From the PCI to the PDS

Livio Maitan

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 15 (48pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

In 1991 the Italian Communist Party completed its long process of social-democratization. For many years the PCI was proud of its 'communist identity' and even of its 'diversity' in the context of the national political system and the European left. For several decades it was not only the main force of the Italian workers' movement but also the biggest Communist party in the capitalist West. But at its last congress in Rimini it abandoned its historic name and took that of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). At the end of such an itinerary a balance sheet is necessary. In From the PCI to the PDS, Livio Maitan looks at some key moments in PCI history and underlines the problems and contradictions that prepared the conditions for its final turn.

Livio Maitan, born in Venice in 1923, has been active in the ltalian workers' movement since the beginning of the Second World War. A national organizer of the Socialist Youth at the Liberation, he broke with social democracy in 1947. Since 1991 he has been in the leadership of the Party of Communist Refoundation. He has taught sociology at the University of Rome and translated and introduced almost all the ltalian editions of Trotsky's writings. His works in English include Party, Army and Masses in China (1976).

Do the Workers Have a Country?

José Iriarte 'Bikila'

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 16 (48pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

Marxism has contributed much to the understanding of the national question: its class dynamics, its relationship to internationalism, its political importance and the importance of the slogan of self-determination. Lenin's role in this was particularly significant. But José Iriarte 'Bikila' thinks we should also take other theorists into account, like the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer and the Irish socialist and patriot James Connolly. Above all, it is important to re-examine a number of issues in the light of contemporary experience. In what circumstances can there be a fusion of Marxist and nationalist traditions? What is the particularity of an oppressed nation in advanced capitalist Europe? Should the borders of a radical left party necessarily be the same as those of the existing states? What is the present significance of independence?

José lriarte 'Bikila' was born in 1945. His thinking on the national question has drawn on his personal involvement and intimate knowledge of the struggle of the Basque people. In 1964 he joined the ranks of the pro-independence organization ETA, leaving in 1973 as part of a current that took part in a regroupment of the radical left. In 1991 he helped found the independent Basque revolutionary organization Zutik.

October 1917: Coup d'Etat or Social Revolution?

Ernest Mandel

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 17/18 (64pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

Although it is no longer 'fashionable' to refer to it, the Russian Revolution remains a major experience of the twentieth century. Knowledge of it is indispensable to those who wish to understand the contemporary world, or to see clearly how to proceed in the fight for socialism. In October 1917: Coup d'Etat or Social Revolution? Ernest Mandel sets out to analyze it in a polemical and critical essay. Polemical, because today this revolution is the target of such a strong campaign of ideological denigration that one of the formative experiences of the past century has become incomprehensible. Mandel, writing as both a historian and an activist, comes back to the most essential question: was October 1917 a totalitarian coup d'état or a socially liberating uprising? Critical, because there is nothing less useful than an apologetic reading of history. While vigorously reasserting the legitimacy of the Russian Revolution, Ernest Mandel also sets out to identify the critical mistakes that the Bolshevik leadership made in the period 1917-21. This is a valuable contribution to the discussion of the lessons to be learnt from the history of Bolshevism.

Ernest Mandel was active in the revolutionary socialist movement from the late 1930s until his death in 1995, and participated in the struggle against the Nazi occupation of Belgium. Successively editor of La Gauche, a member of the economic studies commission of the General Confederation of Labour of Belgium, and a leading figure of the independent radical left, he taught at the Free University of Brussels. He was the author of many books, including Marxist Economic Theory, The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, Late Capitalism and Long Waves of Capitalist Development, as well as IIRE Notebook no. 1, The Place of Marxism in History.

The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia - An Overview

Catherine Samary

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 19/20 (60pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia is a comprehensive report on the Yugoslav tragedy: a historical overview; a multi-disciplinary social study; an invitation to collective reflection; and a call for solidarity with those working for peace with justice for all the ex-Yugoslav communities. Author Catherine Samary shows the interaction of national and international, socio-economic and political, past and present factors at work. She concludes that the war could have been avoided. She gives a multi-causal explanation, dissecting the various one-sided accounts being put forward and assigning responsibility to several actors. Going back in time, she looks at the history of the Yugoslav revolution and the Yugoslav Communists' conflict with Stalin. She draws a balance sheet of the Titoist regime, the experience of self-management, and the sharp turn toward the market that took place in the 1980s. Finally, she considers what national self-determination means today. Including Bosnian documents, a glossary, a bibliography, peace groups' addresses in ex-Yugoslavia and a list of helpful journals, this Notebook is an indispensable tool both for scholars seeking to draw the lessons of a half-century of Yugoslav history and for people working for lasting peace in the region.

Catherine Samary is an economist, a research associate at the Institut du Monde Soviétique et d'Europe Centrale et Orientale (IMSECO), and a lecturer at the University of Paris-IX, Dauphine. She has studied Yugoslavia for many years and made a number of trips there. Among her many studies on the country are: her doctoral thesis at the University of Nanterre (1986); a book, Le Marché Contre L'Autogestion: L'Expérience Yougoslave (1988); and numerous articles published in a range of periodicals, including several in Le Monde Diplomatique. An IIRE Fellow, Samary is also the author of Notebook no. 7/8, Plan, Market and Democracy (1988). Besides her studies on Yugoslavia, she does ongoing research on the (ex-)Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and theoretical and historical questions concerning transitional economies and societies.