For the Class Union

THEORY

The proletarian economic struggle is the struggle of the workers to defend their immediate interests: it is to do with wages, reduction of the intensity and duration of work, contesting the way work is organised, etc. It is the first stage in the class struggle, which becomes truly such when it becomes political struggle, the apex of which is the revolution against the bourgeoisie to conquer and exert power.

The economic struggle is a flight of steps which leads to political struggle. Each step is higher than the one before insofar as it corresponds to a broader and more intense struggle, drawing in and uniting an ever greater number of workers. In completing these steps the workers join together, overcoming the barriers which divide them. The first barrier is always that of the individual, then the department, the factory, plant or works, the firm, the category, and finally, most difficult of all, the barrier of the nation. The highest stages of the economic struggle – when the entire working class is mobilised for common objectives – tend to coincide with the first stages of the political struggle, because acting as a class is the first step towards feeling part of a class and understanding oneself to be part of a class.

The economic struggle is constantly being fuelled because the material conditions that generate it haven’t been eliminated. These reside in the relations of production which distinguish capitalism from all previous modes of production: the relationship between Capital and Labour. The two poles of this relationship – which determine capitalism’s two main classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat – are implacably opposed. In general terms:

– Capital either grows or dies. A company whose capital doesn’t grow is destined to go under in the short or medium term. The sum of the capitals of individual firms – small, medium and large – is society’s gross capital. The bigger it gets, the more difficult it is to make it even bigger. To achieve this it is forced to step up the level of exploitation, in other words to lower wages and increase the duration and intensity of the working day.
– Wages – as the ultimate form assumed by Labour – is the sole means of subsistence of the proletariat, of the worker under capitalism, deprived as he is of all instruments of production apart from his own labour power, which he has to sell in order to eat. To ensure his own survival the worker necessarily finds himself in conflict with the requirements of capitalism.

The conflict between Capital and Wage Labour is implacable because it doesn’t derive from the will of the individuals which form the two main social classes under capitalism – the workers and the capitalists – but rather from the laws which govern this mode of production, which determine the needs of individuals and therefore their actions, according to their place in society. Class struggle doesn’t derive from ideology but is a fact which communist theory, precisely because it is scientific and non-ideological, recognises and places at the centre of its thinking. Examples of ideologies are notions such as social peace, the harmonisation of class interests, the idea of reconciling the needs of workers with those of Capital, in a word, reformism.

Economic struggle and political struggle are not opposed to one another. Economic struggle only hits out at the effects of capitalism, defending workers from Capital’s need to offset the falling rate of profit. The political class struggle aims to tackle the cause of the problem: the Capital-Labour relationship in the realm of production. The history of capitalism shows that every victory won by workers in the field of economic struggle is ephemeral. Over recent years this has been confirmed as one by one the workers’ hard-won conquests have been smashed by the bosses and their governments. The only way the working class can put an end to being exploited and to its precarious situation is to pass from fighting against the effects of capitalism to fighting against capitalism itself. The political struggle is the logical extension of the economic struggle. Communists don’t therefore exploit the workers’ economic struggles for political ends which are totally extraneous to those struggles.

“The Communists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole (…) They are distinguished (…) only by this (…) they point out and bring to the fore the common interests of the entire proletariat independent of all nationality (…) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole” (The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels, 1848).

THE PARTY

The crucial importance of the economic struggle is clear. Without it there would be no possibility of victory over capitalism. A class that is incapable of defending itself on the economic plane cannot attack on the political plane.

“The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point”. (Letter from Marx to Bolte, Nov 23, 1871).

The importance of economic struggle is accentuated by the fact that during periods of counter-revolution it is the one field in which party can take action; by which we mean not just propaganda and proselytism, but getting involved to the extent of being able to influence, organize and lead workers’ struggles. Continuous insistence on the possibility of such action is one of the pillars which underpins the party’s effectiveness and determines its very nature.

     “8. (…) Clearly the predominant task of today’s small party is the restoration of principles with doctrinal value (…) But this does not mean we should erect a barrier between theory and practical action; beyond a certain limit that would destroy us along with our basic principles. We thus lay claim to all forms of activity peculiar to the favourable periods insofar as the real balance of forces renders it possible”. (Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the general situation is historically unfavourable, 1965).
     “9. (…) The party soon realized that, even in an extremely unfavourable situation, even in places in which the situation was absolutely sterile, restricting the movement’s activity merely to propaganda and political proselytism was dangerous and should be avoided. At all times and in all places with no exceptions, the party had to make an unceasing effort to integrate its own life with the life of the masses, participating in its protests as well, even when these were influenced by directives which conflicted with its own. (…) It is important to establish that, even where such work [Union activity] has not really got off the ground, we must make sure the small party doesn’t end up as an exclusive club with no connection with the outside world, or limits itself just to recruiting members in the world of opinion” (The “Naples” theses, 1965).

The party therefore takes great care to define its line of action in the field of proletarian economic struggle. The general aim of this action is to get the workers to move up each of the steps leading from economic struggle to revolutionary politics. It is a difficult job which consists of connecting every battle – even the smallest, most localised and most restricted in its goals – with the all-encompassing road to struggle which the class must take in order to achieve its highest aims, through the choice of goals, means and methods of struggle.

This task is conditioned by two major factors: the role of the proletarian economic organisations and the opposition of the ruling class.

HISTORY

Since the beginnings of the labour movement proletarian struggle has meant organisation of the workers. For workers equipping themselves with an organisation is a pressing necessity. “The collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the form of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found PERMANENT ASSOCIATIONS in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts” (The Communist Manifesto).

From temporary structures, which arose to fight individual battles and then dissolved, there was a move to permanent organisations. This allowed the accumulated energy and experience not to be wasted, and operated as a touchstone of the level of class unity which had been achieved. When – inevitably – the combativity of the workers fluctuated, experiencing highs and lows, the organisation operated as a kind of flywheel, accumulating the energy expressed at the height of battle, and conserving it for when the working masses had ceased strike action, transmitting it to the next struggle.

As well as progressively overcoming temporal limitations the proletarian organisation also tended to surpass those limitations linked to the way capitalist production is structured, that is by company, trade or sector. Typically organisations would arise in a particular company, then spread to similar enterprises in the same sector of production in order to prevent competition between the workers in the respective companies. In such a way organisation of the entire sector on a national basis is achieved. The next step is uniting the unions in the various trades and sectors into one organisation.

Another way in which unions which organise the whole of the working class have been formed has been by setting up local territorial organisations, which coordinate the workers’ struggles by uniting them outside and above the various companies and trades. Typical examples of this are the Chambers of Labour in Italy and the Trades Councils in Great Britain.

Communists, even when not directly involved in forming organisations of proletarian struggle, have always eagerly supported them because what reinforces the class also reinforces revolutionary communism. The Party doesn’t organise party trade unions: economic organisation and political organisation need to remain distinct. But this approach isn’t in response to some moral precept. Communists know they are closest to the workers and represent their party. They never plead apoliticism, a trait which is a distinguishing feature of opportunisms of every hue. As a matter of principle “communists disdain to conceal their views and aims” (The Communist Manifesto). The Party encourages workers to build organisations to fight their struggle wherever a real proletarian push in such a direction actually exists. However it supports the formation of organisations which are open to all workers and which transcend their divisions, including political ones.

The Party doesn’t support the creation of unions – [The Italian term sindacato, which can also be translated as “syndicate,” avoids any reference to individual “trades” as in the English term “trade union.” We have therefor tended to translate sindacato as “union” where possible] – composed just of communists as the latter would inevitably be in a minority. In fact the Communist Party, insofar as it is revolutionary, inevitably organises only a minority of the working class because “the dominant ideology is always that of the dominant class” (Marx). Organising “party” unions would mean abandoning the majority of workers to the influence of the bourgeois parties, an influence exerted in the majority trade union organisations through their agents. This is the reason we reject the hybrid forms which seek to combine Party and Trade Union.

The Communist Party, insofar as it is revolutionary, and therefore in the minority, doesn’t have the manpower to create direct relations with the class as a whole. The organisations formed by the proletariat to conduct their struggles are intermediate organisations which Lenin aptly described as the transmission belt between the Party and Class. Only by means of communist activity within these organisations can the voice of the Party, and its strength, be multiplied.

The best development of the class struggle is when there is a large part of the working class organized in one or more proletarian economic organisations, and there is a Party, with a clearly defined theory and revolutionary program, which has been able to carry out intensive activity within these organisations, to the extent that it is instantly recognisable by its members.

THREE PHASES

Two hundred years of proletarian struggle have shown us that the process of forming union organisations isn’t something that is achieved once and for all but is something that may be repeated, by a part or the whole of the class, according to how matters unfold in each country and what forms the hostile action of the bourgeoisie takes.

Although the trade union and labour movement in each country has certain characteristics of its own which are shaped by its national history, its fundamental traits are nevertheless everywhere the same, as delineated by revolutionary communism at the very beginning in the 1848 Manifesto, which concludes with the watchword Workingmen of all countries unite! It is both necessary and possible to delineate the general course which proletarian organisations have followed, and what the characteristic responses of the national bourgeoisies have been towards them.

The conduct of the ruling class has changed over the course of the history of capitalism and within it three successive phases may be discerned, which we refer to as: prohibition, tolerance, and subjugation.

Prohibition

The bourgeoisie’s attitude In the early days of the workers’ movement was strict prohibition and repression. Typical examples are the Le Chapelier law of June 1791 and the 1799-1800 Combination Acts in England. The conquest of political power by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, at the expense of the landed aristocracy, had as its ideological cover the doctrine of so-called liberalism, according to which the newly installed order, civil society, would, by virtue of the newly obtained legal equality of its citizens, be self-regulated, no longer harbouring those internal destructive forces which had been a feature of the feudal ancien regime, which had collapsed under the blows of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, of course, its regime was, and still is, the ultimate that is achievable, and will last for ever. The formation of distinct social bodies within society, such as the workers’ organisations, was thus repressed, considered a relic of the past, associated with the mediaeval corporations.

Tolerance

The Liberal doctrine soon revealed its ideological, that is, its false character. As youthful capitalism in Western Europe gathered momentum, along with the rapid growth of the proletariat, the use of repression would soon prove to be dangerous. If every time the workers went on strike they were faced with the full force of the bourgeois state, they might very rapidly be persuaded to move from economic to revolutionary struggle. Economic struggles were tending immediately to become political struggles. For that reason, in this period, the economic organisations and the political organisations of the proletarian class often coincided, as in the case of the glorious First International of 1864-1876.

The bourgeoisie – which took power in England during the revolution of 1649-58, in France during the Great Revolution of 1789-93, and in the rest of Europe after the revolutions in 1848-49 – would change its approach and accept proletarian associationism. The Tsarist regime, still feudal, wasn’t able to do the same, and this would be an additional factor contributing to its collapse under the onslaught of the proletarian revolution in October 1917.

The bloody repression of the Paris Commune would thus mark the start, In Western Europe, of the phase of tolerance, which witnessed an impetuous development of capitalism on the one hand and of the unions on the other. Typical examples of the latter were the German and English trade unions.

Thus the bourgeois State tacitly admitted that capitalist society wasn’t a homogeneous whole consisting of free, equal and fraternal citizens after all, but was divided into classes. But – in deference to the liberal doctrine – it still tried, for as long as it could, to leave the resolution of disputes between Capital and Labour to the independent organisations of the bosses and the workers, intervening only when they became a threat to public order. But the course of capitalism would inevitably exert pressure in the opposite direction: towards ever greater State intervention.

The long period of strong economic growth from the 1870s to the early years of the 20^th Century – similar to one after the Second World War – was the material basis which fed the growth of a reformist current within the socialist and labour movement; a current which would become entrenched within the leadership of the trade union organisations. The new attitude of tolerance thus seemed to be serving the bourgeoisie’s interests very well: economic struggle was no longer pushing workers towards revolution, but towards reformism.

Subjugation

Reformism rejected revolution as the way out of the class struggle but shared with revolutionary Marxism the objective of a society without classes, without Capital, without wage slavery. There existed a proletarian reformism, or reformist Marxism, which revolutionary Marxism fought against – denouncing its inevitable failure – but with which, until History had proved the revolutionaries right, it shared the same political organisation, as in the typical case of the Second International, founded in 1889.

The trade unions, despite being led by reformists, were independent from the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois State in a theoretical and a material sense, due both to the nature of proletarian reformism and that of the bourgeoisie’s so-called liberalism. Neither of these attitudes were free choices on the part of their exponents but rather expressions of the youthful phase of capitalism; a phase which, following the powerful surge at the end of the 19^th Century, was fast declining.

The ending of the cycle of growth and opening of the crisis around 1905, which resulted in the First World War and the proletarian revolutionary wave from 1917 to 1923, would radically alter the situation in the way revolutionary communism had predicted.

The revolutionary Marxist currents showed they were capable of carrying out highly effective activity within the trade union organisations, and of putting the latter’s subjection to reformism in jeopardy. The bourgeoisie could see they needed to exert tighter control over them.

The First World War accelerated capitalism’s transition from its youthful phase to maturity – imperialism – the chief characteristics of which on the economic front are theconcentration and centralisation of capitals, closely linked to a fusion of banking and industrial capital. These features of the economic structure would be reflected in the political superstructure as a strengthening of the capitalist State machine, which, having once dispensed with the threadbare cloak of liberal ideology, tended from then on to intervene, control and discipline both the labour movement and the bourgeoisie itself in the interests of national and international capital as a whole.

The First World War confirmed the failure of reformism which in every country had supported its own bourgeoisie by propelling proletarians into fratricidal massacre on the war fronts, showing that it accepted capitalist war even if it rejected revolutionary violence. Proletarian reformism died and since then its corpse still walks only because it was embraced by the bourgeois state, which upholds it as an essential bulwark against the revolution. From now on there would exist only bourgeois reformism.

The defeat of the revolutionary wave in the years 1917-1923 helped the bourgeoisie in its bid to subjugate the workers’ economic organisations.

In those countries where the link between the workers and revolutionary communism was strongest the ruling classes resorted to the armed action of fascism, destroyed the class’s trade union organisations, created in their place State trade unions and theorised – openly – the organisation of the social forces, Capital and Labour, into Corporations, subject to State discipline, for the higher good of the Country.

But the material content of Fascist ideology – as well as the military action against the proletariat – was merely the practical action which all bourgeois states, both democratic and fascist, would take from then on. Just substitute “Corporations” with “Social components” and “Fatherland” with “Democracy”, or “Country”.

In those countries where revolutionary communism had been weakest, the bourgeoisie could still achieve the same results with reformism which, now become the bourgeoisie’s faithful servant, abandoned its previous goals and advocated those of its new master: first the classless society, without Capital, without wage labour was identified, and then Democracy,which, insofar as it was supposed to guarantee an egalitarian, progressive and forward looking capitalism in a state of permanent growth, would now be promoted as the supreme good to which the workers’ struggle had to be subordinated. Entirely false, of course, because no political regime can change the economic laws of capitalism.

The victory of the counter-revolution was also a victory for reformism which, having survived the revolutionary years of 1917-23, would penetrate the communist parties under the ideological guise of Stalinism and utterly destroy them. This new defeat of communism and of the revolution led to the Second World War. Yet again the workers of the world were prevented from answering the Manifesto’s call to unite! Yet again reformism would send workers to be massacred on the war fronts. The counter-revolution had triumphed, and as it couldn’t be broken it would have to run its course.

The ending, in 1974, of the new cycle of accumulation made possible by the Second World War, the collapse of fake Russian communism in 1989, the explosion of the general economic crisis in 2008, all of this is a sign of the deterioration of the material basis of this long counter-revolutionary phase.

AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Immediately after the Second World War the Party recognised the new stance of the ruling class, which now wanted to subjugate the working class organisations. The historical time-span which included the two world wars had seen the surrender of the traditional class-based union organisations. Seriously compromised as far as their independence was concerned, they had been transformed into regime unions, that is, tied to the political, economic and social regime of Capital. The long counter-revolutionary phase could only favour this process.

Faced with this situation, the Party kept to its traditional policy of working within these union organisations with the aim of conquering them, and turning them back into classorganisations. However it added the proviso that the more they became incorporated into the regime, the greater the likelihood would be of the workers having to organise themselves outside and against them.

The work within these unions was therefore linked to the process of their progressive subjugation, or, more precisely, to the possibility for militants of carrying out communist union activity within them and of fighting for the communist trade union line: “IV, 11. (…) The Party, whereas it recognises today that its work in the unions can only be sporadic, yet never renounces it; and, from the moment the numerical relationship between its members, sympathisers and those organised in a given union body becomes appreciable, and the given organisation is one in which the last possibility, whether potential and statutory, of autonomous class action hasn’t been entirely ruled out, the party will carry on trying to penetrate it and to conquer its leadership” (Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951).

The party is in no hurry to resolve this dual possibility – reconquest of the unions, or rebuilding them outside and against the regime unions – but insofar as it has a clear and complete picture of the situation, it has as a duty to indicate to the working class which path to take, because its role is to promote the party line within the proletarian economic struggle, and to influence and direct it accordingly. “II, 7. (…) In unfavourable periods, and when the proletarian class is passive, the Party’s duty is to encourage the formation of organisations whose aim is to achieve economic objectives in the immediate struggle and to predict the form they might take”. As in any other branch of activity, neglecting any one of its functions damages the entire organisation; its internal life; the work that it does.

The possibility of evaluating whether a union organisation is definitively a regime union, that is, it is unconquerable by communists, rests on the basis of what its policies are, and on whether the following factors are present:
– regular attempts by groups of workers to organise outside and against it;
– practical impediments in place preventing the activity of party militants within it.

Following the Second World War the Party was only able to engage in significant activity in the unions in Italy. Here it fought inside the biggest union – the CGIL – from when it was reconstituted “from on high” with the “The Rome Pact” in 1944, already on the regime’s terms, and then for a further thirty years after that.

Only at the end of the 70s did the party come to the conclusion that it was no longer possible to carry out communist trade union work within the CGIL: conquering it was no longer possible, not even, as we used to say, ‘a legnate’ (‘with cudgels’), in other words not through congresses but propelled by mighty struggles and using violent means. This evaluation of the situation was based not only on union activity inside the CGIL, but also on important struggles in which workers organised themselves outside and against it.

Both of the above mentioned facts were very evident. Indeed in subsequent years the line of the party – which from then on in Italy was “outside and against the regime’s unions; for the revival of the class union” – has been confirmed by the birth of new, so-called “base” (or “rank-and-file”) union organisations. If over the last 35 years, from the end of the 70s until today, it is true that these new organisations have not gone on to form the Class Union; that they have defects, some of them serious; and that some of them have even tended to go down the same involutional path as the CGIL, this doesn’t contradict the party’s approach to the union problem but actually confirms it. In the age of imperialism the fact is that every union organisation that hasn’t been conquered by the revolutionary Communist Party is destined, sooner or later, to be subjugated by the bourgeois regime.

After having resolved the question of whether to “reconquer or rebuild outside and against” the Italian unions, the Party has for the last thirty years or so carried out union activity inside the new rank-and-file union organisations using the same methods and pursuing the same objectives as always, same as it did in the regime union the CGIL in the imperialist age, and same as in the red CGL during the first quarter of the 19^th Century. What distinguishes this later period from the earlier ones is the absence of major proletarian struggles, making it quite a challenge for these small rank-and-file union organisations.

Apart from the party’s work in the trade unions having inevitably been influenced, much reduced and sometimes even interrupted altogether by external events (since it is struggle we’re talking about and not academic activity) its essential consistency and continuity is traceable using the main instrument of communist work, that is, the newspaper as “collective organizer,” through its trade union organs: Il Sindacato Rosso (1921-1925), Spartaco (1962-1968), Il Sindacato Rosso (1968-1973), Per il Sindacato Rosso (1974-1987).

The new trade union supplement, Per il Sindacato di Classe, which will appear in our monthly in Italian language Il Partito Comunista, intends to do the same job and stick to the same path that has already been marked out.