General Premise

The central thesis we wish to assert and illustrate is the following: Marx derived the characteristics of the Party form from the description of communist society.

From a methodological standpoint, we will attempt, as far as possible, to indicate the connection to the various meetings held in Italy. On the other hand, certain points will be touched upon but not examined in depth.

The struggle of the nascent proletariat during the great French Revolution had led certain revolutionaries (Varlet, Leclerc, Roux, the so-called “Enragés”) to believe that the revolution was being carried out solely for the benefit of a specific class of men rather than acting as a universal liberator. Later, though still during the same period, the “Égaux” (Equals) called into question the revolution’s capacity to emancipate humanity and proclaimed the necessity of a new revolution, one not conducted in the name of Reason: “He who has the might,” said Babeuf, “has right”.

The theory of the universal evolution of Reason and its role is found in Hegel’s system, which brings to a close the work of French philosophers and bourgeois revolutionaries. Moreover, by the time the young Marx appeared on the political scene, the proletariat had grown in numbers, and its weight in society had increased. It was precisely from observing the struggle of the proletariat that the idea arose in Marx and Engels that the Enlightenment solution was not the true, real one, at the very moment they perceived where the new solution lay: in the struggle of the proletariat as a class. They realized that the problem of humanity’s emancipation could not be solved theoretically because it had not been posed practically; the bourgeoisie reasoned in the name of an abstract man, a category that did not include the proletariat. Human liberation had to be viewed on practical grounds, considering the real human being, that is, the human species. Armed with this brilliant insight, Marx undertook a critique of the Hegelian system. He had understood why dialectics was standing on its head; now, with feverish enthusiasm, he confronted the monster – a new Oedipus solving the riddles. Whenever the difficulties became overwhelming, he returned to the practical realm and flung reality, the existence of the proletariat, in Hegel’s face. Like a modern-day Antaeus, he drew fresh strength for the battle from the proletariat itself, whose struggle he elucidated. Every one of his critiques of Hegel was grounded in the existence of the proletariat and its struggle: it was the connecting link between theory and praxis. (We shall endeavor, whenever possible, to highlight this aspect.)

Attuned to every practical and theoretical struggle, Marx was familiar with the works of fellow fighters such as Engels, Moses Hess, the French socialists, and others. Thus, ultimately, this synthesis, this historical integration, was achieved: Marxism as the theory of the proletariat, the theory of the human species. It would emerge in full force during the explosive phase of human societal development, the Revolution of 1848, with the Communist Manifesto.

Marxism is, therefore, the product of all human history; yet it could only emerge thanks to the struggle of the proletariat. This class “has no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old, collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant” (The Civil War in France).

Our task today is to explain how that stroke of genius became reality in the communist program; how this program was presented to humanity through the intermediation of the proletariat; how Marx and Engels fought to have it accepted by the proletarian organization (Marx’s letter to Bolte, Nov. 23, 1871: “The history of the International was a continuous struggle of the General Council against… the individual sections”); and how it triumphed in 1871 with the Paris Commune, proving its absolute necessity (its necessity reflects its verification and its validity). We shall examine all this to clarify the origin and function of the party-form. Finally, we shall approach the issue as follows: the only form of „actuality“ that possesses reality is the actuality of the program, that is, its necessity. For us, capitalism no longer exists; only communist society exists. (Cf. recent issues of Il Programma and the discussion at the Milan meeting on the following topic: Our theory is the only one capable of basing itself on future action).

Origin of the party form

To understand Marx’s critique of bourgeois society, one must grasp how human knowledge has evolved. Setting aside the period of primitive communism and its phase of degeneration (the beginnings of class-divided society), there are three major stages:

1) knowledge mediated by God; 2) knowledge mediated by the individual human being, in the capitalist period (cf. the meetings in Florence, Casale, and Milan). In this latter case, the entire problem lies in determining what Man is (it is needless to recall all the treatises that bourgeois philosophers have devoted to man: Hume, Locke, Helvétius…). From the abstract definition of the individual human being, characterized by Reason, one moves to the question of the best form of society for the optimal development of this individual; hence, the best social organization to guarantee the most rational development possible of humanity, viewed as the arithmetic sum of all individuals living at a given moment. Finally, since the human spirit is perfectible, the masses must be educated in order to achieve the liberation of man…

By carrying this critique to its logical conclusion, Marx, in the “Paris Manuscripts”, in the “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State and Right” (where right constitutes the bond between abstract individuals and between them and the State), and in “On the Jewish Question”, demolishes the Hegelian monster and arrives at a grasp of the real meaning of the movement of human society, comprehending it in its totality. Humanity as a whole tends towards Communism, defined thus in the “Paris Manuscripts” (chapter „Private Property and Communism„):

“Communism, as the positive transcendence of private property, as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by man and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, being a fully developed naturalism, is equivalent to humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution to the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solved riddle of history, and it knows itself to be this solution. Therefore, the entire movement of history is the actual act of communism’s birth, the birth of its empirical existence, and, at the same time, for its thinking consciousness, the comprehended and known movement of its becoming.”

We now arrive at the third stage: knowledge mediated by social man, by the human species. It is from this perspective that Marx and Engels view the world and social evolution. The problem is resolved at a stroke. Marx identifies the goal to be achieved, human emancipation, and its agent: the working class, for which this goal constitutes a historical mission and a program. It is therefore necessary to define the characteristics of this class and the nature of the link it has with its program:

“The emancipation of Germany is practically possible only by adopting the standpoint of the theory which declares that man is the supreme essence of man” (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). Man here is the human species. “The head of this emancipation is philosophy; its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat; the proletariat cannot abolish itself without the realization of philosophy” (ibid.). The character of the proletariat is that of “a class of bourgeois society that is not a class of bourgeois society, a class that represents the dissolution of all classes, a sphere possessing a universal character due to its universal suffering, and which lays claim to no particular right because no particular injustice has been inflicted upon it, but injustice “par excellence”; a sphere that cannot appeal to any historical title but only to a human one (here we encounter the fundamental constant of Marxism: the criterion for judging truth or error is that of the species; here, what interests us is not a transient, contingent fact, but the human being who is the mediator of all knowledge and action. The proletariat does not base its action in history on the possession of certain means of production, and thus on the possibility of a partial liberation of man, but on the non-possession of human nature, which it seeks to appropriate and thereby emancipate humanity); a sphere that stands not in any particular antithesis to the consequences, but in a general antithesis to the premises, of the German political system; a sphere, finally, that cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society, and thus emancipating them all; which, in a word, represents the total loss of man and can therefore regain itself only through the total recovery of man” (ibid: italics are Marx’s; the sentences in brackets are our own).

Thus, the question of the proletariat’s future evolution is a matter of how the issues of class, the State, and the organization of future society will be resolved. Moreover, the bourgeoisie tends to obstruct the organic link between the class and its program, seeking to reduce it to merely one class within the existing social order and thereby induce it to abandon its program. It is here that the question of the party arises.

None of these problems were resolved in isolation; rather, they were addressed as a whole. Marx grasped the nature of the future society, and it is from this understanding that he derived his theories of the State and the party. An understanding of communist society serves as the mediating basis for understanding Marxism itself. The entire body of work by Marx and Engels was dedicated to describing this society and defending it against bourgeois society. The following article, originally published in the “Pariser Vorwärts” on August 7, 1844, will allow us to demonstrate this.

The nature of the State

Marx first analyzes the nature of the State: “From a political standpoint, the State and the organization of society are not two separate things. The State is the organization of society. To the extent that the State acknowledges the existence of social disharmonies (Marx would later speak of class antagonisms, a more precise term, though it refers to the same reality), it seeks their causes either in natural laws beyond human control (reflecting Marxism’s enduring critique of the bourgeoisie’s claim that their mode of production is eternal), in private life independent of the State, or in administrative inefficiency, something that depends on the State itself”. He then examines the “ills” of the State form and the remedies proposed: “Ultimately, all States attribute the cause of their ills to accidental or intentional administrative shortcomings, and consequently look to administrative measures for the remedy. Why? Precisely because administration is the State’s organizing activity”. Here, we already find a critique of the very bureaucracy that some today would portray as a distinct class. We can already see Marx’s keen interest in defining the mechanisms of the State; it is in this light that he would follow the measures adopted by the Paris Commune in a constant and passionate way. For the bureaucratic phenomenon to disappear, the scope of administration must be limited and simplified; furthermore, given its link to authority, steps must be taken to ensure that holding an administrative position does not entail special privilege.

Subsequently, Marx analyzes the various contradictions inherent in the State and critiques the reformists, those who seek to cure the State’s ills, which are incurable by their very nature: “Suicide is contrary to nature. Therefore, the State cannot believe in the intrinsic impotence of its administration, that is, of itself. It can perceive only formal, incidental defects and attempt to remedy them.” This precisely defines the position of the Stalinists and various democrats. Not content with this, Marx mocks his adversaries by exposing their impotence: “If such changes prove fruitless, well then, the social infirmity is a natural imperfection independent of man, a divine law, or else the will of private individuals is too corrupt to align with the administration’s good intentions! And what a breed these private individuals are! They grumble against the government whenever it curtails liberty, yet demand that the government prevent the necessary consequences of that very liberty!” Here we find a critique of the French Stalinists who call for a strong democratic authority yet “grumble” whenever de Gaulle curtails “liberties” and thereby strengthens that authority: they disagree with the form of the State.

Marx mocks these illusions by showing that the State is the organized power of a class that dominates society: “Indeed, this rift, this infamy, this slavery of civil society constitutes the natural foundation upon which the modern State rests, just as the civil society of slavery was the natural foundation of the ancient State. The existence of the State and the existence of slavery are inseparable”.

Marx pushes this impossibility of reformism to the extreme by criticizing the position of A. Ruge, who declared: “All uprisings will be stifled as long as they erupt from this desperate isolation of individuals from the existing order (Gemeinwesen) and of their thought from social principles”, in other words, one must utilize the existing State to achieve the emancipation of the proletariat if one wishes to avoid failure; a position that would later be adopted by Lassalle, Proudhon, Dühring, and others.

Marx responds by analyzing, first of all, what the bourgeois revolution, and all revolutions, actually were:

“Do not all revolts, without exception, erupt from man’s desperate isolation from the existing order (Gemeinwesen)? Does not every revolt necessarily presuppose this isolation? Would the Revolution of 1789 ever have taken place without the desperate isolation of French citizens from the prevailing state order? It was precisely intended to abolish that isolation”.

The proletarian path is not “within” the State

But do the facts of the proletarian struggle present themselves in the same way? No:

“The Gemeinwesen (the existing order) from which the worker is isolated is an entirely different reality and of a very different scope than the political Gemeinwesen. The order, the community from which his labor separates him, is life itself—physical and intellectual life, human morality, human activity, the human being”. Here the critique achieves totality, because it is radical. Now, “to be radical means to take things at their root, and for man, the root is man himself” (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right).

The misery of the proletarian lies in being deprived of his human nature. This critique transcends the narrow framework of Proudhon’s critique, which is a rational miserabilism and therefore a futile line of reasoning about authentic human misery. Our Stalinists, with their theory of absolute misery, are the true heirs of Proudhon and E. Sue.

The proletarian’s demand manifests itself in the will to reclaim his human nature, and Marx defines the communist program thus: “The human being (human nature) is the true human Gemeinwesen (community)”. This means that in communist society, the State no longer exists; the principles of authority, organization, and coordination among human beings are embodied by the human species itself. It is a return to primitive communism, yet one achieved through the integration of the intermediate stages of development. In the past, the human species was represented in an imperfect and fragmented manner, for instance, through the totem. Men defined themselves in relation to the totem through a form of participation in it (the moira of the ancient Greeks); their individual existence held no reality but with reference to the totem; the individual was not separated from the species. With the establishment of class society, a rift between the two terms emerged, reaching its maximum existence in the proletariat. It is this wretchedness that Marx articulates in all its universality:

“Just as the desperate isolation from it (human nature, the human being) is infinitely more universal, unbearable, terrifying, and contradictory than isolation from the existing political order, and just as the overcoming of this isolation (the communist program), or even its partial reduction, a revolt against this isolation (proletarians can acquire class consciousness only by struggling and organizing into a party), possesses infinite scope, so too is man himself infinitely more than the citizen of the State, and human life infinitely more than political life”.

Any run-of-the-mill philistine, that is, the vulgar democrat who regards reflection as a mere product of his cerebral cortex’s activity, will think that Marx derived all this solely from his own powerful brain (for him, knowledge must be produced by a specific part of the human being, a notion of unparalleled foolishness). On the contrary, the proletariat is the living manifestation of Marx’s thought, of the articulation of the universality of misery and, consequently, of the universality of its liberation.

“An industrial revolt may be as partial as one likes; yet it nonetheless embodies a universal soul; a political revolt may be as universal as one likes; yet beneath its most colossal exterior, it nonetheless conceals a narrow spirit”. (While one might perhaps read into this a critique of Blanquism, it is in any case a stinging rebuke to Proudhon, whose petty musings once led him to discover that the working class lacked political capacity and thus could not govern itself, and to his refusal, like that of all other anarchists, for that matter, to correctly assess the ‘economic’ struggle and, later, the trade-union struggle.) And Marx continues: “This has been demonstrated. Even if it occurs in but a single industrial district, a social revolution places itself on the plane of totality because it is a protest by man against dehumanized life, because it proceeds from the standpoint of each real individual, and because the Gemeinwesen (community, collectivity), from which the individual strives no longer to be isolated, is the true community of man, the human essence”.

The proletariat tends to counterpose its Gemeinwesen, that is, the human being, to that of the capitalist (the oppressive State). To realize this actual opposition, it must appropriate this being, and it cannot do so unless it organizes itself into a party, a party that is precisely the representation of this being, a prefiguration whose life is a movement toward the appropriation of this being. Here, the consciousness of the proletariat’s mission is precisely expressed: the appropriation of nature and of the human being.

The Revolution and the States

The discovery of the movement of human society as a movement towards communist society coincides with the rediscovery of man; it is, therefore, the simultaneous manifestation of the need to appropriate his own nature. This defines the communist program.

To clarify the program, Marx then characterizes the bourgeois revolution: “The political soul of a revolution, on the contrary, lies in the tendency of politically powerless classes to break out of their isolation from the state and from power.” In feudal society, the bourgeoisie possessed the means of production, which gave them a power that was not recognized in the state. Hence the need to no longer be separated from the Gemeinwesen. Therefore, the bourgeoisie demanded the dissolution of the various “estates” (classes, orders) because their existence was the legal expression of its de facto alienation (later, only the “people” will be referred to), and proclaimed that all social strata could participate in the state. But only those who owned property could participate. The bourgeoisie thus carried out nothing more than an essentially political revolution.

We proletarians cannot content ourselves with this kind of revolution, because its standpoint “is that of the existing State itself, of the abstract totality of the State, which exists only by virtue of its separation from real life, and which is unthinkable without the organized antagonism between the general idea and the individual existence of man”. The proletariat must seize power, but to do so it must not place itself on the level of the State; it must not struggle for one form of the State, claimed to be more progressive, against another, as it does when fighting for one faction of the bourgeoisie against another (for democracy against fascism, etc.). Its action must be external. To carry out the revolution, the proletariat must abolish the opposition between individual and species, which is the contradiction upon which the existing State rests (as long as individuals exist, there remains the problem of their organization within society, and that of the relationship between this organization and the true needs of the species). The proletariat must not wage a revolution with a political soul, because such a revolution “organizes… a dominant part of society at the expense of society”. And, before moving on to characterize the proletarian revolution: “Every revolution dissolves the old society; in this sense, it is social. Every revolution overthrows the old power; in this sense, it is political”. The bourgeois revolution is a social revolution when it dissolves the old society; it is political when it overthrows the old power, yet asserts its own: an essentially political revolution. Indeed, to erect its social organization, the bourgeoisie had to employ a political organization that was inseparable from it; why? Because the bourgeoisie carried out the revolution to realize the abstract human type: the individual isolated from nature and the species; because they sought to liberate men from ancient feudal bonds (the dependency between man and nature). The problem was to define what the ties between these new men would be; thus, they formulated the rights of man, rights realized only when the revolution shifted onto its practical bourgeois terrain, that is, when it abandoned the hope of truly liberating humanity (after having crushed the sans-culottes uprisings). For Marxism, by contrast, „man“ signifies the human species, the social being who shares a human bond with the species and a human bond with nature (through dominion over it). Clearly, the proletarian state will not be a specialized apparatus governed by rigid rules, by a legal code whatsoever; rather, it will embody the Human Being itself. „Socialism cannot be realized without revolution. It requires this political act insofar as it needs to destroy and dissolve. Yet, it casts off its political shell as soon as its organizational work begins, as soon as it pursues its own true end, as soon as its soul is revealed„. Here, the entire theory of the „withering away of the state“ is already articulated. The revolution carries out a political act to put an end to the old world, but from that moment on, it turns toward establishing the reign of humanity over nature, of man over the planet; it no longer requires a political form, for its task is not to govern people. It is the Species, then, that governs, dominates, and possesses. Once the old society has been destroyed, the communist revolution will strive to assert the Human Being, the true Gemeinwesen of man.

The parties of the proletariat

Marx’s subsequent work would consist of examining how this could be achieved. He would then proceed to a precise analysis of society and outline the broad contours of the socialist transformation: ownership by the species, the abolition of mercantilism, and so forth. All this would be elaborated upon in the Manifesto, and later in the writings on the Commune and the Inaugural Address of the International (addressing the destruction of the bourgeois state and measures to curb “careerism”).

The party therefore represents the future society. It cannot be defined by bureaucratic rules, but rather by its very being; and its being is its program: a prefiguration of the communist society of the liberated and conscious human species.

Corollary: revolution is not a matter of organizational forms; it depends on the program. However, it has been proven that the party form is best suited to representing and defending that program. And our rules of organization are not borrowed from bourgeois society but derive from the vision of the future society (as we shall demonstrate).

Marx derived the originality of the party from proletarian struggles. From the very beginning, it manifests itself as a new Gemeinwesen; from the very beginning, it reveals the goal towards which it strives: a society in which private property will no longer exist, but rather property of the Species:

“The proletariat immediately and clearly proclaims its antagonism to the society of private property. The Silesian uprising begins precisely where the French and English workers’ uprisings end: namely, with the consciousness of being the proletariat. The action itself bears the stamp of this superiority. Not only are the machines, those rivals of the worker, destroyed, but also the account books and deeds of ownership; and whereas all other movements were directed essentially against the factory owner, the visible enemy, this movement is directed simultaneously against the banker, the hidden enemy. Finally, no other uprising by English workers was conducted with such courage, deliberation, and length. Comparing these giant boots of the infant proletariat with the worn-out dwarf shoes of German bourgeois politics, one cannot help but predict an athletic physique for this German Cinderella (a prediction that has largely come true; even today, we must base our revolutionary strategy on the action of the proletariat in this part of the world: the invariance of Marxism!). It must be acknowledged that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its economist and the French proletariat its politician”.

In each of these three cases, the struggle of the proletarians was a critique of various aspects of human activity. Knowledge does not come to us directly from the bourgeoisie, as some would have it; it comes from the struggle of our class. It is not a discrete sphere of activity that we passively absorb from the opposing class; rather, it is something vibrant and impassioned, something the proletariat has wrested from its class enemy. The young Marx was absolutely right to say that the ideas of communism, „which conquer our intellect, which capture our minds, and to which reason has bound our conscience, are chains we cannot cast off, cannot tear away without tearing out our own hearts; they are demons that man can overcome only by submitting to them„.

Marx therefore integrated these three elements and transmitted them to the proletariat in the form of theses, which are the communist program. A program born of the struggle, an impersonal force transcending generations. Marx and Engels were the substratum of this initial universal consciousness and passed it on to us. From the very beginning, Marx demonstrated that the communist program is not the product of an individual: “the revolution – we say -will be anonymous, or it will not happen at all”.

Yet this goal, this liberation, is precisely what all of humanity strives for; thus, the liberation of the proletariat is the liberation of humanity (a constant tenet of Marxism). The program, born of struggle, can only be asserted through struggle. This raises the issue of the conditions for the struggle against capital, the question of the link between the proletariat and the program, and the identification of periods of revolution and counter-revolution. The proletariat asserts its mission only when it is truly without reserves (integration into the dynamics of society and class struggle: can capitalism ever guarantee a reserve, a sense of security, to the proletarian? This issue is linked to the problem of crises; this point is explicitly addressed in the Rome Theses).

From this stems an important characteristic of the party. As the prefiguration of the communist Man and society, it serves as the mediating basis of all knowledge for the proletarian, that is, for the man who rejects the bourgeois order and accepts that of the proletariat, fighting to impose it and, thereby, to impose the human Being. The party’s knowledge integrates that of all past centuries (religion, art, philosophy, science). Marxism is not, therefore, a mere scientific theory (among so many others!); rather, it encompasses science and employs its revolutionary weapons of prediction and transformation to achieve its goal: the revolution. The party is an organ of foresight; if it fails to be this, it discredits itself. Marx to Engels, letter of February 18, 1865:

“The middle-class party discredited itself and brought on its present misery chiefly because it seriously believed that with the ‘new era’ power, by the grace of the Prince Regent, [the government] had fallen into its lap. But the workers’ party will discredit itself far more if it imagines that in the Bismark era or any other Prussian era the golden apples will drop into its mouth by the grace of the king. That disappointment will follow Lassalle’s hapless illusion that a Prussian Government would carry out a socialist intervention is beyond all doubt. The logic of things will tell. But the honour of the workers’ party demands that it should reject such illusions even before their hollowness is exposed by experience”.

Why? And here is the essential characteristic of the proletariat: “THE WORKING CLASS IS REVOLUTIONARY, OR IT IS NOTHING”.

Party and Revolution

Having defined the links between the program and the class, that is, between the State and the class, it is necessary to specify how liberation will come about. The answer: through a revolutionary assault. And what character will the revolution have? It will be violent.

As early as 1842, writing as a correspondent in London for the Rheinische Zeitung (December 10, 1842) under the headline „The Internal Crises,“ Engels states:

“For although industry makes a country rich, it also creates a class of unpropertied, absolutely poor people, a class which lives from hand to mouth, which multiplies rapidly, and which cannot afterwards be abolished, because it can never acquire stable possession of property. And a third, almost a half, of all English people belong to this class. The slightest stagnation in trade deprives a considerable part of this class of their bread, a large-scale trade crisis leaves the whole class without bread. When such a situation occurs, what is there left for these people to do but to revolt? By its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, and woe betide the wealthy Englishmen when it becomes conscious of this fact.

So far it is not conscious of the fact. The English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer. The nature of these disturbances was quite misunderstood on the Continent. At any rate, people wondered whether the matter might not take a serious turn. But there was no question of that for anyone who saw the events on the spot. In the first place, the whole thing was based on an illusion; because a few factory owners wanted to reduce wages, all the workers in the cotton, coal and iron areas thought that their position was endangered, which was not the case at all. Moreover, the whole affair was unprepared, unorganised and without leadership. The strikers had no definite aim, still less were they united on the nature and method of the action to be taken. Hence, at the slightest resistance on the part of the authorities they became irresolute and unable to overcome their respect for the law. When the Chartists took over the leadership of the movement and proclaimed the People’s Charter to the assembled crowds, it was already too late. The only guiding idea vaguely present in the minds of the workers, and of the Chartists as well, with whom it had, in effect, originated, was that of revolution by legal means — in itself a contradiction, a practical impossibility — in their efforts to achieve which they failed. The very first measure jointly undertaken by all — stopping the factories — was forcible and illegal. In view of the inconsistent character of the whole undertaking, it would have been suppressed at the very outset if the administration, for whom it came as a complete surprise, had not been equally irresolute and resourceless. Nevertheless, insignificant military and police forces sufficed to hold the people in check. In Manchester one saw thousands of workers trapped in the squares by four or five dragoons, each of whom blocked one of the exits. The “legal revolution” had paralysed everything. Thus the whole thing fizzled out; every worker returned to work as soon as his savings were used up and he had no more to eat. However, the dispossessed have gained something useful from these events: the realisation that a revolution by peaceful means is impossible and that only a forcible abolition of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical overthrow of the nobility and industrial aristocracy, can improve the material position of the proletarians. They are still held back from this violent revolution by the Englishman’s inherent respect for the law; but in view of England’s position described above there cannot fail to be a general lack of food among the workers before long, and then fear of death from starvation will be stronger than fear of the law. This revolution is inevitable for England, but as in everything that happens there, it will be interests and not principles that will begin and carry through the revolution; principles can develop only from interests, that is to say, the revolution will be social, not political”.

Must the masses, then, be educated in order to organize the revolution? Here is Engels’s answer in The Holy Family, Chapter IV, II (critical marginal note), from 1844–45:

“Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.

When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today. There is no need to explain here that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historic task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity”.

It follows that the proletariat exists only when it is revolutionary, when it has its own spirit, its own program, and sets its own state—that is, the human being—in opposition to bourgeois society. Otherwise, it becomes debased, and its spirit is bourgeois, a thing of bourgeois society; then it no longer has life, because its life is the revolution. That is why the Manifesto states:

“Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class”.

Class, program, party, and revolution, all of this is clearly defined. The class does not act, and therefore does not exist, except when it constitutes itself as a party, which in turn is defined by its program (the program being its very soul); the party can fulfill its historical mission only through a revolution.

Marx and Engels did not content themselves with mere “intuition”; they demonstrated the reality of the program. Whenever the question of revolutionary struggle was not the central focus of their activity, they turned to their “theoretical studies”, that is, to the task of refining the program. They discovered the general law and subsequently defined the specific laws. These studies served not merely to enrich but to strengthen the party’s potential; they were conducted in connection with the proletarian struggle (such as the issues of the State and the Paris Commune), thereby clarifying the description of communist society, and thus the methods for achieving it, just as they clarified the evolution of human society through extrapolation into the past. This led to brilliant insights regarding a society free of class struggle (primitive communism), an extrapolation that proved correct, thereby shedding its speculative nature, upon the publication of Morgan’s works, which Engels utilized masterfully. It is in this light that Marx’s work on Capital must also be viewed.

The harsh cycle of the global party

A product of history, the program could only emerge from the struggle of the proletariat. It fell to Marx and Engels to present it to the class and to humanity in 1848: the Manifesto of the Communist Party. They had to articulate it clearly and unequivocally in the Statutes of the International Workingmen’s Association. The task now is to understand how it established itself, why the proletariat abandons it during certain periods, and the conditions required for it to rediscover it, in short, the problem of the party’s formation and its reconstruction.

The first phase is the sectarian phase. As stated in The Fictitious Splits in the International (1872):

“The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticize social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach, and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature — i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyon workers did not want the St.-Simonists, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists and the English trade unionists wanted the Owenites. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they became reactionary. Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany, who after having hindered the proletariat’s organization for several years ended up becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of science. If the International were to be founded, it was necessary that the proletariat go through this phase. Contrary to the sectarian organization, with their vagaries and rivalries, the International is a genuine and militant organization of the proletarian class of all countries, united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their class power organized in the state”.

This phase, characterized by a predilection for coups, was linked to the counter-revolutionary period following 1833, during which secret societies flourished. Hence the Manifesto’s statement that “the Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims”. (We shall return to this point when discussing Blanquism and the relationship between the party, a minority, and the masses.)

For the program to be championed by an organization, the movement had to have moved beyond the aforementioned stage. Then came the task of imposing it. That is why Marx and Engels fought fiercely to ensure the program’s triumph within the International. The resolution of the International’s London Conference of 1871 reaffirms:

“Having regard to the preambles of the original Statutes, which state: ‘The economic emancipation of the workers is the great end to which every political movement must be subordinated as a means’; having regard to the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association (1864), which states: ‘the conquest of political power has therefore become the first duty of the working class’; having regard to the Resolution of the Lausanne Congress (1867), which reads: ‘The social emancipation of the workers is inseparable from their political emancipation […]’; considering further:”

Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied classes, the proletariat cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to all the old parties formed by the propertied classes;

That this constitution of the proletariat 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”.

Moreover, the creation of the First and Second Internationals, products of the proletariat’s struggle, was also an attempt to prevent the movement from falling under the control of anarchists and reformists. The Third International, in turn, would be forged in the heat of revolutionary struggle.

In this regard, two points need to be considered:

1) The link between party organization and party program,

2) What are the situations and the favorable moments for founding the party?

First point. In his letter to Freiligrath dated February 29, 1860, Marx clarified these elements: “I note first of all: after the ‘League’ was dissolved at my request in November 1852, I have not belonged, nor do I belong, to any secret or public organization; thus, the Party, in the entirely ephemeral sense of the term, ceased to exist for me eight years ago (our emphasis)”. Here, the reference is to the Party as a grouping of individuals, as an organization. And this leads to the second point and the question: why was this organization dissolved? Marx answers by explaining that it was a period of retreat, a counter-revolutionary phase. (In our 1951 meetings in Rome and Naples regarding Marxism as the theory of counter-revolution, and specifically concerning Russia, it was noted that our movement has already experienced other counter-revolutionary periods; therefore, the Russian question should not be placed at the center of our activity, as doing so could sooner or later lead to a view based on contingency.) In such periods, the party is reduced to only those comrades who have, in one way or another, rejected the victory of the opposing class, a victory that many militants theorize about, wishing at all costs to do something to “break out of the situation.” For Marx and Engels, history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature; periods of retreat cannot, therefore, produce good militants, and those who remain on the right path must be protected from the corruption of the external environment, a task that is anything but easy:

“Is it possible, amidst bourgeois dealings or trade, to remain above the muck? It is only in this environment that such muck naturally belongs… The honest infamy, or infamous honesty of ‘solvent’ morality… is not worth a penny more to me than the irresponsible infamy from which neither the early Christian communities, nor the Jacobin Club, nor even our own old League could fully free themselves. Yet, amidst bourgeois dealings, one grows accustomed to losing the sense of respectable infamy or infamous respectability”. No utopian illusions about man, and therefore no futile activism; rather, a “cordon sanitaire around the party”. In the same letter, Marx recalls how he waited a full year before replying to the leaders of the New York communist association who were urging him to reorganize the old League; he eventually wrote to them stating that, since 1852, he had had no dealings with any association, “and I was firmly convinced that my theoretical work served the working class better than my joining associations that had outlived their usefulness. In Die Neue Zeit,” he adds, “I have been repeatedly attacked for this ‘inactivity’”.

It is this withdrawal from action, a deliberate decision to reject action on bourgeois terrain when autonomous proletarian action is not possible, that drew upon Marx the aforementioned accusations of “inactivity”, just as the Left was accused in the past, and is accused today, of “inactivity” because it refused and continues to refuse to be drawn, in the name of activism at all costs, into the vortex of bourgeois corruption.

Why the party never disappears

That said, Marx clarifies the nature of the Party’s life: “The League, like the Parisian Société des Saisons and a hundred other societies, was merely an episode in the history of the Party, which arises spontaneously everywhere from the soil of modern society”. In other words, the formation of the organization is a historical product of this society’s antagonisms: if the class has been defeated, and its organization has consequently lost its revolutionary character by abandoning its program, or has been destroyed in the struggle, the organization will spontaneously reappear; the party re-emerges when social contradictions culminate in its eruption onto the stage of history. The party is not a merely differential notion, an organization whose life hinges on the ups and downs of class struggle. Here is its integral definition: “I have sought to dispel,” Marx concludes in his letter to Freiligrath, quoting an earlier letter to Engels, “the misunderstanding that would have me mean by ‘party’ a ‘League’ dead for 8 years or a newspaper editorial board disbanded twelve years ago. I understand the term ‘Party’ in its great historical sense”, that is, as a prefiguration of the future society, of the future Man, of the human being who constitutes man’s true Gemeinwesen. It is the attachment to this Being, which, in periods of counter-revolution, appears to be denied by history (just as, today, the revolution seems a utopia to the general public), that enables one to hold firm. The struggle to maintain this position constitutes our “action.”

At the meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist League on September 15, 1852, Marx had said:

“Schapper has misunderstood my proposal [for a split]. If the resolution is adopted, we shall separate; the two Regional Branches shall separate, and the people concerned will have no contact with each other. However, they will belong to the same League and share the same Central Committee. You can even retain the greater part of the League membership. As for personal sacrifice, I have given up as much as anyone, but for the class and not for individuals. And as for enthusiasm, not much enthusiasm is needed to belong to a party when you believe that it is on the point of seizing power. I have always defied the momentary opinions of the proletariat. If the best a party can do is to just fail to seize power, then we repudiate it. If the proletariat could gain control of the government the measures it would introduce would be those of the petty bourgeoisie and not those appropriate to the proletariat. Our party can only gain power when the situation allows it to put its own measures into practice. Louis Blanc is the best instance of what happens when you come to power prematurely”.

This issue is bound up with the question of the conditions under which action is possible, and the link between action and consciousness. But before elaborating on this, let us emphasize that the senseless squandering of energy during periods of reaction jeopardizes the historic convergence of the proletarian organization and its integral program. Engels wrote to J. P. Becker on February 10, 1882:

“Events are maturing in Russia in which the vanguard of the revolution will fight its battle. In our view, this, along with its inevitable repercussions in Germany, is what must be awaited; the time will then come for a grand demonstration and the establishment of an official, formal International (here Engels states in different terms what Marx explained to Freiligrath), one that can no longer be a mere propaganda society, but solely a society geared toward action. We therefore firmly believe that such an excellent instrument of combat should not be weakened(emphasis added) by squandering and exhausting it at a time when the waters are still relatively calm and we are merely on the eve of the revolution”.

On this point, all Marxists are in agreement; one need only recall the struggles of Lenin, Trotsky, and the entire Bolshevik Party, as well as the work of the Left, to clarify that, for us, insurrection is an art. What manifests itself, in periods of revolution and of retreat alike, is the continuity of our Being, the affirmation of our Program: the Party “in its broad historical sense”.

Rejection of anarchism to save the program

Marx and Engels fought within the International to ensure the triumph of the program (not their personal ideology, a narrow interpretation held by the anarchists and all our adversaries). The point of contention did not concern the ultimate vision, everyone desires communism, even the bourgeoisie (cf. Lenin on this matter), but rather the means of achieving it, the instrument of liberation: namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is the call for this dictatorship that characterizes Marxism. A class acts as such only when it gives rise to a party that represents its interests, and thus, given the nature of the class, the interests of humanity as a whole; the party seizes power, destroys the bourgeois State, and establishes itself as the ruling class, and thus as a State whose function is no longer political but social, working to ensure that the Human Being becomes „man’s true Gemeinwesen„. This cannot be achieved overnight; hence the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the party. It is this dictatorship that will enable the abolition of classes: therein lies the starting point of the struggle against Bakunin.

„The Alliance wants above all political, economic, and social equalization… of classes„, as stated in Article 2.

The „egalisation des classes“, literally interpreted, comes to the „harmony of capital and labor“ („l’harmonie du capital et du travail“) so persistently preached by the bourgeois socialists. It is not the logically impossible „equalization of classes“, but the historically necessary, superseding „abolition of classes“ (abolition des classes), this true secret of the proletarian movement, which forms the great aim of the International Working Men’s Association”.

This secret is held by the Party; within it lies the solution to all enigmas, and thus to all the antagonisms generated by class society.

“The attacks оп the Conference…assert that according to the General Rules and the original Congress resolutions the International is nothing but „а free federation of autonomous“ (independent) „sections“, whose aim is the emancipation of the workers bу the workers themselves ‘without any directing authority, even if set up bу voluntary agreement’. The General Council therefore was nothing but „а simple statistical and correspondence bureau „. …This. placed dangerous powers in the hands of the General Council. and turned the free association of independent sections into а hierarchical and authoritarian organisation of ‘disciplined sections’, so that ‘the sections are entirely under the control of the General Council, which can arbitrarily either refuse to admit them or suspend their work’… То our German readers, who know only too well the value of an organisation that is blе to defend itself, all this will seem very strange. And this is quite natural, for Mr. Bakunin’s theories, which appear here in their full splendour, have not yet penetrated into Germany. А workers‘ association which has inscribed upon its banпеr the motto of struggle for the emancipation of the working class is to bе headed, not bу an executive committee, but merely bу a statistical and correspondence bureau! For Bakunin and his companions, however, the struggle for the emancipation of the working class is а mere pretext; their real aim is quite different. „The future society should bе nothing but а universalisation of the organisation which the International will establish for itself. We must therefore try to bring this organisation as close as possible to our ideal… The International, embryo of the future human society, must henceforth bе the faithful image of our principles of liberty and federation, and must reject any principle leading to authoritariaпism, to dictatorship.“

We Germans have earned а bad name for our mysticism, but we have never gone the length of such mysticism. The International is to bе the prototype of а future society in which there will bе по executions à lа Versailles, по courts-martial, по standing armies, nо inspection of private correspondence, and no Brunswick criminal court! Just now, when we have to defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal, the proletariat is told to organise not in accordance with requirements of the struggle it is daily and hourly compelled to wage, but according to the vague notions of а futurе society entertained bу some dreamers. Let us try to imagine what our own German organisation would look like according to this pattern. … When Stieber and his cronies, the entire ‘Black Chamber,’ and all the Prussian officers infiltrate the Social Democratic organization on orders from above, the Committee, or rather, the correspondence and statistics bureau, would not be allowed to defend itself at all, for that would mean introducing a hierarchical and authoritarian structure! And, above all, no disciplined sections! No party discipline, no centralization, no weapons of struggle; otherwise, what would become of that anticipatory image of future society? In short, where would such an organization lead us? Toward the loose, groping organization of the early Christians, those slaves who graciously accepted every kick and only achieved victory for their revolution after three centuries, a revolutionary method the proletariat will take good care not to imitate”.

The alternating phases of party life

We can now outline the history of the Party:

1) Phase of the sects.

2) The Party develops during the period 1840–48.

3) In 1850, during a period of retreat, it was preferable to disband, for the reasons mentioned above and because the moment was not favorable for seizing power. The class had been defeated, and Marx and Engels wrote at the time:

“If, then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning. And, fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest which is allowed us between the close of the first and the beginning of the second act of the movement, gives us time for a very necessary piece of work: the study of the causes that necessitated both the late outbreak and its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of existence of each of the convulsed nations”. (Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, I, 1851).

(The same thing happened in 1926. Hence Trotsky’s error in believing he could rebuild an International. The movement’s degeneration revealed all the errors Marx had exposed. Instead of a sound analysis, an assessment capable of paving the way for a revolutionary resurgence, people sought the causes of the defeat in the leaders’ betrayal, Stalin’s crimes, the passivity of the masses, or the misapplication of slogans.)

4) Then comes the reconstruction of the movement. During this period, Marx and Engels make a thorough study of the reasons for the defeat. Their withdrawal from the League does not signify acceptance of the rout; on the contrary, they are concerned with whether the revolution might break out elsewhere, in India, China, etc., and, by a knock-on effect, radicalize the struggle of the proletariat in the West. Lenin’s position would be the same, and so is ours.

1864. The First International was founded during a period of rising momentum for the proletarian movement. Conditions were not entirely favorable, yet the proletariat had moved beyond the phase of sects and was demanding an international organization; moreover, it risked falling under anarchist influence, which would have reduced the movement to an inferior form of struggle. That is why Marx and Engels deemed the founding of the International necessary.
1871. The Parisian proletariat seizes power (The characteristics of the Commune will be incorporated by French internationalists into a study of the workers‘ movement in France). But here, too, the class is defeated – and on an international scale. Action thus reverts again to theoretical study. On May 28, 1872, Marx writes to De Paepe:

“I eagerly await the next congress: it will mark the end of my servitude. Then I shall once again be a free man; I will no longer accept administrative duties for either the General Council or the British Federal Council”; meanwhile, on February 24, 1871, he had declared: “I already told you in London that I often wondered whether the time had not come for me to withdraw from the General Council. The more the Association develops, the more my time is frittered away, and, after all, Capital must be finished”.

It is true: the workers had to be given their instrument of struggle.

5) In 1871, Marx took stock of the situation once more and clarified the conditions of the struggle; he defined the link between human will and action; he specified that the „Party-as-program“ emerged at a particular moment in the struggle of the proletariat, and thus of humanity, and that proletarian organization can only develop alongside a certain level of class struggle and its convergence with the program. In short, the party is not formed through the direct will of individuals; it re-emerges during specific periods, and the task is to determine how revolutionaries can prepare the best conditions for its return to the stage of history. All this is set out in Marx’s speech of September 26, 1871 (published in The World on October 15, 1871):

“The great success which had hitherto crowned our efforts was due to circumstances over which the members themselves had no control. The foundation of the International itself was the result of these circumstances, and by no means due to the efforts of the men engaged in it. It was not the work of any set of clever politicians; all the politicians in the world could not have created the situation and circumstances requisite for the success of the International. The International had not put forth any particular creed. Its task was to organize the forces of labour and link the various working men’s movements and combine them. The circumstances which had given such a great development to the association were the conditions under which the work-people were more and more oppressed throughout the world, and this was the secret of success. … But before such a change [socialism] could be effected a proletarian dictature would become necessary, and the first condition of that was a proletarian army. The working classes would have to conquer the right to emancipate themselves on the battlefield. The task of the International was to organize and combine the forces of labour for the coming struggle.

6) 1871–1889. A period of rebuilding the movement, culminating in the founding of the Second International. Its formation was somewhat forced by the stance of a number of Possibilists and reformists; yet Engels accepted its creation precisely to prevent the global movement from falling under their control.

But in 1889, the program was put to the test of practice and emerged strengthened. The Commune of 1871 made it possible to refine the theory of the State. The cycle of the proletarian movement has concluded: no social phenomenon can any longer “call Marxism into question.” Only the hypothesis of a peaceful revolution remains; the war of 1914 would demonstrate the contrary, thereby proving Marx’s “catastrophic” vision.

The final counter-revolutionary storm

Tactical errors prevented the reorganization of the proletariat into a world communist party. It was the errors of the United Front – a tactic that, in a sense, acknowledged and theorized the defeat of the Western proletariat – that prevented the Russian proletariat from receiving aid from its Western counterpart. The theory of the counter-revolution is inserted on these errors. Here we encounter the most difficult, prolonged, and painful stage of the proletarian movement. The counter-revolution triumphs behind the mask of revolution. To defeat it, one must neither adopt the standpoint of the „Russian leaders“ (Trotsky’s error) nor regard the Russian question as the central issue. The validity of Marxism did not depend in any way on the success or failure of the Russian Revolution; its correctness had already been demonstrated in all its components. The worldwide victory of the proletariat could only hinge on the victory of the Russian Revolution; yet, as has been repeatedly shown, the victory of socialism in Russia depended on the proletariat seizing power in the West. If a verification of Marxism was required, it therefore had to be sought within our own area.

Yet continuity was not destroyed. The Left defended the program. On every level, theoretical, practical, or tactical, it reaffirmed the tenets of the program in all their purity; indeed, it synthesized them anew by organizing the various elements scattered throughout Marxism, which the struggle itself had previously prevented from being organically coordinated, into a unified set of theses. These theses made no claim to discover anything new, but rather sought to systematize the program’s enduring principles for the sake of a more effective struggle: Rome Theses, Lyon Theses, and the Party’s work as a whole.

In times of defeat, the proletariat abandons its program; only a weak minority defends it. Only the „Party-program“ always emerges strengthened from the struggle. The struggle waged from 1926 to the present day amply demonstrates this. This struggle consists of critically highlighting the progressive unmasking that the Russians are driven to carry out in practice, and demonstrating how they are led to create new „categories“ to reconcile reality with their general positions. We know that the foundations for the establishment of the world communist party will exist only when this critical and practical unmasking has reached its ultimate point, the „confession“. But we also know that the proletariat will wrest this confession from them through struggle. Then it will rediscover its program, which is currently distorted and prostituted. Our task can be illustrated by the following comparison: Christ drove out the merchants from the Temple by whip lashes. The Party is the temple from which we must drive out all those who sell their theoretical wares there, rebranding them as Marxism.

Thus, once again, we have invariance, that is, continuity with our human Being = Party-program. Only by understanding the Party in this way can one grasp the apparent contradiction between proclaiming the possibility of the communist revolution in 1848 and the 1859 assertion that any form of society disappears only when it has exhausted all its intrinsic possibilities.

Through the communist revolution, the capitalist phase, which is a transitional stage, can be shortened, starting from the moment when the development of the productive forces is sufficient to generate a class capable of reclaiming the human Being. From that point on, Communism becomes possible.

Stating this point does not mean harboring illusions about the resilience of the opposing class, which is still capable of „achievements“ that can delay the movement by fostering opportunism within the proletariat. It was precisely because they understood all this that Marx and Engels were able to prepare their forces for a retreat following defeat. All other movements threw, or continue to throw, their entire strength into the battle, only to emerge completely destroyed. Our historical continuity stems from this dialectical perspective.

In any case, today we have reached the point indicated by Marx where the social form has exhausted all its possibilities (at least for a vast part of the world). We joyfully welcome the great movement of expropriation unfolding across the globe, because the further this phenomenon progresses, the more possible the reappropriation of human Nature becomes, and the more is Communism relevant.

Function of the party form

The function of the Party derives from the struggle within present-day society and from the description of communism.

1) Organization of the workers, organization of force, direction of violence.

“The ultimate object of the роlitiсаl movement of the working class – Marx writes to Bolte on 29-11-1871 – is, of course, the conquest of роlitiсаl power for this сlass, аnd this naturally requires that the organisation of the working class, an organisation which arises from its economic struggles, should previously reach a certain level of development.

Оп the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class as a class confronts the ruling classes аnd tries to constrain them bу pressure from without is a political movement.

For instance, the attempt bу strikes, etc., in a particular factorу or even in a particular trade to compel individual capitalists to reduce the working day, is а purely есоnomiс movement. Оп the other hand the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc., law is а political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere а political movement, that is to say, а class movement, with the object of enforcing its interests in а general form, in а form possessing general, socially coercive force. While these movements presuppose а certain degree of previous organisation, they аrе in turn equally а means of developing this organisation.

Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake а decisive campaigп against the collective power, i.e., the political power, of the ruling classes, it must at any rate bе trained for this bу continual agitation against this power and bу а hostile attitude toward the policies of the ruling classes. Otherwise it remains а plaything in their hands”.

The party therefore enables the organization of the class; subsequently, it will be the subject of the:

2) Dictatorship of the proletariat:

“Art. 1. – The aim of the association is to overthrow all privileged classes, to subject them to the dictatorship of the proletariat, while maintaining the revolution permanently until the realization of communism, which must be the final form of organization of the human family.”

“Art. 2. – To contribute to the achievement of this goal, the association shall forge bonds of solidarity among all factions of the revolutionary communist party, eliminating divisions of nationality in accordance with the principle of republican fraternity” (1850: Universal League of Revolutionary Communists).

Dictatorship makes it possible to destroy the bourgeois state and thus to spur social transformation. It is historically necessary, and therefore “free.” It is important to emphasize here that we do not advocate just any dictatorship, and that for us it is a means: what matters to us is knowing against whom it is directed, against what, in whose name, and in the name of what. In this respect, one can say that only reactionary dictatorships, aimed at maintaining class oppression, are authoritarian, because they are rejected by Man (to whose development they are not necessary, and grab the Gemeinwesen to exploit him); whereas the revolutionary dictatorship is accepted by Man as a liberation, because the new Gemeinwesen will increasingly tend to identify with the human Being and thus to disappear as a phenomenon external to Man (Lenin: The dictatorship of the proletariat is that of the vast majority over the minority, in contrast to that of bourgeois society).

This is all the more true because, as Marx demonstrated in Capital, the bourgeois dictatorship increasingly becomes the dictatorship of capital, and thus stands external to the class itself. During the revolutionary period, the bourgeoisie’s dictatorial power had enabled a flourishing of production by destroying the obstacles created by feudal society, yet without ever controlling its specific mechanisms. (In a text from 1844, Engels had already pointed out the anarchic nature of capitalist production). Similarly, capital and the capitalist are initially identical, and the freedom of the one is reflected in the other. Later, with the capitalist concentration linked to the mechanisms arising from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the capitalist tends to separate from his property; he who was the being of capital becomes its having. The capitalist as a figure disappears; freedom vanishes; it becomes nothing but the freedom of Capital, and the latter turns into an impersonal force served by a bureaucracy (a pathology of classes), the typical organization of the modern State. In other words, the State becomes the Capital-State, with its bureaucratic organization:

“Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later on by trusts, then by the state. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees”.

All individuals in this class have a stake in the capital; they must therefore receive a profit proportional to the sum they have invested. The modern State must enforce this operation, this balancing out. Hence the glaring contradiction of our era: an increasingly oppressive State, alongside increasingly insistent demands from individuals (yet another illustration being the recent French crisis surrounding the Algerian War). Bourgeois dictatorship has evolved into the rule of a monstrous force alien to humanity, one that obstructs the emergence of a society tending, in its totality, toward communism. Indeed, capitalism itself is tending to disappear.

It is against this dictatorship that the proletariat must struggle. Its destruction is the elimination of man’s malady; the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is his regeneration through the appropriation of human nature.

Thus, the antitheses: Individual-State, Individual-Species, and Liberty-Authority-Necessity, are resolved.

The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was suggested to Marx by the events of the bourgeois revolution, by Babeuf, by the struggles of the French proletariat, specifically in the form of Blanquism (with contributions from socialists such as Flora Tristan), and by the struggles of English and German workers. Through their actions, the workers gave practical expression to the theoretical requirement Marx had formulated in his critique of Hegel. Throughout his theoretical framework, Marx identified the necessity of struggle: might makes right. (The workers engaged in a critique through action: they rejected existing methods of struggle and aspire to a form of power that would enable the birth of a classless society; it should be noted that Marx always grounded his theory in reality). From this, the following conclusion emerges:

a) The Party is a minority of the class.

b) Unification of the proletariat on an international scale to achieve the seizure of power; international character of the proletarian revolution and, consequently, of communism:

“The importance of communism does not lie in the fact that it is an issue of our time and of extreme importance for France and England. Communism is of European importance”.

c) Class struggle is a war; therefore, an army is required. There is the problem of securing allies, the problem of neutralizing certain social strata, and the problem of ensuring a fallback position in the event of defeat. Tactics: Address to the Communist League (1850); Rome Theses. We possess, as Marx repeatedly emphasized, a burning passion for humanity and its liberation; yet, this does not mean we throw ourselves headlong into the fray. We must always seek to master the strategy and the terrain of the struggle. Otherwise, our enemy will, sooner or later, ensure the maintenance of order. For us, insurrection is an art.

The foundations of tomorrow’s party

The characteristics of the Party of tomorrow derive from its function. As the prefiguration of communist society, it cannot accept a mechanism, a principle of life and organization, linked to bourgeois society; it must bring about the destruction of that society.

1) Rejection of the democratic mechanism (Marx to Engels, May 18, 1859): “…we owed our position as representatives of the proletarian party to nobody but ourselves; this, however, had been endorsed by the exclusive and universal hatred accorded us by every faction and party of the old world”). Our position: organic centralism.

2) Anti-individualism: the party embodies the anticipation of the social brain. All knowledge is mediated by the party; so too is every action. The militant has no need to “seek the truth”; it is provided by the party (truth in the social realm: in all other fields, it cannot be attained until after the revolution). A tendency toward the realization of the Social Man.

3) Rejection of all mercantilism and careerism in any form. The bond between comrades, and the expression of this bond in their relationships, must be inspired by Marx’s commentary on James Mill’s book: Every activity and every manifestation must be an affirmation of human joy through communication with others, and thus with the future society.

4) Abolition of class-based social antagonisms. Within the party, there are only communist militants. In practical terms, this corresponds to the need to base the party on territorial unity rather than on unity of work.
5) The party must be the solution to all enigmas, and it must know how to be so. It must present itself as the refuge of the proletarian, the place where his human nature asserts itself in such a way that he can mobilize all his energies in the struggle against the class enemy.

It was necessary to define these characteristics, for only they allow us to understand the party’s function and gain a comprehensive view of it. The party is an impersonal force that transcends generations; it represents the human species, the human being finally rediscovered, the consciousness of the species. This consciousness can manifest itself only under specific conditions (such as the action of the proletariat): in a revolutionary situation, a reversal of praxis becomes possible, a reversal of all past and present development; the Party decides to seize power in order to destroy bourgeois society; human prehistory has come to an end: at this moment, everything converges, it is the culmination of theory, through the precise prediction of the opportune moment, and of action (insurrection is an art). The two phenomena combine: it is then that the consciousness of action emerges, the consciousness that precedes action.

Marxism is a theory of human action and a theory of the production of consciousness; yet, precisely for this reason, it is a reflection of that action, of that praxis, and constitutes its very consciousness, that produced consciousness; thus, it is its absolute truth. Therefore, we can say that it is a guide for action (the party, as the organized action of the proletariat, is the subject of history), a guide for human action, a guide leading toward human liberation, toward the achievement of consciousness, and toward communist society: it is the guide to human emancipation.