To reconstruct the class organization, 1975

To reconstruct the class organization, 1975
International Communist Party
The Union
Question
To reconstruct the class organization
(
Il Partito Comunista
, n. 16, 1975)
The policy that workers’ unions have been carrying out for half a
century has reached such a point that it arouses disgust and even
revulsion among workers toward class organization, so that the revival
of proletarian economic organs, capable of defending and organizing the
working class against the greed of the landowning classes and their
social and economic productive apparatuses, is difficult and vexing.
While from a psychological point of view this is understandable, it
is not justifiable from the perspective of the immediate material
interests and class-based framework of the proletariat. Hatred against
enemies and traitors, a first-rate component for fighting them, cannot
lead us to deny the indispensable necessity of the defense of economic
functions that organized workers in particular must perform.
We are currently in the midst of economic organizations that control
a large part of the working class, dictating their infamous policy of
collaboration with the class enemy to the entire working class. This is
true. And even more tragic is that such a policy prostrates the working
class, and empowers the capitalist class and its political State. The
problem, then, is for the class to wrest the management of this vital
function out of the hands of the traitors, and it would be deadly and
delusional if, in order to be rid of its traitorous leadership, this
same function was denied or confused with the functions of the
Party.
An economic defense organ of the proletariat, fit for this purpose,
exclusively coordinating and rank the forces of
the working class in the ceaseless daily struggle for bread and labor,
draws its strength, as an organization, from the number of its members.
Today’s trade unions influence and direct the activity of the working
masses because they organize and discipline millions of workers. If they
did not, their influence would be negligible or naught. Parties, on the
other hand, can influence the labor movement while not having as large a
force numerically. This capacity for mass organization rests on the
principle that the union is open to all workers, regardless of political
or ideological perspective; a principle that still presides in the regimented unions, however much they wish to expel
or exclude those few workers who refuse to submit, but which the unions
themselves will repudiate when the struggle between classes assumes a
visible and prominent danger. This principle cannot be abandoned by any
class organization, whatever the form and name it takes.
Recruitment into proletarian economic defense organs is not done on
the basis of party, ideology, gender, age or nationality, but
exclusively on the basis of class, that is, one is permitted to join
as a wage worker only
.
Any other basis for recruitment would be specious or deceptive,
coercive in the sense that membership in the organization meant the
right to work (like the “bread card” in the fascist unions), and
exclusionary due to the limitations and exclusions for those workers who
remained outside of the organization. For example, it would be a serious
and debilitating mistake to organize only “revolutionary” workers
because the organization would be limited to representing a narrow
minority, losing its efficiency and leaving the vast majority of the
class in the hands of the enemy. These shortcomings can only lead to the
fragmentation of proletarian class forces, precluding the primary goal
to which class organization must strive: the generalization of
proletarian forces in order to make them into a disciplined class
army.
These considerations derive from the practical experience of
working-class struggles and confirm that the class political party has
no intent to exploit class organizations. The Party tends toward class
action by winning decisive influence over its economic organs
through free adherence of the proletarians organized
within it
to its
revolutionary program
, and not by means of coercion or
deception (even if only because the Party does not have these means
available to it).
The Party’s concept of the “transmission belt” is based precisely in
this respect on the voluntary subordination of the class organization to
the Communist Party’s political direction and leadership, and not on the
coincidence of the economic organization with the Party, let alone the
alliance between it and the Party. That is why the Party does not create
unions in its own image, organizing only its adherents or only workers
who accept its program.
This position is not the result of a tactical attitude, of a
political cunning, but of demonstrating the realistic consideration that
without a broad and powerful class economic framework, which in
principle organizes all proletarians and only proletarians, victorious
revolutionary action is not possible. From this it follows that the
resurgence of class struggle on a world scale is not the result of
agreements, choices or quarrels between “workers” or “revolutionary”
groups or parties.
Neither can the entrenchment of class organization result from such
an arrangement.
In conclusion, if the goal of the class conflict is political power,
the premise for achieving this goal is the struggle to remove
proletarian forces from under the sway of the enemy camp and onto
revolutionary terrain, leveraging the material conditions common to all
proletarians. Any hindrance to the achievement of this aim—to the
reorganization of the working class on class ground—prevents or delays
the realization of a wide array of forces of proletarian economic
defense.
Those groups or parties that call themselves “revolutionary” or
“leftist” and that pose political or, even worse, partisan demands,
behind which they hide group ambitions, or that claim party affiliations
or dubious associations of a populist flavor, have not grasped that the
economic condition of the workers is the terrain of class organization,
on which all proletarians recognize themselves as equal to each other
and different from the rest of the citizenry. By disregarding this
elementary observation, they would, if it were in their power, make the
process of reforming class organizations more painful or even
impossible; and, at the same time, assuming and denying their
“revolutionary” character, they would preclude themselves from the
possibility to
make their supposed revolutionary character triumph. But that is their
business.
The fact is that revolutionary communists do not place party
prejudices on those bodies that operate in the field of class struggle
for the defense of class economic conditions because they see in them
the embryo of a proletarian economic network and urge them to unite on
an ever larger scale, to gain in organization and efficiency, to
transform themselves from am embryo of the class organization into an
extensive and powerful one. It’s practical demonstration is affirmed
every day.
Whenever a group of workers rebel against the bosses by contravening
official union practice, they are forced to give in by not having equal
or greater strength than the union bosses’ control. A lack of numbers
can’t be replaced by the impetus of heroism. It is necessary to carry
our forces, the mass of workers, into the struggle in order to overcome
the enemy’s resistance through action. The economic organ can be
strengthened and its reach extended, even if a particular economic
struggle is unsuccessful, since the power of the union lies within the
mass of workers in the organization.
It is in no one’s power alone to create favorable conditions for the
return to proletarian class organization, but this return can be
accelerated, delayed or even prevented depending on whether or not the
movement of struggle extends to the entire working-class, mobilizing and
framing it on the basis of the workers’ immediate material
interests.
The severe state of the class’ prostration to the domination of the
capitalists is not overcome “with the head”, nor even by the Party; just
as the dictatorship of opportunism over the labor movement is not
overcome “with the head”. The overcoming of these tremendous obstacles
is contingent on the resumption of the workers’ struggle and by the
experience which, in the course of that struggle, the workers will come
to understand the reactionary and treasonous character of the official
leadership of their economic bodies and of the workers’ movement itself.
Therefore, it is futile to expect that the “consciousness” of a few wage
earners, organizing themselves into groups elected by History, will
overcome the present power relations between the classes. The tide will
change in favor of the working class, under the growing pressure of the
struggling proletarian masses, organized for their contingent needs, and
under the direction of which the class political party will have been
able to conquer power.