Programme Communiste 3

Pendant longtemps le faux communisme de Moscou n’a connu que des adversaires obscurs et peu nombreux appartenant à l’aile gauche du mouvement ouvrier. Depuis ces deux dernières années c’est de son sein que surgissent, à grand renfort de publicité, de petits groupes dissidents, scissionnistes avoués ou opposants clandestins, qui découvrent, avez quelque retard, que les partis stalinistes ne répondent plus aux « exigences actuelles » de la lutte ouvrière.

Il n’y a pas de doute que c’est là le commencement de la décomposition organique de l’appareil politique international du Kremlin, et par le fait qu’il tend à désarticuler le principal allié de la bourgeoisie capitaliste on ne peut nier qu’un tel phénomène doive préluder à de nouvelles et plus favorables conditions d’activité politique prolétarienne. Mais dans l’immédiat sa portée est toute différente car il n’apporte pas la clarté mais la confusion. Ces derniers venus dans le camp de l’antistalinisme, s’ils n’ont ni le mérite ni le courage de ceux qui les ont devancés dans cette voie à l’époque où cela coûtait la vie, n’en reproduisent pas moins, en les démultipliant, les tares et les faiblesses de la plupart de leurs prédécesseurs.

Ces derniers, surtout en France et dans les pays anglo-saxons, ont montré qu’étant isolés dans une situation de complet recul du mouvement ouvrier, ils ne pouvaient suppléer à la solide tradition révolutionnaire prolétarienne qui leur faisait défaut. Ils n’ont jamais eu la force de se débarrasser intégralement d’un opportunisme que le stalinisme avait généralisé dans toutes les files ouvrières mais qui n’était que la répétition d’un opportunisme plus vaste et plus ancien, celui qui plonge ses racines jusqu’aux plus grandes défaites historiques du mouvement ouvrier. De là découlaient, chez ces premiers « oppositionnels » un empirisme extravagant dans la pratique politique et dans les rapports avec les autres partis, mais surtout une grande perplexité dans l’identification du mal qu’ils dénonçaient : la nature sociale de l’État russe, le rôle véritable des partis qui lui sont affiliés.

A cette impuissance dans l’analyse théorique et à cette propension à la manœuvre politique qui étaient caractéristiques des anciens courants de l’antistalinisme ouvrier, et particulièrement du plus important d’entre eux, le trotkysme, les groupes ou militants qui rompent aujourd’hui avec Moscou ajoutent une extrême perversion politique et une prétention bien plus grande. Ils ne se posent pas en gens finalement lassés d’une longue suite de compromissions politiques qu’ils ont acceptées d’enthousiasme ou simplement tolérées mais en véritables promoteurs d’un renouveau idéologique du socialisme. A les entendre ils se seraient enrichis d’une expérience historique qui aurait fait défaut à tous les grands noms du mouvement, ils seraient venus à point pour découvrir des conditions nouvelles et originales.

Si nous mentionnons ces démarches intellectuelles bien plus spectaculaires que profondes c’est parce que, tout en matérialisant les débuts de la prévisible décomposition du stalinisme, elles reflètent un phénomène plus général et plus profond que la désagrégation naissante de l’appareil de la propagande russe : la dégénérescence totale de l’idéologie et de la politique. C’est à ce titre qu’elles nous intéressent, parce qu’elles prolongent jusque dans les rangs des travailleurs cette décomposition idéologique générale dont l’influence sur la classe ouvrière ne disparaîtra qu’après de longues et douloureuses expériences. Elles constituent de véritables obstacles sur l’ingrate voie de la réhabilitation du programme historique du prolétariat.

Ce danger des séquelles de la décomposition du mouvement staliniste nous l’avions déjà pressenti; il est nettement évoqué dans un texte qui date de quelques années et que nous reproduisons dans les pages qui suivent sous le titre d’« Appel pour la réorganisation internationale du mouvement révolutionnaire marxiste ». A l’époque de sa rédaction les « innovateurs » étaient encore peu nombreux dans les rangs du « communisme oppositionnel ». Aujourd’hui, où il est prévisible qu’ils vont proliférer, on pourra juger à sa lecture qu’il n’en est que plus actuel et nécessaire. Contre tous ceux qui sont en mal « d’originalité » il n’a pas d’autre prétention que de ne rien apporter d’original au marxisme le plus orthodoxe, rien qui n’ait déjà été dit et répété par nos maîtres et aînés du mouvement prolétarien. Le jour est encore éloigné où il deviendra évident que les hésitations et faux dilemmes qui paraissent aujourd’hui justifier la recherche de solutions « nouvelles » n’étaient que le produit du reflux de la révolution socialiste et du désarroi idéologique qu’il a engendré. Mais plus nombreux auront été les yeux qui se seront dessillés avant cette reprise, plus celle-ci sera vaste et radicale car elle est tout autant inéluctable que l’actuelle déconfiture de ceux qui en furent les renégats.

Le marxisme, devrons-nous répéter sans nous lasser, a donné une fois pour toutes la formule du bouleversement révolutionnaire de la société. Chaque grande phase de convulsion sociale, et particulièrement chaque phase de contre-révolution, n’a fait que préciser et confirmer cette formule. S’inspirant de cette constatation fondamentale, notre « Appel » s’est attaché à faire le point des conséquences de la contre-révolution stalinienne et il suffira d’un peu d’objectivité pour se convaincre que plusieurs des principaux points de ce texte ont déjà subi victorieusement l’épreuve des faits, notamment ceux qui ont trait à l’involution russe vers les formes ouvertement affirmées d’une structure capitaliste. Pour se rendre compte qu’il ne s’agit pas là d’une vérification fortuite mais bien d’une nouvelle confirmation s’ajoutant à celles qui l’ont précédée et qui, en s’intégrant dans la continuité historique du mouvement, donnent à la théorie de Marx son caractère scientifique, il n’est pas inutile de grouper les principales questions traitées autour d’une notion centrale et essentielle pour la compréhension de la doctrine et du programme du prolétariat.

Le fait le plus frappant de la période actuelle, la constatation qui s’impose même au premier venu, c’est que le monde moderne est saturé de violence. Il est secoué par des contrastes et des chocs qui s’inscrivent continuellement en faux contre la vision idyllique qui sert de justification à toutes les théories bourgeoises et d’argument à toute sa structure politique et juridique. La seule ressource des défenseurs du système établi réside dans leur plus ou moins grande possibilité de dénaturer le sens de cette violence et, à chacune de ses inévitables explosions, de réclamer de l’humanité de nouveaux délais pour la réalisation de leur chimérique idéal d’harmonie sociale.

En face de cette manœuvre comment se définit un parti révolutionnaire ? En ce qu’il sait identifier toute cette violence, la dénoncer comme contre-révolutionnaire et appuyer la seule violence qui puisse les supprimer toutes avant de se supprimer elle-même, celle du prolétariat.

Si ce critère appliqué à la social-démocratie en révèle définitivement le caractère conservateur, en quoi réside la difficulté de cataloguer de même le stalinisme comme force de soutien. du système mondial bourgeois ? En ce qu’il se présente comme organisation anti-conformiste, qu’il se place dans le camp de la subversion sociale, allant jusqu’à appuyer l’action anti-constitutionnelle dans certains pays alors qu’il démontre par ailleurs collaborer à la gestion de l’État capitaliste et faire du socialisme le but d’une compétition pacifique entre les classes et entre les États.

Le rôle néfaste du stalinisme dans la classe ouvrière étant dûment constaté et consigné, quelle est sa tare essentielle, celle sur laquelle doivent porter le plus durement nos griefs et se fonder l’enseignement politique de cette période historique ? Faut-il lui reprocher d’avoir fait preuve d’éclectisme politique ou d’avoir abusé de l’autorité qui lui concédait la disposition du pouvoir d’État ? A-t-il pêché par abus de la violence ou par défaitisme devant les grandes forces internationales du capital ?

Ainsi groupées ces questions, que notre « Appel » traite méthodiquement et sous forme de thèses, peuvent constituer l’ossature d’un examen succinct de ce texte, propre à en faciliter l’étude et à résumer sa conclusion générale : ce n’est pas l’arbitraire policier, le sadisme contre-révolutionnaire et les méthodes ignobles du stalinisme qui ont fait des partis de Moscou les instruments de la conservation capitaliste contre la menace de révolution mondiale, c’est le pacifisme social qu’ils ont implanté dans toutes les assises du mouvement ouvrier. Et celui-ci sortira de cette défaite, non pas en pillant son programme dans l’éthique, la morale et l’éclectisme idéologique de l’arsenal bourgeois mais en revenant à ses positions fondamentales sur la nécessité de la violence et de la dictature pour extirper le capitalisme.

En 1950, année de la rédaction de notre « Appel », le monde entier vivait encore sous l’influence des terreurs de la « guerre froide ». La détente internationale n’avait pas encore triomphé. Dédaigneux (pour quelques années encore) des avances russes en faveur de la « coexistence pacifique », l’Occident poursuivait sa violente campagne de dénigration de la « dictature soviétique » sans avoir besoin pour cela de renouveler les prétextes idéologiques qui avaient fait leur preuve lors de la guerre contre l’Allemagne et qui conservaient, appliqués à la rivalité nouvelle entre les Américains et les Russes, toute leur efficacité suggestive.

Fallait-il s’étonner que le prolétariat, impuissant et divise, accepte sans étonnement ni indignation que les ex-alliés de la veille se rejettent l’un sur l’autre les griefs qu’ils avaient précédemment dirigés de concert sur le régime hitlérien ? Que la Russie, saluée quelques années plus tôt comme le rempart de la civilisation contre la « barbarie nazie », soit dénoncée désormais comme le danger № 1 de la démocratie et que le Kremlin déploie toute sa fureur contre « l’impérialisme yankee » pour les intérêts duquel, sur tous les champs de bataille du monde, il avait immolé des millions de prolétaires ? Certainement pas si on tenait compte de l’état d’extrême faiblesse sociale des masses ouvrières dont l’énergie, réveillée par les années de misère qui avaient succédé à la paix, avait été perdue dans des luttes sans issue et trahies d’avance. On ne se redresse pas si rapidement de vingt années d’abandons et de reculs.

D’ailleurs les mêmes forces politiques continuaient à diriger les organisations ouvrières et ne savaient, devant la menace – apparente ou réelle – de la guerre, qu’opposer une plate sollicitation de la paix, loyale et respectueuse de l’ordre établi, que proposer une utopique plate-forme de réconciliation éternelle des blocs d’États.

Il n’est pas douteux que la propagande pacifiste des partis stalinistes, qui tenaient la place la plus importante dans la « protestation contre la guerre », répondait avant tout aux exigences de la stratégie russe. Mais outre que ce serait une grosse erreur de n’envisager que cet aspect de la propagande pacifiste et négliger la portée objective, l’influence idéologique sur les masses de cette stratégie, ce serait ignorer aussi que tout défaitisme de classe a toujours des causes plus profondes que la volonté et la décision des chefs opportunistes. L’erreur des « oppositionnels » de cette époque fut effectivement de croire que la revendication de la paix n’était pas suffisante uniquement parce qu’elle était dictée par les instruments de Moscou et qu’il suffirait de lui superposer quelque phraséologie classiste pour la rendre positive voire pour en faire un tremplin d’agitation sociale.

En réalité, spéculer sur l’horreur que manifestent les masses ouvrières pour la guerre n’aboutit jamais à leur insuffler l’énergie de la révolte sociale mais au contraire n’a pour effet que de leur transfuser la panique qui s’empare des éléments de la petite bourgeoisie lorsque explosent les contradictions du mode de production auquel elles sont ligotées. Sur ce point comme sur tous ceux qui touchent aux réactions des foules c’est la présence ou l’absence d’un fort parti politique du prolétariat qui détermine le sens, révolutionnaire ou panicard, des menaces de destruction qui pèsent sur la société moderne.

Par quelque moyen que ce soit on ne peut suppléer à l’inexistence de l’organisation prolétarienne, ni par la propagande, ni par l’agitation, mais encore moins en faisant chorus. avec les démagogues et les opportunistes qui crient « Halte à la guerre » alors qu’ils en développent les conditions objectives et subjectives. Tout autre est la tâche qui s’impose aux militants révolutionnaires. Quand tout le mouvement international s’est écroulé et décomposé c’est à l’arme de la critique de refaire ses preuves pour frayer la voie à la critique des armes. La gangrène opportuniste a substitué au programme révolutionnaire une plate copie du progressisme bourgeois. La « théorie » des actuels partis « ouvriers » n’est qu’une accommodation ignoble de l’idéologie démocratique à une politique de reculade et de démission dans la lutte intérieure et internationale. Dans leurs ripostes aux attaques de la propagande occidentale, Moscou et ses partis n’ont su que développer les mêmes platitudes de leurs concurrents d’outre-atlantique et, de même qu’ils prétendaient, au nom du socialisme, rivaliser avec la production mercantile capitaliste des grands producteurs de l’ouest, ils veulent se proclamer plus démocrates, plus tolérants, plus éclectiques que les bourgeois de vieille date. Ainsi ils enfoncent plus profondément encore ces mensonges de la civilisation capitaliste que, depuis des décades, bourgeois et serviteurs reconnus du capitalisme s’efforcent d’imprimer d’une encre indélébile dans les cerveaux des prolétaires. C’est donc là qu’il faut porter le fer rouge de la critique marxiste au lieu d’essayer de contourner les fortes positions que ce bourrage de crâne a déjà conquises chez les ouvriers, ou pire encore, de vouloir les orienter dans « un sens de classe ».

Les deux grandes trahisons historiques de la cause prolétarienne se signalent par un essentiel trait commun : l’apologie d’une forme de gouvernement de la société bourgeoise contre d’autres formes politiques de la même société, l’appui à des États capitalistes contre d’autres États capitalistes, le rejet de tous les pays du camp militaire opposé dans les ténèbres du passé et de la réaction. La première guerre mondiale fut lancée comme croisade contre le militarisme germanique, instrument de la conservation sociale monarchique. La seconde, conduite sous la bannière de l’antifascisme, fut également présentée comme une guerre juste, progressive en face d’un retour offensif du moyen âge, en face d’États définis comme réactionnaires par rapport aux démocraties bourgeoises. Tandis que les renégats justifiaient cette position par un reniement total de l’analyse conduite par Marx, lequel, depuis 1871 en Europe occidentale, déclarait la bourgeoisie ennemie № 1 du prolétariat et les guerres nationales vidées de tout contenu progressif, une infâme spéculation se développait, mettant à profit l’évidence du caractère toujours plus brutal et impitoyable des guerres modernes pour en imputer l’exclusive responsabilité aux dirigeants des pays opposés. La prétendue « défense d’une forme historique et sociale progressive » que les opportunistes invoquaient à l’appui de leur honteuse politique d’union sacrée, dégénérait rapidement en une formule grandiloquente et hypocrite de lutte pour le « salut de l’humanité » pour la défense de la civilisation contre la barbarie : hier contre la barbarie teutonne, puis contre la barbarie nazie, aujourd’hui contre la barbarie russe. … demain peut-être contre la barbarie asiatique. La paix et la guerre, la civilisation et la barbarie, le progrès humain et le socialisme : sur ce vaste canevas, une effroyable dénaturation des termes s’accomplissait et se fondait en un homogène bourrage de crâne chauvin et belliciste. Liberté, démocratie, patrie et socialisme sont devenus, après le triomphe incontesté du réformisme et de l’opportunisme dans le mouvement ouvrier, des mots interchangeables auxquels il faudra redonner leur véritable signification sociale sous peine de réduire tous les efforts de redressement de la lutte prolétarienne à une vaine et trompeuse spéculation.

La barbarie est une forme d’organisation sociale – bien supérieure à la civilisation des sociétés de classe, du point de vue de la valeur morale et de l’honnêteté des rapports sociaux – mais non une aberration de la politique des États modernes, une systématisation monstrueuse de la brutalité et de la violence des sociétés industrielles et encore moins – comme dans l’acception de certain groupe « d’avant-garde » – une forme d’avenir du monde capitaliste. La démocratie, structure historique progressive par rapport au féodalisme et moteur politique et social de libération des forces productives dans les pays arriérés, est toujours et partout un système d’institutions qui masque et favorise la spoliation de la force de travail. La patrie, fronton idéologique de la bourgeoisie, révolutionnaire pour autant qu’elle s’inscrit dans des luttes et des guerres qui ont pour objectif de liquider la servitude de la glèbe, le droit personnel et l’étanchéité des îlots productifs dans les formes pré-capitalistes, devient une suggestion trompeuse et conservatrice dès lors qu’historiquement la guerre des classes ne se déroule plus sur les frontières des États mais sur la frontière sociale entre prolétaires et détenteurs des moyens de production. Autour de ces définitions, fondamentales dans la théorie marxiste, se sont déroulés tous les combats de l’aile radicale et marxiste orthodoxe contre la déviation du révisionnisme réformiste, lequel a fini par se fondre dans les arguments classiques de l’apologie et de la justification d’une éternité du système bourgeois.

Mais il faut aussi rappeler ce que vaut la paix du monde moderne, c’est-à-dire la paix capitaliste. Ceci fut aussi l’objet de l’œuvre rénovatrice du marxisme révolutionnaire menée par Lénine dans le premier quart du siècle. Pour trouver un mouvement en faveur de la paix qui ait un caractère véritable de classe il faut remonter jusqu’à la veille de la guerre de 1914 où syndicalistes et socialistes menacèrent la bourgeoisie de la grève générale si elle prenait la responsabilité de déclencher le conflit armé entre les États capitalistes. C’était une position de classe parce que position révolutionnaire. Depuis cette tentative valable – mais impuissante – d’épargner au prolétariat et à la population les misères et désastres du premier grand carnage mondial, la revendication de la « Paix » ne fut jamais qu’une triste farce politique, incapable d’opposer le moindre obstacle au déchaînement de la folie meurtrière, mais toujours efficace pour cimenter chaque prolétariat à sa propre bourgeoisie. D’ailleurs pendant que quelques centaines de milliers de naïfs se rassemblent sous le signe de la colombe pacificatrice, sans se douter qu’en se berçant ainsi de leurs illusions, ils ne font pas varier d’une fraction infinitésimale la route jalonnée de morts et de destruction sur laquelle s’avance inexorablement la civilisation capitaliste, il y a toujours, dans quelque coin du globe, des lieux qu’ensanglante la guerre; sans parler des pays ou la paix civique n’est autre chose que la guerre des classes déchaînée au seul profit des classes dominantes tant l’exploitation économique y est liée a la violence physique sur les travailleurs.

Les falsifications de doctrine qui ont permis cette infection idéologique de la classe ouvrière – sous la forme de la soporifique aspiration à la paix universelle aussi bien que dans la belliqueuse et farouche défense du « sol de la patrie » – ne sont autres que celles qui ont toujours servi de toile de fond à la trahison opportuniste. Mais à dater de l’époque où elles se sont inscrites dans l’énorme imposture qui définit comme prolétarien et socialiste le régime des Staline et des Khrouchtchev elles ont atteint un degré extraordinaire de persuasion politique ce qui explique que les générations successives de critiques du mouvement dégénéré de Moscou n’aient jamais réussi à trancher correctement la délicate et complexe question de la nature sociale de la Russie staliniste et de ses acolytes occidentaux.

A mesure que les événements surgissent qui contraignent les chefs du Kremlin à dévoiler leur véritable jeu politique, la vérité tend à percer sur le caractère contre-révolutionnaire du pouvoir qui siège à Moscou et sur l’intense exploitation économique que masquent les insipides litanies productivistes d’agents appointés. Cependant le sentiment de désapprobation qui s’est manifesté jusqu’au sein des partis stalinistes occidentaux à la suite d’événements comme la répression sanglante de Budapest n’en laisse pas moins intacte la notion de « communiste » appliquée à la Russie et aux organisations sous son obédience. De telles réactions n’engendrent donc que des désirs de réforme à l’adresse du système staliniste et de sa politique (et ce d’autant plus que les expériences du titisme et du gromulkisme apparaissent comme des preuves de la possibilité d’un « socialisme » moins « brutal » moins « autoritaire » que celui de Moscou). Elles ne suscitent donc pas la condamnation de la monstrueuse formule du « socialisme national ». Bien plus, sur le plan idéologique elles rapprochent davantage encore la confusion d’idées qui dominent l’ensemble du mouvement ouvrier des postulats fondamentaux de son adversaire : la liberté et la démocratie.

Ce phénomène démontre combien nous avions raison, au moment de la publication de notre « Appel », d’insister sur le danger que représentent les critiques démocratiques à l’adresse du système russe. Le principal résultat des coups de théâtre politiques qui ont suivi la mort de Staline n’a été, en somme, que de rassurer les préjugés petits-bourgeois des « progressistes » occidentaux, La superstition sur le caractère socialiste de la Russie et des pays qui s’inspirent de son exemple politique sort accrue et non dissipée de l’ahurissante suite des révélations et de réhabilitations qui ont émaillé le dernier congrès du P.C. Russe. En s’en rendant compte on comprendra que notre méthode – qui consistait à rejeter tout critère directement ou non inspiré par les préjugés bourgeois de justice et de liberté – était la bonne puisqu’elle nous a permis de définir des caractères économiques et politiques qui survivent à la disparition des phénomènes qui monopolisaient l’attention au moment où le monde occidental était subjugué par la puissance policière du système russe et terrorisé par la férocité de son chef aujourd’hui vilipendé. Pour comprendre l’importance et la portée de notre texte, passé inaperçu à cette époque comme il peut encore l’être aujourd’hui, il faut tenir compte de ce que la position que nous avons prise à l’égard de la nature de la Russie et de son régime politique fut formulée avant que l’évolution interne de la politique soviétique et les modifications apportées à l’organisation de son économie ne viennent apporter une preuve évidente du caractère capitaliste que nous lui dénoncions. De plus il faut surtout tenir compte que c’est en fonction de critères politiques bien définis que nous avons effectué cette identification économique et sociale et maintenu une condamnation politique qui remonte aux premiers actes de la déviation opportuniste de l’Internationale de Moscou. Sur cette base théorique et expérimentale solide nous nous sommes refusés à devenir, comme ce fut le cas de la plupart des oppositionnels, les victimes des apparences de la politique et notamment de cette spéculation staliniste à la lutte sociale qui lui fit quelquefois diriger de véritables actes antigouvernementaux et aller, dans la Tchécoslovaquie de 1948, jusqu’au coup d’État. Nous avons résolument refusé le dilemme dans lequel tombaient tous les anti-stalinistes : comment un parti qui trahit et abandonne outrageusement la lutte prolétarienne peut-il quand même jouer un rôle subversif ? Les choses n’étaient pas en effet toujours aussi claires qu’à Berlin ou à Budapest où l’armée russe mitraillait les ouvriers. Nombreux étaient les militants d’avant-garde qui demeuraient perplexes devant cette question, lorsqu’ils n’abondaient pas dans cette explication simpliste : le stalinisme, ni prolétarien ni bourgeois mais au service d’une nouvelle classe.

Si sur ce point la moindre incertitude avait été fondée, ce n’est pas simplement notre acquis politique, ni même la grande ligne léniniste qui aurait été faux mais le marxisme tout entier. Nous avons soutenu qu’il s’avère que l’économie russe n’est pas socialiste mais capitaliste, comme nous le savions depuis longtemps, elle doit reproduire les phénomènes essentiels de superstructure qui se sont toujours historiquement vérifiés dans ce système de production. Les plus impudents des innovateurs nés de l’antistalinisme, ceux que nous pourrions appeler les « théoriciens de la facilité », ont parlé, pour la Russie actuelle, d’un capitalisme « nouveau », invulnérable aux crises classiques grâce à la planification supérieure de son économie et à la culture « marxiste » de sa bureaucratie. Ils y voyaient l’assise économique et sociale d’une classe originale, tout à la fois capable de combattre la bourgeoisie et de brimer le prolétariat. Ils ont fait en somme du stalinisme un phénomène monstrueux irréductible aux données du matérialisme historique, une absurdité et un paradoxe puisqu’il réussissait à la fois à révolutionner la société et à opprimer la principale de ses formes productives.

Nous y avons opposé la formule classique de toute révolution sociale, produit de la révolte des forces productives contre la superstructure politique de la société. A l’échelle internationale où la révolution sociale déterminante est celle du prolétariat contre la bourgeoisie capitaliste, le stalinisme est essentiellement une force contre-révolutionnaire. Mais dans les immenses secteurs géographiques où le capitalisme n’est pas pleinement développé et où la constitution d’États nationaux est sa condition primordiale, le romantisme politique attardé de l’école de Moscou peut très bien jouer le rôle de pourvoyeur de cadres politiques et militaires et d’inspirateur d’un « digest » de faux socialisme désormais imité même par les partis autonomes des bourgeoisies locales. Il n’y s’agit en effet que de révolutions nationales-démocratiques – donc capitalistes – pour lesquelles la même idéologie qui a permis au pouvoir soviétique de poursuivre l’extirpation des rapports pré-capitalistes en Russie et d’y masquer au prolétariat que ce n’était là que le premier objectif de la double-révolution de Lénine et non l’instauration d’une économie socialiste, demeure valable et efficace.

Il n’y a pas de contradiction à ce que les liquidateurs de la perspective de la révolution prolétarienne deviennent les artisans de certaines des révolutions capitalistes des pays arriérés. Mais les stalinistes d’Orient et d’Extrême-Orient poursuivent une politique qui n’a rien de commun avec celle que Lénine préconisait : non seulement ils ne font rien pour combattre l’idéologie nationale et démocratique (comme Marx le préconisait dans tous les pays et époques où le prolétariat doit appuyer de telles révolutions) mais encore ils en dissimulent le véritable caractère sous une phraséologie pseudo-socialiste. Non seulement ils ne préparent pas le prolétariat de ces pays à se retourner ultérieurement contre leur propre bourgeoisie mais ils en préviennent toute possibilité en fusionnant les organisations ouvrières avec celles des classes appelées à prendre le pouvoir. Enfin, à l’instar de ces classes qui, dans la plupart des cas ont composé avec l’impérialisme, ils ne sont entrés en lutte ouverte contre lui que contraints et forcés : dans ces pays c’est la situation objective qui fut révolutionnaire avant les forces politiques qui ont pris en mains la direction des mouvements de révolte. D’ailleurs – et c’est là ce qui détermine inexorablement le véritable caractère politique et social du stalinisme – l’attitude de ses partis dans les métropoles est fondée sur une stratégie de complète paix sociale et par suite la grande condition de la radicalisation internationale des mouvements des peuples des pays arriérés fait entièrement défaut : en deçà comme au-delà des mers les stalinistes sont d’exclusifs serviteurs du système bourgeois.

Considéré sous l’angle de sa dépravation idéologique, et non pas sous celui de l’influence qu’il peut exercer et qui demeure dérisoire, l’antistalinisme est pire que le stalinisme.

Ce dernier, durant de longues années a laissé croire à ses partisans qu’il n’hésiterait pas a recourir à la lutte armée contre les pouvoirs capitalistes d’occident. Ce n’était là qu’une fanfaronnade, nécessaire pour sauvegarder le contrôle du parti sur l’aile la plus combative de la classe ouvrière, importante à cette époque. Par la suite, les revirements de la politique de Moscou, et notamment les fameuses déclarations de Khrouchtchev sur les « voies nationales » du socialisme, ont montré que le Kremlin avait ouvertement et définitivement renoncé à cette propagande.

Mais les antistalinistes, c’est par principe eux, qu’ils refusent la violence subversive et la dictature du prolétariat. Leur grand argument ils le puisent dans l’exemple de la férocité de la contre-révolution stalinienne, de même qu’ils condamnent le principe du centralisme dans le parti en invoquant le système quasi-policier des organisations moscovites et qu’ils rejettent toute rigueur doctrinale pour se garder du « dogmatisme » qu’ils attribuent – à tort – à Staline.

Mais toutes ces positions ont en réalité une autre cause : elles sont dictées par la faillite de leur conviction révolutionnaire, Ils craignent l’insurrection armée des masses, ils redoutent qu’elles servent autre chose que le socialisme si on ne les tempère pas d’un peu de démocratisme. Ils ne sont plus capables de distinguer entre la violence révolutionnaire et la violence conservatrice. Il n’y a plus pour eux que la violence tout court même s’ils n’ont pas conscience de ce fait et se le dissimulent sous des considérations pseudo-généreuses au sujet de la « volonté de la base », de la « démocratie interne », du « droit à la libre discussion », etc,.. ces arguments qui n’ont d’autre objet que d’empêcher l’organisation de classe et le pouvoir de classe d’être les instruments homogènes, incisifs et impitoyables, indispensables à une véritable transformation révolutionnaire de la société.

Longtemps après qu’elle ait triomphé, la contre-révolution qui a fait des Staline et consorts des chefs d’État continue son œuvre désormais souterraine de désarmement du prolétariat. Plus néfaste encore qu’à l’époque où elle massacrait ses militants, elle reproduit chez ceux qui n’ont pas la force de rompre intégralement avec toute une phase de dégénérescence politique la même aberration que continue à propager son appareil officiel de propagande : la conception du socialisme comme produit du pacifisme social. Dans leurs bouches et plus encore dans celles de leurs « dissidents » l’horreur que suscite sa violence sert à bannir jusqu’à l’idée de la violence dans l’avant-garde de la classe révolutionnaire. Elle en égare les militants dans les méandres des demi-mesures, de l’éclectisme et des compromis. Elle les incite, en dernier ressort, à reprendre à leur compte l’hypocrite condamnation que formule à l’adresse des brutalités du jeune capitalisme russe le vieux capitalisme d’occident, et par là à participer involontairement à l’entretien de ce faux dualisme de systèmes politiques qui, en réalité sont de même nature sociale parce que fondés sur d’identiques rapports de production.

Le prolétariat devra renvoyer dos à dos ces faux adversaires qu’il s’expose à voir unis chaque fois qu’il s’élancera sur sa voie propre et dont il ne viendra à bout que s’il sait retrouver ses armes théoriques et politiques, son parti et son programme. Le texte qui suit est une proposition dans ce sens, un Appel sans doute à tous les révolutionnaires sincères mais aussi une exclusive, l’exclusive sur tout ce qui pourrait reconduire dans la future organisation prolétarienne les erreurs et trahisons du passé.

C’est une illusion insensée que de croire que les capitalistes se soumettraient de bon gré au verdict socialiste d’un parlement ou d’une assemblée nationale, qu’ils renonceraient tranquillement à la propriété, aux bénéfices, à leur privilège d’exploitation. Toutes les classes dirigeantes ont lutté, jusqu’à présent, avec la dernière énergie pour leurs privilèges. Les patriciens romains, de même que les barons féodaux du moyen-age; les chevaliers anglais, de même que les marchands d’esclaves américains; les boyards valaques, de même que les fabricants de soie de Lyon : tous ont versé des torrents de sang, enjambé les cadavres, semé les meurtres et les incendies, provoqué les guerres civiles et les trahisons d’État pour défendre leurs privilèges et leur pouvoir.
La classe capitaliste impérialiste, en sa qualité de dernier rejeton de la classe des exploiteurs, dépasse tous ses prédécesseurs en brutalité, en cynisme et en bassesse. Elle défendra son Saint des Saints, ses bénéfices et ses privilèges d’exploitation du bec et des ongles, par toutes les méthodes de froide cruauté dont elle a fait preuve dans toute l’histoire de sa politique coloniale et de la dernière guerre mondiale. Elle mettra en branle ciel et enfer contre le prolétariat. Elle mobilisera les campagnes contre les villes, elle excitera les couches retardées des ouvriers contre l’avant-garde socialiste, elle organisera des massacres avec l’aide des officiers, elle cherchera à paralyser toutes les mesures socialistes par mille moyens de résistance passive, elle soulèvera contre la révolution une vingtaine de vendées, elle invoquera pour son salut l’invasion étrangère, le fer exterminateur de Clémenceau, de Lloyd-George et de Wilson. Elle préférera transformer le pays en montagnes de ruines fumantes plutôt que de renoncer de bon gré à l’esclavage salarié.

Rosa Luxembourg (« Que veut l’Union de Spartakus ? »)

1993 INTRODUCTION

      The following text, written in 1949 with a view to being published in French, is still as relevant today as it was then. On the one hand this is because the evolution of the capitalist world, Russia included, has more than confirmed our expectations, and on the other, because the reactions of many groups of vanguard workers against stalinism have never ceased to be hybrid and confused; a reaction which has taken the form of democratism, or even of the negation both of the role played by violence in the class struggle, and of the revolutionary party as fundamental and indispensable organ of the proletarian dictatorship. Thus it became a serious and urgent task for the Marxist Left to draw a demarcation line between itself and the myriad array of other political groups and currents which grew on the rotten soil constituted by democratic or parademocratic criticisms of the Soviet regime.

      The democratic critics of the Russian regime would in fact find their most avid supporters amongst the big bourgeoisie of the capitalist West, with the latter, hoping to open up the vast Russian market, quite happy to urge them on and encourage them in their criticism of “Russian totalitarianism”. Eventually, as the doors to that shrine of American Capital, the Hamburger bar, swished open in Moscow to a fanfare of International publicity, the crusaders of democracy would see their dream of an elected Parliament realised. But it would not be long before the staggering hypocracy of the bourgeoisie would be revealed once again, and a chorus of Western “world leaders” would support President Yeltsin as he dissolved Parliament, banned several papers and drowned the opposition of the parliamentary democrats in blood. It is an episode which serves as renewed testimony to the fact that the capitalist regime alternates the totalitarian AND democratic means of Government to defend its class rule.
 
 
 
 
 
 

THE ALARMING CRISIS IN THE PROLETARIAN MOVEMENT

      The organization of the working classes of all countries of the world is, as a result of a series of splits and the spread of defeatism, almost totally dominated by two forces.

      On the one hand there is the traditional form of democratic socialism. Based on peaceful relationships between classes, these organizations support a programme of social and political collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and plan to defend the workers’ interests by legal means within the framework of the bourgeois constitution. They suggest that private enterprise will gradually change to socialism, and on principle reject the use of violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

      On the other hand there are those parties which defend the government in power in the USSR. These herald the USSR as a Workers State with a policy modelled on revolutionary communism as defined by Marx and Lenin, and consistent with the great victory of the October Revolution. This second force in the proletarian movement claims, in theory, not to reject the tactics of insurrection, dictatorship and terrorism. At the same time however, it says that it is expedient to use in capitalist countries the same tactical methods as the property-owning and non-proletarian classes, and even their propaganda slogans and demands as well. For instance, there is the call for national welfare, for the safety of the fatherland, and the slogan of peaceful coexistence between classes with opposed interests within the framework of parliamentary democracy.

      The application of such a politics, identical to social-democracy, is dependent on the satisfaction of certain conditions. There would have to be peace between the government of the Soviet union and the bourgeois governments. The workers of the world would have to admit that by safeguarding the Russian power, as the premise and the promise of world socialism, they were guaranteeing themselves against future capitalist exploitation. And both the workers and the capitalists would have to acknowledge that for an unlimited period of time the Soviet Union could co-exist with the capitalist powers in a normal and peaceful manner. These conditions, a fools paradise, are summed up by the bourgeois democrats in the hackneyed formula of “non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign States” and in the new, even more ridiculous, slogan of “peaceful competition” between socialism and capitalism.

      From time to time the rank and file of the working class has rebelled against the obvious contradictions of this historical viewpoint; and though until now these rebellions have been limited and uncertain they will undoubtedly gain strength.

      The incessant propaganda is increasingly less successful in hiding these contradictions. It is skilfully aimed at deliberately confusing long-term objectives with immediate ones, the tactical expedients with principled positions, and is selected according to the particular social setting.

      The plan of convincing the capitalist countries that they can very well let the Soviet regime survive, without making a military attack or engineering a social upheaval, can only mean convincing them that it is not a working class State and therefore no longer anti-capitalist. Such a policy emphasises the true state of affairs.

      Convincing the workers in the bourgeois countries that they need not organise their forces for an insurrection and the overthrow of their national economic, administrative and political systems, may well help to recruit members from the social strata who normally support the social democrats, but it has no effect however on the more advanced workers. To them is offered the perspective of a generalised war between States leading to the conquest of class power by the proletariat, a role which Marx and Lenin entrusted to the civil war. When a war of this type has broken out, and irrespective of which side started it, the stalinists promise the groups of advanced workers the chance to try out illegal and defeatist actions within their own countries. In support of this vain promise they say that these “partisans” will be able to rely not only on their own forces but also on the parallel action of a perfected modern military machine.

      The other section of their followers, which certainly make up the vast majority, are made up of workers having no revolutionary consciousness; artisans, small land-owners, shop-keepers and middle-class manufacturers, white collar workers and civil servants, intellectuals and professional politicians. To this section the stalinists are continually making proposals which go so far as offering a permanent united front, not only with the propertied classes but also with the bourgeois parties, which they themselves classify as reactionary and right-wing. They also promise them a future of peace, both internal and world-wide; of democratic tolerance towards any political party, organization, or creed; of economic progress without conflict or expropriation of the wealthy; of equal welfare for all social strata. It is now increasingly difficult for them to justify, in the eyes of the masses, even the existence in the Soviet Union and her satellites of a harsh totalitarian police state, controlled by stalinists through a rigid one-party system.

      This degeneration of the proletarian movement has gone further than that of the revisionist and chauvinistic opportunism of the Second International and it will last longer. The beginnings of this modern opportunism we can fix, at the latest, in 1928; the opportunism of the Second International reached the culminating point of its cycle in the years 1912-1922, though its origins went back much further than 1912, and its consequences went well beyond 1922.
 
 
 

FIRST SYMPTOMS OF REACTION TO STALINISM

      Recently there have been signs of impatience with stalinist opportunism. Both individual militants and groups have appeared on the political scenes of different countries advocating the return to the doctrine of Marx and Lenin and the theses of the 3rd International at its first four Congresses. These latter denounced the stalinists for their complete betrayal of the original policy.

      However most of these splits cannot be regarded as a useful regrouping on a genuine class basis even of a small vanguard of the proletariat. Many of these groups, as a result of their lack of theoretical work and because of their class origin, show in the very nature of their criticism of stalinist activity, both past and present, that they are more or less directly influenced by political schemes which originate from the imperialist centres of the West and by the hysterical and hypocritical propaganda of liberalism and humanitarianism.

      But whether or not such policies are the result of the machinations of secret agents, the real damage they cause is that they divert unwary militants.

      However, historically speaking, fundamental responsability for allowing either means of counter-revolutionary defeatism to succeed rests entirely with the stalinist opportunists. It is they who have given their stamp of approval to an abundance of bourgeois ideologies and theories, who have frantically worked to prevent the working class movements from being autonomous, independent, and ready to defend themselves, despite the fact these attributes were so often stressed by Marx and Lenin.

      This confused and unfavourable course of the proletarian struggle coincides with the irresistable growth of highly concentrated industrialization, which is taking place as much in the old industrial centres as by the extension of industry to the entire world. It therefore aids the offensive waged by the United States against the masses of the world. The United States is the greatest pillar of imperialism and, as with all large concentrations of metropolitan capital, forces of production and power, it tends to forceably exploit and oppress the world masses by breaking down all social and territorial obstacles. The stalinists have shifted the struggle from international objectives and have confined themselves to the defence of precise national objectives delimited by the political and military aims of the Russian centre. As a result they will be less and less able to lead either the international or the national struggle, and will become more and more linked in with western imperialism, as was openly shown by the war alliance.

      The Marxist position has always been that the foremost class enemies are the great powers of the super-industrialised and super-colonial countries, which can only be overthrown by proletarian revolution. In accordance with the Marxist viewpoint, the communists of the Italian Left today address an appeal to the revolutionary workers’ groups of all countries. They invite them to retrace a long and difficult route and to regroup themselves on an international and strictly class basis, denouncing and rejecting any group which is influenced even partly or indirectly by the policies and philistine conformism emanating from the state controlled forces throughout the world.

      The reorganization of an international vanguard can only take place if there is absolute homogeneity of views and orientations; the International Communist Party proposes to comrades of all countries the following basic principles and postulates.
 

1. Reaffirmation of the Weapons of the Proletarian Revolution: Violence‑Dictatorship‑Terror

      For revolutionary left-wing marxists, knowing that acts of repression, cruelty or violence towards individuals or groups have taken place, even if these acts were authorised or controllable, is not in itself a decisive element in the condemnation of stalinism or of any other regime. Manifestations of repression, even the most severe repression, form an inseperable part of all societies based on class divisions. From its very inception Marxism has rejected the so-called “values” of a civilization based on class struggle, just as it rejects those rules of “fair play” by which opposing classes are supposed to regulate robbery and murder to their mutual satisfaction. No extortion or offense suffered by “human beings”, no “genocide”, whether illegal or legal, can be fought by ascribing them to particular individuals or to those who gave them their orders but only by struggling for the revolutionary destruction of all class divisions. In the present phase of capitalism, which is characterised by mounting atrocities, cruelty and super-militarism, only the most idiotic of revolutionary movements would circumscribe its methods of action within the limits of formal kindness.
 

2. Complete Rupture with the Tradition of War Alliances, Partisan Fronts and National Liberations

      Stalinism was first irrevocably condemned precisely because it abandoned these fundamental principles of communism by hurling proletarians into a fratricidal war which divided them into two imperialist camps, thus strongly reinforcing the shameful propaganda issued by the camp to which it had become allied. This camp, no better than the other, would mask its imperialist greed, which was exposed decades ago by marxist-leninist criticism, by alleging that its respect for “civilised” methods of war distinguished it from its adversary. It pretended that even if it was obliged to bomb, “nuke”, invade, and finally, after anxious soul-searching, resort to hangings, it was not in order to defend its own interests, but in order to remove the threat to the “moral values” of civilization and human liberty.

      Leninism had been the riposte when in 1914 this same disgraceful swindle saw the traitors of the Second International proclaim the patriotic alliance against the imaginary ogre of teutonic or tsarist “barbarism”,

      Exactly the same swindle would be the basis for the western imperialists entering the war against the new nazi or fascist barbarism, and the same betrayal was contained in the alliance concluded between the state of Russia and the imperialist states – with the nazis themselves to begin with – and in the alliance forged between the workers’ parties and bourgeois parties with a view to winning the war.

      These lies and betrayals are a matter of historical record, especially now when we find the Russians accusing the Americans of being aggressors or fascists, and the latter accusing the Russians of the same thing, whilst admitting that had they been able to use the atomic bomb (not ready in 1941) to massacre Europe, they would have done so, rather than using the armies composed of Russian workers mobilised for the same task.

      It is true Marxism has always investigated, and continues to investigate, what lies behind the perennial conflicts between bourgeois States, groups and fractions, and from this investigation has drawn its deductions and historical foresight. But to oppose a civilised wing of capitalism to a barbaric wing of the same system is a negation of Marxism. Indeed from a determinist point of view it may well be that the proletariat gains more from a victory of the attacking party which uses the harshest methods of combat than otherwise.

      For human comunities to pass beyond barbarism, the development of productive techniques was indispensable; but man has had to pay for this passage by subjecting himself to the countless infamies of class civilization, and to the suffering arising from the exploitation of slavery, serfdom and industrialization.

      It is therefore a fundamental condition for the rebuilding of the international revolutionary movement that the traditions of chauvinistic politics shown in the support of the 1914-18 and 1939-45 war alliances, popular fronts, guerilla resistances and national liberations be equally condemned.
 

3. Historical Denial of Defencism, Pacifism and Federalism between States

      The guiding line of the marxist position when facing the prospect of a further war can be found in Lenin’s writings. According to him wars of the great powers since the time of the Paris Commune have been imperialist wars. This is because 1871 marked the end of the historical period in which there were wars and insurrections setting out the national boundaries of capitalist countries. Therefore when war occurs, any class alliance, any suspension of class opposition and pressure with war aims in mind constititutes a betrayal of the proletarian cause. For Lenin, also, the revolt of the coloured masses in the colonies against the imperialists and the nationalist movements in under-developed countries in this modern phase of capitalism have a revolutionary significance only if the class struggle of the industrialised sectors is neither halted, nor loosens its connection with the international objectives of the proletarian organization. Whatever may be the foreign policy of a state, the real internal enemy of the working class of each country is its government.

      In this conception – considerably reinforced by the experiences of World War 11, which confirmed the explicit forecasts made in the theses and resolutions of the Third International up to the time of Lenin’s death – the period of imperialist wars will only draw to a close with the downfall of capitalism.

      The revolutionary party of the proletariat must therefore deny any possibility of a peaceful settlement of the imperialist conflicts. It must energetically combat any proposals that hold out the illusion that a federation, league or association of States might be able to prevent conflicts by repressing “those who started them” with an international armed force.

      Marx and Lenin, although aware of the rich complexity of the historical relationship between wars and revolutions, nevertheless condemned as an idealist and bourgeois deception the fallacious distinction between “aggression” and “defence” in wars between States. Similarly the revolutionary proletariat should know that all the suprastatal international institutions are only designed as a repressive force in order to conserve capitalism, and their armed forces are but a class police and a counter-revolutionary guard.

      Real international communism is therefore characterised by a total rejection of any ambiguous propaganda based on the defence of pacifism and the stupid formula of condemning and punishing “the aggressor”.
 

4. Condemnation of Shared Social Programmes and Political Fronts with non-Working Classes

      It is a tradition amongst the left-wing opposition of many groups, dating back to the first tactical errors of the Third International, to reject as incorrect the methods of agitation, rather badly defined as “bolshevik”.

      Especially after the complete and irrevocable elimination of all feudal institutions, working towards the final armed confrontation between the proletariat and the ruling class for the formation of a workers’ State and a worldwide Red dictatorship – one involving political terror and expropriation of all privileged classes – cannot be achieved if, at certain times and in certain places, we omit to mention these aims, which are precisely the programme of communism and of communism alone.

      It is an illusion to think that one can conquer the masses more quickly by putting orders for popular agitation in the place of class positions. Equally it is a vain illusion to confidently suppose that the leaders of such a manoevre are not themselves taken in by it; although this is often proclaimed, at best it is nonsense.

      Every time that the main content (always said to be transitory) of a political manoevre has been a united front with opportunist parties, or there has been a demand for democracy, peace, or non-class popularism, or worse still, national and patriotic solidarity, it has never been a matter of suddenly hoisting up the scenery – after having weakened the enemy front with this crafty camouflage – to reveal an army of soldiers of the Revolution ready at the crucial moment to open fire on the temporary allies of yesterday.

      Quite the opposite has occurred. The masses, along with militants and leaders, have been rendered incapable of class action, and their organizations and rank and file, progressively disarmed and domesticated by such ideological and functional preparation, have ended up as the instruments, and preferred tools of the ruling bourgeoisie.

      These historical conclusions are no longer founded on doctrinal criticism alone, they derive from the terrible historical experience, so dearly paid for, of thirty years of bankrupt efforts.

      Therefore a revolutionary party will never again attempt to gain mass support with demands specific to the non-proletarian and socially hybrid classes and likely to be made by them.

      This particular basic criteria does not apply to the intermediate and specific demands which arise from the concrete antagonism of interests between wage-earners and employers in the economic sphere. It is, however, in opposition to classless or interclass demands, especially political ones whether they be made by one nation or internationally. This criteria, flowing from a criticism of the proletarian political united front, of the slogan workers government, and of popular and democratic fronts, establishes a boundary between the movement supported by us, and the one calling itself the Fourth International of the trotskists. Our movement is seperated in the same way from all those kindred versions which under a different title revive that slogan of revisionist degeneration “the object is nothing, the movement is everything”, and which accordingly end up cherishing superficial agitations lacking in all content.
 

5. Proclamation of the Capitalist Character of the Russian Social Structure

      The way in which the economy, legislation and administration of the Soviet Union has developed over the last thirty years gives historical proof that the workers’ revolution can be submerged not only in a bloody civil war as was the case in Paris in 1871 but also by progressive degeneration. This is equally illustrated by the ruthless repression, and extermination of the revolutionary bolshevik nucleus, which paid dearly for having allowed the party to be transformed from an iron vanguard into a top-heavy, amorphous mass, incapable of exercising control over its own legislature or executive. The monetary and mercantile character of the greater part of the Russian economy, which is in no way contradicted by the presence of State control of vital services and industries found also in several big capitalist countries, presents us not with a workers state menaced by degeneration, or in the process of degenerating, but by a State which has already degenerated and in which the proletariat no longer holds power anymore.

      Power has passed into the hands of a hybrid and shapeless coalition of internal interests of the lower and upper middle classes, semi-independent businessmen, and the international capitalist classes. Such a combination is contradicted only in appearance by the existence of a police controlled and commercial iron curtain.
 

CONCLUSION:

Repudiation of any Support for Russian Imperial Militarism, open Defeatism towards America’s

      As a consequence, a war which appears outwardly to arrest co-operation between the privileged stratas of various countries in administering the World (as all wars do) will not be a revolutionary war in the Leninist sense, that is: a war for the protection and diffusion of proletarian power throughout the World. Such an historical eventuality, which is not today on the agenda, would never involve making justifications for any country’s political and military complex; above all because revolutionary states, if any, could find no allies in the capitalist camp (as was clearly the case at the end of World War 1). Taking our hypothetical eventuality, a strong international communist party would time the attacks of its sections against the bourgeois powers so as to halt military “punitive” expeditions against the revolutionary countries, and would get the workers who had been armed and mobilised for such aims to turn their arms against those who armed them.

      There is all the more reason for any revolutionary movement to constantly maintain a comprehensively anti-capitalist and anti-state orientation in all cases where the offensive is less developed, and the struggle of lesser potential. Communists know that there is only one way to stop capitalists indulging in punitive expeditions against the proletariat: they must eliminate the capitalist class, and this cannot be done unless the vanguard of the working class is everywhere kept on a war footing.

      Even a temporary disarming of class consciousness, be it ideological, organizational or material, is therefore a betrayal whereever and whenever it occurs. The Centre of the communist movement must never succumb to it, even if it is a firmly established discipline that the Centre is responsible for choosing the timing, and forms, that party action takes. Any party or group which accepts being disarmed in such a way, especially if they refer to themselves as workers, communists or socialists, is the first enemy to fight and subdue. For it is precisely their existence, and the function they perform, that is holding back the overthrow of the capitalist system, an overthrow foreseen by Marx and Engels and awaited with conviction by all revolutionary marxists.

      The completely opposite strategy which was applied during the last war by the residue of the Communist international, and which led to its shameful self-liquidation, was undertaken so that “the western governments should not be hindered in their war efforts”, but it merely had the effect of strengthening the western imperialist power. Too late did the Russian Government and military circles admit that the latter were more of a threat to their objectives than Germany, objectives by then overtly national.
      Nevertheless, the new recourse to hurling accusations of barbarism and fascism is no less false and sinister (charges returned with equal effrontery by the “free world”) and revolutionary workers of the vanguard must aim to draw their forces together for a combat in which they can expect neither help nor ammunition from the opposing military forces of today. They must work in the hope, and certainty, that the crisis and downfall of capitalism, expected in vain for 150 years, will strike at the heart of the highly industrialised States: the hitherto unvanquished black guard of the World.

Sans qu’il soit possible, dans le cadre de cet article, d’exposer l’histoire du mouvement ouvrier français des origines à nos jours, l’exemple d’un Cachin, dirigeant du « Parti Communiste Français », permet de bien mesurer l’échec subi par les ouvriers révolutionnaires français dans leur lutte pour se donner une arme de combat solide, un Parti profondément enraciné dans les masses prolétariennes et disposant d’un arsenal théorique apte à les guider vers leurs buts de classe révolutionnaire.

En France, au début de ce siècle, deux partis sont l’expression, au sein de la classe ouvrière, l’un du courant révolutionnaire, l’autre du courant réformiste. M. Cachin à cette époque, et jusqu’en 1905, milite au Parti Socialiste Français dont le programme réformiste vient (en 1899) d’appuyer la participation d’un de ses leaders, Millerand, à un gouvernement radical formé pour « sauver la démocratie française ». C’est l’époque de l’affaire Dreyfus, des grands scandales que la bourgeoisie française accumule dans sa course aux énormes profits (Panama, etc..), en même temps qu’elle réprime militairement les tentatives des masses pour défendre leur droit à la vie. La petite-bourgeoisie et la paysannerie moyenne, hésitantes, sans programme ni doctrine, bien que durement touchées par les aventures où s’engage la grande bourgeoisie, balancent entre un radicalisme anticlérical et une complicité favorable aux entreprises anti-ouvrières.

Suivant les décisions du Congrès d’Amsterdam de la II^e Internationale, l’unification des deux courants s’effectue au Globe (à Paris) en 1905 sur une base classiste : plus de participation aux gouvernements bourgeois ; lutte anticolonialiste, réaffirmation des objectifs de conquête du pouvoir par les ouvriers, dénonciation de la guerre impérialiste et appui décidé au mouvement de défense des ouvriers par une liaison organique avec les organisations syndicales. Pourtant, pendant les neuf ans qui suivent ce congrès, les succès électoraux du nouveau parti l’incitent à attacher une importante grandissante à la vie parlementaire, et les illusoires succès remportés sur ce terrain contribuent à accélérer un glissement prononcé vers le réformisme.

La puissance, en France, du syndicalisme révolutionnaire dont la théorie s’inspire de Sorel et de son école et où le proudhonisme l’emporte sur le marxisme, l’expose aux coups directs de la répression bien davantage que le parti socialiste qui voit ses dirigeants littéralement happés par la bourgeoisie. Cette dernière en effet s’attache à ce procédé de désintégration et de pourrissement de la hiérarchie social-démocrate jusqu’en 1914, date qui marquera l’apogée de cette politique.

Tout comme en Allemagne, en Belgique, en Angleterre, la bourgeoisie, peu soucieuse de se voir un jour acculée à la lutte sur ceux fronts, charge la direction du parti social-démocrate de s’occuper de la couverture idéologique du conflit « pour la démocratie », comme aussi de vaincre les hésitations des pays encore neutres en agissant dans le sens interventionniste auprès des partis frères de l’Internationale.

Député va-t-en guerre et plumitif ultra-chauvin, Cachin, après avoir participé à une réunion à Londres placée sous le signe du « socialisme marque interalliée » dont le but avoué est d’aider les dirigeants ouvriers anglais à arracher à une classe ouvrière réticente son accord pour la guerre impérialiste, reçoit mission d’acheter, avec les fonds du quai d’Orsay, l’intervention de l’Italie aux côtés des puissances « démocratiques » anti-allemandes. Pour y parvenir – et la tâche n’est pas aisée car un courant marxiste révolutionnaire, devenu dominant dans le Parti Socialiste italien au Congrès de Reggio Emilia en 1912, a éloigné l’aile droite réformiste des Rissolati et consorts et agit avec ténacité contre l’opportunisme de guerre – Cachin convaincra Mussolini, un des chefs des « intransigeants ». Par une campagne pour une neutralité « active et opérante », puis par des appels hystériques à la guerre, le journal fondé à cette occasion (« Il popolo d’Italia ») entraîne finalement l’adhésion de la bourgeoisie italienne, qui se vend au plus offrant des grands impérialistes.

Immédiatement condamnée par la direction du Parti parce que « contraire à la défense nationale », la réunion de Zimmerwald proposée par les partis socialistes italien et suisse, est suivie avec inquiétude par les dirigeants socialistes, Cachin en tête, qui cherchent alors à en étouffer le retentissement dans la classe ouvrière française. Les mois passent et, devant l’intérêt grandissant que cette réunion soulève dans le parti en raison des espoirs qu’on y met pour hâter la fin de la guerre, Cachin fonde, en 1915, un hebdomadaire jusqu’au-boutiste : cette feuille ira jusqu’à publier une justification d’inspiration policière de l’expulsion de Léon Trotski hors de France.

L’influence social-chauvine est si forte qu’il faut attendre le déclenchement de la Révolution russe de Février pour que la minorité du parti parvienne à écarter et le mot d’ordre réclamant une conduite plus vigoureuse de la guerre et la participation socialiste au pouvoir, puis, successivement, alors que des grèves éclatent dans des arsenaux et que des désertions se produisent dans l’armée et la marine, lance le mot d’ordre de la recherche des responsabilités dans la guerre, et enfin demande le refus pur et simple des crédits de guerre (début 1918). Durant la période du pouvoir de Kerenski en Russie, celui-ci reçoit la visite de M. Cachin, envoyé du gouvernement français, l’adjurant de ne pas conclure de paix séparée avec l’Allemagne et de continuer la lutte aux côtés des alliés.

Dès 1919, malgré une sérieuse agitation sociale (en 1920 échec de la crève générale des cheminots), s’ouvre pourtant en France une phase de réaction ; le Bloc National à la tête du pays est comme l’avant garde d’une nouvelle Sainte-Alliance tournée, non plus contre le libéralisme, mais contre le communisme. Aucune tentative décidée de rompre avec la trahison du prolétariat et la politique chauvine menée durant la guerre n’est même esquissée. En 1919, alors que les partis socialistes italien et suisse ont déjà résolu de se retirer de la II^e Internationale, le Congrès socialiste français maintient « pour le moment » l’adhésion du parti à cette organisation, tout en affirmant sa volonté d’entretenir des « relations fraternelles » avec la nouvelle Internationale fondée à Moscou.

Le mouvement syndical, tombé aussi bas que le parti durant la guerre se distingue en 1919 lors d’une réunion à Berne, par la prise de position de certains de ses représentants contre la prise du pouvoir en Russie par les bolcheviks et condamnant la dictature prolétarienne.

La rupture avec la II^e Internationale au Congrès de Tours (1920) ne fait que faire suite à un « voyage d’enquête » de Cachin en U.R.S.S. où il espère « négocier » l’entrée du parti français dans la III^e Internationale. Des trois motions présentées à Tours (décembre 1920) deux d’entre elles furent en désaccord avec les 21 conditions d’admission dans la nouvelle Internationale, qu’il s’agisse du nom du parti, des conditions d’exclusion, des rapports avec les syndicats ou de la pratique du parlementarisme. Au manifeste adressé par Zinoviev au Congrès pour aider à se délimiter une tendance communiste authentique, répondit une manœuvre des soi-disant « gauches », déposant une motion aux termes de laquelle le texte d’adhésion à Moscou ne statuerait que pour l’avenir et comporterait admission ou maintien dans le parti de tous ceux qui s’inclineraient « démocratiquement » devant les décisions prises ! La droite et le centre exigèrent alors la conservation de l’unité du parti et le désaveu du manifeste de Zinoviev ; cette ultime tentative de compromis bancal échoua de justesse.

Dans cette ambiance sordide, comment s’étonner que Cachin, nommé au Comité Directeur, soit choisi comme directeur du journal et Frossard comme Secrétaire général, lui qui, en 1930, devait avouer qu’il avait tant de fois recherché l’occasion de se dégager du parti !

Le Parti Communiste français se trouva donc formé d’une très grande fraction de l’ancien parti social-démocrate, les « dissidents » ayant gardé surtout avec eux la majorité des parlementaires et une partie des cadres, tandis que la base, formée d’éléments nouveaux, des jeunes, des anciens combattants, des syndicalistes et un faible contingent d’anarchistes allaient au communisme avec enthousiasme. Très vite, cependant, les militants s’usèrent à prendre parti dans des querelles, des manœuvres souterraines des dirigeants, tandis que de nombreux rappels de l’exécutif de l’Internationale se plaignent des survivances du pacifisme et du réformisme parlementaire.

En fait, outre l’hypocrisie de nombre de ses dirigeants qui admettaient en parole des directives qu’ils s’efforçaient de saboter dans les faits, l’effet énorme qu’imposait les tâches politiques (campagne contre l’occupation de la Ruhr en 1923, contre la guerre du Rif en 1925), le désarroi et la confusion sur la tactique du front unique, décidée par le III^e Congrès de l’I.C. mais mal digérée par un parti hétérogène et trop neuf dans la lutte, les luttes intestines enfin, feront rapidement du Parti français – compte tenu du renversement du rapport de forces mondial entre bourgeoisie et prolétariat – l’un des instruments les plus dociles de la contre-révolution stalinienne. Nous n’en voudrons pour preuve que son développement, qui coïncide avec l’adoption des tactiques du front populaire, de l’antifascisme et de la résistance nationale anti-allemande : n’était-ce pas le symbole du triomphe définitif des Cachin sur les forces saines du prolétariat, que cette réédition, vingt-cinq ans plus tard, de l’ignoble « Union Sacrée » des années 1914–18 ? La suite est bien connue : le P.C.F. au lendemain de la guerre, sera le farouche défenseur de la reconstruction de l’économie capitaliste française, pour jouer ensuite le rôle de l’Opposition de Sa Majesté – opposition qui est elle-même à éclipses : vote des crédits de guerre pour l’Indochine, des pouvoirs spéciaux pour l’Algérie. Durant toute cette dernière période, Marcel Cachin demeurera une figure centrale du Parti ; mais il restera, pour le prolétariat révolutionnaire, comme le vivant exemple du traître, catalyseur d’une évolution historique sans issue, mais typique de l’impuissance à laquelle l’opportunisme, le marchandage des principes et le respect des « valeurs démocratiques » condamnent le Parti.

Capitale costante e capitale variabile

Come abbiamo veduto, il denaro anticipato dal capitalista per acquistare i mezzi di produzione (materie prime e strumenti di lavoro: la materie prime sono di doppia specie: alcune ricompaiono nel prodotto, altre spariscono all’atto dell’impiego, come i combustibili, e si dicono ausiliarie; gli strumenti di lavoro, come macchine, impianti, edifizi, sono da considerare per la frazione di logorio che risulta dal loro valore totale e dalla loro durata) ricompare integralmente nel prezzo del prodotto. È perciò che a tale parte del capitale il nome di capitale costante.

Il denaro anticipato invece per salario degli operai, ossia per l’acquisto della forza-lavoro, ricompare nella vendita dei prodotti aumentato del plusvalore e lo chiameremo capitale variabile.

Avevamo riassunto il bilancio dell’operazione capitalistica nelle due formule:

spese: M + S + F (materie prime + logorio strumenti + salari)
entrate: M + S + F + Plusvalore = P (valore dei prodotti)

Avremo: M + S = capitale costante, che indichiamo con c, e v = capitale variabile.

Chiamando K il capitale totale anticipato, p il plusvalore, K’ il capitale ricavato alla fine, avremo:

K = c + v
K’ = c + v + p = K + p

Saggio del plusvalore

Più che conoscere caso per caso la quantità assoluta del plusvalore realizzato dal capitalista, interessa conoscere il rapporto in cui il plusvalore sta col capitale che lo ha prodotto.

È importantissimo rilevare che il capitale che effettivamente è suscettibile di produrre plusvalore è quello anticipato per la forza lavoro, ossia il capitale variabile v. Quanto al capitale costante c esso ricompare integralmente nel prodotto e di per sé stesso non dà luogo a nessun incremento.

È per ciò che volendo definire una quantità la cui misura ci dia l’idea della intensità di produzione di plusvalore, Marx assume come saggio del plusvalore non il rapporto di questo a tutto il capitale, ma il rapporto al solo capitale variabile.

Dunque, indicato con s il saggio del plusvalore,

s = P/v

Nell’esempio quantitativo da noi dato V era F ossia 6 x 3 = 18 Lire. Il plusvalore era 10 x 3 – 6 x 3 = 12 Lire. Il saggio del plusvalore è s = 12:18 = 66%.

Passando ora ad esaminare il tempo di lavoro, e riferendoci per fissare le idee ad una sola giornata di un solo operaio e al numero di ore di cui si compone, che chiameremo t (nell’esempio 10 ore) si definisce una nuova quantità: il lavoro necessario ed il relativo tempo di lavoro necessario. Si intende per tale il tempo o numero d’ore che l’operaio dovrebbe lavorare per trasmettere al prodotto un valore esattamente uguale a quello che gli è stato pagato per la sua forza lavoro. Nel nostro caso l’operaio è stato pagato in ragione di £. 18 ossia 6 ore di lavoro. Se egli lavorasse 6 ore riprodurrebbe esattamente il valore a lui pagato come salario ossia quello equivalente alle sue sussistenze: in tal caso scomparirebbe il plusvalore e con esso la ragione di essere dell’impresa capitalistica.

Ma l’operaio lavora 10 ore in luogo di 6, e noi distinguiamo le 10 ore in 6 di lavoro necessario e 4 che chiameremo di pluslavoro, chiamando questo tempo anche tempo di sopralavoro.

Ripetiamo: tempo di lavoro necessario è quello che basterebbe a riprodurre il valore del salario; tempo di sopralavoro o pluslavoro quello in più che l’operaio lavora e che produce la differenza di valore o plusvalore a beneficio del capitalista.

Se i valori sono proporzionali ai tempi di lavoro in cui vengono prodotti, identificandosi per una giornata il salario al capitale variabile si ha:

tempo di sopra lavoro / tempo di lavoro necessario = plusvalore / capitale variabile o salario

Questi due rapporti si riducono a quello già noto come saggio del plusvalore, da cui il teorema: il pluslavoro diviso per il lavoro necessario dà il saggio del plusvalore.

Nel nostro esempio la proporzione scritta sarà:

4 : 6 = 12 : 18 = saggio del plusvalore 66%.

Legge generale del plusvalore

Tuttavia sarà bene mostrare la cosa in modo più generale. Riepiloghiamo le notazioni; ricordando che ci riferiamo ad un solo operaio e ad una sola giornata di lavoro:

V = capitale variabile o salario giornaliero
P = plusvalore
s = saggio del plusvalore, ossia P diviso V
t = numero delle ore di lavoro
n = ore di lavoro necessarie
e = ore di pluslavoro.

L’operaio trasmette al prodotto il valore totale (fatta astrazione del capitale costante) V + P, lavorando t ore. Adunque in un’ora l’operaio produce il valore:

(V+P)/t = Produzione di valore oraria

Ora vogliamo calcolare il tempo di lavoro necessario n in cui l’operaio produce il valore V. Per definizione in n ore l’operaio produce il valore V: V = n x Produzione di valore oraria. Quindi, sapendo la produzione di valore oraria, basta una divisione:

n = t V / (V+P)

Abbiamo così trovato n. Semplicissimo è il calcolo di e (pluslavoro):

e = t – n = t – t V/(V+P) = (t V +t P – t V)/(V+P) = t P /(V+P)

Il problema era trovare il rapporto tre e (pluslavoro) ed n (lavoro necessario); dividendo l’una per l’altra le rispettive formule, si ha:

e/n = t P /(V+P) ÷ t V /(V+P) = P ÷V = s

resta quindi dimostrata la proporzione fondamentale che qui ripetiamo per chiarezza: il pluslavoro sta al lavoro necessario come il plusvalore sta al capitale salario; questo rapporto comune è il saggio del plusvalore.

Dimostrazione della legge fondamentale

Per dimostrare che il riferire il plusvalore al solo salario e non a tutto il capitale non è una convinzione arbitraria, facciamo l’esempio di una impresa nella quale venga a cambiare la proporzionale del capitale costante col capitale variabile, rimanendo inalterato il valore di scambio o prezzo dei prodotti, quello delle materie prime e strumenti di lavoro, singolarmente, nonché il salario e la giornata di lavoro. Se il prezzo del lavoro finito deve restare lo stesso, rappresentando esso un tempo di lavoro, non dobbiamo immaginare un mutamento nei procedimenti tecnici di produzione: ma noi possiamo scegliere un esempio (probante del resto anche per chi non parte dalla nostra teoria del valore) in cui la impresa venga ad incorporare anche uno stadio precedente della lavorazione, producendo direttamente quanto prima acquistava sul mercato.

Così un’acciaieria che prima acquistava la ghisa per convertirla in acciaio, prenda a lavorate direttamente il minerale di ferro, da cui proviene la ghisa.

È chiaro che il capitalista spenderà meno in materie prime, costando il minerale assai meno della ghisa, e, sebbene ci sia un relativo aumento degli strumenti di lavoro, diminuirà la quota di capitale costante rispetto al totale.

Anche volgarmente si riconosce che il capitalista realizzerà un profitto maggiore, in quanto cumulerà il profitto di due aziende preesistenti. E realizzerà un profitto maggiore anche a parità di capitale totale anticipato poiché, sebbene per ogni chilo di acciaio egli avrà anche l’onere del nuovo impianto producente ghisa, tale onere egli lo pagava anche prima nel prezzo di mercato della ghisa, anzi aumentato del profitto del produttore di ghisa.

In altri termini il capitale anticipato per una operazione lavorativa è sempre compreso nel prezzo di vendita del relativo stock di prodotto, quindi a parità di potenzialità finanziaria il capitalista potrà produrre lo stesso numero se non più di Kg. di acciaio. Ma su tale cifra il suo guadagno è aumentato; e ciò perché il capitale investito per ottenere il Kg. di acciaio contiene ora meno spese per materie prime e più spesa per acquisto di forza lavoro. Dunque è la quantità di capitale salario che, a parità di trattamento dei lavoratori, a parità di condizioni del mercato, varia proporzionalmente al guadagno del capitalista. Se deve quindi riferire il plusvalore alla massa del solo capitale salario e non a quella di tutto il capitale.

E ciò è valido anche socialmente parlando, poiché sulle varie quote di capitale costante vertono altre quote di plusvalore delle lavorazioni precedenti, ammesso che si siano effettuate col meccanismo capitalistico. Il capitale ghisa era, per la parte non rappresentata da minerale di ferro e logorio impianti del venditore di ghisa, già affetto da plusvalore incassato da costui; il capitale minerale di ferro per il capitalista della miniera era affetto da plusvalore tratto dal pluslavoro dei minatori; e analogamente può dirsi per gli impianti meccanici dell’industria dell’acciaio, della ghisa, nella miniera, riuscendo finalmente soddisfacente – al di fuori delle piacevolezze sui pescatori di perle e simili – la nostra spiegazione che, sia qualitativamente che quantitativamente, scopre in ogni valore di scambio un tempo di lavoro, e in ogni profitto un pluslavoro.

Marx avverte di non cadere nel grossolano errore di confondere il saggio del plusvalore col saggio del profitto. L’economia volgare intende per saggio del profitto il rapporto tra i guadagno netto del capitalista (differenza tra le entrate e le spese di un certo periodo, per es., un anno, a condizione che resti inalterato il valore (patrimoniale) di tutti gli impianti e compensata ogni passività) e il valore totale del capitale investito negli impianti aumentato della somma di denaro che deve essere tenuto disponibile per far fronte agli acquisti di materie prime, al pagamento dei salari, ecc.

L’economia volgare distingue anche nel profitto un interesse puramente commerciale da pagare per i capitali investiti, e la ulteriore differenza o profitto vero e proprio dell’imprenditore.

Non è ora il caso di spingere più innanzi il confronto fra tale computo e le calcolazioni da noi seguite. Basti considerare che la considerazione del tempo è assorbita dall’aver noi tenuto presente un intero ciclo lavorativo, ad es.: quello per cui si perviene al Kg. di acciaio. Più aumenta l’intensità nel tempo e l’estensione di tale atto produttivo, più aumenta il guadagno dell’imprenditore e in generale anche il saggio del profitto.

Il saggio del plusvalore dipende invece dal grado di sfruttamento della forza lavoro ed è sempre molto più alto; i facili esempi di Marx mostrano che a saggi di profitto, ad es. del 10-15%, può corrispondere un saggio del plusvalore anche del 100%.

Tuttavia come esercizio di applicazione di quanto precede si potrebbe istituire il calcolo sul profitto in una azienda che si trasformasse nella maniera indicata nell’esempio dell’acciaieria, supponendo cifre concrete per i prezzi e quantità di minerali, ghisa, acciaio, per i salari, le ore di lavoro, le giornate annue di lavoro ecc. (Vedi appendice).

Ripartizione del valore del prodotto in parti proporzionali delle quantità di prodotto o della giornata di lavoro

Abbiamo dato inizialmente l’esempio del prodotto di valore F il quale si componeva del valore di materie prime e strumenti logorati (M + A = C, capitale costante) e del valore generato nella giornata di 10 ore di lavoro. Facevamo corrispondere il valore di scambio di £. 3 ad ogni ora di lavoro; supponiamo ora che il valore C sia di £. 60. Avremmo allora:

F = C + 10 x 3 = 60 + 30 = 90 Lire

Inoltre, delle 30 Lire di valore aggiunte dall’operaio, 18 = 6 x 3 rappresentavano il salario o il capitale variabile, 12 = 4 x 3 rappresentavano il plusvalore.

Supponiamo ora che il prodotto del prezzo di £. 90 pesi Kg. 1.800.

Come abbiamo: 90 = 60 + 18 + 12 Lire possiamo porre: 1.800 = 1.200 + 360 + 240 Kg.

Allora avremmo rappresentato in parti proporzionali del prodotto gli elementi che ne costituiscono il valore.

Kg. 1.200 = £. 60 rappresentano il capitale costante, Kg. 360 = £. 18 rappresentano il capitale salario (o capitale variabile), Kg. 240 = £. 12 rappresentano il plusvalore. Sommando queste ultime due parti, Kg. 600 = Lire 30 = 10 ore di lavoro rappresenterebbero il valore totale prodotto dal lavoro (tanto del lavoro necessario quanto del pluslavoro).

Questa suddivisione è legittima, ma affatto convenzionale, essa non interpreta il processo produttivo in quanto, se è vero che le £. 60 preesistono all’applicazione del lavoro in quanto erano materia prima e macchina, in quanto parte del prodotto, né una Lira, né un grammo se ne può avere senza lavoro.

Abbiamo qui una pura esercitazione convenzionale; bisogna convincersi che di natura ben diversa è la nostra conclusione sulla ripartizione delle Lire 30 di valore in salario e plusvalore; ripartizione data da una legge che si attaglia esattamente ai caratteri tecnici, economici, storici e sociali del fenomeno studiato.

Con esercitazione analoga divideremo non più i chilogrammi 1.800 ma le 10 ore impiegate a produrli in parti proporzionali agli elementi del valore. Come infatti sussiste, a parità d’altre condizioni, la proporzionalità tra quantità di prodotti e loro valori, sussiste quella tra valore del prodotto (quantità) e tempo di lavorazione. In un’ora uscirebbero dalle mani dell’operaio grammi 180 di peso e Lire 9 di valore ossia il decimo di 1.800 e di 90.

Adunque alla ripartizione: 90 = 60 + 18 + 12 Lire, corrisponde l’altra: 10 = 6,66 + 2 + 1.33 ore e decimali di ora (10 h. = 6 h. 40′ + 2 h. + 1 h. 20′). Adunque 6 h. 40′ rappresenterebbero il capitale costante, 2 h. il capitale variabile e 1 h. 20′ il plusvalore.

Questa rappresentazione può venire interpretata in modo capzioso (vedi in Marx “L’ultima ora di Senior”) dicendo che delle 10 ore l’operaio lavora per il capitalista soltanto 1 h. 20′.

Con tale argomentazione si voleva dimostrare che la giornata di 8 ore avrebbe rovinato il capitalista. Tale argomento sarebbe stato uno di più a favore delle 8 ore, ma l’esperienza ha dimostrato che le 8 ore sono perfettamente compatibili con la produzione del plusvalore.

Quell’argomentazione equivale a supporre che l’operaio produca anche le materie prime e gli strumenti, il cui valore rappresenta invece tempi di lavoro preesistenti.

La ripartizione esatta, giusta la nostra teoria, è la seguente:

90 = 60 + 18 + 12 Lire = valore del prodotto.
30 = 20 + 6 + 4 ore di lavoro = valore espresso in tempi di lavoro.
20 ore sono il lavoro contenuto come valore nel capitale costante acquistato dal capitalista,
6 ore di lavoro necessario (pagato),
4 ore il pluslavoro (non pagato).

La riduzione della giornata ad 8 ore non toglierebbe che 2 delle 4 ore di pluslavoro, ammesso che fenomeni concomitanti (aumenti di produttività del lavoro) non riducano parallelamente il tempo di lavoro assorbito dai mezzi di sussistenza ossia il lavoro necessario.

Appendice – Calcolo dell’azienda di cui al prg. 19

Trattazione generale del caso di una azienda che assorba una lavorazione precedente, a dimostrazione della legittimità del riferimento del plusvalore al solo capitale variabile. Si suppone che un’azienda data, ad es. una acciaieria, assorba un’azienda che le vendeva precedentemente le materie prime di cui essa abbisognava (ad es. una miniera di minerale di ferro), dando così origine ad una terza azienda unificata. Per quanto concerne la rappresentazione simbolica, si conviene di utilizzare gli stessi simboli per designare le categorie proprie a ciscuna delle tre imprese, distinguendole tuttavia a mezzo di un apice per l’azienda assorbita e per due apici per l’azienda unificata.

Elenco dei simboli:

A = quota annua degli ammortamenti degli impianti fissi
H = spese annue accessorie
M = costo delle materie prime in un anno
V = spesa annua salari
C = capitale costante
P = plusvalore
F = entrate annue dell’azienda, fatturato

Le spese annue sono: C = A + H + M + V.

Il profitto risulta: P = F – C = F – (A + H + M + V).

Adesso l’attuale azienda ingloba tutta una azienda per una lavorazione precedente delle sue materie prime. Tale azienda produce in un anno esattamente la quantità M occorrente alla prima azienda.

È chiaro che il valore del suo prodotto F’ è lo stesso di M

Il bilancio di questa azienda isolata sarà:

P’ = F’ – C’ = M – C’ = M – (A’ + H’ + M’ + V’)

Poiché il prodotto dell’azienda unificata è uguale a quello della prima azienda, F” = F, il suo bilancio sarà:

P” = F” – C” = F – (A” + H” + M” + V”) = F – (A + H + V + A’ + H’ + M’ + V’) = F – (A + H + M + V – M + A’ + H’ + M’ + V’) = F – (A + H + M + V) + [M – (A’ + H’ + M’ + V’)] = (F – C) + (F’ – C’) = P + P’

Distinguiamo, nei vari casi, per il capitale totale:

K = C + V = F – P
K’ = C’ + V’ = F’ – P’ = M – P’
K” = C” + V” = F” – P” = F – (P + P’) = (F – P) + P’ = K – P’

e per il capitale costante:

C = A + H + M
C’ = A’ + H’ + M’
C” = A” + H” + M” = A + H + A’ + H’ + M’ = C + C’ – M

Ma poiché M = F’ = C’ + V’ + P’, allora

C” = C + C’ – M = C + C’ – (C’ + V’ + P’) = C – (V’ + P’)

Adunque si è verificato, nel passaggio dalla prima alla azienda unificata:
    il capitale costante C è diminuito (di V’ + P’)
    il capitale totale C + V è diminuito (di P’)
    il capitale variabile V è aumentato (di V’).

L’aumento del guadagno o plusvalore, che è passato da P a P” = P + P’, non può dunque che essere effetto del solo capitale che sia aumentato, ossia del capitale variabile. Quindi giustamente prendiamo come saggio del plusvalore il rapporto di esso al solo capitale variabile che lo ha determinato. Se lo mettessimo in rapporto al capitale costante o al capitale totale avremmo l’assurdo di verificare tra i due termini del rapporto una proporzionalità non diretta ma inversa¹.

1. Non si trovi troppo arida questa successione di formulette. Essa vuole essere una dimostrazione della validità della legge generale del plusvalore data da Marx, nella rappresentazione dell’azienda economica di tipo capitalistico. Siamo qui alla fine della Sezione III che stabilisce la definizione di plusvalore. In fine della V e prima di passare alla trattazione dell’accumulazione del capitale, in un capitoletto riassuntivo sulle varie formule del plusvalore, Marx contrappone i due gruppi di formule che caratterizzano la economia classica borghese e la economia marxista (cap. XVI del testo originale).
   Entrambe si fondano sull’ammissione che il valore sia dato dal lavoro. Ma presentato la cosa assai differentemente quando si tratta di rispondere alla domanda: quanta parte della giornata di lavoro l’operaio fa per sé, e quanta per il padrone dell’azienda?
   In entrambi i casi possiamo parlare di lavoro necessario per la prima parte, che è quella retribuita in pieno, e di pluslavoro per la seconda parte (del tempo di lavoro) che è quella il cui equivalente fa a formare il profitto del possessore dell’azienda.
   Secondo l’economista borghese e le formule sono:
   Pluslavoro / Lavoro necessario = Plusvalore / Costo del prodotto
   In altri termini quel rapporto riproduce ciò che la contabilità capitalistica chiama saggio del profitto, utile, dividendo e così via. La stessa frazione la troviamo scrivendo al numeratore il margine di guadagno su una data produzione, ossia l’eccedenza del prezzo realizzato sul costo totale, e al denominatore questo stesso costo.
   Se un’automobile, poniamo, costa tra materie salarii usura macchine etc. etc. centomila, e si vende per 110.000, l’azienda guadagna il 10%. Si pretende allora che l’operaio sia stato sfruttato solo per il 10% del suo tempo di lavoro. Se ha lavorato 11 ore, per dieci ha riavuto l’intero ricavo, e per una sola ora ha lavorato per il capitalista.
   La economia ufficiale moderna colle sue pretese di positiva esattezza ricalca sempre questa tesi e quindi nega la teoria del plusvalore di Marx trattandola come una brillante esercitazione polemica e non come scienza.
   In questa, invece, le formule prendono ben altro andamento e sono (partendo dallo stesso rapporto iniziale):
   Pluslavoro / lavoro necessario = Plusvalore / capitale variabile = Plusvalore / Spesa salari
   Il grado di sfruttamento, ossia la quantità di lavoro non pagato, viene messo in rapporto all’intera spesa, ossia all’intero capitale anticipato, ma alla sola spesa per salari, detta da noi parte variabile del capitale totale.
   La differenza tra le due accezioni è enorme. Quantitativamente, come Marx qui e altrove mostra, comporta che il saggio del plusvalore è molto più alto. Se in quell’automobile si sono spese per salarii, sulle centomila, solo ventimila, il saggio sale dal 10% al 50% essendo dato dal rapporto del profitto di 10.000 al capitale variabile di 20.000. Un terzo della giornata non è pagato. Vi sono esempi, come uno tratto dall’agricoltura inglese dell’epoca, di saggi del 300%.
   Qualitativamente poi la formula dell’economia corrente si presta a mostrare il rapporto tra salariato e capitalista come forma di libera associazione, mentre la legge marxista ne dimostra il fondamentale carattere antagonistico.
   Abbiamo voluto col nostro calcoletto sulla riunione di due aziende dimostrare come la istituzione del rapporto quantitativo tra plusvalore e capitale salario non è un arbitrio di scuola, ma è la sola che può rendere ragione del fenomeno studiato, in quanto quello, che nel singolo ciclo appare come capitale costante nelle mani del proprietario di azienda, non è che il prodotto accumulato di precedenti capitali salarii che hanno dato luogo ad altre precedenti plusvalenze da lavoro non retribuito.
   Il trucco e la tendenziosità sono dunque proprio nella normale presentazione dei bilanci delle aziende produttive (anche non private) accettati come evidenti e fedeli dalla economia accademica e dalla legalità borghese.
   ↩︎

“Le Principe Démocratique” a paru pour la première fois dans la revue théorique du Parti Communiste d’Italie, Rassegna Comunista en février 1922, c’est-à-dire trois ans après la fondation de l’Internationale communiste à Moscou. Sous l’impulsion de Lénine, mais avec plus ou moins de vigueur et de rigueur selon les pays, le communisme livrait à l’époque contre le socialisme réformiste et démocratique une bataille qui restera son plus beau titre de gloire, et qui était justifiée par la trahison de ce socialisme face au premier conflit impérialiste, face à la révolution russe et face à la lutte de classe de l’après-guerre.

Dans cette lutte, les marxistes italiens comptèrent dès le début parmi les plus décidés et les plus rigoureux. Dans “Le Principe Démocratique” on trouvera donc les mêmes positions fondamentales que dans les “Thèses sur la démocratie bourgeoise et la dictature prolétarienne” présentées en mars 1919 par Lénine au congrès constitutif de la nouvelle Internationale, et dirigées essentiellement contre les idées qui avaient cours dans l’ancienne sur ces points capitaux.

On y trouvera aussi quelque chose de plus, une préoccupation politique qui a été à la fois la principale caractéristique et la contribution la plus précieuse des marxistes italiens au sein du mouvement communiste. Cette préoccupation, une petite phrase du texte suffit à la définir clairement : “APPROFONDIR LE FOSSÉ ENTRE LA DÉMOCRATIE BOURGEOISE ET LE SOCIALISME”. Ce “fossé” existait dès l’origine, et seules les décennies de politique conciliatrice du réformisme d’avant 1914 avaient pu parvenir à le combler : cela, Lénine et les Bolcheviks l’avaient dit et répété alors que les communistes de Rassegna Comunista étaient encore au berceau. Depuis des décennies, Lénine s’employait de toutes ses forces à “déblayer” ce “fossé” salutaire. Les marxistes italiens, qui se trouvaient entrer dans l’arène au moment même où ses efforts avaient été couronnés par la victoire non pas DÉMOCRATIQUE, mais COMMUNISTE du bolchevisme russe, ne se contentèrent pas du déblaiement déjà effectué dans les premiers Congrès internationaux. Ils réclamèrent que le fossé fût encore APPROFONDI et ceci pour éviter la RÉPÉTITION historique de l’engloutissement du socialisme marxiste par la démocratie, dans lequel se résumait toute la faillite de la IIe Internationale.

Vivant non pas dans la Russie révolutionnaire, mais dans l’Occident réformiste et de vieille rouerie parlementaire, ils étaient mieux placés que les bolcheviks pour sentir que le mouvement communiste n’était pas préservé par avance de mille dangers de dégénérescence et de dissolution. Plus jeunes que les bolcheviks de toute une génération, leurs regards portaient plus loin dans l’avenir d’un communisme qui, en 1922, apparaissait rien moins que définitivement assuré dans le monde. L’histoire se chargea de prouver qu’ils n’avaient eu que trop raison.

Quand “Le Principe Démocratique” (qui répondait, répétons-le à cette préoccupation originale et malheureusement unique dans le mouvement communiste) parut pour la deuxième fois, en décembre 1933, dans une petite publication d’émigrés italiens, Bilan, le fossé entre socialisme (ou plutôt communisme) et démocratie était déjà bien en voie de s’effacer à nouveau. En effet, ce qui caractérisait la situation de 1933, n’était pas tant la dislocation des organisations communistes et l’écrasement du prolétariat dans l’Italie fasciste et dans l’Allemagne hitlérienne que LA DÉCOMPOSITION INTERNE AVANCÉE, DOCTRINALE ET PRATIQUE DU MOUVEMENT COMMUNISTE EN TANT QUE MOUVEMENT DE RÉVOLUTION SOCIALE. Nous ne pouvons nous étendre sur cette thèse capitale dans le cadre étroit de cet avant-propos. Disons seulement que cette décomposition se traduisait par deux faits essentiels : le glissement des partis du terrain du communisme à celui de la défense des libertés constitutionnelles et de la République démocratique contre “l’attaque illégale” du parti totalitaire bourgeois ; le passage de l’Internationale de la lutte pour la révolution mondiale à la défense du pouvoir soviétique en toutes circonstances, y compris la guerre impérialiste. Bref par l’ANTIFASCISME, annoncé dès 1924 en Italie et appelé à d’effrayants développements jusqu’à l’adhésion à la guerre anti-hitlérienne et mussolinienne, mais IMPÉRIALISTE de 1940. Et par le SOCIALISME DANS UN SEUL PAYS.

C’est par cette double voie que le fossé entre socialisme et démocratie a été une nouvelle fois comblé. De toute façon, la réalité est là : au XXe Congrès du P.C.U.S., il y a deux ans, les ex-communistes reprenaient ouvertement la thèse social-démocrate des “voies parlementaires au socialisme”. Pourtant la chose la plus amère n’est pas encore celle-là. Elle est de voir certaine opposition prétendument marxiste et révolutionnaire invoquer parfois les écrits de Lénine lui-même pour NIER que ce fossé dût être approfondi, EMPÊCHANT ainsi qu’il soit même simplement rétabli. C’est ce fait, plus encore que le fiasco final et prévu des renégats du mouvement communiste officiel, qui nous incite à publier, en 1958, une nouvelle traduction française de cet ancien et jeune écrit.

* * *

Lorsqu’il parut pour la première fois en français en 1933 “Le Principe Démocratique” ne rencontra aucun écho, même dans l’avant-garde. Les conditions politiques générales définies en premier lieu par l’offensive “stalinienne” contre la Gauche vouaient toutes les rééditions d’écrits marxistes de la “bonne époque” à la plus complète obscurité : ce fut le sort des Thèses et résolutions des Quatre Premiers Congrès de l’Internationale elles-mêmes que des opposants tentèrent vainement de jeter à la face des renégats qui les avaient fait disparaître de la circulation. Pour “Le Principe Démocratique” c’est l’originalité même de son dessein (dont nous venons de voir les implications politiques) qui jouait contre lui. Il nous faut en dire quelques mots.

Le but de l’article ne se limite pas à la critique de la “démocratie bourgeoise” déjà réalisée avec vigueur dans les thèses et les écrits de Lénine. Il va plus loin. De fait, l’erreur couramment dénoncée de la démocratie bourgeoise, qui est de considérer la société ou la nation comme un tout homogène, alors que pour nous elle est déchirée par des antagonismes de classe, et donc d’affirmer que l’État représente les intérêts de tous les citoyens, dérive d’une prémisse théorique qu’il faut affronter directement en tant que telle. Cette prémisse est que les atomes constitutifs de cette société ou de cette nation autrement dit la “plus petite réalité sociale”, la réalité sociale irréductible à tout autre élément plus simple, est l’INDIVIDU. C’est cette conception théorique qui est fausse, mais encore fallait-il le démontrer. Pour cela, la critique politique ne suffisait pas. Il fallait faire appel à la méthode matérialiste marxiste, dans son opposition avec l’abstraction métaphysique de la pensée bourgeoise. Que le lecteur ne se choque donc pas de trouver sous le titre du “Principe démocratique” des passages concernant par exemple la société primitive, ou les castes antiques, ou les doctrines spiritualistes du droit divin. Il n’y a là aucun vain étalage d’érudition, mais au contraire des développements indispensables à la démonstration de cette thèse : la plus petite unité sociale, c’est-à-dire le facteur le plus simple, le facteur irréductible, du développement historique n’est jamais en réalité l’individu, mais toujours une collectivité. En d’autres termes, si l’individu peut bien être l’objet d’observation par exemple pour la science médicale, voire pour la psychologie, il ne saurait l’être pour la science historique ou la sociologie scientifique. En ceci, Rassegna Comunista ne faisait aucune découverte nouvelle : elle se servait d’une vieille découverte marxiste dans un but politique qui mérite d’être souligné. En effet en rappelant que c’était le PRINCIPE même de la démocratie qui était entaché d’erreur bourgeoise, elle visait à démontrer qu’il le restait QUEL QUE SOIT L’OBJET AUQUEL IL ÉTAIT APPLIQUÉ, fût-il les collectivités non déchirées par des oppositions de classe (soviets – syndicats – parti).

Bref, son but était de généraliser la critique marxiste de la démocratie pure du cas de la démocratie bourgeoise, que les communistes avaient fouillée à fond, à celui, encore tabou pour beaucoup, de la démocratie prolétarienne. Et ce faisant de traquer dans ses ultimes retranchements l’idéalisme d’origine bourgeoise. Inutile de dire que pareille entreprise était de nature à provoquer réprobation et horreur même dans le camp prolétarien : la réaction banale était en effet de s’imaginer que le marxisme italien voulait rétablir par la bande on ne sait quel principe abstrait, constitutionnel, d’autorité, ou justifier quelque secret mépris philistin des masses. Cela a conduit bien des esprits indigents ou de formation trop sommaire, à nous accuser d’être “des espèces de staliniens”. Ironie incomparable ! Ce que le marxiste lit dans ces pages de 1922, c’est justement comme une mise en garde prophétique contre l’ignoble, l’oppressant spectacle qui devait commencer peu d’années plus tard, et qui n’a pas encore quitté la scène : les meilleurs révolutionnaires, les véritables continuateurs du communisme condamnés à main levée dans les assemblées ouvrières et populaires, le communisme banni à la majorité démocratique par les PROLÉTAIRES eux-mêmes !!! Et là où l’opposant vulgaire ne sait voir, dans le stalinisme de funeste mémoire, qu’une négation sacrilège de la sainte démocratie, ce que le marxiste y voit c’est la plus éclatante confirmation historique du mensonge sans limite du PRINCIPE démocratique JUSQUE DANS SON APPLICATION AUX COLLECTIVITÉS OUVRIÈRES.

Pas plus en 1958 qu’en 1922 nous n’entendons tirer des conclusions CONSTITUTIONNELLES de cette critique et de ces faits. L’article démontre que ce serait retomber d’une autre façon dans l’abstraction idéaliste que l’on cherchait justement à chasser de ces derniers retranchements. Et il admet qu’autant au sein du syndicat ou du parti avant la révolution que dans les organes de la dictature prolétarienne après, on pourra bien continuer à user du mécanisme majoritaire, à défaut d’un autre meilleur. Celui que cette déclaration “soulagerait” prouverait seulement qu’il n’a rien compris, qu’il ne parvient pas à sortir de l’opposition abstraite entre “autorité” et “démocratie”, et d’une horreur toute libérale pour la première. La portée de l’écrit est tout autre et se résume dans un résultat historique qui pour être aujourd’hui obscur (comme tout ce qui touche au communisme révolutionnaire) n’en apparaîtra pas moins de première importance dans l’avenir : s’il est, dans toute l’opposition antistalinienne ou antikhrouchtchévienne, UN courant qui n’ait pas repassé à reculons le “fossé” qui a toujours séparé la démocratie bourgeoise du communisme pour aller s’embourber dans les sables mouvants d’une des innombrables démocraties dont la pensée politique moderne est empoisonnée (démocratie progressive ou ouvrière, populaire ou bourgeoise), c’est LE courant qui depuis plus de trente ans considère l’écrit que nous présentons ici comme un “classique”. Le lecteur peut en trouver une illustration récente dans les réactions politiques respectives de notre tendance et de l’opposition “anti-bureaucratique” aux événements hongrois.

L’épreuve de la lutte de classe est souveraine : c’est parce que le marxisme d’inspiration “italienne” y a résisté brillamment que nous pensons que “Le Principe Démocratique” mérite d’avoir valeur de “classique” non seulement pour nous, mais pour tous les communistes de l’avenir !

The use of certain terms in the exposition of the problems of communism very often engenders ambiguities because of the different meanings which may be attributed to these terms. Such is the case with the words democracy and democratic. In its statements of principle, Marxist communism presents itself as a critique and a negation of democracy; yet communists often defend the democratic character of proletarian organisations (the State system of workers’ councils, trade unions and the party) and the application of democracy within them. There is certainly no contradiction in this, and no objection can be made to the use of the dilemma, “either bourgeois democracy or proletarian democracy” as a perfect equivalent to the formula “bourgeois democracy or proletarian dictatorship”.

The Marxist critique of the postulates of bourgeois democracy is based on the definition of the class character of modern society. It demonstrates the theoretical inconsistency, and the practical deception, of a system which pretends to reconcile political equality with the division of society into social classes determined by the nature of the mode of production.

Freedom and political equality, which, according to the theory of liberalism, are expressed in the right to vote, have no meaning except on a basis that excludes inequality of fundamental economic conditions: for this reason we communists accept their application within the class organisations of the proletariat and contend that they should function democratically.

But democracy is a highly evocative concept which we are striving hard to demolish, and it might appear desirable to use a different term in each of the two cases in order to avoid creating misunderstandings. But even if we do not do this, it is nonetheless useful to look a little further into the very content of the democratic principle, both in general and in its application to homogeneous class organs. This is necessary to eliminate the danger of again raising the democratic principle to an absolute principle of truth and justice. Such a relapse into apriorism would introduce an element foreign to our entire theoretical framework at the very moment when we are trying, by means of our critique, to sweep away the deceptive and arbitrary content of “liberal” theories.

* * *

A theoretical error is always at the root of an error of political tactics. In other words, it is the translation of the tactical error into the language of our collective critical consciousness. Thus the pernicious politics and tactics of social-democracy are reflected in the error of principle that presents socialism as the inheritor of a substantial part of the doctrine that liberalism opposed to the old spiritualist doctrines. In reality, far from ever accepting and completing the critique that democratic liberalism had raised against the aristocratic and absolute monarchies of the ancien regime, Marxist socialism in its earliest formulations demolished it utterly. It did so not to defend the spiritualist or idealist doctrine against the Voltairean materialism of the bourgeois revolutionaries, but to demonstrate how the theoreticians of bourgeois materialism had in reality only deluded themselves when they imagined that the political philosophy of the Encyclopedists had led them out of the mists of metaphysics applied to sociology and politics, and of idealist nonsense. In fact, like all their predecessors, they had to surrender to the genuinely objective critique of social and historical phenomena provided by Marx’s historical materialism.

It is also important, from a theoretical point of view, to demonstrate that no idealist or neo-idealist revision of our principles is required to deepen the abyss between socialism and bourgeois democracy; to restore to the theory of proletarian revolution its powerfully revolutionary content, adulterated by the falsifications of those who fornicate with bourgeois democracy. It is enough merely to refer to the positions taken by the founders of Marxism in the face of the lies of liberal doctrines and of bourgeois materialist philosophy.

To return to our argument, we will show that the socialist critique of democracy was, in essence, a critique of the democratic critique of the old political philosophies, a denial of their alleged universal opposition, a demonstration of their theoretical similarity, just as, in practice, the proletariat had little cause to celebrate when the direction of society passed from the hands of the feudal, monarchical and religious nobility into the hands of the young commercial and industrial bourgeoisie. And the theoretical demonstration that the new bourgeois philosophy had not overcome the old errors of the despotic regimes, but was itself only an edifice of new sophisms, corresponded concretely to the appearance of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat which contained the negation of the bourgeois claim of having forever established the administration of society on a peaceful and infinitely perfectible basis, thanks to the introduction of suffrage and of parliamentary democracy.

The old political doctrines, based on spiritualist concepts or even on religious revelation, claimed that the supernatural forces which govern the consciousness and the will of men had assigned to certain individuals, families or castes, the task of ruling and managing the collective existence, making them the repositories of “authority” by divine right. The democratic philosophy, which asserted itself at the time of the bourgeois revolution, counterposed the proclamation of the moral, political and juridical equality of all citizens, whether they were nobles, clerics or plebeians. It sought to transfer “sovereignty” from the narrow sphere of caste or dynasty to the universal sphere of popular consultation based on suffrage, which allowed a majority of the citizens to designate the leaders of the State, according to its will.

The thunderbolts hurled against the latter conception by the priests of all religions and by spiritualist philosophers do not suffice to give it recognition as the definitive victory of truth over obscurantist error; even if the “rationalism” of this political philosophy seemed for a long time to be the last word in social science and the art of politics, and even if many would-be socialists proclaimed their solidarity with it. This claim, that a system which has its social hierarchy based on the consent of the majority of electors spells the end of the epoch of “privilege”, does not withstand the Marxist critique, which throws a completely different light on the nature of social phenomena: and it is a claim which seems an attractive logical construction only if it is admitted from the outset that each vote, that is, the judgement, the opinion, the consciousness of each elector, has the same weight of delegatory power in determining the administration of the collective business. It is already evident that this conception is unrealistic and unmaterialist because it considers each individual to be a perfect “unit” within a system made up of many potentially equivalent units; and instead of appraising the value of the individual’s opinion in the light of his manifold conditions of existence, that is, his relations with others, it postulates this value a priori with the hypothesis of the “sovereignty” of the individual. Again this amounts to denying that the consciousness of men is a concrete reflection of the facts and material conditions of their existence, viewing it instead as a spark ignited with the same providential fairness in each organism – healthy or impaired, tormented or harmoniously satisfied in all its needs – by some indefinable supreme bestower of life. In the democratic theory, this supreme being no longer appoints the monarch, but rather bestows on everyone an equal capacity to do so. In spite of its rationalist front, the democratic theory rests on a no less childish metaphysical premise than does “free will” which, according to the catholic doctrine of the afterlife, wins men either damnation or salvation. Because it places itself outside of time and historical contingencies, the democratic theory is no less tainted with spiritualism than are the equally erroneous philosophies of revelation and monarchy by divine right.

To further extend this comparison, it is enough to recall that many centuries before the French Revolution and the declaration of the rights of man and citizen, the democratic political doctrine had been advanced by thinkers who resolutely took their stand on the terrain of idealism and metaphysical philosophy. Moreover, if the French Revolution toppled the altars of the Christian god in the name of Reason, it was, wittingly or not, only to make Reason into a new divinity.

This metaphysical presupposition, incompatible with the Marxist critique, is characteristic not only of the doctrine constructed by bourgeois liberalism, but also of all the constitutional doctrines and plans for a new society based on the “intrinsic value” of certain schemes of social and State relations. In building its own doctrine of history, Marxism in fact demolished medieval idealism, bourgeois liberalism and utopian socialism with a single blow.

* * *

To these arbitrary constructions of social constitutions, whether aristocratic or democratic, authoritarian or liberal, as well as to the anarchist conception of a society without hierarchy or delegation of power, which is rooted in analogous errors, the communist critique opposed a much more thorough study of the nature and causes of social relations in their complex evolution throughout human history, and a careful analysis of their characteristics in the present capitalist epoch, from which it drew a series of reasoned hypotheses about their further evolution. To this can now be added the enormous theoretical and practical contribution of the proletarian revolution in Russia.

It would be superfluous here to develop the well-known concepts of economic determinism and the arguments which justify its use in interpreting historical events and the social dynamic. The apriorisms common to conservatives and utopians are eliminated by the analysis of factors rooted in production, the economy, and the class relations they determine. This makes possible a scientific explanation of the juridical, political, military, religious and cultural facts which make up the diverse manifestations of social life.

We will restrict ourselves to making a brief summary of the historical evolution of the mode of social organisation and grouping of men, not only in the State, an abstract representation of a collectivity fusing together all individuals, but also in other organisations which arise from the relations among men.

The basis of interpretation of all social hierarchies, whether complex or simple, is to be found in the relations between different individuals, and the basis of these relations is the division of tasks and functions among these individuals.

We can imagine without serious error that the human species originally existed in a completely unorganised form. Still few in number, these individuals could live from the products of nature without the application of technology or labour, and in such conditions could do without their fellow beings. The only existing relations, common to all species, were those of reproduction. But for the human species – and not only for it – these were already sufficient to form a system of relations with its own hierarchy – the family. This could be based on polygamy, polyandry or monogamy. We will not enter into a detailed analysis here, but suffice to say, the family gave us the embryo of organised collective life, based on a division of functions directly determined by physiological factors, since the mother nourished and raised the children, and the father devoted himself to the hunt, to the acquisition of plunder and to the protection of the family from external enemies, etc.

In this initial phase, where production and economy are almost totally absent, as well as in later stages when they are developing, it is useless to dwell on the abstract question of whether we are dealing with the individual-unit or the society-unit. Without any doubt, the individual is a unit from a biological point of view, but one cannot make it the basis of social organisation without lapsing into metaphysical nonsense. From a social perspective, not every individual unit has the same value. The collectivity is born from relations and groupings in which the status and activity of each individual do not derive from an individual function but from a collective one, determined by the multiple influences of the social milieu. Even in the elementary case of an unorganised society or non-society, the physiological basis which produces family organisation alone is already sufficient to refute the arbitrary doctrine of the Individual as an indivisible unit which is free to combine with other fellow units, without ceasing to be distinct from, and yet, somehow equivalent to them. In this case, the society-unit obviously does not exist either, since relations between men, even reduced to the simple notion that others exist, are extremely limited and restricted to the sphere of the family or the clan. We can put forward the obvious conclusion that the “society-unit” has never existed, and probably never will except as a “limit” which we can get ever closer to by overcoming the boundaries of classes and States.

Setting out from the individual-unit as one who is able to draw conclusions and to build social structures, or even to deny society, is setting out from an unreal supposition which, even in its most modern formulations, only amounts to refurbishing the concepts of religious revelation and creation and the notion of a spiritual life which is not dependent upon natural, organic life. The divine creator – or a single power governing the destiny of the universe – has given to each individual this elementary property of being an autonomous well-defined molecule endowed with consciousness, will and responsibility within the social aggregate, independent of contingent factors deriving from the physical influence of the environment. This religious and idealist conception is only very superficially modified in the doctrine of democratic liberalism or libertarian individualism. The soul as a spark from the supreme Being, the subjective sovereignty of each elector, or the unlimited autonomy of the citizen of a society without laws – these are so many sophisms which, in the eyes of the Marxist critique, are tainted with the same infantile idealism, no matter how resolutely “materialist” the first bourgeois liberals and anarchists may have been.

This conception finds its match in the equally idealist hypothesis of the perfect social unit – of social monism – constructed on the basis of the divine will which is supposed to govern and administer the life of our species. Returning to the primitive stage of social life which we were considering, and to the family organisation discovered there, we conclude that we do not need such metaphysical hypotheses of the individual-unit and the society-unit in order to interpret the life of the species and the process of its evolution. On the other hand, we can positively state that we are dealing with a type of collectivity organised on a unitary basis, i.e., the family. We take care not to make this a fixed or permanent type or to idealise it as the model form of the social collectivity, as do anarchism or absolute monarchy with the individual. Rather we simply record the existence of the family as the primary unit of human organisation, which will be followed by others, which itself will be modified in many aspects, will become a constituent element of other collective organisations, or, as it may rightfully be expected, will disappear in very advanced social forms. We do not feel at all obliged to be for or against the family in principle, any more than we do to be, for example, for or against the State. What does concern us is to grasp the evolutionary direction of these types of human organisation. When we ask ourselves whether they will disappear one day, we do so objectively, because it could not occur to us to think of them as sacred and eternal, or as pernicious and to be destroyed. Conservatism and its opposite (i.e. the negation of every form of organisation and social hierarchy) are equally weak from a critical view-point, and equally sterile.

Thus leaving aside the traditional opposition between the categories ’individual’ and ’society’, we follow the formation and the evolution of other units in our study of human history: widespread or restricted groupings of men based on a division of functions and on a hierarchy; which appear as the real factors and agents of social life. Such units can to a certain extent be compared to organic units, to living organisms whose cells, with their different functions and values, can be represented by men or by elementary groups of men. However the analogy is not complete, since while a living organism has well-defined limits, and obeys the inflexible biological laws of its growth and death, organised social units do not have fixed boundaries and are continually being renewed, mingling with one another, simultaneously splitting and recombining. If we chose to dwell on the first and obvious example, the family unit, it was to demonstrate that even if these units which we are considering are clearly composed of individuals, and if their very composition is indeed variable, they nonetheless behave like organic and integral “wholes”, such that to split them into individual units has no real meaning and is tantamount to a myth. The family element constitutes a whole, whose life does not depend on the number of individuals that comprise it, but on the network of their relationships. To take a crude example, a family composed of the head, the wives and a few feeble old men doesn’t have the same value as another made up of its head and many strong young sons.

Setting out from the family, the first organised social form (in which one finds the first example of a division of functions, the first hierarchies, the first forms of authority, of direction of individuals’ activities and administration of things) human evolution passes through an infinite series of other organisational forms, increasingly broad and complex. The reason for this increasing complexity lies in the growing complexity of social relations and hierarchies born from the ever-increasing differentiation between functions. The latter is directly determined by the systems of production that technology and science place at the disposal of human activity in order to provide an increasing number of products (in the broadest meaning of the word) suited to satisfying the needs of larger societies evolving towards higher forms of life. An analysis which seeks to understand the process of formation and change of different human organisations, as well as the interplay of relations within the whole of society, must be based on the notion of the development of productive technology and the economic relations which arise from the distribution of individuals among the different tasks required by the productive mechanism. The formation and evolution of dynasties, castes, armies, States, empires, corporations and parties can and must be studied on the basis of these elements. One can imagine that at the highest point of this complex development a kind of organised unit will appear which will encompass all of mankind and which will establish a rational division of functions between all men. What significance and limits the hierarchical system of collective administration will have in this higher form of human social life is a matter for further debate.

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To examine those unitary bodies whose internal relations are regulated by what is generally called the “democratic principle” we will, for reasons of simplicity, distinguish between organised collectivities whose hierarchies are imposed from outside, and those that select their own hierarchy from within. According to the religious conception and the pure doctrine of authority, in every epoch human society is a collective unit which receives its hierarchy from supernatural powers; and we will not repeat the critique of such a metaphysical over-simplification which is contradicted by our entire experience. It is the necessity of the division of functions which gives rise naturally to hierarchies; and such it is in the case of the family. As the latter develops into a tribe or horde, it must organise itself in order to struggle against other organizations (rival tribes). Leadership is entrusted to those able to make best use of the communal energies, and military hierarchies emerge in response to this need. This criterion of choice in the common interest appeared thousands of years before modern democratic electoralism; kings, military chiefs and priests were originally elected. Over the course of time, other criteria for the formation of hierarchies prevailed, giving rise to caste privileges transmitted by inheritance or even by initiation into closed schools, sects and cults. This evolution derived from the fact that if accession to a given rank was justified by the possession of special aptitudes, such condition was as a rule most favourable to influence the transmission of the same rank. We will not go into here the whole process of the formation of castes and then classes within society. Suffice to say that their appearance no longer corresponds to the logical necessity of a division of functions alone, but also to the fact that certain strata occupying a privileged position in the economic mechanism end up monopolising power and social influence. In one way or another, every ruling caste provides itself with its own organisation, its own hierarchy, and this likewise applies to economically privileged classes; the landed aristocracy of the Middle Ages, for example, by uniting itself for the defence of its common privileges against the assaults of the other classes, constructed an organisational form culminating in the monarchy, which concentrated public powers in its own hands to the complete exclusion of the other layers of the population. The State of the feudal epoch was the organisation of the feudal nobility supported by the clergy. The principal element of coercion of the military monarchy was the army. Here we have a type of organised collectivity whose hierarchy was instituted from without since it was the king who bestowed the ranks, and in the army passive obedience of each of its components was the rule. Every State form concentrates under one authority the organising and officering of a whole series of executive hierarchies: the army, police, magistrature and bureaucracy. Thus the State makes material use of the activity of individuals from all classes, but it is organised on the basis of a single or a few privileged classes which appropriate the power to constitute its different hierarchies. The other classes (and in general all groups of individuals for whom it is only too evident that the State, in spite of its claims, by no means guarantees the interests of everyone) seek to provide themselves with their own organisations in order to make their own interests prevail. Their point of departure is that their members occupy the same position in production and economic life.

As concerns the organisations, of particular interest to us, which provide themselves with their own hierarchy: if we ask what is the best way that a hierarchy can be appointed in order to ensure the defence of the collective interests of all the components of the organisation in question, and to avoid the formation of privileged strata within it, some will propose the democratic method whose principle lies in consulting all individuals and using the majority opinion to select those among them who will occupy the various levels of the hierarchy.

The severity of our critique of such a method depends on whether it is applied to present-day society as a whole, to given nations, or when it is a case of introducing into much more restricted organisations such as trade unions and parties.

In the first case it must be rejected since it takes no account of the situation of individuals in the economy, and since it presupposes the intrinsic perfection of the system without taking into consideration the historical evolution of the collectivity to which it is applied.

The division of society into classes distinguished by economic privilege clearly removes all value from majority decision-making. Our critique refutes the deceitful theory which maintains that the democratic and parliamentary State machine which arose from modern liberal constitutions is an organisation of all citizens, in the interests of all citizens. From the moment that opposing interests and class conflicts appear, there can be no unity of organisation; in spite of the outward appearance of popular sovereignty, the State remains the organ of the economically dominant class, and the instrument of defence of its interests. In spite of the application of the democratic system to political representation, bourgeois society appears as a complex network of unitary bodies. Many of these, which spring from the privileged layers and tend to preserve the present social apparatus, gather around the powerful centralised organism of the political State. Others may be neutral or may have a changing attitude towards the State. Finally, others arise within the economically oppressed and exploited layers which are directed against the class State. Communism demonstrates that the formal juridical and political application of the democratic and majority principle to all citizens, while society is divided into opposed classes in relation to the economy, is incapable of making the State an organisational unit of society as a whole or the nation as a whole. Officially that is what political democracy claims to be; whereas in reality it is the form suited to the power of the capitalist class, to the dictatorship of this particular class, for the purpose of preserving its privileges.

Therefore we do not need to insist further on the critical demolition of this error which attributes the same degree of independence and maturity to the vote of each elector – whether a worker exhausted by excessive physical labour, or a rich dissolute; whether a shrewd captain of industry, or an unfortunate proletarian ignorant of the causes of his misery and the means of remedying them – and it is an error which thinks that accomplishing the sovereign duty of soliciting the opinion of ’the elector’, once in a blue moon, will be sufficient to ensure the calm and obedience of whoever feels victimised and ill-treated by the State policies and administration.

* * *

It is thus clear that the principle of democracy has no intrinsic virtue. It is not a principle but rather a simple organisational mechanism, responding to the simple and crude arithmetical presumption that the majority is right and the minority is wrong. Now we shall see if, and to what extent, this mechanism is useful and sufficient for the functioning of organisations comprising more restricted collectivities which are not divided by economic antagonisms. To do this, these organisations must be considered in their process of historical development.

Is this democratic mechanism applicable in the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. in that State form born from the revolutionary victory of rebel classes against the power of the bourgeois States? Can this form of State, on account of its internal mechanism of the delegation of powers and of the formation of hierarchies, thus be defined as a “proletarian democracy”? The question should be broached without prejudice, as we might reach the conclusion that the democratic mechanism is useful under certain conditions, as long as history has not produced a better mechanism; still, we must be convinced that there is not the slightest reason to establish a priori the concept of the sovereignty of the “majority” of the proletariat. In fact the day after the revolution, the proletariat will not yet be a totally homogeneous collectivity nor will it be the only class. In Russia for example, power is in the hands of the working class and the peasantry; but if we consider the entire development of the revolutionary movement, it is easy to demonstrate that the industrial proletarian class, although much less numerous than the peasantry, nevertheless plays a far more important role. Then it is logical that the Soviet mechanism accords much more value to the vote of a worker than to that of a peasant.

We do not intend to examine thoroughly here the characteristics of the proletarian State constitution. We will not consider it metaphysically as something absolute: as reactionaries do the divine right of the monarchy, as liberals do parliamentarism based on universal suffrage, and anarchists, the non-State. Since it is an organisation of one class destined to strip the opposing classes of their economic privileges, the proletarian State is a real historical force which adapts itself to the goal it pursues, that is, to the necessities which gave birth to it. At certain moments its impulse may come from either broad mass consultations or from the action of very restricted executive organs endowed with full powers. What is essential is to give this organisation of proletarian power the means and weaponry to destroy bourgeois economic privilege and the political and military resistance of the bourgeoisie; in a way that prepares for the subsequent disappearance of classes themselves, and for the ever more profound modifications of the tasks and structure of the proletarian State.

One thing is clear: while bourgeois democracy’s real goal is to deprive the broad proletarian and petty-bourgeois masses of all influence in the control of the State, which is reserved for the big industrial, banking and agricultural oligarchies, the proletarian dictatorship has to involve the broadest layers of the proletarian and even the quasi-proletarian masses in the struggle that it embodies. Only those who are the victims of democratic prejudice could imagine that attaining this end requires the setting up of a vast mechanism of electoral consultation. This may be excessive or – more often – too little, because this form of participation by many proletarians may result in their not taking part in other more active manifestations of the class struggle. On the other hand, the intensity of the struggle in particular phases demands speed of decision and movement and a centralised organisation of efforts in a common direction. In order to combine these conditions the proletarian State, as the Russian experience is teaching us with a whole series of examples, bases its constitutional machinery on characteristics which are in open contradiction to the canons of bourgeois democracy. Supporters of bourgeois democracy howl about the violation of liberties, whereas it is only a matter of unmasking the philistine prejudices which have always allowed demagogues to ensure power to the privileged. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, the constitutional mechanism of the State organisation is not only consultative, but at the same time executive. Participation in the functions of political life, if not of the whole mass of electors, then at least of a wide layer of their delegates, is not intermittent but continuous. It is interesting to note that rather than this damaging the unitary character of the action of the whole State apparatus, it is in fact consistent with it; precisely because it applies criteria which are opposed to those of bourgeois hyperliberalism: that is, by virtually suppressing direct elections and proportional representation (once that other sacred dogma – the equal vote – has been overthrown, as we have seen).

We do not claim that these new criteria introduced into the representative mechanism, or codified in a constitution, stem from reasons of principle. Under new circumstances, the criteria could be different. In any case, what we are trying to clarify is that we do not attribute any intrinsic value to these forms of organisation and representation: it is a view we can translate into the fundamental Marxist thesis: “the revolution is not a matter of forms of organisation”. The revolution, on the contrary, is a matter of content, that is, of movement and action of revolutionary forces in an unending process; which cannot be theorised by crystallising it in any of the various static “constitutional doctrines” which have been attempted.

In any case, in the mechanisms of the workers’ councils we find no trace of that rule of bourgeois democracy which states that each citizen directly chooses his delegate to the supreme representative body, parliament. On the contrary, there are different levels of workers’ and peasants’ councils, each one with a broader territorial base culminating in the congress of Soviets. Each local or district council elects its delegates to a higher council, and in the same way elects its own administration, i.e. its executive organ. At the base, in the city or rural council, the entire mass is consulted. In the election of delegates to higher councils and local administrative offices, each group of electors votes not according to a proportional system, but according to a majority system, choosing its delegates from lists put forward by the parties. Furthermore, since a single delegate is sufficient to establish a link between a lower and higher council, it is clear that the two dogmas of formal liberalism – voting for several members from a list and proportional representation – fall by the wayside. At each level, the councils must give rise to organs that are both consultative and administrative and directly linked to the central administration. Thus it is natural that as one progresses towards higher representative organs, one does not encounter parliamentary assemblies of chatterboxes who discuss interminably without ever acting; rather, one sees compact and homogeneous bodies capable of directing the action and political struggle, and of giving revolutionary guidance to the whole mass thus organised in a unitary fashion.

These capacities, which are definitely not automatically inherent in any constitutional schema, are achieved in this mechanism because of the presence of an extremely important factor, the political party; whose content goes far beyond pure organisational form, and whose collective and active consciousness will allow the work to be oriented according to the requirements of a long and always advancing process. Of all the organs of the proletarian dictatorship, the political party is the one whose characteristics most nearly approach those of a homogeneous unitary collectivity, unified in action. In reality, it only encompasses a minority of the mass, but the properties that distinguish it from all other broad-based forms of representative organisation demonstrate precisely that the party represents the collective interests and movement better than any other organ. All party members participate continuously and uninterruptedly in accomplishing the common task and prepare themselves to resolve the problems of the revolutionary struggle and the reconstruction of society; which the majority of the mass only become aware of when they are actually faced with them. For all these reasons, in a system of representation and delegation based not on the democratic lie but on a layer of the population whose common fundamental interests propel them on the course of revolution, it is natural that the choices fall spontaneously on elements put forward by the revolutionary party; which is equipped to respond to the demands of the struggle and to resolve the problems for which it has been able to prepare itself. The fact that we do not attribute these capacities of the party merely to its particular constitution, anymore than we do in the case of any other organisation, is something we will set out to prove later on. The party may or may not be suited to its task of leading the revolutionary action of a class; it is not any political party but one in particular, namely the communist party, that can assume this task; and not even the communist party is immune to the numerous dangers of degeneration and dissolution. What makes the party equal to its task is not the machinery of its statutes or mere internal organisational measures; it is the positive characteristics which arise in the course of its development, its participation in the struggle and in taking action as an organisation possessing a single orientation which derives from its conception of the historical process, of a fundamental programme which has been translated into a collective consciousness, and at the same time into a secure organisational discipline. These issues are more fully developed in the theses on party tactics presented at the Congress of the Communist Party of Italy, of which the reader is certainly aware.

To return to the nature of the constitutional mechanism of the proletarian dictatorship – of which we have already said that it is executive as well as legislative at all levels – we must add something to specify what tasks of the collective life this mechanism’s executive functions and initiatives respond to. These functions and initiatives are the very reason for its formation, and they determine the relationships existing within its continually evolving elastic mechanism. We will consider here the the initial period of proletarian power in reference to the situation during the four and a half years that the proletarian dictatorship has existed in Russia. We do not wish to speculate as to what the definitive basis of the representative organs will be in a classless communist society as we cannot predict how exactly society will evolve as it approaches this stage; we can only envisage that it will move in the direction of a fusion of the various political, administrative and economic organs, and at the same time, of a progressive elimination of every element of coercion, and of the State itself as an instrument of class power and weapon of struggle against surviving enemy classes.

In its initial period, the proletarian dictatorship has an extremely difficult and complex task that can be subdivided into three spheres of action: political, military and economic. Both the problems of military defence, against counter-revolutionary attacks from within and without, and the reconstruction of economy on a collective basis, depend upon a systematic and rational plan of how to deploy its forces, in an activity which has to be extremely unitary through the utilisation, or rather by using to greater effect, the diverse energies of the masses. As a consequence, the body which leads the struggle against the domestic and foreign enemy, that is, the revolutionary army and police, must be based on a discipline, and on a hierarchy, which is centralised in the hands of the proletarian power. The Red Army itself is thus an organised unit whose hierarchy is imposed externally by the government of the proletarian State; and the same is true for the revolutionary police and tribunals. The economic apparatus, which the victorious proletariat erects in order to lay the foundations of the new system of production and distribution, gives rise to more complex problems. We can here merely recall that the characteristic that distinguishes this rational administration from the chaos of bourgeois private economy is centralisation. Every enterprise must be managed in the interest of the entire collectivity and in harmony with the requirements of the whole plan of production and distribution. On the other hand, the economic apparatus (and the position of the individuals that comprise it) is continually being modified, and this is due not only to its own gradual development, but also to the inevitable crises during a period of such vast transformations; a period in which political and military struggles are inevitable. These considerations lead to the following conclusions: in the initial period of the proletarian dictatorship, although the councils at different levels must appoint their delegates to the local executive organs as well as to the legislative organs at higher levels, the absolute responsibility for military defence, and in a less rigid way, for the economic campaign, must remain with the centre. For their part, the local organs serve to organise the masses politically so that they will participate in fulfilling those plans, and will accept military and economic organisation. They thereby create the conditions for the broadest and most continuous mass activity possible in relation to the issues of collective life, channelling this activity into the formation of a highly centralised proletarian State.

These considerations certainly are not intended to deny all possibility of movement and initiative to the intermediary organs of the State hierarchy. But we wanted to show that one cannot theorise that they would support the revolution’s executive tasks of maintaining military or economic order if they were formed by groups of electors organised at the level of the factory or army division. The structure of such groups is simply not able to confer any special abilities on them and, therefore, the units in which the electors are grouped at the base can therefore be formed according to empirical criteria. In fact they will constitute themselves according to empirical criteria, among which, for instance, the workplace, the neighbourhood, the garrison, the battlefront or any other situation in daily life, without any of them being excluded a priori or held up as a model. Still, the foundation of State representation in the proletarian revolution remains a territorial division into electoral districts.

None of these considerations are hard and fast rules, and this brings us to our thesis that no constitutional schema amounts to principle, and that majority democracy understood in the formal and arithmetic sense is but one possible method for co-ordinating the relations that arise within collective organisations; a method to which it is absolutely impossible to attribute an intrinsic character of necessity or justice, since such terms actually having no meaning for Marxists, and besides which our aim is not to replace the democratic apparatus criticised by ourselves with yet another mindless project for a party apparatus inherently free of all defects and errors.

* * *

It seems to us that enough has been said about the democratic principle in its application to the bourgeois State, which claims to embrace all classes, and also in its application to the proletarian class alone as the basis of the State after the revolutionary victory. It remains for us to say something about the application of the democratic mechanism to organisations within the proletariat both before and after the conquest of power, i.e. trade unions and political party.

We established above that a true organisational unity is only possible on the basis of an identity of interests among the members. Since one joins unions or parties by virtue of a spontaneous decision to participate in a specific kind of action, a critique which absolutely denies any value to the democratic mechanism in the case of the bourgeois State (i.e. a fallacious constitutional union of all classes) is not applicable here. Nevertheless, even in the case of the party and the trade union it is necessary not to be led astray by the arbitrary concept of the “sanctity” of majority decisions.

In contrast to the party, the trade union is characterised by the virtual identity of its members’ immediate material interests. Within the limits of the category, it attains a broad homogeneity of composition and it is an organisation with voluntary membership. It tends to become an organisation which all the workers of a given category or industry join automatically or are even, as in a certain phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat, obliged to join. It is certain that in this domain number remains the decisive factor and the majority decision has a great value, but we cannot confine ourselves to a schematic consideration of its results. It is also necessary to take into account other factors which come into play in the life of the union organisation: a bureaucratised hierarchy of functionaries which paralyses the union under its tutelage; and the vanguard groups that the revolutionary party has established within it in order to lead it onto the terrain of revolutionary action. In this struggle, communists often point out that the functionaries of the union bureaucracy violate the democratic idea and are contemptuous of the will of the majority. It is correct to denounce this because the right-wing union bosses parade a democratic mentality, and it is necessary to point out their contradictions. We do the same with bourgeois liberals each time they coerce and falsify the popular consultation, without proposing that even a free consultation would resolve the problems which weigh on the proletariat. It is right and opportune to do this because in the moments when the broad masses are forced into action by the pressure of the economic situation, it is possible to turn aside the union bureaucrats’ influence (which is in substance an extra-proletarian influence of classes and organisations alien to the trade union) thereby augmenting the influence of the revolutionary groups. But in all this there are no “constitutional” prejudices, and communists – provided that they are understood by the masses and can demonstrate to them that they are acting in the direction of their most immediate felt interests – can and must behave in a flexible way vis-à-vis the canons of formal democracy within the unions. For example, there is no contradiction between these two tactical attitudes: on the one hand, taking the responsibility of representing the minority in the leadership organs of the unions insofar as the statutes allow; and on the other, stating that this statutory representation should be suppressed once we have conquered these organisations in order to speed up their actions. What should guide us in this question is a careful analysis of the developmental process in the unions in the present phase. We must accelerate their transformation from organs of counter-revolutionary influence on the proletariat into organs of revolutionary struggle. The criteria of internal organisation have no value in themselves but only insofar as they contribute to this objective.

We now analyse the party organisation which we have already touched on in regard to the mechanism of the worker’s State. The party does not start out from an identity of economic interests as complete as within the union. On the contrary, it bases the unity of its organisation not on category, like the union, but on the much broader basis of the entire class. This is true not only in space, since the party strives to become international, but also in time, since it is the specific organ whose consciousness and action reflect the requirements of victory throughout the process of the proletariat’s revolutionary emancipation. When we study the problems of party structure and internal organisation, these well-known considerations force us to keep in mind the whole process of its formation and life in relation to the complex tasks which it has to carry out. At the end of this already long exposition, we cannot enter into details of the mechanism which should regulate consultation of the party’s mass membership, recruitment and the designation of its responsible officers. There is no doubt that for the moment it is best to hold on to the majority principle. But as we keep emphasising, there is no reason to raise the use of the democratic mechanism to a principle. Besides its consultative functions, analogous to the legislative tasks of the State apparatus, the party has executive tasks which at the struggle’s most crucial moment correspond to those of an army, and which demand maximum hierarchical discipline. In fact, in the complex process which has led to the formation of communist parties, the emergence of a hierarchy is a real and dialectical phenomenon which has remote origins and which corresponds to the entire past experience of the functioning of the party’s mechanism. We cannot state that the decisions of the party majority are per se as correct as those of an infallible supernatural judge who provides the various human collectivities with their leaders; a view certainly believed in by those who think the Holy Spirit participates in papal conclaves. Even in an organisation like the party where the broad composition is a result of selection through spontaneous voluntary membership and control of recruitment, the decision of the majority is not intrinsically the best. If it contributes to a better functioning of the party’s executive bodies, this is only because of the coincidence of individual efforts in a unitary and well-oriented work. We will not propose at this time replacing this mechanism by another, and we will not examine in detail what such a new system might be. But we can envisage a mode of organisation which will be increasingly liberated from the conventions of the democratic principle; and it will not be necessary to reject it out of unjustified fears if one day it can be shown that other methods of decision, of choice, of resolution of problems are more consistent with the real demands of the party’s development and its activity in the framework of history.

The democratic criterion so far has been for us an incidental material factor in the construction of our internal organization and in the formulation of our party statutes; it is not their indispensable platform. We will not, therefore, raise the organizational formula known as “democratic centralism” to the level of a principle. Democracy cannot be a principle for us: centralism indisputably is, since the essential characteristics of party organization must be unity of structure and action. In order to express the continuity of party structure in space, the term centralism is sufficient, but in order to introduce the essential idea of continuity in time – the historical continuity of the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances towards the same goal – we will propose saying, linking these two essential ideas of unity together, that the communist party bases its organization on “organic centralism“. Thus, while preserving as much of the incidental democratic mechanism as may be of use to us, we will eliminate the use of the term “democracy”, so dear to the worst demagogues but tainted with irony for the exploited, oppressed and cheated, abandoning it to the exclusive usage of the bourgeoisie and the champions of liberalism, who appear in various guises, sometimes extremist.