Italian communists gathered in the capital city of Rome for the Second National Congress of the Communist Party, Italy (PC).

ICP, 23 January 2017

Communist Party, Italy (PC) was founded in 2009 with the aim to be a leading Marxist-Leninist organisation of the peninsula and since then has defined itself with the ideas of Italian partisan and communist leader Pietro Secchia. On Sunday 22nd January, Italian communists gathered in the capital city of Rome for the Second National Congress of the Communist Party, Italy (PC).

The congress was attended by hundreds of Italian communists, along with the representatives of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Workers’ Communist Party of Russia-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (RKRP-KPSS) and the Communist Party of Albania (PKS) as well as official delegations from the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba, the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Communist Youth Front (Fronte della Gioventù Comunista). The congress thus opened with the commemoration of Fidel Castro, the founder and leader of the Cuban Revolution who passed away a couple of months ago, and the victims of the recent series of earthquakes in Central Italy.

In his speech, the First Secretary (Segretario Nazionale) of the PC, Marco Rizzo pointed out the failures of the opportunist “left” across Europe, of which SYRIZA had already become an epitome. He also criticised the alliances forged by “eurocommunists” in Italy, as well as the “so-called anti-system forces” such as comedian Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star Movement” and reactionary rightists such as Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni whose stance is “merely fluff, just to get a few more votes”. His criticism was picked up by the delegation of the KKE, who emphasised that the shortcomings of the “left-wing forces” that rose to power in Greece, Cyprus and Portugal showed that “the bourgeois state can’t be dismantled by electing a supposedly left-wing government in a capitalist framework” and that “such forces have thus executed policies which only served to save the capitalist system”.

Notably, both the present and former leaders of the Communist Youth Front spoke at the Congress. The former leader of the Communist Youth Front and member of the Central Committee of the PC, Alessandro Mustillo, underlined the “practical” needs of the party, whereas the current leader, Lorenzo Lang, emphasised on the cooperation between the PC and the Communist Youth Front.

The Communist Party (Turkey), along with the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE), the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ), the Union of Revolutionary Communists of France (URCF), the Pole of the Communist Rebirth in France (PRCF), the Socialist Labour Party of Croatia (SRP), the Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism (PADS) and the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP), has hailed the Congress of the PC.