Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 10, Number 11, March 22, 1983 I talian Communists surrender to the Venetian oligarchy by Marco Fanini in Milan The 16th Congress of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and organizer of every "sociological" project leading to the which took place here between March 2 and 6, was truly various brands of terrorists bred on Italian soil. "historic," as of the Italian newspapers described it. The subservience of the PCI leadership to this anti-indus­ Officially, the party took its distance from Moscow in trial-capitalist brand of finance was complete. Berlinguer one of the three major policy decisions, and the one under­ spoke in his opening speech to the 16th Congress of the need lined by the press in and out of Italy. The real story is that the to call a new Bretton Woods conference, thus allying himself "pro-Soviet" current of the PCI-a party notoriously recal­ with Henry Kissinger, the Ditchley Group, and Giovanni citrant about swallowing orders from Moscow-played a key Agnelli, the auto magnate and hete noire of the Italian labor role in turning the PCI over to the Venetian and Roman movement, which the PCI nominally leads! oligarchy, which runs the environmentalist "peace" move­ Berlinguer is a man of the left.Therefore, he specified ment with the complicity and financial aid of Moscow. that his Bretton Woods should also include the socialist coun­ At this congress in fact, the PCI abandoned completely tries and the developing sector. Yes to the dictatorship of the the nationalist streu in its identity which had made it a IMF-but a dictatorship with a "human" face. potentially positive force for Italy-and which often led it to ignore "left-wing" allegiances, especially when it came to 'Stalinists' end democratic centralism fightingthe "red" side of terrorism.Capitulating to the power The 16th Congress also signaled the end of so-called of the Venetian-centered family fortunes, the PCI accepted democratic centralism, that is, of party discipline, and the the proposal for a technocratic government made two years prohibition on creating international organized factions, or ago by Sen. Bruno Visentini, President of the Olivetti Cor­ currents, as they are called: Thanks to the destructive work poration and of the feared Venetian Cini Foundation, the carried out by the leader of the internal left, Pietro Ingrao, a most powerful and secretive "cultural" think tank in the West. leader who had always been kept on the sidelines because of The technocratic government is, in effect, an emergency his fascist past, the principle of so-called "direct democracy" government of so-called experts chosen from outside the was introduced for the first time into the PCI. traditional party framework, technocrats who would be an­ The party apparatus had tried to stop Ingrao in the pre­ swerable to none of the labor, farm, or industrial constituen­ congress phase when 14,000 locals of the PCI with a total of cies which are the mass base of Italy's two important political about 400,000 activists had debated the issues to be voted parties, the PCI and the ruling Christian Democracy. on.Ingrao colluded astutely with the leader of the pro-Soviet Moreover, the PCI also accepted the economic plan for minority, the man the press likes to call a "Stalinist," Arman­ Italy and the viewpoint on the present international situation do Cossutta. Cossutta, with his pro-Soviet line had, in the which is precisely that of the Italian oligarchy. Through the course of the last two years, de facto sanctioned the right of mouth of its secretary, Enrico Berlinguer, the PCI accepted a pro-Soviet current to exist inside the party. the proposals made by Carlo De Benedetti, the general man­ Once the precedent had been created, Ingrao jumped in ager of Olivetti and an "assault" financier, for the de-indus­ and imposed the right to exist for all the factions, calling it trialization of Italy, and for investments limited only to the "Democracy of the Base," in substance, anarcosyndicalism. field of "telematics," electronics, and alternative energies. Ingrao was the leader who got the most applause of the De Benedetti is not just the chief executive officer of congress. He said that the PCI is at a turning point, and it Olivetti (nor, for that matter, is Olivetti "merely" Olivetti); must become an open party-"open" to youth, to minorities, he is the financier singled out in the late seventies for a top to homosexuals, to prostitutes, to drug users, etc. international award by former U. S. Secretary of State Henry The preparatory regional PCI conferences that fed into Kissinger, and he is reputed to be the real controller of the. the national congress were orchestrated to bring about the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements chief, Fritz clear-cut triumph of the "post-communists," the term that Leutwiler. Olivetti Corporation, in tum, has distinguished Alfredo Reichlin, Ingrao's man and likely the new number - itself since World War II (at least) as the hotbed of the most two in the party, introduced to refer to his own faction and, virulent brand of zero-growth ideology, and the major funder by extension, the PCI as a whole. The weekly L'Espresso, 40 International EIR March 22,1983 © 1983 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. owned by the noble Caracciolo family and closely tied to mentalist peace movement, which has already infected Ger­ environmentalist and terrorist circles as well as to the Social­ many and gets money from Moscow; secondly, support for ist Party, gave in its pre-congress issue a list of how each of the disarmament and deindustrialization plans which are the regional PCI conferences had voted on the three key items weakening Italy and therefore the West as a whole. (splitting with the Soviets, internalparty democracy, and the Berlinguer said yes to both of these demands and even issue of NATO, i.e., the disarmament question). praised the nuclear "freeze" movement of former World Bank Most interesting of these was the "internal democracy " head Robert McNamara, the man whom the PCI press excor­ vote, based on the document submitted by Ingrao. In those iated for years-when he was Lyndon Johnson's defense cities in which internal democracy was brought in for a vote secretary-as the "Butcher of Vietnam." at all, (i.e.in about two thirds of the PCI locals), the obvious­ ly orchestrated votes averaged between 70 to 80 percent in The 'historical compromise' or a coup? favor of Ingrao's resolution. The overwhelming favorable Once upon a time, the classical position of the PCI was vote was particulafly visible in the Red Belt, the Tuscany and what in the early 1970s was dubbed the historical compro­ Emilia regions of north-central Italy , where the PCI has long mise, that is the alliance of Catholics and Communists­ dominated local governments, and where the vote in favor keeping in mind that the PCI wins 30 percent of the popular was typically in the 90 to 99 percent range! vote and the Christian Democracy gets nearly 40 percent. Party secretary Berlinguer merely fell into the trap that The rest of the Italian parties really do not amount to much. had been set for him. For example, in his opening remarks An alliance of that kind was not impossible. It was tried Berlinguer had attacked the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) as a with a certain success-before Winston Churchill's Cold corrupt, overbearing, fascist-learning party. When subse­ War was adopted by Harry Truman-by Christian Demo­ quently the head of the Socialist Party Bettino Craxi, called cratic Prime Minister Alcide DeGaspari and PCI leader To­ "Benito" because of his resemblance to Mussolini, took the gliatti; it was fully successful during the 1950s, when the podium of the PCI congress to extend greetings and made a PCI's head Luigi Longo supported the oil and economic very seductive speech inviting the PCI to join an alliance of policies of the president of Italy's national hydrocarbons the two parties of the Italian left, Berlinguer could findnoth­ agency, ENI, the legendary Enrico Mattei, a Christian Dem­ ing better to do than hasten to correct his aim and admit that ocrat who was then assassinated; and it was tried again in a PCI-PSI alliance would be an excellent thing. 1978 by Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic Party presi­ Therefore the results of this congress are: dent, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, and Enrico Berlin­ • yes to the left alternative together with the Socialist guer. That attempt was brought to a brutal end by the kidnap Party and the ecologist Radical Party-which, by the way, and murder of Moro. has taken the lead in proposing "green" electoral lists on the Three times, therefore, the policy of the historical com­ model of West Germany's Green party (see p.38): promise, the only policy that could give a stable government • yes to the abolition of party discipline; to Italy, was violently interrupted. • yes to the formula for the economic program of, the Today, the nationalist faction of the PCI which had been technocratic government; represented by Enrico Berlinguer has completely collapsed, • no to the Soviet model. and the PCI is just another gang, which is competing with the PSI and Christian Democracy for power.The economic plans The charade of 'distance from Moscow' are the same for all of the parties; they are those of Olivetti's Cossutta's role in paving the way for the advent of the Carlo De Benedetti, and in the presence of this bankruptcy classic "anti-Soviet" Ingrao should throw a shadow of sus­ of the parties the gloomy shadow of an emergency govern­ picion on the strategic meaning of the PCI's "rejection of the ment-a de facto coup which Will impose mass layoffs, aus­ Soviet model." In reality, the Italian party's di:;tance from terity, and IMF conditions, is looming over Italy.