[RG98] An Excellent Party Meeting in Parma

Our general meeting this time took place in the city of Parma, over the weekend of 19 and 20th May, 2007. Comrades from Italy, France and Great Britain attended, some arriving on the morning of the Friday and leaving on the Monday, everyone appreciating the warm hospitality extended to them.

The well-organised sittings were held in a pleasant, quiet well-lit room. Used to working with one another according to the spontaneous and serried discipline that characterises communist method, our small group of militants managed, as always, ‘to get done what needed to be done’ in an unhurried way, unworried about obtaining immediate results, which we know to be impossible anyway. In a word, we pressed on free from all those neuroses exhibited by miserable bourgeois individuals, who are certainly not envied by the conscious proletariat.

We undertook a careful review of all the party’s various activities and engagements, which today mainly centre on the study of Marxist doctrine and the enveloping global capitalist crisis, and on external propaganda. All comrades tend to contribute to this elaboration, although all are keenly aware that the meeting isn’t a conference, or anything to do with democracy, nor based on the opinions of particular individuals; rather it is about participation in a real social battle.

We also keep in the forefront of our minds that our work in defence of the communist theory can only be effective if carried out within the framework of the class political party, which reaches out towards the class in its daily life and struggles, in a complex, necessary and constant relationship.

As usual the Saturday morning meeting was devoted to organisational matters and the afternoon and the Sunday to the reports. The latter, summed up below, will be published in full in Comunismo.
 

History of the workers’ movement in the USA – the first organisations

The first report presented another instalment in the ongoing history of the workers’ movement in the USA, examining labour conditions in the period after the War of Independence. From a political point of view workers got caught up in the Democratic Societies, clubs that supported the Democratic Party which was seen by the city proletariat as an organisation that defended their interests. This would result in the bourgeoisie gaining the proletariat’s staunch support during the war of 1812 against England. From the trade union point of view, however, workers’ organisations were weak and of short duration.

How weak proletarians actually were is evidenced by the spread of the yellow-dog contracts. Signing these documents obliged workers (mainly female) not to join a labour union. Not abiding by the contract made them liable for non-payment of their wages, and since often salaries were only paid twice a year, it was a particularly heavy penalty. There was also the widespread use of black lists, used to bar recalcitrant workers from finding work, at least in the same state or industrial sector. Only in 1823 did the movement revive, the crowning moment of which was the founding of the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, the first town-based trade union to unite all trades within one organisation. This, in its turn, arose out of the 10 hours movement. At a time when proletarians were finding it difficult to form durable organisations, a situation that only really changed in the 1840s, the struggle for the 10-hour day was an objective that united them more than anything else.

Meanwhile, in the realm of politics, the vote was gradually extended to ever-broader strata of the working class, who would receive greater attention from bourgeois politicians, amongst whom there were genuine and dedicated leaders originating from both the bourgeois class and the workers and artisan strata. In 1828 the Working Men’s Party was formed in Philadelphia. But neither this, nor other ephemeral organisations that arose over the following years, ever managed to really get the working masses behind them, although, here and there, there were sporadic electoral successes. And none of these organisations could be described as socialist, not even of the utopian variety, and the theories informing them subscribed rather to the fanciful lines of thinking inspired by the enlightenment thinkers.

Proletarians continued to follow the two national parties and in particular the Democratic Party. For this reason, although with notable interruptions, mainly during the decades straddling the 19th and 20th centuries, the American working class from a political point of view has always lagged behind their European counterparts, despite the continuous injection of socialism and other revolutionary doctrines brought in with the incessant waves of German, English and Italian immigrants arriving from Europe.
 

The Origin of the Trade unions in Italy – The CGIL

The second report was on the important subject of the history of the trade unions in Italy.

In the last chapter on the subject, presented at the party meeting in Viareggio in June 2006 (see p.76, Communist Left No. 25/26), we covered the birth of the ‘Red CGL’ in Naples immediately after the 2nd World War. Quotations from the pages of the CGL’s organ, Battaglie Sindacali, proved that the organisation had a combative and genuinely classist character.

The present chapter covers the CGIL (the Italian General Confederation of Labour), formed in Bari as an openly patriotic organisation under the auspices of the CLN (Committee of National Liberation).

From its first programmatic statements onwards, much to the consternation of the working class, there was a call for ‘sacrifices’, which had to be made for ‘the good of the firm’ in order to ‘increase production’. And then there was the ‘sharing’ in the management of the enterprise with the aim of improving ‘labour productivity’ and lowering ‘production costs’; whence we can see their full endorsement of the bourgeois point of view in their very use of the language.

But the Italian working class didn’t passively abide by the collaborationist directives of the Stalinists and the CLN. On July 15, 1946 Di Vittorio, the general secretary of the CGIL, would lament ‘the tendency of the masses to slip out of our organisational control. They have launched a strike without the Camera del Lavoro and degenerated into violence. The CGIL is committed to containing the mass movement, moderating the workers’ demands, and avoiding strikes and agitations’. In the same year the CGIL invited workers to support the Reconstruction Loan and in September signed the pact agreeing to a six-month wage freeze, later to be renewed.

Clearly the CGIL was a patriotic ‘tricolore’ union from its very inception, imposed from above and designed to exclude the impulses welling up from the rank-and-file as a result of the recent post-war imperialist arrangements.

However, as regards this difficult question it was quickly established by our party, at a conference in Turin in 1946, that this bourgeois mortgage on the workers’ union, and the latter’s ‘present counter-revolutionary function’, didn’t derive from ‘its capitalist class nature’ but was purely due to ‘the general political situation’. The problem didn’t reside in the ‘organisational form’ as such, but was due to the ‘current balance of forces’.

Therefore our party would take part in the CGIL’s Florence congress under the slogan: ‘Support the class union, fighting organisation of the proletariat. Oppose the trade-union-prison, domain of the government parties and strategic standby of imperialism’. And even though our comrades represented thousands of members they would be denied a platform by Di Vittorio, who stated they didn’t express a ‘constructive’ tendency.
 

Course of the Economy

Also at this meeting we were able to update our picture of the course of the capitalist economy, which is a vital and ongoing work. The various charts and numerical tables were projected onto a screen, making it much easier for comrades to follow the lengthy exposition.

Industrial production tables for USA, Germany, Japan, France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, China and India were presented. Having already gone through the historical series at previous meetings we concentrated here on the most recent years, including monthly data. The exception was Russia, whose growth rate we plotted from 1989, the year of the collapse and unmasking of so-called ‘soviet’ socialism.

In order of seniority: Great Britain, the dean of capitalism, shows a ‘flat curve’, with light oscillations around zero. Industrially, it appears on its last legs. The most recent figure from February indicates a 0.3% increase in production over the previous year. The significance of this phenomenon (on the economic plane, and consequently as regards the prospect of revolution, since can any kind of ‘post-capitalism, apart from communism, actually exist?) must be sought in the global context; within the dynamics of a ‘division of labour’ that moves capital and labour power across continents. The old capitalisms increasingly rely on revenue and interest rather than on profit. ‘The City’, thanks to its so-called ‘light touch’ approach to financial regulation and particularly lax tax system, accepts and ‘recycles’ monetary capital from all over the world. The working class, of course, doesn’t benefit from any of these fluctuations and its situation continues to deteriorate.

The growth rates of the other ‘senior’ capitalisms – France, Italy and Japan – are not much higher, with a decline in the first months of this year (2007) although still not yet in recession.

Meanwhile there is an upturn in the United States and Germany, despite the former in a slowdown: from a maximum of +5.9% in September to +2.3% in March. Germany, meanwhile, after the recession in far off 2002 has shown continuous almost uninterrupted growth: +7.9% in February and +7.6% in March, which is really quite substantial.

As for Russia, after the ruinous decade running from 1989-1998 its economy seems to be picking up again, but given that the data we have is not that reliable, and it’s unclear whether it refers to manufacturing or mining, further study is required.

The picture changes quite dramatically when we look at the Asiatic giants. Marxist theses on the inevitability and universality of capitalism are fully confirmed. That alone shows that Marx’s work towers above the flat plains of bourgeois thinking. One capitalism to plague mankind: one party and one revolution to overthrow it.

But quantity must also be taken into account: in the historic sequence England-USA-China, whilst the capitalist quality is the same the order of magnitude of these successive ‘workshops of the world’ is different.

Although they are societies with very different histories, India and China both show prodigious growth rates with production increasing more than 10% over the last year: both also, of course, are ultimately accelerating down the road to catastrophic ruin.

For this meeting the speaker had been able to complete an updated world trade chart, including trade in raw materials and agricultural produce as well as industrial products. Data on imports, exports, trade balances, in dollars and in global percentages, was included covering the period 1948-2005.

Postponing the publication of the complete chart, all of it very significant, to the next issue of Comunismo we will just highlight some of the more important points here.

Over the entire post-war period the volume of world trade has been in rapid and constant growth; its contraction will signal the onset of the real crisis, and war.

Although the value of each capitalism’s exports and imports continues to grow, its own particular slice of world trade varies considerably and not always in parallel with its industrial growth: some economies depend more on the world market more than others. But the degree of participation in global trade gives a good indication of an industrial power’s vitality compared with others.

Here in extreme synthesis:

First group: already in decline since 1948. England, after peaking in 1948, after emerging victorious from the war, was already only exporting 11% of the world total and importing 13%: still a lot however and second only to the USA. Since then there has been a slow decline to 4% and 5% in 2005: a very unfavourable balance of trade.

The USA as well peaked in 1948, with exports at 22% reducing bit by bit down to 9% in 2005. On the other hand there is an irregular rise in imports over the same period, up to 17% in 2003 reducing to 16.5% in 2005. Trade balance: an enormous amount in the red – 830 billion dollars.

Second group: peaking in 1973, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.

In 1973 Germany gets to export 12% of world exports and imports 9%, reducing in 2005 to 9% and 7%: a very good balance of trade. France is at half these values but with a negative balance.

Italy and Japan, younger capitalisms, have managed to delay the year of peak exports to 1993, then declining to 3.6% for Italy and to 6% for Japan. Italy breaking even, Japan in the black.

The others.

China enters the foreign market after 1983 and by 2005 is responsible for 7.5% of exports and 6.3% of imports, its balance in the black. Amongst the exporting countries it ranks third. The top eight exporters, and this is quite significant, is as follows: Germany-USA-China-Japan-France-England-Italy-Russia.

India, on the contrary, still seems to be mainly targeting its domestic market. Russia is still suffering from the collapse of its domestic structure and of it imperial relations to the extent that its percentage of exports and imports actually peaked back in the days of the USSR.

All this will need to be illustrated in more detail in the more extended exposition.
 

The military question – feudalism

At the last meeting in Sarzana we dealt with the military question during the phase of primitive communism and under slavery; we now proceeded to apply our theoretical and historical perspective to feudal society.

Dialectical materialism sees violence as flowing entirely naturally from the class struggle and from the dynamics of the different forms of production, and shows its intimate connection with the economy, which determines its necessity and its development. It is necessary to distinguish the use of force in wars between state armies from conflicts within these same societies between the suppressed classes and the organised powers. It is necessary then to investigate the origins of given political structures and their historical interaction with the use of force, as well as the limitations of these powers, why they were developed, and their rise and fall.

Restricting ourselves to Western Europe, we then went on to review, more or less chronologically, the key historical facts of feudal society in relation to military events, highlighting the often vital role of violence in economic development.

The State is an organisation that exerts class violence. We examine how its structure changes in relation to the material sources from which it draws its vital nourishment. Naturally those sources are none other than the economic assets of one or more classes and the function of the state is the defence of the interests of those classes and the maintenance of the existing relations of production.

When the feudal mode of production starts to succumb to the pressure of a new more efficient mode, the power of the feudal lords starts to fall into the hands of other classes. As their seigniorial dominion is emptied of content they appear merely as parasites and courtiers. But the power of their armies is not in immediate and mechanical correspondence with the material development of productive technology and social maturation. For that to come about Revolutions are required.

Introducing this chapter of the report the speaker referred back to an old controversy between Marxists and bourgeois ideologues about how to evaluate feudalism; one which in fact touches on the overall question of how human history as a whole is viewed. Bourgeois historians, convinced of the overall superiority of capital and democracy, describe feudalism as a period of general backwardness, as a relapse into obscurantism and authoritarianism. During the passage from a slave society to a feudal one the volume of production undoubtedly declined, but this was nevertheless a transitory, if long lasting, phase. Such can happen during the passing from one mode of production to another, and the length of time the new structures take to establish themselves is not always identical. But suffice to say that it is after the destruction of the imperial unity of the Roman slave system, during the Middle Ages, that the foundations of the modern nation states are laid.

The speaker accordingly went on to describe the slow decline of the Empire, pressed on all sides by the barbarian invasions, and then, using quotations from Engels, he went on to describe the technical and organisational aspects of German and Frankish warfare of the period.

Special attention was then given to the formation of the temporal power of the Church with its characteristic state form, and to the long battle between the Church and the Empire.
 

The Jewish question – the 30 pieces of silver

The charge that has forever been laid against Judaism is that of ‘betrayal’ for abject reasons: for money. We often use similar language ourselves, blaming working class and communist defeats on the betrayal of particular parties and workers trade unions: human beings and their organisations do betray. But those counterblows are due to objective historical causes and processes.

Was Judas perhaps raising money for the cause? And what was the cause? What was the Zealot movement fighting for? It was a nationalist movement that considered Jesus too lukewarm on the question of political engagement against the Roman Empire and the collaborationist forces.

The canonical charge against lending money was pronounced as early as 300 AD, going on later to encompass both scholasticism and the protestant Reformation, and giving birth to Shylock and other expressions of anti-semitism.

The materialist dialectic doesn’t deploy prejudice against capital. Our fight against capitalism has nothing to do with ‘reactionary socialism’ and the regurgitations of populist demagoguery. Anti-semitic hatred has been one of the resources of these positions, which pose as anti-capitalist but display a total ignorance of historic dynamics, which they don’t seem to want to know about either.

Using the formula ‘struggle against the Jewish-demo-plutocracy’ the big financial and industrial bourgeoisie resorted to fascism, successfully drawing the middle classes along behind them and trying to uproot all internationalist feeling within the proletariat with the use of nationalist propaganda.

If it is true that identifying someone as a sworn enemy is generally equivalent to projecting one’s own sick fantasies, in the modern age there is no doubt that the relationship between Western culture and money has tended to prompt hatred rather than understanding of the unresolved contradictions involved. And whenever the nature of money is subjected to analysis, its social function is ignored and it is credited with some kind of metaphysical power: its insuperable ‘vices’ and idolatrous powers are stigmatised without however providing a dialectical explanation as to how such a sorry state of affairs might have come about. It would take science and Marx’s impassioned study to resolve the question. Historical materialism recognises the idolatrous nature of money, but explains it in relation to actual production and distribution.

It is not apparent reversals of values that herald the ending of a system of production. The transmutation of values happens after and not before the real historical revolutionising of the relations of production.

Under communism there is no money or competition, no hegemony of nations. Communism is anticipated on the theoretical level as the overcoming of these characteristics, and therefore no global investment bank or global government of the economy can possibly prefigure it.

In the words of Marx, the apostate Jew, the ‘Jewish Question’ can only be resolved with the downfall of Capital. Indeed not just the Jewish question, but the national, the ‘Islamic’, and the ‘Catholic’ questions, too.

Will there be no room for feelings, then, in communist society? Of course there will! But since these are the product of fundamental social relations, they will inevitably be very different.

* * *

During the meeting there was also a brief exposition of the Iraqi question: the speaker gave us an up-to-date report on how the work is going, adding detail to what has already been published in our press.

There was also discussion about the need to deepen our examination of that nebulous entity known as the‘Iraqi resistance’, highlighting the contradictions in order to better delineate the nature of the various groups and parties.