Presentation, 2017

The article that we republish here was written in 1980, a little more than six years after our separation from a party in which many of us had served since its birth. It concerns a maneuver that we regarded as shabby, to which the article returns in the final section.

Its publication was prompted by a nonsensical assertion by our former comrades, according to which up until that moment we had passed through a phase of “circles” and it was now time to build the real party; but the article is in general a clear reaffirmation of the fundamental principles underpinning the very existence of the communist organization, of the way it works and of the relationships between comrades, all vital aspects of our very existence as a revolutionary political organ.

In the assertion referred to above they spoke about a revolutionary camp, to be filtered in order to provide the materials for the construction of the mass party. In practice, this operation would obviously mean reducing our Party to a circle or a collection of circles, whose only concern would have been the elaboration of theory.

In this regard they recalled the Bolshevik experience, which, as a matter of fact, had something to do with circles. But the similarity stops there: it is true that in the late nineteenth century, due to the Tsarist repression, larger organizations had been dispersed and the socialists were forced to meet only locally, without connections; this had resulted in obviously heterogeneous groups, with the most varied theories. They were in most cases sincere socialists, who wanted to fight to overthrow Tsarism and capitalism.

But, in contrast to what various low-life political hacks would have you believe, Lenin never did any filtering, he did not make compromises with regard to theory or tactics in order to build the Party, on the contrary he always hammered away on the intransigence of original and monolithic Marxism, the “granite foundation of theory”, he writes in “Left-wing Communism”, a doctrine he knew perfectly, as witnessed by his theoretical and polemical writings of those years. There had in fact been a revolutionary camp in existence, which Lenin contributed to greatly in accompanying its maturation into a centralized and disciplined party, inspired by the unique doctrine and unique communist program, which was to guide it to the October Revolution

Even before then, revolutionary theory had never arisen from filtering, that is to say, rummaging through different groups: not in 1848, not in 1903. It was not so for our Left current in the Italian Socialist Party, which since its establishment at the end of the war of 1914-18 boasted theoretical bases perfectly in line with Marx. As well as with Lenin, who we still did not know at that point.

To think, in 1980, that it was possible to bring groups and organizations drawn from areas of bourgeois rebellion over to correct Marxist doctrine, assuming that one possessed this, groups that always swarm around the Communist Party, and to get them to accept Marxist teaching by virtue of who knows what tricks and maneuvers, was just anti-Marxist wishful thinking. It was opportunism: it was claimed that the intention was only to sift through these groups, but the real effect was to allow the Party to be filtered, reducing it to a circle among circles.

Hence the article, which in accordance with our method offers very little in the way of polemics, but positively reaffirms the fundamental characteristics of the Communist Party, as ever. Already in 1980, the years that had passed since our expulsion had proven these to be undeniable for holding to the straight course that leads to the proletarian revolution. And the decades that have passed since then have only confirmed those statements and those predictions.

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