Against Political Fronts and Reformist Illusions

A leaflet distributed at strikes in Rome and Milan, by the ICP, Saturday October 24, 2020

The global economic crisis of capitalism, which has been going on for decades, has been accelerated by the COVID crisis and will lead to a serious worsening of the living conditions of the working class.

The only way for workers and all wage-earners to defend themselves is to return to the struggle, with the strike, joining progressively above the divisions between factories, companies, territories and categories, with common actions for their immediate interests: defense of wages, reduction of the day and working life, against the increase in workloads and rhythms, for the raising of the redundancy fund to 100% of wages for all, for full wages for unemployed workers, Italians and immigrants.

In order for this to happen, the role of trade unions is unavoidable. The regime’s trade union confederations (CGIL, CISL, UIL) are collaboratist with the ruling class and its political regime. For this fact they will always oppose the struggle of the working class in a generalized and united way. For example, in these weeks they are conducting negotiations for the renewal of national collective agreements for more than 10 million workers (metalworkers, logistics, procurement, wood industry, agribusiness, entertainment, public employment…) each for themselves.

For A Combative Trade Unionism – the rank and file unions as well as the class opposition in CGIL – were born in the late 1970s in reaction to the definitive class betrayal of CGIL. *But these organizations are lead by opportunist leaders who wage a miserable ongoing war against each other, in separate and competing strikes, hindering the already difficult task of getting the workers’ movement back on its feet.

The fundamental task of the combative proletarians is therefore to fight for the UNITED FRONT OF ALL MILITANT UNIONS AND WORKERS with the goal of forming, to the detriment of the current union leaderships, a UNITED CLASS FRONT.

The Rank and File (COBAS) unions need to organize strikes united on all levels – corporate, territorial, category and inter-category – so they can intervene in a unified manner in the rare strikes proclaimed by the regime trade unionism – such as the one on November 5 by the 3 metal workers’ unions (FIOM, FIM AND UILM) – to show the majority of workers remaining in those unions the methods of struggle and the demands of class unionism.

Only this kind of serious, methodical and lasting action will encourage a rapid return to working class struggle and, when this finally happens, it will make it possible to have trade union organizations less compromised by opportunism, more likely to follow a genuine class union approach and therefore able to decisively strengthen the workers’ movement.

It is necessary to resolutely avoid confusing a needed United Class Union Front and the various attempts at political fronts between political groups which the preferred terrain of opportunist workers’ parties. A tactic which identifies them as such and in which they are left to agitate helplessly.

To confuse political fronts with the Workers’ United Front only condemns any attempt in this sense to the asphyxiated life of a small inter-group monster.

The re-establishment of a strong minority of the working class around revolutionary communism will never take place through mergers between different political groups, which can only occur on the basis of temporary and hypocritical renunciations of important elements of the programs of each organization. On one hand, political unity can only occur on the basis of a return to mass proletarian direct action in defense of immediate needs. On the other a clear, defined and party-based presentation of theory, a program, and a tactical direction of action.

The Communist and Revolutionary Party does not conduct political fronts, an operation that is resolved by proposing so-called “Transitional” political objectives before the conquest of political power by the working class – such as nationalizations – in the frivolous illusion that they bring it closer to revolution, and that they do nothing but reinforce the influence of reformism on it.

The Communist and Revolutionary Party, on the other hand, commits the forces of its militant workers to the reconstruction and strengthening of the labor movement and denounces all the failures of capitalism and its political regime, reaffirming that every step, every transition to socialism, will be possible only after the revolutionary conquest of political power by the working class.