Introduction to Marxism of the Stammerers

Immediately following the second world conflict, the world appeared divided into the two blocs which had emerged out of the broken war alliances. These soon discovered a new form of rivalry by competing with one another with offers of a sunny future of wealth and civilisation to the battered army of survivors. In the “capitalist” west, the magic recipe of an economy in constant unlimited expansion was flaunted before them; a wealth which would expand forever thanks to the impeded development of industry and the consequent limitless growth in salaries, meanwhile the state would intervene guaranteeing a large number of social assistance measures for the most vulnerable. In the East, in the newly constructed fatherlands of Socialism – built on the total systematic slaughter of the best comrades in the revolutionary party – the allegedly “socialist” state appeared as the proprietor of the means of production, in short, as managers of a planned economy capable of ’overtaking’ the economic rates of expansion in the ‘capitalist’ camp, this, it was said, would be possible because it had been delivered from the anarchy of profit.

This contest of peaceful competition propped itself upon the desolate ruins of the revolution and the destruction of the international organisation of the communist party that had set the world ablaze not so long before, twisting the theory and practice which for ten years had constituted the backbone and spirit of that formidable revolutionary international apparatus – the Third International. Passages were now misread and systematically distorted so as to undermine the magnificent victory that had established the proletarian power in one country alone; and such it would eventually remain with the International instrument of the proletariat smashed to pieces. Indeed, even the very vocabulary of communism remained to be vulgarised by the grave-diggers of the revolution, for still, despite everything, reference would be made to the teachings of Marx. Everything and anything that suited the regime in Russia was supposedly ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ and working towards the end of capitalism. In such a way the counter-revolution succeeded in establishing its definite victory with Stalinism: named after the figure represented the symbol of this catastrophic process.

Thus the world revolutionary wave was brought to a close for a interminably long period. The scattered remnants of the fraction of the left abroad, which had been reduced to near silence by the stalinist regime, or dispersed by fascism, continued to voice the same criticisms that they had raised in the International, and managed to retain a physical continuity as a group through Its press (Prometeo, Bilan, etc.). With such tiny numbers its role became that of maintaining the Marxist tradition and trying to spread its influence where it had no presence. By 1943 the fraction had laid the basis for the future world party with a solid basis of doctrine, and the recognition of the irretrievably counter-revolutionary nature of the official communist parties that were prostrating themselves before the opportunist Mecca in Moscow. Eight years later, in early 1951 it would be possible to say that the party existed on a firm homogeneous basis as a clearly defined and unchangeable doctrine.

In this context appear the articles “On the Thread of Time”. The article which we present here was composed in April 1952 and has the same characteristic structure of all the others in the series, consisting in a brief preamble introducing the ‘theme’ of the dialogue, where the positions of adversaries are dealt with one by one. There are also two fairly lengthy sections entitled ‘YESTERDAY’: in which are delineated how the terms of the matter were studied and resolved in the past, and ‘TODAY’: in which the dialogue with the falsifiers, the traitors and the innovators are elaborated with forceful polemics supporting the main content. It was thus a work of infinite patience and unlimited faith (faith, yes, but positive and ‘concrete’) to set to order the theoretical and programmatic cornerstones that the counter-revolution twisted and dishonoured, and to knit together once again the frail network of the international organisation of the party. No academic exercise in juggling concepts this, but a duty of a militant activity, once again, as has happened so many times in the history of communism in the wake of defeat and when the enemy forces are stronger, the struggle was carried out in the realm of ‘ideas’. This hard, apparently obscure work of analysis, verification and synthesis that gave a context and order to the dynamic play of fact was absolutely indispensable for the rebirth of the party, and this would happen on the same basis is always, but even firmer in the light of the bitter, terrible but profound lessons of defeat suffered on the battlefield. It was indeed a gigantic duty for the tiny complement of forces that remained after the storm to frontally attack all the theories of both right and left which were then in circulation. Everywhere the swindlers, the babblers, the stammerers’ of Marxism would continue to infest the proletarian masses, and these it was that we attacked without quarter showing them to be demonstrably anti-Marxist: and standing out, in high relief amongst the ragbag of ‘’’new innovations’ and ’creative fine-tunings’ of Marxism was the final insult to the hard won doctrine of communism – socialism in one country.

The articles entitled “On the Thread of Time” were written on the basis of, and contributed towards, this clear split with these latest discoveries and laid the basis which the organisation of the party could be reborn. This involved establishing and reappropriating in their entirety the original principles of Marxist doctrine, and knitting these together with the historical experiences of the past and the present into that coherent whole and continuity of thought and action that the counter-revolution had smashed. “Yesterday” and “Today” are not therefore two separate moments divided by some startling theoretical discovery (the absurd Stalinist theory derives from the ‘double’ market and ‘socialist’ merchandise) nor by an unforeseen historical accident that mean that doctrine and principle must be either thrown in the dustbin or set out on a new basis once again, rather they constitute a unity that moves in the same historical trajectory. When between 1949 and 1957 this long series appeared in the party press it had as its primary aim precisely that of demonstrating the invariance of revolution and counter-revolution, and conducting a ceaseless battle though still on theoretical terrain against the bourgeois adversary and its infamous ally, opportunism. The formal organisation was at that time in the process of being reborn, and as a formal organisation there would always be the possibility that it might succumb once again to the enormous pressure exerted by the bourgeois world, but the road to the revival of the class, and above all of the party, passed necessarily to this juncture. We may say then that the articles “On the Thread of Time” were the work of the party and indeed were the party, part of its history, of its doctrine and its life on a par with other works of the masters of communism. There remained a difference though, whilst in the past the author’s name and surname would accompany the work, now it became anonymous and impersonal, the work of a collective that doesn’t have names to exhibit to a public already stupefied and intoxicated with big names and journalistic scoops; this reaches its maximum formal expression by rejecting the outward manifestation of intellectual property as well as the signature at the end of an article. The so-called stalinist socialism was the mystifier of the mercantile nature of capitalism and it was this which the article “Marxism of the Stammerers” highlighted. But why no ‘Tomorrow’? Like all the others in the series, tomorrow is not made explicit because Marxism is not an exercise in futurology: even so, the main elements of the questions expounded in that far off ‘Today’ of 1952, would already anticipate and find an echo in the resounding clashes that we are witnessing today 38 years later.