Document Presented by the Left Minority (Communist Project) to the National Political Committee of the Party for Communist Refoundation (PRC) of May 6-7 2000

Introductory note

On May 6-7 was the meeting of the National Political Committee (that is the central committee) of the Party for Communist Refoundation (PRC) that discussed the vote of April 16 and of the perspectives of the party after the vote. The majority of the party approved the proposals of the Secretary, Fausto Bertinotti, without expressing differences in phase of vote (apart from five votes of express abstention of these comrades and of Bandiera Rossa, but not from the overwhelming majority of these comrades).

In extreme synthesis the position of the majority of the PRC is the following:

- it gives a positive judgment of the result of the party (from 4.4% in 1999, to 5.1% in 2000);

- it declares the failure of the centre-left but it doesn't make a balance sheet of the politics of alliance of the PRC with the centre-left, even the local alliances are confirmed (for instance in the government of the city from Rome);

- it declares a clear opposition to the new government of the centre-left (Amato government);

- it advances the proposal of working for an alliance of the "plural left" with the Left Democrats (ex PCI, ex Democratic Party of the Left, now on the positions of liberal Social Democracy), with the Greens and with the Party of the Italian Communists (the party of the ex president of the PRC, Armando Cossutta), but it doesn't close the door to an accord with the centre-left;

- it confirms the wish of building the PRC as an independent party;

- at the same time it proposes working for a "federation of the left alternative" (on the model of the Izquierda Unida from Spain) with other forces of the left and environmental movement, a proposal also advanced by Luigi PIntor, influential leader of the daily paper "Il Manifesto."

An internal tendency of the majority (Paul Ferrero, Bandiera Rossa) underlines the proposal of the "federation of the left alternative" that, if realized, could lead to the breakup of Communist Refoundation as a Communist Party.

Another tendency of the majority (that could be defined as "neo-stalinist") criticises the proposal of the federation of the left alternative.

Another theme of debate has been the electoral tactic in the referendum that takes place on the 21st May. The referenda are seven but two are most important: (1) a referendum for a totally unilateral majoritarian electoral law; (2) a referendum to grant total liberty of dismissal to the bosses also in firms with more than 15 workers (under this limit it is already possible).

In Italy for the validity of the referenda it is scheduled that the voters are more than the 50% (quorum of the 50%). Since a mass abstention is anticpated (also important sectors of the center and of the right--such as Berlusconi and all the ex-Christian Democrat parties--invite the electors not to vote), the majority of the PRC has proposed to invite abstention on all the referenda. The majority of the left of the PRC proposes instead to invite the workers to vote only for one referendum, and that is to vote No to the referendum that wants to introduce the total liberty of dismissal, and to invite abstention on the others. And this is because there is a strong push of sectors of workers and of trades union activists to also mobilize with the vote to stop the bosses attack, because it appears likely (not only on the basis of the polls) a victory of the No in this referendum, and this would strengthen the position that opposes the introduction of the freedom of dismissal (scheduled also from a proposed law of the government of the centre-left).

The minority of the left (Communist Project) has presented and voted its own alternative document (rejected obviously) that is reproduced here below.

(Tiziano B.)

MOTION to the NPC of the PRC of May 7 2000

The victory of the centre-right in the administrative elections of April 16 indicates profoundly the national political situation and represents a serious warning for the whole worker's movement.

The governmental collaboration between liberal Social Democracy and big bourgeoisie centre, true lintel of the centre-left, has represented from the '96 to today the flight of the revenge of the rights. The structural politics of the cutting of costs, privatisations, flexibility of the basic programmatic job of the Prodi and D'Alema governments in the service and on the orders of financial capital -- have struck and demotivated the social base of the left, favoring the consolidation of a social reactionary bloc: a bloc hegemonised by the small and medium enterprises and by the guilds of the free professions but capable of meaningful influence over vast popular layers. The alliance between Polo and the Northern Leagues has constituted the victorious political representation of this social bloc.

The constitution of the Amato government, in full programmatic continuity and bourgeois representation of the Prodi and D'Alema governments, extends today to further strengthen the spaces of affirmation of the centre-right in the next political elections: the Craxian image profile of the new leadership of the centre-left combined with the removal of the DS guide of the coalition; the deep crisis of the internal relationships in the centre-left and the processes of shattering that they invest to important political forces in the coalition; the absolute fixity of the liberal politics of the government on errand of the big enterprise, compete as a whole to accent dismay and demotvation of wide parts of the people of the left to the great advantage of Berlusconi, Bossi and Fini.

The failure of the centre-left therefore is real. It is not the failure of its politics in the eyes and on account of its social agent: the big capital continues to express a meaningful thank you for the full success of the centre-left in ordering the financial improvement and the social peace. But the liberal politics of the centre-left and the subordinate bloc of the workers' movement with the big enterprises under the bureaucratic control of Social Democracy and trades unionl apparatuses have failed the ambitious objective of hegemony in the Italian reality. The advance of the centre-right and of its social bloc is the measure of this failure. The political crisis of the coalition is its inevitable effect.

But the failure of the centre-left requires a balance sheet of the basis of the line of coalition with the centre-left that the PRC has pursued from its III Congress.

Certainly, the PRC has achieved in the administrative elections of April 16 a result "not negative," even if strongly non-homogeneous between North and South and compared to the historical minimum of '99. But it would be a serious error of method and of worth to remove the need for a political balance sheet. The politics of reformist conditioning of the liberal and bourgeois centre-left are resoundingly bankrupt together with the centre-left. Bankruptcy is total and full. It has failed from the inside of the national coalition of government in the years of Prodi, as it has failed from the outside. It has failed on the national plane as in the local experiences of government of important regions and cities.

Every where the real political and programmatic profile of the centre-left, its material and class relationships with the strong powers of society have revealed themselves impermeable to the suggestions, to the pressures, to the attempts of "contamination" by the PRC.

The actual deafness of the centre-left to the limited social proposals of the PRC, intentionally displayed unavailability even to listen to its "social reasoning" are the definitive symbolic denial of a whole political course of the PRC. A political course that above all has lost precious occasions of autonomy and vast communication for the mass of the party, to the loss of its own visibility (as in the last electoral campaign); and that has caused substantial damage to the initiative and construction of the PRC inducing its internal disorientation and demoralization.

The NPC of the PRC, in the light of this iverdue balance sheet and in the context of the new political situation promotes a general, political and strategic turn, in the fundamental direction of the party. It is not sufficient to recognize the failure of the centre-left and avoid its ruins. A new fundamental line is necessary that at the same time combines a coherent class autonomy of our party with a strong release of external projection and a new proposal to the workers' movement and to the popular masses, without amy subordinate logic, and any temptation for sectarian sheltering.

A) It is necessary above all that the new judgment of failure of the centre-left is accompanied immediately by coherent political action. The relocation of the PRC to the opposition of the centre-left on the local plane beginning from those regional and big city councils (see Rutelli council) that have fallen to the revenge of the rights; the definitive announcement of the independent political presentation of the PRC to the next political elections as an autonomous force from the centre right and centre-left is an action that, as a whole, gives an immediately coherent reply to the turn.

B) Parallel to this, the NPC promotes a vast and open mass campaign in the workers' movement, in the movements of struggle, around the working class and popular base of the DS for a break of the workers' movement with the forces of big business and the Christian Democratic Centre and, proposing a united front of action on the basis of an anticapitalist program. And a proposal induced from the failed balance sheet of the centre-left in front of the rights. Only the break of class of the whole of labour and of the unemployed with the political representation of the big enterprises and of financial capital; only the full recovery of the political independence of the workers' movement from all the forces of the middle class could create the conditions for a resumption of the mobilization of the class. And only a big raising of the mobilization of class and of the struggles of masses, as the experience of the autumn of the '94 teaches us, can today halt the ascent of the rights and change the picture of the Italian political scenerio.

C) The NPC promotes the immediate elaboration of a program of action of the PRC for the raising of mass opposition and recomposition of the alternative social bloc. The proposal of a unified general strike of the whole of labour around themes woven from a substantial wage recovery, of the reduction of the hours of work, of the cancellation of the measures of flexibility ( "Treu pachetto"), of a truely social salary for the unemployed, for a minimum wage [in all categories] totally untaxed; and of a corresponding revaluation of the minimum pensions, can and must be posed forcefully by our party in the workplaces, in the mass organizations, in the intervention in the local councils, within a more general anticapitalist program. The same campaign of boycotting of the antisocial referenda of Confindustria and the Radicals are engaged, outside of a purely electoral and institutional scheme, as an occasion for a mass campaign for the definitive breakup of the electoral alliance and the raising of an independent mobilization of the worker movement. Equally, the PRC must today undertake to raise a fund to support the movement of the railroad workers and the struggle of the of schoolworkers, developing on this terrain an elaboration of proposals around objectives, forms of struggle, forms of organization. More generally, is a priority to develop concentrated commitment ofall of the Party in mass work in the midday, a decisive wedge in the recomposition of the alternative social bloc.

D) In this picture the CPN proposes a line of denunciation and boycotting of the general profile of the referendum operation, inviting people not to participate in the vote on the electoral referendum and on the other small referendum. Within this general line of boycotting of the referenda (beginning from the electoral one) is gathered the specificity of the referendum on the dismissals as a terrain of active campaign of the party in relationship to the sensibility of wide sectors of the whole of labour and to the thrust of mobilizations that have taken place. The indication "withdraw an only card, vote No to the freedom of dismissal" is the indication that most corresponds to this necessity.

Parallel to this, on the electoral and institutional theme the CPN believes essential that the frontal campaign against the majority system for its hollow [? affossamento] be accompanied by a strong democratic campaign for the relaunching of the proportional law without any concession to the cultivation of the governability and the stability of the governments (v. thresholds of obstruction). Itis amater not only and not so much of a battle conforming to our interest in institutional representation of the PRC, but of a battle of beginning from the independent interests of the workers' movement : that does not have any interest in sacrificing, all or in part, the democratic representation of its own social rationale to the stability of the bourgeois system and its governments.

This new political direction is inseparable from a new strategic objective : the construction of the PRC as the axis of recompositionof a new political leadership of the workers' movement, of another Italian left based on a coherent anticapitalist program.

Replacing the bankrupt illusion of the contamination of the centre-left with the objective of a "Jospinian" plural left would be deeply negative for the PRC. Not only because it would mean exhuming the myth of the same Jospin in the moment in which the liberal moderate politics of the French plural left have been exposed to a strong crisis of credibility and to an open mass confrontation. But because it would mean continuing to engage the bureaucratic DS apparatus as the strategic interlocutor of a recomposition of the left, and our party as a critical tool of pressure within a reformist and governist horizon. The disaster in Spain of the reformist understanding between IU and the PSOE show that this logic of reformist cartels with the dominant apparatuses of the left does not point out any real perspective for the workers' movement .

On the contrary, the failure of the centre-left, the deep crisis of the DS, the vast disenchantment, albeit also confused, that broad sectors of subordinate class and people of left express toward the traditional political leaderships, makes more than ever actual and necessary another strategic objective, certainly difficult but decisive: the construction of another left. Not a "left alternative" as a political-cultural area antagonistic to the search for a frontist position at the side of the old reformist apparatuses.

Even less a "new political formation," light and of opinion - as Pintor would want - or confused federative solutions that march in fact in a dangerous direction. But a communist revolutionary party and a mass alternative to those apparatuses, committed to build in the workers' movement another hegemony on the basis of a program of an alternative system.

The NPC intends to start forcefully a deep democratic turn in the inside life of the PRC, also strengthening for this road the necessary unity of action of the Party. They are openly going to combat diffused tendencies to bureaucratism, the administrative embezzlement, "lobbyism" that in these years have taken form in the PRC. But they could be fought effectively only if the political ground of the confrontation is strengthened and raised, if the particpation of comrades in the life of the Party and the definition of their choices (also avoiding demotivating political choices) is stimulated, if a profoundly new climate is developed, based on valuing and equal respect of divergent ideas and proposals.

Communist Refoundation cannot reduce democracy to simple tolerance of dissent. It can and it must instead set the diverged positions and proposals on a plane of real equality in the eyes of all comrades, favouring their wide acquaintance, thus developing also the free critical formation of the activists and of the cadres.

Rome, 7-5-2000

Marco Ferrando

Ivana Aglietti

Claudio Bellotti

Vito Bisceglie

Anna Ceprano

Franco Grisolia

Luigi Izzo

Matteo Malerba

Francesco Ricci

Michele Terra