The Troubled Relations between
the Communist Workers Party (POC)
and the Fourth International (1946–48)

THE RECONSTRUCTION of a Trotskyist organisation in Italy in 1948–49 was a predictable event. As a matter of fact, whilst expelling the Partito Operaio Comunista (POC: Communist Workers Party) from the Fourth International, the Second World Congress of April 1948 had called on ‘all comrades of the POC to gather around the magazine which is shortly to appear, with the object of building a genuine Trotskyist organisation in Italy’, and had instructed the International Secretariat to carry on ‘the work of revolutionary regroupment in Italy ... which been entrusted [to the IS] by the IEC [International Executive Committee] at its October 1947 meeting’. [1]

In fact, from the summer of 1947 the possibility of a break between the Fourth International and its Italian section – the POC – began to appear increasingly likely. Born in February 1945 out of an unprincipled fusion between on the one hand the Centro Nazionale Provvisorio per la costruzione del Partito Comunista Internazionalista (IV Internazionale), led by Nicola Di Bartolomeo (Fosco), and on the other hand the Apulian Federation of the Italian Communist Party headed by Romeo Mangano, the POC suffered from the start from a chronic political-organisational crisis due to the principled, tactical and organisational differences existing between the two ‘souls’ of the party, that is, the Trotskyist minority and the Apulian majority, which adhered to a Bordigist-type position. [2]

The conflict between these two tendencies became steadily sharper during 1946, whilst the International Secretariat planned to send a delegate of its own to Italy [3] in order to achieve ‘not political conciliation, which was already deemed impossible, but merely an organisational “modus vivendi” which would make it possible to integrate the Apulian Federation into real leadership work in order to create the necessary conditions for a quicker organisational expansion’. [4] That delegate, Jérôme (a pseudonym for Michel Raptis, better known under the name of Pablo), attended a session of the POC’s Political Bureau in July 1946, during which, far from seeking to start a process of political clarification, he suggested the adoption of a series of organisational measures, and the recognition of the necessity for the party to extend its influence in northern Italy. Some time later, however, the POC’s leadership – which had been based in Naples since the party’s inception, and which was composed of three members of the Trotskyist minority – was weakened by the resignation ‘for personal reasons’ of Leonardo Iannaccone in August 1946. Thus the burden of leading the Italian section fell upon the shoulders of just two comrades – Bruno Nardini and Libero Villone – and the whole organisational plan agreed upon with the International Secretariat representative became inoperative.

The Second IEC Plenum in October 1946, which was attended by Mangano and Nardini, dealt with the question of the POC. In his report on the various sections of the International, Gabriel (another pseudonym for Raptis-Pablo) mentioned the problems of the Italian section almost incidentally, stating that ‘there are two tendencies, one of them wavering towards Bordigism’. [5] But the leading members of the Fourth International once more decided on merely administrative-organisational solutions. The resolution on the Italian question that was moved jointly by the International Secretariat and the two Italian delegates at the Plenum – and which the plenum passed – ordered Mangano to obey the discipline of the POC and the Fourth International, called both for the cooption of Mangano himself onto the Italian section’s Political Bureau as the third member of that body (together with Nardini and Villone) and for his appointment as the General Secretary of the party, and decided that the POC leadership should move to Milan.

The transfer of these three Political Bureau members to Milan, which was carried out in about December 1946, was nevertheless rather unhappy. According to Mangano’s testimony:

‘During the very first days there was Villone’s defection ... The work fell on Nardini and I. Starting from January [1947] ... we realised that it was impossible ... I, as the representative of the vast majority of the party, withdrew from the Political Bureau, left the General Secretariat to Nardini, and went back to Foggia ... Comrade Nardini ... refused that post and declared himself unqualified. Because of my great attachment to the party and the Fourth International, I remained in Milan as the party’s General Secretary.’ [6]

In the face of this real ‘crisis of leadership’, which exacerbated all the other difficulties, the POC was on the brink of ceasing any type of activity. Its paper, IV Internazionale, which used to be printed in Rome, ceased publication in January 1947, and resumed four months later in Foggia, after the coup by which Mangano, taking advantage of the organisational chaos and the demoralisation of the Trotskyist leading members of the POC, seized the leadership of the Italian section. This coup took place at a ‘national conference’ of the POC which had been called by Mangano, and was held in Naples on 2 March 1947, in spite of the protest of the International Secretariat against its improvised character. The conference rejected the decisions of the Second IEC Plenum, and decided to move the leadership to Foggia, that is, under the direct control of the Apulians. Here is how Mangano described this conference at the Third IEC Plenum in late March 1947:

‘The conference was held, a wonderful conference which all sections of the International should envy us for the interventions of the delegates, for the discussion... and for the liquidation of the bridgeheads of the International Secretariat [Nardini and Villone]. And in all this, I beg you to believe me, no rôle whatsoever was played by the majority and by myself, since at that very conference ... I had declared that I intended to withdraw from the post of party Secretary, and that I would not be unhappy if this post be given to comrade Nardini. Comrade Nardini declared that he wanted to go back to France, that he was tired, and felt harassed by the work in Italy. And comrade Villone stated that he was withdrawing because of health reasons.’ [7]

The conference on 2 March adopted three basic if extremely confused documents which had already been endorsed by the Apulian regional congress of the POC held on 14 April 1946 in Foggia: the Draft Theses on the Fourth International, the Draft Theses on the Italian and World Situation, and the Draft Theses on the POC and the Trade Unions. [8] In each of these texts, the majority of the Italian section revealed itself as being in disagreement with some basic elements of Trotskyist policy. In the first document they denounced the tactics ‘of the united front and the Popular Front [sic] defined by the Third Congress of the Communist International’ as ‘counter-revolutionary’, arguing that only the first two Comintern congresses were valid. The second document rejected the Trotskyist characterisation of Stalin’s USSR as a degenerated workers’ state, and defined it as an ‘orthodox bourgeois state’; it mechanically bound the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat to the changes of orientation of the bourgeoisie; it completely excluded the possibility that any antagonism could arise between the ‘rightist forces’ and the ‘ostensibly leftist’ ones, and denied that any difference existed between bourgeois democracy and Fascism. The third document proclaimed that the unions – not the party – were ‘the organised vanguard of the class of workers and peasants’, whereas the party was considered as a mere ‘ideological component’ of the class, and it traced the origins of the CGIL’s submission to the bourgeois state from the moment in which that union was legally recognised by the state, arguing that, as long as such a recognition did not take place, the POC would fight to bring the CGIL back ‘onto the terrain of the class struggle’.

That same conference also adopted a long series of motions, [9] the first one of which openly contradicted point one of the theses on the Fourth International – ‘The Fourth Communist International is the party, and therefore the revolutionary leadership, of the world proletariat’ – arguing on the contrary that ‘the Apulian federation ... reaffirms its unconditional confidence in the Fourth International, whilst not considering it today as the actual revolutionary leadership of the world proletariat ... as far as its ideology, strategy and tactics are concerned’.

The conference elected an 11-member Central Committee and a new, three-member Political Bureau. Both leading bodies were formed entirely by representatives of the old Apulian federation, and were led by Mangano. The Trotskyists were thus completely eliminated from the party leadership. But they acquiesced to this exclusion. As Nardini was to comment some months later:

‘In the last analysis the clarification did not take place around political differences, but through the successive self-removal of the comrades who represented the Trotskyist tendency within the party; without any political discussion, it was a real forced march that delivered the party into the hands of the present leadership.’ [10]

On the other hand, the Second World Congress stated in 1948 that the Italian Trotskyists were responsible for the outcome of the POC conference, since they had ‘surrendered to a moment of discouragement’. [11]

The situation of the Italian section was discussed again at the Third IEC Plenum late in March 1947, during which Mangano delivered the above-mentioned histrionic report, and, of course, did not fail to repeat his oath of loyalty to the Fourth International. Following this discussion on the Italian section, [12] the IEC unanimously adopted a short resolution which instructed the International Secretariat ‘to reorient the work of the section along the lines discussed during the Plenum of October 1946’, and ‘to follow closely and aid politically the preparation for the coming congress’ of the POC. [13]

The worsening of relations between the Fourth International and the POC is revealed by the letters exchanged between the Italian Political Bureau and the International Secretariat in June and July 1947. On 23 June the International Secretariat informed the POC that an International Secretariat representative would go to Italy in July, and asked for a meeting of the POC Central Committee to be called to discuss the situation of the party, its relations with the International, and the preparation of the first congress of the Italian section. [14] After receiving this letter, Mangano organised a meeting of the Political Bureau on 27 June, during which he claimed that the International Secretariat letter ‘is part of a plan of struggle... against our party’. [15] On that same day he drafted a letter in which he stated:

‘We believe that, until the world congress is held, one cannot speak about a single orientation of the Fourth International; it is only after that congress that all sections should orient according to the line that will be laid down by the congress itself.

‘Whilst the Italian section accepts almost unanimously theoretical and tactical positions that are at odds with those upheld by the International Secretariat majority, this does not mean that a number of groups having the same positions as ourselves do not exist in the International.

‘Consequently, the line of our party must be considered for what it is until the world congress. After the congress there will be the strictest discipline.

‘Our party cannot tolerate organic factions within the party, especially if they are encouraged by you. Our party does not tolerate your interference in its organisational functioning.

‘Our party is quite convinced that you are organising factional work within all sections of the International, and that only in Italy will this be impossible for you.’ [16]

The tone of this letter gives no grounds for doubt. Mangano and the POC majority were acting in two directions: on the national level, towards the expulsion of the Trotskyist ‘organic faction’ that was being ‘encouraged’ by the International Secretariat; on the international level, towards a fight against the leadership and the programme of the Fourth International at the coming world congress, seeking to set up an alliance with all the national factions which stood opposed to the majority line. [17]

Relations had thus already reached rock bottom, and a collision could not be avoided. It was not by chance that the International Secretariat’s delegate Germain (a pseudonym for Ernest Mandel), who was only able to reach Italy in August 1947, was to devote but one single day out of 15 of his stay in Italy to discuss with the POC’s leaders – without having any illusions that he could redress the situation.

In the March of that year, however, something occurred to change the Italian perspectives of the Fourth International. Livio Maitan, the 24 year old leader of the Italian Federazione Giovanile Socialista (FGS: Socialist Youth Federation), which sided with the Saragat-led Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (Socialist Party of the Italian Workers), travelled to Paris and established contacts with some Trotskyist leaders, including Mandel. These contacts promised to be so fruitful that the International Secretariat representative took advantage of his trip to Italy to tighten them further and to recruit Maitan and some other FGS leaders to the International. Mandel himself informed Mangano about what was in fact the main purpose of his trip. This caused Mangano to write with some disappointment that:

‘The IS has sent a delegate to Italy, comrade Germain, in order to study “at first hand” the situation of our party. Comrade Germain ... presented himself before the party’s leading bodies for just one single day, and only for seven hours, justifying his long stay in Italy away from the party leadership with a certain, mysterious work he had to carry out, outside the party and with people foreign to the party in the Bordigist right wing and the Saragatite left wing. Germain declared that he would frequently come back to Italy to complete his mysterious work ...’ [18]

In fact, over the following months, Mandel returned to Italy at least once, in November 1947. However, on the other hand, the International Secretariat had not yet definitely broken with the POC, which continued to be formally but not in any meaningful way the Italian section of the Fourth International. The Fourth IEC Plenum, held in September 1947, confronted this problem with a lengthy document, a Resolution on the Italian Situation and the POC. [19] This document, after emphasising the POC’s inability to ‘translate into life the Trotskyist programme in Italy as well as establishing a serious pole of attraction for the various currents of radicalisation which are crystallising in the traditional organisations’, and after listing the political differences existing between the Fourth International and its Italian section in detail, concluded, firstly, that the political and organisational conceptions of the POC were fundamentally opposed to the Trotskyist programme; secondly, that a genuine revolutionary party of the Italian proletariat did not exist, and was still to be built; thirdly, that the POC’s leadership should postpone the date of the first party congress to mid-November to enable the Fourth International to submit its programmatic documents and its political line for Italy for pre-conference discussion; and fourthly, that the International Secretariat must intervene at the POC’s congress to defend the positions of the International, to regroup as many POC members as possible on that basis, and to warn the POC that the adoption of the line championed by its leaders would force the IEC and the world congress to re-examine the question of the POC’s affiliation to the Fourth International.

The POC was unable to send delegates of its own to this IEC Plenum because of financial problems. But this time, too, Mangano did not refrain from further exacerbating the tone of the fight through his above mentioned letter dated 3 September, which gave a new, long reprimand to the International Secretariat, where he went so far as to ask for the latter’s resignation, and proposed ‘the candidature of our party for the leadership of the International’!

It was therefore during the summer of 1947 that the leading bodies of the Fourth International eventually began to stress the more political facets of the continuing fight. The decisions of the Fourth IEC Plenum were indeed preceded by a remarkable work of political elaboration, which was carried out by Nardini and Raptis-Pablo in June-July, and which culminated in the drafting of a series of documents on the basis of which a battle against the Italian section’s majority should be waged in order to try and win as many of its members as possible to the Fourth International’s programme. So in these months Nardini and Raptis-Pablo wrote the Draft Action Programme for Italy. [20] Pablo also drafted a long introduction to this document, [21] whereas Nardini prepared a draft resolution entitled The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the POC [22] and a document entitled The Building of the Party in Italy and Its Relations with the International. [23] All these documents were subsequently published by the International Secretariat, together with the letters exchanged between the International Secretariat and the POC’s leadership in that period, in a special Italian-language bulletin, [24] in preparation for the first congress of the POC which had been scheduled for 16-17 November 1947.

The International Secretariat delegate who attended this congress warned the participants that if the POC persevered in its hostile attitude toward the positions of the Fourth International it would put in question the Italian party’s affiliation to the Trotskyist International, and he asked the congress for a formal commitment to obey the political and organisational discipline of the International. Mangano called on the participants to vote in favour of the proposals and the documents presented by the International Secretariat and the Trotskyist minority of the party, and pledged himself to apply and defend publicly the political positions of the Fourth International. Faced with such a patent about-face, the International Secretariat representative asked him ‘whether he felt himself politically and morally able’ to defend a policy with which he was in disagreement, but the Apulian leader replied in the affirmative. [25]

As a matter of fact, however, on the very morrow of the congress, the POC continued to carry on its old policy. Then the International Secretariat sent the leadership and members of the Italian section an ‘open letter of protest’, but Mangano went on breaking ‘in the most cynical way the agreements that had been reached ... and the resolutions that had been solemnly adopted’ at the first congress of the POC. In addition to that, he ‘did not hesitate to declare openly at a Central Committee meeting held in February 1948 that in the struggle against the International, all means were permissible, and that he had urged his comrades to vote for the [International Secretariat’s] resolution ... in order to mislead the IS’. Moreover, the party majority had sabotaged the work of revolutionary regroupment within the FGS initiated in Italy by the International Secretariat by publishing in the POC’s paper ‘a series of articles... that can only be interpreted as real provocations’. [26] In fact, precisely in that period the POC’s organ IV Internazionale carried several articles which mentioned the names of the ‘young Saragatites’ who, after joining the Fourth International, were carrying on ‘underground’ recruiting work inside the FGS, and later inside the Movimento Socialista di Unità Proletaria (MSUP: Socialist Movement for Proletarian Unity), with the aim of winning a majority of the members of these organisations to the programme of the Fourth International.

Such recruiting was part of the activity of revolutionary regroupment that had been started under the leadership of the International Secretariat since the first half of 1947. Sanctioning a definite break with the POC, the Second World Congress foresaw the ‘Italian work’ of the Fourth International within that framework. The magazine 4^a Internazionale, launched in July 1948, was the landmark around which the reconstruction of a Trotskyist organisation in Italy started. And towards the end of that year nearly all the leaders and most of the members of the MSUP joined the International. Thus it was precisely those ‘young Saragatites’, whom Mangano had so much scorned, who united with a few ‘survivors’ of the POC minority and with other activists coming from various leftist groupings, to form the core of the new Italian Trotskyist organisation.

Notes

1. Resolution on the Partito Operaio Comunista (POC) of Italy. Adopted by the Second World Congress, Fourth International, Volume 9, no. 6, August 1948, p. 190. The IEC meeting to which this resolution refers actually took place in September, not October, 1947.

2. On the origins of the POC see Paolo Casciola, 1943–1945: Origini del Partito Operaio Comunista’, in Appunti di storia del trotskysmo italiano (1930–1945), Quaderni del Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Serie: Studi e ricerche, no. 1, May 1986, pp. 44–8, and Paolo Casciola, Trotskyism and the Revolution in Italy (1943–44), above, pp. 159–72.

3. The sending of an International Secretariat delegate to Italy, first asked for by Bruno Nardini during his trip to Paris in October 1945, was repeatedly postponed between November 1945 and the summer of 1946. It eventually took place in July–August 1947 (Minutes of the International Secretariat meetings of 29 October 1945, 12 November 1945, 30 January 1946, 16 April 1946 and 22 June 1946). In the same period the International Secretariat thought of sending a reliable comrade to Italy to act as the International Secretariat’s representative in the POC’s leadership. They suggested the name of a member of the British section, Charlie Van Gelderen, who had taken part with Nicola Di Bartolomeo in the first discussion with the Apulian Federation in 1944, but for whatever reason this did not materialise (Minutes of the International Secretariat meetings of 4 July 1946, 4 September 1946 and 2 October 1946).

4. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) et la IVè Internationale (Rapport présenté au Congrès Mondial), Quatrième Internationale, Volume 6, nos. 3–4–5, March–May 1948, p. 106.

5. Gabriel [Michel Raptis], Rapport sur les sections (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

6. Question italienne. Rapport de Mangano (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

7. Ibid..

8. Schéma des thèses sur la IVè Internationale, Schéma des thèses sur la situation italienne et internationale, and Projet des thèses sur le POC et les syndicats (typescripts).

9. Motions, ordres du jour, résolutions votées à la première conférence du POC (typescripts).

10. Bruno [Nardini], La construction du parti en Italie et les rapports avec l’Internationale (undated), Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat International, no. 17, August 1947, p. 22.

11. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) ..., op. cit., p107.

12. The discussion was introduced by Michel Raptis-Pablo. See Question italienne. Rapport de Jérôme (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

13. Resolution on the Italian Section, Third IEC Plenum, March 1947: Record of resolutions, motions, etc., p. 11.

14. Lettre du SI du 23 juin, Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat International, no. 17, p. 17.

15. Procès-verbal du BP (27 June 1947), ibid., p. 18.

16. Lettre du BP du POC du 27 juin, ibid. (original emphasis).

17. This ‘manoeuvrist’ approach to the Fourth International was confirmed in 1978 by Mangano himself: ‘We did not merge with the Trotskyists, but thought it useful to go along with the Trotskyists because of the opportunities that an international organisation offered us.’ (Quoted by Arturo Peregalli in L’altra Resistenza. Il PCI e le Opposizioni di sinistra in Italia 1943–1945 in Quaderni del Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Serie Studi e ricerche, no. 5, November 1987, p. 93, n10. On Mangano’s awkward attempts to set up an unprincipled alliance with several national minority factions of the Fourth International, see for example his exchange with the British Left Fraction in 1946–48. In a letter sent by Mangano to the leaderships of the French, Belgian, British and Swiss sections on 7 June 1948, the POC leader – who had been expelled from the Fourth International – declared that his party ‘is of the opinion that it would be advantageous to establish personal contact between your leaderships and the delegates of the POC’, and asked the addressees to meet the expenses of a trip of POC delegates to their respective countries; further on the letter states: ‘The POC has become, alas, the black sheep of the IV [International], and cde M [Mangano] has been described as the chief disrupter of the International. This is all false.’ Subsequently, on 23 July 1948, the Apulian leader addressed the Left Fraction, arguing:

‘... we were and are of the opinion that we should not have been denied membership of the International. You know the position of our party, and its outlook tactically and strategically. We stand for the most absolute political intransigence (no united front); we are opposed to the defence of the USSR ... [which should be] regarded as being on the same plane as the imperialist states. We regard the Stalinist parties to be the left wing in the capitalist line-up, that is, bourgeois. We consider that the Fourth International has “yet to be constructed”, and therefore that the organisation “artificially” formed by Trotsky is a parody of a revolutionary International. In short, we accept only the first two congresses of the Third International. We are now organising an international conference of the Left throughout the world. Will your fraction take part?’ (Original emphasis)

18. Romeo Mangano’s letter, To the Members of the International Executive Committee, Foggia, 3 September 1947. This letter is also signed by two other members of the POC PB: Rosa Gaudino and Renato Vassari.

19. Resolution on the Italian Situation and the POC, Resolutions and Motions of the Fourth Plenum of the IEC, September 1947, pp. 19–23. There is also a French version of the same document entitled Résolution du plénum du CEI. La situation italienne et le POC, which differs from the English one.

20. [Michel Raptis-Pablo and Bruno Nardini], Projet d’un programme d’action pour l’Italie (July 1947), Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat Internationale, no. 17, p. 25–9.

21. Pablo [Michel Raptis], Pour une politique trotskyste en Italie (June 1947?), ibid., pp. 23–5.

22. Bruno [Nardini], La situation italienne et les tâches du POC (July 1947), ibid., pp. 19–21.

23. Bruno [Nardini], La construction du parti en Italie ..., op. cit.

24. Bollettino Interno del Segretariato Internazionale (Supplemento per l’Italia), September 1947.

25. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) ..., op. cit., p. 108.

26. Ibid.