10.04.2002

PRC factions

The Congress was divided into majority and minority groupings. Within the majority there was the dominant subdivision around general secretary Fausto Bertinotti. Bertinotti himself comes from the PSIUP (the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity), which was a left centrist split from the Socialist Party of Italy in the revolutionary climate of the 1970s. Included in the majority is the Usec group, Bandiera Rosa, which has a senator and a member on the national secretariat (this will probably be around five to seven-strong after congress). Bandiera Rosa uncritically supported the motions of the Bertinotti group, and so there is no clear way to measure its strength, though it is small. The second largest section of the majority was around comrade Claudio Grassi. This is a more 'official' communist section deriving from the old Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). There is also a tiny rightist grouping in the majority around comrade Giovanni Confalonieri. This section originates from the Proletarian Democracy of the 1970s. The leftwing minority opposition is dominated by the group around comrade Marco Ferrando called Proposta Comunista (Communist Proposal). This is a very formal Trotskyist group with a small 'international' called the International Trotskyist Organisation. There is also a small grouping around Claudio Bellotti called Falce Martello (Hammer and Sickle). This group is connected to the Socialist Appeal group of Ted Grant and Alan Woods in Britain. Majority (87% of congress delegates) Bertinotti group 59% Grassi group 26% Confalonieri group 2% Minority (13% of congress delegates) Ferrando group 11% Bellotti group 2% Groupings not submitting factional positions at congress would have been calculated as part of the dominant majority or minority group. Hence Bandiera Rosa delegates would be counted as part of the Bertinotti group. There are also a number of other small groupings in Communist Refoundation.