Introduction

Sinistra Critica declares that the experience in the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) is over, and is beginning the construction of a new political project. SC is changing into a movement and is proposing the initial phase of constructing an anti-capitalist coalition to the left of Arcobaleno (the Rainbow Coalition). It will make the commitment within the movement, from next Saturday at Vicenza, of continuing its work in the Pact against Insecurity, in the feminist movement, the LGBT movement, for the ecological and anti-racist struggles. A recruitment campaign and fund drive will start in January, with the aim of holding our first national mobilisation in the spring.

Final Resolution of first National Conference

The first national conference of Sinistra Critica approves the introductory speech and in particular:

1) declares that the experience is over, and announces the initiation of a new political project. This is a separation resulting from the observation that two different projects are taking different roads: on the one hand, Rifondazione

is in effect ending its own history, hijacking the conference of its own militants, in order to give life to a new political subject, with a new identity, timidly reformist and with a vocation of being in government; on the other, Sinistra Critica proposes to continue building a class left, anti-capitalist, oppositional, centred on the movements and ready to re-appropriate the theoretical and practical space for a modern revolutionary left now made vacant by Rifondazione. A left in opposition to the PD (Democratic Party), and indeed, today, in opposition to the Prodi government.

2) In the next few days the militants and leaders of SC will leave the PRC and its representatives will constitute autonomous groups in the Chamber of Deputies; the group in the Senate has already been formed. This decision will be conveyed to the PRC nationally by way of an open letter, and the same letter will be presented to local organisations; at a provincial level we will organise meetings in order to explain this decision to the members of the PRC.

3) Sinistra Critica is not a party but a movement, a political subject orientated towards the mass movement. It will form local groups and groups working on particular issues, and provincial co-ordination bodies. From January it will have a membership drive and a fund-drive.

4) As far as the project of constructing a political force adequate for the needs of our time, we are proposing the establishment of an anti-capitalist Constituent Assembly to the left of Arcobaleno, which will bring together the best experiences of Rifondazione and of various sectors of the movement, anti-social- partnership trade unionists, radical feminism, the ecological movement, and above all of the youth. This Constituent Assembly represents a real and promising project, capable of bringing to life in the here and now, even if in exemplary or partial form, a class and anti-capitalist Coalition of the Left, based on at least three reference points:

a. the link with the social movements and their dynamics and objectives;

b. providing an alternative to that of the right while maintaining independence from centre-left governments and consequently also opposition to the Democratic Party;

c. independence in political work from the institutions, not however excluding the electoral arena and the tools needed there, including the use of the symbols of the hammer and sickle, which has today been abandoned yet again.

5) To have a real life the anti-capitalist Constituent Assembly must be linked to the paths taken by the movement, so in the short-term Sinistra Critica commits itself to:

a) the widest possible participation in the Vicenza demonstration and to the struggle against the US base but also to the reconstruction of a general movement starting from the Pact signed on 25 November and calling another day of mobilisation on 26 January;

b) developing and articulating the Pact against Insecurity made after the strike of 9 November which will have to be capable of intervening in such a way as to organise a real existence beyond the level of mere, though necessary, demonstrations;

c) giving continuity to the renewal of the feminist movement that was expressed last 24 November around the question of the fight against male violence and which will see another national meeting on 12 January;

d) sustaining and building the movement against the influence of the Vatican and against sexual discrimination and for civil rights and a secular state, based around the LGBT movement and the NoVat day on 9 February;

e) continuing the fight for common goods and defence of the environment, seeking to generalise disputes and proposing wider structures for co-ordinating and maintaining such struggles over time;

f) strengthening the anti-racist struggle and the struggle for the organisation of migrants, starting with the justified opposition to Prodi and Veltroni’s “security package”.

6) Lastly SC decides to give a mandate to the national co-ordination to prepare a national campaign around the centrality of work, social rights and defence of the environment against the logic of profit. In particular the centrality of work is underlined by the murders in Torino, which show how hard the daily battle is of capital against working people. A national campaign, then, which will be a way of building Sinistra Critica, and which will focus on a bid day of mobilisations next spring.

Unanimously approved.