However, word was soon let out that the State Department was not yet ready to grant the PCI representative a visa. To avoid embarrassment both to itself and to Washington the PCI delayed making the necessary application for the visa.
Ruling class considering a coalition
This incident highlights the fact that a considerable section of the Italian ruling class, as well as some in the U.S., have long held under consideration the advisability of promoting a coalition government in Italy between the Christian Democrats and the PCI. The PCI leadership, on its part, has been pushing most vigorously and energetically to get such a coalition going, which it says would be a great "historic compromise."
The idea has attracted wide attention and interest both in Europe and America. The PCI, it is said, now wields a lot of clout and prestige particularly since the recent election in which the Communists got more than 33 percent of the vote. The ruling Christian Democratic Party received barely more than a percentage point higher.
This very large vote for the PCI has been the occasion for a flood of very laudatory articles about the party in the bourgeois press. It has especially been praised for the efficient manner in which it has conducted itself in regional governments under its control and in municipal affairs generally. But most of the articles have handed the PCI accolades and plaudits for its moderated course, for its efforts to become "respectable" and to have finally come "of age."
The high command of the party, under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, has explained the party's great success by its ability to win the confidence of the masses. Most frequently the party's success is attributed by its leaders to wise political tactics, to their sagacity in political maneuvering with bourgeois parties, and most of all, to their flexible approach in winning the masses.
PCI lined up against Portuguese CP
The Italian CP it is said is free of that rigidity which characterizes other CPs such as the Portuguese party. The PCI leaders have skillfully utilized the recent reverses of the Portuguese CP (PCP), with whom they are sharply at odds, to ingratiate themselves with the Italian bourgeoisie as though to say, "See we are different."
Alvaro Cunhal, the PCP leader, has roundly condemned the Italian CP, which is said to have more in common with the political approach of Mario Soares (the Portuguese Socialist Party leader) than with Cunhal.
However that may be, and there is much to be said about the rapidly changing situation in Portugal, the Togliatti-Berlinguer strategy should be examined on its own merits, and independently of the Portuguese experience.
The idea of a working class party participating in a bourgeois cabinet is certainly not a new one, no matter what new glittering name it is given. Practically since the beginning of the First International, the idea of a workers party taking a post in a capitalist cabinet as distinguished from election to a bourgeois parliament, has been considered unprincipled and a desertion to the camp of the class enemy.
Early Marxists scorned cabinet posts
During the days when the European working class was increasingly under Marxist influence, the idea of participating in a bourgeois cabinet was regarded with contempt and opprobrium, and Marxists — especially those of the German, Polish, French, and Russian Social Democratic parties, both before and after the split in 1903 — were the most scornful of the idea, which they saw as an expression of opportunism and rank class collaboration.
But as the movement grew in breadth and scope, and as capitalism entered its phase of rapid, so-called "peaceful" development, opportunism as a social trend in the working class movement became formidable. Soon thereafter, it found its political and theoretical expression in Bernstein's famous revision of Marxism.
However, by the turn of the century the Second International had truly become the representative of the international working class. It had grown by leaps and bounds, and was still to widen and deepen its influence in Europe, America, and Japan. In spite of the perilous growth of opportunism, the Marxist revolutionary element grew stronger and stronger. Its grip upon the advanced elements of the working class, especially in Germany, Austria, and France, was strong and profound, so that when the Second International of Social Democratic parties met in Paris in 1900, it passed a resolution roundly condemning the idea of any Social Democrat taking a cabinet post in a bourgeois government.
Denounced Millerand
The resolution was not introduced as an abstract exercise in Marxist strategy in the pursuit of the class struggle. It was purposely introduced to condemn a well-known French socialist leader, Alexandre Millerand, who took the post of Minister of Commerce in a bourgeois cabinet in 1899.
It was the first time that a Social Democratic leader had done so. His action set off a violent controversy in the world socialist movement between the opportunist elements and the Marxists. Millerand's desertion was made all the more odious because he took a seat in the same cabinet with General Gallifet, the hangman of the Paris Commune. However, the resolution denouncing Millerand was not based on this aspect, which was regarded as incidental. Capitalist prime ministers often like to balance out their ministerial posts by allotting seats in the cabinet to one or two leftists in order to mask the class character of their regime.
It was Karl Kautsky who framed the International's resolution, and it was characteristic of him that, in his conciliationist bent, he should leave some loophole in the area of what might be generally considered as valid exceptions. These were later used by opportunist elements to justify support of the imperialist war in 1914. Millerand himself was expelled from the French party in 1904, and thereafter turned more and more to the right, becoming an exponent of rabid reaction.
It seems that from the time of Millerand, all who have entered bourgeois cabinets from working class parties have never resumed the revolutionary struggle against capitalism thereafter.
PCI calls it 'flexibility'
The PCI prides itself on its undoubted ability to employ sagacious political tactics, on its ability to maneuver with bourgeois political parties, on its readiness to employ flexibility in its approach to the masses, and on the need to understand changing concrete conditions which govern the day to day political situation in Italy.
Leftist criticism of its political approach is often met with derision; the critics "fail to understand" the Italian people, whom they so well understand. This line of argument is utilized by the Italian CP leaders in the struggle against revolutionary elements who accuse them of abandoning the revolutionary struggle for socialism.
It is startling, but nevertheless true, that the arguments employed by the Italian CP leaders are almost identical with the arguments presented by the right wing of the Socialist Party of Italy back in the pre-Mussolini days (1919 to 1923), when it was in the fold of the Communist International.
Answering the right wing, Lenin stressed again and again at the Second Congress of the Communist International, during the discussion on the Italian question, that he had no objections at all to flexibility in tactics, to wise and sagacious maneuvers against bourgeois parties, or to taking account of the changing, concrete political situation in the country. The whole history of Bolshevism was a classic illustration of how all this was done.
But one first of all had to separate all those for the proletarian revolution, for the seizure of power, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for communism, from Turati and his followers, whom Lenin characterized as the Italian Mensheviks. These had to be fought and driven out of the Communist movement before one could talk about tactics or understanding a particular condition in the country.
The whole story of Bolshevism, Lenin said, was a struggle against Menshevism, of which Turati was a clear-cut representative in Italy. Menshevism was an opportunist trend in the international labor movement and was characterized by class collaboration.
Practically everything that Lenin said in condemnation of Turati could be said of Togliatti's and Berlinguer's conception of the struggle today — only the latter have a position more crass, more open, even more cynical.
At one point in the discussion of the Italian question Lenin exclaimed in answer to Serrati, one of the Italian delegates who had raised the question of trying to understand the national psychology of the Italian people: "I wouldn't claim that I understand the psychology of the Russian people. One has to understand the differences in trends, and the difference between a reformist and a communist, the difference between the Italian Mensheviks and the Italian Communists."
Difference between cabinet and parliament
It has become a prevailing tactic in many of the revisionist CPs of the world to confuse the difference between the participation of a working class party in a bourgeois parliament, when that is proper, with participation of a working class party in a bourgeois cabinet.
A working class party can participate in a bourgeois parliament, when appropriate, on a thoroughgoing revolutionary class struggle basis. Working class candidates elected to a bourgeois parliament or Congress are responsible only to the party. A working class representative is only obligated to utilize his or her seat in Congress or Parliament to mobilize the masses on a revolutionary class basis.
He or she is obligated to utilize his or her post for extraparliamentary purposes and is free to vote for or against measures inasmuch as they advance the interests of the working class and oppressed. He or she is not obligated or beholden to the ruling class to do otherwise.
The cabinet: Executive committee of the ruling class
It is altogether different in joining a bourgeois cabinet. A working class representative who does so becomes responsible to the cabinet first. The position is always an appointed one — it's not an elected post. He or she must abide by the general discipline and general policy of the cabinet, which is the executive committee of the ruling class. A cabinet member must carry out executive orders. He or she takes orders either by majority cabinet decisions or more frequently by orders from the Premier or President.
Of course, there is occasionally some limited latitude in carrying out the general policy of the ruling class. Sometimes there are differences. Often these differences are sharp and bitter. But, and this is the important thing, these are differences within the same class camp. Indeed, there may be hard liners, moderates, and liberals within the same cabinet. But it is a bourgeois cabinet, whose function is to carry out a policy which is irreconcilably opposed to the class interests of the workers and the oppressed.
The transition from a parliamentary post, that is, an elective one, to that of an appointive cabinet level in a capitalist government, is deep and profound. For a working class party it means crossing class lines. It means going from the camp of the working class to the camp of the bourgeoisie. It's class betrayal. That's why the Second International more than 75 years ago clearly recognized the peril to a working class party in Millerand's case. And for that reason he was denounced as a renegade. It was really never a question at all among the solidly revolutionary Marxists of the day. The word Millerandism thereafter became a synonym for class treachery.
Historic exceptions:[1] Bavaria
The resolution passed by the Paris Congress in 1900 recognized certain exceptions to this. There are two examples which would illustrate the genuine exceptions for which the Congress voted and not the phony ones which were later used as a cover for class collaboration. For instance, on the heels of the great October Socialist Revolution, the Bavarian government in Germany was tottering and the possibility of a revolutionary takeover seemed imminent and practical. The Bavarian Communists thought it an opportune moment to take a cabinet post in the Bavarian government — that of Minister of Internal Affairs.
The purpose was to facilitate the revolutionary seizure of power by the workers. The Minister of Internal Affairs could and in fact tried to distribute arms and ammunition to the workers in the imminent struggle. Unfortunately, as in most of the revolutionary struggles following the Russian revolution, the counter-revolution was triumphant.
[2] China in 1946
Another instance closer to the contemporary era was in 1946, when Secretary of State Marshall was sent by Truman to negotiate a coalition government between Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists. The Chinese Communists agreed to the negotiations and agreed in principle to join the coalition. However (and this is a point very much obscured in the post-liberation history of the Chinese revolution), the CCP made it a condition of the coalition that the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) remained strictly under the jurisdiction and orders of the PLA military command.
What this condition meant was that the coalition would merely be a cover for what were already two separate states, one an embryo workers' state, the other a bourgeois puppet regime. Chiang's jurisdiction was being severely limited anyway. Although he had a great number of arms under his control, the revolutionary resurgence in Chiang's own areas was such that accepting the CCP condition would have meant a disastrous acceleration of the disintegration of his armed forces, which was already in progress. Had the CCP leadership agreed to surrender jurisdiction over the PLA or hand it over to Chiang, that would of course have meant a capitulation to the compradore bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Millerandism reborn
It was the acceptance of precisely such a condition by the Italian and French CPs immediately after the end of the Second World War which spelled their complete renunciation of the revolutionary class struggle, when they had such a splendid opportunity to pursue it. Both the French and Italian CPs voluntarily liquidated their armed resistance movements in exchange for ministerial posts in a bourgeois imperialist cabinet.
It was Millerandism reborn, and this time there was not the threadbare excuse of the danger of fascism which had been utilized to construct the Popular Fronts of the 1930s. Those were also betrayals of the working class. The CPs assumed ministerial posts in capitalist governments and were forced to carry out capitalist objectives: contain the revolutionary fervor of the masses, limit the workers' struggles so as not to go beyond the confines of bourgeois property relations, and curb the peasants from taking the land of the landlords. In a word, they enforced continuing capitalist exploitation.
The Italian CP will, of course, not really be making a qualitative change in its political outlook by taking cabinet posts. Its parliamentary representatives today are practicing class collaboration with the Christian Democrats even without being given a cabinet post. Why then, are some sections of high finance and industry in this country and Italy so fearful of according the PCI the responsibility of "sharing power" with the bourgeois Christian Democrats?
Of course, it's not sharing of power. By sharing the administration of power on behalf of the bourgeoisie, the latter-day Millerands will merely be office holders, not power holders. State power consists of the armed forces, the police, the courts, and all the other repressive forces which make up the capitalist state. These are solidly in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The Italian CP liquidated the old resistance movement and is by no means building a new one.
What imperialists fear
The ruling circles in the Pentagon and State Department fear that the consummation of a so-called historic compromise might impel the resurgent, confident popular masses to go beyond the limits of bourgeois legality, and commence to take things into their own hands.
Isn't this really what has terrified the European and American capitalists about Portugal? Isn't it because the workers began to take things into their own hands, taking over factories, mills, and landed estates, that a revolutionary situation exists in Portugal?
Isn't it these measures of workers' control, which became nationwide, that so frightened large sections of the Portuguese possessing class with the revolutionary energy and resistance of the masses that they had to flee, some without their bank accounts? And isn't this what has roused the world bourgeoisie?
This is exactly what worries the bourgeoisie about the historic compromise! Both Washington and Rome worry whether the PCI leaders will be able to control the masses, in the aftermath of the consummation of the historic compromise.
Opportunity for revolutionary elements
For our part, we can only hope that the Italian ruling class, which is reeling under an economic crisis more severe with each passing day, will eventually be forced to accede to the offers of the PCI. Once that is done, the greatest opportunity in more than a quarter of a century will be open for the revolutionary elements to lead the masses in the absolutely inevitable revolutionary upsurge.
The Italian proletariat has twice during the century allowed a genuinely revolutionary crisis of the capitalist system to elude it. The first was during the 1919-1923 period, when the reformists were far stronger than the revolutionary elements led by the communists. And the communists were immature at the time. And second, when following the defeat of the fascist regime, the PCI willingly liquidated the partisan movement and traded it in for a ministerial post à la Millerand.
Every progressive, every class-conscious worker, every communist and genuine socialist must hope that this time around the proletariat will emerge victorious.
Index
Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Last updated: 13 May 2018