International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Partito d'Unitá Proletaria (Proletarian Unity Party, PdUP) and Democrazia Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy, DP) were two party organizations created in the 1970s in Italy as part of the process of transforming Italian new left movements into political organizations that sought to create a stable political space in the political system. In 1975, Democrazia Proletaria was the name originally given to an electoral alliance that aligned the organizations Avanguardia Operaia (Workers' Vanguard, AO) and Partito di Unità Proletaria per il Comunismo (Proletarian Unity Party for Communism), with support from Lotta Continua and other Italian new left groups. In the 1976 general elections, the alliance won 1.5 percent of the electoral vote and elected six deputies, the first members of the new left to hold seats in the Italian parliament. The electoral showing was diminished by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) competition for votes from the far left and internecine political dissension among organizations in the coalition. The alliance was comprised of AO, a political current rooted in the factories of northern Italy that split from Trotskyism and sponsored rank-and-file worker committees ( comitati unitari di base ); PdUP, the result of a merger of the socialist left (Partito Socialista Italiano di Unitá Proletaria, PSIUP) led by Vittorio Foa, a Catholic leftist; Movimento Politico dei ... log in or subscribe to read full text