Il Partito Comunista 407

The riot at the United States Capitol on January 6 was the convulsion of a dying social system. The deep crisis of capitalism became a political crisis in the leading power of the bourgeois world. The U.S. has not seen an emergency like this one since the outbreak of its civil war in 1861, before it rose to become the leading capitalist power. The extent of its fall – from the triumph of the Union in 1865 over the slaveholders’ insurrection to the seizure of the Capitol by the MAGA mob – seemed unthinkable even a few weeks ago. But as Marx and Engels observed, under capitalism “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

Let’s sober up, then.

What happened on January 6 has been described as an attempted coup d’état. This is certainly an exaggeration, but it is proof that democracy is now only a papier-mâché figure, ready to be trampled underfoot by anyone, and that no one is really interested in defending it.

The United States has the most sophisticated security apparatus in the world, but that didn’t stop a largely unarmed mob from storming the Capitol during a joint session of Congress. How could that police state have allowed this to happen?

The answer is obvious from the videos of officers opening the gates to allow the rioters to enter and posing for photos with them. This was a very different police presence than that which has always been seen at demonstrations against racism, for example.

For the bourgeois state to defend itself it is useful to draw on the ideologies of racism, sexism, imperialism, and anti-communism. For the January 6 skit it has therefore mobilized some well-known fascist barkers, who advocate armed actions on the internet but cower in front of the police in real life.

Anti-communism was a strong influence on the rioters. One person at the vanguard of the push into the Capitol held a sign that read “Communism Is the Real Invisible Enemy.” There were other banners depicting Trump beheading Karl Marx, and communists being thrown out of helicopters in Pinochet’s Chile (with the slogan “Anti-Communist Action”). These statements and symbols are evidence of the contemporary U.S. far-right’s lineage from the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s. Their real enemy has always been freedom for the working class!

But it is possible, and historically verified, that the fascism of the bourgeois state – always anti-communist and anti-proletarian – sometimes presents itself as “leftist”, and even “proletarian” and “communist”: Stalinism has given us numerous bleak examples of this “real socialism”.

Meanwhile – just because the ghost of democracy is useful to delude the working class and the ruined petty bourgeoisie – the representatives of the bourgeoisie feign outrage at the riot. As with any parent, the big bourgeoisie sometimes needs to discipline its unruly children. So they condemn the rioters and claim that Trump, in his final days in office, represents a threat to democratic values and bourgeois political civilization (some civilization!). The right and “left” deprecate this farce as “an attack on our democracy”. The worst demagogues prostrate themselves before the wounded nationalist pride of an “uncontaminated citadel of democracy”.

All of this is an effort to depoliticize the whole affair, to reduce it to an issue of “extremism”, against which the “good” state, supported by all parties of the right and left, should fight. The electoral left, the democratic socialists, is the first to appeal to the bourgeois state to crush the fascist threat, which it will never do!

Even supposed “Marxists”, who recognize that the revolt arose from the founding characteristics of the United States, particularly racism, remain subservient to it, although they recognize it as reactionary.

We revolutionary communists will certainly be compared to the rioters of January 6 by our opponents, because we dare to fight back against the bourgeois state. We are not the “opposite extremism” to the fascists who rallied on January 6: all of them want to be part of this state; we will abolish it!

The living conditions of the workers and of all wage earners have been continuously worsening for decades, subjected, in perfect continuity, to the attacks of all successive governments. Above parliamentary alchemy, every government of the bourgeois state is necessarily opposed to the workers.

This is because the real holder of power is not the current government, but those who today, with hypocritical modesty, call the “strong powers”, and who are none other than the industrial, financial, and landed, the national and international bourgeoisie.

The parties of the parliamentary arc are bands that pose as representatives of classes and class interests, but the threads of these puppets are in the hands of big capital: they cannot go beyond certain limits in their disputes over how to divide the surplus value extorted from the working class, and must discipline themselves to protect the common interest of the entire ruling class, which requires that they maintain of the productive system based on the exploitation of the working class.

The story of the probable settlement of Mario Draghi as head of the government is the driving license. Who better than that international banker can embody the current, stringent general needs of the Italian bourgeoisie?

This is an urgent hour, and all the lobbies and tradesmen of media-parliamentary politicism must step aside or kneel and obey – these clowns are useful only for the staging of an apparent democracy, played only to mask the fascism that, behind the scenes, is alive and prevailing everywhere.

The working class is therefore not interested in taking sides for or against the formation of this government. Democracy, the mask of the dictatorship of capital, must not be defended; its role must be denounced and the true face of our enemy exposed. The new government – be it “technical” or “political” – will work against the living conditions of the wage class, in perfect continuity with the previous ones.

What is needed instead is to rebuild the strength of a real class union to deploy real strikes. This is the only means that the proletarians have to stop the deterioration of their conditions.

The signing of a new national contract for metalworkers on February 5 confirms this urgent need. The Italian Confederation of Metalworkers (FIOM), the Italian Federation of Metal Mechanics (FIM), and the Italian Union of Metalworkers (UILM) in 12 months of dispute have called the category to only 4 hours of national strike, finally obtaining a salary increase well below what they requested: 82 euros out of 153.

The Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL), the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions (CISL), and the Italian Labour Union (UIL) are collaborationist and regime unions that prevent workers from returning to struggle. On the other hand, the rank and file unions still do not represent a valid alternative because of their divisions, a consequence of the pettiness of their leadership.

For this reason, the inescapable task of communists and militant workers in the workplace and in the trade union movement today is to fight for the unity of action of conflictual unionism – base unions and opposition in the CGIL – to win the struggle against current opportunist leadership, the first practical step towards the rebirth of a true class union, outside and against the regime unions.

Only on the basis of a reborn workers’ movement will more and more workers return to join the revolutionary communist party, which is the fundamental weapon of the class for the overthrow of capitalism and its political regime.