The disastrous outcome of the counter-revolutionary policy of the trade union centres and the programmatic and tactical line of the International Communist Party

In view of the 6th Congress of the CGIL, scheduled for the end of March in Bologna, and in the tragic recognition of the general state of the proletariat, defeated even more than by the capitalist reaction by the counter-revolutionary leadership of the trade union centers, none excluded – the class party once again proposes to the proletariat the only line of struggle and trade union defence capable of withstanding capitalist pressure in and outside the workplace, and above all capable of unifying and strengthening the working forces.

If the current economic chaos, caused by the contradictions of the existing system of production, has once again revealed the failure of the capitalist bourgeoisie, it has also exposed the absolute inability of the trade union leaderships to protect the proletarian masses. As a matter of fact, they have bound and continue to bind the fate of the exploited to the opportunist politics of self-styled workers’ parties, aiming at sharing positions of privilege in Parliament and in the central and peripheral organs of the capitalist state with the traditional parties of the bourgeoisie, instead of destroying the state apparatus of capital, the real obstacle and enemy of the communist revolution.
The following points are not an original invention of the Party, but represent a line of historical continuity common to all political formations of the revolutionary proletariat, from its origins to the most intense and favourable periods of workers’ struggles, as expressed by Lenin and the Bolshevik Communist Party, the Communist Left and the Communist Party of Italy in its first glorious years of life. In this absolute fidelity and complete adherence to the tradition of revolutionary struggle lies the guarantee that, under favourable conditions of struggle, the proletariat will be able to find the main road to its emancipation.

1 – Capitalist relations of production dominate present-day society, and it is on the basis of these relations that the struggle between the fundamental classes of society is permanent; classes whose interests are contradictory and irreconcilable. On the other hand, the monopolistic development of capitalism increasingly exacerbates class conflicts, rather than mitigating them, insofar as the imperialist phase characterises the agonising and putrefactive state of economic and social structures.

Capitalism is incapable of developing the productive forces in the interest of society as a whole, and is historically ripe to give way to a new and young social formation. Capitalism is only capable of expressing its parasitic nature; it subordinates to its existence, based on the extortion of unpaid labour – profit – all technical and scientific resources and all productive forces, placing part of the fruits of these at the disposal of a layer of intermediate classes, the petty and middle bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy, for the purpose of its own preservation.

2 – Driven by its internal contradictions, the capitalist economy tends to concentrate itself in the state, within which the profit regime finds its only trench to stem the historical assault of the proletariat. State capitalism, predicted by the classics of Marxism and brilliantly described in its real development by Lenin, is therefore the most suitable form for perpetuating the conditions of exploitation of the proletariat.

3 – Today, even more clearly and openly than yesterday, the identity between capitalism and the state, between the interests of the bourgeoisie and the politics of the bourgeois state; it’s evident that the central state is the representative of the permanent historical interests of capitalism, whatever its government, whatever the party or coalition of parties in power. For this reason, every struggle of the proletariat against capital, even if only in defence of its immediate economic and wage conditions, inevitably comes up against the state of capital and constitutes, albeit still in an unconscious form, a subversive action against the established order.

4 – In this historical, social and political context, just as political programmes that straddle the interests of the various conflicting classes are impossible, so a trade union program that seeks to defend the contingent interests of the proletariat while refusing to fight thoroughly against the power of the state representing the bourgeois classes is absolutely inconceivable.

5 – The economic struggles of the proletariat are not the product of anyone’s will. They are imposed by the existing social regime, in which, on the one hand, the capitalist bourgeoisie, with its state, tends to compress the conditions of the working classes within ever narrower limits in order to defend its privileges, and on the other hand, the proletarian masses are driven to resist this permanent capitalist assault in order not to be reduced to slavery.

6 – The trade union thus represents the instrument of economic defence of the proletariat. But the effectiveness of this instrument depends on the political forces that manoeuvre it, on the objectives they set themselves and on the means they employ.

7 – For over forty years, there have been no autonomous revolutionary struggles of the proletariat on the historical scene, which is completely captive to the opportunist parties that dominate all mass organisations, including and above all the trade unions. The trade union, thus directed by non-revolutionary political forces, does not constitute a threat to the capitalist regime even on the terrain of the economic struggle, although the strongest of all, the CGIL, still dares to call itself a ‘class union’.

8 – The explicit proclamation of loyalty to democracy, the republican constitution and the state is proof of open betrayal of the historical interests of the proletariat and of the abandonment of any serious struggle on behalf of wage earners. Democracy is the typical form of the capitalist state, through which it is much easier to deceive the masses of the exploited by giving them the illusion that the current social system, based on the exploitation of the labour force, is eternal and, at most, can be “corrected”. The democratic republican constitution is the official charter of this deception and illusion, designed to distract the proletariat from the achievement of its historical aims, which are the overthrow of the present inhuman regime of production and life and the establishment of communist society.

9 – While the trade union leaders accuse revolutionary communists of being reactionary because of their firm determination to propose the revolutionary solution to social conflicts to the entire proletariat, they are setting the workers’ movement back more than half a century, leading the dispossessed masses into a demagogic and disastrous perspective of reforming economic and social structures, thus wiping out with a stroke of the pen the tragic significance of fifty years of tremendous struggles, which gave rise to two bloody world wars and confirmed the dictatorship of capital.

10 – The perspective agitated by the trade union centres of structural reforms and “democratic planning” leads back to a reformist past, which the history of recent decades has taken it upon itself, often with the utmost violence, to destroy forever, showing that capitalism is not to be reformed but annihilated.

11 – To confine the immediate struggles of the proletariat within the limits of “structural reforms” means to proclaim in advance the renunciation by the trade union centers of any serious defence of wages and jobs: it means pursuing the illusion that the wage-based regime is eternal; it means, consequently, destroying the revolutionary will of the working masses.

12 – The alternative facing the workers’ movement is not “democratic reformism or fascism”, but “open or hidden dictatorship (democracy) of capital or proletarian dictatorship”; it is “victorious communist proletarian revolution or the total destruction of the productive forces”.

13 – The squalid reformist vision has always been fully embraced not only by trade union organisations of bourgeois origin such as the CISL and the UIL, but also, unfortunately, by the CGIL. In the immediate post-war period, in agreement with the opportunist parties behind the two currents at the head of the CGIL, the counter-revolutionary task of rebuilding the “national” economy was proclaimed, and subsequently, when capitalist power had been reconstituted and powerfully strengthened, that of “fighting the monopolies”. During this period, the trade union confederations subordinated their demands to the preservation of the productive apparatus and the national economy, i.e. the substantial privileges of the capitalist classes.

14 – The struggles for differentiated wages favoured the formation of a layer of privileged, better-paid workers at the expense of the large masses of wage earners. The struggles in bits and pieces further divided the working class, allowing the capitalist bosses, company managements and the monopolies themselves to gradually absorb the shock and the workers’ demands without suffering any damage.

Demands for production bonuses, piecework and overtime pay led to increased exploitation of workers, rising unemployment and, in general, the breakdown of class unity.

15 – Strikes that had all the prerequisites for success, impressive demonstrations of working-class strength (1962-1963) were undermined in advance or diverted in the course of the struggle, with the ultimate aim of preventing links between different categories and in fear that the struggles, driven by the tragic conditions of the working class, would become generalised and automatically propose a new and different political direction for the union.

When the economic crisis became more acute and profound, and capitalism rushed to partially dismantle its companies, the trade union centres were unable to organise any general defence of the workers, but allowed layoffs and reductions in working hours to be regulated separately by each company, and the workers’ anger to be dispersed into a thousand local and company-specific episodes, to prevent the proletariat from coming together in a single collective surge to test the validity of direct and generalised struggle against capitalism and, at the same time, to expose the betrayal of the union leaders in the heat of the struggle.

16 – The much-vaunted trade union unity pursued by the CGIL leaders with the white and yellow unions, CISL and UIL, which express the open interests of the bosses, is not and cannot be achieved on the basis of a programme of general interests common to all proletarians, and therefore aims rather at the creation of a single counter-revolutionary trade union organisation that imprisons all wage earners. in the same way that yesterday the only trade union organisation, the CGIL, was broken upby the establishment of the CISL and the UIL with the aim of weakening the natural resistance of the workers as quickly as possible by dividing the proletarian front.

The return to proletarian unity either means – as it does now – the complete abandonment by the CGIL of any semblance of class, or – as we hope – will be the product of the growing class mobilisation of wage earners determined to find a single, compact and invincible organisation, the prerequisite for which is the replacement of treacherous leaders with leaders loyal to the interests of the workers.

For a revolutionary direction of the union

17 – Economic disruption has highlighted the inability of union leaders to propose to the proletariat efficient solutions in defense of wages and jobs: as has clearly demonstrated the absolute impossibility under the capitalist regime of avoiding economic disasters, of achieving a harmonious evolution of the economy. New and deeper crises will put the inescapable direct clash between proletariat and capitalist state on the table to put an end to this mad race towards the destruction of men, means and energies.

18 – Revolutionary communists, on the basis of the centuries-long experience of proletarian struggles, note that the present treacherous trade union leaders will not leave their leadership posts until after they have been driven out by the workers after a not short struggle aimed at eliminating from their ranks the traitors and the sell-outs to the bourgeoisie. This struggle, an evolved form of the class struggle, will take place to the extent that the proletarians decide to pass from a passive submission to opportunist influences to the firm determination to defend by every means their existence, their wages, their jobs, refusing to defend national, patriotic, republican, constitutional interests, behind which capitalist privileges are hidden; refusing to subordinate their economic struggles to the demagogic struggle for structural reforms.

19 – This struggle will be possible to the extent that the proletariat makes the revolutionary communist program its own; it will be victorious on condition that it is directed by its class party, the International Communist Party. For this reason, the revolutionary communists do not plan the creation of new unions, as long as it is possible to carry out revolutionary work in the existing ones, as long as the CGIL does not renounce even formally the class attributes to which it refers, and does not prohibit the creation of currents within it. They do, however, hope for the creation of revolutionary communist groups, through which the revolutionary program of the class party will be spread and leadership positions in the unions will be conquered.

20 – Becoming established within the trade unions of the revolutionary communist program will guarantee the revolutionary unfolding of the struggle of the masses, which is an essential premise for trade unions not to be captured by the capitalist state and to be able to constitute the unitary organization of the proletariat in defense of its economic interests and in view of the seizure of power.

21 – As the clashes between the dispossessed masses on the one hand and the ruling class and their State on the other become more and more acute, the continuation of a so-called neutral policy, equidistant from the parties and the State, which the piecards of the CGIL boast of pursuing, becomes increasingly impossible. In fact, in declaring themselves faithful custodians of the democratic method, they objectively place themselves at the service of the capitalist regime and bind the fate and conditions of the proletariat to those of the capitalist State. Rightly taught by Lenin and the Left, the trade unions cannot pursue a policy independent of the parties: they are either under the influence of opportunist parties, i.e., agents of capitalism, or they are led by the revolutionary party.

22 – The work of the revolutionary communists within the mass organizations of the proletariat is therefore essential, because it serves to unmask the counter-revolutionary policy of the leaders, urges the proletarians to demand greater resoluteness in conducting struggles and in setting contingent objectives, and to guard against collusion between union leaders and company managements. With the establishment of the Company Trade Union Sections, the Union Centrals aim to isolate the proletarians more and more in the workplaces and to restrict the possibility of a general action of the masses.

The first task of the communists is precisely to fight against the corporatism generated by the company based unionism and to give the whole proletariat a general vision of the economic and political problems, to impart to the struggles a class vision that overrides not only the narrow limits of the company, but also those of the category and the sector, the region and the nation, reaffirming that the struggle of the proletariat is an international struggle against a regime, the capitalist one, which extends its domination over the whole world.

23 – Revolutionary communists call on the proletariat to put an end to the ignoble practice of timed strikes, which have been announced in advance to company management, prefectures and police headquarters, strikes which do not inspire any fear in the bourgeoisie and when, through the spontaneous initiative of the workers, they take on an unexpected class consistency, they serve as a reminder and an outlet for the hatred of the bourgeoisie, materializing in harassment, arrests and convictions of proletarians. The strike as is adopted today by the counterrevolutionary centers is a blunt and counterproductive weapon. Only the sudden strike, the widest possible strike, really strikes the economic interests of capitalism, and also prevents it from effectively preparing means of defense and immediate counterattack.

24 – Revolutionary Communists do not pretend to possess a magic formula by which they guarantee, once in the leadership of the Trade Unions, the full and continuous success of the struggles for demands.

Because of the consciousness they derive from being militants of the class party, they are well aware that any conquest in a capitalist regime is transient and ephemeral, and that the awareness of the masses of the inevitability of the victory of communism over capitalism is the indispensable and necessary premise even for the immediate struggles for demands.

For this reason, they will always propose immediate objectives that contain elements that unite and do not divide the many categories into which capitalism has separated the workers into in order to better dominate their strengths and interests; elements that generalize workers’ struggles in order to raise them to the higher political form of class struggle; objectives whose achievement, or even the mere consequent struggle to achieve them, will undermine capitalist interests and oblige the capitalist State to throw off the infamous mask of the Nation or the people, which is to say, the mask of democracy, and to present itself in its true guise as an instrument of the dictatorship of Capital. The characteristic objectives of this revolutionary communist method are the demand for the reduction of the working day with no decrease in pay, the undifferentiated and substantial increase of wages, the granting of wages even to workers who are expelled from production and placed in a state of unemployment, instead of begging in subsidies and misery pittances, and the cessation of piece-meal work and production bonuses, incentives and overtime, to be replaced instead by a general increase in wages.

25 – The myth of the national collective bargaining agreement, as of any type of contract, transfers the importance of the struggle from its social and class ground to its legal and formal ground. On the basis of this legal practice, the Trade Union Centrals instill into the wage-earning class the belief that everything is resolved by the achievement of the contract; when the company managements stiffen, they channel the disputes into the meanderings of the ministries to make them the subject of formal adjustments or equivocal compromises, for the sole purpose of diverting the attention of the workers from the political and class importance of the struggle for better conditions, and thus quenching the workers’ anger while waiting for the legal solution of the dispute. Labor contracts are signed through struggle and with street mobilization, and they represent no guarantee for the proletarians if they are not defended by daily battles and struggles that engage the bourgeois classes head on.

26 – In order to amalgamate the proletarian forces, to unify their efforts and struggles, the revolutionary communists advocate the return to the traditional function of the Chambers of Labor in which all proletarians, beyond categories and sectors, offices and companies converge, because of that mutual physical and natural contact which instills confidence in one’s own strength, breaks the isolation to which the proletarians are forced into in the workplaces, and awakens in the proletarians the consciousness of being a class and not aggregates or productive appendages of capitalist society. Thus they demand frequent assemblies and meetings of proletarians in neighborhoods and districts, and not, as almost exclusively happens, meetings of a small number of leaders committed, in the privacy of their offices, primarily to defend their bureaucratic managerial positions paid with the not insignificant dues of the wage-earners.

27 – In the struggle that will not fail to take place the proletariat is engaged on a twofold front: against the privileged classes and their central State and against the opportunist parties and union leaders. All workers are called into this struggle, and the International Communist Party relies on the worst-paid and most exploited part of the proletariat to arouse the necessary ferments to the revolutionary class struggle.

28 – The proletariat must, within and outside the trade unions, resolve – contrary to what the program of the CGIL emphasizes – to destroy the present social system, if it does not want to perpetuate its conditions as modern slaves, periodically obliged to shed their blood, after having shed their sweat all their life, on the altar of the defense of the fatherland and the national economy.