Directives for Union Action by the C.P.

International Trade Union Situation

The integration of the Italian labor movement into international structures, an issue to which the Communist Party has devoted its utmost attention since its inception, has certainly not yet been achieved, nor can it be said that great strides have been made with the national congresses of the Confederation of Labor and the Railway Workers’ Union. All the major Italian proletarian organizations have yet to take a clear position on the fundamental dilemma: Moscow or Amsterdam? Following the results of the International Congress of Red Trade Unions, the national congresses of the Confederation, the Trade Union, and the Railway Workers’ Union will inevitably have to be held in Italy, and all these organizations will have to define their position on the basis of the clear organizational foundations laid down in Moscow.

The Communist Party notes that the known results of the International Trade Union Congress confirm the tactics it has adopted on trade union matters, as summarized in the appeal launched some time ago for the unification of Italian workers’ organizations. As soon as its trade union delegation returns, the Communist Party will convene a trade union conference to define its work on the international question and will address the organized masses on the attitude to be taken at the congresses of the national workers’ organizations.

The Offensive of Confederal Leaders Against Communists

However, the Communist Party must have its say to workers and its members who are active in economic organizations on various important issues of the moment, reflecting above all the directives of the largest Italian workers’ organization: the General Confederation of Labor, in which communists form a strong, combative opposition to the leadership.

At the recent meeting of the Confederation’s Executive Council, a resolution was adopted that heralds the launch in Italy of a campaign that union leaders still dominated by reformism have adopted in many other countries, feeling directly threatened by the communists’ union tactics. While the latter are in favor of trade union unity and work within the unions against the right-wing leaders, the former threaten to split the workers by excluding the communists from the organizations. The confederal executive committee has been given the power to expel organizations or groups from the confederal body.

The clear objective of the mandarins of the Confederation, who realize that our offensive is causing them to lose ground every day and paving the way for the liberation of the Italian proletariat from their soporific influence, is to sabotage the formation of a communist majority in the organizations they control.

The Communist Party fully accepts the challenge thus thrown down by those it considers to be the worst enemies of the proletarian cause. First of all, it fully and unconditionally confirms, even in the face of the situation created by the confederal decision, its tactic of remaining in the Confederation and working to bring all left-wing organizations out of it, and this declaration must serve as a rule for all comrades who, from the attitude of the bonzes, drew the rash conclusion that it is advisable to prepare for a union split. The communists do not want to leave and will not leave the ranks of the confederal organizations. They declare arbitrary any act tending to exclude from the ranks of the union not those who violate its specific discipline in the struggle against the capitalists, but those who agitate within it for directives and methods of proletarian political struggle. If anyone should be removed from the ranks of the organization, it is those who deny the fundamental principle of class struggle, and these people should be sought among those who voted in Rome for the resolution that the capitalist press has widely and logically welcomed.

The Communist Party declares that its members will fight with all means, without exception, against what must be considered an arbitrary act and an attempt at oppression, that is, against the expulsion of even a single communist from the ranks of the organization of his fellow workers.

Any attempt in this direction by our comrades—avoiding any possible fait accompli that could establish the impositions of the confederal leaders as a consequence of any kind, renouncing social rights—shall be urgently communicated to the local and central Communist Trade Union Committee, which will give the specific instructions for the case.

In the meantime, these few fundamental practical guidelines remain established.

If the expelled member is an organizer, all organized communists will support him or her by demanding that the expulsion be discussed at the League assembly and by boycotting any meeting from which he or she is to be excluded by all possible means.

If the expelled member is an organizer, whether a local official or a member of the national federations, the organized comrades will request a ruling from the local organization, propose that the organizer be reinstated, and, in extreme cases, boycott their replacement in every way possible.

If an entire local organization is to be excluded, it will refuse by all means to evacuate the social premises and, with the support of other communist organizations, will intervene in all meetings and congresses to which it has the right to be represented, under penalty of boycotting all forms of such gatherings.

Further measures may be indicated on a case-by-case basis by the communist trade union committees. The Party press will give maximum publicity to the episodes of this struggle, pointing out to conscious workers the reactionary actions of the trade union leaders in this area.

The Policy of “Pacification” of the Confederal Leaders

The communists remain in the Confederation, and they remain there to thoroughly exercise their function of ruthless criticism of the leaders’ policies. No opportunity should be overlooked to invite the masses to disapprove of negotiations and agreements with the fascists, which for communists are tantamount to betrayal of the proletarian cause. Wherever they are, communist organizers and members will clearly state and explain that the Confederation of Labor cannot and must not discipline its members to follow political directives that may result from its agreements with those who have so far been able to ransack proletarian headquarters with impunity. If the Confederation is allied with the Socialist Party, it should leave it to the latter to direct the activities of those members who are registered socialists or sympathizers. In reality, the confederation leaders, who at their last meeting even expressly dealt with parliamentary politics, have become the dictators of the Socialist Party itself, which they are transforming into a labor party tied to their policy of collaboration and corporatism.

The communists who remain in the Confederation are about to break this ruinous policy and free the masses from this counter-revolutionary dictatorship by working to penetrate the trade unions with the communist spirit.

Despite the attitudes of the confederal leaders, the communists are counting on the help of organized workers in the open struggle against the reactionary gangs. This message must be carried to all proletarian meetings.

Economic Crisis and Unemployment

A single directive must be given to the propaganda and action of communists in this field. The harshest criticism must be levelled at the approach adopted by the confederal bodies on this issue, and their acquiescence to the impositions of the capitalists must be denounced. The closure of companies, the inadequacy of government measures in terms of subsidies and public works contracts, the illusion of being able to obtain more effective state intervention through parliamentary and collaborationist means, as proposed by the confederal leaders, their acquiescence in the face of the bosses’ offensive against the agreements won by the workers, are all elements that we must put in their true light, explaining that according to our revolutionary tactics, a radical solution to these problems exists only in the conquest of power by the proletariat, that the obvious insolubility of these problems must be used to lead the masses to this conviction and to intensify revolutionary preparation among them, while the reformists, in order to avoid this, delude the workers into believing that it is possible to improve the difficulties of the present crisis within the framework of the current regime. It is important to show that with this policy, the confederal leaders, while achieving nothing of concrete benefit to the masses, place their collaborationist and pacifist thesis not only above the interests of the revolution, but also against the immediate interests of the workers, renouncing, in order not to disturb their political maneuvers and agreements with bourgeois groups, the use of the trade union force of the proletariat in the battle against the employers’ offensive, which could be launched when they are truly determined to push it to the limit on the political terrain. This will only be possible by ousting the defeatists from the leadership of the organized proletarian masses, and these arguments must be used to attract broader strata of workers to the struggle against the confederal leaders.

The Communist Party will shortly launch a special appeal on the issue of the unemployed. From our point of view, this issue becomes an exclusively political one. The palliatives proposed by the reformists must be criticized. The bourgeois state, to which they appeal, cannot remedy the tragic situation of the masses of unemployed with ineffective measures that are little more than paltry charity. From a class point of view, only one solution can be put forward: the principle of replacing subsidies with the payment of the full wage to the legitimate unemployed on the basis of the number of members of their family. This principle, an elementary step towards a socialist economy, while incompatible with the existence of bourgeois power, would be an immediate realization of proletarian power, which, by fundamentally undermining the privileges of capital, would establish the elimination of any disparity in treatment between workers, on the basis of the social obligation of work.

Tactics in Economic Unrest

Reformists often use a specious argument against our comrades who work in the unions, claiming that what we could do in union disputes, but do not actually do, is practically no different from what they do. The answer to this is that communists would never dream of denying the contingent achievements of the trade union struggle in the field of bargaining over working conditions, which do not exclude the tactical problem of whether or not to accept the bosses’ proposals, to push to the limit or to stop strikes at a certain point. Nor do communists claim to have a recipe for infallibly winning economic struggles. What distinguishes them from reformists and social democrats is the revolutionary propaganda they take the opportunity to spread from every episode of economic struggle, their constant effort to create political and class consciousness among workers. Furthermore, communists must prove that the fact that large centers of the proletarian organization network are in the hands of latent friends of the bourgeoisie or opponents of revolutionary preparation, who consider the spread of unrest and its impact on the entire social and political life of the country to be the greatest danger, ties the hands of organized workers and their organizers even when they follow communist directives. Since communists know that they cannot achieve their goals if the masses are still dominated by the influence of union leaders, they consider the need to oust them, position by position, from the proletarian organization to be at the forefront of their revolutionary struggle.

All communist union activity is based on this observation, that in the current era of convulsive crisis of the bourgeois regime, the simple traditional activity of the unions is no longer sufficient, as they see their action becoming increasingly difficult as the crisis worsens.

In order to tackle the problems of everyday working life, it is necessary to be able to control the functioning of the economic machine as a whole in order to implement measures that can combat the consequences of its collapse. It is illusory to believe that the current political system offers the proletariat any means of exerting influence over the course of these phenomena on which its fate and conditions of existence depend, and all problems boil down to the single issue of replacing, through a great revolutionary effort by the entire proletariat, the class of its exploiters who, by holding power, prevent any mitigation of the painful consequences of capitalism, as they prevent any limitation of the privileges of the capitalists.

The unions must therefore become the phalanxes of the revolutionary army, imbued with the communist political spirit, and fighting under the leadership of the class party for the conquest of power and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship.