Proletarian Unity Party (Italy)

Proletarian Unity Party

Partito di Unità Proletaria
Proletarian Unity Party Partito di Unità Proletaria
Abbreviation	PdUP
Founded	1972
Dissolved	1984
Merger of	New PSIUP ; Socialist Alternative
Merged into	Italian Communist Party
Newspaper	Unità Proletaria; Il manifesto
Ideology	Communism; Socialism
Political position	Far-left
Colours	Red
	Politics of Italy; Political parties; Elections;

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

Origins

The PdUP was founded in the November 1972 by minority factions of two parties: the New PSIUP, led by Vittorio Foa and Silvano Miniati, that gathered the militants of the right wing of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity who had not agreed on the decision to join the Italian Communist Party, and Socialist Alternative, led by Giovanni Russo Spena and philosopher Domenico Jervolino, that gathered the militants of the left wing of the Workers' Political Movement who had opposed the merge into the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Its symbol was the hammer and sickle over the world, inheredited by the PSIUP.

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 (Italian: Partito di Unità Proletaria 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 three 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 Workers' Movement for Socialism (Movimento Lavoratori per il Socialismo; MLS), a Maoist group 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 members

Vittorio Agnoletto
Luca Cafiero
Mario Capanna
Massimo Caprara
Luciana Castellina
Mario Catalano
Famiano Crucianelli
Ivano Di Cerbo
Davide Ferrari
Vittorio Foa
Paolo Gentiloni
Alfonso Gianni
Franco Grillini
Lucio Magri
Ramon Mantovani
Lidia Menapace
Eliseo Milani
Silvano Miniati
Roberto Musacchio
Aldo Natoli
Valentino Parlato
Carlo Petrini
Luciano Pettinari
Luigi Pintor
Rossana Rossanda
Giovanni Russo Spena
Massimo Serafini
Vincenzo Vita

Election results

Italian Parliament

Election year	Votes	%	Seats	+/−	Leader
Chamber of Deputies
1976	into DP	–	5 / 630	–	Lucio Magri
1979	502,247 (9th)	1.4	6 / 630	1	Vittorio Foa
1983	into PCI	–	1 / 630	5	Lucio Magri

European Parliament

Election year	Votes	%	Seats	+/−	Leader
European Parliament
1979	406,656 (9th)	1.2	1 / 81	–	Vittorio Foa
1984	into PCI	–	0 / 81	1	Lucio Magri

References

v t e Historical political parties in Italy
Communist	Proletarian Unity Party (1972–1984) Italian Communist Party (1921–1991) Proletarian Democracy (1978–1991) Party of Italian Communists (1998–2014)
Democratic socialist	Italian Revolutionary Socialist Party (1881–1893) Italian Workers' Party (1882–1892) Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (1964–1972) Democratic Party of the Left (1991–1998) Democratic Left (2007–2010) Left Ecology Freedom (2010-2016)
Green	Rainbow Greens (1989–1990) Federation of Green Lists (1986–1990) Federation of the Greens (1990–2021)
Social-democratic and liberal-socialist	Italian Reformist Socialist Party (1912–1926) Unitary Socialist Party (1922–1930) Action Party (1929–1947) Labour Democratic Party (1943–1948) Union of Socialists (1948–1949) Unitary Socialist Party (1949–1951) Unified Socialist Party (1966–1969) Italian Socialist Party (1892–1994) Italian Democratic Socialist Party (1947–1998) Labour Federation (1994–1998) Democrats of the Left (1998–2007) Italian Democratic Socialists (1998–2007) Article One (2017–2023)
Radical and social-liberal	Action Party (1853–1867) Italian Radical Party (1904–1922) Democratic Party (1913–1919) Social Democracy (1922–1926) Republican Democratic Concentration (1946) Radical Party (1955–1989) Democratic Alliance (1993–1997) The Network (1991–1999)
Centrist and centrist liberal	Constitutional Democratic Party (1913–1919) Italian Democratic Liberal Party (1919–1926) Democratic Union for the Republic (1998–1999) Union for the Republic Italian Renewal (1996–2002) The Democrats (1999–2002) Segni Pact (1993–2003) Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (2002–2007) Civic Choice (2013–2019) Liberal Popular Alliance (2015–2018)
Regionalist and federalist	Movement for the Independence of Sicily (1943–1951) Federalists and Liberal Democrats (1994–1996) Federalist Italian League (1995–1996) Great South (2011–2013)
Christian-democratic	Italian Catholic Electoral Union (1906–1919) Conservative Catholics (1913–1919) Italian People's Party (1919–1926) Christian Democracy (1943–1994) Italian People's Party (1994–2002) Christian Democrats for the Republic (1998) Christian Democratic Centre (1994–2002) United Christian Democrats (1995–2002) European Democracy (2001–2002) Christian Democracy for Autonomies (2005–2009) Union of Democrats for Europe (1999–2013)
Conservative-liberal	Liberal Union (1913–1922) Italian Liberal Party (1922–1994) National Democratic Alliance (1953–1954) Union of the Centre
Liberal-conservative	Economic Party (1919–1924) Forza Italia (1994–2009) The People of Freedom (2009–2013) Future and Freedom (2010–2014) New Centre-Right (2013–2017) Conservatives and Reformists (2015–2017) Direction Italy (2017–2019) Cambiamo! (2019–2022)
National-conservative	Common Man's Front (1946–1949) Monarchist National Party (1946–1959) People's Monarchist Party (1954–1959) Italian Democratic Party of Monarchist Unity (1959–1972) National Democracy (1977–1979) National Alliance (1995–2009)
Nationalist	Italian Nationalist Association (1910–1923) Combatants' Party (1919–1923) National Fascist Party (1921–1943) Republican Fascist Party (1943–1945) Italian Social Movement (1946–1995)
List of political parties in Italy 19th-century Italian political groups Early 20th-century Italian political parties 1950s–1990s Italian political parties Current Italian political parties

Authority control databases
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