italy

[apathy]

more then a year ago, i heard that the left won the elections in italy and that they elected a president who'se an ex-communist and a prime minister who'se also leftist (donno what exactly).However, afterward i never heard anything about them,i would really like to know more about the situation there, if they're applying communism or no, if they are with or against the united states... anyone has any idea?

[cherx]

Here is a country report from a italian communist movement from may 2007:

"Party of the CARC - adherent to the Communist List
Contribution of CARC, Italy
Support Committees to the Resistance for Communism (CARC) - ITALY
COUNTRY REPORT
In the latest two years in Italy, there are been many significant events for Communist movement's rebirth and for the development of popular masses' struggle.
On October 2004, it was founded the (new) Italian Communist Party ((n)PCI), as a clandestine party. On November 2004, the Statement of its foundation affirmed that the Party "was born in order to complete the work the first Italian Communist Party let unfinished, that is to make Italy a new socialist country and so to contribute to the world proletarian revolution." The (n)PCI declared that its task was to resume the way begun by the first Italian Communist Party (PCI, the party of Antonio Gramsci), constituted in 1921. That party carried out a heroic resistance against Fascism,
gaining consideration and support by the working class, until it take the direction of the popular masses and led them to victory in the Resistance (1945). However, starting from the Fifties, owing to internal and international factors and to its own errors and limits, in the party the modern revisionists led by Togliatti prevailed. They have led again the popular masses under imperialist bourgeoisie's direction and the party to corruption, desegregation and dissolution.
The birth of (n)PCI started a debate within the CARC, that ended in the Spring of 2005. The CARC recognized the (n)PCI as the embryo of future headquarters of the working class, and gave it their full trust. Afterwards, on April 2005, an Extraordinary Congress sanctioned the transformation of the CARC. They were an organization working for the reconstruction of the communist party. Then they became a party that has brought Communists to enter again in a field let to bourgeois and revisionist parties for years, the field of bourgeois political struggle. This was a particular task
within the general struggle carried out by the (n)PCI, for making Italy a new socialist country. The CARC believe necessary to carry out the work in this front of the struggle, where the Communists are almost completely absent, because this front involves, interests and mobilizes a very great part of Italian popular masses. It is the field of the electoral campaigns, the activity of Parliament and other elective Assemblies, the campaigns of public opinion’s orientation, the demonstration and the
strikes organized by the bourgeois organizations. The CARC enter in this field of struggle for defending the freedom of political and social action conquered by the Resistance against Nazi.
Fascism and for showing to the widest masses that popular masses’ and imperialist bourgeoisie’s interests are not compatible. In fact, the bourgeoisie has answered to the initiative of our Party with a hard and continuous repression, with inquiries, house searches, sequestration of computers and documents, defamatory campaigns through the media. All this demonstrates that the bourgeoisie want to carry out its electoral theatre without the Communists, because their presence in that theatre
shows how fake its democracy is.
In these two years we saw the end of the government of Berlusconi's gang. Berlusconi didn't succeed in carrying out the program assigned to him by the class that really rules our country (the imperialist bourgeoisie, constituted by industrials, bankers, Vatican, US imperialists and Mafia).
According to this program he had to dig as deeper and more quickly as possible into workers’ and popular masses’ conquests. Wide workers and popular masses’ t struggles wrecked the bourgeoisie’s 2 plans and overwhelmed Berlusconi’s gang. The most significant struggles were at Scansano, against the incinerator, at the FIAT of Melfi, in Susa Valley, against the construction of the High Speed Railway, and the one carried out by the tram drivers in Milan.
After Berlusconi’s fall, the government of Centre Left Circus began. Its leaders are Prodi, ex Christian – Democrat, D’Alema, ex member of the revisionist Italian Communist Party, Bertinotti, ex trade unionist leader, and Epifani, leader of the CGIL, the greatest Italian trade union. They are trying to be successful in what Berlusconi failed. The current events completely confirm our thesis according to which Centre Left and Centre Right have the same common program. Prodi’s government hopes to realize it by different methods, not by the Berlusconi’s arrogance, not fighting
the trade unions of the regime. For the first time it directly involves all the parties of bourgeois Left and the so called Communists, who got many Ministries and the Presidency of Chamber of Deputies. Besides, Prodi’s government got agreement and support by the trade unions of the regime, particularly by the CGIL and its secretary Epifani, and creates very profitable jobs and positions for thousands of exponents of working class’ aristocracy.
On the international level, the US imperialist and their allies are suffering defeats facing the popular masses’ resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, communist parties are carrying out revolutionary popular wars in Nepal, Philippines, India, Turkey, and a strong anti-imperialist movement is growing in Latin America and all over the world. The rebirth of the popular and communist movement advances everywhere and in this situation the principal task of Italian Communists and other vanguard struggling people and organizations is to carry out the mobilization against the imperialist bourgeoisie’s common program. This is the only way for preventing Prodi from doing what Berlusconi’s gang wasn’t able to do. Owing to the corruption and desegregation carried out by Centre Left parties and trade unions of the regime among the workers and the popular masses, we need a qualitative leap in order to struggle effectively against the Prodi’s government.
We believe that this qualitative leap is the development of a popular front politics, struggling against the bourgeoisie’s common program, for defending and extending workers and popular masses’ rights and conquests in every field, that is in political, cultural, social and trade union fields. In order to do it we need to build a more ramified and strong organization of the popular masse, really politically and ideologically independent from the bourgeoisie. We need to give more determined and farsighted political objectives to every struggle of resistance and popular aggregate.
These advanced objectives are summed up in the slogans “let’s make Italy a new socialist country” and “rebirth of the international communist movement”.
Free and open confrontation, unity in the struggle and class solidarity are the words indicating the process of transformation and strengthening of the struggle against imperialism and for socialism, in our country, in our international relations, and within the international communist movement.

[Demogorgon]

There are some Communists in the Cabinet, but it is applying standard social liberal policies.

Relations with the United States are worse than they were under Berlusconi but hardly antagonistic.

[luxemburg89]

Prodi's government has collapsed twice due to pressure from the Communist Party (with whom he is affiliated and allied) and their discontent with his handling of affairs. Prodi is essentially a good man, and a good Prime Minister, but he is rather old and senile - he enjoys a somewhat volatile but generally good relationship with all the left-wing parties - whose differences have been sorted out now. The political situation in Italy is chaotic as usual lol.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 10:44 pm
Prodi is essentially a good man, and a good Prime Minister, but he is rather old and senile
Come on, he isn't even seventy. Whatever his faults, and there are plenty, he is still possessed of completely sound mind

[Cheung Mo]

He has more in common with Berlusconi than he has with progress.