ELECTIONS

Il Comunista, April 14, 1921

We also hoped, and it is understandable why, that they would not happen. But all hope must now be laid to rest. Elections are being held. What will the Communist Party do?

Apart from all the modalities that the competent bodies may establish, according to some comrades the question should be asked: Should the C.P. participate in the elections or not? In my opinion, this question has no reason to exist. For clear reasons of international tactical discipline, the C.P. must and will intervene in the elections.

I don’t mean to say that the problem of election tactics is within the Communist International definitively resolved with the decisions of the Second Congress. On the contrary, I believe that the number of us abstentionists has increased in many Western Communist Parties, and it is not excluded that the question will return to the next Third Congress. If this were to happen, I would be for the same theses I put forward and which were rejected at last year’s Congress: for the better conduct of communist propaganda and revolutionary preparation in western ‘democratic’ countries, in the current period of universal revolutionary crisis, communists should NOT participate in elections. But as long as the opposing theses of BuKharin and Lenin apply, for participation in elections and parliaments with anti-democratic and anti-social-democratic directives and aims, one must participate without discussion, and strive to adhere to these tactical rules. The outcome of this action will provide new elements to judge whether we abstentionists were wrong or right.

There are some abstentionist comrades – and even some electionists – who say: But can’t one find in Moscow’s theses a foothold to abstain from elections without incurring indiscipline? To this I reply firstly that abstentionism, which we try to get through the door, must not enter through the window, by means of pretexts and subterfuges. And then all the circumstances in which we find ourselves in this election campaign contribute to making the application of Mosca’s theses clearer, in spirit and in letter, in the sense of participation.

Let the comrades reread all the arguments of Lenin and Bukharin and they will see that they correspond better to circumstances of reaction and conculcation of the party’s freedom of movement. Let them reread the arguments put forward by me, and they will see that they refer above all to situations of ‘democracy’ and freedom, without, let it be understood, my thinking that they are outdated in the present circumstances. When Lenin said: We took part in the most reactionary Duma, I replied that the real danger lies in the most liberal parliaments. Lenin is convinced that a truly communist party can and must participate, but he admits with me the counter-revolutionary value of participation under the conditions of 1919, with a non-communist party.

The two theses dealing with the possibility of communist parties boycotting parliament and elections, refer to circumstances in which ‘an immediate struggle to seize power could take place’. I would like this to be the case, but this is not the case today: it cannot be ruled out that tomorrow the situation will be reversed; it would then take little to blow up, with the rotten parliamentary apparatus, the election committees that our party will have set up.

In Moscow, if I had accepted the suggestions of some comrades, I could perhaps have obtained an ‘enlargement’ of those exceptions, and today we could, perhaps, apply them – although we are, I repeat, in the specific conditions thought up by Lenin for useful participation. But instead I preferred to present clearly opposite conclusions. This has led to the benefit of having clear and certain directives and not being ‘Serratized’ with the tiresome argument of ‘special conditions’. Centralisation is the cornerstone of our theoretical and practical method: as a Marxist, first I am a centralist, and then an abstentionist.

For other theses it did not happen like that. Some points were patched up to satisfy small oppositions (but bigger than our small patrol of coûte que coûte abstentionists). I don’t consider the conclusion, in the application of these theses, which have somewhat lost a precise theoretical directive, favourable for the effectiveness and security of revolutionary action.

We abstentionists were the only ones who opposed the theses proposed by men whose authority was and is rightly formidable with precise conclusions to the contrary. (In the meantime, many critics of the twentieth day were silent, who were unable to oppose conclusions to which they later rebelled). We abstentionists must also be the ones to set an example of discipline, without sophistry and prevarication.

The Communist Party, therefore, has no reason to discuss whether or not it will go to the elections. It must go. In what manner, it will be duly decided. With what objective, Moscow’s theses tell us, and it can be summed up in a few words: Break the parliamentary prejudice, and thus accept if instead of votes one wants to count the blows and worse. Break the social democratic prejudice and thus turn the batteries, with inflexible intransigence, against the social democratic party.

The abstentionists are at their post.

È ben curioso che in questi giorni chi ha detto una parola esatta sul terrorismo è stato, nientemeno!, quel ricordo-uomo di Guido Podrecca, e proprio nell’organo fascista. A parte la teorizzazione del terrorismo, propria degli anarchici individualisti (la filosofia individualista anarco-borghese trova una magnifica applicazione nella guerra; ragione per cui moltissimi individualisti anarchici furono interventisti), il terrore è un mezzo di offesa che vien applicato in certe situazioni storiche, indifferentemente da qualunque aggregato politico il quale debba difendere o offendere per intimorire l’avversario. Le escursioni aeree del periodo bellico, miranti alla distruzione di popolazioni non partecipanti direttamente alla guerra, sono comune patrimonio di tutti gli eserciti che scesero in lizza negli anni 1914-18. il loro scopo era quello di intimorire le popolazioni civili, e determinare uno stato d’animo di depressione che agisse, per riflesso, sullo stato d’animo delle truppe operanti. Non si può deplorare l’eccidio singolo di un bombardamento aereo, senza deplorare la guerra che lo determina. La stampa di Francia, o di Germania, d’Inghilterra o d’Italia, la quale malediceva gli assassini dell’aria, si serviva di un motivo sentimentale per mettere l’opinione pubblica contro il presunto nemico. Ma tutte le nazioni uccisero, con i loro mezzi di distruzione, i civili delle nazioni nemiche, ed il bombardamento aereo di Padova ha l’eguale nel bombardamento italiano su Lubiana.

Il terrore bianco – cui noi oggi siamo sottoposti in Italia – è un sintomo della grave situazione sociale che angoscia l’umanità proletaria intera. Deprecare il fascismo evitando di inquadrare il fenomeno fascista nella cornice della situazione generale rivoluzionaria, significa ignorare o non sentire il momento storico che attraversiamo.

È perciò noi – che non avremmo mai assunto la paternità di un gesto come quello compiuto al Teatro Diana di Milano, né lo avremmo consigliato – non volemmo deplorare l’accaduto, né favorire la speculazione borghese che del fatto ne fece a proprio uso. Ed abbiamo dovuto sentirci dire da alcuni sovversivi (del giudizio borghese ci curiamo ben poco) che noi – con il nostro atto di differenziazione dal contegno di tutti gli altri partiti avevamo solidarizzato con gli uccisori delle vittime del Diana. Trascurando di rispondere a coloro i quali non intesero rompere la loro solidarietà dagli assassini che condussero il proletariato italiano alla guerra borghese, ed a coloro che ignorano profondamente la gravità della situazione rivoluzionaria e recano incensi e viole al Sacerdote Onan schiavi della loro impotenza critica, dobbiamo dire che abbiamo ancora una volta dovuto constatare le mediocre mentalità anarchica, manifestatasi attraverso il pensiero di Errico Malatesta, di Luigi Fabbri e del Comitato di Corrispondenza dell’U.A.I.

Sapevamo che l’anarchismo è privo di ogni contenuto scientifico e vive permeando tutte le società, sino al punto di diventare domani un movimento controrivoluzionario, a similitudine di quello da tempo iniziato nella Russia Meridionale dal Macno. Ma pensavamo che gli anarchici, assai meglio di noi, interpretassero obbiettivamente l’eccidio del Diana, mettendolo in raffronto, se non alla situazione di disordine generale del regime borghese, per lo meno al movimento di protesta sorto tra le folle contro le vittime politiche. Gli anarchici ci hanno detto che la violenza è bandita dai loro testi. Essi guardano l’avvenire e dimenticano che per giungere a conquistarlo bisogna superare difficoltà sanguinose. Noi potremmo dire altrettanto: che il regime comunista è la negazione della violenza, ed aggiungere che la violenza è frutto della esistenza delle classi, che per giungere al Comunismo quanta violenza è necessaria e santa!

E gli anarchici ciò non possono provare. Si tratterebbe, dunque, di distinguere violenza da violenza, violenza buona da violenza cattiva: Eh, via! Non sempre si può disciplinare interamente la violenza di classe; e quella che resta disciplinata alla volontà di chi la usa lascia ai margini una violenza bruta, cieca, incosciente. Non possiamo pensare che un borghese di Francia dell’89 abbia ordinata la mutilazione orrenda della Lamballe. Non pensiamo che Luigi Fabbri o Errico Malatesta abbiano consigliato la strage del Diana. La nostra deplorazione va a tutto il disordine borghese che provocherà nefasti più orribili di quelli compiuti giorni or sono a Milano. Bisogna instaurare l’ordine nuovo, l’ordine comunista, se si vuole por fine al caos in cui l’umanità lavoratrice si dibatte.

NORMS FOR POLITICAL ELECTIONS

Il Comunista, April 14, 1921

There is no electionist or anti-electionist question for us today. It may come up for discussion again at the 3rd Congress of the Communist International. But today the Italian section of the 3rd International obeys, disciplined and united, the rules laid down in Moscow last year. The Executive Committee of the Party, meeting to deliberate on the forthcoming electoral struggle, did not delay even a minute in examining whether the Party could, given its special organisational conditions just at the beginning, refrain from participating in the May rallies.

And it immediately went on to set the rules for participation, voting on the following agenda:

‘The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Italy, discussing the general political elections, in the urgency of issuing provisions even before the convening of the C.C., which will address a manifesto-programme to the proletariat, declares that, by virtue of the discipline to the deliberations of the International, the Communist Party will participate in the elections with the precise aims and criteria contained in the theses approved by the Second World Congress in Moscow and resolves:

‘that the Communist Party will take part in the struggle, in principle, in all constituencies, with absolute intransigence, with blocked lists, adopting as a symbol for the ballot papers the emblem of the Republic of Soviets, i.e. the hammer and sickle in the crown of ears of wheat;

‘that in each constituency a convention of representatives of the interested provincial federations – no more than two delegates for each one – is immediately convened to proceed with the organisation of the struggle, designating a shortlist of candidates, which must include a number of names more than half the number of deputies to be elected in the constituency, and informing the Executive Committee by the 14th so that the latter can compile the final list;

‘all full members of the Party who have been members since its constitution may be candidates;

‘in all the constituencies the collection of the three hundred signatures with notary authentication necessary for the subsequent presentation of the lists will begin immediately’.

It is pointless to repeat what we have already written in anticipation of the forthcoming convocation of the electoral meetings. These come at a very critical time for our party. Difficulties of all kinds will have to be overcome, given also that the federal constituent congress has not been held in all the provinces and that the federations’ coffers are empty. Nor will the E.C. be able to contribute even a small part of the election expenses. Since we are unscrupulous in this matter, we won’t get worked up over  electoral preparations. We will keep our health intact for the biggest and most decisive battles. But this does not mean that we should disregard the fight, which would mean not participating in it, having a colossal defeat without even the honour of having fought, sabotaging party discipline under the guise of respecting it.

Of course our elections will be done with economy. We have always repeated that they do not even remotely give the true majority of the country’s thinking, since the democratic regime, which holds the power of the state and the bank and the press in its hands, precludes the workers from the path of free expression of their political thought. Tens of thousands of revolutionary workers are in jail and ‘will not come out until after the elections have taken place’, hundreds of thousands of names of workers presumed to be subversive voters have been removed from the electoral lists by the bourgeois communes; and where the communes were socialist, due to their cowardice and the action of the royal and white guards, the royal or prefectural commissioners took over to prepare the electoral lists. Thousands of workers, on voting day, could not cast their ballot in the ballot box, because they were in service on the railways, on the tramways, in the ports, on the oceans, in the army, in the navy.

Those taking part in the elections are the same people we see every day on punitive expeditions, the white guard, i.e. the plaincloth royal guard, and the idlers of all industries, of the vilest commerce, of the bloodthirsty agrarians, of the most petulant and unclean press.

But the workers and communists must not miss any opposing rally. They must speak their word, which is that of the entire Party, to the scoundrels of the bourgeoisie, and to the cowardly Italian socialists who have admitted the principle of ‘passive resistance’. We will make propaganda, as far as we are allowed by democratic fiction.

Our thoughts and activities go beyond the petty electoral competition.

We pause to speak our mind at this juncture because we do not want to miss an opportunity to propagandise communist principles.

Nor should we be too surprised if, by granting ‘universal suffrage’, democracy prevents workers from exercising their right to vote. The democratic state exercises its dictatorship. This is Marxistically logical.

And it justifies the proletarian dictatorship, which – moreover – by excluding the bourgeoisie and all those who do not perform productive work for the community (whether material or spiritual) from the soviet elections, does not, through a tendentiously classist formula, lie about its profound class conception.

The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Italy