crisis and the revolution" (in spite of some voluntarist features he noted in Lenin).
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LOTTA CONTINUA The report falls in a vacuum The section of the report dealing with the situation in Italy and orientations after June 20 was mainly devoted to two problems: the evolution of the Communist party (PCI) and the role of the trade unions. Sofri was rather clear: the PCI is henceforth a government party and is rapidly evolving toward the party of the system (some speakers maintained that it had already become such a party). According to Langer, another member of the outgoing secretariat, the PCI acts as an "instrument for the promotion of Italian imperialism. "As for the unions, according to Sofri they are "articulations of the capitalist state" and instruments of government policy. The mass organizations for the present and future struggles will have to be built on the basis of these premises, in a logic of opposition to the existing organizations (even though this does not rule out utilizing these organizations partially and temporarily). We will not repeat here the reasons why Sofri's analytical premises are either so one-sidedly deformed or so radically erroneous and why their possible translation into practice would bring on major defeats. It is interesting to stress that to the extent that there was discussion of these problems, Sofri's orientation was contested and sometimes explicitly rejected. This was done not only by two members who are traditionally critical-minded and considered by the great majority of LC as advocates of rightist positions (for example, Luigi Bobbio, who made one of the rare comprehensive Turin, Venice, etc. These workers stressed the necessity of not characterizing the relations between the PCI and the masses schematically. They reaffirmed that the trade unions remain the only viable mass organs in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat. On the question of workers coordinating bodies, which have arisen on several occasions in some big factories and in some cities during past years, the erroneous positions of those who view these bodies as mass organs outside and against the trade unions were countered by the more correct positions of those who emphasized their role as instruments of liaison and organization of the vanguard with the aim of waging a more effective battle of clarification and mobilization both among the masses and within the real mass organizations. The congress offered no response to these questions, which were considered of capital importance by at least some of the delegates. Nor can Sofri's report be lent any authority; in fact, it was not even submitted to a vote. The negative consequences will inevitably be felt by militants engaged in the difficult struggles of this period, who will not be aided much by the rhetoric published in the daily newspaper on the "congress that continues. " A Pyrrhic victory All the commentaries have stressed that the feminist militants were the winners at the congress. The future will tell whether their victory was a Pyrrhic one. For 26 our part, we are convinced that the women's liberation movement would have much to lose and nothing to gain by a weakening or disintegration of LC or other components of the far left. But it is undeniable that the women militants imposed their conception on the congress, forcing everybody to deal with their problems and acting more or less as an organized fraction (with the anomaly, compared to "classical" fraction models, that a not negligible protion of the fraction had already left the organization). The logic that had already taken shape in some provincial congresses, particularly that of Turin, became the logic of the national congress. Its development may be synthesized in the very long separate meetings held by women on the one hand and workers on the other and in the confused and contradictory confrontations in the plenary assemblies. The effort to translate this counterposition into a counterposition of "workers centrality vs. feminist centrality" led inevitably to a total impasse and practically blew up the congress. Especially since the leading group which had convoked the congress and had, through the vehicle of Sofri's report, sought to set a framework for the discussion disappeared from the scene almost completely. The explosion of feminist dissent at the congress reflects a phenomenon that goes well beyond the limits of Lotta Continua. While in the past LC was the most representative expression of the movements of dissent and radicalization that developed after 1968, the Rimini congress appeared as a reflection of varying social situations and expressed real phenomena and needs, even if in extreme and most often mystilying forms. The most disparate problems were raised during the five days of the congress; some interventions, such as that dealing with the struggle in the prisons, were marked by great human tension. But the battle of the women militants, in the form in which it developed, had no political result. In the end the congress limited itself to registering realities and to deciding that "the contradiction must remain open. " The extremely arduous problems, genuinely new to a large extent, which the explosion of the women's movement has posed for the workers movement as a whole and particularly for the revolutionary organizations — problems of theoretical generalization and of comprehension of the practical dynamic, problems of definition of strategic convergence in the overall anticapitalist struggle, problems of determining the most immediate obiectives - were not formulated in their real terms, not even approximately. The worker militants, initially opposed to the women, found themselves in a completely false position. The most sensitive of them understood this after several hours and preferred not to engage in an absurd battle or else limited themselves to making self-criticisms inspired by a guilt complex which is after all justified. Others, both in their interventions and in the discussion on the fringes of the assemblies, did not avoid exhibiting their male chauvinism, thus heading into a shameful defeat and personal and political crises that could lead them to leave the organization. The whole series of problems advanced in Rimini by the women militants
and outside Rimini by significant components of the feminist movement could obviously not be exhausted in the framework of a single congress. Nevertheless, to avoid this impasse the congress, beginning from the explosive impact the women's movement has now acquired in the crisis of the system, should have clearly reaffirmed that a revolutionary strategy absolutely must take up the problems posed by a movement which represents a mobilizing anticapitalist political force. It should have recognized more explicitly (and this concerns not only LC, but the whole revolutionary movement) that the man-woman opposition has profoundly marked the workers movement itself. This movement has paid and is paying the price for ignorance and historic underestimation. It should have been recognized that problems of morals and revolutionary behavior have been completely mystified without any development of consciousness of the ravages patriarchal society has inflicted on male revolutionary militants as well. The conclusion should have been drawn that the mass movement of women must have a specific independence of all the other mass movements and that independent bodies of women militants must exist within the revolutionary organizations. This being clarified, it was necessary to broach the confrontation with some more or less explicitly formulated theories and vigorously defended orientations. In our view in the final analysis certain positions of the feminist current manifested at the congress lend priority to biological elements as opposed to concrete historical elements. The logical consequence, whether this is the intention of the militants or not (to be precise, some of them overtly reject Marx and Lenin), is a negation of materialist conceptions on the theoretical level and the inevitable impasse of seeking personal solutions on the practical level, sometimes accompanied by moral-mystical tendencies (some interventions almost took the form of confessions of sins). On the other side, a number of interventions, beginning from the correct idea that the overthrow of the capitalist system will not automatically eliminate all forms of the oppression of women, nevertheless wound up turning a deaf ear to the primordial importance of this overthrow and instead stressed the transformation of consciousness, habits, and morals, with a turn away from the Marxist materialist conception. The development of consciousness and the organization of movements which contest on all fields are necessities for the revolutionary battle and it is imperative for revolutionaries to struggle against any sort of mentality and behavior marked by prejudices and conservatism. But if the transformation of consciousness is considered the priority, there inevitably follows an idealist deformation which implies an objectively reformist outlook from the political standpoint. This danger had been understood during the pre-congress discussion by one woman militant who had written in the newspaper: "Our choices cannot make an abstraction of the political phase we are in. I am convinced that the overthrow of capitalism will not take place through the destruction of the family by virtue of the struggle of women taken individually, but through the destruction of the social system, to which women can make a fundamental contribution, provided they take a correct class position. " But nobody at the congress recalled this elementary truth. Impasse of neo-spontanéism The fact that a whole series of important political problems posed in the reporf and taken up again in the most valuable interventions by worker de legates were never answered indicates the heavy negative heritage under which the congress functioned. This could not be wiped out by the neo-spontanéist rhetoric of the commentaries published in the daily newspaper about "the richness of the contradictions opened" and "a congress that only Lotta Continua could have held. " We have spoken of neo-spontanéism. A tendency of this variety has been manifested in the most recent period, even outside LC. In hailing all the movements, not only for their independence but also for their divisive effects, and in renouncing, even in the report itself, the projection of any overall political outlet, the congress stimulated an objectively and subjectively centrifugal dynamic by making considerable concessions to a spontanéism that is partly new and partly nostalgic. This sort of return to LC's origins - which had, incidentally, been rejected by the leading group during the period leading up to the congress - was exhibited particularly in a commentary published in Lotta Continua on November 6: "The men and women comrades who have found their reference point in LC all these years have once again experienced the independence that is born of struggle. A few years ago it was the workers who shouted 'We want it all' (Vogliamo tutto — one of Lotta Continua's main slogans in its early period - INPRECOR). Now the women also 'want it all, ' as do the unemployed, the people who lack housing, and the youth. And soon it will be the turn of the handicapped, the children, and the old people." It had appeared that experience had made LC understand that the 1968 conception "we want it all" was primitive. It had seemed that especially since 1972 LC had begun to understand the necessity of developing a strategy and tactics and that the organization's first national congress (held in 1975) had represented the most systematic effort yet made in this direction. But now the second congress appears as the negation of the first. LC has again begun to flirt with "we want it all" and once again to underestimate the hard work of building an alternative and a revolutionary party and has instead decided to take another bath in
"spontaneous" movement. Although a document published in the daily newspaper on October 17 had denounced "the bankruptcy of a composition of leading bodies that would ascribe preponderant weight to representation by social position, sex, generation, sector, and region" and instead emphasized the criteria of "overall personal political qualification in relation to the decisive problems of political line, " the congress accepted a diametrically opposite solution, leading the organization back to a stage of being a sum of components.
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LOTTA CONTINUA The feverish neo-spontanéist pressure was accompanied by a basic mystification. The congress presented as "the movement" what is in the best of cases only a limited section of the movement. It attributed to the masses states of mind and orientations that are in fact shared only by certain layers or even rather limited nuclei. This deformation appeared in the interventions of some Fiat workers who identified their own rage and their own way of reacting with the reflexes of the entire working class, without bothering much about making distinctions. But it appeared even more strikingly in all the interventions that confused the level of the limited feminist groups with the level of the mass movement of women. The spontanéist error was thus intensified, for while spontanéism that reflects a mass tendency at a given stage can permit a linkup with the masses even if it does not define overall political objectives, spontanéism that mystifies the concrete
A. SOFRI reality of the movement inevitably leads to confusion and isolation for those who accept it. There lies the nub of Lotta Continua's impasse. The experiences of the past several years should have convinced everyone - and before Rimini LC seemed convinced as much as anyone else - that it was no longer possible to win real successes on the basis of spontaneous movements. The very character of the current situation requires comprehensive responses, organized vanguard initiatives, mass mobilizations with a political dynamic. Even during the discussions at # mini, many interventions by workers highlighted the 28 fact that the October days of struggle in the factories, which played a central role, were not spontaneous explosions but mass responses made possible by the initiative of broad vanguard elements capable of understanding the state of mind of the masses and stimulating effective struggles. But all this was forgotten in the tempest of a chaotic discussion. It is not in anyone's interest for the capital of militants represented by Lotta Continua to be paralyzed or to risk dangerous erosion precisely at this time. That is why it would be desirable if reality would force LC to reflect more deeply and to carry out political initiatives that would permit its cadres to play a valuable role in the difficult battles now under way in the Italian workers movement, in which the vanguard that has matured during the past ten years has an important part to play. November 16, 1976 NOTES 1. Democrazia Proletaria was the far-left slate in the June 20 elections. It was composed of militants of several organizations, including Lotta Continua. 2. During this demonstration a Lotta Continua defense guard tried to impose the presence of a contingent of male militants in a contingent that was supposed to be limited to women. In the wake of the incidents that followed, the women militants of LC occupied the party's national headquarters during a meeting of the National Committee and forced a public self-criticism.
SOLIDARITY
WITH POLISH