Editing Enrico Berlinguer (section)

=== Domestic policies and views ===
[[File:Enrico Berlinguer 1970.jpg|thumb|left|Berlinguer in the 1970s]]
During the 1970s, the PCI governed many Italian regions, sometimes more than half of them. Notably, the regional governments of [[Emilia-Romagna]] and [[Tuscany]] were concrete proof of PCI's governmental capabilities. In this period, Berlinguer turned his attention to the exercise of local power to show that "the trains could run on time" under the PCI. He personally took part in electoral campaigns in the provinces and local councils. While other parties sent only local leaders, this helped the party to win many elections at these levels.<ref name="Expoitalyonline 2015"/> In the June 1975 regional elections, the PCI's gap from the DC, which had been 10% points in the [[1970 Italian regional elections]], narrowed to less than two per cent at 1.8%, the PCI having jumped to 33.4% after a surge of 6.2%, while the DC fell to 35.2%, with a loss of 3.6%.<ref name="Bedeschi 2022"/> In the June 1976 national elections, the PCI continued to grow at 34.4%; while the DC recovered and achieved 38.7%, the minor parties had dropped, and there were no longer the numbers for [[centrist]] governments.<ref name="Bedeschi 2022"/> About the future, in an interview in June 1981 to ''Moby Dick'', the monthly of the Sicilian FGCI, Berlinguer said: "We save ourselves and move forward if we act together and not just one by one."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/>

In a 1980 interview with [[Oriana Fallaci]], Berlinguer said: "We are communists. We are communists with originality and peculiarity, distinguishing ourselves from all the other communist parties: but we are communists, we remain communists."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> About [[fanaticism]], he told Fallaci: "I don't throw rants at anyone, I don't like to hurl curses, curses are expressions of fanaticism and there is too much fanaticism in the world."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> That same year, he stated on ''Tribuna politica'' that [[communism]] is "the just transformation of society".<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> In an interview in 1981 with [[Eugenio Scalfari]] of ''[[la Repubblica]]'', Berlinguer outlined the ''questione morale'', or moral question.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2016/07/28/news/questione_morale_berlinguer-144942852/|title='I partiti? Solo potere e clientela'. Così Berlinguer lanciò l'allarme|work=La Repubblica|language=it|date=28 July 2016|access-date=8 July 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Carbonara|first=Stefano|date=19 February 2022|url=https://www.monopolitrerose.it/politica/enrico-berlinguer-la-questione-morale|title=Enrico Berlinguer. La questione morale|work=Monopoli tre rose|language=it|access-date=8 July 2023}}</ref> He said: "Today's parties are above all machines of power and ''[[Clientelism|clientela]]''."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> About the moral question, he added: "The moral question has existed for some time, but it has now become the first and essential political question because the recovery of trust in the institutions, the effective governance of the country, and the stability of the democratic regime depend on its solution."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> About [[capitalism]], he said: "We think that the capitalist type of economic and social development is the cause of serious distortions, of immense costs and social inequalities, of enormous waste of wealth."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/>

In a 1981 interview to ''[[Critica marxista]]'', Berlinguer outlined the difference from other parties. He said: "Our main difference from the others is that we Communists do not give up working and fighting for a radical transformation of society and the construction of a society of free and equal people. They would like left-wing parties that would limit themselves to correcting some flaws in the current system: we are not that type of party and we never will be."<ref>{{cite news|last=Marras|first=Gian Nicola|date=16 June 2014|url=https://www.manifestosardo.org/la-diversita-berlinguer/|title=La diversità di Berlinguer|work=Il Manifesto Sardo|language=it|access-date=8 July 2023}}</ref> In the same interview, he reiterated: "We do not give up building a 'society of free and equal', we do not give up leading the struggle of men and women for the production of the conditions of their lives."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> He stated that this was the main difference from social democrats and other socialists, and said that "they put the commitment to change the given structure between parents, leading them to the obfuscation and loss of their own ideal and political autonomy. Our difference from social democracy lies in the fact that we communists will never give up that transforming commitment.<ref>{{cite book|last=Mafai|first=Miriam|date=1996|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w_jQbE6zAT4C|title=Dimenticare Berlinguer: la sinistra italiana e la tradizione comunista|language=it|location=Rome|publisher=Donzelli Editore|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=w_jQbE6zAT4C&pg=PA80 80]|isbn=978-88-7989-291-9}}</ref> About other Communist parties, he said: "Our main 'anomaly' compared to several other communist and workers' parties is that we are convinced that in the process towards this goal we must remain — and we will remain — faithful to the method of democracy. The 'assault on heaven' — this beautiful image of Marx — is not for us Italian communists a project of irrationalistic climbing to the absolute."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> In a speech delivered by Berlinguer at the FGCI congress held in Milan in 1982,<ref>{{cite web|last=Romeo|first=Ilaria|date=2 April 2021|url=https://www.collettiva.it/copertine/italia/2021/04/02/news/enrico_berlinguer-976246/|title=Enrico Berlinguer ai giovani: se vi impadronite del sapere, se lottate con lavoratori e oppressi, il vecchio ordine non avrà scampo|website=Collettiva|language=it|access-date=8 July 2023}}</ref> he said: "If young people organise themselves, take over every branch of knowledge, and fight with the workers and the oppressed, there is no escape for an old order founded on privilege and injustice."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/>

In an article written for ''Rinascita'' on 6 December 1982,<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Berlinguer|first=Ernico|date=6 December 1982|url=https://www.enricoberlinguer.it/enrico/scritti/partito-societa-anni80/|title=Partito e società nella realtà degli anni '80|magazine=Rinascità|language=it|access-date=8 July 2023|via=EnricoBerlinguer.it}}</ref> titled "Party and Society in the Reality of the 1980s", Berlinguer said: "There can be no inventiveness, imagination, creation of the new if you start by burying yourself, your history and reality."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> In an interview in 1983 with [[Ferdinando Adornato]], he said about communism that "scientists are discussing more about the ''sole dell'avvenire'' [the establishment of socialism] today than the communists."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> That same year, in an interview with Giovanni Minoli about the [[labour movement]], he stated: "We refuse to let the usual ones pay, the workers, the popular masses. And we believe that if there must be sacrifices, and everyone must contribute proportionately, they must contribute to achieving certain goals, not to make the country go backwards."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> In his last rally, held on 7 June 1984, before his death, Berlinguer said: "We are convinced that the world, even this terrible, intricate world of today, can be known, interpreted, transformed, and put at the service of man, his well-being, his happiness. The test for this goal is a test that can worthily fill a life."<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/> During his final rally, held just days later in [[Padua]], he stated: "Everyone work, house by house, company by company, street by street, in dialogue with the citizens, with trust for the battles we have waged, for the proposals we are presenting, for what we were and are. It is possible to win new and wider support for our lists, for our cause, which is the cause of peace, freedom, work, the progress of our civilisation!"<ref name="La Repubblica 2019"/><ref>{{cite web|last=Romeo|first=Ilaria|date=7 June 2023|url=https://www.collettiva.it/rubriche/buona-memoria/2023/06/07/news/il-testamento-di-berlinguer-3110053/|title=Il testamento di Berlinguer|work=Collettiva|language=it|access-date=8 July 2023}}</ref>