[GM7] Bases of Party Action in the Field of Proletarian Economic Struggles Pt. 2

4. – INVARIANCE OF THE MARXIST PERSPECTIVE IN THE TRADE UNION FIELD

It’s on the foundation of absolute fidelity to the theory of the proletarian revolution, preventing any updating and revision of it, on the foundation of absolute fidelity to the strategic and tactical perspective reestablished in the early post-WW1 period by the October Revolution and the Third International, that the class party has been able to consistently read the events of the historical cycle after 1926 and, without being misled by any drive to revise and correct the bases of action of the revolutionary proletarian movement, follow its unfavorable events while also drawing from them the lessons and experiences useful for strengthening the revolutionary direction of all time.

To follow the actual course of the battle and the power relations between the classes, to explain its vicissitudes, its ups and downs, its mistakes and defeats without ever indulging in “revisionist doubt”, that is, the instinct to “revise” the basis of the revolutionary perspective drawn in a century of battles and considered immutable: this distinguishes the class party, but also its unique ability to understand the facts and to accumulate, through the facts, valuable experiences for the improvement of the proletarian army in future battles.

And we once again issue to all our opponents this challenge and to the workers who follow us this unequivocal criterion of judgment: which of the movements that, since 1926, have succeeded one another on the scene, good or bad, with small or big forces, with small or big names, claiming to the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat has not allowed itself to be attracted by making some small tweak to Marxist science and perspective, suggesting that the present world cannot be explained on the simple and linear canons of Marx’s doctrine and that it should be corroborated with the “latest contributions” of the most modern “research”? Which has not been tainted over the past fifty years with the defeatist admission that, having been beaten, perhaps it was appropriate to go and “revise” the very basis of our movement’s perspective? Who did not fall in line with the chorus of bourgeois propaganda that would have liked, after bringing the world proletariat to its knees, to win even the supreme victory, convincing it not that it had been defeated and was suffering from unfavorable power relations, but that it had mistaken the very plan of action? All of them have been on that side.

And that’s abandoning the last trench that the forces of the revolution were responsible for defending, having lost all other possibilities: the prospect of the resumption of revolutionary motion in the classical terms as seen by Marxist doctrine.

That is why the party, resurrected after World War II, didn’t have to expound “new positions” in the field of its behavior with respect to proletarian economic struggles and economic organizations, nor to dictate new norms. The problem of the relations between the party and the proletarian class, between revolutionary class struggle and immediate economic struggles, between revolutionary political organism and economic defense organizations, between the revolutionary Communist Party and other parties and tendencies having roots within the proletarian masses is to be considered completely and definitively resolved by the Marxist tradition over a span of 70 years of world struggles and experiences, starting with the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and ending with the theses of the Second Congress of the Third International in 1920, the Rome Theses of 1922 of the Communist Party of Italy and the Lyon Theses of 1926.

He who does not find in these texts the answer to what the party’s behavior in the trade union field should be in 1977, let him not presume to draft new theses. Let him in full modesty re-reading and study that perspective in the precise conviction that, should it prove insufficient or incomplete, the whole of Marxism blows up.

Thus as early as 1945 “The Party Platform” enunciated, in classical terms, the task of communists vis-à-vis the labor movement:

«In the forefront of the party’s political tasks is the work in the trade unions for its development and strengthening. The criterion, by now common to both fascist and democratic union politics, of attracting the workers’ unions among state bodies, under the various forms of its regulation with juridical framework, must be fought against. The party aspires to the reconstruction of the trade union Confederation, fully independent from the direction of State Offices, acting with the methods of class struggle and direct action against the bosses, from local and category claims to whole class interests. Workers belonging to different parties or to no party at all can join the workers’ union; the communists neither propose nor provoke the division of the unions due to the fact that their governing bodies are wholly in the hands of other parties, but they fully openly proclaim that the purpose of the union is completed and integrated only when the political class party of the proletariat is at the head of the economic bodies. Any other influence on the proletariat’s union organizations not only takes away from them the fundamental character of revolutionary organizations demonstrated by all history of class struggle, but makes them sterile for those very purposes of immediate economic improvements, by making them passive instruments in service of the interests of the bosses.

«The solution given in Italy to the formation of a central union with a compromise not between three mass proletarian parties, as such a thing does in fact not exist, but between three groups of hierarchies, of extra-proletarian cliques with pretensions to the succession of the fascist regime, must be fought by inciting the workers to overthrow this opportunistic apparatus of professional counter-revolutionaries. The Italian trade union movement must return to its traditions of open and close support of the proletarian class party, leveraging on the vital resurgence of its local bodies, the glorious Chambers of Labor, which both in the great industrial centers and in the proletarian rural areas were protagonists of great openly political and revolutionary struggles».

In 1951 and 1952 the trade union question was taken up by the party in several of its texts, aimed at reaffirming the classic perspective of the early post-WW1 period in this field as well, restoring it strengthened and unaltered precisely by examining “what has changed in the trade union field since the wars and totalitarianisms”.

The most important of these texts is “Revolutionary Party and Economic Action”. Divided into points that constitute actual theses, the text recalls that at the Second World Congress in 1920 two major questions of tactics were debated: parliamentary action and trade union action.

«The delegates of the anti-electionist current would now marshal against the so-called left- wing, which supported splitting the unions and giving up the attempt to conquer trade unions led by opportunists».

This is a fundamental deviation from principles by which one leaves the Marxist camp. It’s, as we have seen elsewhere, the petit-bourgeois and anarchist vision opposed to the Marxist vision of the revolutionary process. Indeed, the text continues:

« (…) these currents after all situated the centre of revolutionary action in the trade unions and not in the party, and wanted them pure of bourgeois influence (Dutch tribunists, German KAPD, American Syndicalists, Shop Stewards, etc).

« 2. From then on the Left waged a bitter struggle against these movements analogous to the “Ordine Nuovo” group of Turin, which saw the revolutionary task as consisting in emptying the trade unions to the advantage of the movement for factory councils, with the latter interpreted as the framework of the economic and State organs of the proletarian revolution initiated under full-blown capitalism. These movements thus seriously confused the instruments with the timing of the revolutionary process.

« 3. The trade union and parliamentary questions are on an entirely different plane altogether. Parliament is clearly the organ of the bourgeois State which claims to represent all classes in society, and all revolutionary Marxists agree that it is impossible for it to form the basis for any other power than that of the bourgeoisie (…)

« 4. Given that the trade unions are professional and economic associations, they will always bring together individuals of the same class, no matter who leads them. It is quite possible that those proletarians organized within them will elect representatives who are not just moderate but totally bourgeois, and that the unions will come directly under the sway of capitalist influences. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the trade unions are composed exclusively of workers and thus it will never be possible to say of them what we say about parliament, namely, that it is only susceptible to a bourgeois direction.

« 5. In Italy, before the foundation of the Communist Party, socialists refused to work in the catholic or republican unions. Later on, at the time of the great Confederazione Generale del Lavoro led mainly by reformists and of the Unione Sindacale led by anarchists, communists would declare, unanimously and unhesitatingly, that they wouldn’t be setting up new unions but instead would work inside and conquer the aforementioned ones and indeed work towards their unification. In the international field, the Italian party would unanimously support not only work in all the national social-democratic unions, but also the existence of the Red International Union (Profintern), which saw the Amsterdam Centre as unconquerable because of its links, by way of the International Labor Office, with the bourgeois League of Nations. The Italian Left was violently opposed to the proposal to liquidate the Profintern in order to constitute one single Trade Union International, still asserting, nonetheless, the principle of unity and internal conquest of the unions and national federations».

Describing the historical stages in the evolution of trade unions and the more recent one also underway at present, the text concludes:

« 8. Apart from the question of whether or not in such and such a country the revolutionary communist party should participate in the work of given types of union, the elements of the question recapitulated so far lead to the conclusion that any prospect of a general revolutionary movement will depend on the presence of the following essential factors: 1) a large, numerous proletariat of pure wage-earners, 2) a sizeable movement of associations with an economic content including a large part of the proletariat, 3) a strong revolutionary class party, which, composed of a militant minority of workers, must have been enabled, in the course of the struggle to oppose, broadly and effectively, its own influence within the union movement to that of the bourgeois class and bourgeois power.

« The factors which have led to establishing the necessity for each and every one of these three conditions, the effective combination of which will determine the outcome of the struggle, were arrived at: a) by a correct application of the theory of historical materialism, which links the basic economic needs of the individual to the dynamics of the great social revolutions, b) by a correct interpretation of the proletarian revolution as regards the problems of the economy, politics, and the State, c) by the lessons derived from the history of all the organized movements of the working class – as much from the degenerations and defeats as from the outstanding achievements and victories.

« The general line of the perspective outlined here does not rule that there will be all kinds of different situations arising in the course of the modification, dissolution, and reconstitution of associations of the union type; all those associations, that is, which arise in various countries, either linked to the traditional organizations which once upon a time declared themselves as based on the class struggle approach, or else more or less tied to the most diverse methods and social tendencies, even conservative ones».

So from the analysis of the changes that had taken place over the past fifty years in the practice and structure of trade union bodies, the party was never led to deny the classic perspective of revolutionary uprising: the absolute necessity for the proletariat to organize itself into a “large movement of associations with an economic content”, and that within it the party is able to oppose its influence to that of the bourgeois class and power.