Italian Communism—
Mettle Fatigue ?
By JENNY NICHOLSON pALMIRO TOGLIATTI, probably in the whole history of the Communist movement the most skilful party leader outside Russia, has once again affirmed his grip on the Italian party—the biggest outside Russia. The occasion was the national conference of the party, held in a Roman theatre. The atmosphere was heavy with dedica- tion. It was like an endless religious service at which the con- grekation of 1,142 delegates from all over Italy watched with glazed concentration the altar—a table on the stage behind which drooped the depressing hammer-and-sickle banner al- most obscured by the gay tricolour ribbons—and made their reflex responses—a rhythmic clapping—whenever an intoning High Priest came to the words, Peace, Liberty, Work, Bread. Masses, or Mao Tse-tung.
Togliatti ('Well-beloved Leader' to his two and a half million fee-paying members) made it clear to them (and to the rest of Italy) that there is no serious threat to his leadership; that his leadership means obedience to Moscow; and that obedience to Moscow means abandoning any idea of revo- lutionary action for at least as far into the future as the Com- munists can peer. This was a great disappointment to many of his followers. Party leaders knew that the hope of direct action would make the party much easier to hold together. This national conference was preceded and accompanied by • waves of excitement in the non-Communist Press at rumours of a revolt against Togliatti. The wishful rumour was that the revolt was gathering force in the factories of the north, where Communism seems to have reached saturation point and even seems to be drying out. Minor party leaders in the north and the men who follow them were reported to be afraid that unless the party abandons the conservative Togliatti policy—bland and constitutional—and becomes revolutionary, the members who have remained for years on their mettle will soon begin to show signs of fatigue and frustration.
The Red Eminence of this rumoured revolt was said to be Bruno Fortichiari. He founded the Italian Communist Party in 1921 with Gramsci and Bordiga. Gramsci and Bordiga are dead. Fortichiari is sixty-two. He plays no part on the national scene, but he still has great prestige in the strongly Communist area of Reggio Emilia, where he lives. Non-Communist re- porters did not succeed in interviewing him.
During the conference a pamphlet was distributed to all delegates and to the Press. It claimed to be the programme of 'Communist Action,' and condemned Togliatti's policy as 'the renunciation of revolutionary class action and, instead, collaboration with bourgeois political forces, with, as a conse- quence, new and continuous signs of reformism and of parlia- mentary illusions.' In normal words : Togliatti is accused of allying himself with bourgeois forces in order to make reforms through parliamentary means instead of inducing a violent upheaval which would annihilate the bourgeoisie and their parliament.
During the conference observers watched closely for any sign of revolt among the delegates. There was the usual self- criticism—a necessary safety-valve in a mass organisation of which the leadership never changes. But there was no open criticism of the Togliatti policy. Summing up. he was able to confirm that, although the party's basic policies could perhaps be carried out more efficiently, the policies themselves re- mained unchanged. He addressed thee delegates, who had been elected by the 9,000 Communist sections throughout Italy, like a professor of theology, peerin at them severely through his spectacles: The essential of today—we have already said what it is. I say it once again. The essential of today is the struggle against the provokers of imperialist wars, against the threat of atomic war, against the decisions which lead to rearmament of a militaristic and expansionist Germany, against all the policy which is being framed today. This is the essential and this must be the prime object of the labours of our party as from tomorrow—and in such a way that these labours have the maximum effect. There exists today no question that can be separated from this.'
How disappointing this must have been for those party members who had hoped to be promised a more exciting future! Damped was their dream of invigorating action. They were to plough on with the laborious intellectual and organisa- tional work they have been doing for the past ten years. The Well-beloved Leader was re-chanting his old policy: the Com- munist Party should represent the leadership of all that is progressive in Italy : it should demonstrate moderation and understanding in order to seduce all those who rebound from the 'clerlco-Fascist state': it should be the champion of Italy's post-war republican constitution (claiming most of the credit for the Republic and its constitution): and it should be pliant so that it enchants and absorbs—not iron-handed and violent so that it frightens and subdues.
In the mood of self-criticism Togliatti blamed the party for not seeking common ground with the left-wing Catholics as he had suggested—indeed, ordered—two years ago. He urged the comrades to ignore the leaders of the non-Communist masses and to concentrate on the masses themselves.
Pietro Nenni, the Socialist leader, who at last year's general elections ranged his three million votes alongside the Commun- ists' six millions, hastened to declare his approval : 'The confirmation of the policy that the Communists have followed for the past ten years is an important and significant fact. There was a warning lurking in his statement. The Communist- Socialist alliance is basecl on the old policy. 'Important,' con- tinued Nenni, 'because an abrupt twist in the direction of extremism, of intransigence, or of sectarianism, would have irremediably injured the policy of unity [with the Socialists] which was born and has been developed in the struggle for democracy and which continues to be conditional on this struggle.'
This alliance with the Socialists has been one of the great justifications of Togliatti's policy. In the last elections (June, 1953) these two parties, with small hangers-on, inflicted a damaging blow on the centre democratic parties which have ruled Italy since shortly after the war. The alliance prevented the democrats gaining the 50.1 per cent. of the total votes which—under a now abrogated law—would have given them two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
The great strength of the Italian Communist Party will therefore continue to be used for this gradual building-up of parliamentary power (though there are signs that it may have already reached its limit). And so it will go on until Moscow has some other plan.
Togliatti did, however, offer the comrades a fine all-out demonstration at the end of this month when the Italian Senate debates the ratification of the Paris agreements on Western European Defence. The Communists put up strangely little resistance to the ratification by the Chamber of Deputies last month. Since then Moscow, probably realising that it can't hope for much from Mendes-France, has grown tougher. Hurling a few inkwells and chucking a few desk-tops around the Senate will certainly break the monotony and make them all feel much better. The comrades applauded spontaneously for the first time since the national conference began. Togliatti dismissed them professorially with a closed fist salute. And the delegates and the girl ushers in their red jumpers all trooped humourlessly away like good little party members.
But Togliatti has been forced to take an important precau- tion. Three days after the end of the national conference he announced that he had ousted one of his chief lieutenants of the past ten years from the central executive of the party. Pietro Secchia, known.as the 'Hard Man' of Italian Commun- ism, was demoted from vice-secretary in charge of organisation to provincial secretary of Lombardy. Here, in the great indus- trial area of Sesto San Giovanni and in the thousands of small plants around Milan, he will direct the battle against stagna- tion among the Communist masses—a wearying, hopeless job. He will be out of Togliatti's way, and he will not be able to start a heresy.
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