[GM90] An Intense Party Meeting

GM90 Reunion Reports
Cortona, 2-3 October 2004

The party’s end-of-summer meeting was held this time in Cortona. We have one of our more established sections here, which is well-known after more than forty years in existence. As well as enjoying the beautiful old city, a fine example of an organic urban-territorial development which has escaped random over-development, we met in an environment highly suited to our work, both in terms of accessibility by train, the tranquillity of the surroundings and convenience as regards getting from place to place.

Comrades from Italy, France, Spain and Great Britain attended, some arriving early on the Friday.

On Saturday morning we held the customary organisational and preparatory meeting, where comrades report on ongoing party activities and discuss future work. The meeting was properly focussed due to the use of an agenda prepared in advance by the centre and distributed to groups and individuals in advance. The topics of discussion, although not always simple, were approached, as always, with same commitment and rigor which we always seek to bring to our work as far as we can: that is, free from those “passions” and “emotions”, intrigues and personality cults, which characterise the entire ridiculous and pitiful bustling about which characterises the bourgeois world.

During the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sittings a number of important reports were presented. They will be published in full in future issues of our theoretical publication in the Italian language Comunismo, and hopefully, in due course, a selection will be published in English. We will give a brief summary of them here.

Marxist Economy

The first report we heard, on the theme of Marxist economy, continued the brief survey, and not-too-difficult criticism, of the twentieth century ‘vulgar’ economists. Having looked at the Keynesian school, we touched this time on the work of Schumpeter and Sraffa, considered by the press and ‘educated public’ as important innovators in the realm of economic doctrine.

Both belong to the world of ‘official’ academic economics, i.e. economics supported and financed at a State level. The first example is the English ‘Cambridge school’, an institute specifically entrusted for more than a century – backed up with plentiful supplies of money and prestige – with the sole task of covering up the bourgeoisie’s guilty neurosis about Marx, and catering for their need to ignore, to bury in confused concepts, and to obfuscate and misconstrue his economic doctrine. We already knew this, but a few, slightly more in-depth readings – and there aren’t many of those – certainly seem to confirm this.

Schumpeter is a self-declared marginalist, and he doesn’t therefore present much of a challenge to us on the theoretical level. In his analysis he attempted to tackle the phenomenon of cyclicity within capitalist development, which he saw as connected to the modernisation of the fixed capital element. He distinguished three types of cycle: the short, 36 month Kitchin cycle, the nine year Juglar cycle, already very adequately described by Marx, and the long, 50 year Kondratief cycle. The latter, and it is debatable whether it really is a ‘cycle’, supposedly corresponds to the great industrial and technical revolutions.

Following the first of these revolutions, which is the industrial revolution par excellence, there are those corresponding to railways, steam ships, and then electricity, chemistry and road transport. Now electronics has been added to the list.

Sraffa’s construction is subtler, and less ignorant, although not entirely original. He rejects the subjectivist and psychological criteria of marginalism, and doesn’t deduce prices from the meeting of the curves of utility and disutility. In similar way to the classical economists he has recourse to an economic system which reproduces itself, with a flow of goods and money within and between classes. But this is not enough to justify the definition “neo-classic” which has been used to describe his economics. Indeed Sraffa, like the marginalists, rejects the theory of the Labour-Value of commodities, that is, the “classic hypothesis” which may be enunciated thus: that what historically defines and connects commodities, and determines the measure of the exchange relation between them, is the quantity of average social labour necessary to reproduce them. Having ignored, without explicitly saying so, the concept of the value of commodities, there is the attempt to arrive at a determination of Price within the market of the goods produced. Having, for the purposes of analysis, assumed a society which is “primitive” and yet “mercantile” (a construction totally outside any historical context: a history which, quite obviously, is made to overlap with a no better defined, although apparently immutable, “mercantilism”), it is at first hypothesised that this society produces only wheat and steel, products which it consumes, in given relations, in their very production. The price of one with respect to the other is supposed to be imposed by the requirements of the market: the amount of wheat and steel, in terms of quantity and value (Quantity per Price) “is resolved by the system”, that is, that the ‘entries’ in the scheme of reproduction, whether simple or expanded, balance each other out in the rows and columns. Price becomes the “relation of exchange which allows a replenishment of stocks and a distribution of profit between the two industries”.

The real mechanism of the capitalist market is here turned on its head. It isn’t the case that the price of a commodity is determined by the scale of demand for its consumption within the production process, but exactly the opposite. The theoretical problem of getting the schemes of simple reproduction and expanded reproduction to ‘balance’, as much in a theoretical sense as within actual economic relations, is much more complicated than ‘adjusting’ prices and the average rate of profit in order to achieve such an end. With this comforting and, in essence, tautological loophole, one ends up denying that the problem of capitalist anarchy even exists – that is, the fact that the adaption of production to demand is always delayed. In the capitalist world, the correspondence between quantity produced and values exchanged comes after the fact, by means of the permanent phenomena of over, and under, production of commodities and the fluctuation of Prices around Values.

The attempt to define the rate of profit independently of its origin in the rate of surplus value Is equally destined to fail. Capitalism’s heart resides in the realm of production, in the employment of labour power, in variable capital alone. It is there that one can discern the original and exclusive source of Values, there that one may find the origins of all its difficulties in effecting its continuous reproduction.

The Self-knowledge of the Italian Bourgeoisie

Never has Italy demonstrated its ‘Italianness’ so openly as in the days of the so-called ‘miracle economy’ following the 2^nd World War. And by ‘Italianness’ we also mean the inordinate lengths it was prepared to go to get itself accepted by the big super-powers.

It’s the old dream, certainly not indifferent to the actual efforts of the bourgeoisie of this country, of being recognised as modern, but ever poised between reform and reaction, ready to run to ‘the aid of the victor’… and be well thought of by the imperialist brigands.

We shouldn’t be misled by Italy appearing to have opted for the Atlantic bloc. In actual fact its leading figures were pretty good at switching back and forth between the Western option and its position as go-between for the emergent forces in North Africa and the Middle East. It has showed Itself capable of carrying out at least three different foreign policies at the same time, and there is continual suspicion that it is playing a double, or indeed a triple, game.

But we aren’t interested in ‘getting at’ our bourgeoisie in particular. Rather we wish to demonstrate how those bourgeoisies which got to the imperialist banqueting table late in the day are prepared to bend in any direction as long as they can also partake in squeezing the last drop out of the proletariat and generally deriving advantages for itself.

Its traditional weakness, and at the same time its unrealistic ambitions, must be correlated in a context which takes into account a proletarian tradition which has had in the “Boot” of Italy a specific dignity of its own. We are convinced that it was no accident, in the context of the class struggle on the international level, that our small party was actually reborn in 1945 in Italy alone. The Italian Left had had a very well-defined function within the International: our fraction alone had stood firm on the key theoretical positions and had been able to escape the counter-revolutionary ice age.

Let us not forget the Stalinist tactics adopted in the Mediterranean zone during the 2^nd World War: today we still ponder over whether it was Togliatti, or Stalin, who chose to collaborate with the Badoglio government… The documentation certainly attests to the fact that the imperatives of Russian power had the final word. In this context we can explain the Togliattian ‘duplicity’, which is well-matched with the duplicity, indeed ‘triplicity’, of the avowed bourgeoisie, with whom opportunism seeks to attune itself by all means and at any cost.

The operation is revealing because it demonstrates how bourgeoisies which arrive late on the scene have shown themselves to be the most untrustworthy and hostile to proletarian pressure. Above all, by being prepared to stoop to any deception, they increased the disorientation of the still combative proletariat which emerged, bled dry and disorientated, after the war.

Anti-militarism and the Workers’ Movement

There followed another report in our ongoing series on anti-militarism. At the last party reunion, we examined the various stages of Mussolini’s betrayal. Having started out by advocating the proclamation of the insurrectional general strike, and then become a possibilist, he eventually settled for open interventionism.

We recalled how even the young Gramsci, from the columns of Grido del Popolo had adopted the Mussolinist formula of ‘Active and Effective Neutrality’, declaring it to be perfectly aligned both with the doctrine of an alleged national socialism and with the interests of the proletariat.

Also presented at the last reunion were the clear positions of those revolutionary left groups within the Socialist Party which, holding firm throughout, never tired of reiterating the cardinal points of Marxism throughout the war; a stance which corresponded perfectly with Lenin’s position.

Faced with Mussolini’s renunciation, the revolutionary current within the Italian Socialist Party didn’t mince its words. It immediately expressed its disagreement and stated that the socialist movement could, and would, do without he who, up to a little time before, had been their leader.

In clear antithesis to the future Duce’s famous slogan, the October 22, 1914, issue of Il Socialista published an editorial with a title which left little room for misunderstanding: ‘For Active and Effective Anti-Militarism’.

The concept of neutrality, declared the revolutionary Marxists, has as its subject the State, and certainly not the proletariat. The Socialist Party’s duty, therefore, was to impose neutrality on the bourgeois State, in an unconditional and absolute way, during the war; and even if the national territory was invaded, the proletariat shouldn’t act in defence of the country.

In order to achieve this objective, the proletariat, under the firm guidance of its party, would have to take action against the State using all the means of class struggle: no armistice with the capitalist class and its State because class war is permanent, and no disarming.

Our formula of ‘Active and Effective Anti-Militarism’ stood in irreconcilable contrast with concepts such as pacifism and collaborationism, and couldn’t be mistaken for them. By putting pressure on the State to remain neutral, the proletariat would remain its open, active and effective, enemy, and, by not conceding any truces or adjournments, it would bar the road leading to the mirage of national unanimity; down which, unfortunately, the French, German, and other socialist parties had so recently trodden.

But what is most significant is that as far as the revolutionaries were concerned the rejection of the mirage of national unanimity didn’t just refer to the pro-war type of solidarity; they also nurtured the same openly declared aversion towards pacifist solidarity. Their formula was quintessentially one of class struggle, wherever and whenever, as much during war as in peacetime.

“What we were saying, therefore, was that we wouldn’t put up with a political coalition with Giolitti and the Catholics, as was fondly wished for at the time, just because they wouldn’t go to war if they got into power. Indeed, if any such support had been given by our parliamentary group we would have repudiated it for the same reasons for which we deplored the support given by the French, German etc, parliamentary groups.” (Storia della Sinistra).

Even before the outbreak of war, which had by now become inevitable, the Marxist extreme left of the PSI, analysing its underlying causes with extreme lucidity, located responsibility for that enormous massacre of proletarians not in any so-called teutonic militarism (presented by democratic propaganda as a pre-bourgeois reminiscence, and therefore pre-, and anti-, democratic) but in the intrinsic nature of modern capitalism.

Aversion to a war against the Triple Alliance, and against the Triple Entente, had, therefore, to be advocated in equal measure. The proletariat was averted to the dangers of thinking in terms of aggressor and defender, not least because each of the disputing parties, by fishing in the inextricable labyrinth of diplomatic gestures and exploiting the first inevitable frontier incidents, whether actual or contrived, could demonstrate that it was they who were the victims of enemy aggression.

Only capitalist relations of production should be considered the real, and unique, cause of modern wars. And in fact wars represent only one aspect of the machinery of contemporary history by which the working and exploited class is continuously sacrificed.

The proletariat’s liberation would be accelerated neither by the defeat of tsarist feudal Russia by Germany, nor by the defeat of the central empires by the democratic powers. Faced with the insistent threat of militarism, it could only be achieved by the proletariat launching an independent struggle, and showing, on the terrain of class war, that socialist internationalism was not merely a rhetorical expression but a real and formidable fact.

In fact the Socialist International was the one force which could have seriously contested the militarism of the big European States.

Thus the events of 1914 marked not only the collapse of the bourgeois dream of a democratic, peaceful capitalist Europe, but also the indisputable failure of socialism. Along with failure to put up any serious opposition, there had been almost universal adhesion of the national socialist parties to the war.

And the comrades who arrived at chauvinist positions such as these were not just an isolated minority; in fact they were the same comrades who over long years had distinguished themselves as champions of anti-militarism and as revolutionary leaders of the first rank. What was most tragic about it wasn’t so much the fact that these comrades had abandoned class for nationalist terrain, but the fact that many of them claimed they were no less socialist than before. They thought (or led one to believe) that they were merely building on their earlier convictions, rectifying them slightly in response to current events.

This determined a situation where the European proletariat didn’t just see nationalism extolling war, but above all saw war being extolled, and indeed demanded, by revolutionary socialism, by syndicalism, by anarchism, in the name of the historical process from which the new society would inevitably arise. Above all if the armed victory smiled on one rather than the other military coalition.

Another great merit of the comrades of the Italian left, which derived directly from them having managed to situate the phenomenon of the imperialist war in the light of the Marxist dialectic, was freeing the socialist camp from alleged innovators and those who wanted to change the revolutionary programme. In Italy the Mussolinis were shown the door, something which didn’t happen in the other European socialist parties.

The History of Modern Iraq

There are certain constants which characterise the evolution of the relatively young Iraqi State:

1. The struggle for national independence, within which there are two tendencies battling it out: the ‘national’ tendency, which prioritises the constitution of the Iraqi bourgeois State and puts the emphasis on national interest, and the ‘Pan-Arabist’ tendency, which wants instead to form one State for all the Arabic-speaking peoples.
2. The struggle between the various nationalities and religious groups which, due to imperialist intervention, compose that State: the Kurdish minority in the North, the Sunnis in the centre, and the Shiites, the most numerous, in the central south.
3. The traditional border disputes, mainly with Iran and Kuwait, but also with Turkey.

There emerges however one constant which is more powerful than all the others, even if it is usually played down by bourgeois political scientists and historians, that is, the struggle between the three classes which have composed Iraqi society since its foundation, namely: the big landowners, the nascent commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, and the proletariat of town and country.

The story of this struggle constitutes, according to Marxist analysis, the central element in understanding the tragic history of Iraq and represents the unique key which can allow us to read, seeing beyond the daily horrors, what is happening in Mesopotamia; a land blessed for thousands of years by the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and today cursed by oil and its strategic position in the Middle East.

The report, by dealing with the history of the evolution of Iraqi society and the activity of the communist movement there, cast light on the modernity of production relations in Iraq and the great tradition of class struggle. The latter has been sustained by a proletariat which – notwithstanding constant and ferocious repression of its activity by all successive governmental regimes and by the counter-revolutionary action of Stalinism and its derivatives – has managed to hang on to its own traditions. This is clearly shown by the proletarian revolt which followed the tragic conclusion to the First Gulf War, and which was bloodily repressed by Saddam Hussein’s special corps with the active collaboration of the coalition armies.

Despite the great burden weighing on the Iraqi workers in the latter years of the regime, a burden which presses all the more heavily following the latest war, the Anglo-American occupation, and the creation of the present puppet government, the Iraqi workers of town and country are attempting to rediscover their own independent road. It is a road which rejects ethnic and religious distinctions, and rejects any subjection to the national bourgeoisie; both the one linked to the American boss, which presents itself as ‘democratic’ and ‘legalitarian’, and the one which, having chosen the path of armed opposition to the occupation, presents itself as ‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’. Furthermore, it is a road which will need to pass through a phase of reconstitution of the class unions, and which must lead to the rebirth of the communist party on the basis of the traditional Marxist programme of revolutionary internationalism.

The Jewish Question Today

We intend to deal with the Jewish question as it is generally perceived today, and how instead it viewed by our political current.

We know well the types of aberrations which can arise from the question, and we see this as a clear indication of the fact that the tangle of contradictions, on such a historically charged theme, is sorely in need of unravelling.

Over the extermination of the Jews there weighs a judgement which, under the pretext of being exorcistical and capable of preventing the possibility of new massacres, doesn’t hesitate to make use of a-historical terms such as ‘absolute evil’, or of circumlocutions which are supposed to have the power of absolution, of laying the matter to rest.

We, on the contrary, are convinced that one never gets to the bottom of anything by way of the superstructure. It is by other means that one dissolves the paradoxes and absurdities intrinsic to all theological/fideistic constructions.

That the modern capitalist regime has ended up by exalting ancient, thousands-of-year-old cultures, such as Judaism, is so well known that we hardly need to repeat opinions which have already become part of our ideological baggage; such as those for example which relate to the experience and practice of usury, in relation to which Judaism has been in the eye of the storm since medieval times up to the present day.

It is just that the would-be ‘indemnifiers’ of the Jewish slaughter believe they can get by with a superficial balance-sheet which skims over important historical periods, in particular the one which involved the need for capitalist imperialism to free itself definitively from everything which didn’t appear homologous with its own internal logic of power and dominion.

Far from taking Judaism as a category in itself, historical materialism has to be capable of identifying the contradictions which pushed modern nationalism to unleash itself against those forces which appeared uncontrollable, incapable of being brought under the empire of Blood and Soil.

Thus, according to the needs of the moment, Judaism has been considered both as at the root of, and behind, everything, and equally, against everything, with reference both to capitalism and with regard to its social opposite, i.e. communism.

We are concerning ourselves with this issue to underline the fact that ‘Jewish’ civilization, which can never be subjected to normalisation as long as the laws of capitalism hold, is in reality the proletariat, and its need to go beyond the so-called “natural laws” of a given mode of production and social life.

Trade Union Work amongst the Railway Workers

The final report we heard was about our trade-union work amongst the railway workers and the difficulties that have been encountered in this extremely important area of party work.

With the signing of the national collective work contract by Or.S.A (Organizzazione Sindacati Autonomi e di Base, a federation of autonomous and base, rank-and-file, unions which, rather than being formed on the crest of a wave of class struggle, was formed in order to fulfil the bosses “soglia di rappresentitività”, threshold of ‘representativeness’, requirements in order to be involved in negotiations), a few days before the party meeting, a completely new and changing situation came about. The signing was a real ‘smash and grab’ raid against the entire organisation, and was in open violation of the tried and tested method which, ever since the days of CoMU (Cordinamento Macchinisti Uniti, United Train-drivers Co-ordination), has seen any decision go before the membership and the active cadres first. The national secretariat of OrSA-Macchina (five members) voted 3 to 2 against, but the minority supported by OrSA-National went ahead in any case. The initial result was resignations from the three, while the other two (coincidentally also members of the inter-category national steering committee) continued to follow their own path. It should be emphasised that the OrSA rules state that if an entire category is opposed, any signing or agreement is invalidated. Therefore the behaviour of the two as well as being fraudulent is illegal as well, but it got through anyway due to the general impotence.

After initial dismay the reaction of the membership was disappointment, or amongst the best of them, rage. Both emotions which are quite understandable, but which still end up playing into the hands of the company (Trenitalia) and those within the organisation who support it.

On the 2^nd and 3^rd of August we took part in two very heated national meetings in Rome: the first of OrSA-Macchina (the train-drivers section) and the second of OrSA-intercategoriale. We found the situation to be the same as five, indeed ten, years ago: still there is a majority of around 60% which is ever ready to negotiate, wherever and whenever, in order to conquer minor and personal advantages; and, in sharp contrast, there is a minority which has managed to maintain a combative stance, even if it is increasingly reliant on Tuscany, and in particular on the minority of the Regional Coordination in which Pistoia carries decisive weight – not so much because of any work we carry out there, but due to the tradition and sense of cohesion which has existed all along, and which is facilitated by the small local membership.

We need to start organising those forces which have stood firm on correct positions. Only if we are able to unite il poco ma buono, the few but good elements, can we hope to resolve this conundrum.

In the next shop-floor (RSU, Rappresentanze Sindacali Unitarie, Unitary Trade Union Representations) elections, the Transport CUB (Comitato Unitario di base, a Base Union) will also allow representatives of OrSA and other organizations to stand.

Throughout Italy consternation has been caused by those who want ‘to start from scratch’ again, as if such a thing was possible, as if 2005 was the same as 1985. In fact, many train drivers are addicted to overtime and are signing their own contracts, whilst outside, in the working world, ever harsher and more restrictive controls are being introduced. If we were to go out on strike like we used to, the consequences would be far more serious this time around.

At the end of September the Confederate Unions proclaimed a strike against the VACMA (a technically improved automatic breaking system) in order to head off discontent, to recruit new members, and to present themselves all spruced up at the shop-floor elections in November. Our strike will be on October 13th. Too bad that they would only strike for such restricted aim (the VACMA) and that some have fallen for it. The Tuscan OrSA took up a very lacklustre position pronouncing itself in favour of freedom to take part, just as it had during the CUB strike.

All we can do is continue pursue our own path, although the involvement of our militants in this situation is becoming increasingly difficult to bear.