[GM104] A meeting of concentrated and consistent work

With representatives from most of its groups in attendance, the party’s periodic general working meeting was held at our Genoa editorial office on 6-7 June.

The present function of the party, as regards its immediate tasks, is essentially a defensive one. It directs its efforts to defending the scientific doctrine of Marxism, defending tactical principles which are supported by a long historical experience, and defending a conception of the Communist party which distinguishes it from all other parties, including would-be workers’ or left parties.

Just as the Communist party, from its very beginnings, has always tended to have its own kind of natural and voluntary unicity of movement, confirmed in the seperation of the First international from federalism and from anarchist individualism, so the party reborn during the Second World War learnt the lesson of the degeneration of Third International through Stalinism, which destroyed the world communist party by tearing the organisation apart through its systematic use of fractionism from above, hidden behind the conventions of internal democracy.

This is demonstrated in the way we go about our work, a style which wasn’t invented or revealed by some great leader but which just arose spontanously, embodying the natural attitude of generations of militants without the need for any rules or internal regulations to prescribe it or to punish their infraction. Further proof is the quality of our studies, which even though very complex, are all inter-connected within a coherent whole; and all of it carried out unostentatiously, and without engaging in all the unhealthy infighting and petty intrigues that characterise petty bourgeois and opportunist circles.

A century of crises in the USA – The communist negation of democracy – The Pakistani Volcano – The military question – From the 3rd Volume of Capital, the fall in the rate of profit – Origins of the Chinese Communist Party.