Denying the Work of the Communist Party in Workers’ Struggles Means Retarding the Expansion of Proletarian Organization and Abandoning It to Bourgeois and Petty-Bourgeois Ideologies Pt. 2

(continued from the previous issue)

From “Il Partito Comunista” n. 77/1981

Economic struggle is an objective fact that arises from the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. No reforms, concessions, special laws, or police operations can eliminate it as long as private ownership of the means of production and wage labor remain.

After an initial phase where the bourgeoisie absolutely denied workers’ struggle and organization, it was forced to tolerate it. Then under fascism, the bourgeoisie attempted to give it a framework in its own legal system by creating labor organizations under direct state control.

At the time of the First International, the proletariat was still a tiny minority of the population.

The nascent proletarian movement developed in a direct and open clash with bourgeois legality, as strikes and street demonstrations were prohibited.

Worker and peasant demonstrations almost always took on the appearance of riots; looting, clashes with police and army, mass arrests, shootings, deaths, injuries.

Even for the most limited demands, workers always faced the state in its true essence as a repressive apparatus. The state’s militias and courts were fully deployed in defense of property.

As the state always gave a police response, any movement for demands led to a clash with the state that left no room other than mass action.

Both striking and participation in a demonstration meant risking either your life or years in jail.

Thus, economic struggles immediately became political because they presupposed an awareness that capitalists and landowners could not be hit without clashing with the apparatus set up to defend their privileges: the State.

The distinction between economic struggle and revolutionary political struggle was not clear-cut. They coincided because the economic struggle could only be conducted by revolutionary methods.

At this time in Italy the leaders of the first major workers’ agitations—such as the construction workers in 1888—were the anarcho-syndicalists.

In the second phase, which saw the development of the great socialist parties of the Second International, the bourgeoisie could no longer use pure police methods to contain the movements of a proletariat which grew enormously in terms of numbers. Simultaneously, the bourgeoisie had greatly increased its profits and could make concessions by bribing certain strata of the workers.

Thus arose the objective basis of the development of reformism and trade-unionism, both of which resulted in the Second International’s degeneration and transition into the bourgeois camp.

Police methods alone would have brought an even more numerous and concentrated proletariat into the terrain of open confrontation. This is why the more shrewd bourgeoisie combined repression with the haranguing of social-democratic leaders; leaders who channeled workers’ struggles toward partial gains within the framework of bourgeois social order.

Because of the changed economic and political situation, workers’ struggles resulted in demands for reforms, wage improvements, and alleviation of working conditions. These were no longer seen as steps toward the assault on bourgeois power and the complete destruction of all forms of private property and exploitation. They were now ends in themselves, perfectly compatible with a booming capitalist economy.

The economic movement of the masses compactly proceeded in this direction, all under the leadership of the reformist leaders of the big social democracies and the big class unions.

This is not to say that street riots, shootings, and arrests cease! Of course they continued, but there was a noticeable improvement in proletarian living conditions, which is fertile ground for democratic, pacifist, and legalitarian canvassing.

Revolutionary political organization no longer coincided with workers’ associations, and were progressively isolated and reduced to small groups and factions within the parties of the Second International.

The movement of the masses was then taken to the terrain of reformism and class collaboration. This went so far as to even support their respective bourgeoisies in the imperialist war.

Being communist revolutionaries then meant not following the masses on this ground, but sharply standing out in order to safeguard the prospect of revolution.

This was done by Lenin, the Italian Communist Left, and a few others who declared war on war while the proletarian masses were being led to slaughter under their respective national flags.

With the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the welding between the revolutionary program and the spontaneous motion of the masses was realized. This was not because one fit in with the masses, but because the goals the masses were moving towards—in that brief historical glimpse—could only be pursued with the realization of the revolutionary program.

The example of Russia is crystal clear.

The exploited masses wanted an end to the war and the lands of the big owners.

However, neither peace nor land could be achieved without an insurrection set out to overthrow the bourgeois state and form a workers’ and peasants’ militia.

The Bolsheviks did not improvise, but prepared with iron discipline over the course of decades of hard trials.

They prepared for revolution on the theoretical, programmatic, tactical, organizational, and military levels.

The masses were with them at one of those very rare moments when action and consciousness, spontaneous movement and revolutionary organization become one and the same, merge and form a formidable wedge that routs opposing defenses.

Fascism—an expression of the modern capitalism of banks and monopolies—brought together the two methods of reform and that of open police repression. Fascism realized the old reformist dream of legally framing labor struggles and labor organizations in bourgeois legislation.

The novelty it introduced was precisely the creation of state unions with compulsory membership by workers.

These unions defended workers economically—even going so far as to call strikes—but they did so on the condition that the economic struggle never affected the national interest.

Although formally free membership and not legally subservient to the state, the trade unions that arose after World War II, the current confederations trace the fascist policy.

They display open and avowed submission to the state, economic struggle yes but only to the extent that this is compatible with the performance of the capitalist economy.

They struggle for wage and regulatory improvements when the economy is expanding, they control the working class in order to push through layoffs and increased exploitation while the economy is in crisis, and they cooperate with the state in patriotic mobilizations in the case of war.

Due to the economic crisis, we are in one of those periods when workers’ demands become incompatible with regime stability.

Yesterday it was a purely economic claim to demand wage increases or reduced working hours.

Today, simply fighting to prevent work aggravations, to abolish overtime, to prevent layoffs, to reduce working hours, etc, acquires an increasingly subversive flavor because these demands—compatible yesterday—clash against the bourgeois plan to dump the crisis on the shoulders of the proletariat.

That is why we see the state, all parties, all unions, all institutions, etc, arrayed in defense of the national economy and against proletarian needs.

Thus, today, the economic struggle tends to become political because proletarians who want to move in defense of their needs are forced to take note that

1) the official trade unions are siding with the bosses and the state; 2) in order to struggle, it is necessary for workers to form their own organizations independent of the state, parties, and the regime’s unions.

The issue then becomes exquisitely political not only because class claims would endanger the social order, but also because it is clear that the state defends its unions in every way. This is primarily done by granting them the right to exclusively represent labor.

This means that the workers’ organizations that spontaneously arise (and will arise) are in fact illegal. This is unless they submit to the state—as Solidarity has done. This also means that it is forbidden for all individual bosses and all private or public business administrations to enter into agreements of any kind with those spontaneous workers’ associations that act outside the control of official trade unions.

This means that it is not enough to today tell the workers that one must fight against the bosses. One must also say that in order to fight against the bosses, one must free oneself from the police control of the regime unions and revive real class organizations.

But even this is not enough. It must also be said that the resurgence of class organizations can never take place “freely,” but only in fierce struggle against the state, all parties, and all unions that support it.

In this sense, therefore, the claims that yesterday fitted perfectly into a trade unionist policy, take on a political character. This is not because of any inherent characteristics, but because the changing situation means that the margins of maneuver of the bourgeoisie have shrunk. They are unable to make concessions anymore, and they will soon have to openly resort to force by denouncing all those who struggle for housing or jobs as subversive and anti-social elements.

But even if economic struggles take on a distinctly political character, this does not mean that the nature of class-based economic organizations changes.

Even in moments of the most acute revolutionary struggle, the objective determinations that impel the proletariat to struggle and organize are always the same. They are material in character, not ideal.

Therefore, even in the rare moments when it is guided by genuinely classist politics, economic organizations always retain their objective limitations that make them a suitable organ not of attack but defense.

Class unions alone can excellently defend working-class living conditions against exploitation, but they cannot by themselves constitute a suitable organization for the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie.

A revolution is not the “beau geste” of a handful of desperate people, nor is it the uprising of crowds on a “big day.”

It was precisely in Italy that all the experiments were performed,

from the ridiculous Mazzinian attempts, to individual terrorism (which then reached the flattering result of killing King Umberto I), from the action of bands of anarchists (who in the Matese mountains declared the monarchy deposed and private property abolished), to the peasant uprisings to the Palermo uprising of 1866 and the great proletarian uprisings of 1893 and 1898 that simultaneously affected a large part of the national territory, from the agitations against the Libyan War and the Red Week in 1914, to the armed occupation of factories in 1920, from the strikes of ’43 to the half-insurrection at the assassination attempt on Togliatti in ’48.

A party already existed in Italy that identified itself with workers’ associations and which only proletarians could join:

the Italian Workers’ Party.

It was a strong party, with 30,000 adherents with a wide influence on the proletariat in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria. It was the first autonomous organization of the Italian proletariat that finally separated itself from the bourgeois left and the radical petty bourgeoisie.

This party was basically nothing more than an association of leagues and claimed disinterest in general politics and to be concerned only with proletarian struggles.

In 1886, it was outlawed on charges of preparing insurrection. The organization was virtually destroyed in a major police raid, and the remnants later flowed into the future Socialist Party.

The same fate befell the organization of anarchists—numerous and scattered throughout Italy—after 1888.

The history of these attempts is well preserved in the police archives, which seamlessly go from the Bourbons to the Savoy, through Fascism and to the Democratic Republic.

Governments, parties, and institutions pass away, but the essence of the state, the “old fox questor” who knows everything about everyone, who has learned their lessons and knows when to cane and when to dress as a lamb, remains. No change of government or uprising has caused it to leave its post.

The poor fools of today, who know nothing about anything and claim with their baleful improvisations to “attack the state,” should reflect that one by one all their attempts and all their ways have been tried by far more determined, far more numerous, and far fiercer men and exasperated masses and have failed anyway.

History has shown that to bring down the capitalist regime and to lead workers’ struggles in this direction requires a special organization specially created and prepared for this purpose. This organization is called the Communist Party, an organization that treasures past experience so as not to repeat old mistakes, which knows how to foresee situations and does not allow itself to be surprised, which is able to resist repression because it does not feel that it has “spaces to defend” in this society, which has a precise and proven plan in which the daily proletarian struggles, the assault on bourgeois power and the political and economic measures to be taken after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie are framed.

A Party that knows how to lead proletarian organizations not on the terrain of ephemeral partial achievements, but toward the ultimate abolition of the exploitation of wage labor.

A party such the Bolshevik Party, the Third International, the Communist Party of Italy of 1921, all tended to be. We can proudly say that the Communist Party of Italy was not defeated by the fascist repressions to which it resisted and responded, but by the betrayal of the socialists first and the Stalinists later.

This is what the proletariat lacks today. Without this, all the strikes, agitations, and riots in this world may come, but the power of the bourgeoisie will not be affected in the slightest.

Those who say they want to bring down this infamous regime must therefore be consequential and accept the necessary tools for this purpose.