Word: pci
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...prevailing situation of mismanagement and corruption, the Communist party (PCI), traditionally the extra-parliamentary opposition, presented itself as the party capable of formulating and putting into practice a program of economic austerity that is the only cure for Italy's unemployment and inflation (20 per cent, according to recent figures). During the recent election campaigns, the PCI backed a program of much-needed social reforms: new hospitals and schools, more housing, and a crackdown on the wealthy industrialists who habitually evade their income tax. Perhaps most important, the PCI offered an effective alternative to the politics of corruption and scandal...
...Communists raised one important question during the campaign: can Italy's economic and social crisis be resolved without the recognized participation and cooperation of the 34 per cent of the voting population that the Communists represent? And in fact, the PCI is and has been for some time represented on every parliamentary committee, and has played a large part in drafting and passing progressive legislation, such as the divorce bill and the proposed democratization of the armed forces. On the regional and municipal levels the PCI--who now govern all of the major cities of mainland Italy except Rome--have...
...CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS responded by polarizing the situation. The DC, throughout the campaign, flatly rejected the possibility of any coalition which involved the PCI, and the party secretary, Zaccagnini, went so far as to state that "not to confirm the DC as the indispensable governing party would severely compromise the future of democracy in Italy." This line of attack was supported by the Vatican (over the protests of leftist Catholics, including many of the clergy) and favored by the Ford administration (though not by US Embassy Press Attache William Lenderking, transferred to Bangkok because he advocated a more flexible policy with...
Trying to hold on to power at any price, the DC portrayed the left as a united and anti-democratic front, with whom there could be no "historic compromise." Ironically, the result of their attitude seems to have been a hitherto-unseen unity among the PCI and the smaller parties of the left, from the workers movement, Lotta Continua, to the intellectual leftists of the Partito Radicale, and even including the Socialists, the habitual enemies of the PCI...
...reorientation of the power base, whereby the Socialists, once to the left, are now, though reduced in power, at the center of the Italian political balance, casts the PCI as the "true heirs of Italian socialism," as Lelio Basso, one of the most respected Marxist senators in the country, sees them. Judging by their continued efforts to separate themselves from the Soviet aegis, looking at their evolving ideology of Marxism-as-practicable-in-Italy, this is a role the Communists are glad to play, though they may never officially admit...