By IWU-FI.
10 December 2021. We share a text written by the Fourth International Current Tendency (TCQI) of the PCL of Italy.
We have already commented on the Argentinian success of the FIT in two texts. Most of our party did so, recalling that the “FIT is not a generic left electoral bloc, but a revolutionary Marxist pole fighting for workers’ government, based on a classist, anti-capitalist and internationalist programme”, and we did so with a text by comrade Gemmo: “for over a decade the FIT has been a fixed point for the entire world far left, a hope for the international class struggle”.
Before these two texts, comrade Tremaliti had commented on the result of the compulsory national primaries (PASO) in September, which in a way announced the success of these days. Tremaliti raised the crux of the question, at least for the Italian comrades: is the FIT replicable? “It is necessary to reject […] the mechanistic criticism of those detractors of the FIT who claim that such a situation is not duplicable in Italy because the FIT sees its genesis in the dramatic Argentinian crisis in 2001; as if the October Revolution – taking this criticism to its logical extreme – were not practicable in other hemispheres of the globe because it was a peculiarly Russian event, despite the historical transitions from one system to another, starting with the French Revolution.”
Of course, to build the FIT, i.e. a Trotskyist pole in Italy, one needs first the will. In the majority text, it is limited to say that the Argentinian FIT is real Trotskyism, “not a faded and simulated ‘Trotskyism’, as a bibliographical and historical inheritance, as we see also in Italy in some organisations here present…”. We will leave it to the reader to guess which of the various Trotskyist formations the majority was referring to – it doesn’t take much! – We are only interested in recording that once again we missed the opportunity to seize the ball and immediately propose to the other Trotskyist forces to build the Italian FIT, the only possible Trotskyism at the moment.
If Italian Trotskyism is mostly faded and bibliographical, each formation is faded in its way. And however faded they may be, not all have overlooked the success of the FIT. Perhaps, as well as pointing out their anaemic colour, we should encourage these formations to step forward.
Anticapitalist Left (SA), for example, celebrated the success of the FIT with a very didactic article by comrade Burattini. They congratulate FIT for becoming the third force, followed by figures, numbers and names of deputies, but there is not a single line that tries to question what lessons we too can learn from this breakthrough. As if the issue is just international news and does not affect us. So we don’t know what comrade Burattini thinks about the re-proposal of the FIT in Italy, but we ask him and the Anticapitalist Left if it is not better to try this than to slip behind Rifondazione every time and then support the candidate D’Orsi who votes for the Democratic Party (PD) as soon as the first round of the elections is over. In short, why not try an alternative path instead of giving cover, each time, to the reformist blocks? Not only must the SA ruling group answer but also by the SA rank and file.
More vivid is the analysis of “The Voice of Struggles”, i.e. of our former comrades, who write that the FIT “represents an example and a source of inspiration which should certainly be part of the debate on the left, among the militants of the political movements and organisations”.
Apparently “constructive”, this statement is not very thoughtful and seems more like a contradiction in terms than something particularly studied and thoughtful. A little earlier it says that not only the Italian left but also the European left, “systematically agrees with the centre-left in its various forms”. So how could the Italian FIT enter the debate of such a left-wing party? As comrades Gemmo and Tremaliti point out in their articles, it does not even come into play. The FIT deliberately withdraws from the left. Let’s take as the only example applicable to all, the somewhat campy, somewhat Stalinist, totally anti-Marxist “contropiano” (counterplan) communists. Today, when there is a recognisable mass Trotskyism, instead of entering it and playing their role, they prefer to stay outside and keep the militants with the dubious assessment of parliamentary cretinism and the linear and gradual construction of the party, which is built man by man without knowing quality leaps. However, if the aim is a revolution and not the preservation of the organisation itself, the FIT should also interest the IMT. And that is why, even if the Italian section does not talk about it, we believe it is not so sterile to talk to it about the Italian FIT because there must be someone within it who is sensitive to the call of the FIT.
This outlines the current situation of the Italian FIT. And it was we who reconstructed it, to show that we do not ignore, as our majority thinks, the difficulties of building the Italian FIT. We know them well and here we have made a first, unpretentious analysis.
It remains to say to those who read us, that if today even most of the Communist Workers Party (PCL) is deaf to the calls of the FIT, also because of the situation of our Trotskyism that we have described, in the PCL there is us, the Fourth International Current Tendency (TCQI), the internal tendency that fights for the construction of the Italian FIT. Therefore, given that the PCL has an internal tendency for the FIT, it seems to us a positive sign that the Communist Workers Party expresses in this front the most advanced consciousness currently circulating.
Are there among you Trotskyist comrades of all parties and groupings, tendencies like ours that openly fight for the FIT? Wherever you are, build them. That will be the first step in its development in Italy.
Fourth International Current Tendency (TCQI)
NOTES 1 - Ted Grant, one of the greatest British Trotskyists, was the founding theoretician of the IMT. The basic characteristic of this branch of Trotskyism is the almost infinite entry into the reformist parties (and not only). The comrades of this current use the word sectarian, without realising it, for anyone who does not accept this revisionism of orthodox Trotskyism, which conceives entrism as something more or less long-term but always tactically momentary, i.e. non-strategic.
