Rifondazione row over Cuba

Tensions in Rifondazione Comunista, the Italian hard left party were already high following the support of the party leadership for maintaining Italian troops in Afghanistan, as the price of maintaining the L'Unione coalition in government. As a consequence they have done badly in the recent round of local elections, losing between 20 and 50 percent of their own votes from last year.

Now there is a big row brewing over Cuba.

It started with two articles by Angela Nocioni on the 31st May in the party's daily paper, Liberazione, which attacked the Cuban government, the Five Cubans imprisoned in the US, and Giustino Di Celmo, an old Italian, whose son was killed by Posada Carriles in 1997 in a terrorist bombing in Havana.

This produced a huge response from readers, and on the Internet. For several days running, Liberazione has been publishing entire pages of letters against those articles.

On the 5th June, there was a letter by Marco Consolo, who is in charge of the Latin American desk in the International dept of the PRC, who says that the paper is breaking with the party over the question of Cuba.

However, both the paper editor, Piero Sansonetti, and some party heavyweights like Rina Gagliardi have come out on the side of Nocioni.

Cashmere Communism

Reuters has this story by Robin Pomeroy

"With his dapper appearance and urbane manner, 66-year-old Fausto Bertinotti does not look like the harbinger of "misery, terror and death" that Silvio Berlusconi has accused Italy's communist leader of being. The head of Italy's biggest hard-left party, Communist Refoundation, often called a "cashmere communist" because of his taste for expensive clothes, Bertinotti is set to play a key role in Romano Prodi's new government. Bertinotti has said he would not become a minister himself, but as his party secured third place in Prodi's centre-left election victory, it will demand significant spoils after more than 2 million Italians gave him their vote.

"...Confounding the Prime Minister's constant warnings of "baby-eating" communists, Bertinotti has taken a left-wing but hardly extreme stance, calling for lower tax on labour and higher taxes on capital gains - a policy broadly adopted by Prodi's "Union" coalition. "There's nothing wrong with being rich, as long as you pay taxes," he has said.

"...It is not just Berlusconi voters who fear Italy's communists. Many moderates in the centre-left are concerned Bertinotti could hold Prodi to ransom unless he gets his way. He was responsible for sinking Prodi's first government when, in 1998, he turned against him in a confidence vote due to disagreements over labour policy.

"...New lawmakers who may enter parliament under Refoundation's banner include Vladimir Luxuria, a transvestite who aims to be Europe's first "trans-gender" lawmaker, Francesco Caruso, a leader of the anti-globalisation movement, and Haidi Giuliani, mother of a demonstrator shot dead by police at G8 protests in Genoa in 2001."

I love the way commentators make out that the PRC are fair weather friends, as if leaving the government was just some sort of wrecking technique. The Prodi government was pursuing free market policies that the PRC totally opposed and so they could not continue to support the government. The PRC was absolutely consistent and principled - and it is a testiment to their willingness to work with others that they are giving it another go.

But that doesn't mean the coalition is going to be easy sailing - if Prodi isn't willing to give significant concessions to his coalition partners he wont deserve to stay... Italian election results in detail

Berlusconi - You're not singing any more

Prodi wins

I was out leafleting today for our Socialist Unity candidate Roy North in Gorse Hill and Pinehurst ward in Swindon. Afterwards I popped into the local Italian shop, which is in the ward, and was met with beaming smiles. They told me Berlusconi had lost both houses of parliament, and it was the votes from abroad that swung the senate. Certainsly the left have won a very narrow victory! And the votes from abroad swinging left is significant, as there was real concern that Berlusconi had only introduced postal votes for Italians living abroad in order to allow him to steal the election fraudulently or otherwise.

Berlusconi is the most dangerous politician in Europe, not only has he included the post-fascist Gianfranco Fini’s National Alliance in government, (who get around 12% of the vote), he has also courted for the last year the hard core fascists like Alessandra Mussolini’s Liberta d’Azione, and Roberto Fiore’s Forza Nuovo. Despite the fact that the hard right win less than 1% of the vote, had he won the elelction this time Berlusconi would have brought fascists into government for the first time since 1943. In fact, it is brilliant news that Mussolini's Alterntiva Sociale (AS) of which her own Liberta d’Azione is just one part, failed to win a single seat, and got just 0,7% of the vote.

Of course now the hard work begins. It seems Rifondazione Comunista have won 41 seats and Comunisti Italiani 16 seats. They have to make their presence in the government into a sheet anchor against Prodi’s acceptance of neo-liberalism. They need to be prepared to resign from the government and turn to class struggle if and when the government turns on its working class supporters.

Also, the two parties, Rifondazione Comunista and Comunisti Italiani, split over the question of participation and non-participation in the last centre left coalition. Now they are both participating there is no principled reason for the two organisations to have separate existence. The hard left in Italy needs to unite to counterbalance the social democrats of the other parties: Democratici di Sinistra, Margherita, Socialisti Democratici and Verdi.