Paolo Bellucci, Marco Maraffi, and Paolo Segatti

02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 53

Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

The first Congress of the Democrats of the Left (DS), which took place in Turin 13-16 January 2000, represented another stop in the transformation of the former Italian Communists (PCI). The new leader of the party – Walter Vetroni who followed Achille Occhetto and Massimo D’Alema – tried to change the party’s politics, organization, and culture. He planned these alterations to affirm a new political strategy. With the fall of Prodi’s government in October 1998, and the rise of D’Alema to the presidency of the Council, Veltroni became the new Secretary of the DS. An ardent supporter of the Ulivo (Olive Tree, the Center-Left electoral alliance), Veltroni succeeded the leading proponent of the “social democratic” alternative. Given these differences, Veltroni’s methods of ascent were unexpected. D’Alema named him to lead the party, and the appropriate party organ quickly ratified the nomination. The new Secretary and ex-vice Prime Minister inherited a party renewed in name and in symbol. Above all, he now led a party that, after the General States of the Left of February 1998, had absorbed various fragments of catholic, lay, socialist, and even communist reform into what remained substantially little more than an enlarged PDS.1 Now a powerful electoral force with a weakened organization, party power lay largely in D’Alema’s hands. Given this picture, the new leadership’s call for a Congress sought to accomplish three goals: affirm Veltroni’s leadership; rede- fine the formal rules of the organization, and establish a definitive 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 54

54 Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

post-communist identity, creating a new relationship with other parties of the Left and Center-Left and developing a new position with regard to labour unions in particular, and social and economic modernization in general. Each of these themes divided the party’s internal groups. Each overlapped as well with the conﬂict between D’Alema and Veltroni, the two most prestigious leaders of the 1990s. These conﬂicts hovered over the party during the year, from the start in January as they prepared for the Congress to the election of Massimo D’Alema to the presidency of the party on 15 December 2000.

Towards the Congress

During the meeting of the directorship on 21 June 1999, Folena, coordinator of the Party Secretariat, proposed to hasten the advances that would precede the Congress. As reported by several journalists, D’Alema agreed with this plan. He preferred either to postpone the Congress or to reduce its range, transforming it into “simple regional assizes.”2 He hoped, thereby, to avoid losing control of the party’s apparatus to the new Secretary. Many of the new leading group’s subsequent actions seem to justify D’Alema’s wor- ries. Veltroni’s project of building a party “autonomous of the government” manifested itself as a series of changes of the peripheral leadership. In 1999, five out of nine Secretaries of major cities (Naples, Rome, Bari, Genoa, Bologna) were changed. The change at the level of regional offices involved fifteen regional Secretaries out of twenty. A conflict within the party’s majority, the contest between the “D’Alemians” and “Veltronians,” seemed more bitter than that between the majority and the opposition of the left.3 Other cleavage lines appeared with regard to the definition of the cultural and programmatic identity of the party. At the beginning of October 1999, the Congressional documents in which Sec- retary Veltroni called upon the body of the party to explain itself were made public. Numerous directors, including all the DS min- isters, all the regional Secretaries, and the Secretaries of CGIL and UIL union organizations countersigned the motion signed by the Secretary. D’Alema, on the other hand, limited himself to declaring his support of the Secretary’s motion without signing it. Most of the components organized as the Christian Socials (led by Gorrieri and Carniti) or the Reform Association of Europe (directed by the former Secretary of UIL, Benvenuto) also declared themselves to be in favour of the Secretary’s motion. The United Communists, a fac- tion of the DS left which had split in 1995 from the Communist 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 55

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Refoundation, also backed the document, and so did the “ulivisti” and the inheritors of the reformist component of the old PCI, even if these groups did not formally add their signatures.4 Only the left wing of the New Left party openly opposed the position, offering an alternative motion against the drift of the party toward an indis- tinct “democratic reformism” and, thereby, saving the identity of the DS’s left. The Secretary’s motion was the impetus behind a broad cultural and programmatic manifesto, called “Plan for the Left in 2000.”5 Drawing on discussions at provincial Congresses, a commission chaired by Ruffolo crafted this. It traces guidelines for a new cultural and political positioning of the Party of the Oak. We will dis- cuss it in the next paragraph. At the end of the pre-Congressional procedures, Veltroni’s motion obtained the approval of 79.1 percent of votes, voiced at 7,150 foun- dation Congresses, 116 federation Congresses, and 19 regional Con- gresses. 172,303 militants of the DS participated in these assemblies, a number equal to 26.2 percent of all the members. This electoral body represented the 2,195 regional delegates who then participated in the national Congress.6 The party’s majority demon- strated strength across the country, whereas the New Left exceeded their national average of 20.2 percent in Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Veneto in the North, and in Campania and Basilicata in the South, while it was particularly weak in Emilia-Romagna. The debate in the peripheral areas was less ritual-like than usual. With respect to the preceding Congress of February 1997 there were many more widely divergent positions (29.9 percent against 12.7 percent). This was still, however, a minority, and so it is not an exaggeration to observe that most members were far from the party’s internal battles. Furthermore, many members did not understand the terms of the current debates. Indeed, more were dissatisﬁed than at the previous Congress with regard to informa- tion within the party (54 percent against 48 percent in 1997) and its democratic life (48 percent against 39 percent in 1997).7

Themes of the Congress

The first theme was surely separation from a post-communist identity. Veltroni intended the first Congress of the Democrats of the Left to represent the conclusive resting point of a ten-year voyage of redefinition. He wanted to abolish every effective and symbolic tie with its communist past. To reach this end, he assigned an important role to the document Plan for the Left in 2000. This text 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 56

56 Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

declared the purpose of redefining the identity, the values, and the emergence of a “new,” “democratic and reformist” Left. It would replace the “traditional” values of the European social democratic left, which were no longer adequate for social reality. It sought to “connect them with new values to put at the base of its political and governing culture.”8 New themes – feminism, civil rights, envi- ronmentalism, and pacifism— received pride of place. The document implicitly abandoned the old interpretive schemes of Marxism in the analysis of economic and social relationships. Vel- troni’s reflection on the communist experience was also included in this picture and was synthesized into a strong and explicit affirmation of its incompatibility with liberty. This was not the first time that the Secretary presented these ideas. For example, in a let- ter to Turin’s La Stampa on 16 October 1999, he affirmed that the twentieth century was a “century of blood,” partly due to “the tragedy of communism and the horrors of Stalinism.” On the other hand, this valuation did not imply a complete break with the PCI’s history. Rather, Veltroni acknowledged that in the party’s history there were tragic pages, in particular that of the “support of Stalin- ism and the support of the intervention in Hungary.” In the opening discourse of the Congress, Veltroni returned to these themes, naming the liberal-socialist thought of Carlo Rosselli, among other things, as a new cultural symbol of the party and openly distancing himself from Togliatti’s harsh condemnation of this idealist tradition in the 1950s. Veltroni maintained:

One cannot not remember the words, immersed in the bitterness of the political and ideological conﬂict of those terrible years, with which Palmiro Togliatti called Carlo Rosselli a ‘worthless dilettante, without any serious theoretical formation’ and his book Socialismo Liberale a ‘mediocre slander that aligns itself directly with fascist political litera- ture.’ The defeat of these ideas and the movements that represented them had an unsurpassed influence on the character of the left in Italy. Now is the time to say clearly that the reform left, the left of the liberal socialism of 2000, is our political identity. […] Of democratic liberalism we have made ours, irreversibly, the culture of human rights, the universal value of democracy, the centrality of the theme of liberty, regard for the individual, the value of inclusion, the acceptance without reserve of a market economy, the valuing of competition and even of conﬂict, together with the importance of rules, of procedures, of formalities.

This passage contains dense symbolic content. It charts the definition of a new political identity. As important, it signiﬁes an open break with Togliatti, a leader who, in the iconography of the PCI, was the author, albeit among many reticences and ambiguities, of 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 57

The Democrats of the Left 57

the substantial divergence of Italian communism from the Soviet brand of communism. Note, however, that Veltroni affirmed the incompatibility of communism and liberty, but he did so with regard to communism in its “concrete historical manifestation,” not the communist ideal in principle. He emphasized as well that his condemnation follows other critiques that may be found in documents of the PCI itself as well as the PDS (Party of the Democratic Left, the successor organization). Note as well that Veltroni also did not explicitly revalue the ideals and politics of those who had battled the PCI, such as liberal socialists and democratic Catholics. Positive intentions notwithstanding, the Secretary’s reflections risk being perceived as a reticent approach to postwar Italian political history. It is also important to remember the constraints on Veltroni. Most of the party’s voters and militants are still closely linked to the history of the PCI. Ten years after the fateful year 1989, a wide gap remains between the leadership and the rank-and-file of the DS over the role of PCI in Italian history. Each emphasizes different elements of a party that played an ambivalent role in the First Republic. The party and the coalition address the DS’s role in a political system that is increasingly characterised by conflict between alliances rather than a battle among many political parties. After 1996, two alternatives emerged: a leading role for the DS in a coalition of Left and Center-Left parties or the emergence of a single dominant force that would supersede these parties. Ferocious battles characterized these debates. The party itself was deeply split. Not only was the left hostile to the hypothesis of an ulivizzazione, but conflict appeared between Veltroni, until 1998 vice-premier and supporter of the second alternative, and D’Alema, until then Secretary of the PDS and an open supporter of the first. Now, either because he occupied the role of party Secretary or because he did not want conflict with D’Alema, Veltroni seemed to adopt a more nuanced position that eventually gained D’Alema’s support. To explain his new position, he turned to a rhetorical flourish, declaring that it was necessary to construct “a strong left in a strong Ulivo.” Veltroni developed the reasons for a strong left in response to comments made by Arturo Parisi, the president of the Democrats. Speaking on the eve of the DS’s Congress, Parisi offered a process that would dissolve all the political formations of the Center-Left into “a great house of reform.” Veltroni’s response was a terse neg- ative: “If this is an invitation for the DS to dissolve itself, the answer, obviously, clearly, and simply, is no.” For Veltroni, the Olive Tree was and remained an alliance of very different political 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 58

58 Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

groups. In his report to the Congress, he specified the source of the Ulivo’s strength: its strategic rather than its contingent character and that it was not a mere sum of its parts. He described the Olive Tree as “a structured matter, founded on a program of great inspi- ration, governed by shared rules, guided by a leadership chosen communally.” Notwithstanding the procedures established in Arti- cle 29 of the statute that would allow for the selection of a unified list of candidates and for the definition of a common program, Vel- troni reaffirmed the independence of the DS. The Congress’s importance lies in the proud affirmation of a rediscovered identity. “We have rediscovered ourselves.” In any case the strong affirmation of identity found agreement in a great majority of national delegates. 83 percent of them believed that the Ulivo should remain a simple alliance among different political forces.9 This was not the time to form a new political party. Welfare reform and relations with labor unions represented another of the central points of debate. For Veltroni,

The social state is the greatest success of the twentieth century. And even those people outside of Europe, who have not known this experience, today seek analogous ways to respond to inequalities. For us welfare is not a burden from which to liberate ourselves, but a resource for Italian growth: of the economy and social justice. Two themes for us undissolvably connected. But to defend the social state is nothing other than its renewal, than its capacity to respond to the new demands of liberty, to the new demands of production and of labor.

In other words, if the Secretary of CGIL ﬁnds backing, it is also because he articulates the views of many DS militants with regard to their political identity and the position of the party. Proof of this is the fact that the national delegates at the 2000 Congress, like those at the PDS Congress of 1997, situate the party a little to the right of where they put themselves.

The “Internal Front”: Organizational Reforms

The reform of the statute was another important topic at the Con- gress of Turin. This came after a decade of incessant assemblies and Congresses, which elaborated the themes of organization and internal reform. Consider the most important. According to the Secretary, in order to defend welfare it is necessary to reform it. And to do this it is necessary to negotiate with labor unions.10 These ideas are not new. However, the imminent social referenda promoted by the Radical party and supported by the Conﬁndustria 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 59

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allowed the Secretary to support the CGIL’s positions. As a result, the Secretary occupied an intermediary position within his majority, between the left-wing, led by Salvi, the minister of Labor who would soon form a group called “Socialism 2000,” and the ulivista wing. Veltroni was also able to develop a dialogue with the Secretary of CGIL that was less conflictual than that between D’Alema and Cofferati at the PDS’s Congress in 1997. At the previous convoca- tion, the CGIL leader succeeded in moving the Congress to the left.11 Cofferati had tapped the views of many of the delegates, beliefs that stood apart from the formal motions. If 69 percent held that a just society could not do less than the market, only 50 percent of the delegates were in favor of the privatization of public services, while 61 percent maintained that social inequalities had become greater in recent years and 39 percent were of the opinion that factory workers live in disaffected conditions.12 Furthermore, 61 percent of the delegates believed that the essence of capitalism remained the exploitation of man by man and that job security must be defended at any cost. Many delegates were more ambivalent about market economies than were the elegant formulations of the Project. Once more, D’Alema rose to challenge the communal sense of the left, emphasizing that one must be against social referenda “not because they threaten an old order, but because they hinder the modernization and the change of the country.”13 The issue of the relationship between the DS and CGIL merits further examination. Some observers have suggested that the DS’s prudent behavior towards CGIL depended on two political factors. The party could reach important sectors of the union, for example, some regional Secretaries. The union, however, organizes five mil- lion voters, an electoral reservoir that a party like the DS cannot afford to ignore.14 In reality the situation is more complicated. The number of persons who belong to both the party and the union has declined, even if more of them come to the party after joining the union.15 The union is much less a source of recruitment for the party than in the past. Furthermore, it is legitimate to suppose that the union today is less able than yesterday to influence the vote of its members.16 It is true that, as we saw earlier, the positions of the most powerful union leaders coincide with those dear to the hearts of many party activists. 1. The vertical relationship between members/leaders. Here the modifications focused on the system of electing the party’s Secretary. While in 1997 the Secretary was elected by the Con- gress, the new statute called for the direct election by the members who participated in Congressional votes at all levels of the party. 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 60

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Candidates for the position of Secretary must be presented before the Congresses at the mass level and must be accompanied by a programmatic motion containing the objectives and the lines of political action on which the candidates ask for a mandate (Arti- cle 14). The solution adopted therefore seems to be an important step towards a process that combines personalization and the assumption of programmatic responsibilities.18 Furthermore, the national directorate obtained a notable augmentation of its official powers, as the left had asked. The new function of the directorate, in the overall architecture of the party, is a “counterbalance to the Secretary legitimated directly by party members.”19 The role of party members is therefore valued because it legitimatizes the party leadership. 2. The articulation of the “network” in the organizational model of the party, with a large role entrusted to the regional levels (Article 6), stand among the most important changes. Three elements define the new federal network: a) the associative dimension, or the party’s mass organizations in a territory; b) the federal dimension, dedicated to reaching persons and social groups who are not formally linked to the party; and c) the parliamentary and counciliary dimension, formed “by the elected leaders in institu- tions representative of the diverse levels enrolled in the Democrats of the Left.” The new formal architecture of the party is based on the principle of “supplementariness” among the different organizational “dimensions” (Article 8). The different facets of the party now construct their reciprocal relationships horizontally not verti- cally, and each is autonomous within its own field. For example, in the relationships of the centre-periphery, regional bodies now have the statutory power and the possibility of regulating political, economic, and organizational relationships with the national directorate through formal “pacts.” Another important development is the opening of organizational boundaries. Already indicated in the assembly of 1993 and in the document of 1997, this alteration is defined in a new statute. “As a means of strengthening itself and organically inserting thematic autonomies into the organizational structure, the party involves in its internal life persons who are not members, not only regarding cultural issues, but directly with regard to internal representation.” Put simply, persons who are not party members may now become active in its internal life. Another organizational model to which those not registered in the party can adhere is the associations of political and cultural trends. These are self-governing and self-directing. If recognized by the national council of guarantors, they have the right to administer their own organizational and economic resources. In practice, the DS recog- 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 61

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nizes the right of party members to form factions. Furthermore, the DS strives to bring back those groups that have recently left the party. Beginning in 2001, there will no longer be double member- ship in the party and in a related movement, even if the latter can become an association of trends to safeguard its own political and organizational diversity (a transitional norm of the statute). Cur- rently, at least ten associations of trends are recognized (to which it would be appropriate to add the potential constituted by the fol- lowers of D’Alema). In addition, as the statute foresaw, another chapter was dedicated expressly to the relations between the party and the coalition (Article 29). The party seeks to promote the organizational identity and consistency of the coalition and to ensure that it gives itself regulations that discipline the choice of local candidates and the deﬁnition of the program. As a formal organization, the DS is moving towards personalization of the leadership, organizational “disarticulation,” the centrality of members, and a weakening of organizational boundaries. It is moving away from the classic party of the masses to a model more suitable, as Veltroni says, to operate in a society that is “adult, that no longer needs to be guided and oriented.” It is no longer a “peda- gogical” party, but one that offers citizens opportunities to partici- pate, such as the crucial one to share in the choice of leadership. To what extent have the party’s activists accepted these and other “novelties?” Do the new images of the party, of the role of members, and of the relationship between the party and society present in the heads of the factions coincide with the organizational model that the governing directorate has been trying to construct for almost ten years? The length of the process implies that the activists themselves formed the new organizational model. The reality is different.20 One of the central aspects of the new model regards the relationship between the party and the electorate. What guiding princi- ples should inspire the party’s conduct: fidelity to its own ideological identity or a quest for the greatest number of votes? It is obvious that the ﬁrst alternative refers to a model of the party ani- mated by strong identities while the second refers to a model of the professional-electoral type. Surprisingly, among the national delegates at the Congress in Turin, only 46 percent chose the second model. Even more surprising, the number of those who shared the idea of a party without a strong and exclusive ideological identity seems lower than it did in 1997 and at the PCI Congress in 1990. Party activists stand apart from the national leadership on other matters as well. For example, the secretaryships of both D’Alema and Veltroni, as we have seen, proposed a form of organization 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 62

62 Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

characterized by blurred boundaries, open to alliances even with external groups in order to move particular objectives forward, and therefore open to multiple modalities of adherence to the party. The DS’s activists responded with great caution, if not coldness to these innovations. Most support the autonomy of various forms of internal organizations (82 percent in agreement). Furthermore, the majority of the delegates (55 percent) also agreed with the principle of a federal standardization with ample autonomy given to the regional unions, even if it must be noted that this is a percentage smaller than that that approved the draft of the statute foreseeing this disposition. On the other hand, only 27 percent of the delegates seem truly to accept the effort to transform the party into a political segment in the service of different groups and organizations working in society. Finally, the images that the delegates have of the relationship among politics, the parties, and Italian society contradicts the idea of an Italian society “that is adult, that does not need to be guided or oriented” to cite Veltroni’s justiﬁcation of the reform initiative. In reality, a different picture prevailed among the delegates gath- ered in Turin. 42 percent of them believed that the parties are in crisis because they operate in a society that is described as frag- mented, individualistic, and interested in its own immediate gain. This idea is widely diffused among the delegates from northern regions. If therefore the party fails in this part of the country, members of the Northern factions fault the society. Reform has not yet convinced the party activists.

The Congressional Assembly of 15 December 2000

At the end of the year - one in which D’Alema resigned as head of the national government, there were poor results in regional elec- tions, a sitting party leader was excluded from the competition for the candidacy for head of the governing coalition - the stability and duration of the Veltroni’s secretaryship became an issue, as did his relations with D’Alema. A year before, Veltroni seemed to have definitively conquered the party and adopted a line close to D’Alema. Now at the close of the year, their relationship became strained once again. In November 2000, many journalists pointed to D’Alema’s will- ingness to return to lead the party and Veltroni’s desire to serve as a candidate for mayor of Rome. Conﬁrmations, contradictions, and various considerations by other players ﬁlled the political news. In particular many national directors from various factions on both the 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 63

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party’s right and the left flanks declared themselves perplexed by, if not hostile to, the return of D’Alema to the directorship of the party. The debate accelerated during the meeting of the party’s directorate on 22 November 2000. At that session, D’Alema put himself in strong opposition to the party directorate. He confirmed his avail- ability to become president, but he also expressed, with unusual emphasis, his disagreement with the way in which the question was imposed on the level of procedure and with the hesitation expressed by different members of the directorate. A month later at the Congressional assembly of 15 December 2000, 1,942 delegates elected D’Alema to the presidency of the party with an ample majority (83 percent). At that session, Veltroni stated that he would not run for mayor of Rome until the party asked him, letting it thereby be known that he was personally inclined to assume that role. In the following months, and above all in the crucial months after the election, another wide and profound change of the dominant coalition that was affirmed in the DS under the guidance of Veltroni. Once again, change was on the horizon and the body of the party and its voters were put in a position to wonder whether the guidelines of a (possible) new D’Alema directorship would be similar to those of a (possible) old Veltroni directorship.

Some ﬁnal considerations

A red thread links the ten years of incessant transformations of the old PCI, the PDS, and the DS. There is a recurrent search for a new cultural and political identity, and there is the effort to carve out a new role in a political system that no longer indulges party politics. To date, the search has not borne fruit. Will it become otherwise, thanks to the Turin Congress? Will the burst of pride so intently sought by the Secretary be enough? In our judgment, there is legitimate reason for doubt. Neither the Turin Congress nor the post-Congressional discussion that lasted until the assembly of 15 December 2000 has been able to remove the fundamental divisions The current leaders are not able to act. They may be personally gifted, able to control the organizational apparatus and to manage the exigencies of daily political maneuvring but the ﬁnal result is extraordinarily weak and inef- fective. Proof of this is seen in the continuing distance between that which they have continued to propose and what the body of the party continues to think, feel, and do. There are two different explanations. The DS’s coalition partners do not recognize the party as the hub of the Center-Left electoral 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 64

64 Paolo Bellucci, Marco Marafﬁ, and Paolo Segatti

alliance. As a result, the party’s leaders cannot be considered the natural candidate for the premiership. The leaders of the largest party of the coalition are, therefore, deprived of a principal resource: competition for the premiership, around which they could focus the participation of members. This is so even as the party’s history fades and the demands of electoral competition prevail. From this point of view, the statute approved in Turin for the direct election of the Secretary cannot overcome this weakness. It could instead have a frustrating effect. The new Secretary of the DS will receive from direct election a strong political investiture, but will not be able to utilize this resource in the competition to become premier. Instead, he will have to satisfy himself with undertaking a much more mod- est task similar to that of one of the many leaders of the parties and mini-parties of the field of the Center-Left. The second explanation regards the internal life of the DS, where informal routines of access to the highest offices of the party seem to perpetuate themselves. Not only is this contrary to the written rules, but it repeats the practices of negotiation among the members of the party’s majority, a pattern that typifies a model in which cooption, and not open and risky conflict, was the principal criterion of recruitment to governing positions. In fact, it is easy to observe how, once again, after the nomination of D’Alema to the secretaryship in 1994 against a majority who supported Veltroni, and after the change of the position of Secretary between D’Alema and Veltroni in 1998, new members entered the directorate without clear and open political contests. Instead, this model of selection keeps leadership resources from reaching the heights of the party, as it underlines the futility of trying to engage in new forms of participation among more than six hundred thousand citizens who support the party. (translated by Mary DeCoste) 02-Bellucci/Maraffi/Segatti 12/18/01 3:36 PM Page 65

The Democrats of the Left 65 Notes

1. See O. Massari and S. Parker, “The Two Lefts: Between Rupture and Recompo- sition”, in Italian Politics. The Return of Politics, eds. S. Vassallo and D. Hine, Oxford, 2000, pp. 47-63. 2. Il Corriere della Sera 25 September 1999. 3. See, for example, the article in La Repubblica, 18 December 1999. 4. Notwithstanding the support given to the Secretary’s motion by the “ulivista” component, many within the group continued to be critical, particularly with regards to economic and social politics. 5. AA.VV., “Progetto per una sinistra del duemila”, Roma, Donzelli, 2000. 6. These data come from the website www.democraticidisinistra.it/Congresso. 7. These and all other data on the opinions of the delegates come from the research of P. Bellucci, M. Maraffi, and P. Segatti: PCI, PDS, DS, Rome, Donzelli, 2000, pp. 106-108. 8. AA.VV., “Progetto per una sinistra del duemila,” Roma, Donzelli, 2000, p. 21. 9. P. Bellucci, M. Maraffi, P. Segatti, PCI, PDS, DS, Rome, Donzelli, 2000, p. 112. 10. We would place Secretary Veltroni’s line on these themes between the strongly innovative positions of New Labour and the more traditional ones of the French socialist party. 11. “Il successo della sinistra DS inquieta il segretario,” Il Manifesto, 15 January 2000; “Quella spinta a sinistra che mette in ombra la terza via,” Corriere della Sera, 15 January 2000. 12. It should also be noted that positions critical of the market or at least suspi- cious of private enterprise are growing with respect to those at the PDS Con- gress in 1997 (P. Belluci, M. Maraffi, P. Segatti, PCI, PDS, DS, Rome, Donzelli, 2000, p. 141). 13. The intervention of D’Alema convinced the ulivisti component to retract one of their amendments, signed by 250 delegates, in which it was affirmed that, although choice by referendum was not divisible, some themes raised by the radicals “(had) some justification” among the many, too many chains put upon their undertakings. 14. See G. Pasquino, Una critica alla sinistra, Bari, Laterza, 2001. 15. P. Bellucci, M. Maraffi, P. Segatti, PCI, PDS, DS, Rome, Donzelli, 2000, p. 59. 16. From various investigations promoted by the labor unions in various regions of the north, it emerges that many union members vote for the Lega Nord. 17. On these documents, see C. Baccetti, Il PDS, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997. 18. The party’s leftwing have interpreted this tendency as a further drift towards a personalization of the leadership and have opposed it. 19. Interview with Franco Passuello in l’Unità. 20. For the data reported here, see chapters 5 and 6 of P. Bellucci, M. Maraffi, P. Segatti, PCI, PDS, DS, Rome, Donzelli, 2000.