page_title: Communist Refoundation Party
section_title: Factions
hierarchical_section_title: Communist Refoundation Party / Factions
caption_attribution_description: Communist HQ near the Arsenale in Venice - complete with shrine to the Sacred Heart! Only in Italy...
context_page_description: The Communist Refoundation Party is a communist political party in Italy that emerged from a split of the Italian Communist Party in 1991. The party's secretary is Maurizio Acerbo, who replaced Paolo Ferrero in 2017. Armando Cossutta was the party's founder, while Fausto Bertinotti its longest-serving leader. The latter transformed the PRC from a traditional communist party into a collector of radical social movements.
  The PRC is a member of the Party of the European Left, of which Bertinotti was the inaugural president in 2004. The PRC has not been represented in the Italian Parliament since 2008, but it has a member of the European Parliament, Eleonora Forenza, who sits with the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group.
context_section_description: The majority of the party following the October 2004 congress was led by Fausto Bertinotti (59.2%) and viewed the PRC as the representative of the anti-globalization movement in Italy. Other factions strongly opposed Bertinotti's innovations. These included the hard-line traditionalist Being Communists (26.2%) which was composed of former followers of Armando Cossutta as well as the Trotskyists of Critical Left, Communist Project and HammerSickle (14.6% together). Communist Project, which opposed the party's participation in the Prodi II Cabinet, unfolded shortly after the 2006 general election. A group led by Francesco Ricci established the Communist Alternative Party, others, led by  the Trotskyite Marco Ferrando, formed the Workers' Communist Party, while a tiny minority chose to stay in the party and launched Countercurrent.
  In February 2007, senator Franco Turigliatto of Critical Left, led by Salvatore Cannavò, voted twice against the government's foreign policy, leading Romano Prodi to temporarily resign from Prime Minister. In April, Turigliatto was expelled from the party and Critical Left was suspended from it, leading to its final split and establishment as a party in December. Turigliatto's ejection was supported also by Claudio Grassi (leader of Being Communists) and this caused a break-up of the faction. A group led by Fosco Giannini launched an alternative faction named The Ernesto (from the eponymous communist publication), but it would suffer the 2008 split of Communist Left, which would splinter in 2011 into Communist Left and Communists Together/The Future City.
  Following the severe defeat of the party in the 2008 general election, a group of bertinottiani composed mainly of former members of Proletarian Democracy and led by Paolo Ferrero and Giovanni Russo Spena allied with the other minority factions, notably including Being Communists, to force Franco Giordano's resignation from secretary. Subsequently, in the July congress Ferrero's and Grassi's Refoundation in Movement motion (40.1%) faced the bulk of bertinottiani, who organized themselves around a motion named "Manifesto for the Refoundation" (47.6%) with Nichi Vendola as standard-bearer. Giannini's The Ernesto and Countercurrent (7.7%), Claudio Bellotti's HammerSickle (3.2%) and a minor group of former bertinottiani called "Disarm, Renew, Refound" (1.5%) joined forces with the Ferrero-Grassi group. Vendola, defeated by Ferrero, announced the creation of a new minority faction, Refoundation for the Left (RpS).
  RpS finally left the party in 2009 to form the Movement for the Left (MpS), but some of its members, led by Augusto Rocchi, decided to stay in the PRC and launched To the Left with Refoundation. However, the alliance between Ferrero and the traditionalists did not last. The Ernesto joined the PdCI in 2011 while Being Communists divided in two groups, both eventually quitting the party. One group joined SEL in 2014 and was later merged into the Democratic and Progressive Movement (MDP) in 2016; a second, larger group (including Grassi) participated in the foundation of  SEL's successor, Italian Left (SI).
  In the 2017 congress, two motions were presented by Ferrero and Eleonora Forenza, respectively. The coalition of factions led by Ferrero prevailed with the vote of 71.5% of party members. Consequently, Maurizio Acerbo, supported by Ferrero, was elected secretary by the central committee.
caption: PRC headquarters in Castello, Venice
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