PART III

INTRODUCTION

That “The Communist Party is not an army, nor a state machine” is a point emphasised continually in our writings. It appears both in the theses we drew up to combat the ‘organisational voluntarism’ which took hold of (and then wrecked) the 3^rd international from 1923 onwards, and in the theses, drawing on that tragic experience, which underpinned the life of the party following its reconstitution after the Second World War. On the contrary, the party is a ‘voluntary’ organisation; not in the sense that members make a free rational choice to join, a notion which we reject, but rather in the sense that any militant is “materially free to leave whenever they want”, and “even after the revolution we do not envisage enforcing compulsory membership”. Members of the organisation are required to observe iron discipline in the execution of orders from above, but transgressions of this rule can only be eliminated by the Centre expelling the transgressors. The Centre has no other material sanction by which it can enforce obedience.

Using this basic definition as our point of departure we can identify the elements most likely to guarantee the greatest degree of party discipline; a simple observation which already precludes the achievement of discipline in the party by means of a set of bureaucratic commands or through the use of coercive measures.

What is it the party militant make a commitment to? He make a commitment to a combination of doctrine, programme and tactics, he makes a commitment to an active and fighting front that he instinctively believes everyone else who has joined the party has made. What is it that can keep the militant on the battlefront and make him abide by the orders filtering down to him? It certainly isn’t being compelled to carry out orders, but rather the recognition that these orders arise from this same shared common ground and are consistent with the principles, the final goals, the programme, and with the plan of action which he signed up to.

Thus it is to the extent that the party organ bases its activity on these historical foundations and has the capacity to make them it its own, thoroughly integrating them into the organisation and shaping its entire activity, that the real conditions arise such as to allow for a really solid and discipline. Inasmuch as the latter takes place breaches of discipline not ascribable to individual issues occur less and less and the party acquires the capacity to act in a univocal way. The effort to create an organisation that is truely centralised and capable of responding at all times to unitary instructions therefore essentially involves a continual work of clarification and refinement of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical cornerstones and a continual aligning of the party’s actions and methods of struggle onto these cornerstones.

So, what is prioritised in the party are the clarifications and definition of the basic tenets on which the organisation’s very existence depends. And, in order to finally put a stop to centralism being stupidly equated with bureaucratism, we will refer back to some citations from the Theses of the 3^rd World Congress; which in our 1964 Notes on the Theses on Organisation were revisited and subjected to a detailed commentary.
 

61 – Notes on the Theses on the Organizational Question, 1964
7 -… The following passages already show how dangerous a false interpretation of the formulas democratic centralism and proletarian democracy can be. For example, the centralization of the communist party «does not mean formal, mechanical, centralization, but the centralization of Communist activity, i.e., the creation of a leadership that is strong and effective and at the same time flexible. Formal or mechanical centralization would mean the centralization of power in the hands of the Party bureaucracy, allowing it to dominate the other members of the party or the revolutionary proletarian masses which don’t belong to the party». The thesis proves that the way our centralism has been portrayed by our adversaries is entirely false.
   The division between the “bureaucracy” and the “people”, i.e., between the active functionaries and the passive masses, a dualism that also exists in the organisation of the bourgeois State, is then deplored as a defect of the old workers’ movement. Unfortunately these tendencies to formalism and dualism, which the Communist Party must totally eradicate, were somehow ‘passed on’ to the workers’ movement from the bourgeois environment. The ensuing passage, which highlights the two conflicting dangers, the two conflicting extremes of anarchism and bureaucratism, clarifies to what extent communists were prepared to seek salvation in the democratic mechanism: «purely formal democracy within the party cannot get rid of either bureaucratic or anarchistic tendencies, because it is precisely on the basis of such democracy that anarchy and bureaucratism have been able to develop within the workers’ movement. For this reason, all attempts to achieve the centralization of the organization and a strong leadership will be unsuccessful so long as we practice formal democracy» The remaining theses, from the third section onwards, give an outline of communist tasks, propaganda and agitation and the organization of political struggles, and they emphasise that the solution is to be sought in practical action not in organizational codification. The explanation of the link between legal and illegal work is particularly detailed.

A series of quotes from our core theses now follows. Divided into chapters and set out in chronological order, they show how the Left, deriving lessons from a tragic historical experience, discovered how discipline and centralization might be “guaranteed” within the party organ; not absolutely guaranteed of course, since the party is both a product of and maker of history and consequently its consolidation, development and centralization and conversely its disintegration and extinction, is in the first place either hindered or encouraged depending on the historical situation. Nevertheless, it was able to indicate what might favour the realisation of the maximum level of centralization and discipline, and what might, on the contrary, favour indiscipline, fractionism, and organisational disintegration.

The first set of quotations, under the heading “the model organization”, clearly specifies that the “guarantee” that the party will act in a centralized and disciplined manner doesn’t actually reside in any organizational “model”, which once applied to the party would render fractionism and indiscipline impossible. To declare, a priori, that the structure of the party must be such and such, and that indiscipline, disputes and dissent consequently all arise from not conforming to said model structure is to relapse into idealism and voluntarism. A thesis of ours, oft repeated in many contexts, is that the organized and centralized party structure comes about and develops on the basis of the entire complex activity of the party, as its consequence and as its instrument. In 1967 the question was set out in the following way:

«A real force operating within history and characterised by its rigorous continuity, the party’s life and activity rests not on the possession of a statutory patrimony of rules, precepts and constitutional forms (as hypocritically aspired to by bourgeois legalism, or ingenuously dreamt up by the pre-Marxist utopianism, architect of highly planned structures which were to be inserted ready made into the reality of the historical dynamic) but on its nature as an organized body; a body formed in the course of a long succession of theoretical and practical battles, and along the guiding thread of a continuous forward march; as we wrote in our Platform in 1945: “The party’s organisational rules are in keeping with the dialectical conception of its function. They don’t rely on legal recipes or control by regulations, and they transcend the fetish of the consultation of the majority”».

It is in the execution of all of its functions, not just one of them, that the party creates its various organs and mechanisms; and in executing them it likewise dismantles and recreates them, adhering not to metaphysical dictates or constitutional paradigms but to the real, in fact organic requirements of its own development. None of these internal workings, these organisational “cogs” within the party machine is “theorisable” either before or after their appearance; nothing entitles us to say – to give a very down to earth example – that the best guarantee that any one of these mechanisms will correspond to the purpose for which it came into being resides in the way it is deployed by one or several militants; all one can ask is that it is deployed, whether by two or by twenty – if there are that many – as though with one will, in full consistency with the party’s past and future historical course, and that if deployed by just one militant, that he do so using his hands and his brain to express the impersonal and collective power of the party. And any judgement about whether or not such a requirement has been fulfilled is provided by praxis, by history, and not by articles in a rulebook. The revolution is not a question of form, but of force; the same goes for the party in its real life, in relation both to its organisation and its doctrine. Even the organisational criterion we defend, namely of the territorial rather than the “cellular” type, is neither deduced from abstract “timeless” principles, nor held up as the perfect “timeless” solution; we adopt it only because it is the other side of the party’s primary function as a synthesiser (of the different groups, trades and elementary impulses).

The second set of quotations establishes, given the party organism is based on a voluntary membership, that the “guarantee” that it will respond to really strict discipline must be sought in a clear definition of the tactical norms which are unique and binding on all, in the consistency of the methods of struggle and in clear organisational rules. When the Left saw fractionism and insubordination tearing the International apart, it didn’t draw the conclusion that improved organisational mechanisms or a stronger centre which was better at repressing the autonomist aspirations of the individual sections was needed. Instead it learnt the lesson that the splits, lack of discipline and resistance to orders were due to tactical norms not having been properly articulated due to a lack of consistency in the party’s methods of action, and due to the increasingly shapeless form the organisation was assuming by way of fusions, filterings and infiltrations of other parties, etc, etc.

The Left’s thesis was that unless the essential preconditions for any kind of organization were re-established on a firm basis, then no amount of ingenuity would establish a strong and disciplined organisational structure, or a strong world centre of proletarian action. And from this would derive such frequently reiterated statements of the Left as: «discipline isn’t a point of departure but a point of arrival» and, «discipline is the reflection and product of the activity of the party based on its doctrine, its programme and on its unitary and homogeneous tactical norms».

The third set of quotations use historical experience to prove that rising dissent and fractionism in the party doesn’t mean “the bourgeoisie is infiltrating” but rather that «some aspect of party work or party life is out of kilter». Fractions are a symptom of a sickness in the party, not the sickness itself. The actual sickness consists in the disintegration, for any number of reasons, of that homogeneous foundation of principles, programme and tactics on which unity and organisational discipline are based.

A «senseless exasperation of hierarchical authoritarianism» won’t, therefore, prevent disagreements and fractions from multiplying, and neither will exerting disciplinary and organisational pressure, shifting people and groups of people around, resorting to trials and convictions; nor, much less, will relying on «discipline for discipline’s sake». Injunctions, restrictions, expulsions, the liquidation of local groups and ideological terror all tend to disappear if the party organism is healthy: conversely, these features tend to become more common and the general rule of party functioning if the process of degeneration and self-destruction is already well underway. This is what is emphasised in the fourth set of quotations, whereas the next set culminates in a definition of the internal life of the party, asserting that it consists not so much in a struggle between men and groups and between currents and fractions battling it out in a bid for party leadership, but rather in an effort of continuous research and rational definition of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical cornerstones on which the organisational activity of the party must rely. Inside the party, homogeneity and discipline are achieved not by “internal political struggle” but by working collectively and rationally to integrate and describe ever more effectively the cornerstones which form the basis of party action and which everybody shares and accepts. No internal political struggle.

Ch. 1 THE ‘MODEL’ ORGANISATION

    Having established the fact that out of the very necessity for the communist party to take action before, during and after the conquest of political power, it must have a centralised and hierarchical structure to support its tactical unicity, it is incumbent upon us to examine the real dynamic by which such a structure comes about and can be strengthened. We entirely agree with Lenin’s statement in What is to be Done?:«Without a strong organisation skilled in waging political struggle under all circumstances and at all times, there can be no question of that systematic plan of action, illumined by firm principles and steadfastly carried out, which alone is worthy of the name of tactics». Without a centralised and unitary organisation one cannot be said to have achieved unitary tactics; it is only by having one organisation as the material instrument of action that tactical unity can arise. But the main, crucial statement found constantly throughout our writings, and one which fully corresponds with the thinking of Lenin in What is to be Done? and at the Third Congress of the International, is that this organisation doesn’t first arise as a ‘template’ in someone’s head, to be then introduced into the real dynamic of the party. There is no such thing as a ‘Bolshevik model’ or a ‘Left’ model, which is capable of being theorised and determined at an abstract level in advance, and on which the structure of the party can be modelled. The aprioristic hypothesis of such a ‘model’ underpins the so-called ‘bolshevisation’ of the 3^rd International which served the purpose not of forming ‘bolshevik’ parties, but of destroying communist parties after the First World War.
     From 1924 onwards the stance of the Moscow centre, by then already in a state of decline, was that: “the communist parties of Europe are powerless to exploit revolutionary opportunities and apply the correct revolutionary policy because they don’t possess the Russian Bolshevik party’s organisational structure”. Thus the problem was turned on its head, inasmuch as the realisation of the party’s revolutionary path was entrusted to the existence, or lack, of a particular organisational structure, of a model in other words. And this would sound the death knell of the parties and of the International. If it is in fact true that discipline is not a starting-point but a point of arrival – the point of arrival being the collective activity of the party being conducted on the basis of its theory, programme, and unique and homogeneous tactics – it is also true that an organised party structure is “a point of arrival and not a starting point” too; a point to head for, the reflection of the party’s complex activity taking place on the basis of its theoretical, programmatic and tactical tenets within given political, social and historical circumstances. The Bolshevik party’s factory cell organisation certainly wasn’t in response to some organisational model invented by Lenin or any other fairy tale organizer; it was just an organisational reflection of the activity of a collective organ, firmly grounded on revolutionary Marxism, working within the political, social and historical conditions of tsarist Russia. And this structure allowed the Bolshevik party to triumph in Russia, not because it corresponded to a model of what the communist party should be like, but because it best suited the requirements of the political struggle being conducted under Russian conditions; it best reflected the needs of party activity in Russia. The same structural form, once applied to Western Europe, inevitably gave entirely negative results and instead of strengthening the organisation it undermined it.
     However the ‘territorial’ structure adopted by the Western parties wasn’t a ‘model’ either, and it was no better or worse than the Bolshevik one.
    It was simply a product of history, a historical fact. In an organic way the activity of the Western Communist parties took on the form of territorial sections instead of factory cells, and for a hundred and one material reasons it soon became clear that this form appeared to be the best adapted to accomplish the tasks the party was called on to perform. The most we can say is that having a structure organised into territorial sections responded best to what we consider to be a key task of the party organ: to synthesise the spontaneous and partial impulses which arise at a local, trade and group level. But this is not a principle or an a priori model either. The party organisation is in fact a product of its activity in determined conditions, “it arises and develops on the basis of consistent and coherent party activity undertaken in pursuit of its revolutionary tasks”, whose necessary technical instrument, permitting of no substitute, it is. That is why it is anti-Marxist and wrong to claim that the party of Lenin is the ‘model party organisation’ and why it would be just as wrong to seek a model in the structure of any other party, our own included.
    In the period after the 2^nd World War, the Left professed to be building a centralised party organisation without recourse to the utilisation of democratic mechanisms internally and, consequently, without statutory and legal codifications. But this too wasn’t in response to the ‘left model’ but to a correct evaluation of the historical development that allows today’s parties to do without the instruments and practices that had to be adopted by the old parties. Right from the start our party had, or rather built, a ‘structural form for its activity’, that is, a centralised structure adapted to the activity the party was required to carry out; the structural form wasn’t a response to an ‘invention’ or to a ‘model’, but to the following given elements: homogeneous and unitary tactical and programmatic foundation (not an ensemble of circles and currents as in Russia in 1900), tactical plan which is unique and defined from the start, as far as its underlying principles are concerned, on the basis of historical lessons (rejection of “revolutionary parliamentarism”, obligation to work in the trade unions, rejection of political united fronts, uncompromising tactics in areas of double revolution). These given elements allowed the organisation to create a structure which from the very start was based around a single newspaper which advocated one political line, thereby enabling the organisation’s various parts to appear not as ‘local circles’ but as territorial sections of a single organisation, with orders and instructions emanating, from the very start, from one, single point (the international centre).
    Other elements which characterised the organisational structure were: theoretical activity 99%, external activity amongst the proletariat 1%; number of party members limited to a couple of dozen or couple of hundred. Clearly factors these which were outside anybody’s control. The party organisation, its ‘working’ structure, was what it needed to be and what it only could be as a consequence of these given elements and nothing to do with how Tom, Dick or Harry may have liked it to be. It was an organic structuring of party activity undertaken in real given conditions with a given number of participants. This structuring will change, without prejudice to the historically acquired factual results (theoretical, programmatic and tactical homogeneity; elimination once and for all of all democratic, and thus ‘bureaucratic’, internal party mechanisms) to the extent that the material conditions within which the party conducts its activity also change; to the extent that the quantitative relationship between the various sectors of party activity undergoes change in response to the upsurge of the proletarian struggle, in the measure that party membership increases, etc, etc.
    The work of the party requires organs, instruments of centralisation, of co-ordination and of policy; these instruments, mechanisms, etc, are the expression of real demands that arise as a result of its activity. It is the party’s action which needs a suitable structure and which provides the impulse, the urge, to build it, to realise it. This isn’t, on the other hand, a specific structural type that can be imposed on living reality and shape the party as though it were distinct from its activity. To claim that the party, in order to consider itself as such, must possess at every moment of its existence a specific structure, particular organs, etc, is to fall back into the most abstract, anti-Marxist voluntarism. It’s not just us saying this, all our theses say it, and Lenin does as well, when he’s not being misread by philistines searching for sure-fire recipes for success. Because, as we’ve already said, presupposing an ‘organisational model’ necessarily brings in its wake another, even more serious, departure from sound materialism: it leads to recognising in the existence or achievement of this structural type the ‘guarantee’ that the party is pursuing the ‘correct revolutionary policy’. Our classic sequence is turned on its head and organisational structure ends up as the guarantor of tactics, programme and even principles.
    For Marx, Lenin and the Left, the sole means of ‘guaranteeing’ that the complex and robust organisation the party needs can exist and be strengthened is by carrying out party work on the base of homogeneity of theory, program and tactics. For idealists of all times, and for the Stalinists, party centralisation, discipline and organisational structure are taken as a priori elements and it is these which ‘guarantee’ the unicity and homogeneity of theory, program and tactics. According to Lenin, organisation is the arm without which tactics cannot be put into effect: one organisation as reflection and organic product of an activity performed on the basis of unique presuppositions and a unique line. For ‘Leninists’ of the Stalinist variety the one organisation, centralism and discipline constitute the initial premise from which one then obtain correct tactics and a unique line of action.
    The Marxist declares: if the movement accepts a single theory, a single program and a unitary tactical plan, then by having the party’s activity conducted on such foundations it is possible to develop a centralised and disciplined organisational structure. But if these foundations are found to be wanting, then discipline, centralisation and organisation will accordingly be undermined, and there are no organisational remedies in existence which can head off total collapse.
    Stalin maintains you can have divergent tactics which are unclear, variable and subject to change, but, as long as you have centralisation and organisational discipline, everything is fine: divergences, disagreements, currents and fractions can all be eliminated using organisational measures, by reinforcing the organisational structure and by equipping the party with organisational tools and mechanisms which have an inherent capacity to keep the party on the right path. As we can see the process has been completely turned on its head, and it appears that ‘Leninists’ of the Stalinist variety have only read the last chapter What is to be Done?, doing so because they subscribe to the petty-bourgeois myth of the model party; a party whose structure can guarantee it against errors and deviations, today, tomorrow and forever more. The petty bourgeoisie is always looking for reassurance… that the revolution will definitely

QUOTATIONS

62 – The Democratic Principle, 1922
… None of these considerations are hard and fast rules, and this brings us to our thesis that no constitutional schema amounts to principle, and that majority democracy understood in the formal and arithmetic sense is but one possible method for co-ordinating the relations that arise within collective organisations; a method to which it is absolutely impossible to attribute an intrinsic character of necessity or justice, since such terms actually having no meaning for Marxists, and besides which our aim is not to replace the democratic apparatus criticised by ourselves with yet another mindless project for a party apparatus inherently free of all defects and errors (our italics).

63 – Back to Basics: the Nature of the Communist Party, 1925
… The upshot of all this is we need to recover the fundamental Marxist thesis which holds that the party’s revolutionary character is determined by relations of social forces and political processes and not by empty frameworks, by the type of organisation (…) An anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist utopianism is at the back of all these demonstrations insofar as rather than tackling problems by setting out from an analysis of the actual social forces, it draws up elaborate constitutions, organisational projects and sets of rules. The fallacious ideological approach to the question of fractions, whereby everything is reduced to codifying on paper how fractions are to be prohibited and crushed, draws on a similar misconception.

64 – The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Lyon Theses), 1926
I, 2 -… As regards the perils of degeneration of the revolutionary movement, and of the means to guarantee the required continuity of the political line in its leaders and members, these dangers can’t be eradicated with organisational formulae.

65 – Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1948
V -… The position of the Italian Communist Left on what we could call “the question of revolutionary guarantees” is first of all that no constitutional or contractual provision can protect the party against degeneration.

66 – General Guiding Principles, 1949
… The correct functioning relationship between the central and peripheral organs of the movement isn’t based on constitutional schemas but on the entire dialectical unfolding of the historical struggle of the working class against capitalism.

67 – Notes for the Theses on the Question of Organisation, 1964
6 -… A preliminary paragraph deals with the generalities, and establishes that the issue of organisation cannot be regulated by immutable principles but has to accommodate the purpose behind party activity and the circumstances within which this takes place, both during the phase of revolutionary class struggle and during the following period of transition towards socialism – the first stage of communist society. The different conditions pertaining in different countries have to be taken into account, but within certain prescribed limits. «This limit (today ignored by all) is prescribed by the similarity of the conditions under which the proletarian struggle takes place in the different countries and in the different phases of the proletarian revolution, which is, beyond all individual circumstances, the matter of essential importance for the communist movement. It is this similarity which provides the common basis for the organisation of the communist parties in all countries: it is on this basis that we must develop the organisation of the communist parties and not by striving to create a new model party to replace what already exists, or by seeking a formula for the absolutely perfect organisation, with perfect statutes».

68 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    11 -… The Left staunchly defends another of Marx and Lenin’s fundamental theses, that is, that a remedy for the alternations and historical crises which will inevitably affect the party cannot be found in constitutional or organizational formulae magically endowed with the property of protecting the party against degeneration. Such a false hope is one amongst the many petty-bourgeois illusions dating back to Proudhon and which, via numerous connections, re-emerge in Italian Ordinovism, namely: that the social question can be resolved using a formula based on producers’ organizations. Over the course of party evolution the path followed by the formal parties will undoubtedly be marked by continuous U-turns and ups and downs, and also by ruinous precipices, and will clash with the ascending path of the historical party. Left Marxists direct their efforts towards realigning the broken curve of the contingent parties with the continuous and harmonious curve of the historical party. This is a position of principle, but it is childish to try to transform it into an organizational recipe. In accordance with the historical line, we utilize not only the knowledge of mankind’s, the capitalist class and the proletarian class’s past and present, but also a direct and certain knowledge of society’s and mankind’s future, as mapped out by our doctrine in the certainty that it will culminate in the classless and Stateless society, which could in a certain sense be considered a party-less society; unless one understands by ’party’ an organ which fights not against other parties, but which conducts the defence of mankind against the dangers of physical nature and its evolutionary and eventually catastrophic processes.
    The Communist Left has always considered that its long battle against the sad contingencies of the proletariat’s succession of formal parties has been conducted by affirming positions that in a continuous and harmonious way are connected on the luminous trail of the historical party, which continues unbroken along the years and centuries, leading from the first declarations of the nascent proletarian doctrine to the society of the future, which we know very well, insofar as we have thoroughly identified the tissue and ganglia of the present avaricious society which the revolution must sweep away (…)
    But equally futile, maybe more so, is the idea of constructing a model of the perfect party, an idea redolent of the decadent weaknesses of the bourgeoisie, which, unable to defend its power, to maintain its crumbling economic system, or even to exert control over its doctrinal thinking, takes refuge in distorted robotic technologisms, in order, through these stupid, formal, automatic models, to ensure its own survival, and to escape scientific certainty, which as far its epoch of history and civilization is concerned can be summed up in one word: Death!

Ch. 2 “GUARANTEES”

Arranged in date order from 1922 to 1970, the quotations in this chapter follow a continuous line in the communist conception of organisational questions. According to this line the centralised and disciplined organisation of the party is based not on democratic consultation of majority opinion, and less still on the edicts of leaders or group of leaders, but instead on the clarity and continuous clarification of its line on doctrine, principles, programme, aims and on the ever deeper acquisition of these positions by the organisation. It is based, as a consequence, on the demarcation of clear tactical norms, which all members of the organisation need to be aware of along with a clear understanding of all of their possible implications. The work of organisation-building is therefore an indispensable task whose constant aim is to render clear and unequivocal, to the whole organisation, the historical patrimony of experiences and dynamic balance sheets of which the existing organisation is but the current expression. If there exists homogeneity within, and the acceptance by all members, of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical foundations, then there will also necessarily exist, as a result, homogeneity within the realm of organisational discipline; namely, a general and spontaneous obedience to orders issued by the centre.

In the absence of such homogeneity, attempts to resolve differences by applying disciplinary pressure, compelling obedience to the centre’s orders, or through a strong central organ capable of forcing its decisions on the periphery will be entirely in vain. It will be necessary instead to rebuild the homogeneous base by sculpting and honing the party’s doctrinal, programmatic and tactical lines in the light of our tradition. Now this isn’t the same as saying, ‘the party should have no central organs with absolute and non-negotiable powers’; it means that the ensuring that the orders of the centre are obeyed rests not on the latter’s capacity to punish the disobedient, but on it operating in such a way that there are no disobedient people; and such a situation is obtained not by organisational sanctions but through continuous ongoing work on the part of the entire organisation to integrate its doctrinal, programmatic and tactical bases.

When people say that: “divergences on theoretical, programmatic and tactical questions arise because we don’t have enough organisational centralisation, because the centre isn’t able, by hook or by crook, to impose its own solutions on the organisation”, they are turning the problem on its head, and veering away from the historical path mapped out by the Left. What is more, the party is destroyed, because what should be at the end of the process is placed at the beginning. Discipline isn’t a point of departure but a point of arrival, and if at such and such a time the centre’s orders meet with resistance from within the organisation, this means that either they are at odds with the traditional foundations on which the organisation rests (in which case such resistance is positive), or else the organisation hasn’t fully acquired and incorporated these traditional foundations. In both cases, enforcement, administrative measures, and punishment may serve the immediate needs of the party and get it moving, but it certainly won’t resolve the situation. It is a cheap shot against the Left to state that having theoretical, programmatic and tactical homogeneity in place doesn’t automatically lead to centralised organisation. The organisation has to be built, for sure, but it needs to be supported on the foundations we looked at earlier. And then the building of the organisation becomes a purely technical matter; a logical consequence in terms of the acquisition of practical instruments that serve to coordinate, harmonise and direct the party’s activity. We will have need of an operational central organ which plans and issues instructions; we will need people to take responsibility for various areas of party activity; we will need a centralised and efficient communications network; we will need hundreds of operational instruments, and setting them up won’t be easy. Certainly! But it will all be for nought unless it rests on the aforementioned basis. But woe betides us if it is ever thought that these formal instruments bestow an ultimate guarantee of the good functioning of the party and of its internal discipline. It is a matter of technical instruments that the party has to use in order to act in a co-ordinated and centralised manner; but these absolutely do not guarantee the actions themselves, or centralisation, or discipline.

QUOTATIONS

69 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Rome Theses), 1922
    29 – (…) Since the party programme cannot be characterised as a straightforward aim to be achieved by whatever means but rather as a historical perspective of mutually related pathways and points of arrival, the tactics adopted in successive situations must be related to the programme, and thus the general tactical norms adopted in successive situations need to be clearly specified within not too rigid limits, becoming clear and clearer and fluctuating less and less as the movement gains in strength and approaches the final victory. Only such a criterion as this can allow us to approach ever closer to the optimum level of genuine centralization within the parties and the International needed to direct action effectively; in such a way that orders emanating from the centre will be willingly accepted, not just within the communist parties but also within the mass movement they have managed to organise. One mustn’t however forget that, having once accepted the movement’s organic discipline, there is still the factor of initiative on the part of individuals and groups which is dependent on how situations develop and what arises out of them; and on a continual, logical advance in terms of experiences, and changes to the course being followed, to discover the most effective way of combating the conditions of life imposed on the proletariat by the existing system. Thus it is incumbent upon the party and the International to explain the ensemble of general tactical norms in a systematic manner since it might eventually call on its own ranks, and the strata of the proletariat which have rallied around them, to put these tactical norms into practice and to make sacrifices on their behalf.

70 – Theses of the P.C.d’I on the Tactics of the C.I. at the IVth Congress, 1922
    (…) In order to avoid crises of discipline and eliminate the danger of opportunism, the Communist International needs to bolster its organisational centralisation with clear, precise tactical resolutions which exactly specify which methods are to be applied.
    A political organisation, that is, one based on the voluntary adherence of each of its members, can only respond to the requirements of centralised action when all of its members are aware of, and accept, the array of methods which the centre may order them to apply in various different situations.
    The authority and prestige of the centre, which relies on psychological factors rather than material sanctions, depends entirely on the clarity, firmness and continuity of the programmatic proclamations and methods of struggle. The assurance that the proletarian international is able to form a centre of effective unitary action rests solely on this.
    A robust organisation can arise only on the sound basis that its organisational norms provide; by assuring each individual that these norms will be applied impartially, rebellions and desertions are reduced to a minimum. The organisational statutes, no less than the ideology and the tactical norms, need to impart a sense of unity and continuity.

71 – Speech by the Left’s Representative at the IV Congress of the C.I., 1922
    (…) We support total centralisation and investiture of power within the supreme central organs. But what is needed to ensure compliance with the leading centre’s initiatives isn’t just solemn sermons about discipline on the one hand, and heartfelt pledges to respect it on the other (…) The assurance there will be discipline must be sought elsewhere if we bear in mind, in the light of the Marxist dialectic, the nature of our organisation, which is not a machine, which is not an army, but a real unitary whole, whose development is first of all product and secondly a factor of the developing historical situation. Discipline can only be ensured by specifying the limits within which our methods of action are applicable and by clearly defining our programmes and fundamental tactical resolutions, and our organisational measures.

72 – Communist Organisation and Discipline, 1924
    To consider total, perfect discipline, such as would ensue from a universal consensus also in the critical consideration of all the movement’s problems; to consider such discipline not as an end result, but as an infallible means which should be employed with blind conviction, would effectively be saying, in short: “the International is the world Communist Party, and every pronouncement of its central organs must be faithfully followed”. This would surely be to turn the problem, a bit sophistically, on its head.
    We must remember, at the start of our analysis of the question, that the communist parties are organisations whose membership is “voluntary”. This fact is rooted in the historical nature of parties (…) The fact of the matter is, we cannot force anyone to become a card carrying member, we cannot conscript communists, we cannot impose sanctions on those who do not comply with internal discipline: every member is free to leave whenever he or she wishes (…)
    As a consequence we cannot adopt the formula, although it is not without its advantages, of total obedience in the execution of orders from above. The orders which emanate from the central hierarchies are not the starting point, but the result of the functioning of the movement understood as a collectivity (…)
    There is no mechanical discipline that can reliably ensure that orders and regulations from above whatever they are” will be put into effect. There is however a set of orders and regulations which respond to the real origins of the movement that can guarantee maximum discipline, that is, of unitary action by the entire organisation; and, conversely, there are other directives which, emanating from the centre could compromise discipline and organisational solidity (…)
    In the belief that we remain faithful to Marxist dialectics, we summarise our thesis as follows: the party’s action, and the tactics it adopts, i.e., the way the party acts on the “outside world”, has in its turn consequences on the organisation and on its “internal” structure. Anyone who claims the party should be ready, in the name of some kind of limitless discipline, to take part in “any” kind of action, tactic or strategic manoeuvre, i.e., outside the well-defined limits known to all party militants, would fatally compromise the party.
    We will only arrive at the maximum desirable level of unity and disciplinary solidity in an efficacious way by confronting the issue on the basis of this platform, not by claiming that it is already prejudicially resolved by a banal rule of mechanical obedience.

73 – Speech by the Left’s Representative at the V Congress of the C.I., 1924
    (…) We want real centralisation and real discipline. And for this to happen our tactical directives need to be clear, and the stance of our organisations towards other parties needs to be consistent.

74 – The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Lyon Theses), 1926
    I, 3 – (…) Rejecting the possibility, and necessity, of predicting tactics in their broad outlines – not predicting situations, which is much less possible with any degree of certainty, but predicting what we should do in various hypothetical scenarios based on the progression of objective situations – means rejecting the party’s role, and rejecting the only guarantee we can give that party militants and the masses, in all circumstances, will agree to take orders from the leading centre. In this sense the party is not an army, nor is it a mechanism of the State, that is, an organ in which hierarchical authority prevails and voluntary adhesion counts for nothing; we state the obvious in noting that a way is always left open to the party member, incurring no material sanctions, not to obey orders: leaving the party itself. Good tactics are such that, should the situation change, and the leading centre doesn’t have enough time to consult the party and still less the masses, they don’t lead, within the party and the proletariat, to unexpected repercussions which could undermine the success of the revolutionary campaign. The art of predicting how the party will react to orders, and which orders will go down well, is the art of revolutionary tactics; which can be relied upon only to the extent it makes collective use of the experiences of the past, summed up in clear rules of action (…) We have no hesitation in saying that since the party itself is something which is perfectible but not perfect. Much has to be sacrificed for the sake of clarity, to the persuasive capacity of the tactical norms, even if it does entail a certain schematisation (…) A good party doesn’t makes good tactics, good tactics makes a good party, and good tactics can only be ones which are understood and agreed by all in their basic outlines.

75 – Speech by the Left’s Representative at the VI Enlarged Executive Committee of the C.I., 1926
    (…) It is true we must have an absolutely homogeneous communist party, without differences of opinion and different groupings within it. But this statement is not a dogma, it isn’t an a priori principle; it is an end for which we can and must fight, in the course of development which will lead to the formation of the true communist party, on condition, that is, that all ideological, tactical and organizational questions have been correctly posed and resolved.

76 – Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party of the Working Class, 1947
    (…) The cause of these failures must lie in the fact that successive tactical slogans rained down on the parties and through their cadres with the character of unexpected surprises, without any preparation of communist organization to the various outcomes. In order to foresee the full spectrum of situations and responses, the tactical plans of the party cannot and must not become an esoteric monopoly of supreme hierarchies, but must be rigidly coordinated with theoretical coherence, with the political conscience of militants, in the traditions of the movement’s development, and must permeate the organization in such a way that they are prepared in advance and can foresee what will be the reactions of the unitary structure of the party to the favorable or unfavorable sequence of events in the struggle’s development. To expect something more and different from the party, and to believe that the party will not be smashed by unexpected turns of the helm, is not the same thing as having a more comprehensive and revolutionary concept, but clearly, as demonstrated by concrete historical comparisons, it is the classic process that ends up in opportunism, whereby the revolutionary party either dissolves and is shipwrecked against the defeatist influence of bourgeois politics, or is more easily exposed and disarmed in the face of repressive initiatives.

77 – Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1948
    V – (…) The relationship between the militant and the party is based on a commitment, and our conception of this commitment, which avoids the undesirable adjective ‘contractual’, we may define simply as dialectical. It is a dual relationship which flows both ways: from the centre to the base and from the base to the centre. If the action of the centre goes in accordance with the good functioning of the dialectical relationship, it is met by healthy responses from the base.
    The celebrated problem of discipline thus consists in setting a system of limitations on rank-and-file militants which is a proper reflection of the limitations set on the action of the leadership.

78 – Marxism and Authority, 1956
    29 – (…) The adjective ‘democratic’ acknowledges that at congresses decisions are made, after the the rank-and-file organisations, by counting votes. But is counting votes enough to ensure that the centre will obey the base and not vice-versa? Knowing as we do the inauspiciousness of bourgeois electoralism, does this really make sense?
    We will just recall the guarantees so often suggested by ourselves and highlighted again in the Dialogue with the Dead. Doctrine: this was established right at the start in the movement’s classical texts and the Centre isn’t allowed to change it. Organisation: internationally unique, it doesn’t diversify by means of aggregations or fusions but only through the admission of individuals; members cannot belong to other movements. Tactics: potential manoeuvres and actions must be anticipated in decisions made at international congresses using a closed system. The rank-and-file must not initiate actions without the go ahead from the centre: the centre must not give new factors as a pretext for inventing new tactical manoeuvres. The link between the rank-and-file of the party and the centre takes on a dialectical form. If the party is exercising the class dictatorship inside the State, and against those classes against which the State is taking action, there isn’t dictatorship of the centre of the party over the rank-and-file. Such a dictatorship isn’t negated by means of a mechanical and formal internal democracy, but by respecting those dialectical links.

79 – Dialogue with the Dead, 1956
    77 – (…) Our guarantees are simple and well-known.
    1 – Theory – As we said it doesn’t appear in every phase of history, nor does its appearance depend on Great Men, on Geniuses. It appears only at certain key junctures, and regarding its ‘general particulars’ we know its date of birth, but not its paternity. Our theory necessarily appeared after 1830 on the basis of the English economy. It provides a guarantee (even admitted that perfect truth and science are unattainable goals, and struggling against the scale of the error is all one can realistically expect) insofar as it constitutes the backbone to an entire system. There are only two historical paths open to it: it is either realised or it disappears. The party’s theory consists of a set of laws that govern history and its past and future course, and the guarantee we therefore propose is: no revisions or ‘improvements’ of the theory allowed. No creativity.
    2 – Organisation – It must have historical continuity, both as far as remaining faithful to the theory itself is concerned, and continuity in terms of handing on experience derived from the struggle. Only when throughout vast areas of the world and over long periods of time this has been achieved will the great victories come. The guarantee against the centre is that the latter doesn’t have the right to be creative in the orders it issues, and only to have them obeyed to the extent that its battle orders fall within the precise limits of the movement’s doctrine and historical perspective, as established throughout the world and over a long period. The guarantee lies in holding back from exploiting ‘special’ local or national situations, the unexpected emergency, or particular contingencies. Either history allows certain general connections to be established between distant points in space and time, or it is pointless to talk of a revolutionary party, which is fighting to create a future society. Same as we have always dealt with, there are great historical and ‘geographical’ sub-divisions which fundamentally shape the action the party takes: over fields extending across continents and centuries; no party leadership can announce sudden changes of the type that alter from one year to the next. Thousands of examples have confirmed the following theorem of ours: he who announces ‘a new course’ is always a traitor.
    The guarantee against the base and the masses lies in the fact that unitary and centralised action, the famous ‘discipline’, is achieved when the leadership is firmly committed to the aforementioned canons of theory and practice, and local groups are not allowed to ‘create’ their own autonomous programmes, perspectives and movements. This dialectical relationship between the base and the apex of the pyramid (which in Moscow thirty years ago we wanted to overturn, to turn on its head) is the key which ensures that the party, as impersonal as it is unique, has the exclusive faculty of reading history, the possibility of intervening in it, and of indicating when such a possibility has arisen. Going from Stalin to a committee of under-Stalinists, nothing has been turned on its head.
    3 – Tactics – the mechanism of the party forbids ‘creative’ strategies. The plan of operations is out in the public domain and the precise limits of the territorial and historical fields within which it is to be applied are described. An obvious example: since 1871 the party hasn’t backed any war between States in Europe. Since 1919, the party hasn’t participated (or shouldn’t have…) in any elections in Europe. In Asia and the East, up to now, the party has supported democratic and national revolutionary movements and a fighting alliance between the proletariat and other classes including the local bourgeoisie. We give these crude examples to prevent it being said that there is one rigid scheme which we apply everywhere and always; and to avoid the famous accusation that this construct, which is a completely historical materialist one, derives from immobile postulates which are ethical, aesthetic or even mystical. The party and class dictatorship will not degenerate into a discredited form such as an oligarchy on the condition that it is openly and publicly declared for what it is and set in the context of a broad arc of historical time; making its existence conditional not on a hypocritical majority control, but solely on the strength of the enemy forces. The Marxist party isn’t ashamed of the clear conclusions that emerge from its materialist doctrine; and it won’t be prevented from drawing them by sentimental views or for the sake of appearances.
    The programme must contain a clear outline of the future society’s structure, insofar as it is a total negation of the present structure, and this must be our point of arrival everywhere and at all times. Describing present society is only a part of the revolutionary task. Slandering it and deprecating it is not our concern, and neither is the construction of future society within the precincts of the old. But the ruthless destruction of the present relations of production must occur according to a clear programme, which scientifically predicts how over those broken obstacles there will arise the new forms of social organisation, commented on by the party doctrine in such detail.

80 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    13 – (…) The screening of party members in the organic centralist scheme is carried out in a way we have always declared to be contrary to the Moscow centrists. The party continues to hone and refine the distinctive features of its doctrine, of its action and tactics with a unique methodology that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries. Clearly all those who are uncomfortable with these delineations can just leave.

81 – Introduction to “The P.C.d’I’s Theses on Tactics at the IVth Congress of the Communist International”, 1965
    (..) Some points relate to the question of organisation. Every tradition of federalism must be eliminated to ensure centralisation and unitary discipline. But this historic problem won’t be resolved with mechanical expedients. The new International too, if it is to avoid opportunist dangers and internal disciplinary crises, must base its centralisation not just on a clear programme, but also on clear tactics and working practices. As early as at the IV Congress we already insisted that this is the sole guarantee on which the Centre can safely base its authority.

82 – Supplementary Theses (…) (Milan Theses), 1966
    7 – (…) Within the revolutionary party, as it moves inexorably towards victory, obeying orders is spontaneous and total but not blind or compulsory. In fact, centralised discipline, as illustrated in the theses and associated supporting documentation, is equivalent to a perfect harmony between the duties and actions of the base and those of the centre, and the bureaucratic practices of an anti-Marxist voluntarism are no substitute for this.

83 – Introduction to “The P.C.d’I’s Theses on Tactics at the IVth Congress of the Communist International”, 1970
    (…) As a consequence, the foundations of a genuine international discipline, which is not mechanical, not based on the exegesis of civil or penal law, but organic, collapse when they are replaced by a formal discipline imposed by an organ which is both deliberative and executive; whose capacity to maintain the line of theoretical, practical and organisational continuity, within the complex and unpredictable game of manoeuvres, is supposedly conferred on it a priori by the belief that it has somehow been permanently immunised (…)
    Discipline is the product of homogeneous programme and consistent practice: once you start introducing the independent variable of improvisation, you end up having to surround it with a whole host of restrictive clauses. At the end of process there is just the knut. Or, if you prefer, Stalin.

84 – Introduction to “The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I. (Lyon Theses), 1970
    It is therefore necessary to lay the basis of discipline by supporting it on the firm pedestal of clarity, firmness and invariance of principles and tactical directives. Back in those years whose very brilliance makes them seem a long time ago, discipline was created in an organic way and rooted in the granite-like doctrinal force and practice of the Bolshevik Party; today, either it will be rebuilt on the collective foundation of the world-wide movement, in a spirit of seriousness and fraternal sense of the importance of the hour, or all will be lost (…)
    Discipline towards the programme in its original, clear and precise form was not observed; it was said that the confusion arising from this lack of discipline could be prevented by recreating “genuine Bolshevik parties” in vitro. And we all know how these caricatures of Lenin’s party turned out under Stalin’s heel. At the 4^th Congress they warned: “Discipline can be guaranteed only by defining the boundaries within which our methods are applicable, by clearly defining our programmes and fundamental tactical resolutions, and through our organisational measures”. At the 5^th Congress we repeated that it was pointless pursuing dreams of a trouble free discipline if clarity and accuracy was lacking in the fields on which all discipline and organisational homogeneity depended; that indulging in dreams of a single world party would be in vain if the continuity and the prestige of the international organ was continually being destroyed by conceding, not only to the periphery but to the leaders, the “freedom to choose” the principles which determined practical action and therefore action itself; and that it was hypocritical to invoke the idea of “bolshevisation” if it didn’t signify intransigent ends, and adherence of the means to these ends.

85 – Introduction to the ‘Post 1945 Theses’, 1970
    (…) If the party is in possession of such theoretical and practical homogeneity (possession which isn’t guaranteed for all time, but rather a reality to be defended tooth and claw, and if necessary to be won back as many time as it takes), then its organisation, which is simultaneously its discipline, arises and develops organically on the unitary rootstock of program and practical action, and expresses in its diverse forms of explication, in the hierarchy of its organs, a perfect connectedness of the party with the sum of all of its functions.

Ch. 3 CURRENTS AND FRACTIONS

The Left, therefore, views the appearance within the party of dissent and fractions as the symptom, as the outer manifestation of a sickness that has infected the party organ. Consequently it is a matter not so much of fighting the symptoms but of finding the causes of the illness, which are always to be found in some wrongly conducted aspect of the party’s collective work and its central functions. The party’s activity is veering away from the historical line on which it is based; the organisation’s assimilation of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical foundations is inadequate: consequently different evaluations and fractions may arise. That is the Left’s thesis. Or, the party is going though a degenerative process caused by opportunism and the formation of fractions is the party organ’s healthy reaction to the deviation. Diametrically opposed, as you know, to the thesis continually being rammed home by the current centre, according to which it is the fractions which bring opportunism into the party. The Left’s thesis leads to a practical conclusion: the formation of fractions should set off alarm bells; they indicate that something is not right in the general functioning of the party; that it is necessary, therefore, to find out what it is in the way the party is working that has led to the appearance of fractions. Once the party’s activity is set back on its classical foundations, fractions disappear and there is no further need for them. Here, as well, the accent is placed on the correct method of acting in the theoretical, programmatic and tactical spheres; on achieving clarification within the party by working on the substantive resolution (that is, within the theoretical, programmatic and tactical spheres) of the disagreements that crop up within the party. The present centre’s theses lead to the opposite conclusion: it is fractions which are the disease, and they are due to the opportunist and petty-bourgeois virus trying to penetrate the party; it is consequently necessary to expel, destroy and eradicate fractions; once the instigators of the fractions have been expelled, party life returns to normal. The Left on the other hand believes that opportunism penetrates the party under the banner of unity, of prostration before leaders, of discipline for discipline’s sake. The centre believes that opportunism penetrates the party under the banner of fractionism, of lack of discipline, etc. The Left believes that it isn’t the duty of the party to repress fractionism but to prevent it through “correct revolutionary politics”. The centre believes the main duty of the party should be repressing fractionism, discipline for discipline’s sake, and absolute obedience to the central hierarchies. The Left believes the C.P. could be underwritten with the slogan: “against the causes that allowed fractionism to appear”; the centre believes it should read “against fractionism”. The Left doesn’t believe it is the infected leg infecting the entire organism, but the sick organism infecting the leg. The centre believes amputating the leg would restore the organism to health. The consequences of these opposed views are necessarily as follows: the Left believes that disciplinary measures, organisational pressure, ideological terror and repressive energy are not only not a remedy for fractionism, but are actually a symptom of latent opportunism; the centre believes, on the contrary, that hunting down fractionism, forceful repression, disciplinary measures and mutual mistrust between comrades are indicators of the party organ’s vitality and power. The Left believes that disciplinary measures should be resorted to less and less, finally arriving at a point where they have disappeared altogether. The centre believes that such “ignoble baggage” should become part of the party’s standard mode of functioning. The Left believes the party is functioning well when there is no need to adopt repressive measures. The centre believes the party is functioning well to the extent it has the capacity to adopt measures of this type.

The party’s current centre is therefore going down a path that diverges from that of revolutionary Marxism and of the Left; its behaviour, based on a perpetual eradication of fractions, is in fact, according to the Left, a symptom of latent opportunism.

QUOTATIONS

86 – Theses of the P.C.d’I on the Tactics of the C.I. at the 4^th Congress, 1922
    (…) To the extent that the International applies such expedients [that is, adopts ‘abnormal organisational norms’ that allow the communist parties to fuse with different groups, and thus formally admit fractions from the outset] manifestations of federalism and breakdowns in discipline are bound to occur. If the process were to be reversed or halted in an attempt to eliminate such abnormalities, or if the latter were to become the norm, there would be an extremely serious risk of a relapse into opportunism.

87 – Declaration of the Left on the Organisational Proposals set out at the 4^th Congress of the C.I., 1922
    (…) I must however emphasise that if we wish to achieve real centralisation, that is a synthesis of the spontaneous forces of the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the various countries, so we can eliminate the disciplinary crises we see today, we have to centralise our organisational apparatus, sure, but at the same time we must consolidate our methods of struggle and define precisely everything which relates to the C.I’s programme and tactics. We must be able to explain to every group and comrade who belongs to the C.I. exactly what is meant by the duty of unconditional obedience which they sign up to when they enter our ranks.

88 – Communist Organisation and Discipline, 1924
    (…) Precisely because we are antidemocratic, we believe that a minority may have views that correspond better to the interests of the revolutionary process than those of the majority. Certainly this only happens in exceptional cases and it is extremely serious when such a disciplinary inversion occurs, as happened in the old International and which we sincerely hope will not occur within our ranks again. But even if we omit to consider this extreme case, there are however other less critical situations when the contribution which groups make by calling on the leading centre to refine or modify its instructions is useful, in fact, indispensable.

89 – The Left’s Motion at the Como National Conference of the P.C.d’I, 1924
    10 – It is beyond dispute that in the International, functioning as world Communist Party, organic centralisation and discipline must exclude fractions or groups from taking over the leadership of the national parties, as is happening now in all countries. The Left of the P.C.d’I believes this objective must be achieved as quickly as possible, but considers that it will not be achieved with mechanical impositions and decisions, but rather by ensuring the correct historical development of the International Communist Party, which must run parallel with the clarification of political ideology, the unambiguous definition of tactics, and in conjunction with an organisational consolidation.

90 – The Left’s Response to Zinoviev at the 5^th Congress of the C.I., 1924
    (…) I said exactly the same thing in that article, namely: “The fact of the matter is that within the International, in all countries, there are fractions battling it out at the congresses to conquer the leadership of their respective parties. We too are of the opinion that these fractions shouldn’t exist if the International is to become a truly centralised world communist party. But what is necessary to achieve this objective? Blaming particular individuals or enforcing discipline to a greater or lesser degree is not enough to get us there: what is needed instead is to carry out the task in the way we have suggested, that is, by impressing on the Communist International a unitary and consistent organisational line. If that happens, fractions will disappear. If this path isn’t followed, but the opposite one is, then the disappearance of the international fractions will not be achieved and the formation of an international fraction will have to be taken into account”.

91 – The International and the Danger of Opportunism, 1925
    (…) We can’t see any major drawbacks deriving from an excessive preoccupation with the danger of opportunism. Certainly criticism and alarmism indulged in as a sport is deplorable; but they could also be – when not actually an accurate reflection of “something not working well” or an intuition of impending serious deviations – simply the product of the lucubrations of militants, and certainly these can’t do that much serious harm to the movement and can easily be overcome. Meanwhile, it is extremely dangerous if, on the contrary, as has unfortunately happened on some occasions, the opportunist disease gets worse before anyone dares to energetically sound the alarm. Criticism when errors aren’t being made is a thousand times less harmful than no criticism when errors are being made.

92 – The Platform of the Left, 1925
    (…) The emergence and growth of fractions indicates that the party itself is sick; it is a symptom of the vital functions of the party failing to correspond with its aims and it is combated by pinpointing and eliminating the illness, not by abusing disciplinary powers in order to resolve the matter in an inevitably formal and provisional way.

93 – The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Lyon Theses), 1926
    II, 5 – Another aspect of the watchword “Bolshevisation” is entrusting the guarantee of the party’s effectiveness to centralised discipline and a strict prohibition of fractionism.
    The final court of appeal for all controversial questions is the international central organ, with hegemony being attributed, if not hierarchically, at least politically, to the Russian Communist Party.
    Such a guarantee doesn’t actually exist, and the whole approach to the problem is inadequate. The fact of the matter is that the spread of fractionism within the International hasn’t been avoided but has been encouraged instead to assume masked and hypocritical forms. Besides which, from a historical point of view, the overcoming of fractions in the Russian party wasn’t an expedient or a magical recipe applied on statutory grounds, but was the outcome, and the expression of, a sound approach to the questions of doctrine and political action.
    The disciplinary sanction is an element that can guarantee against degenerations, but only on condition that its application is restricted to exceptional cases and doesn’t become the general rule, or perhaps even the ideal, of how the party should function (…)
    The communist parties must accomplish an organic centralism, which, whilst including as much consultation with the base as possible, ensures the spontaneous elimination of any grouping which starts to differentiate itself. This cannot be achieved by means of the formal and mechanical prescriptions of a hierarchy, but, as Lenin says, by means of correct revolutionary politics.
    The repression of fractionism isn’t a fundamental aspect of party evolution, but the preventing of it is.
    Since it is fruitless and absurd, not to say extremely dangerous, to claim that the party and the International are somehow mysteriously ensured against any relapse or tendency to relapse into opportunism, which could just as well depend on changing circumstances or on the playing out of residual social-democratic traditions, then we must admit that every difference of opinion not reducible to cases of conscience or personal defeatism could well develop a useful function in the resolution of our problems and serve to protect the party, and the proletariat in general, from the risk of serious danger.
    If these dangers accentuate then differentiation will inevitably, but usefully, take on the fractionist form, and this could lead to schisms; not however for the childish reason of a lack of repressive energy on the part of the leaders, but only in the awful hypothesis that the party fails and becomes subject to counter-revolutionary influences (…)
    Historically the peril of bourgeois influence on the class party doesn’t appear as the organisation of fractions but rather as a shrewd penetration which stokes up unitary demagoguery and operates as a dictatorship from above, immobilising initiatives by the proletarian vanguard.
    The identification and elimination of such a defeatist factor is achieved not by posing the issue of discipline against fractionist initiatives, but rather by managing to orientate the party and the proletariat against such an insidious danger when it takes on the aspect not just of a doctrinal revision, but of an express proposal for an important political manoeuvre with anti-classist consequences.

94 – Speech by the Left’s Representative at the 4^th Enlarged Executive Committee of the C.I., 1926
    (…) But when differences of opinion do arise, this means that errors of party policy have occurred, that the party does not have the capacity to successfully fight those deviationist tendencies which, at given moments, tend to appear in the working class movement. When cases of non-observance of discipline arise, they are symptomatic of the fact that the party has still not achieved this capacity. Discipline then is a point of arrival, not a point of departure, not a platform that is somehow indestructible. Moreover, this corresponds to the voluntary nature of entry into our organization. So the remedy for the frequent cases of lack of discipline cannot be sought in some kind of party penal code (…)
    And now I will come on to fractions. I take the view that to raise the problem of fractions as a moral problem, from the point of view of a penal code is not the correct line of action. Is there any example in history of a comrade forming a fraction for his own amusement? Such a thing has never happened. Is there a historical example of opportunism insinuating itself into the party through a fraction, of the organization of fractions serving as the basis for a defeatist mobilization of the working class and of the revolutionary party being saved thanks to the intervention of the fraction-killers? No. Experience has shown that opportunism always infiltrates our ranks under the guise of unity. It is in its interest to influence the largest possible mass, and it is therefore behind the screen of unity that it puts forward its most deceitful proposals. Moreover, the history of fractions goes to show that if fractions do no honour to the Parties in which they have been formed, they do honour to those who formed them. The history of fractions is the history of Lenin; it is the history not of attacks against the existence of parties, but of their crystallisation and of their defence against opportunist influences (…)
    The birth of a fraction shows that something has gone wrong in the party. To remedy the ill, it is necessary to seek out the historical causes which gave rise to it, that gave rise to the fraction and that prompted it to take shape. The causes lie in the ideological and political errors of the party. The fractions are not the sickness, but merely the symptom, and if you want to treat a sick organism, you have to try to discover the causes of the sickness, not combat the symptoms. Besides, in the majority of cases, what one was faced with was groups of comrades who were not in fact making any attempt to create an organization or anything of the kind, but rather seeking to express currents of opinion and tendencies within the normal, regular and collective activity of the party.

95 – Force, Violence, Dictatorship, in the Class Struggle, 1948
    V – (…) When such a crisis occurs, precisely because the party is not a short term, reactive organisation, an internal struggle ensues, tendencies form, splits occur, and in such cases these serve a useful purpose, like the fever which frees an organism of disease but which nevertheless “constitutionally” one cannot admit, encourage or tolerate.
    So to prevent the party from succumbing to a crisis of opportunism or having to necessarily react against it by forming factions, there are no rules or simple recipes. There is however the experience of many decades of proletarian struggle which have allowed us to identify certain conditions for preventing it, and the study, defence, and realization of these conditions must be an unremitting duty of our movement.

96 – Dialogue with the Dead, 1956
    76 – (…) The class has a guide in history, inasmuch as the material factors that set it in motion are crystallised in the party, insofar as the latter possesses a comprehensive and continuous theory, and an organisation in its turn both universal and continuous, which doesn’t break apart and re-form at every turn with mergers and splits; although these are the feverish reactions of such an organism when experiencing a pathological crisis.

97 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    10 – (…) Nevertheless dozens of examples from previously cited texts evidence that the Left, in its underlying thinking, has always rejected elections, and voting for named comrades, or for general theses, as a means of determining choices, and believed that the road to the suppression of these means leads likewise to the abolition of another nasty aspect of politicians’ democraticism, that is, expulsions, removals, and dissolutions of local groups. On many occasions we have openly argued that such disciplinary procedures should be used less and less, until finally they disappear altogether.
    If the opposite should occur or, worse still, if these disciplinary questions are wheeled out not to safeguard sound, revolutionary principles, but rather to protect the conscious or unconscious positions of nascent opportunism, as happened in 1924, 1925, 1926, this just means that the central function has been carried out in the wrong way, which determined its loss of any influence on the base, from a disciplinary point of view; and the more that is the case, the more is phoney disciplinary rigour shamelessly praised.
    11 – It has always been a firm and consistent position of the Left that if disciplinary crises multiply and become the rule, it signifies that something in the general running of the party is not right, and the problem merits study. Naturally we won’t repudiate ourselves by committing the infantile mistake of seeking salvation in a search for better people or in the choice of leaders and semi-leaders, all of which we hold to be part and parcel of the opportunist phenomenon, historical antagonist of the forward march of left revolutionary Marxism.

Ch. 4 IDEOLOGICAL TERROR AND ORGANISATIONAL PRESSURE

The Left’s view, the result among other things of the bloodstained balance sheet of the Stalinian counter-revolution, is this: since organisational discipline is dependent on the collective organisation’s mastery of its tactical, programmatic and theoretical positions, which is not achieved once and for all but which must involve the party in a continuous, daily work of defending, clarifying, explaining and ’fine-tuning’ these cardinal principles; since the appearance in the party of disagreements, acts of insubordination and factional phenomena is just the symptom of this work not being carried out correctly, and is thus a healthy reaction to an inadequate and incorrect approach, then clearly the need for disciplinary pressure will tend to disappear to the extent that the party is in sound health and its struggle is supported on its classical foundations

Clearly these organisational methods are bound to become rare exceptions and eventually disappear; clearly they resolve nothing and guarantee nothing. Likewise it is clear that when such methods become the norm, and almost the preferred mode of internal party functioning, then the party itself is no longer guaranteed against anything, and consequently really does (precisely then!) find itself exposed to opportunist deviations.

Now, on this basis, the Left places another link in our unalterable chain in its correct position: the role of party members, leaders and hierarchies. The latter are bound to exist as technical instruments to coordinate and direct the party’s work as a whole, but their existence does not guarantee the party against errors and deviations. Consequently, when mistakes and deviations occur, they won’t be resolved by judging what people have done, by selecting better people, or by swapping one set of people for another set of people. The solution lies in the collective organ of the party making an honest and rational attempt to reconnect with the historical line which the mistake or deviation caused to be broken. The men can remain the same (unless they are traitors) as long as the party organ gets back on track.

The Left considers, therefore, the ‘personification of mistakes’, the ‘selection of more suitable men’, and the swapping of one person for another, insofar as they are attempts to resolve mistakes and deviations, as the symptom of a distorted view of the dynamics and the life of the party organ. The Left points to the fact that other phenomena inevitably accompany this wrong method, which unfortunately we are presently [1973] encountering in our own organisation, namely: careerism, bureaucratism, and the kind of blind, official optimism which, whilst maintaining everything is fine, arrogantly considers any doubter as a nuisance to be got rid of as quickly as possible; and finally, the superimposing over a passive and terrorized rank and file of a body of functionaries selected solely for their blind faith in the party’s centre.

Faction-hunters and faction-eliminators rampaging through the organisation; spying on each other; systematic lack of trust between comrades; resorting to internal diplomacy: all these phenomena, which have already appeared within our organisation, are just the inevitable corollary of having turned the concept of the party, and its correct functioning, on its head.

The Left doesn’t view the party as a colony of human microbes. The Left believes the party should apply an organic, functional approach to allocating the various technical roles to its members, including that of the central role of leadership which, whether it is one person or more than one person, cannot be expected to provide an absolute guarantee that the party will remain on the correct path. Once again, we will let our uncorrupted party tradition speak for itself.

QUOTATIONS

98 – The International and the Danger of Opportunism – 1925
    (…) In the way of thinking that is gaining ground amongst the leading elements of our movement, we begin to see a clear risk of defeatism and latent pessimism. Instead of manfully facing up to the various difficulties which confront communist action at this time, of courageously discussing the various dangers and using the vital reasoning of our doctrine and our method to tackle these problems, they take refuge instead in an inviolable system. Their greatest pleasure is to discover, with ample use of “he badmouthed Garibaldi” type accusations, with investigations into alleged ideas and not yet expressed personal intentions, that Tom, Dick and Harry have not followed the recipes in the official rulebook, so they can then scream: they are against the International! they are against Leninism! (…)
    Such would be the real, worst liquidationism of the party and of the International, accompanied by the characteristic, well-known phenomena of bureaucratic philistinism. The Symptom of it is blind official optimism: everything is fine, and anyone who allows themselves to doubt it is just a nuisance who should be got rid of as soon as possible. We oppose this bad practice precisely because, having remained faithful to the communist cause and to the international, we don’t believe the latter should lower itself to squandering ‘its patrimony’ of power and political influence in such a vulgar fashion (…)
    But let us go into this matter of bolshevisation a bit more, and be more specific about what our openly held suspicions are. It is because in practice it takes the form of a cellular form of organisation, over which towers an omnipotent network of officials, selected according to the criterion of blind deference to an official ‘Leninist’ rulebook, who use a tactical and political method of working which it is mistakenly believed will achieve the best response to the highly erratic orders issued by the Executive; who have adopted a historical approach to world communist action in which the last word always has to be sought in precedents set by the Russia party, interpreted by a privileged group of comrades.

99 – The Platform of the Left – 1925
    (…) Likewise, we pose the question of discipline as a channelling and utilisation of the party’s growing membership, which the organisational system must be capable of harmonising. In that sense new experiences become the patrimony of the party, which interprets and assimilates them; they don’t become the discovery of a few functionaries who impose them on a passive party, on the basis of interpretations which are mostly plain wrong. Disciplinary sanctions thus become repressions of sporadic cases and not general constrictions imposed on the whole of the party; they should constitute rather a kind of bulwark against individual aberrant manifestations.

100 – The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Lyon Theses) – 1926
    II, 5 – (…) Disciplinary sanctions are one of the elements that prevent degeneration, but on the understanding they are only applied in exceptional cases, and do not become the norm and become almost the ideal of how the party should function (…)
    The repression of factionalism isn’t a fundamental aspect of the evolution of the party, although preventing it is (…)
    The consequence of this method is damaging both to the party and to the proletariat and delays the attainment of the “true” communist party. This method, applied in several sections of the International, is in itself a serious indication of a latent opportunism.

101 – Speech by the Left’s Representative at the VI Enlarged Executive Committee of the C.I. – 1926
    (From the Introduction in Il Programma Comunista no.17/1965):
    (…) We have selected the passages which refer to the tactical errors and the defeat in Germany, and the famous high pressure disciplinary campaign, known as ‘bolshevisation’, which claimed to outlaw factionalism.
    Text:
    (…) When we were faced with the mistakes to which this tactic had led, above all when the October 1923 defeat in Germany occurred, the International recognized it had been wrong. It wasn’t just a case of a minor mishap: it was a case of an error we would have to pay for, having already acquired the first country for the proletarian revolution, with the hope of conquering another great country; something which, from the perspective of the world revolution, would have been of enormous importance.
    Unfortunately, all the International had to say about it was that it is not a question of radically revising the decisions of the Fourth World Congress, it is merely necessary to remove certain comrades who misapplied the united front tactic; it is necessary to seek out those responsible. And they would be found on the right wing of the German party, as nobody was willing to acknowledge that the International as a whole bore the responsibility (…)
    However, if we were opposed to the decisions of the Fifth Congress it is above all because they didn’t address and resolve the major errors, and because, in our view, it is not right to limit the question to individuals being put on trial, when what is necessary is a change in the International itself. But they didn’t want to take this robust and courageous path. We have frequently criticized the fact that amongst ourselves, in the milieu within which we work, a parliamentarist and diplomatist state of mind is encouraged. The theses are very left-wing, the speeches are very left-wing, even those against whom they are directed vote for them, because they believe that that way they can immunise themselves (…)
    I shall now move on to another aspect of bolshevisation: that of the internal regime which holds sway inside the party and the Communist International. Here, a new discovery has been made: what all of our sections lack is the iron discipline of the Bolsheviks, as exemplified by the Russian party. An absolute ban on factions is proclaimed, and it is decreed that all party members must participate in the common task, whatever their opinions may be. In this field too, I think the question of bolshevisation has been posed in a very demagogic way (…)
    A regime of terror has recently established itself in our parties; a kind of sport which consists in intervening, punishing and annihilating, and all of it conducted with great gusto, as though it were precisely the ideal of party life.
    The heroes of these brilliant operations even seem convinced that they themselves constitute a proof of revolutionary capacity and energy. I, on the contrary, maintain that real revolutionaries, the best revolutionaries are, in general, those comrades who are the victims of these extraordinary measures, and who patiently put up with them so as not to destroy the party. I consider that this squandering of energy, this sport, this struggle within the party has nothing to do with the revolutionary work we should be carrying out. The day will come when we shall strike down and destroy capitalism; it is in on that terrain that the party will give evidence of its revolutionary power. We do not want anarchy in the party, but neither do we want a regime of continuous reprisals, which is the very negation of party unity and cohesion.
    At present the official point of view is as follows: the present leadership is eternal, it can do as it likes because, whenever it takes measures against those who speak out against it, whenever it annihilates intrigue and opposition, it is always right. But there is no merit in repressing revolts because they shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Party unity is evidenced by what it achieves, not by a regime of threats and terror. Clearly we do need sanctions in our statutes; but they should only be applied in exceptional circumstances and not become the normal and general procedure inside the party. When there are elements who flagrantly abandon the common path then clearly action must be taken against them. But when, in an organisation, recourse to a code of sanctions becomes the rule, it means that organisation is not exactly perfect. Sanctions should be used in exceptional cases and not become the rule, a kind of sport, the ideal of the party leadership. This is what has to change, if we want to form a solid ‘bloc’ in the true sense of the word (…)
    Before talking about fractions that need to be crushed, one should at least be able to prove they are in contact with the bourgeoisie, or linked to bourgeois circles or milieus, or are based on personal relations with them. If such an analysis is not possible, then we need to find the historical reasons for the birth of the fraction rather than condemning it a priori (…)
    The resort to faction-hunting, muck-raking campaigns, police surveillance and the sowing of mistrust between comrades – a method which in fact constitutes the worst factionalism developing in the higher echelons of the party – has only made our movement’s situation worse and pushed all considered and objective criticism towards the path of factionalism.
    Such methods cannot ensure party unity: they paralyse and render it impotent instead. A radical transformation of our methods of work is absolutely indispensable. If that does not happen, the consequences will be extremely serious.

102 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    3 – (…) [At the 4^th Congress of the 3^rd international, the Left denounced the united front between communist and socialist parties, and the watchword of the “workers’ government”]. The Left thirdly denounced, and even more vigorously in the years that followed, the rising opportunist danger; this third issue concerns the International’s method of internal work, with the centre (represented by Moscow’s Executive) using against parties – or sections of parties falling into political errors – methods involving not only “ideological terror”, but above all organizational pressure; which constitutes a wrong application and eventually total falsification of the correct principles of centralization and discipline without exception. This method of working was everywhere exacerbated, but particularly in Italy in the years after 1923 (where the Left, with the whole party behind it, displayed exemplary discipline by handing the leadership over to the rightist and centrist comrades appointed by Moscow) when there was much abuse of the spectre of “fractionation”, and the constant threat of expelling from the party a current cunningly accused of preparing a split, with the sole aim of ensuring that dangerous centrist errors could predominate in party policy. This third vital point was thoroughly discussed in international Congresses and in Italy, and is no less important than the condemnation of opportunist tactics and of federalist-type organizational formulae (…)
    4. – (…) Along with the awkward influence of money, which will disappear in communist society, but only after a long chain of events in which the achievement of the communist dictatorship is but the first step, was added the wielding of an instrument of manoeuvre which we openly declared to be worthy of parliaments and bourgeois diplomacy, or of the extremely bourgeois League of Nations, that is, the encouragement or inculcation, according to the circumstances, of careerism and vain ambition amongst the swarming ranks of petty government officials, so that each of them would be faced with an inexorable choice between immediate and comfortable notoriety, after prostrate acceptance of the theses of the omnipotent central leadership, or else permanent obscurity and possible poverty if he wished to defend the correct revolutionary theses which the central leadership had deviated from.
    Today, given the historical evidence, it is beyond dispute that those international and national central leaderships really were on the path of deviation and betrayal. According to the Left’s unchanging theory, this is the condition that must deprive them of any right to obtain, in the name of a hypocritical discipline, an unquestioning obedience from party members.

103 – Introduction to the “The Speech of the Left’s Representative at the 5^th Congress of the C.I.” – 1965
    (…) The Italian Left’s position was that we shouldn’t be hitting out at individuals, but rather at a false tactical method, denounced by us before at the 4^th Congress in 1922, for which the entire International was responsible.

104 – Introduction to “Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle” – 1966
    (…) The passages quoted here appear in the concluding part, and make two points crystal clear: that democratic control from below cures nothing and is a classic device of opportunism, whereas the cold and cynical application of disciplinary pressure from above must likewise, with its equally inauspicious history, be eradicated from our party’s methodology and internal life.

105 – Supplementary Theses on the Historical Task, the Action and the Structure of the World Communist Party – (“Milan Theses”) – 1966
    7 – Another lesson we can draw from events in the life of the Third International (in our writings these are repeatedly recalled in contemporary denunciations by the Left), is that of the vanity of “ideological terror”, a horrible method in which it was attempted to substitute the natural process of diffusing our doctrine’s via contact with harsh reality in a social setting, with forced indoctrination of recalcitrant and confused elements, either for reasons more powerful than party and men or due to a faulty evolution of the party itself, by humiliating them and mortifying them in public congresses open even to the enemy, even if they had been leaders and exponents of party action during important political and historical episodes. It became customary to compel such members (mostly with the threat of demotion to less important positions in the organization’s apparatus) to publicly confess their errors, thus imitating the fideistic and pietistic methods of penance and mea culpa. By such totally philistine means as these, smacking of bourgeois morality, not a single party member ever improved, nor was a cure found for the party’s impending decadence.
    Within the revolutionary party, as it moves inexorably towards victory, obeying orders is spontaneous and complete but not blind or compulsory. In fact, centralised discipline, as illustrated in our theses and associated supporting documentation, is equivalent to a perfect harmony of the duties and actions of the rank-and-file with those of the centre, and the bureaucratic practices of an anti-Marxist voluntarism are no substitute for this (…)
    The growing abuse of such methods just marks the disastrous triumphal path of the latest wave of opportunism.

106 – Introduction to ‘Theses of the P.C d’I on Tactics at the 4^th Congress of the C.I.’ – 1970
    (…) Secondly, and for the same reasons, the Left warned that we needed to get off this tortuous path soon or we’d inevitably be swept down the slippery slope. One expedient would lead to another, maybe contradicting the first; then the responsibility and finally the ‘blame’ for the failure of the first expedient would be sought not in its inherent divergence from the final aim, but in its ‘mishandling’ by individuals or groups, frantically running around trying to remedy the situation with brusque twists and turns and impromptu crucifixions of ‘leaders’, deputy leaders and followers. And thus it would undermine the very basis of that essential, not merely formal, international discipline that we, quite rightly, wanted to install (…)
    The alarm about a possible relapse into opportunism, which the Left would sound with ever greater insistence from 1922 onwards, related to (this for us, particularly young militants, is another lesson of primary importance,) a phenomenon which was not subjective but objective, and for which not even the Bolsheviks were to blame, because the rise of opportunism cannot be explained as merely due to Tom, Dick or Harry’s ‘mistakes’, but rather through understanding that Tom, Dick and Harry act in the way the path the have taken impels them to act (…) We didn’t want anyone’s head, even when they wanted, and got, ours: we did everything we could to ensure that brain and brawn could get back to working on the one track which we never expected would or should ever be put into question (…)
    We have no wish to lower ourselves, and can credit ourselves with not having lowered ourselves, into the infernal cycle of pitting one person against another, into which Trotski allowed himself to be swept up after 1927 by his more than legitimate disdain for the Stalinist demon. Let us defend Marxism, which is no-one’s intellectual property; let us condemn a deviation and its ineluctable consequences, not the man in the pillory put there for the dubious satisfaction of the judge and the morbid pleasure of the crowd (…)
    It is an old corollary of ‘guarantees’ that when they unfortunately have to be applied, the question arises, “who will guarantee the guarantors?” Either the leadership and the “base” are linked by a higher, common tie (and this has to be the programme, invariant and binding on all) or there must arise a judicial apparatus of lower, middle and higher courts, along with a gaggle of lawyers, public prosecutors and, of course, professors of constitutional law. And this apparatus is no metaphysical entity, it is the superstructure of the organisation that theoretically ought to examine and sit in judgement: judge and defendant in one person. So, nothing remains but to subject it, as well, to the supreme authority; but not of the good God (who, at least at present, is debarred) but of the policeman, then the questore, and finally the maresciallo.

107 – Introduction to “The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I. (“Lyon Theses”) – 1970
    (…) The 5^th Congress of the Communist International, taking place between 17^th June – 8^th July 1924, on the one hand reflected the profound confusion of the various parties after two disastrous years of abrupt tactical about-turns and ambiguous edicts (…) and on the other, reaffirmed the practice of crucifying the leaders of the national sections on the altar of the Executive’s infallibility. Once again, the Left raised its lone voice, firmly but calmly shunning local and personal fripperies. If it had ever been in the habit of congratulating itself on the correctness of its predictions, the proletarian blood spilled in vain being the terrible proof of it; or of calling for the heads of “guilty” and “corrupt” leaders to roll to make way for more “innocent” and “incorruptible” heads, then this was the moment. But that wasn’t what the Left asked for or wanted: what it asked for and wanted was for the scalpel to be courageously applied, to surgically remove those deviations from principle of which those “errors” were the inevitable product and the “heads” merely the chance expression (…)
    Now that a whole series of tactical innovations was being reeled off and breathing life into the centrifugal currents which lay dormant within every party, with the string of sudden changes generating confusion and disillusionment amongst even the most hardened militants, the question of “discipline” was inevitably posed not as the natural and organic product of a prior theoretical homogeneity and a healthy convergence of practical action, but as a sick reflection of the operational discontinuity and the lack of doctrinal harmony. To the same degree that errors, deviations and capitulations were identified, and attempts made to remedy them by rearranging Central Committees and Executives, the “iron fist” was also applied, and idealized as the standard method within the Comintern and its sections; and used as a highly effective antidote not against adversaries and false friends, but against fellow comrades. The era of the infernal merry-go-round of trials against… ourselves, had begun, which the Left would describe at the 6^th Enlarged Executive, as: “the sport of humiliation and ideological terrorism” (often instigated by “humiliated ex-opponents”): and you don’t get trials without gaolers.
    Discipline towards the programme in its original, clear and precise form was no longer observed; it was said that any confusion arising from this lack of discipline could be prevented by recreating “genuine Bolshevik parties” in vitro. And we all know how these caricatures of Lenin’s party turned out under Stalin’s heel (…)
    We extended the question to include a much wider and more general problem which in 1925-26 incorporated all the questions destined to consume the Russian Party during its internal struggle, we denounced – before it was too late – the frantic and manic “struggle against factionalism”; the witch-hunt that would celebrate its saturnalias during the ignoble campaign against the Russian Left in 1926-28 (…) a witch-hunt which had been shunned by the Bolshevik party in its glorious heyday, even against the open enemy (destroyed if necessary, but not subjected to the cowardly act of mud-slinging) and which, spreading beyond the borders of the Russian State, would produce first the obscene figure of the public prosecutor, then the professional informer, and finally the executioner (…)
    “And if, despite everything an internal crisis does occur,” we declared at the 4^th Enlarged Executive, “its causes and the means to cure it must be sought elsewhere, that is, in the work and the politics of the party”. But in the eyes of an International, whose congresses would eventually end up as shabby court rooms, where parties, groups and individuals were called to account for the tragic setbacks in Europe and the World, all was now explained as the product of “unfavourable circumstances”, of “adverse” situations.

Ch. 5 POLITICAL STRUGGLE WITHIN THE PARTY

The following quotes will demonstrate that within the correct Marxist vision of the Left the way the Communist Party acts, its internal dynamic, is not that of political struggle, clashes between different positions, one of which has to prevail over the other and dictate its terms to the Party. The prevalence of such a dynamic in the Party indicates that it is no longer the homogeneous and unitary expression of a single class, but rather that of contrasting interests of a variety of classes, which obviously express different political orientations. Internal political struggle shaped the dynamics of the parties of the Second International, precisely because within them a proletarian revolutionary tendency coexisted with a reformist and gradualist petit-bourgeois wing. And when a dynamic of political struggle became dominant in the Third International, this meant its gradual conquest by the counter-revolutionary tendency.

The Left did not conduct any internal political struggles in the Third International, on the contrary, in 1923 it voluntarily allowed itself to be replaced in the direction of the Italian party by the centrists, limiting itself to explaining what the errors and weakness of the international party on various important problems were, and the dangers to which it was exposing itself. It continually called for a rational and objective study on the part of the whole International to find the best solutions to the problems of the party and the “Tesi di Roma” (Rome Theses) of 1922 not only respect absolute centralised executive discipline to the Moscow Centre, but are not intended to be opposed to the positions of the Centre; they are rather a contribution of the Italian section towards a rational solution of tactical questions, in line with the common principles.

Only after 1923 did the Left, by identifying the dangers of falling back into opportunism that the International was evincing ever more evidently, sound the possibility that, if Moscow’s Line wasn’t reversed, an International faction of the Left would need to be constituted to defend the International from the resurrected opportunist wing.

Only in 1926 at the Lyon Congress did the Left present a body of theses completely opposed to that of the Italian Centre, identifying in the latter an amalgamation of elements that had never been grounded in Revolutionary Marxism and counter-posing its tradition as the only one adherent to Communism and Marxism. For the Left, although the Communist Party constitutes itself on the basis of a sole doctrine, of a single programme, of principles clearly enunciated and forming the basis of the individual’s adherence to the Party; and although it is on this homogeneous base the grand scheme of tactics becomes rationally defined, nevertheless the Party never ceases to confront hard and complex questions, which it must resolve every day of its life. But the homogeneity of the foundation on which the Party rests enables it to find solutions to these problems through a method of work and research that is common to all of the Party, a constant clarification of the cardinal points which all militants declare they have accepted and from which the solution to any problem must never diverge. The fact that at certain times a variety of answers can present themselves to the same question, with militants taking up different positions in a search for a solution, cannot induce us to forget the shared heritage on which the Party rests, and to which any and all answers must be bound. Thus the solution to a problem that the centre of the Party decides to apply should not come about as the expression of balances of power between different groups within the Party and of the prevalence of one over the other, but due to its compliance with the line laid down by doctrine, by the programme, and by the tactics of the Party, and this loyalty to the common tradition must be demanded for any formulation of any problem. The solution to the issues that assail the Party thus becomes delegated to a collective work carried out on a united foundation that everybody accepts and is thus susceptible to an objective and rational study.

Towards the centre there must be a total obedience and executive discipline, not insofar as it is the expression of a majority of individual viewpoints, but insofar as it proves to be along the lines of this continuity,

The occurrence of dissent on a determined tactical question or practical work, while it does commit all the members of the organisation to keep loyally carrying out the central orders, does not sanction anyone to say that the Party is divided into currents and fractions that fight between themselves, insofar as the two positions on the problem, that is the object of dissent, are the fruit of the same method of work, and in accordance with the common Party tradition. Thus the errors that may occur in resolving a problem do not authorize anyone to argue that they are due to the presence in the party of a general tactical divergence from the norm, or to accuse people or groups of having committed them because they are dissenters from general Party line.

The Left did not conclude, from the fact that the leadership in Moscow applied the tactic of the united political front, or that of the workers government, that there was a wing of the party that diverged from the general line or had views on the key issues that differed from ours, and when these tactics proved to be wrong in practice, we did not ask for any heads to roll, nor for the leaders of the Parties or of the International to be changed.

The Left always set out, when disagreeing with the International’s solutions to various problems, from the “idealist” and “metaphysical” conception that both we and the supporters of the united front policy and of the workers government were in principle comrades, who accepted a common foundation and who claimed that the solution was to be found in the clarification and explanation of this foundation.

To deny this notion that in the Communist Party we are all in principle comrades even when some are wrong and lead the whole party astray means, therefore, denying the whole tradition of the struggle of the Left in the International, it means no longer finding answers to the following questions:
– Why didn’t the Left ever ask for the replacement of Moscow Centre, supporter of the united front policy, with another Centre that supported the correct positions?
– Why did the Left spontaneously surrender, into the hands of supporters of the united front and of workers’ government, the leadership of the Italian party, although it was completely on the Left’s positions?
– Why didn’t it accuse Zinoviev, or even Lenin himself, of being an undercover agent in the party?

It is known that the Left asked for none of this, but requested instead that correct tactical positions, binding for all, be sought in a collective work of clarification and definition of the common heritage of us all. In the putting on trial of the men who had made mistakes, in the personification of errors, in the critiques and self-critiques, the Left saw a departure from this healthy dynamic and, consequently, the risk of a relapse into opportunism.

Having to deal with people who love to forget too easily, we are forced to give a practical example. In our small party a dispute over the union issue has led to a confrontation in which a group of comrades has been defined as suffering from activism and voluntarism, and consequently all efforts to resolve the issue (so to speak) were directed towards depriving this section of its duties and responsibilities and passing them to the healthy part. From a possible tactical error such as the “defence of the CGIL” the inference was drawn that we were in the presence of an “anarcho-syndicalist” current within the party and that it was necessary not only to correct the error, but also to unmask this current of which the error was but a reflection.

From 1922 to 1926 the leadership of the Communist International ruined a Party of millions of people and “objectively” sabotaged the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat throughout Europe and the world; but never by pen or by mouth did the Left ever state over those four years, or even afterwards, that the International was led by anti-Marxists and opportunists and that it was necessary to take the leadership of the organization from those who were guilty of fatal errors.

Neither in any of the writings or speeches of the Left will any statement be found that we were fighting against the Executive in Moscow from whose tactical errors it had to be inferred that it was an opportunistic current infiltrated into the Party. We said nothing, even in 1926 when all was lost. And we did not personify Zinoviev’s or Kamenev’s or Trotski’s errors by sticking labels on them that are only useful to those outside the party; not out of any foolish respect for “personal dignity”, but because we believed, and still believe, that these “errors” were not determined by men.

This is a position completely opposed to the one which says: “we fight against wrong positions, but when they become radicalised we also fight the men who are the carriers of these positions”, which is wrong on both counts, because our work in the International was never a political fight, but was about making a contribution and providing clarification. We never fought a political battle either against the wrong positions, or the spokesmen of these positions. We demonstrated that the positions were wrong and tried to set up a collective and impersonal endeavour to find – on the basis of mutual trust, in an environment free of bargaining, diplomacy, conflicts, pressures – the right position in the light of our principles.

Either the premise of our work was that both Amadeo Bordiga, and Zinoviev “were first and foremost comrades”, even when they came up with two opposing or divergent solutions to the same problem, and that therefore it was not a matter of “condemning” Zinoviev’s solution but of seeking a valid solution for the entire Communist movement, or the entire history of the Left can be chucked in the bin.

QUOTATIONS

108 – The Policy of the International – 1925
    But then, you’ll say, are you asking in principle that at the next Communist Congress there be struggle and open and violent dissent without the possibility of a common solution?
    We respond immediately that if unanimity is reached by the study and advanced objective consideration of the problems, this would be ideal; but artificial unanimity is far more harmful than open dissent during Congressional consultations, provided that executive discipline is always assured.

109 – Communist Organisation and Discipline – 1924
    But to be sure that it is actually advancing in the best possible way in the desired direction, and to adapt such a goal to our activity as communists, we must combine our faith in the revolutionary nature and capacity of our glorious world organisation with an ongoing work based on the control and rational evaluation of what goes on within our ranks and of party policy.

110 – Draft Theses Presented by the Left at the III Congress of the C.P.of I. (Lyon Theses) – 1926
    I.3 – (…) Basically, what we are rejecting is that the party’s difficult work of collectively defining its tactical norms should be stifled by demands for unconditional obedience to one man, one committee, or one particular party of the International, and its traditional apparatus of leadership.
    II.5 – (…) One negative effect of so-called bolshevization has been the replacing of conscious and thoroughgoing political elaboration inside the party, corresponding to significant progress towards a really compact centralism, with superficial and noisy agitation for mechanical formulas of unity for unity’s sake, and discipline for discipline’s sake.
    III.10 – The campaign which culminated in the preparations for our 3^rd Congress was deliberately launched after the 5^th World Congress not as a work of propaganda and elaboration of the directives of the International throughout the party, with the aim of creating a really collective and advanced consciousness, but as an agitation aiming to get comrades to renounce their adherence to the opinions of the Left as quickly as possible and with minimum effort. No thought was given to whether this would be useful or damaging to the party with regard to its effectiveness toward the external enemy, the only objective was to attain this internal objective by any means.

111 – Speech of the Left’s Representative at the Sixth Enlarged Executive Committee of the C.I. – 1926
    The issue must therefore be approached in a different way. Even if the current situation and economic prospects do not favour us, or at least are relatively unfavourable, we must not resign ourselves to accepting opportunist deviations and justifying them under the pretext that their causes are to be found in the objective situation. And if, despite everything, an internal crisis takes place, its causes and the means to heal it must be sought elsewhere, i.e., in the party’s activity and political line, which today is not what it should be.

112 – Politique d’abord – 1952
    Polemics about persons and between persons, and the use and abuse of personal names, must be replaced by the checking and verification of the statements on which the movement, during successive difficult attempts at reorganisation, has based its work and its struggle.

113 – ’Racial’ Pressure of the Peasantry, Class Pressure of the Coloured Peoples – 1953
    We must make this fundamental concept of the Left clear. The substantial and organic unity of the Party, diametrically opposed to the formal and hierarchical unity of the Stalinists, is to be seen as required for doctrine, programme, and the so-called tactics. If by tactics we mean the instruments for action, the latter can only be defined by the same research which, based on the data of past history, led us to establish our final and integral programmatic aims.

114 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    5. (…) Having adopted the old watchword “on the thread of time”, our movement devoted itself to setting before the eyes and minds of the proletariat the meaning of the historical outcomes which marked the course of the painful retreat. It was not a matter of restricting our function to cultural diffusion or propagandising petty doctrines, but of demonstrating that theory and action are dialectically inseparable fields, and that teachings are not book-learned or academic, but are derived from (we want to avoid the word experiences, today fallen prey to Philistines) the dynamic results of confrontations between real forces of considerable size and range, including those cases in which the final result was a defeat of the revolutionary forces. According to the old classical Marxist criteria we called these: “lessons of counter revolutions”.
    7. Since it was a case of a transition, a hand over, from a generation which had lived through the glorious struggles of the first post-war period and the Livorno split to the proletarian generation which had to be freed from the mad elation which followed the collapse of fascism, and have its consciousness restored in the autonomous action of the revolutionary party against all other parties, and especially against the social-democratic party; since this transition had to take place in order to reconstitute a force which was committed to the prospect of the proletarian dictatorship and terror against the big bourgeoisie and all of its obnoxious consequences, the new movement, in an organic and spontaneous way, came up with a structural form for its activity which has been subjected to a fifteen-year-long test (…)
    8. The working structure of the new movement, convinced of the importance, difficulty and historical duration of its task, which was bound to discourage dubious elements motivated by career considerations because it held no promise, indeed ruled out, any historical victories in the near future, was based on frequent meetings of envoys sent from the organized party sections. Here no debates or polemics between conflicting theses took place, or anything arising out of nostalgia for the malady of anti-fascism, and nothing needed to be voted on or deliberated over. There was simply the organic continuation of the serious historical work of handing on the fertile lessons of the past to present and future generations; to the new vanguards emerging from the ranks of the proletarian masses (…)
    This work and this dynamic is inspired by the classic teachings of Marx and Lenin, who presented the great historical revolutionary truths in the form of theses; and these reports and theses of ours, faithfully grounded in the great Marxist tradition, now over a century old, were transmitted by all those present – thanks partly to our press communications – at the local and regional meetings, where this historic material was brought into contact with the party as a whole. It would be nonsense to claim they are perfect texts, irrevocable and unchangeable, because over the years the party has always said that it was material under continuous elaboration, destined to assume an ever better and more complete form; and in fact all ranks of the party, even the youngest elements have always, and with increasing frequency, made remarkable contributions that are in perfect keeping with the Left’s classical line.

115 – Supplementary Theses on the Historical Task, the Action and the Structure of the World Communist Party (Theses of Milan) – 1966
    2. The existing small movement perfectly realizes that the dreary historical phase it has traversed makes it very difficult, at such a great historical distance, to utilize the experiences of the great struggles of the past, and not just those of resounding victories but also those arising from bloody defeats and inglorious retreats. The forging of the revolutionary programme, shaped by the correct and un-deformed outlook of our current, isn’t confined to doctrinal rigour and deep historical criticism; it also needs, as its vital life-blood, to connect with the rebellious masses at those times when, pushed to the limits, they are forced to fight. Such a dialectical connection is particularly unlikely today, with the thrust of masses dampened and assuaged, due both to the flacidity of senile capitalism’s crisis, and the increasing ignominy of the opportunist currents. Even admitting the party’s restricted dimensions, we must realize that we are preparing the true party, sound and efficient at the same time, during a historical period in which the infamies of the contemporary social fabric will compel the insurgent masses to return to the vanguard of history; a resurgence which could once again fail if there were no party; a party not plethoric but compact and powerful, and the indispensable organ of revolution.
    The sometimes painful contradictions of this period will be overcome by drawing the dialectical lesson that comes from the bitter disappointments of past times, and by courageously making known those dangers which the Left gave timely warnings of and denounced, along with all the insidious forms that the ominous opportunist infection periodically assumes.

116 – Foreword to Draft Theses Presented by the Left at the III Congress of the C.P.of I. (Lyon Theses) – 1970
    (…) A curious deduction: in the eyes of an International whose congresses had eventually ended up as shabby trials where parties, groups and individuals would be called to account for the tragic setbacks in Europe and the World, which all came to be explained as the product of “unfavourable circumstances” and “adverse” situations.
    In fact it wasn’t trials which were needed but a radical critical revision based on impersonal facts which aimed to uncover the infinitely complex play of cause and effect between objective and subjective factors, and which showed that although the influence of party on these objective facts – considered for a moment in themselves independently of our collective action – was limited, it was still in our power to safeguard, even at the price of unpopularity and lack of immediate successes, the sole conditions under which the subjective factors would be enabled to influence history and stimulate it to bear fruit.
    The party would be nothing if it weren’t, objectively and subjectively, both for its militants and the undifferentiated working class, the uninterrupted conducting thread which remains intact through the flux and reflux of varying circumstances, or, even if broken, which remains unaltered. The struggle to keep the thread from breaking, the struggle to keep it intact during the long years of victorious stalinism, the struggle to preserve it and reconstruct the World Party of the Proletariat around it, therein lies the meaning of our battle.