Basis of revolutionary communism on the relationship between party..., 1971

Basis of revolutionary communism on the relationship between party..., 1971
International Communist Party
The Union Question
Historical-programmatic basis of revolutionary communism as concerns the relationship between party, class, class action and workers’ economic associations
(From
“Il Programma Comunista”
No.22, Nov.8, 1971)
MARX-ENGELS
-
Il Programma Comunista, 1971, n.22
- Premise - From “Situation of the Working Class in England” (Engels 1844‑45) - “The Poverty of Philosophy” (Marx 1846‑47) - “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” (Marx‑Engels 1848) - “Wages, Prices and Profits” (Marx 1865) - Resolution proposed by Marx and approved by the General Council - General Council’s Instructions to the delegates to the International Congress, Geneva 1866 - “The Political Action of the Working Class”, London Conference, 1871 - “Political Indifferentism”, Marx 1873 - Engels’ letter to Bebel of March 1875.
MARX
-
Il Programma Comunista, 1971, n.23
- Premise - “Capital”, Book 1, ch 8‑15 - Marx’s letter to Bolte dated November 29, 1871 - Lenin - Premise - “What is to be done?”, 1901 - “The Neutrality of Trade Unions”, 1908 - “Left‑Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder”, 1920 - Trotski‑Lenin - Premise - “Terrorism and Communism”, 1920
THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL 1920
-
Il Programma Comunista, 1971, n.24
- Premise - “Theses on The Trade Union Movement, Works Councils and the Communist International” - Red Trade Union International 1921 - Premise - “Deliberation on the Question of Tactics” - Communist Left 1920‑26 - Premise - Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction, 1920 - “Party and class”, 1921
COMMUNIST LEFT 1920‑26
-
Il Programma Comunista, 1972, n.1
- Premise - “The United Front”, 1921 - “The Democratic Principle”, 1922 - Rome Thesis, 1922 - Communist International, IV Congress, Draft Theses Presented by The P.C.d’Italia, 1922 - Lyon Thesis, 1926
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY
-
Il Programma Comunista, 1972, n.2
- Premise - “Trade Union Splits in Italy”, 1949 - “Revolutionary Party and Economic Action”, 1951 - “Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine”, 1951 - Characteristic Thesis of the Party, 1952 - “Considerations on the organic activity of the party”, 1965 - “Theses on the historical duty, action and the structure of the world communist party”, 1965 - “Supplementary theses”, 1966
MARX-ENGELS
It is appropriate, aiming at a systematic resumption of the
fundamental themes of the so‑called trade union question, in its
theoretical postulates as well as in its reflections of practical
direction, to reproduce a series of excerpts from the classic Marxist
texts constituting the doctrinal and programmatic body of the Party
itself.
From their reading the continuous line from Marx and Engels to Lenin
and to us, in the ups and downs of the revolutionary class struggle, on
which the organization of the political Party was created, appears in
full light.
This text is meant to be a contribution to the reaffirmation of
inalienable principles in the period of open counter-revolution that has
been raging for nearly half a century, during which proletarian
generations have gone astray and even lost the sense of the most basic
conceptions of class and revolutionary struggle.
“Probing” into the class past is the historical method the Party uses
to decipher the trivial today and the luminous tomorrow, aware that it
is not in anyone’s brain or consciousness that the solution to the
serious problems afflicting the working class, driven by the
contradictions of capitalist society toward the path of revolution, is
to be found.
The Party is aware that the re‑establishment of principles in every field of its action is the
conditio sine qua non
for qualifying itself
to lead the working class in every economic, social and political
struggle aimed at the conquest of power. Defense of the Program is
struggle against the enemies of revolution and communism, against the
defilers of revolutionary Marxism. This unrelenting struggle is littered
with obstacles erected by the rotting capitalist regime, of which
traitorous opportunism is the most blatant product.
In proclaiming hatred of capitalism, Revolutionary Communism points
to the crushing of the false social-communist parties as the
indispensable action for the destruction of the society of capital.
Against them stand organized Communists in the proletarian ranks, in the
economic associations which the class has created, and is creating in
the heat of its conflict with capital. To abandon this struggle would
mean renouncing forever the defeat of the historical enemy and its
agents disguised as friends of the workers.
The war on opportunism in the ranks of the organized proletariat is
thus a categorical imperative, a programmatic cornerstone, not an
opinion. In the knowledge that, not only the situation preceding the
insurrectional struggle, but also any phase of decisive increase in the
party’s influence among the masses cannot take shape without a layer of
economic organizations with an immediate purpose and high numerical
participation between the party and the class, within which there is a
permanent party network (communist trade union nuclei, groups and
fraction).
From “Situation of the Working Class in England”, Engels 1844‑45
It will be asked,“Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases,
when the uselessness of such measures is so evident?” Simply because
they must protest against every reduction, even if dictated by
necessity; because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human
beings, shall not be made to bow to social circumstances, but social
conditions ought to yield to them as human beings; because silence on
their part would be a recognition of these social conditions, an
admission of the right of the bourgeoisie to exploit the workers in good
times and let them starve in bad ones...
They (the workers’ associations, or trade unions) imply the
recognition of the fact that the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based
wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; i.e., upon
their want of cohesion. And precisely because the Unions direct
themselves against the vital nerve of the present social order, however
one‑sidedly, in however narrow a way, are they so dangerous to this
social order. The working‑men cannot attack the bourgeoisie, and with it
the whole existing order of society, at any sorer point than this...
These strikes, at first skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty
struggles; they decide nothing, it is true, but they are the strongest
proof that the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is
approaching. They are the military school of the working‑men in which
they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided;
they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these
too have joined the labour movement... And as schools of war, the Unions
are unexcelled.
From “The Poverty of Philosophy”, Marx, December 1846-June 1847
In spite of both of them, in spite of manuals and utopias,
combination has not yet ceased for an instant to go forward and grow
with the development and growth of modern industry... Thus combination
always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers,
so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If
the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages,
combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as
the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and
in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association
becomes more necessary to them than that of wages... In this struggle –
a veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle
unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on
a political character.
Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of
the country into workers. The domination of capital has created for this
mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a
class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of
which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and
constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends
become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a
political struggle... Do not say that social movement excludes political
movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same
time social.
From “The Manifesto of the Communist Party”, 1848
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only
increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its
strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests
and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and
more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions
of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.
The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.
The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing,
makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between
individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the
character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers
begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they
club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found
permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these
occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into
riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The
real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in
the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the
improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and
that place the workers of different localities in contact with one
another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the
numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national
struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political
struggle... This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and,
consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by
the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up
again, stronger, firmer, mightier.
From Marx, “Wages, Prices and Profits”, Report to the General Council
of the International Workingmen’s Association, July 20 and 27, 1865
The whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not
checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast down the whole
working class to this utmost state of degradation...
In checking this tendency of capital, by struggling for a rise of
wages corresponding to the rising intensity of labour, the working man
only resists the depreciation of his labour and the deterioration of his
race...
The slave receives a fixed and constant amount of maintenance; the
wages laborer does not. He must try to get a rise of wages in the one
instance, if only to compensate for a fall of wages in the other. If he
resigned himself to accept the will, the dictates of the capitalist as a
permanent economical law, he would share all the miseries of a slave,
without the security of the slave...
The determination of its real level (i.e., the level of the profit
essay), is decided only by the incessant struggle between capital and
labor; the capitalist constantly trying to reduce wages to their minimum
physical limit, while the worker constantly exerts pressure in the
opposite direction. It boils down to the question of the power relations
of the warring parties... It is precisely this need for general
political action that provides us with proof that in the purely economic
struggle capital is the stronger. But, if the working class gave in
through cowardice in its conflict with capital, it would itself deprive
itself of the ability to undertake any larger movement.
At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved
in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to
themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought
not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the
causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement,
but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not
curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed
in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the
never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They
ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them,
the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and
thesocial forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.
Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s
work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary
watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”
From the Resolution proposed by Marx at the end of his report and
approved by the General Council
The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise the
average normal wage, but to reduce it. The Trade Unions do a good job as
centers of resistance against the attacks of capital; in part they prove
ineffective because of an irrational employment of their force. They
generally fall short of their purpose because they limit themselves to
guerrilla warfare against the effects of the existing system, instead of
at the same time striving for its transformation and using their
organized force as a lever for the ultimate liberation of the working
class, that is, for the ultimate abolition of the wage system.
From the General Council’s Instructions to the delegates to the
International Congress in Geneva, September 1866
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to
dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour
can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the
sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of
life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the
opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The
force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the
workmen is created and perpetuated by their u
navoidable competition
among themselves.
Trades’ Unions originally sprang up from the
spontaneous
attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition,
in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least
above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades’
Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences
for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one
word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the
Trades’ Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be
dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the
contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of
Trades’ Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand,
unconsciously to themselves, the Trades’ Unions were forming
centres
of organisation
of the working class, as the mediaeval
municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades’
Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour,
they are still more important as o
rganised agencies for superseding
the very system of wages labour and capital rule
.
From the IX Resolution
on “The Political Action of the Working Class”
adopted by the September 1871 London Conference of the International
Workingmen’s Association
Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied
classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting
itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old
parties formed by the propertied classes;
That this constitution of the working class into a political party is
indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution
and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes;
That the combination of forces which the working class has already
effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as
a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and
capitalists;
The Conference recalls to the members of the International:
That in the militant state of the working class, its economical
movement and its political action are indissolubly united.
From: “Political Indifferentism”, Marx 1873
The working class [argue anarchists] must not constitute itself as a
political party; it must not, under any pretext, engage in political
action, for to combat the State is to recognize the State: and this is
contrary to eternal principles. Workers must not go on strike; for to
struggle to increase one’s wages or to prevent their decrease is like
recognizing Wages: and this is contrary to the eternal
principles of the emancipation of the working class!... Workers must not
struggle to establish a legal limit to the working day, because this is
to compromise with the masters... Workers must not even form single
unions for every trade, because by so doing they perpetuate the social
division of labor, as they find it in bourgeois society... In a word,
workers should fold their arms and stop wasting their time in political
and economic movements... In practical everyday life, workers must be
the most obedient servants of the State; but in their hearts they must
protest energetically against its very existence, and give proof of
their profound theoretical contempt for it by acquiring and reading
literary treatises on its abolition; they must further scrupulously
refrain from putting up any resistance to the capitalist regime apart
from declamations on the society of the future, when this hated regime
will have ceased to exist!
It cannot be denied that if the apostles of political indifferentism
were to express themselves with such clarity, the working class would
make short shrift of them and would resent being insulted by these
doctrinaire bourgeois and displaced gentlemen, who are so stupid or so
naive as to attempt to deny to the working class any real means of
struggle. For all arms with which to fight must be drawn from society as
it is.
From Engels’ letter to Bebel of March 1875
Here relates to the Programme of the German Workers’ Party, which he,
along the lines of K. Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, sharply
criticizes.
There is absolutely no mention [in the draft programme] of the
organization of the working class as a class through the medium of trade
unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the
proletariat’s true class organisation, in which it fights its daily
battles with capital, in which it trains itself, and which nowadays can
no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as
presently in Paris). Considering the importance this organization is
likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to
accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some
room for it in the organisation of the Party.
MARX
From the wealth of fundamental Marxist texts, we only excerpt the
following passages. In them the deterministic basis from which the
proletariat’s defensive struggles on the economic terrain arise is
succinctly described. The class does not come to the explication of its
historical role, fulfilled through the class struggle and its highest
form, the insurrection and seizure of power, by ideological virtue, but
as a result of the diuturnal classist exercise of defense against social
degradation, to which the capitalist class would condemn it eternally if
it could determine the distribution of surplus value at will. The level
of wages, Marx comments, is determined by the balance of power between
the wage‑earning class and the capital class.
There arises from this for the proletariat the deterministic
necessity to organize itself in resistance associations, or trade
unions, as strongly centralized as bourgeois power is centralized; but
there also arises the irrepressible need for the class organized in
economic associations to break the precarious and labile equilibrium
from time to time achieved on this ground – the ground of the opposition
of “right” to “right”, both consecrated by the law of commodity exchange
– by launching its historic revolutionary offensive.
This offensive is possible only if the proletariat constitutes itself
as a class, if, that is, it arms itself with a historical program, a
method of action, a fighting organization: in short, with the Party.
From “Capital” - Book 1 - chapters 8 and 15
We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of
the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working‑day,
no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a
purchaser when he tries to make the working‑day as long as possible, and
to make, whenever possible, two working‑days out of one... and the
labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the
working‑day to one of definite normal duration. There is here,
therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the
seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence
is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of
what is a working‑day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a
struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and
collective labour, i.e., the working-class...
Second. The history of the regulation of the working‑day in certain
branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in
regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated
labourer, the labourer as “free” vendor of his labour-power, when
capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs
without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working‑day
is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less
dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working-class.
The variation in the magnitude of surplus-value presupposes a
movement in the value of labor-power caused by the variation in the
productive force of labour. The limit of this variation is given by the
new limit of labor power...
The amount of this fall... depends on the relative weight, which the
pressure of capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer
on the other, throw into the scale.
From Marx’s letter to Bolte dated November 29, 1871
We quote this famous passage because it clearly highlights the
dialectical relationship between economic and political struggles. A
relationship that is, on the one hand, of mutual determination and, on
the other hand, of elevating the former to the higher level of the
frontal clash of the wage‑earning class against Capital. It is reflected
in the dialectical relationship between economic and political movements
and their organizations and which, if it can only come from their
crystallizing, is, however, also the necessary condition of their
further development in the sense of their polarization toward the
historical goal of the class.
The political movement of the working class has as its object, of
course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for
this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the
working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have
been developed up to a certain point.
On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class
comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force
them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the
attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a
shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely
economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight‑hour
day, etc.,
law
is a
political
movement. And in this
way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows
up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the
class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in
a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these
movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are
themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.
Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its
organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective
power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any
rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile
attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will
remain a plaything in their hands...
LENIN
The passages refer to three different but closely related
periods. The first just precedes the formation of the Bolshevik Party
and the revolution of 1905, and points to the communist militants the
task of importing into the class that consciousness of the ultimate ends
and the way to reach them which only the Party can give, breaking the
narrow framework of the trade-unionist mentality in which every
immediate and spontaneous economic organization inevitably falls if left
to itself.
The second, from the counter-revolutionary period following the 1905
defeat, rejects the absurd theory of the neutrality of trade unions
(dear to immediatists of both right and left, reformists and anarchists)
and sets the Party the task of achieving a close union with the trade
unions, “for which the Party must be a guide”.
The third, written after the October victory and the founding of the
Communist International, reiterates the need for revolutionary militants
to carry out their revolutionary activity in “even the most reactionary”
trade unions, and to import into the mass workers’ bodies in general the
communist program, with a view to generalizing the class struggle on a
world scale: a task that takes on a wholly specific character in the
face of workerist deviations of various origins that claim to “build”
from scratch organisms that are in themselves uncontaminated and
uncontaminable, the bearers of that revolutionary consciousness and
direction that only the Party possesses.
From “What is to be done?” - 1901‑1902
But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia
in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the
nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous”
destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “revolts”, the
strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious”, to such
an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement
made in that period. This shows that the “spontaneous element”, in
essence, represents nothing more nor less than. consciousness in an
embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of
consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their
age‑long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and
began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for
collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to
the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of
outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of
the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness... The
revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the
systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in
embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union
struggles, not yet Social Democratic struggles. They marked the
awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers,
were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism
of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social
system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In
this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress
they represented as compared with the “revolts”, remained a purely
spontaneous movement.
We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic
consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them
from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class,
exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union
consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in
unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass
necessary labour legislation, etc.
“The Neutrality of Trade Unions”, March 4, 1908
Our whole Party... has now recognised that work in the trade unions
must be conducted not in the spirit of trade-union neutrality but in the
spirit of the closest possible relations between them and the
Social-Democratic Party. It is also recognised that the partisanship of
the trade unions must be achieved exclusively by S.D. work within the
unions, that the S.D.’s must form solid Party units in the unions, and
that illegal unions should be formed since legal ones are impossible...
a socialist party and trade unions exist in every capitalist country,
and it is our job to define the basic relations between them. The class
interests of the bourgeoisie inevitably give rise to a striving to
confine the unions to petty and narrow activity within the framework of
the existing social order, to keep them away from any contact with
socialism; and the neutrality theory is the ideological cover for these
strivings of the bourgeoisie...
The Bolsheviks argued that at the present time there could not be a
strict separation of politics from occupation, and hence drew the
conclusion that “there must be close unity between the Social-Democratic
Party and the trade unions, which it must lead”.
From “Left‑Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder” 1920
The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class
in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a
transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments
of class organisation. When the
revolutionary party of the
proletariat
, the
highest
form of proletarian class
organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name
until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the
class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal
certain
reactionary features, a certain craft
narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non‑political, a certain
inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and
could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the
trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of
the working class. The proletariat’s conquest of political power is a
gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must
more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide
the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and
will long remain an indispensable “school of communism” and a
preparatory school that trains proletarians to exercise their
dictatorship, an indispensable organisation of the workers for the
gradual transfer of the management of the whole economic life of the
country to the working class (and not to the separate trades), and later
to all the working people.
In the sense mentioned above, a
certain
“reactionism” in the
trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the
fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism.
It would be egregious folly to fear this “reactionism” or to try to
evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the
proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening
and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the
working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still
graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the
proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a
narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices.
The art of politics (and the Communist’s correct understanding of his
tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when
the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it
is able — during and after the seizure of power — to win adequate support
from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the
non‑proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to
maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and
attracting ever broader masses of the working people.
Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain
reactionism in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested
in a far greater measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found
support in the trade unions (and to some extent still do so in a small
number of unions), as a result of the latter’s craft narrow-mindedness,
craft selfishness and opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have
acquired a much firmer footing in the trade unions; there the
craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case‑hardened, covetous, and
petty-bourgeois “labour aristocracy”, imperialist-minded, and
imperialist-corrupted,
has developed into a much stronger section
than in our country. That is incontestable. The struggle against the
Gomperses, and against the Jouhaux, Hendersons, Merrheims, Legiens and
Co. in Western Europe is much more difficult than the struggle against
our Mensheviks, who are an a
bsolutely homogeneous
social and
political type. This struggle must be waged ruthlessly, and it must
unfailingly be brought—as we brought it—to a point when all the
incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely
discredited and driven out of the trade unions. Political power cannot
be captured (and the attempt to capture it should not be made) until the
struggle has reached a certain stage. This “certain stage” will be
different
in different countries and in different
circumstances; it can be correctly gauged only by thoughtful,
experienced and knowledgeable political leaders of the proletariat in
each particular country...
We are waging a struggle against the “labour aristocracy” in the name
of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side;
we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist
leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be
absurd to forget this most elementary and most self‑evident truth. Yet
it is this very absurdity that the German “Left” Communists perpetrate
when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of
the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that...
we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and
create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so
unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service
Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist,
social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks
are nothing but “agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class
movement” (as we have always said the Mensheviks are), or “labour
lieutenants of the capitalist class”, to use the splendid and profoundly
true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America. To refuse
to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently
developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the
reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour
aristocrats, or “workers who have become completely bourgeois”
(cf. Engels’s letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers).
This ridiculous “theory” that Communists should not work in
reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous
attitude of the “Left” Communists towards the question of influencing
the “masses”, and their misuse of clamour about the “masses”. If you
want to help the “masses” and win the sympathy and support of the
“masses”, you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery,
insults and persecution from the “leaders” (who, being opportunists and
social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected
with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely
work
wherever the masses are to be found
. You must be capable of any
sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on
agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and
patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the
most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi‑proletarian masses are to
be found. The trade unions and the workers’ co‑operatives (the latter
sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the masses are
to be found. According to figures quoted in the Swedish paper
Folkets Dagblad Politiken
of March 10, 1920, the trade union
membership in Great Britain increased from 5,500,000 at the end of 1917
to 6,600,000 at the end of 1918, an increase of 19 per cent. Towards the
close of 1919, the membership was estimated at 7,500,000. I have not got
the corresponding figures for France and Germany to hand, but absolutely
incontestable and generally known facts testify to a rapid rise in the
trade union membership in these countries too.
These facts make crystal clear something that is confirmed by
thousands of other symptoms, namely, that class-consciousness and the
desire for organisation are growing among the proletarian masses, among
the rank and file, among the backward elements. Millions of workers in
Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a
complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and
(to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices)
most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade
unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by,
crying out “the masses”, “the masses!” but refusing to work within the
trade unions, on the pretext that they are “reactionary”, and invent a
brand‑new, immaculate little “Workers’ Union”, which is guiltless of
bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded
craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad
organisation. “Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship”
will be the only (!) condition of membership.
It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to
the revolution than that caused by the “Left” revolutionaries! Why, if
we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented
victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make
“recognition of the dictatorship” a condition of trade union membership,
we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the
masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is
to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence
themselves off from them with artificial and childishly “Left”
slogans...
These men, the “leaders” of opportunism, will no doubt resort to
every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois
governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists
out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in
the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and
persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make
any sacrifice, and even—if need be—to resort to various stratagems,
artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as
we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist
work within them at all costs. Under tsarism we had no “legal
opportunities” whatsoever until 1905. However, when Zubatov, agent of
the secret police, organised Black-Hundred workers’ assemblies and
workingmen’s societies for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and
combating them, we sent members of our Party to these assemblies and
into these societies... They established contacts with the masses, were
able to carry on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from
the influence of Zubatov’s agents. (In note: The Gomperses, Hendersons,
Jouhaux and Legiens are nothing but Zubatovs, differing from our Zubatov
only in their European garb and polish, and the civilised, refined and
democratically suave manner of conducting their despicable policy). Of
course, in Western Europe, which is imbued with most deep‑rooted
legalistic, constitutionalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, this
is more difficult of achievement. However, it can and must be carried
out, and systematically at that.
TROTSKI-LENIN
The two excerpts refer to the period of the proletarian
dictatorship and the Civil War, and show how our claim of the trade
union as the “transmission belt” of the Party applies for Marxists, not
only for the phase prior to the seizure of power, but, and all the more
so, for the subsequent phase. There, on the one hand, the corporate
narrowness of even broad strata of the working class still subsists and
that, on the other hand, the Party must leverage for the performance of
its economic and military tasks on organizations grouping the broadest
strata of the class which, through the Party, exercises dictatorship.
The union must continue to be a school of war, for social warfare is not
ended but by the complete destruction of bourgeois relations and their
“habit” sequelae even in the ranks of the proletariat.
From “Terrorism and Communism” - Trotski, 1920
The dictatorship of the proletariat, in its very essence, signifies
the immediate supremacy of the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon
the heavy masses, and, where necessary, obliges the backward tail to
dress by the head. This refers also to the trade unions. After the
conquest of power by the proletariat, they acquire a compulsory
character. They must include all industrial workers. The party, on the
other hand, as before, includes in its ranks only the most
class-conscious and devoted; and only in a process of careful selection
does it widen its ranks. Hence follows the guiding role of the Communist
minority in the trade unions, which answers to the supremacy of the
Communist Party in the Soviets, and represents the political expression
of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The trade unions become the direct organizers of social production.
They express not only the interests of the industrial workers, but the
interests of industry itself. During the first period, the old currents
in trade unionism more than once raised their head, urging the unions to
haggle with the Soviet State, lay down conditions for it, and demand
from it guarantees. The further we go, however, the more do the unions
recognize that they are organs of production of the Soviet State, and
assume responsibility for its fortunes – not opposing themselves to it,
but identifying themselves with it. The unions become the organizers of
labor discipline. They demand from the workers intensive labor under the
most difficult conditions, to the extent that the Labor State is not yet
able to alter those conditions.
The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against
undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class. From
the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is
inseparable from the industrial movement within the framework of
capitalist society, the unions pass along the whole line on to the new
path of the policy of revolutionary Communism.
From “Left‑Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder” 1920
The connection between leaders, party, class and masses, as well as
the attitude of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its party to the
trade unions, are concretely as follows: the dictatorship is exercised
by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat is guided
by the Communist Party...
In its work, the Party relies directly on the t
rade unions
,
which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have
a membership of over four million and are formally
non‑Party
.
Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions,
and primarily, of course, of the all‑Russia general trade union centre
or bureau (the All‑Russia Central Council of Trade Unions), are made up
of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on
the whole, we have a formally non‑communist, flexible and relatively
wide and very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the
Party is closely linked up with the
class
and the
masses
, and by means of which, under the leadership of the
Party, the
class dictatorship
is exercised. Without close
contacts with the trade unions, and without their energetic support and
devoted efforts, not only in economic,
but also in military
affairs
, it would of course have been impossible for us to govern
the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half months,
let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts
naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of
propaganda, agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with
the leading trade union workers, but with influential trade union
workers generally; they call for a determined struggle against the
Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom
they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from
an ideological defence of (
bourgeois
) democracy and the
preaching that the trade unions should be “independent” (independent of
proletarian State power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc.,
etc.
We consider that contacts with the “masses” through the trade unions
are not enough. In the course of our revolution, practical activities
have given rise to such institutions as
non‑Party workers’ and
peasants’ conferences
, and we strive by every means to support,
develop and extend this institution in order to be able to observe the
temper of the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements,
promote the best among them to state posts, etc. Under a recent decree
on the transformation of the People’s Commissariat of State Control into
the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, non‑Party conferences of this
kind have been empowered to select members of the State Control to carry
out various kinds of investigations, etc...
Capitalism inevitably leaves socialism the legacy, on the one hand,
of the old trade and craft distinctions among the workers, distinctions
evolved in the course of centuries; on the other hand, trade unions,
which only very slowly, in the course of years and years, can and will
develop into broader industrial unions with less of the craft union
about them (embracing entire industries, and not only crafts, trades and
occupations), and later proceed, through these industrial unions, to
eliminate the division of labour among people, to educate and school
people, give them
all‑round development and an all‑round
training, so that they
are able to do everything
. Communism is
advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but
only after very many years. To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate
this future result of a fully developed, fully stabilised and
constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like
trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four.
We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human
material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the
human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy
matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant
discussion.
THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL 1920
The trade union theses of the 2nd Congress of 1920 sanction the
task of the communists in the workers’ unions to import into the broad
organized masses the revolutionary program and submit them, in a
perspective of revolutionary advance, to the influence and eventually to
the direction of the Party, not hesitating for this to work in the old
reformist organizations, even the most reactionary, but at the same time
supporting and trying to influence those that have arisen in reaction to
them in order to free them from anarcho-syndicalist prejudices.
While claiming trade union unity as a favorable condition for the
development of such work, and ruling out artificially provoked splits,
the theses give the directive to support splitting on a national scale
when it becomes materially inevitable; and they also lay the foundations
of the Red Trade Union International as an antithesis to the “yellow”
Amsterdam Trade Union International, dependent on the League of Nations
and therefore on world imperialism.
Fully endorsed by the Left, the theses also speak unequivocally on
factory councils, denying that they can be considered substitutes for
trade unions.
From the “Theses on
The Trade Union Movement, Works Councils and
the Communist International
”, 1920
[I]
1) The trade unions created by the working class during the period of
the peaceful development of capitalism represented workers’
organizations designed to fight for the increase of wages in the labor
market and for the improvement of the conditions of wage labor.
Revolutionary Marxists were forced to come into contact with the
political party of the proletariat, the Social Democratic Party, in
order to wage a common struggle for socialism. The same reasons that,
except on rare occasions, had made the international social democracy
not a weapon of the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle for the
overthrow of capitalism, but an organization that diverted the
proletariat from revolution according to the interests of the
bourgeoisie, had the effect that, during the war, the trade unions most
often presented themselves as parts of the military apparatus of the
bourgeoisie, which helped to exploit the working class with the greatest
possible intensity in order to conduct the war in the most energetic
manner for the interests of Capital.
By organizing essentially the skilled workers, the best paid by the
bosses, being confined in their corporate narrowness, shackled by a
bureaucratic apparatus completely alien to the masses, sidetracked by
their opportunist leaders, the trade unions have not only betrayed the
cause of social revolution, but even that of the struggle for the
improvement of the living conditions of the workers they organize. They
have abandoned the proper terrain of the trade union struggle against
the bosses, and replaced it with a program of peaceful transactions at
any cost with the capitalists.
This policy was conducted not only by the liberal T
rade Unions
in England and America, by the German and Austrian free trade
unions, self‑styled socialists, but also by the French trade unions.
2) The economic consequences of the war, the complete disorganization
of the world economy, the insane rise in the cost of living, the
large-scale employment of women’s and child labor, the worsening
conditions of housing, all of these push the great proletarian masses on
the path of struggle against capitalism.
By the extent and character it takes on more and more every day, this
struggle is a revolutionary struggle that objectively destroys the
foundations of the capitalist order. The increase in wages achieved by
this or that category of workers through economic struggle is
immediately nullified by the rise in the cost of living. Now the rise in
prices must further accentuate, because the capitalist class of the
victorious countries, while bleeding Eastern and Central Europe dry with
its policy of exploitation, is not only unable to reorganize the world
economy, it is increasingly disorganizing it.
In order to succeed in the economic struggle, the broad masses of
workers who remained until now outside the trade unions, flow into them.
Thus, a mighty increase in trade unions can be seen in all countries,
which no longer represent the organization of only the advanced elements
of the proletariat, but of its broad masses. By entering the trade
unions the masses seek to make them their weapon of battle.
Class antagonism, which becomes more acute every day, prompts the
trade unions to organize strikes, which spread in waves throughout the
capitalist world, constantly interrupting the process of production and
trade. By increasing their demands to compensate for the rising cost of
living, the working masses feel the hard effects of it, and thereby
destroy the basis of all capitalist calculations, this elementary
premise of every organized economy.
The trade unions, which had become during the war the organs for
influencing the working masses to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, are
now organs of the destruction of capitalism.
3) But the old trade union bureaucracy and the old forms of trade
union organization hinder in every way this transformation of the
character of the trade unions. It tries in every way to keep the unions
standing as organizations of the working-class aristocracy by keeping in
place the rules that make it impossible for the worst‑paid working
masses to join the unions.
The old trade union bureaucracy also endeavors to replace the strike
weapon, which takes on more and more every day the character of a
revolutionary conflict of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, with a
policy of conciliation with the capitalists, a policy of long‑term
contracts that lose all meaning if only because of the staggering and
uninterrupted rise in prices. It seeks to impose on the workers the
policy of joint commissions, “Joint Industrial Councils”, and to
obstruct, with the help of laws and the capitalist State apparatus, the
organization of strikes.
At critical moments in the conflict, the bourgeoisie sows discord
among the struggling working masses and prevents the isolated actions of
individual working-class categories from merging into a general class
struggle. It is supported in these attempts by the antiquated form of
organization of trade unions, which divides the workers of a branch of
industry into separate occupational groups, although the process of
capitalist exploitation binds them all together.
It relies on the power of the ideological tradition of the old
working-class aristocracy, although the latter is unceasingly weakened
by the abolition of the privileges of particular proletarian groups as a
result of the general breakdown of capitalism, the leveling of the
situation of the working class, and the generalization of its misery and
insecurity.
In this way the trade union bureaucracy divides the mighty flow of
the workers’ movement into meager rivulets, trades off the general
revolutionary aims of the movement against partial reformist claims, and
generally obstructs the transformation of the struggle of the
proletariat into a single revolutionary struggle for the destruction of
capitalism.
4) Given the influx of powerful working-class masses into the trade
unions and given the objectively revolutionary character of the economic
struggle these masses support in antithesis to the professional
bureaucracy, it is necessary for communists in all countries to enter
the trade unions and work to make them conscious organs of struggle for
the overthrow of the capitalist regime and the triumph of communism.
They must take the initiative in the creation of trade unions where none
yet exist.
Any voluntary desertion of the trade union movement, any artificial
attempt to create particular trade unions without being forced into it
either by exceptional acts of overpowering by the trade union
bureaucracy (dissolution of individual revolutionary groups in the trade
unions by opportunistic centrals) or by petty aristocratic politics that
preclude the great masses of low‑skilled workers from entering trade
union organizations, represents an enormous danger to the communist
movement.
It threatens to isolate from the masses the vanguard workers, endowed
with greater class consciousness, and hand them over to opportunist
leaders working for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The hesitations of
the working masses, their indecisive attitude and their accessibility to
the sophistries of the opportunist leaders can be overcome in the course
of the struggle, which is becoming more and more acute, only to the
extent that the broader strata of the proletariat learn through their
experience, through their victories and defeats, that never will the
capitalist economic system allow them to achieve humane living
conditions; to the extent that the vanguard communist workers will
learn, in the economic struggle, to be not only the proponents of the
ideas of communism, but also the most resolute leaders of the economic
struggle itself and of the trade unions. Only in this way will it be
possible to drive the opportunist leaders out of the trade unions. Only
in this way will communists be able to take over the leadership of the
trade union movement and make it an organ of the revolutionary struggle
for Communism. Only in this way will it be possible to overcome the
fragmentation of the trade unions, to replace them with organizations by
industry which will make it possible to eliminate the bureaucracy alien
to the masses and to replace it with an apparatus of factory delegates,
leaving only the most strictly necessary functions to the Central
Unions.
5) Since Communists attach more importance to the purpose and essence
of trade union organization than to its form, they must not retreat from
a split in trade union organizations if the renunciation of the split
would amount to renunciation of revolutionary work in the trade unions,
renunciation of the attempt to make them an instrument of the
revolutionary struggle, renunciation of organizing the most exploited
strata of the proletariat. But even if such a split turns out to be
necessary it must be consummated only if the communists succeed by
incessant struggle against the opportunist leaders and their tactics, by
the most intense participation in the economic struggle, to convince the
broad working masses that the split is being undertaken not for
revolutionary ends still remote and incomprehensible to them, but for
the concrete and most direct interest of the working class in the
development of its economic struggle.
Where a split is necessary, communists must vigilantly examine
whether such a split will not lead them to isolate themselves from the
working class mass.
6) Where the split between the opportunist and revolutionary
leadership of the unions has already taken place, where, as in America,
unions with revolutionary though not communist tendencies exist
alongside the opportunist unions, communists have an obligation to
support these revolutionary unions, to support them and help them to rid
themselves of their syndicalist prejudices and to place themselves on
the ground of communism, which alone can serve as a sure compass in the
tangle of economic struggle.
Where, within the framework of the trade unions or outside of them,
organizations such as Shop Stewards Committees, Betriebsraete (Factory
Councils), etc., are formed in the factory, which aim to fight against
the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the trade union bureaucracy and
to support the direct and spontaneous actions of the proletariat,
Communists must naturally support them with all their energy.
But the support given to revolutionary trade unions must not mean the
exit of communists from the opportunist trade unions that are in turmoil
and moving onto the terrain of class struggle. On the contrary, by
striving to accelerate this evolution of the mass unions that come to be
on the path of revolutionary struggle, the communists will be able to
exercise the function of an element that unites ideally and
organizationally in the common struggle for the destruction of
capitalism, the syndically organized workers.
7) In the epoch of capitalism’s disintegration, the proletariat’s
economic struggle turns into political struggle much more rapidly than
in the epoch of capital’s peaceful development. Every major economic
conflict can directly confront the workers with the problem of
Revolution. It is therefore the duty of communists to make it clear to
the workers, at all stages of the economic struggle, that this struggle
can only be successful if the working class defeats the capitalist class
in an open battle and, through dictatorship, undertakes the work of
socialist edification.
Starting from this premise, communists must strive, as far as
possible, to achieve full unity between the trade unions and the
Communist Party, subordinating them to the effective leadership of the
latter as the vanguard of the proletarian revolution. To this end the
communists must organize communist fractions everywhere in the trade
unions and factory councils and, with their help, take over the trade
union movement and direct it...
[II]
The trade unions already tended in peacetime toward international
unification, because during strikes the capitalists resorted to workers
from other countries as scabs. But, before the war, the Trade Union
International had only secondary importance. It was concerned with the
organization of mutual financial relief and a social statistics service,
not with the organization of common struggle, because unions headed by
opportunists sought to avoid any revolutionary struggle of international
extent.
The opportunist leaders of the unions, the lackeys of the
bourgeoisie, who, during the war, were each in his own country, now seek
to rebuild the Trade Union International and make it a weapon for the
direct struggle of international capital against the proletariat. Under
the direction of Jouhaux, Gompers, Legien, etc., they set up a
“
Bureau du Travail
” at the League of Nations, this organization
of international capitalist brigandage. They seek to stifle strike
movements in all countries by forcing workers to submit to the
arbitration courts of capitalist State representatives, and, through
compromises with the capitalists, to obtain concessions in favor of
skilled workers to thus break the growing unity of the working
class.
The Amsterdam Trade Union International is thus a surrogate for the
failed Brussels Second International. Instead, communist workers
belonging to unions in every country must strive to create an
international front of union struggle. It is no longer a question of
pecuniary relief in the event of a strike: it is necessary that, at the
moment of impending danger to the working class of one country, the
trade unions of the other countries as mass organizations should
contribute to its defense and do the impossible to prevent the
bourgeoisie of their own country from giving aid to that of another
which is in struggle with the working class.
The economic struggle of the proletariat increasingly becomes in
every country a revolutionary struggle. Therefore the trade unions must
consciously make use of all their forces for the support of every
revolutionary action both in their own country and in others; and, to
this end, not only pursue in each country the maximum centralization of
the struggle, but do so on an international scale, joining the Communist
International, uniting with it in one army, whose different units lead
the battle in concert by supporting one another...
THE RED TRADE UNION INTERNATIONAL, 1921
Of the RILU we quote the part of the theses on the question of
tactics presented at the I World Congress in July 1921, concerning the
analysis of trade unions in their respective countries before, during
and after the first imperialist war.
We do not reproduce the other theses because, in principle shared by
the Left, they would be a slavish repetition of them.
The description of the state of the world labor movement, on the
other hand, accords well with the Left’s prognosis that
social-democratic reformism would pave the way for the most brutal
overpowering of even the economic defense bodies of the proletariat by
the ruling class, thanks to it victorious over the working class. And
finally to the framing of the latter into “unions” of complete State
emanation and corporate nature.
The RTUI arose as the international union of class unions, oriented
through the influence of the Communist Party toward revolution and
proletarian dictatorship, as opposed to the Amsterdam International. The
RTUI was the trade union organ of the CI. The close connection, the
“transmission belt”, between the only party of the proletariat and the
trade union movement, by whose means the working class could
victoriously make its revolutionary advance, was being realized in the
world arena.
This is a historical condition, indicating that tomorrow’s class
resurrection entails the reconstitution not only of the world communist
party, but also of the red trade union organization, influenced or
directed by the party.
It should be noted that in 1925‑26 the Left vigorously opposed the
dissolution of the RTUI sought by Stalinism, and its hinted
reunification with the Amsterdam International.
The text is a translation of that published as a pamphlet by the
PCd’I in 1921.
From the “Deliberation on the Question of Tactics”, 1921
TRADE UNIONS BEFORE THE WAR
7) During the nineteenth century and the first decades of the
twentieth, essentially three characteristic types, three basic groups,
were formed in the trade union movement: Anglo-Saxon (tradeunionism),
German-Austrian (social democratic reformism) and Franco-Spanish
(revolutionary syndicalism).
In the world trade union movement, these three fundamental groups
differed as much in the nature of their work as in their methods. Three
different ideologies, three different programs of action, were expressed
in them.
8) The fundamental character of the
Anglo-Saxon trade
union movement
consisted in its strict corporatism,
apoliticism, neutralism toward socialist parties and concentration of
all attention on the immediate and concrete problems of the day.
Tradeunionism viewed the social struggle with a corporatist
criterion, and with these narrow views claimed to solve all social and
economic issues. It mainly brought together the upper strata of the
working class, and its ideology represented the philosophy of the
working-class aristocracy.
By the theorists and practitioners of tradeunionism, capital and
labor were regarded not as two deadly class enemies, but as two mutually
complementary factors of society, the harmonious development of which
was to lead to peace between capital and labor and the equitable
distribution of social goods between them.
9) The
Austro-Germanic labor movement
,
which appeared later than the Anglo-Saxon and took place under different
conditions, from the very beginning was interpenetrated by socialist
ideas. The labor movement of Austria and Germany was baptized by social
democracy, and thus its ideology was imbued with social democratic
spirit. But the social-democratic program and tactics took on the
character of reformism, and thus the trade unions of Germany were the
cradle of reformism, the ideological content of which consists, as is
well known, in the political field in the prospect of peaceful and
gradual evolution tending toward socialism through democracy, in the
softening of class antagonism, in the fearful renunciation of revolution
and class terror, and in the hope that the development of democratic
institutions will automatically lead to socialism without upheaval and
without revolution. Instead, in the strictly trade union field it
expresses the tendency to keep trade unions away from the revolutionary
political struggle, to preach neutrality toward revolutionary socialism,
with an intimate connection with reformist socialism, and finally with
the overvaluation of collective agreements and the tendency to create
equal right, that is, to build social relations whereby, while the
bourgeois political and economic regime remains, equality of right
between workers and entrepreneurs can nevertheless be reconciled with
the preservation of the system of exploitation.
10)
Revolutionary syndicalism
, which arose
as a reaction to the opportunism of the French Socialist Party, had in
its fundamental concept a truly revolutionary content. It launched the
idea of direct action, of the immediate struggle of the masses,
propagandized the general strike, affirmed the necessity of violently
overthrowing capitalism, conducted anti‑militarist agitation and
propaganda, affirmed the anti‑State theory proclaiming that trade unions
were the only organizations capable of making the social revolution and
building socialist society with their own forces. The theorists of this
movement claimed that revolutionary syndicalism was the synthesis of
Proudhonism and Marxism.
11) Revolutionary syndicalism thus formulated a set of concepts (in
this precisely consists its merit) such as to make it superior to other
forms of the workers’ movement and to place it alongside revolutionary
socialism. Such concepts, such as that of direct action, of the
revolutionary pressure of the masses on capitalism and the State, of the
overthrow of capitalism the preaching of social revolution, represent
the merit of revolutionary syndicalists and the practical side of their
theories in general. Conversely, we encounter in syndicalism the concept
of independence, neutralism toward all political parties, including that
of the proletariat, the denial of the proletarian State, the
overestimation of the general strike, and an erroneous demeanor
regarding the workers’ partial aspirations. Economy and politics are two
different things for revolutionary syndicalists, while on the other
hand, it is well known that politics is nothing but the “concentration
of the economy”. The separation between these two factors, despite its
apparent revolutionary essence, is exploited by the bourgeoisie, which
by its own account has never practically separated in its struggle the
economy from politics.
12) The trade union movement was formed and developed mainly in the
period of the peaceful and organic development of capitalist society;
and thus it bore certain characters, which then, especially during the
war, were to enable the bourgeoisie to make use of it for its class
aims. These particular characters are: petty corporatism, the isolation
of the trade unions, the struggle of many of them against women’s labor,
the nationalist and patriotic spirit resulting from the confusion
between the interests of national industry and those of the working
class. They found their greatest expression during the war, when class
interests came into conflict with national interests.
TRADE UNIONS DURING THE WAR
13) The world war, caused by the antagonism between the various
national capitalisms revealed the extent to which the working class and
its organizations were under the influence of bourgeois society. In most
of the major countries of Europe, as soon as war was declared, the trade
unions ceased to exist as class organizations of struggle and
immediately converted into imperialist war organizations, whose function
was to help the government and the bourgeoisie defeat, with their
combined forces, the competitor in the world market. The old groupings
of the labor movement disappeared. In every country the leaders of the
trade unions, with few exceptions, fought each other on the
battlefronts, instead forming alliances with the bourgeoisie of their
country: the interests of the national bourgeoisie were placed before
class interests.
14) The World War period is that of the moral dissolution of trade
unions in all capitalist countries. Most union leaders appear as agents
of the government: they spontaneously take on the task of stifling all
attempts at revolutionary protest, sanction at various times the
worsening of working conditions, agree to bind the workers to the
factories according to the wishes of the capitalist, they renounce
achievements obtained through long struggles, in short they carry out
without a word everything the ruling classes order.
15) The discontent against the war, and the manifestations of it,
which occurred more and more frequently already during the war itself,
were stifled from their birth by the leaders of the old labor movement
themselves. The fear of revolution, which compelled the ruling classes
for many years to refrain from war actions and adventures, disappeared,
since not only the bourgeoisie but also the trade unions whose leaders
had turned into the watchdogs of capitalism now stood against the
revolution. This represented the most resounding moral victory of the
ruling classes, and at the same time a solemn defeat of the working
class in the World War period.
16) The nationalist work of the leaders of the labor movement sowed
deep discord among the masses. Instead of the preaching of class
struggle and hatred, for a few years only calls for the fusion of all
forces against the national enemy, in defense of the “fatherland” and
for the “sacred union” of classes were voiced by the workers’
representatives. This propaganda
of treason, made with the support of the bourgeois press and with the
financial help of the government, was the main cause of the continuation
of the war and of the countless sacrifices, to which the working class
was subjected as a result of the world war. The war demonstrated the
utter failure of all the various organizations of the labor movement.
The leaders of the Trade-Unions of England and America, the trade unions
of Austria and Germany, and the revolutionary unions of France, found
themselves together on the ground of betrayal of the interests of the
working class.
THE TRADE UNIONS AFTER THE WAR
17) The essential features, which the policy of the trade union
leaders of various countries had during the war, remained essentially
unchanged afterwards. This policy consisted in prolonging the sacred
union of classes, concluded during the war, and in subordinating the
interests of the working classes to the reconstruction of capitalist
economy.
18)
In France
this policy acquired an exceedingly
repulsive character, since its exponents were the revolutionary
syndicalists of yesterday, those who called themselves anti‑State and
anti‑militarist.
The General Confederation of Labor, through the mouths of its
leaders, claiming the honor of working in the Commissions for the
drafting of the Treaty of Versailles, took the initiative of forcing the
German workers to compensate France for the losses caused to it by the
war, disintegrated the revolutionary strike movement, fought alongside
the government and the bourgeoisie as a whole the very idea of social
revolution, proclaiming the principle of the reconstruction of
capitalism on the basis of the cooperation of all the “vital forces” of
modern society, i.e. workers, entrepreneurs and government
representatives. This tactic fueled the arrogance of the bourgeoisie,
corrupting workers’ consciousness, and generating distrust in the masses
toward revolutionary watchwords and appeals. The more the General
Confederation of Labor was made subordinate to the bourgeoisie, the more
it extolled the independence and autonomy of the movement, referring in
this regard to the “Charter of Amiens”.
19) Against this unprecedented betrayal, against the shameful
violation of the elementary revolutionary principles of the working
class, there arose and spread in France a strong protest movement that
found its expression and direction in the Central Committee of the
Revolutionary Trade Unions. The revolutionary opposition already brought
together almost half of the members of the General Confederation of
Labor, but despite this increase in numbers, it was weak because of its
insufficient internal unity. The entire opposition was united in the
struggle against the manifest and covert betrayal of the interests of
the working class, but although it was really fighting this struggle and
even bringing back victories in it thanks to the united front,
nevertheless it itself had not yet determined clearly enough its
concrete intentions, its program and the watchwords of the struggle. The
opposition, consisting of anarchists, revolutionary syndicalists and
communists, proclaimed the motto: “
let us return to the Charter of
Amiens
”. An insufficient watchword, if only by the mere fact that
even the majority of the General Confederation of Labor referred to
it.
20) The “
Charter of Amiens”
, summarizing the protest of the
working masses against the opportunism of the Socialist Party, could not
serve as a basis for concrete action, not only because it had been
written fifteen years before the war and revolution, but especially
because from the outset it did not resolve all the questions that the
working class had before it. The world war, the decline of capitalism,
the revolution, all of this required the minority of the General
Confederation of Labor of France not to close itself within the confines
of the now aging Charter of Amiens, but rather to work out a new program
in accordance with the new state of affairs.
21)
In Germany
, the leaders of the German
professional trade unions essentially assumed the part of saviors of the
bourgeoisie and the Germanic war clique after the war. The 1918
revolution really frightened the German bourgeoisie, so much so that
they themselves turned to the German trade unions to safeguard their
dominance in the face of social revolution.
The union leaders concluded an agreement with the German bourgeoisie
around joint labor commissions that served as the basis for all the
activity carried out after the war by the German labor movement. The
domination of the bourgeoisie in the political and economic fields: this
was the result of this joint system. The consequence of this arrangement
was the active help given by the trade unions in the work of repressing
the revolutionary movement. The leaders of the German trade unions
worked ardently to defend capitalism, not even hesitating to this end to
support the bloody repressions carried out by the bourgeoisie against
the working class.
22) Such counter-revolutionary attitude of the trade union
bureaucracy had raised the indignant protests of the working masses.
These protests began to take concrete form with the formation within the
trade union movement of opposition groups and communist nuclei, which
branched out in a vast network throughout Germany and assumed the
character of a mass phenomenon. The pessimism provoked by the attitude
of the trade unions also found its expression in the watchword of the
“
destruction of the trade unions
”, a motto which, however,
conflicted with the true interests of the working class and those of the
social revolution. In addition to the opposition that arose within the
old unions, several groupings also arose outside (Independent Workers’
Union of Gelsen-kirchen, General Workers’ Union, Trade Unionist Union),
each of which had developed on its own instead of carrying out a
concerted struggle against the capitalists and their flankers nested in
the professional unions. These already existing groupings were joined by
those expelled by the trade union bureaucracy, which, intimidated by the
growth of opposition nuclei within the old trade union movement, had
proceeded to expel individuals, as well local union sections accused of
“communism”.
23)
In England
, immediately after the war, the trade
unions waged a dogged struggle to obtain improvements in working
conditions and to consolidate the positions they had won. The grandiose
strikes by miners and other categories of workers,demonstrated the
strength and firmness of the English proletariat in the struggle. But,
in the same period following the war, the full strength of the bond that
bound some of the leaders of the labor movement to the bourgeoisie had
been revealed. Every strike, every serious conflict, bumped first of all
against a centralized resistance within the organizations concerned and
the other trade unions. These peculiarities, in addition to the
unquestionable process of ideological revolutionization. however rather
confused, represented the essential character of the British labor
movement, which nevertheless,in comparison with the pre‑war period, had
certainly taken a great step forward.
24) The Factory and Workshop Committees, which had arisen
spontaneously during the war and were relatively very influential in the
years 1917and 1918, had then declined in importance, despite the spread
of revolutionary ideas and the inevitability of revolutionary struggle
among the proletarian masses of England. The weakness of the organized
opposition elements is explained by the fact that they had not
adequately coordinated their activity among the masses. The fusion of
all these revolutionary elements could have been achieved through the
broadening and deepening of the activity of the Workers’ Committees. A
goal that could be achieved not by detaching the best workers of the
masses organized in the trade unions, and forming other organizations
outside, but in directing their activity within them.
The most conscious, most revolutionary and active elements in the
factories must concentrate activity on all levels of the trade union
movement, from the lowest, to the highest, striving everywhere to win
the positions of responsibility and leadership. This is the main way to
carry out systematic and persistent work, apt to achieve concrete and
permanent results in a country with such an extensive labor movement and
yet so imbued with conservatism.
25)
In America
, more than elsewhere, union leaders
revealed themselves as agents of capital. To
Gompers
and his
clique that presided over the American Federation of Labor, even the
Amsterdam International seemed too revolutionary, so they refused to
join it. The A.F.L. placed all its hopes in the good faith of the
bourgeoisie and did not want to know about the possibility of a struggle
for the establishment of a new social regime. Here was the typical and
classic example of the collusion between the leaders of the working
class and the bourgeois State. This dependence on the bourgeoisie and
the American billionaires constituted the substantial reason why all
these Gompers clamored for the autonomy of the labor movement.
The A.F.L. represented the best support for the bourgeoisie
determined to annihilate the revolutionary movement, even though it
itself was then dragged into the struggle against the bourgeoisie, since
the latter, not satisfied with such subjugation, wanted to make even
greater profits than it had already made.
Thus, although the A.F.L. as such so far took no part in the
struggle, isolated detachments, and local organizations sprang up, which
increasingly came into conflict with the State apparatus and the
interests of capital. Although they still remained within the
organization, yet in reality they were moving further and further away
from the fundamental principles on which the A.F.L. was based.
26) The American independent organization of the “Industrial Workers
of the World” (I.W.W.) was too weak to replace the old unions.
The IWWs had purely anarchist prejudices against political struggle,
dividing themselves into two opposing camps in that question of cardinal
importance which is the dictatorship of the proletariat. The autonomous
unions existing alongside these two organizations were only formally
independent of the A.F.L., while most of them were morally dependent on
the whole ideology and practice of its counterrevolutionary leaders. The
problem of creating revolutionary nuclei and groups within the A.F.L.
and the autonomous unions was of the utmost urgency. There was no other
means of winning over the working masses except to make a systematic
struggle within the old trade unions.
27)
In ltaly
, the situation had taken on an
altogether peculiar character: the great majority of the Italian
proletariat had adhered to the viewpoint of revolutionary struggle and
the dictatorship of the proletariat; on the other hand, the leadership
nucleus of the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGL) had great
distrust of revolutionary methods of struggle, and so, in theory and in
practice, came much closer to reformist socialism than to revolutionary
socialism.
In addition to the CGL, there were the “Unione Sindacale Italiana”
and other autonomous unions, which unlike the American ones were deeply
imbued with the revolutionary spirit. These, in their practical
activities, accepted the directives of the Communist International and
the Red Trade Union International.
28)
In the
other countries of Europe and
America
, the labor movement had made a great breakthrough.
Within the old trade unions in several countries a resolute minority of
opposition had been formed (Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.), while
elsewhere (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Norway) the majority already stood with
the advocates of social revolution and the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
* * *
This specific situation of the labor movement throughout the world
showed what a profound change had taken place among the vast working
masses. The teachings of the war and the Russian Revolution had not been
in vain for the multitudes of workers.
The revolutionary spirit manifested in the trade unions was the
result of the natural unfolding of things.
For the leaders of the Red Trade Unions, the problem lay in following
the revolutionary process and directing it toward the resolute struggle
against the bourgeois regime, for the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
THE COMMUNIST LEFT, 1920‑26
The texts cover a complex period, from the birth of the Communist
Party under the leadership of the Left to its ouster, from the victory
of fascism to the defeat of the world communist movement.
If we were to publish all the texts of programmatic restatement and
documentation of the activities of our current, we would fill an entire
volume. We will limit ourselves to a few fundamental texts, which make
it possible to follow the programmatic and battle positions of the Party
that we directed or influenced.
It will be the task of subsequent specific texts, in particular
future volumes of the History of the Communist Left, to recall the
gigantic activity carried out at the time in this sector, all the more
important in that it was not carried out by a party with millions of
members, but by a few dozen militants, whose strength consisted
precisely in possessing a sound and correct programmatic
orientation.
The Left, in unison with Lenin, repudiates the Latin, German and
Dutch workerist “leftism” and reaffirms that the link with the class and
the leadership of the party on it are impossible without a significant
influence on the workers’ trade unions and class organisations in
general, even if the red trade unions themselves were subjected to the
direction of reactionary forces, tending towards an increasing
rapprochement with the capitalist State in order to bring the trade
union movement under the protection of the bourgeois State. Fascism,
after having destroyed, with the complicity of democracy or social
democracy, along with the proletarian political movement also the class
trade union movement, founded forced, State-controlled trade unions in
an attempt to organise the productive forces centrally and unitedly
within the framework of fundamental bourgeois anarchy. The Left was the
only one to understand the dialectical nexus between opportunism and
fascism, and to oppose all the initiatives of the International itself
aimed, from a distorted viewpoint, at the conclusion of blocs, alliances
and even mergers between the Communist and false social-democratic Left
and opportunist parties, between Moscow and Amsterdam in the trade union
field, with the prospect, condemned by us from the outset, of
strengthening the revolutionary attack front. When the fascist trade
unions prevailed and the social-democratic leadership of the CGL
eliminated itself, the Left launched the watchword of defending and
strengthening the Red Trade Unions. It was left alone, even in the
Party, to proclaim, with the sabotage of the State-controlled unions,
the rebirth of class organisation.
From the Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction of PSI,
1920
II - Criticism of other schools
-
Point 10
-
Point 11
III
-
Point 4
-
Point 5
-
Point 6
-
Point 13
From “
Party and class
”, 1921
THE COMMUNIST LEFT 1920‑26
We have published significant excerpts from theses or articles of the
Communist Left, before and after the Leghorn Congress, to show how our
view of the relationship between economic struggles and general
political struggles to prepare the revolutionary seizure of power, as
well as our conception of the party task in the heat of class fight and
within the trade union organizations (even when led by opportunists),
fully coincided with the theses advanced by the Bolsheviks, and
particularly so by Lenin; and how the few disagreements on tactical
questions we had with the Third International had no effect whatsoever
on the total agreement we had on fundamental principles.
From the same excerpts it appears evident how the Communist Party of
Italy, led by the Left, had set up in 1921‑23 a vigorous trade union
action.
We continue publishing texts of the time, to further highlight the
continuity of both the positions of principle and the practical action
the Left maintained along the whole period ending with the devastating
triumph of the Stalinian degeneration, i.e., until 1926.
From “The United Front”, in “Il comunista” of October 28 1921
Revolutionary communism is based on the unity of the struggle for the
emancipation of all the exploited, and at the same time it is based on
the well‑defined organisation into a political party of that “part” of
the workers who have the best consciousness of the conditions of the
struggle and the greatest decision to fight for its ultimate
revolutionary goal, thus constituting the vanguard of the working
class.
Those who find a contradiction between the invocation and union of
all the workers and the fact of separating a part of them from the
others, organising them into a party with methods that differ from those
of all the other parties, even those that make reference proletariat and
call themselves revolutionaries, would show that they have not
understood our programme, because in truth those two concepts have the
very same origin.
The first struggles the workers wage against the ruling bourgeois
class are struggles of more or less numerous groups for partial and
immediate ends.
Communism proclaims the need to unify these struggles, in their
development, so as to give them a common goal and method, and speaks for
this of unity above individual trade categories, above local situations,
national or racial boundaries. This unity is not a material sum of
individuals, but is achieved through a shift in the direction of action
of all individuals and groups, when they feel they constitute a class,
i.e., they have a common purpose and programme.
If, therefore, in the party there is only a part of the workers,
nevertheless in it there is the unity of the proletariat, since workers
of different trades, of different localities and nationalities,
participate in it on the same level, with the same aims and the same
organisational rules.
A formal federative union, of trade unions, or perhaps an alliance of
political parties of the proletariat, while having greater membership
than the class party, does not achieve the fundamental postulate of the
union of all workers, because it lacks cohesion and unity of purpose and
methods.
However, communists affirm that trade union organisation, the first
stage of workers’ associative consciousness and practice, which sets
them against the bosses, albeit locally and partially, precisely because
only a further stage of consciousness and organisation of the masses can
lead them to the terrain of the central struggle against the present
regime precisely because it gathers workers together by their common
condition of economic exploitation, and by bringing them closer to those
of other localities and trade union categories, directs them to achieve
class consciousness; the union organisation must be a single one, and it
is absurd to split it up on the basis of different conceptions of the
general proletarian action programme. It is absurd to ask the worker who
organises for the defence of his interests what his general vision of
the struggle is, wh ich are his political views; he may have none, or a
wrong one, but this does not meke him incompatible with trade union
action, from which he will draw elements for his further orientation.
That is why communists, as they are against trade union splits, when the
majority of members or the cunning of opportunist leaders make them
assume a non revolutionary attitude; accordingly they work for the
unification of the presently split trade union organizations, with the
aim of having in each country a unique national trade union central.
Whatever the influence of opportunist leaders, trade union unity is a
favourable factor for the diffusion of the revolutionary political
ideology and organization, and the class party makes within the united
trade union his best recruitment and his best campaign against the wrong
methods of struggle that others propound within the class.
From “
The Democratic Principle
”, 1922
From “Theses on Tactics”, CPofI, 2nd Congress, Rome, 1922
III. Relations between the Communist Party and the Proletarian
Class
-
Point 10
-
Point 11
-
Point 12
-
Point 13
-
Point 14
-
Point 15
-
Point 16
IV. Relations between the Communist Party and other Proletarian
Political Movements
-
Point 19
-
Point 20
From Draft Theses Presented by The P.C.d’Italia at the IV World
Congress, 1922
The conquest of the masses cannot be achieved by mere propaganda of
party ideology and by mere proselytism, but by participating in all
those actions to which the proletarians are driven by their economic
condition. It must be made clear to the workers that these actions
cannot by themselves ensure the triumph of their interests: they can
only provide an experience, an organizational achievement and a will to
struggle to be part of the general revolutionary struggle. This is
achieved not by denying such actions, but by stimulating them by
inciting the workers to undertake them and by presenting to them those
immediate demands which serve to bring about an ever‑widening union of
participants in the struggle...
Through actions for partial claims the Communist Party realizes a
contact with the masses which enables it to make new proselytes: for, by
supplementing with its propaganda the lessons of experience, the Party
gains sympathy and popularity and gives birth around itself to a wider
network of organization connected on the one hand to the deepest strata
of the masses and on the other hand to the leading center of the Party
itself. In this way the unified discipline of the working class is
prepared. This is achieved by the systematic
noyautage
of trade
unions, cooperatives and all forms of organization of working class
interests. Similar organizational networks must arise as soon as
possible in all fields of party activity: armed struggle and militia
action, education and culture, work among youth and women, penetration
of the army, and so on. The goal of such work is the realization of not
only ideological but also organizational influence of the Communist
Party on the largest part of the working class. Accordingly, in their
work in the trade unions Communists tend to realize the maximum
extension of the base of them as of all organizations of a similar
nature, fighting every split and advocating organizational unification
where the split exists, provided they are guaranteed a minimum of
opportunity to work for Communist propaganda and
noyautage
.
Such activity in special cases may also be illegal and secret.
The communist parties, while working with the program of securing the
leadership of the trade union centers, an indispensable apparatus for
maneuvering in revolutionary struggles, by the means of winning the
majority of the organized, accept in all cases discipline to the
decisions of the latter and do not demand that in the statutes of the
trade union and related organizations, or in special parts, a commitment
to party control be sanctioned.
From Draft theses presented by the Left at Lyon Congress, 1926
8. - The Union Question
International questions -
Point 8
. Union question
Italian questions -
Point 11
. Draft programme of party work
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY
The group of texts reproduced here covers the twenty years from 1949
to 1966.
The titles indicate with sufficient exactitude the order of the
problems set out in them as a true historical and programmatic balance
sheet. This is the main task for our organisation in the perspective of
the resumption of the revolutionary class struggle, which has been
largely absent in the last half‑century.
A “democratic” twenty‑year period has already passed, following the
fascist twenty‑year period, and we are able to draw up another
historical balance sheet that can be summarised in the lapidary phrase:
fascism has fallen on the battlefield of the last imperialist war, but
it lives and breathes in the economic, social and political spheres, in
spite of the parliamentary showcase, universal suffrage and the whole
paraphernalia of democracy.
This is all the more reason to curse bourgeois democracy, with which
the working class was once more led to accept the persistence of the
capitalist regime, the parties of betrayal, the national “communist”
parties, being mainly responsible for this operation.
How does fascism live and thrive under the cloak of post‑war
democracy? In the economic field we have the supremacy of a statist or
semi‑statised economy, the triumph, therefore, of the capitalist
monopoly par excellence. In the social sphere, there is the iron control
of the broad working masses by official parties, run by gangs of
professional counter-revolutionaries, and by trade union centres, run by
careerists submissive to the bourgeois State. In the political sphere,
the total disempowerment of the “legislative power” (parliament) to the
advantage of the “executive power” (government), with the general
elections falling to the level of farce for the bourgeoisie itself;
“popular” intoxication of a purely Mussolinian brand, rich of patriotism
and nationalism, on the basis of the class collaboration already typical
of democracy and raised to the level of a permanent regime by fascism.
In the field of theory, total contempt for any body of principles,
analogous to Mussolini’s claim of repudiation of any doctrinal
“constraint”.
It is in this balance that the trade unions of today stand, different
from the trade unions of yesterday, even if they have identical or
similar acronyms.
They march every day more and more in the same direction as the only
fascist trade unions, that of subjection to the political State of
Capital. The rebirth of class unions or of any intermediate class
bodies, free from capitalist State and regime constraints, will
therefore be mandatory for the proletariat.
The way of this rebirth is not and cannot yet be in the field of
vision of the Party and of the class struggle. Would it either come from
the conquest “by beatings” of economic organisations that are more than
“reactionary” (Lenin), such as the existing ones, or arise by other
means from the interweaving of proletarian struggles on the wave of a
general class revival, it is certain that the existence of intermediate
organisms, economic, social and political, is a prerequisite for the
revolutionary direction of the class by the Communist Party.
If breaking up the class associative network is a necessary objective
of capitalism and its lackeys, it is dialectically incumbent on the
class political party to direct the proletariat to its reconstruction.
It is also in view of this task that the Party weaves the network of its
factory and trade union groups, with which it organises the healthy
forces of the working class, however numerically weak they may be today,
on the basis of a clear and rigid opposition to both capitalism and
opportunism, these two faces of the same counter-revolutionary reality,
in the field of demands as well as in the political and organisational
field. These groups are not and do not aim to become “new” trade unions,
moreover “pure”, “uncorrupted”, etc., but they certainly represent the
vanguard and the leaven of the class. Thanks to them, the proletariat
will finally be able to regain its fighting organs, of which the main
one, the irreplaceable one, is the Party.
“
Trade Union Splits in Italy
”, in “Battaglia Comunista” no.
21/1949
From “
Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine
” and “Revolutionary Party
and Economic Action”, 1951
From “Characteristic theses of the party”, 1951
II. TASKS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
-
Point II.4
-
Point II.6
-
Point II.8
IV. PARTY ACTION
-
Point IV.4
-
Point IV.8
-
Point IV.9
-
Point IV.11
From “Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the
general situation is historically unfavourable”, 1965
-
Point 8
-
Point 12
From “Theses on the historical duty, action and the structure of the
world communist party”, 1965
-
Point 9
From “Supplementary theses on the historical task, the action and the
structure of the world communist party”, 1966
-
Point 2