The Function of the Center in the Tradition of the Left Pt. 1

The report we present here is an orderly collection of quotations from The Communist Party in the Tradition of the Left, our fundamental text.

Presentation

[This type of work becomes necessary] whenever the organisation swerves off course and which generally, at least so far, have taken the form of more or less conspicuous and comprehensive splits, more or less useful in terms of strengthening of party action on the basis of continuity and unity of theory, programme, tactics and organisation…. 

[A] party work rather than a polemical document or an indictment of secessionism against an alleged ‘other side’.

[…] 

The aim of this tenacious work wasn’t to arouse any sense of personal satisfaction about ‘winners’ and the ‘losers’ within the party, but rather to prompt a sound reaction, capable of bringing the party as a whole back onto correct positions[.]

[…] 

Centralism and discipline derive from monolithicity of programme. Rather than being construed as administrative or terrorist coercion, discipline in the party is, and can only be, spontaneous; the natural way of life of an organisational body which is entirely focused on one end, and well aware of the route and all the detours and dangers on the path to achieving that end…. [T]he call for discipline within the party doesn’t have recourse to coercion, since all that could be assumed, in any non-individual lack of discipline, was that it had to be something about the party’s work at a deeper level which was causing it to stray from its historical path.

[…] 

Similarly having a rigid framework to contain the shortlist of tactical options bolsters and reinforces unity, compactness, and therefore discipline within the entire party collective; which no longer has to be subjected to the tactical inventions of the movement’s leadership because the latter in its turn is obliged to respect norms and cardinal rules as binding on the rank and file as on the leadership; norms and cardinal rules shared by all and known by all, and on whose basis the Party itself was formed. Therefore, it is not to consultative assemblies, battles between minorities and majorities, or to more or less brilliant leaders that the carrying out of tactical plans will be entrusted, but to an organ of anonymous appearance, substantiated by an anonymous, impersonal and collective work considered as a task of the entire party collective, all the more efficient inasmuch as it is firmly connected to that tradition, and that historical method, which the Party has understood and made its own….

Part 1

Chapter 1 – Centralism and Discipline, Cornerstones of Party Organization

17 – Our Perception of the Theses, Then and Now, 1965

According to the left’s conception of organic centralism, congresses shouldn’t pass judgement on the work of the center or decide who does what, rather it should make decisions about questions of general orientation in a way that is consistent with the invariant historical doctrine of the world party….

Chapter 3 – Differentiation of Functions

Asserting the necessity of disciplined and centralized party organization clearly implies, amongst other things, a hierarchical differentiation which sees individual militants assigned different roles of various levels of importance. The party needs leaders and persons to fulfil various functions. There need to be order givers and order takers and there must be appropriately differentiated organs to perform these functions. Our conception of the party organization is of a many-faceted structure, which we define as pyramidal, in which all of the impulses deriving from the various points of the structure converge towards one central node, from which emerges the regulation and direction of the entire organized network.

20 – Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924

The organization as a party, which allows the class to truly be such and live as such, can be viewed as a unitary mechanism in which the various ‘brains’ (not just brains of course, but other individual organs as well) perform different tasks according to aptitude and capacity, all of them in the service of a common goal and interest which progressively unifies them ever more intimately ‘in time and space’. […] Therefore, not every individual in the organization occupies the same position or is at the same level. The gradual putting into practice of this division of tasks according to a rational plan (and what goes for today’s party-class will be the case for tomorrow’s society) completely excludes those higher up having privileges over the rest. Our revolutionary evolution isn’t heading towards disintegration, but towards an ever more scientific mutual connection between individuals.

21 – General Guiding Principles, 1949

The party isn’t an inanimate lump composed of identical particles, but a real organism brought into being and determined by social and historical requirements, with networks, organs and centers differentiated to carry out its various tasks. Establishing a good relationship between such real requirements and the best way of working leads to good organization, but not vice versa.

22 – Original Content of the Communist Program…, 1958

19 […] The party, which we are sure to see arise again in a more radiant future, will be composed of a vigorous minority of proletarians and anonymous revolutionaries who will carry out different functions as though organs of the same living being, but all will be linked, from the center to the base, to inflexible party norms which are binding on all as regards theory, organizational rigor and continuity, and a precise method regarding strategic action, in which the range of allowable possibilities, and corresponding vetoed possibilities, is drawn from terrible historical lessons about the havoc which opportunism wreaks.

23 – Reunion of Milan: Supplementary Theses…, 1966

    8 – Owing to its necessity of an organic action, and to be able to have a collective function, that goes beyond and leaves out all personalism and individualism, the party must distribute its members among the various functions and activities that constitute its life. The rotation of comrades in such functions is a natural fact, which cannot be regulated by rules similar to those concerning the careers within bourgeois bureaucracies. In the party there are not competitive examinations, in which people compete to reach more or less brilliant or in the public eye positions; we must instead aim at organically achieving our goal, which is not an aping of the bourgeois division of labour, but the natural adaptation of the complex and articulated organ (the party) to its function.

Part 2

Introduction

[C]entralized structure, existence of differentiated organs and a central organ capable of coordinating, directing, and issuing orders to the entire network; all members of the organization observing absolute discipline with respect to carrying out orders issued by the center; non-autonomy of the sections and local groups; rejection of communication networks which diverge from the unitary one which connects the center to the perimeter, and perimeter to center….

[I]t isn’t enough to perceive the party as a centralized organization, with all of its members responding as one man to impulses issuing from one central point. […] nor is it enough to stupidly maintain that, vice versa, we are for subjection to the principle of authority, and that consequently any centralism is good for us as long as it is centralism, any discipline goes as long as it is discipline. All this is something we have denied a thousand times over in the course of our party’s history….

But not any old centralism or any old discipline, a trivial description of which could be summed up in one phrase: “there must be a center which rules and a rank and file which obeys”; although we should add that, since we are antidemocratic, we don’t want head counts or leadership elections either, and that total rule by a small committee, or even by one man without the need for his power to be sanctioned by the democratically consulted majority of members, holds no fear for us. All these things we accept, but it doesn’t help explain the real dynamics by which the organ ‘party’ realizes its maximum centralization or, vice versa, loses it and degenerates during less favorable phases of the revolutionary class struggle; nor does it help us understand how the organ ‘party’ strengthens, grows and consolidates itself so as to be able to rid itself of the diseases that may affect it. All this needs to be explained if we are to reach an understanding of the essence of centralism and of communist discipline.

As is the case with all our theses, and the 1965 Naples theses in particular, it is not a matter of providing an organizational recipe (the ‘recipe’ here being expressed by the very term ‘centralism’), but rather of describing the communist party’s actual life, the ups and downs of its long history, the diseases that over and over again have afflicted it and the efficacy of the remedies we thought to apply on each occasion in order to effect a cure. We must study the party’s history from 1848 to the present, perceive it as moving through real historical events, traversing both the attacking and retreating phases of the revolution as it unfolds on the global scale. Only by doing this can we draw lessons which may, indeed must, be assimilated to good purpose by today’s party, making it stronger and better able to resist those material, negative events which destroyed three Internationals, and a proletarian revolutionary movement which seemed set to win a spectacular victory on a planet-wide scale in the post WW1 period.

Palming us off with the paltry doctrine that everything boils down to a lack of centralism, and claiming the only lesson to be drawn is the need for a structure even more centralized than the Bolshevik Party and the Third International, is tantamount to betraying the party and falsifying its entire tradition. How to obtain maximum centralization of the party? What diseases undermine absolute centralization and absolute discipline? Is it by having a cast of leaders who are even more rigid and totalitarian than, say, Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev? By having militants in the rank and file who are yet more disciplined, more devoted to the cause of communism, more obedient and heroic than the militants of the always under-centralized German party? Or is it by providing better instruction in historical Marxist doctrine to each of our militants, in the infernal sequence according to which a militant who has not properly studied all the party texts, who is not ‘programmed’, cannot serve in the organization in a disciplined way?

These questions can be answered by analyzing party history and the lessons derived by the Left from it….

Chapter 1 – Historical Party and Formal Party

What must become an absolutely essential part of our heritage is the notion of the existence of this strict connection between the militant organization’s action, between what they say and do today, and its theories, principles, and past historical experience; and that it is the latter (theory, principles, etc.), and not individual or even collective opinions which will always be the final arbiter as regards all party questions. Who gives the orders in the party? We have always maintained that the historical party, to which we owe unswerving obedience and loyalty, effectively gives the orders. And through what microphone does the historical party transmit its orders? It could be one man, or a million men; it could be the leadership of the organization, or even the rank-and-file recalling the leadership to observance of that data without which the very organization ceases to exist.

In the party—we quote a text from 1967—no-one commands and everyone is commanded; no-one commands, because it is not in one individual’s head that the solution of the problem is sought; and everyone is commanded, because even the best of Centers mustn’t give orders that depart from the continuous line of the historical party.

Dictatorship of the principles, traditions and aims of communism over everybody, from rank-and-file to Center; legitimate expectation of the Center to be obeyed without opposition as long as its orders respond to this line – a line which must be evident in everything the party does; expectation of the rank-and-file not to be consulted about every order it is given, but to carry them out only if they follow the impersonal line of the historical party which everyone accepts. In the party there are therefore leaders and hierarchies; it is a case of technical instruments that the party cannot do without, because every action it takes must be unitary and centralized, must aspire to maximum efficiency and discipline. But the course of action is not decided by party organs on the basis of flashes of genius issuing from particular brains; they in their turn have to submit to decisions taken, above all, by history; decisions which have become the collective and impersonal inheritance of the organ ‘party’.

Chapter 3 – The Party as Organization of People

But who then decides party policy? What is the party collectivity supposed to say and do? This is decided by translating the party’s programme, aims, principles and theory into activity; the activity of study, research and interpretation of social events and actively intervening within them. It is from this collective activity that the practical decisions emerge; decisions that mustn’t in any way be at odds with the historical foundations on which the party stands. It is the world center which issues orders to the rest of the network and although it is a role which can be performed by one person or by a group of people, the center itself is a function of the party, is the product of the collective activity of the party, and orders don’t emerge from it as result of its greater or lesser cerebral capacity, rather they constitute the nodal point within an activity that involves the entire organization and which must be based on the historical party.

In our scheme, the orientation of the party is neither decided by the totality of individuals who compose it, nor by the group that happens to be performing the role of center, which only expresses decisions that are binding on all militants insofar as they derive from the party’s historical patrimony, and are the result of the work of, and contributions from, the organization as a whole. Our thesis, therefore, is that it is not individuals who are responsible for how well the party performs, and nor indeed are they to blame if the party falls apart. We will never consider the question as one of finding “the best people” to guarantee the work is carried out correctly; nor will we ever attempt, in accordance with our theses, to remedy a mistake by juggling individuals around within the party’s hierarchical structure. As to individuals separately considered our theory denies them consciousness, merit or blame and considers them exclusively as more or less valid instruments of the collective activity; likewise it considers their actions, whether right or wrong, not as the fruit of their personal intentions but due to impersonal and anonymous determinations. It is the collective work itself, based on sound tradition, which selects individuals for the various levels in the hierarchy and for the various roles and tasks that define the party organization. But the guarantee that the tasks will be performed correctly cannot be provided by the brain-power and will-power of an individual or a group: it is, on the contrary, the result of the development of the party work as a whole.

34 – Communist Organization and Discipline, 1924

Orders emanating from the central hierarchies are not the starting point, but rather the result of the functioning of the movement understood as a collective. This is not to be understood in a foolishly democratic or legalistic way but in a realistic and historical sense. We are not defending, by saying this, “the right” of the communist masses to devise policies which the leaders must then follow: we are noting that the formation of a class party presents itself in these terms, and that an examination of the question must be based on these premises. That is how we tentatively sketch out a set of conclusions with regard to this matter.

There is no mechanical discipline that can reliably ensure that orders and regulations from on high “whatever they are” will be put into effect; there is however a cluster of orders and regulations responding to the real origins of the movement which can guarantee the maximum of discipline, that is, unitary action of the whole organism, whereas there are other directives which if issued from the center could compromise both discipline and organizational solidity.

It is, therefore, a matter of demarcating the duty of the leading organs. But who is supposed to do that? The whole party should do it, that’s who, the whole organization, and not in the trite and parliamentary sense of a right to be consulted about the “mandate” to be conferred on the elected leaders and how restricted it will be, but in a dialectical sense that takes into consideration the movement’s traditions, preparedness, and real continuity in its thinking and action.

37 – Speech by the Left’s Representative to the Sixth ECCI Plenum, 1926

This also relates to the question of leaders that comrade Trotsky raised in the preface to Nineteen Seventeen, in an analysis of the causes of our defeat, and I entirely agree with the conclusions he came to. Trotsky does not speak of leaders as though Heaven needs to delegate men for this purpose. On the contrary, he approaches the problem quite differently. Even leaders are the result of party activity, of party working methods, and a product of the confidence the party is able to inspire. If the party, in spite of changeable and often unfavorable circumstances, follows the revolutionary line and fights opportunist deviation, then the selection of leaders, the formation of a General Staff, will go well; and during the final struggle we will have, if not always a Lenin, at least a compact and courageous leadership-something that today, given the current state our organizations are in, we have little cause to expect.