Italian Communist Party 1945
Source: L'Unita, April 9, 1945;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor.
“Before anything,” Comrade Ercoli[1] said, “and this is what is essential, the new Party is a party of the working-class and the people, that no longer limits itself above all to criticism and propaganda, but that intervenes directly in the politics of the country, with an activity both positive and constructive. The new Party is a party capable of translating into action this new position of the working class, to translate it through its policies, through its activities, and therefore transforming its organization.
“In such times the new Party that we have in mind must be an Italian national party, that is, a party that, within the framework of our national life and liberty, weighs and resolves the problem of the liberation of labor, making all the nation’s progressive traditions its own.
“Since the old ruling classes have, with Fascism, brought Italy to its ruin, today the salvation and the resurrection of Italy are not possible without the intervention in Italian political life- as a new guiding element of the entire nation — of the working class and, around it, gathered together in one sole front, the great laboring masses of the country.” (Ercoli)
From this fundamental “theoretical and historical” position is derived the concept of the new Party, its role and its function, the forms and methods of its organization. A new Party whose class and ideological nature remain unaltered.
In order to be able to fulfill the great task which Comrade Ercoli spoke of, in order to be a “positive and constructive” factor in the fight for liberation and reconstruction, the new Party must, above all, be a party of unity; unity of the working class, unity of all anti-fascists, unity of the entire nation for the re-conquest of freedom and independence.
To this end, our party will work harder every day to reinforce the unity in action with our Socialist comrades, multiplying and activating the joint Socialist-Communist provincial and local committees that will allow them to join together in the creation of a unique party of the working class. For it is only through the realization of its unity that the working glass will succeed in regrouping around it all the progressive forces of the country, and cut off any attempt by reactionary groups to return to power.
With the goal of reinforcing unity, our party intends to link up, in ever tighter relations, with the other parties of the CLN, and in particular with our Christian-Democratic friends, for it is only through the full and sincere collaboration of all the healthy forces of the nation within the CLN and the other mass organizations that it will be possible to arrive at the complete destruction of fascism, and carry out the labor of national reconstruction.
The new Party must be a great mass party:
“We must create a great party, a mass party, that will draw from the working class its decisive force, to which will be brought the best elements of the vanguard intellectuals, the best elements of the peasant class, and which will then have within it all the forces and all the capacities that are necessary to lead the great laboring masses in the fight to liberate and reconstruct Italy.” (Ercoli)
And this means that our militants must multiply their ties with the mass of the people, with the peasants, with white-collar workers and, through the thousands of connections that will thus be established, they will succeed in mobilizing for the fight for liberation the great popular masses inside and out the factories.
The new Party is the party of the national insurrection, for it has developed during the period of national insurrection, of which it was the advocate and the animator, for it gave and gives to the national insurrection its utmost energy, since the great majority of its militants were brought over during the course of the national insurrection.
The current task of the new Party, at the moment when the victorious armies of the United Nations are decisively aimed at the heart of Germany, is that of carrying out the general mobilization of all patriotic forces, that of confronting the complex and arduous demands of the final phase of the insurrection in order to accelerate the defeat of Nazi-fascism and to save the remains of the nation’s patrimony.
There must not exist a factory, a field, an office where our Party is not present. There must not be a neighborhood, a district, a block, a village where our Party is not present. We must carry out the slogan: where there is a bell-tower, there must be a Communist section. In the smallest and most far-flung locale the flag of the new Party must call on the people to rise up to save the agricultural products, the patrimony, livestock; to block the Nazi-Fascist destruction; to give the enemy no respite and to cut off his avenues of retreat.
In sending its members en masse into the partisan groups and the S.A.P., reinforcing and strengthening the fight of the C. d'A., the C.L.N., the F.d.G. and the G.D.D., the new Party reinforces and strengthens the struggle of the Italian people, and prepares the conditions for the constituting and the functioning of the popular democratic organizations that must assure the democratic order and furnish a new basis for the new life of our people. We must and we wish to do that which our Party, the new Party, proved itself able to do in the fire of the insurrection as the Party of the people; capable not only of destroying the enemy, but from the first day to bring its active contribution to the solution of the thousands of problems posed by the coming liberation: of provisioning, of hygiene, of housing, of the reactivating of public services, of administration.
The working class, led by its party, in the most serious moment of its history, must advance and must with deeds say, to repeat the words of Comrade Ercoli:
“Today it is we who know how, against all, to defend the interests of the country, that is, of the nation.”
1. Ercoli – Pseudonym of Palmiro Togliatti.