The attempt by American imperialism to both mire Russia in a brutal military clash in Ukraine and bend it economically with sanctions has clashed with the harsh reality of a war that Russia is winning on the ground. This has led to a prevailing conviction in Washington of the need to scale back military and financial commitments on the Ukrainian front, in order to shift focus—and resources—towards the Asian front against Chinese imperialism.
A potential agreement between the Americans and Russians is being obstructed—albeit with varying degrees—by the Europeans, who remain aligned with the earlier strategy dictated by the old Biden administration. That is, to continue the war until Russia’s defeat.
This strategy took root in Europe even if against the interests of European states themselves. That was the case for Germany in particular, which had seen its powerful industry thrive partly thanks to access to low-cost energy resources from Russia.
European bourgeois are now facing the prospect of an agreement with Moscow that, given Russia’s military dominance in Ukraine, would resemble an outright “surrender”. As such, the former—already economically defeated since they had to renounce the cheap Russian energy in favor of other, more expensive sources—have no other option but to press on with the war against Russia. The illusion they chase in an old one: militarily defeat Russia in order to plunder its wealth and invade the Eastern markets.
The First “Radiant Days”
In the current phase of the Russia-Ukraine war, after the Americans have started to pull out of the conflict, it has mainly been the Europeans pushing Ukrainians to die on the battlefield. Zelensky’s attitude reflects nothing more than the Europeans’ opposition to a deal with Russia.
Ukraine—which has thus far been used and allowed itself to be used in this war—now stands on the verge of being abandoned by the Americans, clinging desperately to the fragile hand extended by the Europeans.
The risk facing Kyiv and other European capitals is significant, given the real possibility of a collapse of Ukraine’s internal front.
This clearly illustrates that, in imperialist wars, the true enemy of any bourgeois state is not so much the army of the opposing country, but its own proletariat—just as in October 1917, during the height of World War I, when the war between states was turned into the class war that lead to the overthrow of bourgeois power.
The Ukrainian state apparatus is therefore forced to use brutal methods to subdue its own proletarians and drag them to the front. Likewise, European bourgeois find themselves fighting the internal battle against their own proletariat, asking for sacrifices to halt the “Russian aggression.”
It is no surprise then that in Europe, in support of the continuation of the war, we have already witnessed the first “radiant days,” with initial interventionist demonstrations such as the one in Rome on March 15th.
The bellicism of European states relies on the mass of petty-bourgeois parasites sustained by the spoils of imperialist plunder. For them, “less Europe” simply means a reduced capacity for European imperialisms’ to loot the rest of the world and provide for their parasitic upkeep.
The warmongering stance of the ruling classes of various European countries thus finds its foot soldiers in these petty-bourgeois, parasitic strata, who increasingly sense the decline of their social standing. They express this through “Europeanism,” the pious wish for “more Europe,” for greater political unity among EU member states—advocating different versions of the same petty-bourgeois, reactionary ideology. Moved by the fear of falling into the ranks of the proletariat, they cling to their own imperialism, revealing their inherently reactionary nature.
As demonstrated by the participation of the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour) in the March 15 demonstration, opportunism also adopts the reactionary Europeanist ideology, further confirming our classical positions on imperialism, masterfully outlined by Lenin:
“Imperialism, which means the partitioning of the world, and the exploitation of other countries besides China, which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries, makes it economically possible to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives shape to, and strengthens opportunism.”
The Meaning of European Rearmament
Europeanist propaganda—with its nauseating debate on a “common defense”—and the anti-Marxist position of the self-proclaimed communists who blather about a supposed common European imperialism, are once again contradicted by the reality of the European rearmament issue. After all, such rearmament can only be the rearmament of individual nation-states.
The European rearmament project was announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on March 4 and soon after accepted by the European Parliament.
This plan consists of five key points, the most important being the ability for EU member states to exclude defense spending from the deficit rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, up to 1.5% of GDP.
According to analysts, this exemption could result in €200-250 billion per year in defense investments, potentially reaching €650 billion over four years, plus €150 billion in EU funding. Military spending as a percentage of GDP would rise from the current 1.9% to 3% by 2028.
It is clear that this EU-conceived rearmament plan remains confined within the national borders of a politically divided Europe.
That is, the European states will rearm themselves, but each on its own.
Germany will lead the way, having immediately seized this as an opportunity to remove defense spending from the public deficit. Setting aside its much-vaunted fiscal austerity, it has outlined a rearmament plan that would allow the conversion of its crisis-hit industry to military production.
As early as March 18th, the German parliament approved a massive investment plan, including constitutional budget rule changes to facilitate rearmament and investment in defense and infrastructure.
Estimates suggest Germany could invest €1–1.5 trillion over the next decade.
This German rearmament marks the end of the post-World War II Europe as we have come to know it, as no other country could match Germany’s spending power.
A critical point must be clarified, against both Europeanist propaganda and the anti-Marxist positions of self-styled communists. The enemy the European proletariat will face—one that may wave the blue-starred EU flag today—will ultimately be the national bourgeoisies of each European country. While they may occasionally align due to coinciding interests, they may just as well turn on each other, as happened in the past century.
Nothing new for the Party, just a confirmation of our traditional assessments:
“Europe (and the world) will not truly be united until the proletarian revolution has overthrown the national states and established an international proletarian power.
Until then, all the reformist and megalomaniac propaganda for a United Europe will collide with the objective limitations and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. The solemn signatures of ambassadors and ministers will not be enough to overcome them.”
(Il Programma Comunista, no. 11 and 12, 1962)
Limits of European Militarism
The European rearmament plans will inevitably not only concern weapons but also the need for soldiers to wield them—or more bluntly, cannon fodder to send to the front.
The war in Ukraine has dispelled all theories about future wars being hyper-technological and requiring minimal manpower.
From the frontlines in Ukraine comes the clear lesson: modern war needs mass armies.
This makes the European rearmament plans look like “paper tigers”—threatening due to the massive resources allocated to weapons spending but fragile due to the lack of large numbers of men to send into battle.
A case in point is the saga of the so-called “willing”. This is the group of European countries—led by Britain and France—that want to send troops to Ukraine but cannot. That is due to the hesitancy of the rest of the EU, the predictable internal opposition that would build up as coffins return from the front, and especially the lack of preparedness to face Russia’s war machine.
European armies are small, often only tens of thousands strong, and there is no realistic prospect of significantly increasing those numbers.
Even analysts serving the bourgeoisie acknowledge the dire outlook of having to fight wars like Ukraine’s with insufficient personnel.
The threatening scenario for European imperialisms is worsened by purely demographic factors—Europe’s aging population and low birth rates—as well as moral factors, given the lack of ideological fervor to build an interventionist internal front capable of mobilizing masses of men.
Expedients seen in the Ukraine war—female conscription, recruiting prisoners and mercenaries—are unlikely to solve the issue of mass army building.
Soon, the question will arise: who will be sent to die?
The bourgeoisie and its lackeys know what’s at stake.
On one hand, the risk of becoming entangled in protracted wars without sufficient manpower; on the other, the danger of internal social upheaval in the attempt to mobilize the required forces.
Lessons from the Ukraine War
As European bourgeoisies embark on massive arms spending —costs that will be shouldered by the proletariat, worsening its living conditions— we can already see the future in the fate reserved to the Ukrainian and Russian workers sent to the slaughter in the imperialist war.
Reports from an anti-militarist group in Kharkiv noted that in late 2024, the Ukrainian army was heading toward total collapse.
This was exacerbated by the shift in U.S. policy toward halting military aid.
However, during winter, a crackdown on discipline brought the situation back under control.
The economic conditions, due to the lack of job opportunities for those who leave the army, also work against the disintegration of the Ukrainian army, forcing many of those who had left to return.
For now, the Ukrainian state manages to control the front through a combination of repression and economic pressure: on one hand, the death penalty for deserters, and on the other, hunger forcing fugitives to rejoin the army due to lack of employment.
The disobedience of entire military units in Ukraine is now a distant memory, from those early months of the war when numerous videos had circulated—recorded by those very soldiers refusing to follow orders from military commanders. And there is currently no serious threat to the regime from discontented civilians.
However, episodes of opposition to the ongoing war are not lacking. These go beyond the pattern of individual rebellion and constitute an embryonic form of organized struggle.
For example, at the end of May, in the Khmelnytskyi region, the local population opposed forced conscription by attacking and surrounding the vehicle of the recruiters who had captured a man to send him to the front.
It was the very authorities in charge of recruitment in the region who issued an unusual statement regarding the incident:
“According to available information, the vehicle was damaged, and the actions of the citizens showed signs of organized resistance to the exercise of official functions by representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
Therefore, although the Ukrainian army is in a grave situation, the state apparatus —through its organs of repression— has at least for the moment, prevented a collapse at the front. However, forcibly sending men to the front and detaining all those deemed unreliable could have far more negative repercussions than letting a few soldiers escape, potentially triggering military and civilian revolts.
Revolutionary Defeatism
From a class perspective the current situation seems to offer no concrete revolutionary way out. However, the Party of the proletariat is well aware—from the lessons learned in the fire of past class struggles—that the true limit of the current, predominant militarism lies within itself. That is the necessity of militarily organizing millions of proletarians for war aims. Yet, if organized and led by the Party, these same proletarians could turn their weapons against their own state.
Already in Anti-Dühring, Engels, analyzing the Franco-Prussian war, had impeccably formulated how militarism itself gives rise to the possibility of revolution:
“The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism also bears within itself the seed of its own destruction. Competition among the individual states forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army and navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the warlords in command. And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass of the people—town and country workers and peasants—will have a will. At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectics of its own evolution. What the bourgeois democracy of 1848 could not accomplish, just because it was bourgeois and not proletarian, namely, to give the labouring masses a will whose content would be in accord with their class position—socialism will infallibly secure. And this will mean the bursting asunder from within of militarism and with it of all standing armies.”
We are not in the realm of the brilliant theories of our teachers here. This was the real experience of the proletariat in its struggle against the class enemy, as the events of the Franco-Prussian war—and the crushing of the Paris Commune—marked a historical lesson of fundamental importance. One that Lenin and his Party would doctrinally restore and put into practice in October.
In the fire of imperialist war, the call for defeatism was the action of all those currents in Europe that remained firmly anchored to Marxism. It found fertile ground in Russia, where desertion and organized rebellion against military commanders formed the base from which the revolutionary struggle erupted and led to the seizure of power.
While the rearmament plans of the European states define the present and future of the European proletariat, today just as in the last century, proletarians face the prospect of becoming cannon fodder in the war looming ever closer.
“The enemy is in our own country!” was the cry of the internationalists against the first world slaughter. As then, so now, that enemy is the bourgeoisie of one’s own country. Through the brutal state apparatus firmly in its hands, it keeps the proletariat subjugated, waiting to send millions of workers into the already much-foretold war.
These days, Gaza—where millions of proletarians are confined—appears before the world as a huge extermination camp. One that was conceived by American imperialism and its armed wing in the Middle East, the State of Israel—but also by Palestine’s so-called “sibling” Arab countries—to solve the so-called “Palestinian question.
Hundreds of thousands of residents are now left to starve, surviving in the rubble of destroyed cities, having lost their homes and family members. Hospitals and aid centers are nearly razed to the ground.
They move from one side of the Strip to the other, tailed by the occupying army, in search of a place of refuge and food to feed themselves.
The scarce food supplies that have been brought in from the border are being rationed and distributed under Israeli control.
However, these distribution centers have also become traps into which Palestinians are lured just to then face the army’s fire.
We have reports of dozens and dozens of desperate people being slaughtered in this way every day.
We can once again see that the massacres of civilians—planned and executed in Ukraine as well—are a natural consequence of the ongoing imperialist war. Though still fragmented today into scattered conflicts around the world, imperialist war carries the prospect of expanding in the future, involving the regions of the world’s most industrialized countries, whose population will not be spared from the massacres.
Starvation, death and destruction are looming all over Gaza—and also Ukraine. This is just a preview of what capitalism, in its imperialist phase, envisions in order to survive its crisis and then return to a new phase of accumulation, rejuvenated after the apocalypse.
Only the proletarian revolution will be able to break from this perverse cycle. Only the proletarian revolution will carry out the sentencing of this society and mode of production, which history has long since decreed.
The bourgeois essence of the referendum campaign currently underway in Italy was best expressed by CGIL secretary Maurizio Landini, who proclaimed:
“It is a battle for a better country, for a modern country, a new country. It is a struggle of hope, a struggle for the future, against those who still want an old, conservative, backward country.”
The piecard’s appeal lies in the eternal bourgeois logic of the country’s, nation’s, or homeland’s welfare, which is essentially the logic of defending the existing social relations of domination and maintaining the exploitation of the working class.
This is how we commented on the referendum’s value for the proletarian class in issue no. 379 (September-October 2016) of our newspaper Il Partito Comunista in the article “The FIOM’s outward opposition backs the corporatism of the CGIL: eight years of betrayal of workers’ interests,” in the chapter “Democratic traps”:
“Resorting to the method of the popular referendum and the legislative method is eyewash. What the CGIL has not wanted to defend on the level of class struggle, it will certainly not achieve by these means, full of tricks and traps, in which the strength of the workers is replaced by the counting of the opinions of citizens, of members of all classes, or by the votes of parliamentarians. When members of all classes and social strata, who live all the better the more the working class is exploited, are called upon to vote on issues affecting workers, the victory of the bosses is guaranteed […]
Any popular bill must of course be approved, and it is not clear how the same parliament which—beyond governments and legislatures—carries out the orders of the national and international bourgeoisie by producing the most harmful anti-worker laws, could pass a bill without first changing it to make it favorable to the interests of the bosses. The same applies to referendums aiming at abrogating laws: they cancel articles of a law, but the void they leave must then be filled by the legislative work of bourgeois governments and parliaments. Therefore, even if a sufficient number of signatures are collected, using energy that should be used to organize the class struggle; even if the bourgeois Constitutional Court and the bourgeois Supreme Court approve the referendum questions; even if the so-called quorum is reached; even if, finally, we succeed in overcoming the influence that the powerful bourgeois media have on the brainwashed public opinion, directing it to vote against the interests of the ruling class, even in this remote hypothesis it is not possible to achieve the goal favorable to the working class.
In the quagmire of these exhausting procedures, they would like to sink the class struggle, the strike, which is all the stronger the more widespread and lasting it is, the only method by which workers can truly defend their living conditions.
The referendum is already a harmful tool for the class struggle when it concerns only the workers of a single company or category: the vote of a worker who sacrifices his time and energy for the union, risking reprisals from the bosses, and who has experience of previous struggles, is worth as much as that of an inexperienced, fearful, individualistic, or even scab worker. When anger grows but is not yet at the point of exploding into a strike, having workers vote individually in a referendum is the best way to buy time, dampen determination and, often, allow the undecided to prevail over the most combative. Strikes unite the energies of workers; referendums divide them”.
The essence of the referendum revolves around the bourgeois lie of “popular sovereignty” and “parliamentary representation.” It’s a tool that is most suited to the so-called direct democracy so dear to the bourgeois left because it (supposedly) faithfully reflects the will of the people, which, in liberal ideology, opposed to ours, should choose the men of government and impose its political agenda on them. But the concept of popular sovereignty is nothing but a fiction that masks reality, namely that there is an irreconcilable opposition of class interests that so disgusts the guarantors of “conciliation.”
Whatever the results of the referendum may be, nothing will change in substance, and the attack on the working class will continue in parallel with the worsening of the crisis of capital.
The resolution of issues that concern workers alone through the interclassist instrument of the referendum is left to the indistinct judgment of all voters, most of whom are not proletarians: the referendum is therefore the exact opposite of class struggle, as we are witnessing the undue intrusion of regime populism and its constructed “majority” into a terrain of struggle that is exclusively between the proletariat and the bosses. Members of all social classes are called upon to vote on issues affecting the working class, thereby affirming and confirming the principle of interclassism, i.e., the subjugation of the working class to other classes.
It is, of course, only the bosses who have an interest in allowing the undifferentiated “people,” composed in no small part of the clique on which the bourgeois regime rests, all materially interested in the maximum exploitation of the working class, to “democratically express” themselves. We therefore place no trust in the democratic instruments of parliamentary elections and referendums, which are nothing more than a charade designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat.
The laws are made by the bosses, and relations between the classes cannot really be regulated by “law,” so dear to the bourgeoisie, except insofar as it serves to preserve these relations. Therefore, the “rights” of workers cannot be defended through electoral consultations but by working to mobilize and organize their class forces. The democratic principle is at odds with the class struggle, which is based on a balance of forces and not on a tally of opinions. The abstract democratic principle of justice, when applied to the real world of capitalism, becomes a formidable weapon for perpetuating the injustice of the privileged class against the workers.
Any random improvements gained through referendums, so dear to collaborationist trade unionism, disengage workers from struggle, exacerbate their current passivity, and at the same time guarantee the bosses continuation of the conditions of social peace that have allowed them years to worsen the living conditions of the working class. The regime unions do nothing but serve the interests of the bosses and the national economy, while the so-called “militant” unions, also rotten with democratism, are careful not to reveal this deception to the working class: for this reason, a reorganization of the working class is necessary, the rebirth of the authentic class union and, under the leadership of the International Communist Party, the continuation of the political struggle for the seizure of proletarian power.
The Party’s 152nd General Meeting (since 1973), was held in Florence on May 24th and 25th.
Comrades from various European countries, the U.S., and Australia participated in the meeting. It was the most international meeting held to date.
Many other comrades and sympathizers from various other countries joined online.
The meeting was therefore very successful, both in camaraderie that permeated it and for the quality of the reports presented.
Below are the summaries of the works, which will be duly published through our press organs in full.
* * *
The Course of Global Capitalism
The course of capitalism is necessarily chaotic and catastrophic.
As the crisis of overproduction deepens, precarity grows. This escalation makes a trade war inevitable, which will then spill over into another great conflict. This can only be avoided when the proletariat overthrows this process through international revolution.
In this latest report, we highlight these increasingly evident and catastrophic imbalances. On the one hand we record trade surpluses, on the other, enormous deficits. In the same way, entire regions, once prosperous, are turning into industrial deserts, leaving the population impoverished and insecure.
Simultaneously, corporate and national debt -even household debt- is growing more and more, so much so the situation is no longer sustainable. As the old imperialist states decline, new ones emerge, altering inter-imperialist relations and exacerbating tensions between states.
This is the path of capital that we have tried to illustrate in the report presented at the General Meeting, with extensive documentation of statistical data.
The Function of the Center in the Tradition of the Left
Let us briefly clarify. In all our works, we constantly emphasize the importance of never abandoning, even for a moment, the internal way of life and the structural management of organization (even under the risk of triggering a deadly spiral).
Our admittedly small nucleus of fighters is the anticipation of communist society. Not as a paragon or aesthetic fact, but as an operative and recognizable entity in its way of being.
The Party knows what communism is, so it must apply the corresponding communist method within itself.
As is well known, the Communist International adopted democratic centralism as the criterion for the functioning of its national sections. Our current countered with organic centralism. An adjective that does not mean that each militant can arbitrarily interpret the party’s provisions; or that the party is structured without a hierarchy and that, in this hierarchy, those at the top can just as arbitrarily issue orders, suppress, and condemn.
The problem of discipline, on the other hand, should not be posed as the starting point, as the product of a beautiful statutory plan. Rather as the result of the consciousness of the proletarian vanguard, its ability to connect with the great masses of workers, the correctness of its strategy, and its political tactics.
Thus, organizational discipline is the result of the Party’s ability to move based on theory and in full fidelity to it, of its capacity to intervene in the real struggle of the working masses for their material needs, in with the right strategy and tactics.
Who decides?
Who “commands”?
Here is the “decisive” question that we have been hearing from the now parched democratic throats for a century.
The riddle resolves itself precisely by immersing oneself in the real life of the Communist Party, and this party alone: It is the unified body of the Party that sets and follows its path; and in it “no one commands and everyone is commanded.” It isn’t to say there are no orders. Rather they coincide with the natural way of moving and acting of the party, regardless who gives them.
But if the unity of doctrine, program, and tactics is broken, then everything collapses, and Stalinism becomes logically and historically inevitable. Evident in the ruinous subordination to the false and deceitful mechanism of democratic consultation becomes logically and historically justified.
The link between the Party base and the center therefore has a dialectical form.
If the Party exercises the dictatorship of the class in the State, and against the classes which the State is belligerent, there is no dictatorship of the center of the party over the base.
The Labor Movement in France
After emphasizing the importance of the party’s union activities, the first part of the presentation focuses on the general characteristics of particular European unionisms.
Firstly, a distinction was made between the economic organizations, aimed to defend the living and working conditions of the 19th century proletariat: The first concerns mutual aid organizations for workers (illness, accidents, death) which the bourgeoisie wanted to control and which also included the creation of cooperatives. The second being the struggle and negotiation of worker organizations.
The report then examined the economic and social situation of the main European countries. Covering the importance of developed and centralized industry, as in Great Britain and Germany. Whereas in France, the persistence of a large craft sector led to the prevalence of anarchic concepts. Revolutionary syndicalism is one of them, that, inherently hostile to cooperativism, we consider a form of bourgeois collaboration.
The presentation concludes with the distinction of four types of labor unionism:
British trade unionism, which was born and remained collaborative; German trade unionism, which was born socialist but evolved towards reformism from the end of the 19th century; French trade unionism, which was marked from the beginning by the anarchist movement and diverged from Marxism, where the party-union relationship was confrontational; and finally communist trade unionism, which emerged from the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was characterized by an organic link between trade unions and the revolutionary party.
The History of the Party
The Italians are not, as someone once defined them, the “people of heroes, saints, poets, navigators”. The Italians are a people of emigrants.
In one hundred years, more than 26 million Italians had left the “homeland,” forced by poverty, hunger, and driven by the hope of a better future.
With the Fascism coming to power, this economic migratory wave was joined and intertwined with a policy that concerned those masses of proletarians, especially communists, who had distinguished themselves in the open struggle against the reaction.
From a legal standpoint, Mussolini’s government had not issued any provisions that would prevent the Communist Party from existing and functioning.
However, the expression that the communists would be left with only one alternative, “either all in jail or all in Russia,” was soon widely put into practice.
In fact, already in early 1923, searches and arrests of communists began to become more frequent.
The arrest of the party leaders, like that of thousands of communists throughout Italy, was motivated by the publication of a Manifesto against fascism signed by the two internationals in Moscow.
The truly curious fact was that, on February 6th, the entire Italian press, including “Popolo d’Italia,” the official voice of fascism, reproduced the incriminating manifesto in full, giving it such widespread distribution that no other document from the I.C. would have ever had.
We said in a party report to the International:
“The government neither disarms nor mitigates its offensive.
There are more than 5,000 communists in Italian prisons, in addition to thousands of other subversives and partyless workers.
The mass arrests continue without respite.
Fascism aims to spread despair and distrust in the Communist Party by making evident its inability to materially assist those who are members and fight for it.”
(February 13th, 1923)
The letter continued by appealing for international solidarity to address the party’s difficulties, especially financial ones, to provide at least some assistance to the arrested comrades and their families.
More than natural, therefore, given the described situation, thousands of communists fled Italy to escape repression and to save their lives.
Consequently, our party faced the immediate problem of saving the organization from its dissolution and ensuring that the comrades who had to leave Italy did not abandon the party, and finally keeping the inevitable opportunists at bay.
In letters sent to the sibling parties of Europe, they were asked “to promote the application of the rules we have given and will give regarding the organization of refugee communists and the stateless.”
Most of the political emigrants headed towards France since there was already a large and established Italian emigration there due to migratory flows that had begun even in previous centuries.
Abroad, Italian proletarians had to work hard to earn a minimum to live, mostly leading a life as illegal immigrants, harassed by employers, persecuted by the police.
In the land of France, the Italian proletarians distinguished themselves for their political and trade union activities.
Over 5,000 were PCF members. We must highlight that they were comrades adhering to the Italian Left’s approach.
In previous reports, we have seen how the Italian Stalinists exerted constant pressure on the International to identify and immediately expel members of the Communist Left.
The Left’s position is that one does not leave the party, but stays to fight against every type of opportunistic deviation.
The report then examined what was the first attempt to establish, within Italian emigration, an autonomous communist organization, the “Réveil Communiste” group.
The lack of theoretical clarity and the desire to “do something” led that small group to quickly slide from a generic appeal to the Communist Left to the confusion and immediatism of both Korsch and the KAPD.
The work will continue following the course of that “Faction” which, amidst the storm of counter-revolution, still managed to never lower the flag of revolutionary communism.
The article that we republish below appeared in issue 100 (December 1982) of Il Partito Comunista; it referred to the split organized a few years earlier in a dirty manner, the result of a bad period of factionalism from above and political struggle within the Party.
We rightly called it a “dirty split,” because false accusations were being hurled at a group of comrades, while hiding the true intentions of what the then Center had decided to undertake: a new road, completely different from the one outlined by our doctrine and tradition.
We are republishing this article not to revisit what happened more than half a century ago; those who took responsibility for expelling a limited group of comrades caused irreparable damage, which soon led to the disintegration of a Party with a good organizational structure, one with numerous local branches and a consolidated tradition of class-based labor union action.
So, we will never feel like forgiving those who took on this responsibility, and neither shall we return to this topic.
On the other hand it is quite striking to reread this old article and realize that—with just a few words replaced—it could very well refer to the events from last year, 2024.
This is the case not only because the Party has its own continuity, but also because deviationism and opportunism are always subject to the same laws.
The main one is that the deviations that kill the Party invariably occur as a result of factionalism-from-above and political struggle.
So it is not a confrontation between openly declared positions, but an underground effort to find “trusted comrades” to rely on and use to marginalize and denigrate others.
But why do all of this?
Because of the false conviction that we could, by voluntaristic acts, force the nature of things and be able to, out of the blue, expand the Party to a world scale. A party where “the sun never sets,” like the empire of Charles V (circular dated 04/27/2023).
The simplest method to achieve this is to widen and loosen those barriers that the Party has built to protect itself from the penetration of ideologies foreign to it. This way it will become increasingly easier to enter it while bringing methods of action and behavior as well as ideological positions foreign to our tradition.
This, however, is at odds with the resistance of those comrades who oppose this slow, inexorable, and sometimes almost imperceptible departure from an established tradition.
These might be small things that, in themselves, do not represent a real deviation, but nonetheless mark a road that increasingly tends to stray from the tradition of the Communist Left.
Hence the need to undertake the same action to defeat those comrades presented as adversaries (defined, from time to time, as “factionalists,” “splitters,” “putschists,” “mutineers”): political struggle on all fronts, by any means, none excluded.
And above all, what is the issue on which the real factionalists-from-above have always imposed their claimed supremacy?
The call for discipline. Not discipline toward the Party—toward its theoretical and tactical positions—but “unconditional discipline” to the Sole International Commissioner, as the one we had always called the Center had wanted to be defined’ (party circulars of 03/04/2024; 07/03/2024).
On several occasions, some comrades—who became tired of being constantly accused of expressing mere “personal opinions”—had reminded the then-Center what discipline can be required of comrades and in what terms.
“Leader” in fact means driver.
The party leader does not have a steering wheel in their hands and the freedom to choose the angle of direction in front of them; the center is the driver of a train or a tram.
Their power lies in knowing that the track is fixed, although certainly not straight all the way; the centre knows the stations through which it passes and the destination toward which they is driving, the curves and the slopes.
“And he is certainly not the only one who knows it.
The historically plotted course does not belong to just one thinking head, but belongs to an organization which transcends individuals, above all in time, forged by living history and by a doctrine, which is (for you a tough word) codified.”
“There is no mechanical discipline that can reliably ensure that orders and instructions from above will be put into effect ‘whatever they are’.
There is however a set of orders and instructions which respond to the real origins of the movement that can guarantee maximum discipline, that is, of unitary action by the entire organization; and, conversely, there are other directives which, emanating from the Center, could compromise discipline and organizational solidity.”
“We do not see any serious problems in being exaggeratedly worried about the danger of opportunism.
Of course, criticism and alarmism for the sake of sport are highly regrettable; but even if they were, the pure product of the ruminations of a few militants rather than the precise reflection of ‘something that is not going well’ and the intuition of serious deviations in the making, it is certain that they will not be able to weaken the movement in the slightest, and will be easily overcome.
On the other hand, the danger is extremely serious if, as has unfortunately happened in many previous cases, the disease of opportunism spreads rapidly before anyone dares to sound the alarm.
Criticism without error does not cause even a thousandth of the harm caused by error without criticism.
[…]
Comrade Girone puts the question simply and clearly when he says that everything the leaders of the International say and do is a matter on which we claim the right to discuss, and to discuss means being able to question whether what has been said and done is wrong, regardless of any prerogatives attributed to groups, individuals, or parties […]”
(“The Opportunist Danger and the International” – L’Unità, September 30, 1925).
A breach of discipline—which was never disavowed by the comrades in the party’s terms of executive action—was invoked by the center. In defiance of the characteristic principles of “organic centralism,” our exclusive conception of the centralization of the party organ, those who had dared to criticize the work of the center were expelled from the party ranks.
But these are issues that the Center, having abandoned the Party tradition, can easily ignore and proceed with the final solution to any opposition: expulsion, the supposed magic cure to save the Party
So two comrades, accused of a very serious act of indiscipline, were expelled without the possibility of appeal
What was their crime?
Disobeying a central ukase [decree] by taking part in a meeting… of the Party (our Party, their Party).
Then the action did not stop, but the “cleansing” continued against all those comrades who had not shown solidarity with this disastrous decision.
The Party was violently broken up, and several comrades were lost along the way
This was the result of the actions of a Center that had long shown signs of losing its balance, but above all of the sloth of a group of comrades who, in the name of a false discipline toward a leader, whoever he may be, accepted the disintegration of the Party.
And the fact that they may not even have realized the damage they have done does not exonerate them or mitigate their guilt
* * *
Several years have passed since an article entitled “Sulla strada di sempre” (On the Same Road as Always) appeared in the first issue of the first year of this newspaper, pointing to yet another painful break in the organizational thread of the formal postwar party.
At that point, the split between the two factions that had formed within the Programma Comunista organization became definitive. One faction had been expelled, by means of a procedure never previously employed, by the other—the one conscious of having stripped the party of its honor, according to the splendid definition of the Left at the Livorno Congress of 1921. In doing so the expelling faction made use of its misunderstood and falsely applied central authority, which most of the party came to submissively accept. However, with tenacious determination and revolutionary optimism, the expelled faction stayed the course and resumed on the road it had always followed, for the reconstruction of the organ of the social revolution.
It matters little now who and why. The Party as a whole had lost its bearings, its revolutionary awareness of the right course. It was no longer able to grasp the correct stimuli that were coming, with resounding perseverance, from a minority—certainly not a faction until then!—for the purpose of the whole Party returning to the ABCs of doctrine in order to regain the energy and clarity to get back on “our” track.
The disarray had grown so vast that even those same voices shrieking about a return to the old ways had become an obstacle to the lust for political noyautage, to the wild, unrestrained frenzy of tactical scheming with the aim, or so they claimed, of finally building the “real party”—strong and unified—and breaking out of the cramped little perimeter of the organizational circle the past generation of revolutionaries had left behind.
And so hammering home our basic theses became more than a theoretical luxury. It became an annoying academic exercise which, it was said, made us lose sight of the urgency of the present and compromised the possibility of “seizing the favorable opportunity,” but was just a foolish waste of time. Under the guise of total and absolute discipline—a requirement that the faction that was later expelled had never questioned—and the hideous theorizing of political struggle within the party, the leadership was strong-arming the entire party apparatus into the abyss. However, the rest of the organization did not understand this.
“The historical dialectic leads each fighting organism to perfect its means of offense by employing the tactics possessed by the enemy.
From this it can be deduced that in the phase of armed combat the communists will have a military framing with precise patterns of hierarchies to unit paths that will ensure the best success of joint action.
This truth must not be unnecessarily mimicked in any of the party’s noncombatant activities.
The transmission of directions must be unambiguous, but this lesson of the bourgeois bureaucracy cannot make us forget how it can be corrupted and degenerated, even when adopted within workers’ organisms.
Party organicity by no means demands that every comrade see the personification of party strength in another comrade specifically designated to convey provisions that come from above, the personification of the party form.
This transmission between the molecules that make up the party organ always simultaneously has the double direction; and the dynamics of each single unit is integrated in the historical dynamics of the whole.
Abuse of organizational formalisms without a vital reason has been and will always be a defect and a suspicious and stupid danger.”
We resisted the prevailing ramshackle state of affairs with all our might. We were anxious above all not to stray an inch from the constraints of discipline, tradition, and the functional hierarchy of the party, not to mimic the feeble democratic criteria of majority and minority. We strived to remain always on the ground of organic centralism, the fundamental structure of our party organism, its way of existing, developing, and living.
Despite the declared willingness to adhere fully to the Party’s historical program, organizational constraints, the “politics first” approach within the organization, the myriad of intrigues and backroom deals, and accusations of everything and its opposite, succeeded in the villainous task of expulsion, carried out in the most trivial style of the abhorred democracy.
We were forced to accept the path that the old organization had decided to follow. They wanted a party disciplined to move with every contortion fetid, everyday life would impose a party united in following the whims of the “leaders,” with a military hierarchy, with trustees and underlings. We were an obstacle to the achievement of this supreme goal, and they managed to drive us out.
Even our theses, the living experience of revolutionary generations crystallized in definitive form—the very essence of the Party organ—clearly warn of the danger of degeneration, its causes, and its symptoms, even if they obviously do not provide any “practical” recipe for defense and cure.
“The Left hoped to be able to save the International, and its vital core rich of traditions, without organizing […] itself, as a fraction, or as a party within the party.
Nor did the Left encourage or approve the practice of individual resignations from the party or from the International, even when the displays of the rising opportunism were becoming more and more undeniable.
Nevertheless dozens of examples from previously cited texts evidence that the Left, in its underlying thinking, has always rejected elections, and voting for named comrades, or for general theses, as a means of determining choices, and believed that the road to the suppression of these means leads likewise to the abolition of another nasty aspect of politicians’ democraticism, that is, expulsions, removals, and dissolutions of local groups.
On many occasions we have openly argued that such disciplinary procedures should be used less and less, until finally they disappear altogether.
If the opposite should occur or, worse still, if these disciplinary questions are wheeled out not to safeguard sound, revolutionary principles, but rather to protect the conscious or unconscious positions of nascent opportunism, as happened in 1924, 1925, 1926, this just means that the central function has been carried out in the wrong way, which determined its loss of any influence on the base, from a disciplinary point of view; and the more that is the case, the more is phoney disciplinary rigour shamelessly praised.
It has always been a firm and consistent position of the Left that if disciplinary crises multiply and become the rule, it signifies that something in the general running of the party is not right, and the problem merits study.
Naturally we won’t repudiate ourselves by committing the infantile mistake of seeking salvation in a search for better people or in the choice of leaders and semi-leaders, all of which we hold to be part and parcel of the opportunist phenomenon, historical antagonist of the forward march of left revolutionary Marxism.
The Left staunchly defends another of Marx and Lenin’s fundamental theses, that is, a remedy for the alternations and historical crises which will inevitably effect the party that cannot be found in constitutional or organizational formulae magically endowed with the property of protecting the party against degeneration
Such a false hope is one amongst the many petty-bourgeois illusions dating back to Proudhon and which, via numerous connections, re-emerge in Italian Ordinovism, namely: that the social question can be resolved using a formula based on producers’ organizations.
Over the course of party evolution the path followed by the formal parties will undoubtedly be marked by continuous U-turns and ups and downs, and also by ruinous precipices, and will clash with the ascending path of the historical party.
Left Marxists direct their efforts towards realigning the broken curve of the contingent parties with the continuous and harmonious curve of the historical party.
This is a position of principle, but it is childish to try to transform it into an organizational recipe.
The screening of party members in the organic centralist scheme is carried out in a way we have always supported against the Moscow centrists.
The party continues to hone and refine the distinctive features of its doctrine, of its action and tactics with a unique methodology that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries
Clearly all those who are uncomfortable with these delineations can just leave.
Not even after the seizure of power has taken place can we conceive of having forced membership in our ranks; which is why organic centralism excludes terroristic pressures in the disciplinary field, which can’t help but adopt even the very language of abused bourgeois constitutional forms, such as the power of the executive power to dissolve and reassemble elective formations – all forms that for a long time we have considered obsolete, not only for the proletarian party, but even for the revolutionary and temporary State of the victorious proletariat.
The party does not have to display, to those who want to join it, any constitutional or legal plans for the future society, as such forms are only proper to class societies.
Those who, seeing the party continuing on its clear way, that we attempted to summarize in the these theses to be set out at Naples’ general meeting (July, 1965), do not yet feel up to such a historical level, know very well that they can take any other direction turning away from ours.
We do not have to take any other steps on the matter.”
These are a few scattered lines, taken for illustrative purposes from a formidable body of work providing a historical summary and guideline for action—a body of work which characterized our party in a completely original way compared to any other group or party, “close,” or “distant.” These lines already give a clear indication of the future of the formal organization when the evil plant of opportunism begins to take root, and the correct method for eradicating it becomes lost. They predict the future in case the “updaters”—even if they pay lip service to the program—grow and strengthen within the organization, taking, as it is said, “any other direction that diverges from ours.”
The secessionists of 1973 claimed that they still had in their hands the party that supported those ideas, and this was still believed by the majority of militants. They understood little of the fierce battle that was being fought on one side in order to save tradition and principles from disaster, and meekly accepted the nefarious expulsion, or worse, applauded it.
That organization believed it had strengthened itself by cutting off the part that refused to bow to intrigue, political infighting, and the tactical and programmatic compromises that were being employed to—supposedly—“maintain and increase the ranks of comrades.” That organization did not yet dare to throw away the last shred of formal loyalty to the tradition of the Left.
But the ideological and organizational compression, the political struggle between comrades, the misunderstood centralism that labels any discussion of the order or directives that seem wrong or contradictory to the theses as undisciplined and anti-centralism, were all complementary aspects to the democratic mechanism; of congresses, majorities and minorities, opposing theses according to groups and factions. They were the legacy of bourgeois structures that we wanted to have expelled forever from our organization, structured at a much higher organic level.
The expellers wanted a party that was “united by force.” They deluded themselves thinking that—with the pretense of discipline for discipline’s sake—they could maneuver their organization in the face of the effects of all the tactical expedients they had employed, dishonestly asking of the latter to break the deadlock in the class movement and expanding the party’s ranks.
They lacked the courage to go all the way and formally renounce all the theses of the Left, thus adopting an openly democratic centralist structure with room for the play of majorities and minorities. Perhaps this would have further broadened their boundaries, only at the cost of removing that useless front-page headline referring to the Left and its anti-opportunist and anti-democratic struggle.
Not doing so, while maintaining the formal top-down structure, led to further widespread splits. It led to the tragicomic point where they had the courage to publish a sort of summary of the positions of the last splinter, whom they defined as “comrades who left the party.”
As a final destination for iron-fisted centralists, it’s not bad: and the fact is that, in this case, the members of the “splinter group” were not even expelled for their positions!
But then the former expellers would have rediscovered the correct method—which we have always advocated for—namely that “those who disagree with us have no choice but to leave”!
Certainly, in a healthy party (as the Left has clearly defined) the process of eliminating foreign bodies, of those who do not feel they are “following the party on its clear path” outlined in the Theses, takes place or should take place in this organic, natural way. However the organization that the expellers of that time claimed to build has certainly not developed that kind of healthy reaction.
Instead, it is decomposing into the different factions that constituted it, now incapable of coexisting. That is because they absolutely lack a unifying programmatic cement nor are they organized in a truly democratic structure—one that has now disappeared even in the bourgeois state parties, with the possible exception of the PCI (Italian Communist Party).
The original nature on which the party was founded was completely overturned, with the most tragic symptom being the expulsion of 1973. Perhaps sooner than those expelled at the time had expected; the “strong and centralized party” had come apart, and more or less belated and ambiguous attempts at re-foundation by the various formerly united groups were waiting.
But the mock-heroic exploits of their former neighbors mean nothing to those who have remained anchored in the same old positions of the Left—except as a formidable confirmation, a living lesson for those of us who have emerged from these miseries.
Once again, the historical experience of the Party and its theoretical corpus have clearly indicated which are the causes and the consequences. Once again, it has been demonstrated that breaking with these theoretical cornerstones in practice does not lead to better organization, but corrupts and destroys the organization itself.
Beyond the daily triviality of a divisive split of a party in the “left” area, as some imbeciles might see it, what remains for us communists is the valuable confirmation of the validity of our method and the awareness of the solidity of the base on which we have rebuilt.
We settled accounts with the “expellers” once and for all in that first issue of Il Partito Comunista, and we now have nothing to do with that organization.
“The party that we are sure will rise again in a bright future will be made up of a vigorous minority of proletarians and anonymous revolutionaries. They may have different functions like the organs of a single living being, but all will be linked—at the center or at the base—in the overriding and inflexible respect of the theory; of continuity and rigor in organization; of a precise method of strategic action whose range of acceptable possibilities, inviolable by all, is drawn from the terrible historical lesson of the devastation wrought by opportunism.
In such a party—one that is truly impersonal at last—no one will be able to abuse power, precisely because of its inimitable characteristic distinguishing it in the unbroken thread that has its origin in 1848”
In the 1970s, the further rapprochement between all kinds of Italian trade union leaderships and the institutions—and the needs of both the capitalist companies and the state that administers their interests—continued. On the contrary, with the season of struggles being over, this process continued with the definitive consolidation of
“the dues checkoffs arrangement; the strengthening of the bureaucratic apparatus of professional trade unionists—now considering themselves officials at the service of the State receiving a regular paycheck; the implementation of police-like strike regulations; the well-established practice of all sorts of contractual or corporate dispute coming to a close only under the supervision of state ministers (in perfect fascist style); the co-optation, inside the union, of police representatives; […] accusations of terrorism and pro-terrorism against all militant workers; the formal (already a de-facto) acceptance of classic capitalist postulates such as tying the workers’ conditions to the profits of the companies; the necessity of cutting labor-power down in the factories; the increase in the plants’ runtime and the increase of the productivity of labour of which the union itself has become the guarantor; openly organizing scabs against the spontaneous strikes of the groups of workers acting outside of rigid union control.
The union structure has become increasingly rigid: closed off to workers, it is increasingly in the hands of careerist civil servants. This has made the road towards the unions’ eventual reconquest—on a class-based line—impracticable[…].
It’s more and more obvious to workers the contrast between their own vital needs—that is, defending their wages and employment—and the openly renunciatory and collaborationist attitude of the official trade unions of all colors. […] From the situation that has emerged in recent years, it is now clear—not only to us, but also to an ever wider array of workers—that no serious defense of the most basic life and work needs is possible under the protection of the current trade union centers. No action of struggle carried out consistently on the class level is possible except outside of their organizational framework. In recent years—in some sectors—the most exploited groups of workers have struggled for the first time in open contrast with the directives of the union piecards. They even managed to give rise to significant strikes and to form organisms in open contrast with the organizational structures of the unions (railway workers in 1975, hospital workers in 1978).”
It became clear that the defense of the workers’ condition could only be fulfilled outside and against the current union structures. The transition from widespread apathy to mobilization on the class struggle terrain took place in opposition to the regime union, albeit in a non-linear and even contradictory way. Steps both forward and backward were taken, and the involvement, at the local level, of even the rank and file sectors of the confederal structure was not ruled out a priori.
The hospital workers’ struggle was emblematic in this respect. The 35-day struggle at FIAT in the fall of 1980, crushed by the confederal union just as it was finally taking on the classic characteristics of a real class struggle, was certainly no less significant.
In the hospital workers’ case—a struggle that started in Tuscany and spread throughout Italy—the latter struggled on a class-based line in opposition to the confederal union organization, which took a frontal stance against the strikes. Eventually, the union managed to retake the reins of the movement, and then crushed it in the end. After negotiating and reaching an agreement with state representatives, the official unions—in the spirit of true regime unions—were falsely recognized by the bosses as representatives of the struggling workers. That was in spite of the fact that its officials were chased away and rejected by the workers every time they tried to contain the ongoing mobilization.
FIAT’s struggle, despite its spontaneous and decisive nature, did not take on an organizational form opposing the piecards, as was the case of the hospital workers or flight attendants’ struggle. The CGIL, participating in the struggle committee, managed to “ride the tiger” until the strike threatened to turn into an open clash with the police—who, on the judges’ orders, were determined to break up the picket lines by force. At that point, with the struggle confined to just one company (the unions had formed a cordon sanitaire around the struggle), the union negotiated a surrender by signing a draconian agreement. One that would pave the way for future layoffs and that was, either way, strongly contested in the factories (see the workers’ assault on the company union headquarters).
“From an immediate point of view, this points out to the proletariat the necessity of organizing independently from the present trade unions, in the perspective of reconstituting a class-based organizational network. We are aware that this is a process that can only be done by the proletariat itself. Therefore, as long as the proletariat does not take part in class struggle in a generalized and non-episodic way—and as long as the Party has but a marginal influence on it—no call for the sabotage of the current struggles can be made in the immediate future. This no matter how much these struggles are directed towards increasingly anti-worker objectives, unless we are faced with the explicit will on the part of vast strata of workers to actively rebel against such a direction. Nor can the explicit call to leave the “tricolor” (nationalistic, patriotic) unions can be made, since there is no alternative, organized “agent” today capable of catalyzing the workers’ will to struggle.
What does it mean to ‘immediately start working towards the perspective of the ex-novo rebirth of a class-based economic organization’? It certainly cannot mean passively waiting for spontaneous proletarian movements. […] Proletarian militants must therefore work to direct and, when objective conditions are met, organize workers on class-based terrain. In other words, as we have pointed out on other occasions, the Party has the task of helping concretely—by making its proletarian forces available—the workers’ tendency to organize themselves for the defense of their class interests. It has the task, during action and on the organizational level, of making available the ability of its militants to provide a direction, one that comes from having possession—which the Party and the Party only can have—of the historical background of the past experiences of proletarian struggles. At the same time, it has the task to bring consciousness to the workers about the precariousness of the struggles that are fought for exclusively economic defensive purposes, and the necessity of embracing the perspective of the revolutionary communist program as the definitive, historical solution to their condition of exploited class.
Another point to consider is union membership. In relation to—and as a consequence of—the above mentioned situation, we communists are inclined not to join the tricolor unions. This attitude does not come from reasons of principle, nor from union splitting tendencies—which have always been denied and fought by the Communist Left. It comes from a simple, practical observation. The tricolor union apparatus—in its vertical organizational structure—is now, at the top as well as at the rank-and-file level, a bureaucratized organism impervious to the internal action of a working class fraction that is autonomously organized on a class-based terrain while still adhering to the official union structures. This is because there is no longer that internal union life allowing even minimal work—of entering and influencing the rank and file—to be carried out, as the officials’ apparatus and the basic structures of the union are becoming increasingly distant from rank and file members. Under these conditions, union membership—regardless of the issue of union checkoffs—is no longer useful, as the means available for organizing the rank-and-file members become no greater than those available for organizing non-members. Thus, applying for union membership would simply amount to the financing of bodies completely subservient to the capitalist regime. However, precisely because this attitude is not motivated by reasons of principle, in some possible and specific situations—most likely at the small business level where non-membership would compromise the work of our militants in the struggle from which a positive result could follow—the question of whether applying for union membership or not will be addressed by the Party. After all, only the Party and not the individual militant is entitled to a final decision in such situations.
When it comes to factory bodies directly elected by the workers—the factory councils and the likes—the issue takes on a different character. These bodies are almost entirely controlled by the unions. Indeed, these bodies are almost entirely controlled by the unions. In large factories, they often serve as the true backbone of the union, managed jointly by the external organization. Their internal life is frequently sclerotic and apathetic, and their activity reduced to the tired ratification of decisions made by executive bodies that are themselves offshoots of the local union apparatus. Nevertheless, these structures are composed of delegates elected by the workers and keep in direct contact with them. As such, they are still susceptible to the influence of events that lead to stronger agitations and an increase of the workers’ willingness to fight. Moreover, in small and medium-sized companies—where the grip of trade union opportunism tends to be weaker—Works Councils often enjoy a degree of autonomy and are more readily permeable to class-based positions. For all these reasons, we cannot a priori exclude the possibility of engaging in propaganda and agitation within these bodies. In general—and without ruling out exceptions in particular cases—we support internal work, provided that we are elected by workers who recognize in our militant a combative figure. One prepared to fight uncompromisingly against the bosses and, as such, against the formidable barrier posed by union opportunism and collaborationism. Of course, we cannot provide a definitive list of ready-made responses for every situation on this issue. The case of militant workers elected as delegates must be rigorously assessed by the Party, and any decision must take into careful account the specific circumstances surrounding the election.
In any case, the conduct of our militant must be characterized by consistent and public disaffiliation—before the workers—from any decision taken by the Factory Council that diverges from a genuine defense of class interests. The same goes for any collaborationist, pro-company initiative framed in terms of the “proper functioning of the factory” or any acknowledgment of its productivity needs. The militant’s activity must also involve the unwavering and unambiguous denunciation of the actions and draconian agreements brokered by Factory Councils under opportunist control.”
Text No. 10 ends by indicating the future perspective in which the Party’s action will take place:
“In the imperialist phase of capitalism, the existence of ‘free’ trade unionism is no longer possible. That is, trade union organizations which—though not guided by a revolutionary line and led instead by reformist or petty-bourgeois parties—might nonetheless consistently carry out struggles on the economic front. In the imperialist era, economic struggles transform—far more rapidly than in the past—into political ones, as their very development and generalization come into direct conflict with the foundations of the capitalist regime. As a result, any trade union organization is immediately confronted with the question regarding its relation to the State. It must either accept to limit proletarian struggle within the bounds of legality—thus restricting and stifling it for the sake of preserving the existing order—or it must break through the limits of bourgeois legality and enter the revolutionary field. That entails extending, intensifying, and generalizing the workers’ struggle in defense of their living conditions.
This reality implies that all political parties and tendencies committed to the preservation of the capitalist regime are necessarily opposed to a broad and consistent emergence of the proletarian economic struggle. Only the revolutionary class Party stands as its most unwavering advocate. According to our Political Platform of 1945 the trade union function is only complete and integrated when the class political party leads the trade union organizations. There is, in fact, no other path.
The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is not that trade unions are no longer necessary or that the trade union struggle can no longer exist. On the contrary: the proletariat will return to the struggle to defend its economic conditions, and in doing so will rebuild the forms of organization adequate to this task—the class unions. Due to the situation, these unions—by definition open to all proletarians, organizing them not on the basis of consciousness but of material necessity—will have to face two alternatives. Either to fall once again under the control and influence of the state—which is to say, under the control of opportunist, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois parties—or to shift their action onto the terrain of illegality, submitting themselves to the only, truly illegal political direction: that of the revolutionary class party.
In our view, the existence of class unions in the imperialist era is even more vital than it may have been in earlier phases of capitalism. In the past, it was possible to divert the economic struggle of the proletariat from the goal of the ultimate revolutionary conquest—to the point of using economic struggles as an obstacle against it. In the imperialist era, this diversion is no longer possible and the transition from a class union to a red union—one influenced and led by the Party—is far more immediate. This transition must happen even at the risk of proletarian economic organizations losing their class connotations, effectively abandoning the elementary function for which they came into being.
Within the economic organizations that the working class will be compelled to recreate in its return to battle, a struggle will emerge between those seeking to confine—and therefore stifle—the action within the bounds of bourgeois legality and the directive of the Party, which, by working to extend and generalize the proletarian struggle, will pull these very organizations onto the revolutionary path.”
Di seguito pubblichiamo il volantino che il Partito ha prodotto e diffuso in molte lingue in occasione del Primo Maggio. Serve a ricordare al proletariato la vera essenza della società capitalistica, e il suo compito storico, quello della distruzione di questo inumano sistema di produzione.
**********
La sovrapproduzione capitalistica sta scatenando il sempre più feroce conflitto fra le potenze economiche mondiali che, sostenute dagli apparati militari degli Stati nazionali, si contendono i mercati di tutto il mondo dove le merci cercano la loro valorizzazione.
Gli Stati Uniti di America che da sempre hanno fondato la loro potenza commerciale su quella imperiale sostenuta dal più potente apparato militare del mondo, subiscono tuttavia sempre più, nel loro stesso mercato nazionale, la concorrenza di merci prodotte altrove a più bassi costi. Sono così costretti a negare anche formalmente i principi della decantata “libera concorrenza”, elevando barriere protezionistiche attraverso i dazi doganali che, in risposta, altre potenze dalla Cina, all’Europa, stanno per loro conto innalzando.
Questa guerra commerciale fra gli Stati è la premessa del deflagare della guerra condotta sui campi di battaglia con lo schieramento dei potenti eserciti e armamenti che già portano distruzione e morte in alcune regioni del mondo, come nel Medio Oriente a Gaza, già ridotta a un cumulo di macerie, e nel cuore stesso dell’Europa, nell’Ucraina da anni devastata dalla guerra.
Per risolvere la crisi in cui sta precipitando, il Capitale non si fermerà certamente a questo. Esso necessita la distruzione ben più estesa delle forze produttive che ha generato, anche nei centri mondiali più industrializzati. Come in Ucraina e a Gaza, città e fabbriche debbono essere rase al suolo nel cuore dei paesi più sviluppati e le masse dei proletari dovranno essere decimate per avviare un nuovo ciclo di accumulazione che darà nuovo ossigeno al capitalismo, consentendogli ancora una volta di sopravvivere a se stesso. In tutti i paesi si punta così ad incrementare la spesa militare e, dai singoli focolai in corso, la guerra arriverà ad estendersi e generalizzarsi in un terzo conflitto imperialistico mondiale.
In parallelo la guerra commerciale si combatte in tutto il mondo, premendo sulle condizioni delle classi lavoratrici per ridurre i costi di produzione e rendere più competitive le merci poste sui mercati. Ciò avviene per le masse diseredate nei paesi meno sviluppati, costrette là a vivere e a lavorare in condizioni disumane, o altrimenti, spesso rischiando la propria vita, a intraprendere il viaggio per aggiungersi alle masse dei proletari nei paesi più industrializzati. Sono milioni i migranti costretti spesso a vivere nell’illegalità e costantemente minacciati, e, quando considerati in sovrannumero, braccati, imprigionati e deportati come sta avvenendo negli Stati Uniti, ma anche si prospetta nella “civile” e democratica Europa. Sono queste vere campagne di terrorismo nei confronti dei proletari che già vivono nei paesi più ricchi, i quali, grazie anche alla acquiescenza e collaborazione di sindacati e di partiti di regime, finiscono per subire, senza poter reagire, condizioni di sfruttamento sempre più pesanti. Gli uni e gli altri con la prospettiva di finire poi come carne da macello sui fronti di guerra.
Proletari, compagni,
Questo abisso che ci si trova di fronte è la prospettiva che offre la società del Capitale! Un destino al quale la classe lavoratrice potrà sottrarsi solo se riuscirà finalmente a sollevare la testa, ritornando sulla via della difesa ad oltranza delle condizioni di vita e di lavoro, contrapponendo alla guerra fra Stati, la guerra fra le classi, per arrivare alla conquista rivoluzionaria del potere politico.
Questa strada il proletariato potrà percorrere solo se riuscirà a ricostruire i suoi organismi di difesa economica e ritrovare la sua guida politica: il vero Partito Comunista!
Report delivered to the general meeting of May 24th-25th, 2025.
Everything seems to be accelerating. The crisis of global capitalism is leading not only to general imbalance, but to disorder and chaos, before pushing the various imperialist states towards a deadly confrontation in a third world war.
The dominance of the dollar in financial markets and the international payment system constitutes a really tough predicament for the US economy. On the one hand, the security provided by a dominant monetary system, backed by a really strong military, has allowed the US to impose its debt on the rest of the world. On the other hand however, the constant demand for dollars—which accounts for 90% of foreign exchange transactions, 75% of foreign currency-denominated bonds, and three-fifths of international bank loans—drives its value up, making US industry less competitive on the international market.
Hence the US government’s desire to weaken the dollar to make its industry more competitive.
This upheaval comes on top of many others, not least the heavy tariffs—either threatened or actually imposed by the Trump administration—which prompted the French newspaper Les Echos to write that “Trump is demolishing the historical foundations of world trade.”
The US has been running record trade deficits for years, the latest of which, in 2024, amounts to $900 billion.
An absolute record, compounded by a huge budget deficit of $1.8 trillion.
While in the 1970s the United States was the world’s largest creditor, today it is the world’s largest debtor. Similarly, while in the past the largest currency reserves were held by the United States and its European allies—Great Britain, France, Germany, etc.—today they are held by Japan, China, and other Asian countries.
Today, the ten largest holders are, in descending order: China, Japan, Switzerland, India, Russia, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Mexico.
In this ranking, the old imperialist states are in the background.
Foreign investors hold almost 20% of US shares—an all-time high—and 30% of US debt, compared to a third less in 1971.
To counteract the downward trend in the rate of profit, entire branches of industrial production have been transferred to low-cost countries, where workers are forced to accept any working conditions.
This has made the fortune of European, Japanese, and American multinationals. Furthermore, this is what has allowed global capitalism to enjoy thirty years of respite, at the cost of the growing impoverishment and precariousness of an entire section of the American, European, and Japanese proletariat.
The result has been a shift in the economic center of gravity from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
The tumultuous economic development of Southeast Asia, based on the fierce exploitation of cheap labor, has nevertheless had a positive effect because it has led to the improvement of the living conditions of the working masses, laying down the economic foundations for communist society – regardless if this has happened, as always, in a despicable manner.
At the same time, new imperialist states have emerged, while the old ones have experienced relative decline.
A new superpower has also emerged: China, which aims to replace the United States on the world stage.
The globalization touted by the European and American bourgeoisie, which has been a source of extraordinary profits, is turning against them.
The new US government, aware of this danger, is calling into question the free trade that has so far allowed its multinationals to make extraordinary superprofits.
By trying to force its foreign competitors to rebalance trade, the new US government could provoke a serious trade and financial crisis, worse than that of 1929.
Every year, the US government is forced to issue an ever-increasing amount of debt, and, with the progressive weakening of the international financial system, this will call into question the role of the dollar. That will cause mistrust in its role as an international currency of payment and thus leading to a further serious financial crisis.
Similarly, the closure of the US market will result in a serious crisis of overproduction on a global scale, given the importance of this market.
Moreover, forcing American multinationals, such as Apple, to resume production in the United States can only lead to a decline in their profits.
We do not know how far the US president and the American financial sector that supports him will go, but there is no doubt that the crisis of overproduction of world capitalism and the new inter-imperialist balance of power can only lead to a trade war. This will aggravate the crisis itself, before the world heads towards a third world war. Unless, in the meantime, the proletariat returns to the glorious path of class struggle and communism.
Let us now consider some aspects of the current worldwide situation.
Inflation
After reaching an all-time high of 9.1% in the United States in June 2022 and 10.6% in Europe in October of the same year, inflation fell to 2.4% in the United States and 2.2% in Europe in March 2025.
China, which experienced deflation from April 2023 to April 2024, saw inflation pick up again, peaking at 4.4% in October 2024 before falling to 3% in March 2025.
In Europe, inflation in the Eurozone ranges from 0.8% in France to just over 2% in Germany.
The UK stands out with relatively high inflation at 3.4%.
Low inflation in the Eurozone will allow the ECB to continue lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy, particularly the construction branch, which is still in recession.
Industrial production
Despite the vigorous financial incentives provided by the Biden administration, US industrial production stagnated during 2023 ( + .2%), slightly falling in 2024 (- .3 %).
Now, the trade war unleashed by the Trump administration will put a stop to any resumption of capital accumulation in the industries.
On the contrary, we should expect a decline, especially if these policies are pushed to the limit.
US industrial production is driven by shale gas and oil, of which the United States has become the world’s leading producer.
But in 2023, American manufacturing output was -7.5% compared to 2007, while its overall industrial output, thanks to oil and gas, was 1% higher.
To provide a global outlook, we have reported (see below) industrial production trends (from 2019 to 2024) for the most significant countries.
We do not have such data for China and Russia.
What emerges is that the old imperialist states were in recession or near stagnation in 2019. Some more data in retrospect: figures range from Germany’s -3.3% to Spain’s +0.5%. Belgium’s +4.9% stands out as an exception, thanks to its industries in the Flanders.
Poland experienced a very significant growth, recording an increase of 4.1%.
Türkiye, on the other hand, recorded a negative growth of 0.6%.
The recession obviously worsened in 2020 with the international downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Apart from Türkiye (+ 2.2%), all other countries were in the red.
What followed was a strong recovery in 2021, with increases ranging from +25.6% in Belgium to 3.9% in Portugal and Brazil.
On the contrary, after a 7.8% decline in 2020, the UK saw its production continue to fall, in 2021 (-0.7%).
Then, in 2022, recovery slowed down significantly, recording negative increments for some countries.
Other countries fared better: a 10.3% increase for Poland, +5% for Türkiye, +3.4% for the United States, and +2.3% for Spain.
For the rest, increments ranged from the UK’s -6.4% to France’s -0.3%.
Japan stayed at 0%.
By 2023, almost all countries resided in negative territory, with numbers ranging from Belgium’s -7.5% (surprisingly) to the UK’s -0.9%.
Countries in positive territory were Türkiye (+1.6%), France (+0.4%), the United States (+0.2%) and Brazil (+0.1%).
However, those last three are practically at a standstill.
In 2024, almost all countries recorded increments in the red, especially the old imperialist countries. Others will experience near stagnation.
The only exceptions are South Korea (+4.1%) and Brazil (+3.1%).
The last two columns compare 2024 industrial production figures with 2018’s and 2007’s, respectively.
Comparing 2024’s industrial production with that of 2018, we notice that all the old imperialist countries are in negative territory, with declines ranging from -17.3% in the United Kingdom to -0.3% in the United States, thanks to gas and oil.
The exception is Belgium, with an impressive +15%, thanks to Flanders.
Among those in the green, however, Poland stands out with a 29.3% increase in production, followed by Türkiye with +26.7%, then Korea (right behind Belgium) with +11.2%, and finally Brazil, with a slight increase of 0.7%.
If we look at the last column, which compares 2024’s industrial production with the peak reached in 2007, the situation of the old imperialist countries worsens further.
Portugal, Spain, and Italy are almost at -23%, followed by the UK and Japan (-21%) . France sits at -12.3%—although in reality it is probably worse—Brazil (which has been in recession for some time) at -8.3%. Finally Germany and its -9.1%. The latter, which in 2018 had exceeded its 2008 peak by 8.5 percentage points, has taken a massive fall and is also experiencing a deep crisis of overproduction.
The United States is managing to get by thanks to hydrocarbons, with a slight 1.1% increase.
However, manufacturing output is expected to be 10% lower than its 2007 peak.
Among those who have managed to make the most of the processes of production relocation are Türkiye (+111%), Poland (+97.3%) and Belgium (+30.3%).
However South Korea is outperforming Belgium, scoring an incredible 53.5%.
On May 16th, a strike began by train drivers of New Jersey Transit, a transportation company which operates in New Jersey and in some counties of New York and Pennsylvania. The company provides rail service for commuters in these areas.
Joining the strike for the first time in the region since 1983 were 450 workers, all members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainment (BLET)—one of the oldest trade unions in the American railway industry.
The striking train drivers sought a new collective bargaining agreement for wage equalization with drivers employed by other companies in New York City.
This demand is not new. It has been raised by NJ Transit workers since at least 2019, and it has only intensified over the past five years in response to the continued decline in real wages.
The renewal negotiations involved BLET and 14 other trade unions.
The strike ended on May 8th, following the conclusion of negotiations between union leaders and the state-owned company–much to the satisfaction of both parties and the governor of New Jersey, who had been alarmed by the “disruption” the strike had caused to the community.
Indeed, the NJ Transit President Kolluri stated:
“The deal, as the governor correctly said, was fair and fiscally responsible…”
BLET secretary Haas agreeing:
“It was definitely a feeling of success that we were able to come to terms on something that I think we both can accept…”
We communists are fully aware that compromises may arise, and at times are outright inevitable, at the end of a struggle. But they mustn’t be disguised as victories for the proletariat in struggle.
On the one hand, we applaud the class solidarity shown by the railway workers and train drivers of the Tri-State area, who from Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road supported the NJ Transit workers. On the other, we move for the union to once again become the transmission belt between the revolutionary Party and the working class in struggle. Ceasing to be, mere “institutionalized” intermediaries between the bourgeois and proletarian classes, acting in a collaborationist manner, pursuing nothing more than the “common good,” or worse still, the “national interest.”
May the proletariat one day consign the proclamations of union bureaucrats like Haas to their rightfully miserable corner of History.