[GM10] Bases of Party Action in the Field of Proletarian Economic Struggles Pt. 8

13. – POSITION TAKEN BY THE PARTY IN THE FACE OF THE FACTORY OCCUPATIONS IN 1920

In 1920, in several Italian regions (Piedmont, Liguria, Campania) workers began to occupy factories, taking de facto possession of them and preparing to defend them with arms. The party (then the Abstentionist Fraction within the PSI) saw many dangers in this action; first and foremost that of the dispersion of forces and the illusion that the bourgeoisie could be defeated without striking at the heart of its central State. However, while warning the proletariat against these errors, which later unfortunately proved fatal, the party didn’t deny the action, but rather emphasized its positive significance: the proletariat, in a situation of economic recession, realized that only by wresting the means of production from the hands of the capitalists could it defend its material conditions, and therefore the question of power arose. That is, the party did not take a doctrinaire position; communist workers were also in the forefront of factory occupation. We quote in this connection the article “Seize Power or Seize the Factory?” which appeared in the “Il Soviet” issue of February 22, 1920:

«The working-class disturbances of the past few days in Liguria have seen yet another example of a phenomenon that for some time now has been repeated with some frequency, and that deserves to be examined as a symptom of a new level of consciousness among the working masses. Instead of abandoning their jobs, the workers have so to speak taken over their plants and sought to operate them for their own benefit, or more precisely without the top managers being present in the plant. Above all, this indicates that the workers are fully aware that the strike is not always the best weapon to use, especially under certain circumstances. The economic strike, through the immediate harm it inflicts on the worker himself, derives its utility as a defensive weapon for the worker from the harm the work- stoppage inflicts on the industrialist by cutting back the output which belongs to him. This is the state of affairs under normal conditions in the capitalist economy, when competition and price-cutting force a continual increase in production itself. Today the profiteers of industry, in particular the engineering industry, are emerging from an exceptional period in which they were able to amass enormous profits for a minimum of effort. During the war the State supplied them with raw materials and coal and, at the same time, acted as sole and reliable purchaser. Furthermore, through its militarization of factories, the State itself undertook to impose a rigorous discipline on the working masses. What more favourable conditions could there be for a fat profit? But now these people are no longer disposed to deal with all the difficulties arising from shortages of coal and raw materials, from the instability of the market and the fractiousness of the working masses. In particular, they are not disposed to put up with modest profits which are roughly the same or perhaps a bit below their pre-War level. This is why they are not worried by strikes. Indeed they positively welcome them, while mouthing a few protests about the absurd claims and insatiability of the workers. The workers have understood this, and through their action of taking over the factory and carrying on working instead of striking, they are making it clear that it is not that they have no wish to work, but that they have no wish to work the way the bosses tell them to. They no longer want to be exploited and work for the benefit of the bosses; they want to work for their own benefit, i.e. in the interests of the work-force alone.

«This new consciousness that is emerging more clearly every day should be held in the highest regard; however, we would not want it to be led astray by vain illusions. It is rumoured that factory councils, where they were in existence, functioned by taking over the management of the workshops and carrying on the work. We would not like the working masses to get hold of the idea that all they need do to take over the factories and get rid or the capitalists is set up councils. This would indeed be a dangerous illusion. The factory will be conquered by the working class – and not only by the workforce employed in it, which would be too weak and non-communist – only after the working class as a whole has seized political power. Unless it has done so, the Royal Guards, military police, etc. – in other words, the mechanism of force and oppression that the bourgeoisie has at its disposal, its political power apparatus – will see to it that all illusions are dispelled.

«It would be better if these endless and useless adventures that are daily exhausting the working masses were all channelled, merged and organized into one great, comprehensive upsurge aimed directly at the heart of the enemy bourgeoisie. Only a communist party should and would be able to carry out such an undertaking. At this time, such a party should and would have no other task than that of directing all its activity towards making the working masses increasingly conscious of the need for this grand political attack – the only more or less direct route to the take-over of the factory, which if any other route is taken may never fall into their hands at all».

14. – THE JULY 1922 STRIKE PROCLAIMED BY THE ALLIANCE OF LABOR

The Alliance of Labor was a coalition of trade union bodies, the establishment of which was promoted by the trade union organs of the parties. Its leadership was in reformist hands, and yet to have arrived at such a coalition was a success of communist tactics. No longer able to withstand the pressure of the proletarian masses, the reformist leadership of the Alliance was forced to decide on a general strike in July 1922. It did so, however, in such a way that the action failed or was as weak as possible: the decision was almost sudden, without preparation, and came after the untimeliness of the strike had been argued up to the day before; the start of the strike was not made to coincide with any particular fact that would revive proletarian combativeness; the date of the strike, which was to remain secret, was revealed by a reformist newspaper allowing the State apparatus to prepare its measures. Moreover, no liaison network was prepared to transmit orders to the organized proletariat.

We once again found ourselves having to fight in a ground chosen by enemies stronger than ourselves and under unfavorable conditions. The party not only didn’t denounce the sabotage, it put its union network, the only efficient one, at the disposal of the Alliance of Labor to transmit the strike order, and it was through our union network that the strike – not proclaimed by us – was conducted. When after two days the action had to end due to the betrayal of the reformists and anarchists, the trade union organs of the party also gave the order to retreat so that even the end of the action would take place in close ranks and not turn into a complete defeat.

Could we have acted otherwise? It’s all too obvious that if, after agitating before the masses the watchword of a general strike, we had backed down because we judged the moment to be unpropitious, the party would have been irreparably compromised in the eyes of the proletariat; we therefore had to throw ourselves with all our strength into action, even though we foresaw that it wouldn’t succeed. Instead, reformists and anarchists sabotaged the strike, but definitely lost their influence on the Italian proletariat.

15. – THE STRIKE AT O.M. IN BRESCIA

This strike had been called by the fascist unions for economic demands. The party didn’t give the order for the sabotage, the communist workers participated in the strike and managed to take charge of it.

Were our comrades at that time following the directives of the fascist trade unionists? Not at all: the demands underlying the strike were felt by the majority of the workers and they would follow whoever enunciated them and showed sufficient strength to support them. The fascist unions found themselves forced into the proclamation of the strike in order to preserve their influence and to prevent “someone else” from doing so. We knew, however, that they would not go through with it and that at a given moment they would deflect betraying their own claims. We were therefore at some point in a position to take over the direction of the strike; but if we had not accompanied the workers in the action from the very beginning, we could not have even attempted to do so.

So it was not a question of adhering to the directives of the fascist trade unionists (which for us was a false problem since in reality the strike was, so to speak, “proclaimed” by the needs of the workers), but of standing by the workers when they moved; and this was not in contradiction with the directive the party gave to sabotage the fascist trade unions. Indeed, the best way to sabotage the fascist unions was to demonstrate to the workers their demagogy, and this could only be done by throwing oneself into action.

Our Lyon Theses (1926) denounced the attitude of the party center, in the hands of the ordinovist group, which failed to take advantage of workers’ combativeness and disappointed the expectations of the proletariat by throwing itself into the sterile Aventine opposition.

«During the March 1925 metalworkers strike another serious mistake was made. The leadership should have predicted that the proletariat’s disillusionment with the Aventine would propel it into class actions and a wave of strikes. If the leadership had foreseen this, it might have been possible to push the F.I.O.M. into a national strike (just as it had managed to get it to take part in the strike initiated by the fascists) by setting up a metalworkers agitation committee based on the local organisations, which throughout the country had been highly supportive of the strike.

«The trade union direction of the Central did not clearly correspond to the word of trade union unity in the confederation, even despite the confederation’s organizational breakdown. The party’s trade union directives suffered from ordinovist errors concerning action in the factories, in which not only were multiple and contradictory bodies created or proposed, but words were often dictated that devalued the trade union and the conception of its necessity as an organ of proletarian struggle.

«It was a consequence of this error the unfortunate FIAT concordat, like the unclear direction in factory elections, in which the criterion of choosing between the tactic of class lists and that of the party list was not set rightly, that is, on the union ground».

16. – THE CURRENT SITUATION

If in this work we began by quoting classic Party texts, it’s certainly not in order to “get off easy”, when faced with a practical problem, with mere quotations or general statements, nor to seek documentary evidence for the practical direction of the currently small Party.

Instead, it’s about the effort that the Party must always make not to stray from the line already drawn by the Communist Left and the search in the great and exciting past struggles for useful lessons to continue on the right path even in the miserable reality of today.

Coming precisely from the glorious struggles of the past to the meager and very weak struggles of today, the situation has changed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

The CGL of 1921 was a class union run by agents of the bourgeoisie. Workers in the early postwar period flocked to it en masse, forcing the confederation’s leaders – no less traitors than those of today – to proclaim major strikes. The Party, organized internally as the Communist Fraction, attempted its “peaceful” conquest, using the internal organizational mechanisms (which were overtly working-class in character) and proclaimed the necessity of discipline to the governing bodies which might one day pass into our hands.

The present CGIL, born after World War II not out of a spontaneous proletarian movement but through the initiative of opportunist parties and the bourgeois State, is, as we’ve always said, not a class union, but a tricolored union, and thus the party has always ruled out its conquest by peaceful means, through internal structures. If in the CGL of 1921 it was only a matter of kicking out the traitorous leaders, here it is a matter of obliterating the whole structure, which is completely anti-worker. Therefore the party has always proclaimed the necessity of indiscipline against the union leaderships and the structure they set up.

In numerous party works we have explained the reasons why we saw, however, a difference between openly bosses’ unions such as the CISL, UIL and autonomous unions and the CGIL, which always gathered – under a “red” banner and in the name of a daily usurped and betrayed tradition – the most combative strata of the Italian proletariat.

The Italian workers in this acronym saw the union as red and in the name of this acronym showed themselves willing to fight and in many cases even to be fired, hit with batons, killed.

It was this state of mind of the Italian proletariat, a sign that the red tradition had not yet died out, that – while always reiterating the need for the rebirth of the class union – led us not to rule out the possibility of a “violent” reconquest of the CGIL to a class leadership. This reconquest, of course, could not have been gradual, but would have been possible only on the wave of a powerful proletarian movement. That’s why we were always stalwart defenders of the red tradition that workers, in spite of everything, saw in the CGIL acronym and that the piecards were trying to erase every day. So we agitated against unifying with the CISL and UIL and tried to organize proletarians’ opposition to the introduction of the proxy membership method, all steps that led to the loss of those tenuous class characteristics that the CGIL retained and to its ever-increasing closure to combative workers. We also set a deadline beyond which we would now consider the CGIL’s transformation into a State organ to be final, and thus exhausted any possibility of reconquest even “by means of blows”, that is, when organic union with the CISL and UIL was implemented.

In the fact that from time to time when the CGIL would wave the red flag, for the sole purpose of deceiving the workers, we always saw a positive element: in order to fool the Italian workers it was necessary precisely to wave the red flag; that is: the Italian workers were still moved by the red flag. So we tried to strengthen this positive element, to emphasize it, to make sure that these small embers still lingering after the great revolutionary blaze of 1920 would not be extinguished.

Returning to the subject at hand, however, a fundamental distinction must be made: one thing is to examine the existing trade union bodies and the Party’s consequent practical direction toward them; quite another is to examine the Party’s attitude toward the economic struggles of the proletariat. One thing is to break internal union discipline; quite another is to break an action.

In the post-WW1 period our workers were organized in the CGL, but we did not back down from the OM strike in Brescia, even though it was officially proclaimed by the fascist unions. After World War II we always proclaimed indiscipline against the CGIL, but never sabotaged a strike.

It’s certainly not out of a mania for purity or a point of commitment that we have maintained this position (such considerations would have no meaning here). The fact that the post-World War II CGIL was not a class union does not mean that there were not or are not class struggles. No one can eliminate class struggle because it arises from the contradictions of capitalism. Workers are driven to move regardless of the existence or not of class bodies, and the work of the tricolored unions is not so much to prevent struggles as to make sure that they remain integrated in the capitalist order and don’t jeopardize the security of the regime.

We therefore have always stood by the workers and participated in their struggles, trying to show them the need to break union discipline and the necessity of the rebirth of the class union. We’ve always distinguished the leaders from the masses, even when the latter mobilize for non- class goals.

We’ve also always made another distinction: between the official reasons for a strike and the strike itself as an action of struggle. The buzzwords, the official claims, are launched by the piecards for the purpose of diverting workers’ energies to nonsense goals and to conceal the real class claims; thus they say that, for example, the railroad workers are going to struggle “for transport reform”, the day laborers “for agricultural reform”, the state workers “for public administration reform”, and so on. But whenever workers stop work together they do so as an action of struggle against the capitalist discipline of labor, regardless of the goals tacked onto it by the piecards.

The separation of action and consciousness is our classic thesis. We have always said that in individuals first comes action, then consciousness. If a railway worker participates in a strike, in the objectives of which the piecards have included the “demand” for a transport reform that will lead to greater exploitation and a reduction in the workforce, this does not mean that he agrees with this outcome. He participates in the strike first of all because he feels that it’s a struggle action, and as for the objectives, either he doesn’t even know them or he’s convinced that through transport reform his material conditions can be better defended.

If union bureaucrats could, they would never proclaim any strike. They have been proclaiming the need for reforms for years, but have been careful not to mobilize the working class in a generalized struggle over this goal they themselves demand. Likewise, they rant against fascist violence, but are careful not to mobilize the working class in earnest against the squadristi.

Social forces cannot be maneuvered like pieces in a chess game, and once set in motion, they cannot be stopped. That is why the mobilization of the working class, even for phony goals, is itself a danger to capitalist order. Bourgeois order means first and foremost iron discipline in workplaces, a barracks-esque climate in factories. A strike is always a rupture of this discipline, and so it is instinctively understood by the mass of workers who, even before reflecting on the “slogans” of the moment, joyfully consider exiting the place where they are exploited every day.

Workers who remain at work will always, regardless of individual motivations, appear as scabs, as people who weaken strike action. The individual worker who, when faced with a strike “for investment” would say, for example, “I don’t strike for investment because it’s an illusory goal”, would make several mistakes: First, he would identify the action of struggle with the goals that the piecards wanted to tack onto it; second, he would classify all workers participating in the strike as “reformists”; third, he would admit that there is a contradiction between participating in that strike and fighting for the revolution, and he would adopt in practice not the materialistic criterion of examining the situation and evaluating forces, but the idealistic criterion that sees the social clash as a clash of ideas (the revolutionary idea versus the reformist idea).

Finally he would preclude himself from the practical possibility of speaking to his fellow workers and being heard. Even admitting that while remaining in the factory he would be able to make his position known he would always appear to his comrades as a scab trying to justify himself on pseudo-revolutionary grounds. Instead, participating in the strike would enable him to speak to his comrades, finding them more willing to listen to him and to bring the right positions: “even supposing that the capitalists invest where we want them to, it’s an illusion to think that this will come back to benefit us and the unemployed; so we demand wage increases and a reduction in the working day”. Still taking part in the action he could, if the opportunity arose, have proposed transforming it into a real struggle to the bitter end, on class objectives; in any case the positions he expressed would have had greater persuasive force.

It’s clear that if we do not regard as enemies the workers who passively follow the practical reformist direction, neither should we regard as such those who, often out of sound emotional reaction, express such centrifugal tendencies.

In the trade union struggle we don’t fight ideas but methods of action, and communist workers in proletarian organizations must prove not so much that our ideas are better than others, but that our methods of action are more effective than others and lead to better results. This is not contrary to propaganda, which must always be done, but it must be remembered that the best party propaganda is done by example and demonstration.