Exactly a century has passed since that fateful 1926, which marked the worldwide defeat of the revolutionary communist movement and left the proletariat a victim, delivered entirely into the hands of its betrayers. The defeat was so total and so powerful that after a hundred years the international proletariat still gives no appreciable sign of recovery or of a resumption of the class struggle on a large scale, but only sporadic flare-ups.

Besides a political guide present across the class and the various countries, there are no true class unions to organize and lead intransigent action in defense and in attack. Class unions will have to rise again, and without doubt they will; but today they do not exist. Let us always remember the two alternatives put forward by the Communist Left.

If the defense of the proletariat’s material and economic interests can be guaranteed by truly class-based unions, it is nevertheless necessary that within them the influence of the communist party be strong, so that the proletariat can make the necessary leap in quality from the defense of bread and work to the struggle for the conquest of power.

The guidance of a strong party, rooted in vast layers of workers, through whose action the union becomes a ”transmission belt” between the party and the proletarian masses, is therefore an indispensable factor.

And not even such a party exists today.

For the resumption of the class struggle it would have been preferable had the defeat been caused by direct clash with the reactionary armies of the bourgeois States. Instead this defeat, all the more bitter, which struck so hard and for so long, was the effect of the degeneration, from within, of the highest organization of revolutionary communism: the Moscow International, Lenin’s own.

1926 moreover represents a crucial aspect of the victorious battle of the Communist Left alone against every kind of degeneration and contamination of revolutionary Marxist doctrine. We can say with pride that it was a true victory: the battle fought in 1926 against the degeneration of the party and the International, and the documents and programmatic theses of that time, constitute a unitary body of doctrine, program, tactic and tradition, on the basis of which the communist party of the international revolution will necessarily have to come back to life.

At the present moment the task of our small organization is to keep intact the continuity of that red thread which will link the past experience of the Communist Left to what must be the future and powerful international communist party. No easy task, if we consider how many present-day political groupings, though contaminated by petty-bourgeois ideologies, disguise themselves as heirs of the Left.

But let us return to 1926, a crucial year in the history of the international communist movement, when the degeneration of the revolutionary communist movement had by now infected the highest leading organs.

As for Italy, the question a militant might naively ask is: ”How was it possible that the Party born at Livorno, founded on such cornerstones, degenerated so?” The answer is that it was not a national problem but an international one. The parties of the Third International were born spurious, for historical reasons, from splits more or less to the left of the old social-democratic parties, from unions of non-homogeneous groups, and not even the Communist Party of Italy could wholly escape this congenital defect. The degenerative process depended in large part on the weaknesses that had historically marked the formation of the new international organization, which, when the revolutionary ebb arrived, weighed on its capacity to react to the unfavorable situation.

The tactical errors of the International had led to a long series of defeats, beginning with that of the revolution in Germany, paid for with the impossibility of winning a second great country to the revolution after the first, a country of decisive importance for the development of world victory.

Naturally the degenerative phases of the Third International could not fail to be reflected within the Communist Party of Italy as well.

As we wrote over half a century ago: ”the history of the Third International is, unfortunately, also the history of its gradual departure from its main road; it is therefore also the history of how a party is killed. […] 1926 is the year of ’socialism in one country’ with all its necessary trappings (bolshevization, the crushing of the Russian Left Opposition under the steamroller of discipline-for-discipline’s-sake). […] It is the true year of the death of the Comintern: the rest will be no more than a macabre dance around its coffin.”

The degeneration matured on different levels which, intertwining and developing together, led first to the corruption and then to the destruction of the true unity of the international communist movement, replacing it, in 1926/27, with a purely formal and militaristic unity, fit only to endorse and mask the freedom of the leading center to trample to the last shred the program, tradition and doctrine.

”We had insistently demanded that the formation of the communist parties (better still, of the International as a single world communist party) be based on a theoretical and programmatic platform defined once and for all, to be taken or left. […] By virtue of this theoretical and programmatic barrier there were to be irrevocably excluded not only the doctrines of the ruling class […] but also the schools enjoying a certain following in the working class: from social-democratic, pacifist and gradualist reformism, to syndicalism, which devalues the political action of the working class and the necessity of the party as the supreme revolutionary organ; from anarchism, which repudiates on principle the historical necessity of the State and of the proletarian dictatorship as means for transforming the social order and abolishing the division into classes, down to the spurious and equivocal ’centrism,’ synthesis and condensate of analogous deviations sheltered behind a pseudo-revolutionary phraseology.”

The barrier was never erected and, little by little, there regained ground within the International French-style syndicalism, German-style workerism, and a whole internal practice typical of parliamentarism. In this atmosphere there could not fail to appear that mixture of Sorelianism and Crocean idealism typical of the ”Ordine Nuovo.”

When the Third Congress of the PCd’I was held at Lyons, the 14th Congress of the Russian communist party had just ended in Moscow, where nearly the whole old guard had risen up, by now in vain, against the prevailing and suffocating internal climate. Another month would pass, and then came that 6th Enlarged Executive where the Italian Left fought its last battle. A last battle which, in spite of all the official interpretations, did not end in defeat but on the contrary represented the victory of revolutionary communism, incarnated by this one and only current. Unfortunately, a similar balance on the historical scale could not be drawn even by the Russian Opposition, for the very fact that the degeneration had followed a course begun long before 1926, in which the Opposition had had its share of co-responsibility. Not so the Italian Left, which alone, for many years, had warned against what would be the inevitable consequences of the tactical eclecticism of the Comintern, and which therefore had the possibility and capacity to draw the overall balance of the preceding six years.

The Party will have to resume a thorough study of the degeneration of the International starting from the internal crisis that broke out in the Russian party. For now, without wishing to enter into the heart of the problem, which would lead us away from the purpose we have set ourselves, we nevertheless wish to sketch the situation lived by the comrades inside the Russian communist party, where the Stalinist counterrevolution was by then registering its definitive victory over what remained of the revolutionary and internationalist tradition.

Through falsification of documents, invention of plots and other similar expedients, the new chiefs of the Russian party managed to get the better of the true commanders of the revolutionary 1917. The roads of deportation opened, before Trotsky, to many other comrades, while the Russian party and the International, by now Stalinized, imposed as the condition for remaining in the International the acceptance of the new opportunist theory of ”Socialism in one country.”

It is well known that during the 14th Congress many delegates preferred to keep silent so as not to run the risk of being deported to Murmansk or Turkestan. ”These ’transfers,'” declared Krupskaya, ”create in the party the impossibility of speaking sincerely and openly. If we create conditions such that a party member can be ’transferred’ elsewhere for having openly expressed his opinion, all the good intentions about internal democracy will remain on paper.”

Besides this we also wish to cite an excerpt from another intervention by Krupskaya, at the 14th Russian congress, in which she protests against the abuse of appealing to the authority of so-called ”Leninism” and of majorities: ”I think it is out of place to cry that this or that is true Leninism. I have recently reread the first chapters of ’State and Revolution.’ […] He wrote: ’There have been cases in history in which the teachings of great revolutionaries were distorted after their death. Harmless icons were made of them, and, while honoring their name, the revolutionary edge of their teaching was blunted.’ I think this bitter quotation obliges us not to hide this or that conception of ours behind the label of Leninism, and makes it necessary to examine all questions in their essence. […] For us Marxists, truth is what corresponds to reality. Vladimir Ilyich was in the habit of saying: ’Marx’s teaching is invincible because it is true.’ […] The work of our congress must be to seek and find the right line. […] Bukharin said with great emphasis that whatever the congress decides will be right. Every Bolshevik considers the decisions of the congress unappealable, but […] one must not console oneself by thinking that the majority is always right. In the history of our party there have been congresses in which the majority was wrong.”

The congress ended with the adoption of the reports of Stalin and Molotov by 559 votes to 65.

In February-March 1926, inside an International not yet counterrevolutionary but by now in full decay, the Italian Left fights alone in Moscow and remains ”defeated.” In November-December, at the 7th enlarged session of the Comintern Executive, triumphant Stalinism liquidates the Bolshevik Opposition.

1926 was ”the year of the supreme test, since upon the outcome of the titanic struggle of the Chinese workers and peasants and of the British proletarians there depended, in the last instance, the destiny of Soviet Russia and of the International. The Russian Opposition will feel in the course of that year the terrible urgency of the knots come to the comb of history and, overcoming old quarrels, Trotsky and Zinoviev (to name only two) will desperately form a bloc against the pressing forces of counterrevolution. […] The Chinese revolution will emerge beaten, together with the Russian Opposition, and, the grandiose British strike defeated, the entire international communist movement will emerge destroyed.” The International brought to completion that degeneration long foreseen and denounced by the Left.

But of this we shall treat at length in the continuation of this work; this part will instead be devoted to how the 3rd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy was arrived at, and to the theses presented by the Communist Left, our current.

First of all we wish to premise that those theses, although presented to the congress of a ”national” communist party, in reality concerned the whole problem of the tactics of the international communist movement, of which the ”Italian question” was nothing but a secondary reflection, soluble only within the general one.

Those theses represented a true watershed in the history of international communism: they were a point of arrival, seen against the background of the six lived years of the Third International. For us, however, they have represented much more: the point of departure of our independent existence, as a current first and as a party afterwards, and of the perspectives of the revolutionary movement to come.

If we were to represent the evolution of the international communist movement from the standpoint of pure material events, we would have to admit, in agreement with official historiography, the defeat without appeal of the Left, crushed under the weight of enormously unfavorable relations of force. We, on the contrary, proudly claim for the Left a victory at the international and historical level, as well as the theoretical one, because it was the only current able to maintain the uninterrupted and uncorrupted continuity of the doctrine, tactic and tradition of revolutionary communism. Only thanks to the Left has the red thread joining Marx, Lenin, Livorno 1921 suffered no break. And when the revival of the world revolutionary movement finally comes, this movement, if it is at last to bring its victory to completion, can only base itself on the clear-cut positions of the Left.

Not even the Russian Opposition, fallen heroically in defense of proletarian internationalism, can, because of its participation in that tactical eclecticism on which the degeneration rested, represent a basis for the restart of the party of the future triumphant revolution.

What at the 5th Congress of the International had represented an abrupt ”turn to the left” had not in the least excited our current. We have never regarded ”turns,” with their oscillating course from right to left and vice versa, as positive.

In what, in fact, the ”turn to the left” consisted can be well understood from the fact that the 5th international congress, in place of the one elected by the Congress of Rome, had appointed a Centre composed of representatives of the old Ordinovist group.

After the disasters of the German 1923, the International, instead of drawing a sober balance of its tactics, had found it much easier to make fall the heads of the leaders accused of right-wing deviationism.

From that moment on, the danger of deviation into opportunism became ever more evident and, as we have written on other occasions, proofs of this now rampant orientation were not lacking:

• The rapprochement with social-democracy, with the project of dissolving the Red Trade Union International in view of a fusion with the Amsterdam international.

• The theorization of the ”left government” as an intermediate stage favorable to revolutionary development.

• The return to equivocal formulas of united front extended even to bourgeois left parties. • The attempt at noyautage (entryism) within left factions of the social-democratic parties.

• The tendency to attenuate every differentiation between the communist parties and the peasant or national-democratic parties, both in the colonial and semi-colonial areas and in the heart of fully capitalist Europe.

• The system of resolving the internal problems of the parties by reshuffling their respective leaderships, a system typical of bourgeois democracy.

• The refusal to bring the discussion of the Russian question into the International.

• The system of humiliation and corruption by which confessions and abjurations were demanded of the ”reprobates.”

The 5th Congress of the Comintern had established that the Communist Party of Italy should convene its next congress within the following six months, and already gave a glimpse of what the ”freedom” granted to the Left to take part in the pre-congress discussion and to set out its positions in party assemblies would be: ”In the discussion on the press organs, the opinions expressed by the Left must always be accompanied by adequate replies from the leadership. The party must strengthen and centralize its organizational structure by adopting various measures.”

And the ”various measures” could be none other than those adopted by the communist party of Russia, certainly within the limits allowed by the Italian situation, but with the same unscrupulousness, dishonesty and, as far as possible, use of force. After 1924 the Ordinovist group, installed at the head of the party, began a most violent campaign against the Left. In preparation for its 3rd Congress, the voting procedures imposed were so fraudulent that the Left, which a year earlier at the Como conference had obtained the adherence of nearly all the delegates, was confined to a derisory minority.

In the Party born at Livorno in 1921, now on the way to complete Stalinization, a veritable internal repression against exponents of the Left had begun as early as 1925: expulsions, suspensions, denigratory press campaigns, and openly provocative actions became ordinary practice.

The 3rd Congress of the Italian party was to bring about the defeat of the Left; such were the directives from Moscow, and therefore every means would be good for the purpose. Besides, how could the party ”learn to maneuver skillfully among all obstacles” if it did not rid itself of the Left?

To uproot from the base of the party the influence exercised by the Left was, for the International and the centrist leadership, a priority task. They could not have afforded a consultation of the party conducted on an honest confrontation of the respective programmatic positions; too recent was the rebuff suffered at the illegal Conference of Como. Neither the alliance with the heterogeneous elements of the right, nor the entry, with full honors, of the ”terzini” repudiated by the PSI, nor the new levy of members of 1924, none of these expedients had modified the internal balance all that much.

With the attempt to reabsorb the PSI into the ranks of the Comintern having failed, the conquest of the ”terzini” faction was regarded as proof of the correct tactic of the International: ”The fusion with the third-internationalist faction must be carried out immediately and in the most clamorous form. It must then be exploited to the maximum in order to provoke a movement of unification towards the communist party, to show the proletariat that it will be the PCd’I that realizes proletarian unity, and to weaken the influence of the socialist party among the masses of the workers.” (who says so?)

The ”terzini,” welcomed with every honor into the PCd’I in 1924, after being expelled from the socialist party, had entered as an organized faction, and as such they behaved. What was the result of this great conquest is confessed to us by an exponent of the new party himself, who we can be sure never had great sympathy for the Left: Gramsci, compelled to admit that the ”terzini” co-opted into the party were nothing but a group of opportunists.

”The general situation was aggravated last year by the entry into our ranks of the third-internationalist faction […] which for two and a half years had lived in autonomous form inside the maximalist party, creating internal bonds among its adherents which were bound to persist even after the fusion. […] It was wholly absorbed by the internal struggle […] which was predominantly personal and sectarian in character and only episodically dealt with fundamental questions, whether political or organizational.”

Indeed, in a report to the International, in November 1924, Togliatti wrote: ”The position of the various tendencies in the party is as follows: the right has no influence, it is limited to the individual action of a few comrades. […] the two groups in which the party gathers are the centre and the Left. It is not possible to say at this moment what the balance of forces is. In the recent federal congresses the party has in general approved the resolutions of the 5th Congress and the policy followed in Italy. But this approval cannot be considered a definitive shift, because the great mass has not yet become aware of the real divergences between those directives and the attitude taken by the Bordiga group at the 5th Congress. For this reason the solidarity still possible of a fraction of the party with comrade Bordiga has only a relative importance, because it represents only to a small extent an effective adhesion to his thought and his political attitude, but is rather the effect of the personal influence that Bordiga exercises on the party, an influence which is fatally destined to diminish […].”

If we purge these contradictory and embarrassed statements of their ”official optimism” we can note:

1. That the centrists have to admit the persistence of a strong influence of the Left on the party, and since they cannot confess to themselves and to the Moscow leaders that they have failed to ”conquer the masses” of the party, they are forced to remain vague, asserting that they ”cannot say at this moment what the balance of forces is.”

2. That even in the federal congresses they had taken good care not to clarify the real points of contrast between the Left and the official policy of the Comintern.

3. That their battle against the Left would take on the character of personal attack and denigration.

But Togliatti himself, on the following 15 February, was forced to confess that in the traditional strongholds of the party the Left kept the majority: in particular at Turin (home of the Ordine Nuovo), Alessandria, Novara, Biella, Milan, Pavia, Como, Bergamo, Trento, Modena, Rome, Naples, Ancona, Teramo, Macerata, Aquila, Foggia, Taranto, Cosenza, Cremona.

It would have been very difficult to wrest from the base of the party the predominant influence of the Left through a correct and honest confrontation of program and tactics. It was a terrain on which centrism knew well it would be defeated, but the solution adopted was that of the ”political struggle” to be conducted inside the party.

As for the method of ”political struggle inside the party,” the not-so-young comrades will not be able to forget its reappearance as a theorized doctrine over half a century ago and, recently, its renewed practice.

The warhorse of centrism in its slanderous struggle against the Left was the question of ”discipline.”

”Discipline” is the hypocritical resource to which, every time, a degenerate Party Centre appeals to muzzle all those who recall it to its duties.

A much-trumpeted example of indiscipline, committed by the comrades of the Left, was supposed to be, for the centrists, the refusal to sit on the C.C. and the C.E. of the party. Even had this been true, it would have been an act of authentic and full discipline toward the party leadership, as the Left had made quite clear, holding it necessary that the central organs of the party have as homogeneous a composition as possible and not a hodgepodge of currents which, creating internal contrasts and antagonisms, would in fact compromise their functioning. Moreover these were also the directives of the International: ”The leadership of the party shall be made up of comrades determined to apply the tactic of the International and to undertake the struggle, on the ideological as on the organizational plane, against the anti-Marxist revisionism of the extreme right as against that of the extreme left, in order to direct the mass of the party’s members onto the road of the Communist International.”

We wrote: ”even had this been true,” and in fact it was not true ”that the 5th Congress invited comrades of the Left to take part in the Centre of the party. With its conclusions against us […] the 5th Congress de facto ratified our removal decided at the Enlarged Executive of June 1923, against which, for that matter, we never raised any objection in point of procedure, even though it remains the only case of its kind in the history of the International. Moreover the 5th Congress unanimously voted the conclusions of the Italian Commission, which […] resolved to constitute the party Centre without us.”

It is plain, then, how the invitation to take part in the central organs of the party was entirely instrumental, since the International itself ordered the newly appointed Leadership to fight the Left on every plane.

In the course of the pre-congress ”debate” the Left was prevented from carrying out any activity whatsoever. It began with the suppression of the review Prometeo.

Sections in which the Left is dominant are dissolved, comrades of the Left are removed from leading posts, their articles and documents censored or not published; if published, they are flanked by ample editorial prefaces, sometimes longer than the articles themselves, in which, falsifying their content, an attempt was made to discredit them by presenting them as factionalists, taking special pleasure in attributing to the Left opinions and attitudes openly contrary to reality. Within the party a regime of suspicion and intimidation is established, of barracks-style and bureaucratic discipline. A climate of veritable ideological terrorism.

But shortly afterwards the Centre would be able to obtain its ”proof” of the factional and disruptive work carried out by the Left: the formation of a ”Committee of Understanding.”

On 1 June a group of comrades of the Left sent to the C.E. of the party a letter informing it of the constitution of a ”Committee of Understanding.” The letter, after reaffirming the necessity of a debate as wide as possible and free of any form of prejudice, ended by putting forward the following requests:

”a) That the discussion be given a span of time commensurate with the state of unpreparedness of the party’s masses and the importance of the questions;

”b) That the provincial congresses be held only after an exhaustive discussion has taken place in the party press;

”c) That at the provincial congresses the recognized representatives of the various tendencies be given the right to speak in contradiction;

”d) That the delegates to the Party Congress be appointed by the respective federal congresses; should, however, such appointment be made by other systems, the provincial trustees of the various currents be given the right to choose the elements called to sit on any committees;

”e) That, finally, the right be recognized to appoint and regulate the speakers who will illustrate at the congress the thought of this or that current.

”It is evident that the work of congress preparation is such as to require activity and discipline from all.

”The undersigned comrades therefore bring to the attention of the Executive Committee the constitution of a ’Committee of Understanding’ among elements of the Left.”

In an internal communication of the CdI, of 6 June, the comrades of the Left were notified that ”the Executive has already taken disciplinary measures against all the comrades who signed the letter sent to the central organ of the party, a letter in which some comrades of the Left asked how, in their view, the pre-congress campaign should be conducted in order to arrive at a true clarification in the party.”

Indeed, the following day the party daily informed comrades and adversaries (fascists and police included) that ”the C.E., unanimously, has judged that the comrades of the Committee of Understanding, comrades Damen, Repossi, Lanfranchi, Venegoni, Manfredi, Fortichiari, have made themselves guilty of an attack on the party which could be sanctioned by their expulsion, and has decided to refer them to the judgment of the next session of the Central Committee, suspending them in the meantime from all work or office.” On 4 June, by circular to the interregional secretaries, instructions were given to ”strike down without further ado those who criminally […] weaken our ranks. The members of the C.E. have the absolute necessity to crush radically every attempt and every activity aimed at crumbling the solidity of the party, diminishing its strength, transforming it into a masked social-democratic party.”

The circular speaks of the ”criminal responsibility of the constitutors of the faction,” of the ”work undertaken by a group of enemies of the party,” of the necessity ”to carry out a work of purification of our ranks.”

But, bless them, the centrists hoped that ”the few comrades responsible for the scandal […] will be induced to recognize the criminal content of their fault and to repent […] under the banners of Leninism.”

The order to dissolve the CdI by the representative of the International in Italy bears the date of 3 July, but is published in l’Unità only on the 19th, together with the document of acceptance by the Left, which the Centre had had for about a week. This delay in publication allowed the Centre to continue in the paper its slanderous campaign of accusation against the repeated factionalism of the Left.

Thus appeared, on the 19th, the third page of the party daily.

Across the full page, over six columns, towered the headline in giant type: ”The members of the Committee of Understanding against the International,” and below, over three columns: ”Political degeneration and moral wretchedness.”

Over the document of the Committee of Understanding, again over three columns, was placed the following headline: ”A document unworthy of communists.” This was the climate breathed in the ”party founded by Gramsci and Togliatti” (as it was once said. And in this case the attribution of paternity was correct!).

Of the Left’s document we shall report only one significant passage: ”Communists will judge our conduct. We care not to win their superficial adhesion or sympathy and to pile up votes for the congress, but to bring the debate and the consciousness of the party a little further beyond the superficial and petty attitudes on which people speculate when they want to rid themselves with little effort of the nuisance of being discussed and criticized. If it is wished to go on organizing demagogic deceit and industrializing confusion and bewilderment, let it be done, but let no one think to build anything stable: the harm to the party will remain, but the position of the groups and groupuscules, artificers of so politicking a method, will not be saved, a vulgar scenery destined to fall soon enough, revealing the dangers of opportunism and of the degeneration of the party.” Let the comrades reflect how timely these words are.

In its work of denigration centrism has always played on the fact that the mass of comrades refuses to believe that wholly false and groundless things are asserted from the centre of the party, and this genuine instinct plays into the hands, every time, of factionalism from above.

Moreover the C.E. of the Comintern, with a view to the 3rd Congress of the PCd’I, had already in April 1925 unleashed its attack against the Italian Left. At the 5th Enlarged Executive a ”resolution on the Italian question” asserted ”that the main obstacle to the bolshevization of the party is constituted by the Bordigist ideology and that therefore the greatest effort must be directed to eliminating this obstacle.”

In this resolution it will not be possible to find any indication of the tasks and tactics the party should carry out; it consisted entirely of an attack on the ”ideology” of the Italian Left, declared a ”by-product of the second international” and in contrast with ”Leninism” on three fundamental points: abstentionism, the role of the party, tactics.

”The urgent task of the party,” the resolution said, ”is to arrive, within its own ranks, at a complete ideological clarification and to combat all deviations, above all those of comrade Bordiga, which at the present moment are the most dangerous for the movement. The national congress will have to decide whether it approves the policy conducted by the Central Committee of the party since the 5th World Congress, in agreement with the International. At the same time it will have to express its choice between Bordigan tactics and Leninism. Only if it has understood the necessity of placing itself without reservations on the Leninist platform will the Communist Party of Italy be truly strong and truly able to fulfil its historic role as guide of the masses in the proletarian revolution.”

As for Leninist tactics the document specified: ”Leninism represents a supple tactic, which continually adapts to the changing economic and political situation in the world, in order to mobilize all anti-capitalist forces and to seize the favorable moment for the intervention of the party, while the latter, consequently, is ready to modify rapidly its slogans and its attitude, in order to remain in contact with the masses and drag them along with it.”

In the intentions of the centrists the 3rd Congress ”was to close a whole epoch in the life of the party,” and so it was.

Even the decision to hold the congress abroad was a move owed less to questions of security than to a political maneuver.

Paolo Spriano in his ”History of the PCI” wrote: ”The Executive decided some time ago to hold the congress abroad; Vienna is chosen first, but the person preparing the organization there […] falls gravely ill. Lyons is then decided upon.” Lyons was therefore a last-minute makeshift.

On this point it is well to highlight something always passed over in silence by official historiography, namely that, as Bruno Fortichiari recalled, ”the Milan federation, whose organization was still efficient and some of whose leaders were members of Office 1 of the party, offered the centre to secure a suitable venue in Milan for a clandestine meeting, guaranteed and defended. The centre refused the offer without checking its seriousness. It had decided on Lyons also, or rather precisely, because it was easier to ’filter’ the delegates who would have to go there clandestinely. To refuse a convocation in a metropolis of great movement in every quarter, with constant exchange of thousands of people in transit even from abroad, with besides dozens of premises suited to controllable meetings and hundreds of trained and trusty comrades […] was proof of sovereign ineptitude or of a caution suited to an evident end.”

The delegates had to reach France by crossing the frontier illegally by eleven different routes. The congressists had left Italian territory illegally, but just as illegally they entered French territory. The congress was held moving among various secret premises since the French police, alerted, were on the congressists’ trail. Thus illegal was the expatriation, clandestine the congress, illegal the return of the congressists to Italy. As can be seen, the percentage of risk was quite high (and some fell into the net of the French police), but it allowed the Centre to have total control and choice of the participants in the congress.

Giuseppe Berti himself, notoriously rabid toward the Left, of which he was a turncoat, was nevertheless forced to state: ”Objectively […] it must be said that if the Como conference was prepared little, indeed not at all, and gave, therefore, the well-known results, the Lyons congress […] was, perhaps, prepared a little too much, in the sense that preliminarily the December conference […] saw to it that at Lyons the extreme left […] was represented in a manner not adequate to the forces it still counted in the party.”

That democracy represents an element of deceit through which the ruling class exercises its dictatorship is entirely natural for communists. That the democratic method may also be used by the party of the working class, in a phase of its development, is likewise natural and scandalizes no one. But that this method be used inside the party, by those who hold its leadership, to crush internal currents is truly shameful; yet, once ”political struggle” is admitted, this too becomes a weapon which factionalism from above uses to keep a power it has acquired.

The official results of the congress awarded 90.8% of the votes to the centrist theses and 9.2% to the Left.

The maneuvers of the Centre grotesquely falsified the majority of the Left, always dominant in the party, also by exploiting the impossibility for many sections of getting their votes through. Now, the centrists’ idea was highly original: it was established that all membership cards for which no vote was recorded would be counted in favor of the theses of the centre. But this democratic mechanism reached such refinement that even Amadeo’s vote turned out to have been cast in favor of the theses of the Centre.

On the scope of the battle sustained by the Left at the 3rd Congress of the party we shall return in depth in a forthcoming article.

A full year after the meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska, which marked the high point of negotiations regarding the fate of the war in Ukraine, that attempted agreement between the two great powers who, through Ukraine, have been facing off in a conflict now dragging on for four and a half years, has given way to a continuation of hostilities.

Since the very early days of the war in Ukraine, there has been a succession of diplomatic meetings and negotiations aimed at finding a solution to the conflict.

Russia, having failed to bring about a change in Ukraine’s leadership, and to install a puppet government through its invasion of the country, immediately attempted the path of negotiation. First in Belarus and then in Turkey, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had come very close to an agreement just two months into the war, but the process collapsed due to the opposition of Kiev’s true masters, primarily American imperialism, followed by the British, who sought to defeat Russia by sacrificing the Ukrainian pawn in a conflict designed to bring Russia to its knees, not only on the battlefield but, above all, economically, through a war waged via sanctions. The change of administration in Washington had initially led to a resumption of talks between the Americans and the Russians, culminating in the Anchorage meeting.

Yet, beyond any political will to reach some form of agreement, economic interests ultimately prevail, ranging from the need to recoup the billions already spent on the war to the prospect of a more favorable division of the spoils, and including the continuation of a war that is always a lucrative business for the bourgeoisie and a breath of fresh air for the rotten world of capital as a whole; for in the age of imperialism, war is fundamentally economic in nature, driven by the capitalist mode of production’s need to overcome its profound crisis of overproduction through the massive destruction of surplus commodities and proletarians.

Therefore, the tragedy unfolding on Ukrainian soil, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers slaughtered at the front, the suffering of the civilian population, and cities gutted, does not appear to be heading toward an end in the form of a cessation of hostilities, whether in the near future or otherwise. Indeed, the course taken by the imperialist struggle in Europe, barring profound economic upheavals capable of precipitating the collapse of the major powers involved in the Ukraine war (Russia on one side or Kyiv’s backers on the other), is leading to a direct conflict between the great imperialist powers in Europe. Once the Ukrainian cannon fodder runs out, there will be either surrender to Russia, though that is not an option for the voracious, bloodthirsty bourgeoisies of the so-called West, or an expansion of the war that tears the mask off Kyiv’s backers; having thus far waged war against Russia by flooding Ukraine with weapons and billions, they will inevitably find themselves forced to send their own soldiers to fight the Russian enemy.

Russia is winning on the battlefield

The fact that the war in Ukraine is increasingly turning in Moscow’s favor can be seen in at least three elements: the Russian advance in the Donbas and on other fronts, the blockade of Ukrainian ports, and the clash between the political and military leadership in Kyiv. Following the fall of the Konstantynovka stronghold into Russian hands, the Russian army is within sight of the fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major urban centers in the Donbas still controlled by Ukraine; capturing them would mean achieving one of Russia’s primary objectives: the seizure of the entire Donbas region. Russian advances are also being reported in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, while Ukrainians also fear that the Russians might open new fronts, such as the one in the Chernihiv-Kyiv area.

Regardless of the specific axes of the Russian advance, reports confirm a gradual Russian takeover of Ukrainian territory, particularly in the Donbas, which is heading toward the final battles for the major hubs of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, as well as the difficulties facing the Ukrainian army, which continues to lose ground and suffer from an increasing shortage of manpower; indeed, Syrsky himself, recently removed from the top army command, had stated that defending the last two Ukrainian strongholds in the Donbas would require at least another 150,000 to 200,000 soldiers.

The situation in Ukraine deteriorated further in early July due to Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Dnieper. Russian attacks have devastated the port of Odessa and other ports, effectively halting Ukraine’s port operations and leaving the country facing immense difficulties in exporting grain and other goods. Not only port infrastructure and silos but also several merchant vessels have been hit. Consequently, the devastation at the ports and the unwillingness of shipowners and insurers to risk operations in this environment have caused Ukrainian maritime trade to collapse. Alternatives for exporting Ukrainian goods, whether through Romania or by rail to the west, present logistical challenges but could also lead to serious tensions with neighbors due to competition from Ukrainian agricultural products.

The intensification of Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports is a severe blow to the Ukrainian economy, already battered after more than four years of war and heavily dependent on financial aid from its Western backers, and also marks an escalation of the conflict itself, representing Russia’s reaction to the lack of any prospect of an agreement and to Ukrainian strikes deep within Russian territory.

The systematic economic, infrastructural, and military destruction of Ukraine is triggering a backlash within the political and military leadership, driven by the need to find a scapegoat to shoulder the blame for the disaster and to prevent the population’s anger and suffering from turning against the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and its political rubber-stampers. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and Army Chief General Syrsky bore the brunt of the consequences. The two were portrayed by the bourgeois press as being in conflict with each other over how the war should be conducted. On the one hand, there was the ”Soviet” vision of General Syrsky, linked to a way of fighting where different types of weapons, ammunition, logistics and above all soldiers predominate, so much so that the general is also known as ”the butcher”, for his willingness to comply with the wishes of the political leaders, never willing to make the soldiers retreat even in desperate situations, causing a large number of losses; on the other, the more modern vision of Fedorov, who is credited with having developed the massive use of drones. Such reconstructions serve only to pull the wool over the eyes of a population ravaged by war. Figures like Fedorov serve a narrative in which fighting can take place without the need for a constant manhunt through the streets of Ukraine’s cities and villages to find men to throw into the meat grinder of war. But it is precisely a narrative: the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, bankrolled by Western bourgeoisies, needs hundreds of thousands of soldiers to continue playing its role as a combatant against Russia. Ultimately, Fedorov’s dismissal stems from his attempt to overhaul the Ministry of Defence’s procurement system, a point he himself made in an interview: “The reason has to do with procurement and tenders, and the fact that we began restructuring processes in this area; this caused significant dissatisfaction.” He added, “I never imagined that, at the Ministry of Defence, people could be appointed to head departments by private companies.”

War is excellent business for the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, and interference by political personnel is not tolerated!

Who calls the shots, who pays, who dies

Given the difficult economic and military situation it faces, the only thing enabling Ukraine to continue fighting against Russia is the support of Western imperialist powers. However, to continue the war, Ukraine needs to constantly address the shortage of equipment and manpower.

As for military supplies, it has no choice but to rely on financial support from allies in Europe and on the United States’ interest in profiting from defense contracts. This reliance on foreign support was starkly illustrated by the Patriot Missile affair, as the United States backed away from the idea of ​​licensing the production of these missiles directly in Ukraine (the recent Russian strike on a US-owned drone factory in Ukraine was, in all likelihood, a decisive factor in this shift in the American stance).

Instead, the shortage of men is met in the only possible way: through forced recruitment, or rather, the outright capture of men to be sent to the front. Ukraine’s alleged “resistance” exists only in the contortions of the worst kind of opportunism. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie has sold its country and its proletariat to the interests of Western bourgeoisies, turning the nation into a battleground against Russia and its people into cannon fodder.

Now, four and a half years into the war, it is not only the role of sacrificial victim played by Ukraine that is becoming increasingly clear, but also the relationship between the imperialist powers involved in the Eastern European conflict alongside Kyiv.

The start of the Trump presidency was marked by an attempt to move closer to Russia, a move intended to drive a wedge into the relationship between Russia and China, thereby seeking to undermine the advantageous ties China (the principal adversary of American imperialism) maintained with its Russian neighbor. The lack of progress in negotiations has pushed the United States toward the only viable path, namely, continuing the war against Russia via Ukraine, while introducing a substantial difference compared to the Biden administration: the fact that the costs of the war have been offloaded entirely onto the compliant Europeans.

European countries that were compelled by the US to use Ukraine as a pawn in the war against Russia, thereby forfeiting the benefits of Russian energy supplies and plunging their own economies into decline, now find themselves in a state of subordination to American imperialism, forced to serve US interests on that front through massive economic support, alongside the purchase of American weaponry and a reliance on the US for energy.

The NATO summit in Ankara, held on July 7 and 8, 2026, merely confirmed the current state of relations within the diverse anti-Russia front, refuting the accounts of certain “experts” regarding the demise of NATO. It is the nature of imperialist rivalry that pits even allies against one another in the division of the spoils, a process that occurs not only at the expense of enemy imperialist powers but also involves a struggle among colluding brigands to secure a larger share of the loot.

The Ankara summit first and foremost confirmed Russia as the Alliance’s adversary; the final declaration speaks of a “long-term threat” that must be countered.

It is precisely the abandonment of that attempt at rapprochement with Russia on the part of American imperialism. The price to be paid by European “allies” consists of increased financial and military commitments: “For 2026, the Allies pledge to provide Ukraine with 70 billion euros in military equipment, assistance, and training, and reaffirm their sovereign commitment to maintain at least equivalent levels in 2027,” according to the final declaration.

In this way, the Europeans’ acceptance of the burden of increased defense spending has eased the transatlantic tensions that preceded the summit, and the American threat to disengage from Europe has also receded. The United States has thus secured the continuation of the war against Russia, not only at virtually no cost, given that no American contribution is envisaged for the €70 billion package, but also by striking a lucrative deal for its defense industry, since a large portion of the €70 billion to be funded by European countries (and Canada) will be spent on purchasing weaponry manufactured by American companies. This marks a departure from the early years of the war, introduced by the Trump administration, which eliminated U.S. spending and shifted the costs of the conflict onto European nations. Furthermore, there remains another demand from the American master to be met: he wants the Europeans to also take on the goal of increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.

NATO remains standing, with all its internal divisions, but also with the explicit confirmation that the United States is the master of the Alliance. Internal tensions are the inevitable backlash resulting from American imperialism’s need to disengage from Europe, not in the sense of relinquishing its grip on the continent (maintained through the subjugation of weak and divided European nations), but rather by redirecting financial and military resources toward other fronts: the Middle East today, and East Asia tomorrow, where a decisive clash looms with China, American imperialism’s principal rival for global dominance. The decline of American imperialism, driven by the rise of new imperialist powers, China above all, no longer allows the US to play the role of global policeman it has held since its victory in World War II. The United States needs to redefine its global supremacy by shifting resources to those regions of the world, specifically Asia, where its dominance is being challenged by the growing expansionism of rising imperial powers; consequently, it must cut spending on Europe, forcing its European subordinates to shoulder the costs of confronting Russia while reducing them to mere purchasers of American weapons and energy.

Billions in European funds for the war

Having endured the war against Russia, which, as we established from the outset, was itself a war against Europe, European nations, economically weakened by high energy prices and drained by the costs of supporting Ukraine, have obstinately pursued this military campaign against Russia. For the European bourgeoisies, Russia’s defeat represents the only way out, offering a much-needed lifeline through the imperialist plunder of Russian resources and the carving up of Eastern Europe currently under Russian influence.

Defeating Russia is therefore the only way to emerge from the economic crisis, and given that Russia is winning the war on the battlefield, European support for Ukraine must be viewed within the perspective of a long-term war. So far, Russia has held firm; using Ukraine has failed to bring Russia to its knees, just as sanctions have, but the path is set: once Ukraine’s resources have been fully drained, it will fall to the Europeans to plunge directly into war against Russia. However, this perspective requires time for rearmament, and that time is bought by flooding Kyiv with billions and weapons, turning Ukrainians into cannon fodder. In essence, arming Ukraine today serves to rearm Europe for the war of tomorrow.

It is against this backdrop that the 70 billion in support for Ukraine, agreed upon at the NATO summit in Ankara, came into play. The European Union will provide approximately 30 billion euros as part of the so-called Ukraine Support Loan, a financial aid package for Ukraine allocated by the EU for the 2026–27 period, set to reach a total of 90 billion euros. Of this amount, 30 billion euros are earmarked for 2026 to fund Ukraine’s rearmament, thereby integrating these funds into the plan established at the Ankara summit. The remaining 40 billion will be funded by individual states, specifically, those countries in Central and Northern Europe that are providing the greatest support to Ukraine.

The halt in US financial flows to Ukraine in early 2025 has been almost entirely offset by increased contributions from the EU and individual European countries. According to data from the Kiel Institute, funding for Kyiv reached one of its peaks last June, the third-highest since the start of the conflict, at €7.2 billion; when added to the allocations from May, the total reaches nearly €11 billion. Data provided by the institute also reveal a trend of maintaining military aid at the previous year’s levels, while financial and humanitarian aid are declining, alongside a reliance on US arms supplies, with Europeans allocating at least €3 billion in military aid between January and June for weapons manufactured by American companies.

In essence, the withdrawal of US financial backing is not fully offset by increased contributions from Europeans; given this reduced availability of economic resources for Ukraine, priority tends to be given to military aid, with American weaponry forming the backbone of that support, at the expense of other Ukrainian budgetary needs and humanitarian supplies, confirming that the role assigned to Ukrainians is to fight and die against Russia in the interests of Western bourgeoisies.

Europe needs all these billions to buy the time required for its rearmament, a process that relies primarily on individual European countries.

German imperialism will come out on top, its economic power far surpassing that of the other European countries. This is not a matter of political choice, but an unavoidable course of action to halt the country’s deindustrialization; rearmament plans are serving to revitalize German industry, which had been stifled by the loss of access to low-cost Russian energy and had ceased to be competitive on the global market.

The costs of European rearmament are being shifted entirely onto the shoulders of the proletariat, which will pay the price through a deterioration in living and working conditions.

Faced with rearmament plans and the imperialist war, which is threatening to expand beyond Ukraine, the proletariat will be called upon to shed sweat and blood for the bourgeois fatherland.

Only if united in genuinely class-based organizations that reject any appeal to national sacrifice, and under the leadership of the Communist Party, will the proletariat be able to fulfill its historic task of seizing power and destroying the bourgeois rule that is preparing a new, gigantic massacre.

The slain so-called Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamene’i, has been put to rest in his coffin, adorned in the national banner, and surrounded by the other members of his family, killed alongside him in his compound. This convocation has seen groups and delegates of different persuasions, from all around the world, come together to extend their respects to the late leader, who helped grow Iran into the imperialist force it is today. It is said that a nationalist fervor has swept across the whole of the country; while the workers yesterday struggled against and were executed under the Iranian bourgeoisie’s rule, today, these bourgeois lackeys and sycophants would like us to believe, the proletariat congregates and cries mournful tears for their Rahbar! Fairy-tales aside, there is no doubt that such a tumultuous time, as befell Iran during these long and desperate weeks, has only resulted in the suffering of workers’ to increase tenfold. The proletariat, at its most vulnerable, and without their party, often rallies to the bourgeoisie as it sees no other evident recourse. The bourgeoisie gladly accepts any bodies that they can utilize to carry out their interests and other shrewd calculations, especially if it is extracted under the veneer of voluntary service, or worse, a “common interest” against a “common enemy.”

But there is another burial ceremony, one which has not yet convened, but whose corpse still flounders about, whose death throes and thrashing gives the false impression that it has not lost so much of its power. The United States, with its title as the financial world hegemon, has had its hegemony slowly yet assuredly wrung from its fingertips for several decades now. That American section of the bourgeoisie, whose intention is to reassert the United States back onto the global stage by warhawk means, through their desperate jingoism, and with the optimistic cheerleading of Israeli leadership, led to this new military episode. The initial stated purpose was supposedly “regime change in Iran,” but was later revised to simply, “seizing oil and gas”. The true rationale is of course the further division of the world market in favor of American and Israeli joint interests. This is why, when the strike to political leadership did not effectively give them a willing puppet, the American government instead was compelled to seize Iranian cargo ships, all in order to acquire said oil and gas for themselves.

This whole event does not come to us unexpectedly. To showcase the unchanging nature of imperialism, we shall quote in full from our work first printed decades ago in Comunismo n. 53’s “The Shift in Imperial Balances: Between Economic Crisis and Rumors of War,” released in December 2002:
“Anyone who thinks that the fact that bourgeois states take up arms against—or in defense of—“rogue states” is proof of, or a triumph of, power is sorely mistaken. The triumph is forced, and the display of power is historically defensive and compelled. There is no unexpected “end of history” with the definitive triumph of the American Empire, nor is there the disappearance of nation-states into a single empire without borders or a center, as some pygmies delude themselves into believing. On the contrary, we are on the eve of processes that Marxism has long awaited. America’s loud voice is an expression of the decline of its hegemony over the world. Smaller capitalist states such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and others are demanding their share, seeking influence in their own regions, and snarling through clenched teeth at the Yankee mastiff. Washington would like to unify the bourgeois world under its interests, but that world is already unified—in the overflow of its all-too-jarring and uncontrollable contradictions.”

Today, not only do we see that these smaller capitalist states are necessarily continuing to “demand their share” as a byproduct of the capitalist mode of production, but that this “American Empire,” however limited it was before in its rallying cries, most assuredly diminished to an even greater degree! It has gone to the extent that the American state apparatus’s frequent criticisms and lambastings against their “European Allies” for not joining the war is treated as nothing to be taken seriously at all. America’s foreign policy, its hyper bloated military apparatus, is indeed not proof of its supremacy; rather, this frequent fighting, this gamble to try and put itself back on the map, shows just how much America has declined. Now, it must desperately vie for its position on the world stage.
Iran, whatever is to be said of their perceived “victory,” and whether or not it will ultimately prove pyrrhic, nonetheless had most European states ceaselessly demanding an immediate end to the war, lest their economies fall into deeper recesses, and their stockpiles of oil and gas reserves run dry. This fragility of the world economy allowed for Iran to have favorable conditions be agreed to in the “Iran Deal.” It is to nobody’s surprise however, that these terms will forever remain a bourgeois formality. There has already been constant zigzagging and disagreements regarding the deal, further missile strikes and threats have resumed and ceased and so on. This instability is only aiding the decline of American hegemony, the Israeli state, which many on the “left” falsely prescribe as being leashed entirely to American interests, has routinely taken their own paths, and made their own military maneuvers, in spite of what is desired by the Americans for the procurement of this so-called deal.

What is certain though, is that these post-war conditions must not equate to an undying loyalty to one’s bourgeois leadership. The proletariat cannot feel satisfied by this alleged defeat of their enemies, operated by a fully capitalist country to the detriment of the world’s most stately imperialism. It mustn’t fall to further nationalism, nor the desire for revenge against the workers of these other nations. The proletariat must identify their strife, “the depopulation caused by massacres, sickness, hunger, etc., and the immense destruction of wealth, with the consequent economic crisis, and the impossibility of developing industry and agriculture through lack of capital and labour”, with the bourgeoisies of not only their nation, but of all others!

The Iranian workers who suffer terribly under the yoke of capital ought to consolidate their strength within a fighting force that is truly their own, that which is truly proletarian, under the leadership and discipline of the International Communist Party. American workers must likewise see the cracks in the hull, and assert that they will not go down with the bourgeoisie who captains the ship of American financial interests; they must embark on the difficult path of all workers in advanced countries, and bring about the total destruction of their nation’s hegemony, establishing instead the merciless scythe of the proletarian dictatorship, which is the only answer to imperialism, and the only force which can bring an end to war.

The corporatist model of relations between trade unions, employers, and the state, which has long inspired so-called “concertation,” had already been initiated by the General Confederation of Labor in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. It was brought to completion and made the rule with the advent of fascism, following the defeats suffered by the proletarian movement and the destruction of its organizations, which had been led to capitulation by the counterrevolutionary leadership that had held sway until then.

The corporations brought together representatives of the trade union, the employers, and the State. They became part of the state machine and served as the clearing house in which concertation took place (precisely!), with the aim of preventing conflicts between wage earners and capital. A result that could not always be achieved, however, sometimes forcing even the fascist trade union, under pressure from the proletariat, to take up conflicts in defense of workers’ demands. Indeed, there can never be a regime that can abolish class struggle by decree.

The organizations were then rebuilt after the Second World War with no break in continuity with fascist trade unionism, under the aegis of the parties of the Resistance (CLN), the Church, and American and Russian imperialism (Pact of Rome of June 3, 1944). The aim was to immediately rein in the proletariat, which, in the tragic conditions in which it found itself, could have set about its economic defense independently, as had been shown in the strikes in northern Italy in ’43, later those of the agricultural laborers in Puglia, and then the struggles in the South that had led to the reconstitution of the red CGL in Naples. In effect refusing the terrible sacrifices demanded for postwar reconstruction, to which the false communist and socialist Parties intended to bend it.

In our organ, “Battaglia Comunista,” we then described the resurrected CGIL, which had emerged from the Pact of Rome (which added the I, standing for “Italian”), as an organization “tailored to Mussolini’s model” (“The Trade Union Splits in Italy” — May 1949).

This founding characteristic of the CGIL, reborn after the war, has revealed itself ever more clearly as the period of economic recovery and the scope for substantial action in support of workers’ demands have drawn to a close. As capitalism moved toward an ever deeper crisis, a policy of increasingly abandoning the defense of workers’ conditions and accepting the sacrifices imposed in the name of the “national economy” was forced upon the collaborationist unions.

In a corporatist vein, as early as 1983, with the bargaining round about to begin and in order to establish from the outset the conditions under which the platforms of demands would be drawn up, an agreement was signed between the Government, CGIL–CISL–UIL, and Confindustria, entitled “Comprehensive Protocol of Agreement on Labor Costs,” in which, while the government undertook to contain the tax burden on wages, the trade union undertook to concede flexibility in working hours, mobility between companies, part-time and fixed-term employment, and stricter controls on absenteeism. Even the compatible limits on wage increases were set, and these had to be respected in the platforms of demands.

Subsequently, faced with the growth of rank-and-file unionism, which had already emerged as a reaction to confederal collaborationism in public employment and the services (hospital workers, railway and tram workers, flight attendants, school workers, employees of the State and local authorities, etc.), the need arose to block the development of these movements in industry as well and to lock in the Confederations’ representative role, establishing them as the sole interlocutor designated to represent the workers.

In June 2011 and January 2014, agreements were drawn up between Confindustria and the confederal unions, establishing as the benchmark for representation the weighted average of the membership figure that each company would supply on the basis of the authorizations signed by each worker for payroll deduction of union dues for payroll deduction of union dues, and the votes obtained in elections to the unitary workplace union bodies (RSU). Only the trade union organizations that signed these agreements — concluded with the three confederations — would be entitled to represent the workers. Thus, to be considered “representative” (so-called “certified representation”), the rank-and-file organizations opposed to the confederal line would have had to sign the agreements and accept the system of payroll deduction of union dues, making their membership data known and thereby exposing their members to repression by the employers. It should be noted that, for precisely this reason, our Party firmly opposed the authorization system — that is, joining the union through the boss — from the moment it was introduced, insisting on direct membership.

Thus concertation between the unions and Confindustria arrives at the agreement of February 28, 2018, which defines the so-called “Pact for the Factory.”

Here, the preamble declares the intention to pursue “balanced governance of collective bargaining” and “increased productivity in enterprises,” in order to “close the competitiveness gap and the disparities that persist relative to the other major competing economies.” It would therefore be a matter of establishing “an autonomous, innovative, and participatory model of industrial relations that supports the competitiveness of sectors and production chains.” It should be noted that, when “productivity” is spoken of, this must be understood as “greater exploitation” of wage labor.

And so we arrive at the question of representation, reaffirmed in the terms already defined in the previous agreements to prevent so-called “contractual dumping,” that is, agreements concluded with parties “without certified representation.”

The national collective agreement “will retain its function as a regulator of industrial relations […] directing company-level agreements […] toward the recognition of pay provisions tied to real and agreed targets for growth in company productivity.”

The agreement then addressed other points, likewise guided by collaboration aimed at increasing company productivity and competitiveness, which we will not comment on here.

What we want to bring out is the attempt to safeguard and assert the exclusivity of trade union action managed by the Confederations, against any prospect of the formation and growth from below of trade union organizations that oppose the confederal line, and, by appealing to the workers’ rank and file, win its support and call on it to mobilize, breaking the pact of collaboration established by the confederal unions with the employers on the opposing side and with the State that safeguards their interests.

And so, remembering the struggles over workers’ demands in the years of economic recovery, we find that bargaining rounds proceed quietly, even for the traditionally strongest and most combative groups of workers, such as metalworkers. The platforms drawn up in the name of “compatibility” are presented in workplaces in an unobtrusive manner, and the few strikes are a formulaic ritual that involves the workers in the sector to no great extent, still less in solidarity with other groups of workers who are also awaiting ratification of their agreements. The conclusion of the negotiations, on the terms provided for by concertation, also takes place without fanfare. Nor does ratification any longer follow a real “consultation of the rank and file,” which we already knew was steered toward securing approval, but which nevertheless allowed dissent to be expressed in factory assemblies, leading in some cases to outright rejection.

It will not, however, be possible to stop class struggle through the pacts and dozens of agreements that the confederal unions proceed to establish in order to assure Capital of social peace. Capitalism, moving toward a structural crisis, will once again bring the working class to repudiate all the pacts made at its expense and the forums for concertation.

By rebuilding its organizations of economic defense and finding its political leadership once again in the Communist Party, the working class will again express its full potential for action. In this case, “representativeness” will not need to be “certified,” but will be imposed by the strength expressed by the genuinely class-based organization.

Last April, the Indian industrial city of Noida saw large-scale revolts and a series of strikes that brought daily life to a standstill and led to the erection of barricades.

Pent-up anger over the new labor law, which came into force in November 2025 and allows working hours to be extended to 10–12 hours, erupted on a massive scale, with wage disparities providing the spark.

This working-class revolt began with a sudden strike by contract workers at the Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India plant in Haryana, a state bordering Noida. They were demanding a wage increase.

On April 8, around 3,000 workers from a dozen companies in Haryana had gathered at IMT Manesar to support their fellow workers’ struggle.

On April 9, when the Haryana state government yielded to the struggle by raising the minimum wage by 35%, Noida workers, mainly in the garment, hosiery, and light industry sectors, doing the same work as workers in Haryana but earning almost 6,000 rupees less a month, immediately grasped the situation and took to the streets to demand higher wages.

The demands of Noida’s workers, who are literally fighting for survival, can be listed as follows:

• A minimum wage of 20,000–26,000 rupees, compared with the current wages of 10,000–15,000 rupees in Uttar Pradesh, which have not been revised since 2014;
• A maximum working day of 8 hours, against the current norm of 12–16-hour shifts on all seven days of the week;
• Overtime paid at twice the regular rate for hours worked beyond normal working hours, a legal requirement systematically violated in practice;
• Payment of the unpaid wages owed by various employers;
• Equal conditions for temporary and permanent staff, including written contracts, paid annual leave, and social security entitlements; implementation of rights of which 58–67% of the workforce in Uttar Pradesh is entirely deprived;
• Repeal or withdrawal of four new labor laws that, according to the unions, have legalized 13-hour working days and stripped workers of their collective bargaining rights.

The protests in Noida began with work stoppages and mass peaceful sit-ins at more than 82 factories.

On April 9 and 10, workers gathered near the NSEZ metro station in Phase 2 (a major industrial hub and officially designated industrial area in Noida) and took to the streets, demanding a minimum wage of at least 20,000 rupees to survive. Tensions between workers and management intensified on the second and third days.

The protests began spontaneously, without the leadership of the established unions, as workers were spurred into action by the impact of the wage increase in Haryana.

At the grassroots level, the labor organizations present from the outset included Mazdoor Adhikar Sangharsh Abhiyan (MASA), an umbrella organization bringing together 16 small unions, alongside Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, IFTU Sarvahara, Mazdoor Ekta Committee, All India Labor Reform Sangharsh Abhiyan (AILRSA), and Naujawan Bharat Sabha.

These unions operate outside the main trade union federations, focusing particularly on unorganized workers and contract workers.

The strike and protests in Noida served as a point of reference for workers’ struggles in various Indian states. The Noida strike sparked solidarity strikes at Motherson Group plants in Faridabad and Bhiwadi.

Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, described the incident as a “conspiracy” aimed at derailing the workers’ actions.

On the fifth day, April 13, the struggle degenerated into violence; around 45,000 workers blocked all the main roads, including NH-9, Sector 62, and the access routes to Akshardham.

In Sector 84, some vehicles were set on fire, and reports emerged of stone-throwing and other violent incidents; the police used tear gas against the workers.

Large security contingents, including the PAC and the RAF (the State’s police force), were deployed in the area, and all police leave was canceled.

The workers pouring into the streets denounced the harsh conditions of the class struggle against capital; they were rebelling against 12- to 16-hour shifts, unpaid wages, and the systematic denial of their needs by the bourgeoisie, which left them without any security.

During the protests, one worker summed up the plight of their class: “Rent is 5,000 rupees. Once you add food, transport, and the children’s education, it is impossible to survive on this wage.”

Police violence peaked on April 13–14; more than 350 workers were arrested. Those detained were subjected to ill-treatment.

This violence will remain etched in the memory of the proletariat. Like every counterrevolutionary force, the police will sooner or later pay for it.

By April 16, most factories had resumed operations, and the protests had become scattered, localized gatherings. The intense phase of the revolt therefore lasted about a week, from April 9 to 16.

Outside the industrial areas, Noida’s domestic workers officially joined the protests, demanding wage increases and better working conditions.

This shows how, with a more organized and militant core at the forefront, the entire working class, even workers who are more dispersed and disorganized because of their working conditions, can unite in struggle.

On Saturday, April 17, the Uttar Pradesh government officially announced revised minimum wages for specific jobs throughout the state. These wages were published in accordance with Section 3(b) of the India States and Union Territories Industrial Disputes Act of 1947 and replaced the previous wage decision dated March 25, 2026.

Although the protests were suppressed, the wage demands were taken into account in order to placate the protesters, and substantial wage increases were implemented. The increases varied according to workers’ skill levels and are well below the 20,000–26,000 rupees demanded by the workers and unions.

Deeper structural problems, such as the absence of written contracts, the lack of social security, the four labor laws, and the criminalization of protests, remain entirely unresolved.

At the end of April, more than 350 workers were still in custody. Seven First Information Reports (FIRs) had been registered, and lawyers reported that various additional charges had been brought to prevent their release on bail.

From April 30 to May 8, Section 163 of the Indian Penal Code (restrictions on public assemblies) was enforced throughout Gautam Buddh Nagar district, covering the May Day period. The restrictions affected International Workers’ Day in order to prevent workers’ demonstrations on that day.

Although bourgeois left-wing organizations were not very effective during the strikes, they tried to influence the workers with their opportunist political lines.

Rising oil and gas prices will lead to higher inflation in the coming months, leaving the wage increases won through these struggles, which were already below what had been demanded, insufficient to meet the needs of the Indian working class. Together with workers around the world, it will once again take up the struggle for its immediate interests.

The only way for workers to overcome these strike bans and police violence and confront the capitalist economic crisis is to organize in militant class-struggle unions under the leadership of the Communist Party and overthrow bourgeois rule in India and throughout the world.

If there were ever a need, it is worth reiterating our traditional “principles” regarding war between imperialist states, and—without presuming to explain everything—returning to the simple words of our teachers. This is the fundamental principle. Then we must consider the historical facts, but without losing sight of the ultimate goal: revolutionary preparation.

In ongoing wars, the Party cannot avoid studying how operations unfold, certainly by studying bourgeois military professionals—without presuming to know more, strictly from a military standpoint, about how strategies and maneuvers develop, what innovations military technology enables, and the chances of one side prevailing over the other. Likewise, it must analyze, in light of its materialist doctrine, the remote and immediate causes of war.

Naturally, what it cannot afford to do is to favor one side over the other in its rigorous analyses, for that would amount to open betrayal of the proletariat—a historically international class, even if it is currently tied to the chariot of the bourgeois state.

Our Founding Principles

In his essay “Resolutions on Imperialist War,” Lenin defines with razor-sharp clarity the conditions and characteristics of modern wars that imperialist powers wage—either directly or through third-party states—during the most critical phases of their historical trajectory:

“Modern war is imperialist in character. This war was generated by the conditions of an era in which capitalism has reached its highest stage of development; in which the export of capital has become no less significant than the export of commodities; in which production is regulated by producers’ cartels and the internationalization of economic life has reached enormous proportions; in which colonial policy has led to the partition of nearly the entire globe; — in which the productive forces of world capitalism have transcended the narrow boundaries of the divisions between nation-states; — in which the objective conditions for the realization of socialism have fully matured”

These words form the cornerstone of our conception of armed conflicts between states and coalitions of states, and they entirely rule out the notion of blame on one side or the other—a concept so dear to the petty bourgeoisie, through which they explain conflicts in a simple and satisfying manner, distinguishing, according to ideological alignments, the “good” from the “bad,” and the “less good” from the “worst.” Guided in this direction, aided and supported by the regime’s press, which cheers for one side or the other, the Party clears the field of moral judgments regarding alleged aggressions against which the other side must defend itself.

For every imperialist conflict, this is the Communist interpretation. The text, however, also expresses another corollary concept, which is equally binding on the Party’s action and its agitation:

“… The nationalist ideology generated by that era has left a deep mark on the petty

bourgeoisie and on a section of the proletariat. Today, in a profoundly different imperialist era, the bourgeois sophists and the traitors to socialism who follow in their wake exploit this fact to divide the workers and divert them from their class objectives and from the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Now more than ever, the words of the Communist Manifesto ring true: “Workers have no country.” Only an international struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie can safeguard its gains and pave the way for a better future for the oppressed masses.”

In wars instigated by imperialist powers in areas of fully developed capitalism, it is reactionary to invoke the argument of defending the homeland. On the contrary, communists will always fight for the militant solidarity that must exist among soldiers on opposing sides. The Party’s clear position is to reject war—not for the sake of peace, but in order to turn arms against bourgeois adversaries: both those of one’s own state and those of the enemy state.

This is the lesson of 1917. Our criteria regarding wars between states, as stated, are simple and easy to understand, and our slogans are equally straightforward. Bourgeois peace is always a defeat for the international proletariat, regardless of who emerges victorious. It has always been this way, and the bourgeoisies of the defeated states have always recovered at the expense of the proletarians in uniform whom they sent to die on the battlefields.

In an exhausted and weary Europe that vainly seeks an international dimension and military and political unity, the “Special Military Operation,” as it was defined by the Russian state, has continued for nearly five years with desperate meticulousness, bringing endless grief, misery, and death—incited and supported by both Western and Eastern states alike—amid friction along the borders of areas controlled by competing imperialist powers. This war was motivated by a purported fight against fascism and declared support for the pro-Russian populations of Ukraine, who have been mired for years in a grueling guerrilla war against the central government. The picture is clear, even if the petty-bourgeois advocates of blame and grievances refuse to accept an objective assessment of the facts.

Like Ukraine, Russia, too, is in flames. And the European states more or less directly involved in the conflict are in the grip of a progressive deterioration. The overall economic situation is deteriorating sharply, and Ukraine’s desperate bombing campaign—aimed at easing the military pressure on the ground, which is undoubtedly yielding slow but steady successes, though at an unknown cost—has already impacted the production and distribution of fuel and perhaps even food, especially for the neglected Crimea, which was “liberated” from Ukrainian rule in 2014 and is now subject to a fierce blockade as an area directly affected by military operations

However, the data released by the two warring parties differ strikingly, and—for what they’re worth in terms of accuracy and reliability—do not allow for a reliable assessment of the war’s devastation, which is, after all, to be expected during a war and should come as no surprise. This toll, however, appears to be heavy even for Russia, and falls primarily on the lower middle class and the working class, who are the first to bear the burden. The Russian president himself has publicly acknowledged the economic hardships caused by the bombings and has promised tough and appropriate responses. It is likely—even if nothing has officially been disclosed—that a faction within the Russian government is pushing for peace or at least a ceasefire. But peace does not serve anyone’s interests at this time, with the exception of the soldiers on opposing sides at the front who are enduring unspeakable suffering.

But they matter little to Russia and Ukraine.

Certainly, the Ukrainian population is under far greater economic and social pressure, and the immense debt incurred with the generous Western “Shylocks” will, once the war ends—who knows when—become a noose around the neck of this tormented country.

The toll of proletarian blood that the war demands to sustain itself will be an extremely heavy burden for the population of the Russian Federation in the years to come, and just as will happen in Ukraine—perhaps on an even larger scale— the postwar period will be marked—assuming, though this is by no means certain, that the war remains confined to its current scope—by intense and dramatic popular uprisings that will force the respective governments to resort to brutal repression to maintain “public order.”

But without a strong and deeply rooted Communist Party—we repeat, both in the Federation and in Ukraine—it is absurd and ahistorical to presume that these events could in any way serve as a catalyst to awaken the class consciousness of the proletariat and “transcend national borders,” as some are imagining with a feeble, ahistorical, and anti-Marxist hope. A poor, far-fetched dialectic for the utopian dreams of those who expect a sort of new 1905. Either the Class Party is reborn, or communism remains a utopia with no future. Likewise, we consider it essential for the proletariat of Russia and Ukraine that a strong trade union based on genuinely class-oriented principles be reborn in some form; this is the other condition—albeit less urgent but equally necessary—for the reconstitution of the Communist Political Party of Russia and Ukraine.

But this goes far beyond the meager forces of our Russian and Ukrainian comrades, and above all, the rebirth of the Class-Based Trade Union rests essentially on the shoulders of the two proletariats. The comrades, however, will have to work to make this prospect a reality.

The soldiers who return after the unlikely peace will lack the strength and resolve to take up arms again against their own bourgeoisies. The lesson of 1919 in Germany has gone unheeded by these dreamers of a revival at the end of the war. Yet it is a likely scenario—one that is utterly detrimental to the fate of the Revolution—that the conflict might spread and merge with the hundred hotbeds of war; and in this unfortunate case, the flames of a world war could consume the revolutionary revival. It must be made clear that without a strong, widespread, and pervasive Communist Party within society, there is no future for the proletariat—and perhaps not even for humanity. But our indomitable revolutionary optimism will always stand against this dystopia.

For now, the Russian Federation is reviving, within its government apparatus, the dream of the Great Patriotic War personified by Stalin; the parties admitted to the Russian parliament are competing to see who supports the war with the greatest enthusiasm, even as they raise the red flag of the revolution. Meanwhile, oligarchs and the bourgeoisie—both large and small—are ruthlessly profiting from the war at the expense of the combatants and the petty bourgeoisie.

This has always been the case in the past and continues in the present. Similarly, Ukrainian rulers and members of the bourgeoisie—who were once called “war profiteers” by the proletariat and members of the lower classes—are amassing wealth, which they are prudently transferring outside the country’s borders. Meanwhile, their Russian counterparts are finding it difficult to carry out similar operations, having been stung by the freezing of their foreign deposits in European financial institutions. Under conditions of “peace” between states, this would be inconceivable according to capitalist ethics, but war is, after all, an objective reality, and the ideological forms of private property are blithely disregarded. Nothing new under the sun.

Meanwhile, European nations have unofficially called for a farcical crackdown on the corruption rampant in Ukraine, which is triggering a whirlwind of resignations among government officials. Yet theft, fraud, and embezzlement are unlikely to cease anytime soon. In fact, they certainly won’t cease at all, but “it’s the principle that counts.” There is no doubt that a fierce internal struggle is unfolding among the various factions occupying Ukraine’s political and military structure—a struggle made even more bitter by the refusal to hold elections, which allows unqualified and compromised political figures to remain at the highest levels of government.

In Russia, on the other hand, they pride themselves on holding the elections mandated by law, which will allow those already exercising political power to continue to hold onto it—but in a “democratic” manner. Democracy is the most colossal fraud that the bourgeois world, as a whole, has orchestrated against the international proletariat. We communists certainly do not lament the sordid and inglorious demise of a political mechanism that, since the last century, has exhausted its function of renewing government lineups to become a despicable smokescreen that guarantees social peace in non-critical times and is swiftly replaced by open bourgeois dictatorship in times of tension.

Russia’s electoral alternative is false and nonexistent, “blackened by the soot of war”; Ukraine’s is insipid and utterly devoid of substance—a squabble entirely confined to the upper echelons of the state.

It is possible that these deceptive maneuvers foreshadow a sort of ceasefire, before the whole situation degenerates into a much wider conflict.

But at this moment, no possible solution in line with our revolutionary perspective is in sight.