DE-STALINIZATION A LA TOGLIATTI
ROME -~ The Italian Communist party has begun preparations for a. national organizational conference the aims of which were not clear at first but which are now beginning to emerge into view. It seems that — the Togliatti leadership seeks on the one hand to take up organizational problems which have confronted the party for some years without satisfactory solution, and, on the ather, to utilize the occasion to make clear its current conceptions in relation to the party of the working ~~ class in general, its structure and function.
The appearance of a double number of the Communist party theoretical magazine Critica Marxista [September-December 1963] on this topic . is a very interesting indication. It offers important information, including statistics, as did a report at a recent meeting of the Céntral Committee, worth all’ the greater attention since the Italian Communist) party remains the largest and most powerful of all the Communist partiés. in the advanced capitalist countries,
An article written for Critica. Marxista by Enrico Berlinguer, a memoer of the National Secretariat, indicates shifts in the membership of the party. In 1954 it was 2, 145, 517; in 19635 it had fallen to 1,614,886, The Youth movement Pell’ from 450,908 members to 172,206, Ber Linguer immediately adds that detailed analysis points to even more significant conclusions, Thus in 1953 the ratio of electoral supporters to party memberswas 2.8 (i.e., 2.8 votes per member); in 1958 it-was 5.63 in 1965 the ratio was 4.8. This shows that the increased strength of the party on the electoral plane was not matched by increased organi-~ zational strength. On the contrary, it fell,
The data on social composition as shown in the following table are: not less revealing:
1954 _ 1963 Industrial Workers 856,314 (40.0%) 643,733 (39.5%) Agricultural Workers 382,257 (17.8%) 206,684 (12.7%) Sharecroppers 262,227 (12.2%) 173,975 (10.7%) Small Farmers 84,317 ( 3.9%) 91,374 .{. 5.6%)
There were no significant changes among the other categories except for those pensioned off. No figures were available on these in 1954, They now constitute 7%. - oe
The author himself underlines the fact that if the decrease in the ratio of. agricultural workers and sharecroppers corresponds with a decrease in the ratio of these categories in society as a whole, the decrease in both ratio and absolute number of workers goes against the. increase in the working-class sector of Italian society. In absolute numbers, industrial workers in the Italian Communist party fell 24.8%; agricultural workers, 45.9%; sharecroppers, 33.6%, It is necessary to add that this unfavorable shift is especially evident among the youth with a resulting rise in the average age level of the party.
Berlinguer .also stresses a considerable reduction of the number of party organizational units in the factories, There were :11,495 industrial cells in 1954, but not more than 4,538 in 1962. |
This article as well as others in the issue note that the Italian Communist party has been affected by the general phenomenon of less: direct and less active participation by the masses in political life, One article especially talks‘ about the bureaucratization of political organizations as hitting even the organizations of the working class, Against Stalin, But. oe
From the political point of view, this issue of Critica Marxista is important from a number of angles and merits detailed analysis, There is great insistence throughout on criticism of the bureaucratic deformations of the Stalinist epoch which led to "theoretical ossification and deformations in practice." The practices of the Stalinist epoch, we are told, were completely different from the practices in Lenin's day. This, naturally, does not prevent the editors from underlining the "positive aspects" of Stalinism and especially of presenting things as if, following the initiative taken by the Soviet leaders, the problems were already solved or close to genuine solution. They dwell much on bureaucratization, etc., but completely ignore the ‘social roots of the phenomenon,
. In addition, Togliatti and those around him also seek to make out that in reality the Italian Communist party was never Stalinist and they particularly stress the period of the Congress of Lyon (1926) and the most recent period, skirting in quite cavalier way the most out and out stages of Stalinization.
“In a conference held under the auspices of Critica Marxista, Pajetta went so far as to assert that the Italian Communist party had its period
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of bureaucratic centralism, too, but that was in 1921-25; namely, under the leadership of Bordiga (in which, moreover, many present leaders who were later Stalinists participated), Tiyew"t Concept of the Party .
But the most important material presented in this issue of the magazine is the attempt at a new theory on the question of the party, in brief, an adaptation of: the concept of the party and its structure to the strategic orientation of the peaceful road to socialism. The main article, written by Lucio Magri, “Problems of the Marxist Theory of the Revolutionary Party," is in reality a bald criticism of the Leninist _ concept of the party as being applicable to backward Russia but not to industrially advanced countries,
Magri says flatly that "the limitations of Leninism are a reflection of the objective limitations of the Russian revolution," He speaks of the "“Jacobin danger" of the Bolshevik concept, and declares that the concept of the "new party" will not be that of Lenin but Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist party, who allegedly expressed a more adequate and more mature concept than that of Lenin. The essence of this concept, according to Magri, is that the party must lead not only the proletariat but a “historic bloc" composed of the proletariat and other social layers. and that it must be a kind of prototype of the > socialist society.
Magri is not a member of the top circle, but his article is the key one in an issue of the party's theoretical magazine which is stir ring up a lot of controversy. Is it a trial balloon sent up by Togliatti to test the reaction in the party and in the international movement before proceeding further? This will be determined quickly enough, In any case it is clear that the Italian Communist party has gone further _. down the road of rightist revisionism which is its way of interpreting the more general phenomenon of de-Stalinization,
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