ABSTRACT: In the summer of 1966, Pannella delivered an interview to the daily "Nuova Repubblica", the organ of the homonymous movement founded by Randolfo Pacciardi (1). Pacciardi, formerly an antifascist militant who fought in the Spanish civil war and who became secretary of the Republican Party after the war, had left the Republican Party - in that period - and had founded a political movement which advocated a presidential republic.

Following this interview, the Communist party attacked Pannella violently, and accused him of collusion with the "fascist" Pacciardi.

(Nuova Repubblica - August 1966 from "Marco Pannella - Works and speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

Nuova Repubblica - The Italian Communist party's evolution toward an increasing integration in the system strikes many as one the most interesting elements of the Italian political scene. If, on the one hand, there are the intermittent attempts of the Communist party to establish a dialogue with the Catholics, on the other hand the Communist party seems to be experiencing an increasing "socialdemocratization".

From the outside, we have always been inclined to estimate and perhaps even overestimate the Communist party's revolutionary potential. But you, who have often taken part in common initiatives of the Left with the Communist Party, have no doubt had the occasion to judge what the ambivalence of its leaders really means. Is it a purely tactical expedient, or can it become a second nature in time?

Pannella - Actually, I think you're right when you say that you overestimated the Communist party's revolutionary potential, and underestimated its democratic and even conservative potential.

Not even the Stalinist choice, after the war, which had catastrophic consequences for the entire Italian and European Left, in all its components, was a "revolutionary" choice. On the contrary, it was a conservative, passive and basically remissive choice in the context of the socialist and communist front itself, a move which already expressed the relinquishment of the perspective of a takeover in Italy as a consequence of an autonomous struggle on the part of the socialist and workers' movement.

As for the rest, the "change of Salerno" (2), the attitude vis-à-vis the monarchy, the amnesties granted by the Minister of Justice Togliatti to the fascists, the "strange" conduct of trials such as the one of Roatta, no doubt appreciated by most of our militaries, the passage of article 7 of the Constitution, the cooperation with the Vatican party, sought for by hook or by crook, the constant and harsh polemic (in parallel with the clerical and conservative one) against the substantial reformative intentions which started to emerge in the Partito d'Azione (especially in the so-called "Right"), in the Republican Party, in the Liberal Left, in the modern and lay wing of the PSIUP (3), Togliatti's "talks" with Giannini (4) and his speech tinged with "qualunquismo" at the Congress, the Communist Party's defence against the Liberal Party of Villabruna of the continuity with the Risorgimento battles, the nationalist-oriented objections against the "Atlantic Treaty", all this cannot be explained as a series of aut

onomous acts of individual opportunism, or as mere "tactics" without an objective value unless we leave the field of a political and historical analysis and we enter the field of a sterile and superficial psychologism.

From the point of view of the structures of the State, it is impossible to deny that the Communists were they too protagonists of that which the centrists emphatically but accurately call "reconstruction".

Having relinquished any form of revolutionary or seriously reformist claims (self-management, co-management, workers' control, socialization, etc), the Communist Party supported the reconstruction and the extension of the corporative structures and of the State capitalism, as they had been created during fascism and maintained by centrism, without relevant differences and alternatives. It might be worth making a few examples. For almost twenty years, the INPS (5) was run by Left-wing and Right-wing unionists, by ministerial bureaucrats, representatives of the authority, all appointed by the Ministry upon the practical indication of the Party. The IRI (6), created to socialize the losses and guarantee the privatization of of the profits of Northern Italy's industry, continued the policy it started in the thirties without particular interferences on the part of the Communist Party. The ENI (7) was respected and cherished by the Left to such a point that "cadres" from the Communist Party often entered the ENI i

n the technical sector. Nor did the Communist Party particularly oppose the greatest Italian monopoly, which it is ridiculous to continue considering a "private" force, the FIAT (8), and the advertisement budgets of many an extreme-Left newspaper can prove it. From the point of view of the national defence, which should not be forgotten, it is sufficient to recall the debates of the Constituent Assembly and the parliamentary records, the political motions, the policy of the Communist youth organizations. The Communist Party immediately took and maintained an anti-pacifist and traditionalist stance, and like any other moderate party, it did nothing more than ask for a greater "democracy" of the army. It is a significant fact that the Communist Party is the only lay party which never submitted, in these twenty years, a single proposal for the acknowledgement of "conscientious objection". And I can guarantee that the party that prevents the birth in Italy of a strong pacifist and antimilitarist movement in Ital

y, which many movements of the Left advocate, is precisely the Communist Party, which mobilizes all its bureaucracy in charge since 1950 of "activism for peace" in this sense. At a Congress of the Radical Party, the member of Parliament Boldrini himself, the most important communist expert in "national defence", one of the prominent and most courageous leaders of the Resistance, recently acknowledged that the Communist Party had made a traditionalist choice in this field, with absolute conviction, apart from any "tactical" reasons that suggested to take such stance.

To end with, it is worth remembering the bureaucratic and executive characteristics which the Communist Party has assumed, isolating most of the former leading class which formed itself with revolutionary methods in a revolutionary climate. Togliatti (9) and his collaborators clearly did not ignore that a leading class cannot but tend to administer power in the light of the experiences in which it formed itself and consolidated itself. For twenty years, the communist leaders formed themselves in the major battles to obtain more humane and civil conditions for social classes which could objectively not expect the "market system" to "automatically" provide them with work, bread and dignity, and attracted the Italian workers with slogans that traditionally belonged to the liberal and democratic tradition: freedom everywhere, also in working places, equality of the law also for the humble, equality faced to the law without political or confessional discriminations, right to study, defence of the State school, de

fence of the autonomy of the public life from the persistent assault of the modern "baronies". Perhaps they did it awkwardly, making mistakes, insufficiently, in contradiction with the international choices which the "leading class" had taken, perhaps with the deceptive intention of conducting an instrumental battle...But this is something that does not impair the democratic value which these battles have represented all the same. It is doubtless, as we said already back in the fifties, that Togliatti and his collaborators had slowly formed a state apparatus and not a revolutionary party, a party which under many aspects was deeply moderate, to such point that it represented a pro-clerical force with a populist streak. It was and it is a large, Socialdemocratic type of party, which found itself in the conditions of being forced to choose the Stalinist block. Since the wave of the "cold war" slowly started to withdraw in our country, it became progressively clear that a deeper and more lasting reality had ori

ginated beneath the dramatic but contingent clash between a U.S. and a Soviet party. To the extent in which they were "national" and autonomous, our leading classes, both in the government and the opposition, had for the most part operated in agreement and had often blended into one another.

Our political class has not competed, to this moment, on the substantial themes concerning the development of our society. It has too often limited itself to choosing, in an international situation characterized by opposed blocks, to align itself with one of these. It was probably a need, which was however poorly received by an unprepared leading class, interested in power alone.

We radicals have been fighting to break this situation. The true problem is that of "radicalizing" this "socialdemocratized" Italian Left, renewing it in order to establish a major lay and democratic alternative to the clerical, paternalist and deeply corrupt regime in which we live. We need to discredit the myth of a total and revolutionary opposition of the Communist Party against the system and instead analyse its history of compromises and "integrations" over these last twenty years, if we want to give new impulse and new, civil and responsible choices to Italian democracy.

Nuova Repubblica - In the past years, there was much talking about the "church communists" and about the pro-communism of the Catholic Left. However, if, as you say, the Communist Party has long since become a fully-fledged part of the system, then more binding forms of cooperation should arise also between the Communist Party and the official centres of Catholic power. At times we have the impression that we can distinguish two different functions of the Communist Party in the Italian political scene. The former is the one that is typical of it, and for which it receives the adhesion of the out-and-out communists. The latter is the one it has acquired naturally with time, for the very fact of being the strongest political party at the opposition, and thus being appreciated as the possible avenger of the faults committed by the dominating party power, also by people who are not really communists. Now we have the impression that the Communist Party's drive toward integration is passing increasingly through th

e forced passage of the compromises with the political forms of power. And that therefore the Communist leaders, in an effort to establish a possible climate of cooperation, especially with the Catholic forces, are already waiving that moralizing role which, even if only for contingent and instrumental reasons, they seemed to play in the past, denouncing scandals, abnormal situations, etc....Do you agree?

Pannella - Certainly. The Radical campaigns, from the ones conducted by Ernesto Rossi (10) against the "barons" and the "corporative" structures of the State, until the more recent ones against the policy of the ENI, against the pillage of the social security and of the public assistance on the part of confessional institutions, against the corruption of the local corporations and especially of the leading class of the Roman DC, have rarely had a satisfactory repercussion on the part of the Communists. The Communist Party is practically paralysed every time a moralization campaign can directly affect Vatican centres of power or in any case the interests of dignitaries of the Church and of their most direct clients. But generally these are not direct and full institutional co-responsibilities "in" the system, even if they could have become such; it is a connivance, in the sense of an "omission" of denunciation and struggle. Moreover, there is the wrong conviction of some who believe that this indirectly defen

ds certain delicate positions of power acquired in the society of the Left, such as the corporativist structures against which the executive power has always had blackmailing powers, or the ambiguous financing which the Ministers of Labour grant to the unions, or the corruption of the press which affects all political parties, from the fascist one to the Communist one....

I can guarantee that in these cases, the interlocutor is not represented by the "church communists", but precisely by those who denounce them with greatest force. The Catholic dignitaries themselves, which have often used the stick of "easy excommunications", have in fact always defended their own positions using the carrot of corruption and paternalism. It is they who need the complicity of their opponents to defend their huge worldly interests, and who for this reason have the opportunity to give something in exchange. Secured beneath forms of deep-rooted anticommunism (the "honesty" of which is doubtful to say the least), they have deliberately tries to extol the anti-State, antidemocratic and anti-Risorgimento forces present in the Socialist world, to the detriment of the civilization and progress of our country.

However, this is a plan (as well as a praxis) which precisely the constant, courageous, solitary and underestimated action of the Radical Party can cause to fail. Similar monstrous convergences need silence and shade in order to live. If they are taken out in the light, they are soon defeated. A typical episode is that of the recent administrative elections in Rome, in which the bureaucratic executives of the Communist Party participated in the "talks" under way at the Theatre Adriano, trying to suffocate our hard and substantiated polemic against people like Petrucci and against the Roman DC. Today, should new elections be held, the base and the intermediate cadres of the Communist Party would, with a vast majority, impose a totally different line, as well as a change of its leaders. It is a well-known fact that in Rome quite a few communist votes went to candidates of the Radical Party, and that many others expressed their opinion with blank or invalid votes.

The greatest guaranty against the regime, and against the "talks" between clericals and Stalinists, lies first of all in the large democratic masses that are about to give 50 per cent of their votes to the lay parties of the Left, despite the serious mistakes committed by their leaders.

Nuova Repubblica - Among the various campaigns which you promoted or which you supported, the most vigorous and insistent one was the one for the legalization of divorce. In this field too, the Communist Party's attitude has appeared to be ambiguous. Whereas the vulgar opinion conceives communism as the "party of free love", in fact it seems to be much closer to the definition of party contained in art. 7.

Pannella - This is partly true. But precisely the episode of the battle for divorce, especially if we consider it in its last stages, authorizes hopes for a positive change. As we know, Togliatti was against divorce and other "bourgeois" claims (which in fact were very much the expression of the conscience and the life of the working masses, which count five million "outlaws of marriage"). Nenni (11) himself has held serious anti-divorce stances in one of his metamorphoses. For fifteen years, the UDI (12) was firmly against this reform, and only two years ago, with a new majority formed at a national congress of the UDI which was qualified as Radical, it started to impose a different position, which is still opposed by, for example, Cinciari-Rodano, the Communist Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies, who is basically against divorce.

But when our campaign, after years of apparent failure, substantiated itself into true mass demonstrations, and the Italian League for Divorce created itself, the progressivist forces within the Communist Party finally managed to impose the current position. Over the last months, the Communist Party has held a clear-cut lay position, expressed repeatedly, with courage and clarity, especially by Nilde Jotti (13). In order not to hinder the debate on the project of Loris Fortuna (14), the Communist Party also gave up on presenting a draft bill for the reform of family law, which was ready this winter.

Thus, Father Lener travels all over Italy saying that the true enemies are the "few radicals" who could drag even the most "responsible and conscientious" of communist and socialist leaders "against the Concordat"!

Translator's notes

(1) Randolfo Pacciardi (1899): Partisan of the Resistance, Secretary of the Republican Party (1946-48), Minister of Defence ('48-53), left the Party in 1964 to found the Movement for the New Republic.

(2) Change of Salerno: On his return from Russia in 1944, Togliatti adhered to the formation of a government of "national unity", enabling the formation of the first democratic government presided by General Badoglio.

(3) PSIUP: Italian Socialist Party for the Union of All Workers. Party created in 1943 from the fusion of the Socialist Party with the movement of proletarian unity.

(4) Guglielmo Giannini (1891-1960): Playwright and journalist. Established the weekly magazine "L'uomo qualunque" (1944) and the political movement "Fronte dell'uomo qualunque", which obtained considerable success at the elections of 1946.

(5)INPS: National Institute of Social Insurance.

(6) IRI: Institute for Industrial Reconstruction.

(7) ENI: National Hydrocarbon Corporation.

(8) FIAT: Italian Motor Works in Turin.

(9) Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964): Italian politician. Secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 unto his death, he lived abroad for long periods, in Moscow as a member of the Secretariat of the Comintern and in Spain during the civil war. On his return to Italy in 1944, he launched the Communist Party's national policy, with the association with the other antifascist forces, with the acknowledgment of the role of the Catholics, and the participation in the governments from '44 to '47. Minister on several occasions, after the elections of 1948 he headed the opposition of the Left. He established the premises for the Italian Communist Party's autonomy vis-à-vis the USSR.

(10) Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian politician. Leader of the antifascist movement "Giustizia e Libertà" founded in Paris in 1929 by Italian exiles, he was arrested in 1930. He promoted the European Federalist Movement and was among the founders of the Radical Party. His best-known work is "Il Padroni del vapore" (1955).

(11) Pietro Nenni (1891-1980): Italian politician. A socialist since 1921, editor of l'"Avanti!" (1923-25), fled to France in 1926, where he was the protagonist of the socialist unification ('30) and of the pact of unity of action with the communists ('34). Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party in 1943 and from '49 to '64, Vice Prime Minister ('45) and Foreign Minister ('46-47. During the sixties he supported the alliance between the Socialist Party and the Christian democrat Party, was Vice Prime Minister ('63-68), and Foreign Minister ('68-69). Elected senator for life in 1970.

(12) UDI: Association of Italian Women.

(13) Nilde Jotti (1920): Italian politician. Leader of the Communist Party. President of the Chamber of Deputies since 1979.

(14) Loris Fortuna. Exponent of the Socialist Party, one of the promoters of the law for the legalization of divorce.