep wage demands to the strict minimum and to cut the heart out of demands for a reduction of hours.
However, precisely because it is determined to continue its policy and maintain its strategy of "historic compromise," the CP has to reaffirm its raison d'être, its identity, and exploit everything that may appear to be a specific strongpoint in its strategy. Otherwise, it could not maintain the homogeneity of its ranks or be in a position to mobilize them effectively, and it would risk seeing its influence in the electoral arena shrink.
Paris, Moscow, and Belgrade
It is in this perspective also that we have to view the trips Berlinguer made recently to France, to the USSR, and to Yugoslavia (as well as travels projected for the near future).
The Italian CP leaders are convinced that in order for their strategy to appear credible, it has to have a European dimension. This is why they have developed proposals about the need for transforming the Common Market and about using the bodies set up by the European Economic Community, and so on. This is why they have tried to form a bloc of so-called Eurocommunist parties.
However, at a time when Europe-wide problems are going to be posed before broad masses by the upcoming elections to the European parliament, the CPs are in danger of revealing a serious weakness. Not only will they get far fewer votes than the Social Democrats but they are also going to appear deeply divided.
In fact, in a recent meeting of the West European CPs, four positions emerged. The Italian CP was in favor of active participation in the Common Market and the elections to the European parliament. It also favored extending the European Economic Community to include Greece, Spain, and Portugal. The French CP is going to participate in the elections, but it opposes extending the EEC. The British CP is for the withdrawal of Great Britain from the EEC. And the Irish CP favors a boycott of the elections to the European parliament. So the situation gave little cause for rejoicing.
Berlinguer wants to limit the damage by seeking a minimum accord with the French CP. To judge from the final communiqué on his visit to Paris, the bases of such an agreement would be to concentrate electoral propaganda around some common axes and to organize common initiatives, the nature of which has not yet been made clear, by the two parties.
In Moscow, Berlinguer could lay out a concrete enough deal. The Italian CP cannot ignore the existence of the USSR, which is a major factor in world politics. The day of the "guide-state" and the "model" for socialism is over. But the USSR remains a reality. And the Italian CP leaders-as the Genoa speech showed once again—consider that on the historic and strategic level not only the October Revolution but what remains of its accomplishments are an element of strength rather than weakness for the CPs as they are.
Therefore, the Italian CP leaders have an interest in establishing a modus vivendi with Moscow. And this could be discussed more easily after the Genoa speech. The fact that Moseow reaffirmed that it would not attempt to revise the framework for relations among Communist parties laid down at the Berlin conference in 1976 and that it approved of the overall strategy of the Italian CP indicates that progress was made toward achieving a modus vivendi.
Finally, Berlinguer's trip to Belgrade revealed another aspect of the Italian CP's approach to the problems of the international Communist movement. The Italian party has reaffirmed that it is prepared to maintain friendly relations with all the CPs, regardless of differences that may exist, and to restore ties that were broken in the past, notably with the Chinese CP
This position fits in perfectly well with the logic of "national roads," and it would be wrong to interpret any overturn toward Peking as a move toward breaking from Moscow or taking distance from it. In a recent interview, Pajetta said explicitly: *1 refuse to believe that there is any basis for considering the relations between the Chinese CP, Romania, and Yugoslavia as an anti-Soviet plot, or that they are directed against the USSR."
The Italian CP, moreover, saw Hua Kuofeng's trip to Europe as a "positive" development (Corriere della Sera, October 10). Contradictions of Eurocommunism
The Eurocommunist parties are unquestionably in a more difficult situation than they were two years ago. At the time, they could present themselves as a credible alternative in the short term for very broad sections of the masses in key countries.
In Italy, the CP had increased its influence and won resounding electoral victories. In France, the victory of the Union of the Left seemed quite possible, even very probable. The French CP could hope to play an important role in this alliance, consolidating its dominant position in the working class. In Spain, the CP was regaining legal status in an atmosphere of euphoria and could legitimately hope to acquire a decisive weight within the proletariat and the other exploited masses.
Today, the Italian CP's position is obviously eroding, and it is unable to combine following a strategy of its own with supporting the moderate policy of the Andretti government, which is trying to shift all the costs of overcoming the economic crisis onto the workers.
The French CP is paying much more of the price for the defeat of the Union of the Left in the elections than the SP. It is losing ground day by day, including among the workers. It finds itself obliged to retreat into a sectarian shell.
The Spanish CP has shown itself to be much weaker than the SP in the electoral arena, and it has not covered itself with glory by its fervent defense of the Moncloa Pact [a social pact between the big workers parties and the bourgeois government].
Moreover, as already noted, major differences have developed among the Eurocomences nave developed among the turocommunist parties on important questions, such as the extension of the European Economic Community. Some rather sharp polemics have taken place, notably between the French and Spanish CPs.
It is possible that some conjunctural problems may be overcome and that some homogeneity may be achieved on the level of general ideological formulations (for example, in rejecting the formula "Marxist-Leninist" as outmoded). The coming congresses of the Italian and French CPs, scheduled for 1979, will provide some additional elements for assessing where these parties are going. These gatherings may mark a new stage in the long march of the CPs toward "renewal"; that is, their adaptation to the new national and international conditions in which they are operating.
However, it is clear as of now that the Italian CP, which originated the "new course" after 1956 and stood out as the main inspirer of Eurocommunism, is marked by contradictions that can be broadly summarized as follows:
• Autonomy from the USSR and criticism of the Soviet leadership have brought some temporary tactical advantages. But this involves at the same time a danger of weakening the party's separate identity vis-à-vis the Social Democracy.
• Abandoning the "model" of "real socialism" makes it possible to avoid having to take responsibility for the crimes and failures of the Soviet bureaucracy. But at the same time it weakens the strategie perspective of the Italian CP. It can no longer point to a concrete example. It limits itself to advancing hypotheses that are generally quite vague and nebulous, and, moreover, tend to resemble the traditional Social Democratic conceptions.
• The growing integration of the CP into the institutions of bourgeois democracy and the state apparatus in the strict sense is increasing its influence in all spheres and enabling it to maintain more of a role in the game of "normal" politics. But this seriously undermines its ability to offer a credible alternative to the masses hardest hit by economic stagnation and the prolonged crisis of the system. The party's attitude toward the Andreotti government and its austerity policy can only magnify this problem.
• The attractive power of the Italian CP's Eurocommunist perspective depends also on projecting the outlines of a Europewide alternative. But as their integration in the system increases and as they come to share, directly or indirectly, the responsibilities of government, the CPs' policies become conditioned by the specific needs of their own bourgeoisies. And then, like the Social Democratic parties, they tend to develop differences among themselves that reflect the differences between the various "national" bourgeoisies or among various strata of these bourgeoisies.
Thus, it can be safely predicted that in the months and years to come there will be not a few polemics in the workers movement and in the Italian CP on "Leninism," on the "third way," and on other subjects.
10% in U.S. Say They Favor 'Socialism'
Big Business Takes a Nose Dive in Polls
In the past decade and a half the confidence of people in the major institutions in the United States has dropped steadily and precipitously. And one of the biggest casualties has been confidence in big busi ness.
That's the conclusion reached by sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and polling consultant William Schneider in an article entitled "How's Business? What the Public Thinks," published in the July-August issue of Public Opinion magazine.
In 1968, they report, pollsters found that fully 70% of the American people agreed that "business tries to strike a fair balance between profits and the interests of the public." But since then the number who agree has steadily fallen, until scarcely 15% concurred by 1977.
Similarly, a 1966 poll found that 55% of the public expressed high confidence in leaders of "major companies." In recent years barely one-fifth of the American people expressed such confidence.
The only solace for business leaders is that their decline in popularity has been shared by every other major institution. Pollster Daniel Yankelovich summed up the changes in attitude registered by polls in these words:
We have seen a steady rise of mistrust in our national institutions. ... Trust in government declined dramatically from almost 80% in the late 1950s to about 33% in 1976. Confidence in business fell from approximately a 70% level in the late 60s to about 15% today. Confidence in other institutions. sharply declined from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. More than 61% of the electorate believe that there is something morally wrong in the country. More than 80% of voters say they do not trust those in positions of leadership as much as they used to.... By the mid-70s, a two-thirds majority felt that what they think "really doesn't count."
Yankelovich summed up his findings in these words: "Within a ten- to fifteen-year period, trust in institutions has plunged down and down, from an almost consensual majority, two-thirds or more, to minority segments of the American publie life."
It was the development of the antiwar movement, the rise of the Black, Chicano, and women's movements, and the effects of the 1974-75 economic slump that, in the view of Lipset and Schneider, "changed the perceptions which Americans had of their country."
Within the context of this massive loss of confidence in all institutions, the farthest and fastest drop has been experienced by leaders of "major companies." In addition, the pollsters note, opposition to big business is no longer confined to economic grounds. Business is now seen to be responsible for many social ills as well, such as pollution, exploitation of colonial and semicolonial countries, public corruption, and the like.
Early in 1976 pollster Pat Cadell asked people, Would you favor or oppose introducing socialism in the U.S.?" Ten percent replied they favor socialism, 27 percent said they "don't know," and 62 percent were opposed.
It should not be surprising that in the United States, which is the only industrialized country that doesn't have a labor or socialist party represented in its parliament, and where the labor movement remains totally tied to the capitalist parties and the capitalist system, people have been slow to draw all the conclusions from their experiences. There has as yet been no mass force to provide an alternative to the ideologists of the capitalist system.
But as the ruling class's own polls show, identification with the capitalist system rests on shaky grounds, and there is a huge reservoir of people who can be won over to socialism if they have the opportunity to hear the socialist alternative.
Notes
1. In his interview, Berlinguer also said: "Lenin conceived of the fight for democracy as a battle that the working class had to carry through to the end but one that remained in the framework of a struggle to complete the bourgeois revolution. For us, on the other hand, democracy (the so-called formal freedoms, which originally represented a gain for the bourgeoisie as well) is a historical value, which, as historical experience has demonstrated, is a universal and permanent one." It is clear that Berlinguer, who no longer raises the problem of the destruction of the bourgeois state, at the same time forgets the difference between the struggle for democratic rights and the struggle for building soviet democracy, which is qualitatively superior to any bourgeois democracy, even the most advanced.
2. I am quoting here an article by Spriano [the most prominent CP historian] that demonstrated in detail the extent to which Craxi had used the method of falsifying by taking quotations out of context.
3. Colletti scored a point, however, by making fun of the word fuoriuscita (way out), which is being used very widely now in Italy. The Il Manifesto group can claim the rights to it. This is a formula obviously designed to fuzz over or eliminate the problem of achieving a qualitative leap, a revolutionary break from the past.