General Guidelines on the Organizational Foundations of the Class Party

from “Battaglia Comunista”, 13/1949

When the 1921 Statute of the Communist Party of Italy was republished in 1949, this brief summary was appended to it, intended both to reaffirm its instrumental nature and to frame it within that precise vision of internal relations—of a purely dialectical nature—that characterizes the revolutionary class party, known as “organic centralism.”

Whether or not there is a codified set of rules (and for us, it will never have a definitive and absolute character), what matters is that all members are fully aware of its guiding principles, which are indeed unchanging insofar as they are prerequisites for the organization’s proper functioning and its unity in space and time, and which are binding on all the differentiated bodies, networks, and functions into which the party is structured, and upon whose complete integration (not mere equalization) its very existence depends. 

The intent of this text is to clarify a fundamental point of distinction for us regarding the organization of the Party.

What is written in the text reflects a situation in which the principles regarding the party’s internal structure had not yet been definitively established—a process that would be completed with the theses of 1951 and the three sets of theses from 1965–66. It is, however, powerful—and even prophetic—in its synthesis, forcefully reiterating some central tenets of party doctrine. We therefore present this text—little known to younger members—at a time when internal attacks on doctrinal consistency and the consequent staunch and persistent defense of that consistency have caused the Party serious losses and necessitated a process of organizational reconstruction, which is, in fact, currently underway.

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The Statutes and Regulations of the Party and its Federations and Sections constitute the practically indispensable set of permanent rules governing operation, coordination, and communication that underpin the life of the organization. With respect to the Party’s historical and social objectives, they serve merely as instruments and means to an end. In establishing and, if necessary, amending them, it makes no sense to draw upon analogous regulations of other bodies—such as the state and democratic parliaments—since, according to the Communist Party’s own conception, there are no fundamental constitutional principles or criteria that are common to and supersede the various social classes and their tasks of struggle in successive historical phases.

The party is not a crude collection of equivalent individual units, but a real organism shaped by social and historical determinants and needs, with networks, organs, and differentiated centers for the fulfillment of various tasks. A good relationship between these real needs and optimal functioning leads to good organization, and not the other way around. 

Consequently, the adoption and general or partial use of the criterion of consultation and deliberation based on numerical and majority principles—when enshrined in the statutes or in technical practice—is a means or expedient, not a matter of principle.

The foundations of the Party’s organization cannot, therefore, be traced back to norms specific to other classes and other historical dominations, such as the hierarchical obedience of rank-and-file members to leaders of various ranks—a practice drawn from pre-bourgeois military or theocratic organizations—or the abstract sovereignty of grassroots voters delegated to representative assemblies and executive committees, which are characteristic of the legal fiction typical of the capitalist world; since the critique and overthrow of such organizations is an essential task of the proletarian and communist revolution. 

The proper functional relationship between the central and peripheral organs of the movement is not based on constitutional frameworks but on the entire dialectical unfolding of the working class’s historical struggle against capitalism.

The fundamental basis of these relationships is, on the one hand, the continuous, uninterrupted, and consistent development of party theory as an assessment of the unfolding of present-day society and as a definition of the tasks of the class struggling to overthrow it; and, on the other hand, the international bond among revolutionary proletarians of all countries, united in purpose and struggle.

The party’s peripheral forces and all its members are required, in the practice of the movement, not to take local and contingent decisions on action on their own initiative that do not originate from the central bodies, and not to propose solutions to tactical problems that differ from those supported by the entire party. Correspondingly, the leading and central bodies cannot and must not, in their decisions and communications applicable to the entire party, abandon theoretical principles or alter the means of tactical action—not even on the grounds that situations have presented unexpected or unforeseen facts not included in the party’s perspectives. In the absence of these two reciprocal and complementary processes, statutory provisions are of no avail, and crises arise—of which the history of the proletarian movement offers no shortage of examples.

Consequently, while the party calls for the participation of all its members in the ongoing process of elaboration—which consists of analyzing events and social facts and clarifying the most appropriate tasks and methods of action—and facilitates this participation in the most suitable ways, whether through specific bodies or through periodic general consultations at party congresses, it absolutely does not permit groups of members within its ranks to form distinct organizations or factions and to carry out their work of study and contribution through networks of communication, correspondence, and internal and external dissemination that differ in any way from the party’s unified structure.

The party regards the formation of factions and the struggle between them within a political organization as a historical process that communists found useful and applied when an irremediable degeneration of the old parties and their leaderships had occurred and a party possessing revolutionary characteristics and functions was no longer in existence.

When such a party is formed and active, it does not harbor ideologically divided—much less organized—factions within its ranks; it admits only individual membership through grassroots organizations; and it does not employ the method of forming its own overt or covert organizations within other political parties, considering all such situations to be pathological and contradictory to the character of strict unity in the communist struggle.