A REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PROJECT IN THIS NEW HISTORICAL PHASE

MOTIONS FOR THE V PRC CONGRESS
Voted by the minority of the National Political Committee
INTRODUCTION - SYNTHESIS

World capitalism increasingly lays the blame for its crisis on the general condition of humanity, threatening a true historical regression of civilisation. The renewal of wars that has marked the last decade - first in Iraq, then in the Balkans, now in Afghanistan - is both the material and the symbolic reflection of this. The representation of the so-called capitalistic "globalisation" as the coming of a "new capitalism" able to overcome its historical contradictions has been belied by reality.
Not only has the crisis that has marked world economy for a quarter of a century not been overcome, but it has re-emerged today in the classic form of a recession. The contradictions between the capitalist blocs have not melted away into an indistinct, homogeneous "empire", but rather they have been sharpened after the collapse of the USSR and under the spur of the crisis. The contradiction between capital and work, far from being overcome or reduced, has re-emerged as the central issue in the crisis and the new global capitalist competition.
The very increase in militarism and the progression of the war in course - with its regressive effects on democratic freedoms and social conquests - is inseparable from the general context of the capitalist crisis. Far from being a conflict between two ideological "fundamentalist beliefs" (the Market and Terror), it is an imperialist war against oppressed peoples: it aims to control the Middle East and Central Asia; it hopes to intimidate national liberation movements (starting from the Palestinians); it aims to block economic recession by a large-scale reinvestment in defence spending; and it answers the American imperialist interest in counter-balancing European economic growth with the re-launching of its own, undisputed military hegemony.
On another level, the political developments and the dynamics of capital in the 90s were devastating for the environment. All the historical problems have become even more widespread, and new emergencies have emerged on a global scale. Faced with all this, both ethical-cultural theories and green reformism have been seen to be inadequate and powerless: no new development model will be possible without a new production model, without overthrowing capitalism.
In short, ten years after the collapse of the USSR, the capitalist reconstruction of world unity has by no means meant a peaceful, more stable world, but a worsening of the international crisis.
This general picture of crisis and regression has revealed once again the utopian nature of all reforming projects.
The idea of "reforming governments" that support workers, of a possible "fair" capitalism held in check by the rules of a "progressive civil society", and of a pacifist reform of the world order, founded on a re-evaluation of the UN in line with the Gandhian vision of "non-violence", represent more than ever an impotent illusion. This is not a concrete way to build a new world, but means accepting with resignation today's world, even while nurturing dreams.
The V Congress of our party is, therefore, called on to renew and contrast every reforming utopia, assuming a new strategic aim that is openly anti-capitalist and revolutionary.
Another world is possible. It is called Socialism. Its name must not be evoked alone, but a general programme must be proposed as the only real answer to the crisis facing humanity.
Only the abolition of private property, starting from the two hundred multinationals that today dominate the world economy; only a democratically-planned world economy, freed from the dominion of profit, and only the conquest of political power by the subordinate classes as the decisive lever for transition can create the conditions for a new "development model". This model will feature new relations between individuals and peoples, a new relationship between humans and the environment, and control over the directions and applications of science in order to work for the quality of life as the new frontier of progress. Thus, the recovery and analysis of the original programme of communism and the October revolution as the scenario for the liberation of mankind, free from the Stalinist bureaucratic heritage, is the primary duty for communists and our party. It must be employed as the compass for a new strategic formulation that leads the immediate objectives of each battle and each movement back to the need for social revolution.
Moreover, the very start of a renewed class struggle and the world mass movements (what in the party we have called "the thaw") - symptoms after twenty years of the dominant politics' hegemony - represents an extraordinary opportunity to re-launch the socialist future in the younger generations: as a revolutionary answer in the heart of the grass-roots movements to their social, environmental, democratic demands, their demands for peace that are all incompatible, in their deepest demands, with the current bourgeois order. So, it is not a question of abandoning the mystical rhetoric of the grass-roots movements, nor of losing the centrality of class, but rather, it is a question of leading the precious anti-liberal sentiments of the new generation to a clear vision of an anti-capitalist class. The only vision that can offer the grass-roots movements themselves a future; foster a mobilisation against imperialism and war free from pacifist illusions; place the reference to the working class and the world of work in its new composition and extension as the centre of an alternative historical bloc. Consequently, a struggle in the grass-roots movements for the hegemony of class is needed: not a bureaucratic self-formulation but an open, loyal struggle for the socialist future against those neo-reforming cultures that lead the grass-roots movements themselves into a blind alley of defeat. The complex job of re-founding a revolutionary, communist international movement that takes on the battle for an anti-capitalist hegemony on a world scale is a basic need for communists today more than ever before.
But this new strategic formulation implies a great shift in policy and choices at national level. Within the new Italian political scenario, the renewal of the dynamics of grass-roots movements in the working class and the young, and the vertical crisis and liberal policy shift in the D. S. (Democratic Left) have created the conditions for a strong and necessary re-launching of our party as the only possible alternative political reference point for vast sectors of workers and the young. But this would imply a new, fundamental direction for the RCP. For ten years, our party has rejected the idea of building an autonomous class pole to follow the line of "conditioning" of the DS apparatus and its coalitions (a progressive, centre-left pole) on the basis of a "programme of reform" both of the government and the opposition, on a national and local level. It must be admitted honestly that this line has substantially failed. Indeed, it has not obtained any results, neither from the point of the view of building up the RCP and its electoral influence, nor above all from the point of view of the interests and prospects of the working class, whom the Centre-Left and the DS apparatus, pawns of the interests of the bourgeoisie during the preceding government, have condemned to social and political defeat. On the contrary, the only effect of this line of Centre-Left "contamination" has been the RCP's involvement during half of the Ulivo coalition government in supporting anti-working class and anti-popular policies (temporary work in Treu's reform package, privatisation, cuts in social expenditure) which are totally opposed to the social principles of our party.
The future proposed for a "plural left-wing government" after Berlusconi on the basis of a "reforming programme" would not only remove any balance but also re-propose the failed policy of the last ten years. This is made explicit in the pre-congress document voted by the majority wing of the party at the CPN in October that affirms: "(…) this does not mean that a plural left cannot be constructed in Italy and in Europe, able to propose the idea of conquering the majority of consensus and candidature for government in order to carry out a reforming programme, but it means that to achieve this it is necessary to follow different routes from the traditional one of a unitary policy, in the first place so that the novelty and the rupture of the grass-roots movements breaks into the whole area of the left parties and their relationships." This idea does not only retain the reference to the negative experience of Jospin's gauche plurielle, but it proposes it again with a DS apparatus, who for the most part have broken with the function of social democracy itself. Taking on this idea as the final way out for the grass-roots movements would mean contradicting the anti-capitalist potential of the grass-roots movements themselves and subordinating them to an agreement with the liberals.
Therefore, the V Congress rejects this political prospect on the basis of a fundamental change in perspective: the construction of the RCP around the line of an autonomous anti-capitalist class pole which is alternative both to the reactionary Centre Right and the liberal Centre Left. This political line would imply, first of all, coherence in the political collocation of our party as an opposition force. There can only be contradictions between the social reasons expressed by the RCP and its institutional political collocation. This is as true in the future at a national level as it is at a local level, where we should reject the collaboration with Centre Left councils in the Regions and the cities, where we are in practice silenced by policies and interests that are totally extraneous to the interests of the workers. But, generally speaking, this proposal of a autonomous pole of class is directed to the working-class movement and mass grass-roots movements. The experience of the last government has demonstrated the social and political disaster for millions of workers which lies in the collaboration of the working-class movement with the political and social force of the middle-class Centre. "Breaking with the Centre" is not, therefore, an abstract concept: it uses class experience to claim the autonomy of the working class against the interests of the other classes and their representatives. In short, only the independent mobilisation of workers and grassroots movements on an anti-capitalist basis can defend their reasons and open the way for a true alternative.
This need for autonomy is even more relevant today. Faced with the right-wing parties and Berlusconi, all forms of alliance with the Centre have failed. Only the great independent mobilisation of the working class in 1994 managed to bring the Berlusconi government to its knees and pave the way for its fall. Our party must build on the memory of this experience in the masses and use it as the reference point for its own actions.
The new Berlusconi government has a stronger social and institutional base than in 1994, but this is precisely why its eventual stabilisation would lead to greater reactionary risk, as has been seen since Genoa. Therefore, the RCP cannot continue with its institutional opposition while trusting in the spontaneity of the grassroots movements. Its duty is to propose a future for the working-class movement and actively build this political future. In this sense, the V Congress of the RCP must aim to bring down the Berlusconi-Bossi-Fini government in favour of a class alternative as the basis for the unitary mobilisation of the working-class movement and the grass-roots movements and all the political and union tendencies that they are based on. Only a true social eruption turned against the bosses and the right-wing government can truly break up the Italian political scenario and lay down the conditions for a class alternative.
As a consequence, we propose a general discussion around the proposals for a significant wage increase for all dependent workers, a guaranteed minimum salary for all categories, a real guaranteed salary for the unemployed and young people looking for their first employment, the abolition of the new precarious, temporary employment laws (viz. "Treu package" and the most recent laws introduced by the Berlusconi government) with open-ended contracts for all short-term workers and the generalised reduction in working hours. This proposal for mobilisation can and must be advanced by our party in all workplaces, in all union organisations, nationally, and to the anti-globalisation movement, supporting the internal trends of the movement that already push for a direct struggle side by side with the workers. It is this unitary re-composition in the struggle of the new generation, from the working class and from the anti-globalisation movement, that can foster a social eruption against the government of the right and the dominant classes. Directing the work of the mass of the party in this direction, extending the framework of our demands to every social sector affected by the dominant politics (viz. Immigration and Education), linking this framework of immediate demands to a more general programme of a rupture with capitalist ownership and the State, and developing in every grassroots movement an anti-capitalist conscience - these are the necessary duties of the communist opposition for a class alternative.
And in this field, our party cannot theorise the principle of a silent adjustment to the grassroots movements, trusting passively in their choices: it must elaborate the capacity to propose political choices - on both the small and large scale - working towards an anti-capitalist future. The forms of struggle, starting from the necessary defence of the right to public demonstration, against every temptation to retreat; the questions linked to the defence of peaceful, mass demonstration against violent aggression, wherever it comes from; and the forms of organisation of grassroots movements and their democratic development, currently at the heart of the anti-globalisation movement, are all areas in which our party cannot stay silent in the name of an unconditional complicity with the hegemonic direction of the grassroots movements. It must put forward proposals, of course in line with the interests of the interlocutors and the concreteness of the problems, but always inspired by a single, fundamental criterion: the development of an autonomous force in the subordinate classes and grassroots movements in the direction of an alternative society and power. As Rosa Luxemburg affirmed: " the conquest of political power remains our final aim and our final aim remains the heart of our struggle. The working class must not take on the view "the final aim isn't important, but the movement is everything". No, on the contrary, the movement as such, unless in relation with the final aim, the movement as an end in itself, is nothing, but it is the final aim that is everything." (1898).
Therefore, the logic proposed by the majority leadership of the RCP must be turned upside down. Of course, the party has, as its priority, the need to participate fully in the grassroots movements without a doctrinal separation or rather with the maximum concentration of its force. But it needs this as a party, that is as a specific collective, anti-capitalist, revolutionary project that requires specific structuring, specific instruments that can organise the collective battle for that project with the grassroots movements, starting from the working class. And it is also the widest development of the internal democracy of the party, a decisive condition for the collective elaboration and the very formation of its managers. In this sense, the vanguard function of the party, not as a bureaucratic imposition but as a programmed project to develop consensus and hegemony, is the very condition for its rooting and the reinforcement of its organisation.