Proletarian Unity Party (Italy)

Proletarian Unity Party
Partito di Unità Proletaria
Founded 1972
Dissolved 1984
Merged into Italian Communist Party (PCI)
Ideology Communism
Socialism

The Proletarian Unity Party (Italian: Partito di Unità Proletaria, PdUP) was a political party in Italy.

Origins

The PdUP was founded in the November 1972 by minority factions of two parties, the socialist Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP), led by Vittorio Foa, and Silvano Miniati, and the Catholic left Political Movement of Labourers (MPL), led by Giovanni Russo Spena and Domenico Jervolino, who had opposed the merge into the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Its symbol was the hammer and sickle over the world.

In 1974 these members were joined by the group of Il Manifesto and by the Autonomist Student Movemenet led by Mario Capanna, forming the Proletarian Unity Party for Communism (in Italian called Partito di Unità Popolare per il Comunismo). The founding congress was held on January 29, 1976. Main leaders of the various currents were Miniati, Foa, Capanna (far left-oriented), Rossana Rossanda and Lucio Magri - leaning for collaboration with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italian General Confederation of Labour) - and Luigi Pintor. Magri was elected as the group's first national secretary.

During the 1976 general elections, PdUP ran together with Proletarian Democracy, gaining 3 seats in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Magri, Eliseo Milani and Luciana Castellina) elected out of the coalition's 9.

Splinter group

In January 1977, the Manifesto and former-PSIUP affiliates left the party due to the failure in creating an all-left government. On February 20, 1977 the left-wing minority tendency broke away to join Proletarian Democracy in its founding process as organized party.

The Magri's majority absorbed for a while the Avanguardia Operaia movement, which, however, separated in the Congress held at Viareggio the following year. During its third congress (Rome, 1981), the party was joined by the Movimento Lavoratori per il Socialismo, led by Luca Cafiero.

Absorption into the PCI and later events

After the elections of 1983 PdUP associated its lists to PCI, to which it had become closer after the PCI secretary Enrico Berlinguer had abandoned the Historic Compromise (a project for a PCI-Christian Democracy alliance).

On November 25, 1984 the Proletarian Unity Party merged into PCI. When, in 1991, Achille Occhetto started the process of transformation of PCI into the Social-Democratic oriented Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), some former PdUP members declared their opposition to the move, and subsequently joined the Communist Refoundation Party. After the latter withdrew from the Centre-left Lamberto Dini government in 1995, many former PdUP members left the party to create the Movement of Unitarian Communists, which later was absorbed into PDS' heir, the Democrats of the Left.

Notable member

Election results

Italian Parliament

Chamber of Deputies
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1979 502,247 (#9) 1.4
6 / 630
–
Vittorio Foa

European Parliament

European Parliament
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1979 406,656 (#9) 1.2
1 / 81
–
Vittorio Foa

References

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