Philosopher and historian of political doctrines, academic and parliamentarian, president of the Gramsci Foundation, Beppe Vacca he was one of the most brilliant "organic intellectuals" of the PCI and is still today a figure of great cultural and political prominence on the Italian left, as well as one of the major scholars of Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti, on whom he has written an infinite number of books translated all over the world. Having entered the PCI in the 60s, he immediately approached the movementist tendency of Pietro Ingrao and did not fail to look sympathetically at the "heretics" of the Manifesto, and then later moved towards the Berlinguerian center of the PCI without establishing collaborative relationships with Massimo D' Alas. In the last two Pd primaries, Vacca voted first for Bersani and then for Cuperlo, but today he is more than ever convinced of Matteo Renzi's reforming value and has taken the field, with great passion, in the YES front in the referendum.
Professor Vacca, if it is not exactly a surprise, it was certainly not at all obvious that an intellectual with his cultural and political background would participate in the referendum battle by chairing the Lazio Committee for the YES to the referendum on the constitutional reform: what did push for this choice of field?
“Being a historical Togliattian and therefore a Gramscian, as such I see in the current Pd the expression of the only significant political project of the Second Republic with an eye always projected on the political reading of the country. A project that was born from the attempt to integrate the two core cultures of the Republic, the Catholic-democratic and the Togliattian, aiming to be a fundamental force of Italian democracy and of the European process. This is why I have always interpreted and lived the Democratic Party in a constitutional key as heir to the best history of the Olive Tree and as a restorative subject of the political framework of the State, according to the figures of Gramscian politics and democratic Catholicism. As a natural consequence, my support for the YES in the referendum for a constitutional reform that finally overcomes equal bicameralism and redefines the relationship between the state and local autonomies, strengthening the guarantee bodies and the form of government without touching the powers of the premier ”.
I struggle to find in his current political positions in support of the YES the echo of Ingrao's "movementist heresy" of '68.
“I remind you that in the 70s Pietro Ingrao founded the Center for State Reform of the PCI and that in the 80s, when the crisis of democracy made institutional reform more urgent, ingraism, understood as a branch of Togliatti, it was the component of the then PCI that most fought for institutional reforms, arriving in 1986 to propose a constituent government”.
What connection is there between the thought and practice of Gramsci and Togliatti, towards whom his writings are full of admiration, and its current location in the referendum?
“The link is the conception of democracy and the awareness that the democratic nation is a daily plebiscite that is continually renewed. Democracy is not just about voting every five years but about the active participation of citizens, exactly as is beginning to happen in this referendum campaign”.
What mainly induced you to side with the YES in the referendum? The fight against populism that crosses the entire West, sympathy for Renzi's modernizing plan or the contents of the constitutional reform?
"Without emphasizing the scope of the constitutional reform, what drives me to support it is the overall plan to strengthen government functions in a country that has been progressively dismembered over the last thirty years and - here is its second identity element - its link with the Europeanism, understood as the construction of supranational sovereignty from above and below. Constitutional reform and Italy's new way of being in Europe by overcoming the passive introjection of the external constraint go hand in hand and it must be recognized that Renzi has been able to overturn the Italy-Europe paradigm, placing Italy's European mission at the center of his action and consequently the type of Europe that citizens, including Italians, need today”.
Paraphrasing Togliatti and Berlinguer, is there more renewal or more continuity in the constitutional reform and is it more revolutionary or more conservative?
"In the reform there is the modern restoration of some foundations of republican parliamentary democracy, not forgetting the difference between Togliatti the father of the constituent and the "conservative" Berlinguer on the constitutional reforms and on the electoral law".
Professor, you are well aware that, beyond its specific contents, the constitutional reform is opposed by supporters of the NO for the so-called "combined arrangement" with Italicum which would end up, according to critics, by giving too much power to the Government and to the prime minister in a Parliament where only one Chamber will be able to vote for confidence: what do you think of these objections?
"I think that the "combined" has been swept away by the last leadership of the Democratic Party and that there are no more alibis for not supporting the YES in the referendum, because in politics words are stones, if you don't want to slip into the process at intentions. And the political openness on three key points of the Italicum is undoubted with the willingness to review the rules on the double shift, on the majority bonus and on the formation of lists”.
There are those who argue that the real watershed of the referendum is not only between the renewal of the Constitution or the status quo but that it plays on the very future of reforms in Italy and puts popular support as an alternative to the whole policy of reforms launched by the constitutional reform with the halt for years and years to the strategy of reforms that a hypothetical victory of the NO would entail: what is your opinion?
“In the last twenty years we have made some constitutional reforms without the classic instruments (the Constituent Assembly or a Constituent Commission) but with article 138 of the Constitutional Charter. But in a Parliament elected with majority electoral laws it is unlikely that a majority of 2/3 of those elected will form in favor of constitutional reform and recourse to the referendum becomes natural, which unlike the one freely wanted by Cameron on Brexit, is in our case an act made mandatory by the Constitution itself. We are facing a change that interrupts decades of inertia and which, probably, will have to continue in the future Parliament, which is also a majority. Basically, if the YES wins the referendum there will be an impulse to continue along the path of reforms, while the victory of the NO would mark a clamorous failure of the possibility of changing the Constitution through the 138 and would require a constituent assembly in presumably biblical times ”.
The polls on the intentions of Italians to vote in the referendum show that the Yes vote is discreetly positioned in the North but that in the South the majority of voters seem decidedly oriented towards the NO to the reform: as in other parts of the world, we are facing the revolt of the suburbs towards the elites or are there more specific reasons that push the South towards the NO?
“According to the most recent analyzes of the territorial differences of development in our country, it appears that the entire area that includes all of Lazio and descends down to Sicily can be considered as the South; as North the area that includes only the Veneto, Lombardy and segments of Piedmont; and that it is difficult to establish whether Italy still has a centre, as the events in the capital have demonstrated for at least ten years. Today the South therefore corresponds to that part of the country where the State is sinking, where Regions and Municipalities function worse and where citizen participation is more liquid than elsewhere. In the current state of the referendum campaign it is not surprising that, in the face of a distorted and propaganda narrative of the reforming experience of the Renzi government, the participation of citizens in the referendum battle is more difficult and slower and the level of emotion is higher. But the outcome of the referendum is all linked to the participation rate: the YES front will win if, compared to the forces in the field today, it manages to mobilize and convince another two million citizens to vote”.
After the direction of the Democratic Party last Monday, it seems to understand that in fact on December 4 there will no longer be one referendum but two: the first on the constitutional reform and the second on the identity of the Democratic Party which compares the reform proposal of clear discontinuity and Matteo Renzi's majority vocation with the continuist one, often well-intentioned and more concerned with the representativeness than with the governability of the political systems represented by Bersani and D'Alema. How will it end?
“A referendum consultation such as the one on the constitutional reform will inevitably also become a pronouncement on the identity of the Democratic Party. It is a matter of deciding whether Renzi's should be considered a parenthesis or whether it is the first step of a modern left that really knows how to make reforms and promotes a new Europeanism. And I say that I had first supported Bersani and then Cuperlo in the primaries, underestimating Renzi's innovative thrust. It is evident that, if the YES vote wins in the referendum, the Renzi government will be even more legitimized to continue the reforms”.
What if NO wins instead?
“In that case, whether or not Renzi resigns as Prime Minister, the problem would remain of forming a government to go to elections after having made a new electoral law, subject to a ruling by the Constitutional Court in a very difficult international context and in a scenario economy that risks returning to that of the beginning of the 2007-2008 crisis. In such a situation, is it credible, even if the NO won, that a government different from the current one would be formed? In my opinion, no, and in my opinion, a Renzi bis government would go to manage the elections with a new electoral law in view of a plank and an anti-populist coalition. Certainly the clash between Renzi and Grillo would be dramatized but with what benefits for the country it is legitimate to doubt ”.
But do you think there will be a split in the minority of the Democratic Party?
“D'Alema is already out. As for Bersani and the dem minority, I believe that sooner or later they will realize that in the last Pd direction the music on the Italicum has changed and it would be incomprehensible not to take note of it ".
