This piece on what’s happening inside Rifondazione Comunista is for the next issue of Socialist Resistance. It throws up one or two knotty questions of principle and tactics.

Romano Prodi’s governing coalition was brought down following a vote in the Italian parliament in late February. Rifondazione Comunista senator and Fourth International supporter Franco Turigliatto abstained in a vote to continue funding Italian troops in Afghanistan. According to the rules of Italian parliamentary procedure an abstention is counted as a vote against a motion.

Rifondazione Comunista has made a sharp turn to the right so that in can stay in Romano Prodi’s governing coalition. The party voted to keep Italian troops in Afghanistan. It also supported the expansion of the United States military base in Vicenza a few days after many of its members had participated in a large demonstration against the same base. Party leader Bertinotti has indicated that he will support a series of government reforms of the welfare and pension system. The finance minister says he wants new arrangements that will encourage insecure, flexible working and he wants to raise the age at which workers receive their pension. The Berlusconi government had backed off from similar neo-liberal reforms.

At the heart of the opposition to this move to the right were supporters of Sinistra Critica, in particular Franco Turigliatto. Sinistra Critica describe themselves as association of those “who want to create an alternative and anti-capitalist left for the radical transformation of society” and explain on their website that many of them have held key positions both in Rifondazione Comunista and in the mass movements. They supported a break with the Prodi government and engaging actively with the struggles and social movements. They admit that many, but by no means all of them, are supporters of the Italian Fourth International group Bandiera Rossa.

Turigliatto controversially voted to allow the government to fund the Italian intervention in Afghanistan a few months ago. He said that he would only do it once and that the next time he would vote against the government. According to the rules of the Italian parliament war credits have to be renewed every six months.

When Prodi put the issue of funding the troops in Afghanistan on this occasion it was against a context of long planned big mobilizations against American bases. This made a decision not to support the administration more comprehensible both inside and outside the party. For reason that have not been made clear Turigliatto has declared that he intends to resign as a senator. This looks like a serious tactical error since the Senate gives a useful platform for his politics. Nevertheless the party leadership announced that his vote was incompatible with his continued membership and expelled him.

Sinistra Critica have declared that they intend to function as an organized group inside the party. They intend to oppose the right-leaning decisions of the last congress by taking part in the struggles of the social movements and building links with the international ant-capitalist movement. In effect they are proposing building a class struggle opposition to neo-liberalism. Such a project will quickly bring them into conflict with Rifondazione Comunista’s leadership, a leadership which increasingly sees its role as being to “limit the damage” of the Prodi government. In a public statement they say that they will disobey “actively and en masse…by not following the line of unconditional support to the government but practising another, the social opposition line.”

Rifondazione Comunista’s current development is a big setback for the European anti-capitalist left. Sinistra Critica may be expelled as a current. It acknowledges that it is about to enter into a very difficult period in which the class struggle left in Italy will have to be reconstituted. But from the wreckage of Rifondazione Comunista has emerged a group of socialists who remain committed to what they describe as “anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, internationalist and revolutionary polititics”.