often in Autonomist thought, the PCI is considered somewhat like the party of
historical compromise, the party at the basis of the great betrayal of workers’
struggles and of workerism. Have you ever thought of a positive role that the PCI
might have played inside the so-called ’sections’ in neighbourhoods, as somehow
the site of an affective investment in the political? That is, I am thinking of my
mother, for example, who almost every evening went to ‘the section’. That is, I
don’t think she went there simply because one day the revolution would happen,
etc. It was somehow an aggregative site that allowed people to talk, right? And
do you think that the collapse of the Communist Party eliminated something
from the Italian political landscape, or was it simply a well-deserved collapse –
who cares and so much for the better?Bifo:Well, to begin, my father was Communist and went every day to
the section that we had in the basement, and at age fourteen, I regis-
tered in the Italian Communist Youth Federation. At sixteen, I was the
secretary and representative of the Communist High-School Students,
so I know this quite well as reality, I know what you are saying and I
share it. But we are describing in this way the daily, existential reality
of the Communist Party. We have spoken a lot about the forms of life,
but not about the ideology, or even really about the the political func-
tion that the PCI effectively performed in Italy. And so, to answer your
question: certainly, you are quite right, the PCI played a more funda-
mental role than other forces might have played elsewhere, finally the
role of community, a type of communitarian element that we cannot
minimize. The fact is that this communitarian reality became contra-
dictory. Because one thing is the Party of the Roman working-class
neighbourhoods, and another in the sections of Bologna, which were
very different from Rome. In the Bologna sections, where many people
I know very well were members in the PCI for years and years, they
joined the PCI with the precise goal of having a career, of becoming
city officers, of being able to manage matters ...GM:The ‘Craxian’ side of the PCI in Bologna, or the so-called ‘Red
administration’.^7Bifo:So when you tell me about this reality of the Party as a com-
munity, I share it completely, but really this insight does not fully
describe the Party reality, or what were then the Parties. I mean that I
think this could also be said about the USSR: if we could know well the
reality of the Communist Party in the USSR, we would discover that it
was entirely ...150 Thought, Friendship and Visionary Cartography9780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 150