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Motion adopted by PRC congress (extracts)

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Thursday 16 May 2002, by Rifondazione - PRC

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With this conference our party completes a determined and innovative step forward in the process of refounding modern thought and communist action to meet the great challenge that faces us with the deep transformations taking place in the capitalist system world-wide in the current phase of globalisation.

This task is today possible precisely because the challenge of being communist in the present age has already been won.

The whole of humanity finds itself at a crossroads between the return to barbarism and the construction of an alternative society, that we continue to call Socialist.

This development and innovation in analysis and political theory are only possible if at the same time we put into effect a serious, brave and also a harsh balance sheet of the history of the communist movement of the last century and the experiences of constructing socialist societies.

Those ideas, those conflicts, those struggles, those revolutions have indelibly marked the history of humanity as for the first time the masses have been protagonists of their own destiny in this way. But in this history, that therefore we do not want to put to one side or to fossilise, mistakes took place and also horrors - those of the Stalinist age - that we must look at in order to avoid them happening again - in the present or the future.

This is an indispensable and also a possible task today, because we are facing a world-wide movement against globalisation that is fighting for ’another possible world’, and that therefore raises questions about the nature and the characteristics of a new society - one without exploitation, alienation and wars. This search, on the basis of a return to the basic elements and foundation of Marxist thought, must continue and be expanded and our conference is a definite contribution in this direction.

With this conference, our party proposes and effects a turn to the left. This has been made necessary by the present crisis in the process of globalisation, which it is an economic, cultural and political crisis and a crisis of legitimacy, to which the capitalist system responds with a permanent state of war.

It is necessary in order to be in tune with the growth of the movements when, in our country in particular, we see more and more a meshing together of the movement against globalisation, war and neo-liberalism, and the extraordinary upturn in the combativity of the working class movement itself.

It is necessary because of the defeat of the political project of the Centre left and the so-called third way put forward by the moderate left, which not just in Italy but on a European level, has demonstrated its total inability to face and defeat the right wing, its neo-liberal policies and its wars. We commit ourselves to these fundamental aims on all necessary and possible fronts, whether social, political, cultural or institutional, working inside the movements for their growth and participating politically at an international level. (....)

This congress reaffirms that the strategic objective of our party in the current stage is the construction of the alternative left. This objective is today possible precisely because of the growth of the social movements; the alternative left then can only be built by an interaction with and in liaison with the movements. It is not about putting together the fragments of an old political layer, but of bringing together, at the level of thought, an alternative politics and practice, from experiences of parties, associations and movements, that is of various forms of aggregation.

That is why we launch the invitation to open a constituent phase of the alternative left, by the construction of a network of stable relationships between multiple and autonomous subjects. It is a task that is all the more urgent in that the constituent phase of the movements is under way for some time. It is necessary to project different and contemporary levels of initiative, going from that of intervention in society to that of political action and theoretical reflection which will contribute to the transformation of our current scientific committee. The construction of the alternative left is a task which imposes itself already, including at a European level, where it is realistic, not just necessary, to fix concretely, on the basis of the experience of the European United Left, the objective of the construction of a new European political subject bringing together, in their political and organisational diversity, the communist and alternative forces. It is in this framework that the strengthening and innovation of the party should progress. This congress confides to us an important task: to innovate our way of thought, to act, to ensure a broader opening to society and the movements within it. (...)

We must change our modes of functioning, overcome hierarchical conceptions and practices of separation, we must privilege political initiative in relation to a simple action of propaganda or reaffirmation of identity, we must privilege in our ranks the culture of knowing how to do things rather than how to say things.