Presentation – 1985

The following text, The Communist Party in the Tradition of the Left, from June 1974, is the product of the party’s collective effort to prioritise and restate the fundamental issues; issues which get brought up whenever the organisation swerves off course and which generally, at least so far, have taken the form of more or less conspicuous and comprehensive splits, more or less useful in terms of strengthening of party action on the basis of continuity and unity of theory, programme, tactics and organisation. Written all in one go, under the impulse of the perpetual, pressing need to re-establish the fundamental principles on which the Party based its re-launch in 1952, no textual modifications are needed.

In the days before the appearance of the Party’s new press organ Il Partito Comunista, the work appeared originally as the first of a series of pamphlets. The circulation of the text was therefore inevitably limited, although a new edition in book form was brought out a few years later, first in Italian then in other languages. Now, at last, it is available in English speaking countries and to an international readership. It is hoped that comrades, readers of our press and proletarians who follow our struggle will find it both an aid to study, and an indispensable guide to how the Left resolved the complex and intertwined issues adequately summed up in the title of our classical text from 1945, Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the Working Class.

Explained in that work, using our powerful and impersonal historical method, is the Marxist school’s perfectly consistent definition of the Communist Party; which, after the destruction of the Third International, has been uniquely represented by the Communist Left’s tradition of positions and struggles.

Drawing on a long party activity stretching over half a century, from 1920, a still revolutionary year in Europe, to the comparatively recent 1970, and covering a long cycle of counterrevolution (as opposed to the gossipy “new stages” discovered every six months by anti-Marxist immediatism), the quotations and the comments which introduce them, and nail down their meaning, describe the historically determined characteristics of the revolutionary party, «a projection into the present day of the human-society of tomorrow».

The text neither adds to, or modifies, any of the theses which the Left defended within the International against Stalinist corruption and then later against the degeneration represented by the non-Marxist anti-Stalinist currents. Taking that in combination with what was codified and objectively realized within a long international party tradition in the post 2^nd World War period, it represents a synthetic and systematic document, and the confirmation of our programmatic theses on the so-called organizational questions. We thus bring to the attention of new generations of young proletarians, the revolutionaries of tomorrow, and to whoever is drawn into our orbit the theses defended by our party organization and by us alone.

The text was written immediately after the last laceration of party unity; the worst and most dramatic of the post-war period because desired and driven by the party Centre itself, and directed against comrades who maintained their full allegiance to its programmatic principles and organizational discipline. It is to be considered the continuation of a work, carried out according to our tradition and method, by which, amidst the frantic organizational “new courses”, the correct orientation was kept in accordance with the basic principles which regulate and discipline the life, action, and nature of the party; a work which was presented to the organization as a whole as a way of preventing it losing its revolutionary bearings.

The text was circulated at the time as an internal document, exclusively aimed at party comrades and the Centre. This was because the main thing was to get the administrative measure of expulsion repealed, channelling the forces of all comrades into reconfirming the homogeneous bases we held in common, the old method of work we had in common, the common principles which nobody was openly saying they wished to question; and, equally importantly, it wanted to reaffirm those characteristic and special aspects of party life which had characterized it since its reconstitution in the immediate post-war period.

So, a party text then, a party work rather than a polemical document or an indictment of secessionism against an alleged “other side”. In the Introduction of the time we read: «Rejected by the Centre as total and absolute rubbish, this work is a modest contribution which amplifies a proposal made some years ago. Maybe if the ’compass’ hadn’t spun out of control, it would have appeared in the columns of Programma Comunista, instead of all those dubious articles on ’organisation’».

We had to admit that the compass had spun out of control, and irreversibly so. Since then, the two organisations have pursued their own respective paths and we have no further demands or reproaches to put forward. We are, however, left with the precious lesson of the method we used to respond to the encroaching disaster of the split, and to the errors which would prompt, sustain and conclude it in such an ignominious way over the years which followed; errors which would reduce to vile, disgraceful tatters that allegedly iron organization which had arisen after the expulsion of ’the weaklings’; of those ’lacking in discipline’; of the ’anti-centralist’ fraction, as it was then called, who had opposed the new organizational courses and the impromptu disciplinary measures; not for fear of discipline and organizational power, but rather because they saw in those means, in those criteria, the road to disorganization, and hence a breach of programmatic unity.

The aim of this tenacious work wasn’t to arouse any sense of personal satisfaction about ’winners’ and the ’losers’ within the party, but rather to prompt a sound reaction, capable of bringing the party as a whole back onto correct positions, without rehabilitations, self-criticisms or anyone being put on trial.

Drawing on the whole, integrated tradition of the Communist Left, the text, therefore, merely sets out to restate postulates known to everyone in the party and accepted by all militants; postulates which past and present generations have ’sculpted’ and refined with the aim of fortifying and expanding the fighting party organization, which in its turn has been strengthened by this continuous, untiring work.

Faced with the dispersal and general retreat of the proletarian movement on all fronts, when even parties calling themselves communist would yield to those old bourgeois and idealist superstitions which entrust everything to the myth of the illustrious leader, or to the petty bourgeois deference to hierarchy, or, worse still, to simple arithmetical majorities, only the Left was capable of drawing the lesson of the counter-revolution, by recognising the Third International, in its first two congresses, as the anticipation of the world communist party; something which is an old aspiration of Marxist communism and a historical necessity. The Left would also denounce ephemeral forms, the survival of federalism and of doctrinal and programmatic heterogeneity within the party, and their degenerate consequences: the democratic mechanism and its complement, bureaucratism and abuse of organizational formalism.

Before in the International the Left was opposed to the view that the method of internal work, the study of social reality and the singling out of the appropriate tactics, should be the result of an internal political struggle, of the clash between different factions and of their changing relationships.

Within the party which re-emerged at the end of the war – the one world communist party in embryonic form – all the more strenuously did we rule out the possibility that its internal life could be based on a clash between several, ideologically opposed currents. Now, thanks to a process of historical revolutionary and class struggle maturation, doctrinal unity had finally been achieved once and for all, and a system of tactical norms codified.

Such an objective maturity of proletarian experience is crystallized in facts, texts and theses, and pulsates in the living party structure and in its univocal and scientific work of study and research. This makes possible – or rather requires – the adoption of an organic method for the realization of its tactics and its coherent action.

We maintain that the most efficient way of utilizing the party forces as a whole lies in unitary methods of work which rely on «fraternal solidarity and mutual consideration among comrades». We therefore finally relegate to the museum of prehistory, to that of proletarian organization as well, those nowadays destructive methods (which were only ever present in the movement due to historical immaturity) of “struggle” between comrades and fractions, where not only the weapons of democracy and numerical head counts are used, but exaggeration and polemical excess as well; to the point indeed that the Left fraction would have to put up with personal attacks, slanders, gossip, manoeuvres between prominent leaders, and manipulations of the much adulated rank and file.

Finally, we could rule out both the habit of “personifying the party”, and “personifying errors”, according to which it is only through the authoritativeness of a “leader” that the party can discern the correct political line, or, vice versa, ascribe errors to some “culprit’s” deviation. In the world revolutionary party, the hunt for the correct tactical line was at last possible without the need to waste an absurd amount of energy in factional struggles (the “sport of fractionism” within the Third International); the goal was no longer defeating, numerically overwhelming or expelling from the organizational leadership a given group of comrades, by using any means necessary; but rather convincing the whole party organism of the correctness of the tactical line, and thus reinforcing the movement’s unity.

We knew what the objection would be: the party, still subjected to the pressure of the bourgeois environment, should defend itself from spurious ideologies and lines which try to penetrate it. With our clear theses, and wishing to avoid all useless moralising or witch-hunts, we simply answered that experience had taught us that the opportunist involution of parties has always been manipulated from above, by artfully flaunting numerical majorities and invoking formal discipline. Introducing the practice of engaging in political struggle within the party thus meant handing it over to the very people it was supposed to be fighting against. The party can, and indeed must, defend itself from the terrible, permanent pressure of the external environment with the same methods it uses to govern its organic life. The latter is not an aesthetical luxury or a formal liturgy to be set aside whenever we move from the “stage of theoretical research” to that of “class struggle”. The one defence the party has is the extreme coherence of its organic method.

These themes have been further expounded in a recent report entitled, In the Party’s Organic Predisposition lies its Preparation for Revolution, which is included here as an appendix to the 1974 text.

In 1951, «in the depths of the counter-revolutionary depression», with the drifting of the Russian State onto the terrain of defence of bourgeois relations a fait accompli and the patriotic intoxication of the second imperialist war a thing of the past, the Internationalist Communist Party, constituting itself in a clear and homogeneous manner, formulated a body of characteristic theses. These theses had the purpose of defining our movement, and clearly delimiting it both from those forces which have abandoned the party and from those groups which though they appear to be close to us, have marched in step with the great machineries of official social democracy ever since.

In those theses, still a constant reference point for our present organization, the chapters entitled Theory; Tasks of the Communist Party; Historical Waves of Opportunist Degeneration; Party Action in Italy and in Other Countries in 1952, aren’t to do with philosophy, or with abstract professorial histories; rather they outline the party’s mode of being, a party not merely firmly founded on “the principles of historical materialism and of critical communism of Marx and Engels”; but one able, and willing to, bring that social science and those future predictions to life within an active organisation; within a party whose aim is to suppress the antagonism between consciousness and action, between the theory of revolution and revolutionary activity itself.

Although referring to a fairly small organisation, due to historical causes, the 4^th thesis in part IV states:

1 – Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951
    IV. 4 – Today we are in the depths of the political depression, and although the possibilities of action are considerably reduced, the party, following revolutionary tradition, has no intention of breaking the historical line of preparation for a future large scale resurgence of the class struggle, which will integrate all the results of past experience. Restriction of practical activity does not imply the renunciation of revolutionary objectives. The party recognises that in certain sectors its activity is quantitatively reduced, but this does not mean that the multi-faceted totality of its activity is altered, and it does not renounce expressly to any of them.

The reduced militant forces which reorganized soon after the end of the war recognized that choosing the program of revolutionary emancipation of the working class from the capitalist class was by now historically incontrovertible. Not only were the theoretical principles of communist social and cognitive critique integral and essential parts of such a program, but also a complete system of tactical norms derived from centuries of proletarian warfare, and an organic method of work and internal relations relevant to the proletarian party. The maturity of our theoretical postulates, and their confirmation derived from the living verification of the class struggle, enabled the party at the time to state in Thesis 5, Part IV:

2 – Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951
    IV. 5. Today, the principal activity is the re-establishment of the theory of Marxist communism (…) That is why the party will present no new doctrines but will instead reaffirm the full validity of the fundamental theses of revolutionary Marxism, which are amply confirmed by facts (…) Because the proletariat is the last of the classes to be exploited, and consequently in its turn will exploit no one, the doctrine which arose alongside the class can neither be changed nor reformed. The development of capitalism, from its inception until now, has confirmed and continues to confirm the Marxist theorems set out in the fundamental texts. The alleged “innovations” and “teachings” of the last 30 years have only confirmed that capitalism is still alive and must be overthrown.

The consequence of our trust in science and the scientific method is the conviction that the programme isn’t something we invent, rediscover or update, especially nowadays. The revolutionary programme already exists in the awful reality of proletarian defeats and the putrefaction of the bourgeois universe. The revolutionary programme, in a doctrinal sense, has existed for a century and a half with the last refinements being added by the Marxist left, who codified the lessons derived from the culminating point of the proletarian advance, the Russian Revolution; and from that first, pulsing realization of the anticipated one, worldwide direction of the insurgent proletariat, the Third International. From then on, the party’s task has been to preserve this outlook, to keep the science of subversion alive. In the amorphous present, the party’s task is to seek the confirmation of its theorems in contemporary and past events rather than trying to find new exceptions to them.

Since the time of the Third International, the party, remaining true to its historical tradition, has devoted itself – within what the theses would refer to as “merely quantitative” limitations – to the impersonal and indispensable work of defending communist continuity.

We postulate the organized form of the party type, which since 1848 at least has been the appropriate form for a conscious, and unique, proletarian organization capable of accommodating the milizia comunista whenever there was the slightest chance of it existing. So a unitary party organization then: as unitary as our program, and as devoid of the clash of conflicting interests as the world we are fighting for. Centralism and discipline derive from monolithicity of programme. Rather than being construed as administrative or terrorist coercion, discipline in the party is, and can only be, spontaneous; the natural way of life of an organisational body which is entirely focused on one end, and well aware of the route and all the detours and dangers on the path to achieving that end. Discipline in the strongest sense, organic discipline, is only possible in the communist party; that is why – as opposed to within organisations of the dying class society – the call for discipline within the party doesn’t have recourse to coercion, since all that could be assumed, in any non-individual lack of discipline, was that it had to be something about the party’s work at a deeper level which was causing it to stray from its historical path. Since the birth of new schools or ideologies inside the communist movement is ruled out at a theoretical level, we take the position that internal political struggle, and fractions battling amongst themselves, can be banned inside the party. Whenever the party is divided into two groups, it leads to the death of that party and the birth of a new organization in reaction to the degeneration of the old. Events from the past, and recent, history of our movement show this only too clearly.

The concept of the communist party outlined in the Theses rejects all localism, and contingentism, in the work of defending the program or in the party’s external propaganda. They are stale residues of petty-bourgeois social strata, who, restricted by the narrow horizon of the club, or local “study” group, think they can “make their own way to the party”. But these winding and tortuous new paths, compared to the broad highway of the old, tried and tested and impersonal method of the party, are impassable and they lead precisely nowhere.

Within the party, and only within the party, we see the social relations typical of the future society realized. Firmly resisting the powerful influences of the external environment, it is only within the party that the bourgeois superstition of the “person” is rejected as a false abstraction of the ascendant bourgeoisie; and condemned along with its mercantile accessories of careers, rewards and competition.

In the belief that the consignment of the historical party, not as “revealed dogma”, but as the synthesis of past proletarian experience, confirmed by past and present events, constitutes the continuous furrow along which the militant organization has to channel its energies, in Thesis 7 of Part IV it is stressed that:

3 – Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951
    IV. 7… Consequently, party members are not granted personal freedom to elaborate and conjure up new schemes or explanations of the contemporary social world. They are not free as individuals to analyse, criticise and make forecasts, whatever their level of intellectual competence may be. The Party defends the integrity of a theory which is not the product of blind faith, but one whose content is the science of the proletarian class; developed from centuries of historical material, not by thinkers, but under the impulse of material events, and reflected in the historical consciousness of one revolutionary class and crystallized in its party. Material events have only confirmed the doctrine of revolutionary Marxism.

Another separation of party forces took place in 1966, and organizational continuity was maintained then by a decisive reconfirmation of the norms of internal party relations drawn from the balance sheet of the Third International’s degeneration, as specifically recalled by the Theses of 1965-66. As in 1951, another, separate organization was formed which distanced itself from the party and went off in a different direction to ourselves; where to we’ve never been particularly interested in finding out.

On this basis, the party which would be identified with its organ Il Programma Comunista would arise, and carry out its work, until 1973. Then another, ’dirty’ split as we would call it, would take place; dishonest because those who were betraying the party at the time didn’t have the nerve to proclaim their intention of abandoning the plotted course; or only after the event, once militants had already been deceived. On the contrary – and the history of formal parties has taught us this is the rule for all revisionisms – they did it while making a show of reverence, as formal as it was hypocritical, for the great names of illustrious men and for abstract principles kept on ice to be brandished at the right moment. Unlike former splits, the one in 1973 was particularly murky and deeply felt because, for the first time since 1951, crisis and fractionism involved the steering centre of the organization too.

In 1973, the material fact of the expulsion from Programma of a significant part of the organization in itself provoked the existence of two separate parties, each of them following their own path. The historical impossibility of the positions of the Left coexisting with any kind of opportunism explains why this irrevocable split was so clear cut. The new organization, publishers of the periodicals Il Partito Comunista, Comunismo, Communist Left, and periodicals in other languages, now had the chance to weigh up this latest crisis of the formal party; a crisis which, even though occurring at a very paltry level, we nevertheless deemed “rotten to the core”. We would proceed to brand the deviation as opportunist, and the result of voluntarism and impatience as regards practice. Describing our accusers as activist, we would turn against them the very label they had conjured up to describe our non existent fraction.

Since the possibility of the party’s existence is not something we make mechanically dependent on particular force relations between the classes, or the number of available militants; but rather on everyone’s absolute acceptance of the unique, unchanging and monolithic program, our party, small though it was, pressed on with the “serious work” it had embarked on in 1951: that of preventing defections and the impending pressure of the bourgeois world from breaking the “thread of time” which, continuous and intact, is passed on from one generation of militants to the other. In 1973 we weren’t just fighting over a couple of deviations, or just about some of the more vexed questions; above all we were defending our very concept of the communist party; and that was the ultimate test insofar as keeping the conscious proletarian organization alive is both the most important revolutionary action of all, and a scorching theoretical defeat for our enemy towering above us.

Therefore, from the moment of separation from the old organization we have had nothing more to do with it, and felt no obligation to pronounce judgement on how it has gradually distanced itself from the Left.

Over recent decades the party has «persevered» – in the Theses of Naples sense – «in ’sculpting’ the distinctive features of its doctrine, action, and tactics with the same unique method, over space and time», in the certainty that the present day work of the party, if it survives, will be in the future a very powerful factor in accelerating the reconstruction of the large scale party of the Revolution. And let us not rule out the possibility of a future rebirth of the proletarian party, in other countries or continents, anywhere, exclusively through a rediscovery and rereading of the texts and of history. We maintain however that this process, otherwise long and tortuous, can be made far shorter, and more direct, by the presence of a party, even a small one, capable of handing down the thread, and the norms and the formulae which are synthetic and conclusive in the historical sense, of our science.

The current state of society being no worse than in 1951, the party is proud to have been able to maintain, throughout the longest ever reflux of the world revolution, this “small continuance” of left wing Marxism, and not just as “theses and texts” but also as a living and active organ. Since our movement now lacks famous men, from whose now “useless” genius there is no further enlightenment to be drawn, impersonal and collective party work is the only way we can really get to grips with proletarian social science and hope to see beyond the mists of the present amorphous environment.

We don’t believe we need to change our theses or add to them. Away from a stupid “organizational arrogance” devoid of programmatic content (typical of all opportunism by the way, including recent examples) and not emotionally attached to any particular organization per se, we confirm our claim – alone against all the various updaters and re-considerers – to full and exclusive continuity with these theses; and with that party which had the revolutionary instinct, and dialectical strength, to proclaim itself as such in the face of the stammerings of spontaneistic rationalism and realpolitick scepticism.

The final part of the present work, the fifth, is dedicated to the crucial issue of tactics, the practical action of the party at various times and in different places; the knotty problem which needs unravelling in preparation for the revolutionary attack and which, conversely, of all the areas in which the party organization operates, is the most delicate and complex because conducted in the white heat of the social struggle.

As in the previous sections there is an introduction to the fifth part which provides a synthetic overview of the party’s general tactical plan. This is followed by an ample set of quotations, subdivided into six chapters, drawn from the fundamental texts of revolutionary communism and from our uncorrupted tradition of struggle against Stalinism and opportunism, which clearly demonstrate the invariance of the filo rosso, wending its way through generations of men and political formations.

The tactical sphere, like the organizational one dealt with in the preceding sections, has always been one of the points of ’major criticality’; the starting point for some of the party’s most dangerous deviations. Many party structures founded or re-founded on very solid doctrinarian and organizational bases, and even on the wave of a victorious revolution, have been distorted out of all recognition in the space of a couple of years because they thought that possession of “sound principles” made the use of any manoeuvre permissible, or worse still, that a “strong and disciplined” organization made any tactical about-face permissible. That the painful corollary of such a tactical ’dégringolade’ is that it is then inevitably accompanied by a degeneration of relations within the Party, by the appearance of fractionism from above, by methods of organizational coercion and by out and out political struggle; this is something the century old history of the class organ ’Party’ has taught us; and it is a definitive lesson.

Similarly having a rigid framework to contain the shortlist of tactical options bolsters and reinforces unity, compactness, and therefore discipline within the entire party collective; which no longer has to be subjected to the tactical inventions of the movement’s leadership because the latter in its turn is obliged to respect norms and cardinal rules as binding on the rank and file as on the leadership; norms and cardinal rules shared by all and known by all, and on whose basis the Party itself was formed. Therefore, it is not to consultative assemblies, battles between minorities and majorities, or to more or less brilliant leaders that the carrying out of tactical plans will be entrusted, but to an organ of anonymous appearance, substantiated by an anonymous, impersonal and collective work considered as a task of the entire party collective, all the more efficient inasmuch as it is firmly connected to that tradition, and that historical method, which the Party has understood and made its own.

The “group of statements” which are brought together in the first chapter cover a 40 year time-span, and within them, in the powerful dialectic and historical sense which we attribute to our doctrine, is combined the authority of the past, present and future revolutionary militants who are the cornerstone of the “tactics” which, one could almost say, supports the entire life of the party. The Party lives and “exists” for the outside world, for the class which it historically defines partly through its tactics; i.e., through its set of rules for action, which are necessarily the reflection, or rather the consequent accomplishment, of its being, of its program and of its historical principles; existing above and beyond changing historical circumstances or its more or less brilliant leaders.

Tactics cannot be improvised; tactics cannot be changed on the whim of some leader, or due to unforeseen circumstances. They must remain within the set parameters prescribed by the party’s historical experience, under pain of destruction of the party itself and the defeat of the revolutionary movement. What’s more, good tactics involves the party being ready and prepared to apply them, and turn them into weapons to fight the enemy.

We emphasize the fact that our thesis on the Party’s absolute autonomy (which we alone subscribe to) which is discussed in the second chapter, and in the third in reference to the Rome Theses, sums up the Party’s characteristics in the most complete and unmistakable way, distinguishing what makes it entirely distinctive and unique compared to every other organisation, not only of the proletariat, but every other organisation which humanity as a whole has so far expressed; to the extent in fact that in the living reality of today it represents the link between primitive communism and the advanced communism of the future.

The proletariat can do without the kind of party which is only capable of leading it to new defeats. The proletariat needs a Party which has learnt all it can from the past and is capable of leading it to the final victory against capitalism. The central question of tactics, therefore, is as follows: only the Party possesses the kind of tactics which enable it to tackle the questions of what action it should take in a conscious way, and that is why, in given historical conditions, it can deploy a greater force than the capitalist State itself. It is a well-known fact that we often express this distinctive feature, this defining characteristic of the party by the term “reversal of praxis”; by which the relationship between action and consciousness is turned on its head and the action of the Party organ can become conscious, something denied to any other organism, and especially the individual militant.

The thesis of the Party’s absolute autonomy from all other parties, even self-styled proletarian or “revolutionary” ones, is clearly contained in the above: if the Party were to mingle with other organisations its would inevitably dilute its strength, insofar as any numerical increase in its membership would limit its compactness and unitarity. Clearly absolute Party autonomy is an essential requirement, not just in the geo-historical areas of direct revolution, but also in those of double revolution; and the fact that in the latter case the possibility of revolutionary alliances remains, whilst in the former case it does not, is the only difference between them.

That conscious action is attributed to the Party is therefore at the heart of the communist conception of the Party; a Party whose action can be accurately predicted and coordinated with the required goals precisely because its action is collective rather than individual; and, moreover, it isn’t a simple sum total of individuals but rather a collectivity, which, by unitarily connecting itself, specifically by means of Party action, to the whole proletarian historical experience, expresses a power a hundred times stronger than its merely numerical strength. Consequently, this implies that Party action is characterized by an essential unity in the conduct of its members, which is only possible if the requirements for action are «summed up in clear rules of action», which the entire membership finds it possible to go along with, independently of their individual consciousness.

From this there follows two characteristics both of which are essential which define the nature of the Party:
– precision, clarity and the absolute autonomy of its tactical plan;
– prefiguration of the future communist society, already a living reality within the Party.

Such a Party cannot be improvised, it can only be the result of a long and difficult effort on every level: on the fundamental one of defence and continual appropriation of theory; in terms of coherent action and participation in all proletarian struggles, and in terms of fraternal consideration of all comrades. Therefore there is no way that its absolute autonomy towards any other party or movement can be compromised, as it would be tantamount to rejecting the only support the proletariat has in the revival of its revolutionary struggle and the only organ capable of leading it to victory over the capitalist monster.

In chapter 4 we take a small selection of quotations from our texts of the 1922-1945 period in order to re-propose this central thesis: the Party’s tactical plan entirely rules out the possibility of participating in the united front, i.e., we rule out any convergence of the party’s directives on communist proletarian action and activity of its militants with those of other parties, outside of a well defined sphere: that is, anything outside the sphere of proletarian direct action; where action is actual movement, not ideological statements and mere propaganda; where direct is according to the methods of class struggle – non-parliamentarian, non-pacifist, and not a matter of opinion; and where proletarian means proletarian objectives, and mobilizing the proletariat separate from other classes. This action, moreover, will not take shape outside the union organization. Since the united front between the communist Party and other parties is no longer possible, it can only be realised in practice within the union fractions present in the fighting organizations. Underlying this tactic is the materialist view that «the defence of immediate interests can only be achieved by going on the offensive, with all its revolutionary ramifications».

Outside this sphere of activity, which, although sharply defined will nevertheless be crucial on the road to the revolutionary recovery, «the party rejects the manoeuvres, combinations, alliances and coalitions which traditionally get formed on the basis of contingent postulates and slogans agreed on by a number of parties». Outside the realm of proletarian direct action and of union organization, the Party cannot join with other parties in issuing tactical directives «which involve attitudes and watchwords which can be accepted by opportunist political movements».

The theses then move on to condemn the misapplication of the united front tactic by the degenerated parties of the Third International, erroneously extended to include convergence of “proletarian” or “revolutionary” parties for openly governmental or parliamentarian purposes.

We do not judge parties by what they say about themselves, nor on the basis of the classes from which they recruit their members. Parties recruiting proletarians today which are not the communist party are bourgeois parties, and not only are they anti-revolutionary and anti-communist, but anti-proletarian too.

Although it may be true that not all governments are the same vis à vis their effects on the development of class struggle, it must nevertheless be taken into account that the accession of “left” governments has often had a more destructive effect on the revolutionary movement than openly bourgeois governments; and that if we believe it useful for proletarians to see the social-democrats for what they are when they take up the levers of governmental power in the first person, this will only be true if the Party hasn’t previously compromised itself in the operation and hasn’t confused proletarians by pushing them into fighting for it; if the Party has kept out of it and all the while issued counter-propaganda advocating struggle and organization.

Communist tactical positions as concerns the united front do not have any moral, ethical or aesthetic character but are adopted for essentially historical reasons. We maintained:

4 – Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party of the Working Class, 1947
     At the time when the capitalist class had not yet initiated its liberal period, when it still had to destroy the old feudal power, or still had to run through considerable stages and phases of its own expansion in the major countries, and when it was still laissez-faire in terms of economic processes and democratic in terms of the functioning of the state, a transitory alliance between the communists and parties that were in the first instance openly revolutionary, outside the law and organized for armed struggle, and in the second instance carried out a task which assured useful and genuinely “progressive” conditions, was both understandable and acceptable – because the capitalist regime would accelerate the historical cycle that will lead to its downfall (…)
      As a result, the tactic of insurrectionary alliances against the old regimes came to its historic end with the great fact of the Russian Revolution, which eliminated the final imposing military state apparatus of a non-capitalist character. After this historical phase, the still theoretical possibility of tactical blocs must be considered formally and centrally denounced by the international revolutionary movement.

As regards areas of double revolution we would elaborate further:

5 – Platform of the International Communist Party, 1945
   21 -… Within the framework of present world history, if by chance a residual role should still be retained by any bourgeois democratic group due to the partial or possible survival of the requirements of national liberation, or the need to liquidate backward islands of feudalism and similar historical relics, such tasks would not be carried out in a more resolute and conclusive way (with a view to clearing the way to the final cycle of bourgeois crisis) by having the communist movement relinquish its positions and passively accommodate itself with postulates that aren’t its own, but rather by an implacable, searing opposition of communist proletarians to the inevitable weakness and slothfulness of petty-bourgeois groups and bourgeois left wing parties.

Since 1945 we alone have defended the thesis (given ample treatment in our text Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party…) which states that the current phase of capitalist power presents peculiar economic and political features indicative of the final phase of the unitary and thoroughly rotten capitalist mode of production. This phase, which began at the end of the 19^th century and peaked during World War I, does indeed display peculiar features, but they are not such as to modify the mode of production since they merely represent the development of certain aspects already present in the earlier, liberal-democratic, phase of capitalist power. As concerns economy, in the first phase free competition prevails, although due to its nature the development of free competition leads to monopoly, which instead characterizes the imperialist phase. Similarly in politics, allowing for a time lag due to the fact that the political-legal framework is slower to change than the economic structure, we have a transition from the multi-party, demo-liberal State to the totalitarian State, a transformation which is best exemplified by the World War One. Our thesis, which we will support here using quotations from chapter 5, is that «for as long as it survives the capitalist world will no longer be able to use liberal forms to order its affairs; rather it will organise itself as monstrous State units, the pitiless expression of economic concentration».

During the imperialist phase we have therefore the ordering along totalitarian lines of all States, both those which defend liberal State forms and the openly fascist ones. The return of the ex-fascist States to liberal forms after World War II was not a return to the liberal State of the first phase. Despite its much vaunted liberal appearance, many features of the post-fascist democratic State are of a totalitarian character, namely strict social control, unitary political leadership and a strongly centralized hierarchical structure.

The two phases (disregarding here the phase in which the revolutionary bourgeoisie fights against the feudal regime) are characterized by different attitudes of the bourgeoisie towards the proletariat: during the first, the bourgeoisie’s stance towards the revolutionary proletariat is defensive; during the second, the bourgeoisie takes the offensive because only by controlling the proletariat, both with economic concessions and political subjugation, is it able to hamper its revolutionary attempts.

Here is why, to the great surprise and disgust of all pseudo-revolutionary intellectuals, we certainly do not consider democracy as a “supreme value” to be defended against fascism (in fact if anything the latter is less of a threat to revolution insofar as it doesn’t conceal the use of direct violence): as a matter of fact, the sequence as we see it is not fascism, democracy, socialism; it is democracy, fascism, proletarian dictatorship.

One of the tactical issues which received most attention in the period immediately after the creation of the Communist International was that relating to the participation of Communist Parties in democratic elections, a subject we cover in chapter 6. As is well known, the matter was discussed at length at the C.I.’s Second Congress, and the Left, after having outlined the case for abstentionism, would apply Lenin’s Theses on so called “parliamentarianism”. The Left asserted at the time that the latter tactics, even if carried on with undeniable revolutionary intention (Lenin believed that it was the best instrument to destroy the bourgeois parliament), would on the contrary contaminate all the communist parties which had just been formed, or were about to be like the Italian one, and cause them to degenerate. Historical confirmation of this assertion still needed to be provided, as eventually it would be in great abundance. It was therefore possible, back then, for the Left to accept a tactic it considered – and which actually was – wrong, as it would always be possible to correct it after the inevitable historical verifications: the important and essential thing at that time was the formation of the revolutionary Party on the basis of unquestioned faithfulness to the Marxist doctrine; as in fact actually occurred at the International’s Second Congress.

All this abundantly proves that the only way to tackle the issue of tactics, and remain true to revolutionary principles, is that proposed by the Left in the early years of the International: since there is a close connection between tactical norms and programmatic guidelines, the former have to be anticipated and defined by deducing them from principles and from an examination of the historical situation.

The Left maintained that the tactics of “revolutionary parliamentarism” were ill-adapted to the new historical situation opened up by the First World War. The imperialist war had unmasked the bourgeoisie once and for all, demonstrating that their offensive stance towards the proletariat was now permanent and based exclusively on the open use of violence; hence any “parliamentarist” tactic, which in the past had been justified by the progressive function the most radical section of this same bourgeoisie still retained, had now become counterproductive, and would remain so for the rest of the historical cycle which will be completed by the world proletarian revolution.

In fact it was under the banner of the struggle for Parliament that the revolutionary bourgeoisie fought against absolutist and feudal States, a struggle in which the proletariat would prove its most resolute ally, despite the fact that parliament does not embody and never has embodied the form of proletarian power, as the Commune and the Soviet would later demonstrate.

In the period of peaceful capitalist development, from the end of the 19^th century to the early 20^th, the young socialist parties, using correct revolutionary tactics, participated in the democratic elections in order to attain greater influence within the proletarian class; in this respect, they did not disdain to use bourgeois legality. This was justifiable not only on the basis that improvements in proletarian economical conditions might be won, but also that certain political aims it shared with the most radical and progressive part of the bourgeoisie might also be achieved. Such tactics, nevertheless, as clearly stated by Engels at the founding of the Second International, attributed no intrinsic value to any such conquests (as would occur when the reformist degeneration had gathered pace); their sole objective was the strengthening of the revolutionary movement, in anticipation of the bourgeoisie itself moving onto revolutionary terrain by abandoning legality, forced to do so by ineluctable material necessity. The world bourgeoisie would finally enter onto that terrain in 1914, and the world proletariat would lose an important battle, but the historical class war is not over, and the proletariat can still prevail if it links up with its natural organ, the class Party.

The events of the 20^th century, proletarian defeats included, have not been in vain, and today, «in the present situation and with the current balance of forces, the Party is not interested in democratic elections of any description or taking part in them».

And our position today, as it was when we explained it to Lenin, does not derive from anti-Marxist theoretical errors of the anarcho-syndicalist type, but rather from a practical, tactical and organizational necessity. We declare that any party, be it the most revolutionary one can possibly imagine, is nevertheless bound to degenerate if it practices electoralism (referring of course to political electoralism not to possible electoral mechanisms adopted by economic organizations composed of proletarians alone) and the reason for this is because at the present time, in the depths of the imperialist epoch, «electoralism is conceivable only as a promise of power; of scraps of power».
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction, June 1974

Although we’ve had several requests for „texts” from ex-members and people we don’t know, the text which follows, like the letter-circulars leading up to it, is addressed exclusively to party members. Clearly we haven’t satisfied the curiosity which has been aroused over the last few months by the notorious ’communiqués’ in Programma Comunista, culminating in that ’frosty warning’ which should be consigned to some museum of monstrosities.

Rejected by the Centre as total and absolute rubbish, this work is a modest contribution which amplifies a proposal made some years ago. Maybe if the ’compass’ hadn’t spun out of control, it would have appeared in the columns of Programma Comunista, instead of all those dubious articles on ’organisation’.

Comrades will note that nine tenths of the work is composed of excerpts from our fundamental texts, arranged according to subject, covering a fifty year time span, and standing in confirmation of the continuity and invariance of the positions of the Communist Left, ever faithful to revolutionary Marxism.

But the task doesn’t stop there. Marx and Lenin need to be studied too. Indeed the work is already well underway, and will soon be the subject of a second pamphlet.

As the continuer of the tradition bearing the names of Marx and Lenin, referring to the Communist Left should suffice; but with things they way they are, when the next falsification, manipulation or arbitrary interpretation may occur at any time, and, moreover, be committed by those from whom you least expect it, we are forced to go back to the basics on all questions, grasping the ’thread of time’ as far back as we can. And that, in fact, is the classical method we have always subscribed to.

The text, then, merely proposes to correctly restate postulates we all know and we all once accepted, even if we didn’t always agree with them; postulates worked out by generations of past and present militants with the aim of strengthening and spreading the fighting party organisation; a party whose continuous development is assured by this continuous and unremitting work.

That, then, is the road we need to take. There is no other way. There are no ’new decisions’ to be taken, ’restructurings’ to be carried out, or ’modifications’ to be made under the specious and ever dubious pretext of impending ’new situations’. The party forges its organs through action, in the measure that the various forms of action require them, adapting or substituting them with more suitable ones out of organic necessity; it doesn’t claim that the perfection of these organs, their automatism, can be a surrogate for correct action; as though everything was to do with organisation – a typical error of the activist variety in the field of organisation. The party organisation does not arise in vitro, in the fallacious laboratory of the brain, independent from the class struggle’s actual development. That would mean creating a lovely little model of a party, but not a real „compact and powerful” party whose instruments of battle are forged in the furnace of social struggle.

The feverish pursuit of perfectionism and automatism entails an error which spreads from the organisational field to the tactical one and affects the nature and functioning of the party. Pointed out many times by the Left to the International, the error consisted in the belief that a strong organisation can achieve anything (with ’strong’ meaning subordinate to any centralism whatsoever and ready to lend itself to any manoeuvre). Give us a ’Bolshevik’ organisation and everything is permitted. Let’s build a disciplined, all-purpose party and victory will be assured.

With the Left we know for certain that the party alters under the impulse of its own action; we know that indiscriminate use of tactics corresponds to changes in the organisation. Inevitably, then, any ’model’ of the party gets shattered into a thousand pieces. For example, the recognition of electionism, even on a temporary basis, even every now and again, is no longer permissible; nor can we delude ourselves that it won’t corrupt the essential nature, function and anti-democratic structure of the party. And another example, of an ’internal’ nature: nowadays, you can’t launch ’political struggles’ with impunity inside the organisation, and claim not to know that that way of working is bound to become ’the norm’, a handy way of resolving every problem with periodic splits in the organisation as the consequence. You would descend into the famous ’fractionism from above’. Regarding that as ’Leninism’ would be to caricature Leninism.

The party’s correct functioning can neither be referred to special organisational structures nor to the use of political means within the organisation.

The party’s strength doesn’t depend on organisation per se. The correct formulation is that the organisation is strong and functional in the measure that it adheres strictly to the programme and consequently develops ’correct revolutionary policies’. The opposite of that, i.e., that ’correct revolutionary policies’ and a stricter adherence to the programme are established in the measure that the organisation is ’strong’ and ’functional’ is false. It’s Stalin. It’s one of the features of opportunism.

We see in the latter the phenomenon of ‘bolshevisation’ in reverse. Before, organisational distortions were the result of errors made in the tactical field; now these distortions make for tactical errors. And recalling the reciprocal influence between both orders of questions, we would witness the progressive collapse of the party in all fields.

But as long as this process of ’slippage’ prompts a robust response from the party which induces it to return to correct positions, we believe it shouldn’t be considered irreversible,. That is what we are striving for, and developing this approach should be considered the duty of comrades of the Left.

Such is the aim of the preambles which introduce each group of quotations; all of which are directly deduced from the texts, and from which, as comrades can establish at their leisure, no arbitrary conclusions or polemics have been drawn.

Everything is predictable and well-known. All the same, we are sure we can do better. It is a modest contribution of our time, effort and revolutionary passion.

In conclusion, to prepare itself for the revolution the party has no need of polemics or ’political struggle’ among comrades

Through its collective work, through an amalgamation of its forces under the ’dictatorship of the programme’, the party grows stronger, from top to bottom, and weaves together its various fibres tending towards an indispensable minimum of ’executive discipline’, and an optimum of ’conviction’.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction, September 1974

The following text uses quotations drawn from the most significant texts of the last fifty years (1920-1970) to re-propose the Marxist conception of the party and of the party’s tasks, functions and organic dynamics. Under the crushing blows of the Stalinist counter-revolution and no less fetid post-Stalinism, only the Communist Left of Italy managed to keep this conception in line with that of Marx, Lenin and the III International, by constantly defending and restoring it in the face of every deviation, and codifying it in theses and texts which constitute the objective result of the historic experience of the proletarian struggle and the world communist movement.

The text presents the quotations in chronological order and subdivided according to topic. In each chapter there is an introduction which serves to place them in their relevant context and highlight the implications and consequences of the thought they express. Since in fact the statements contained in each of the parts constitute an inseparable whole, a unity of positions running in perfect continuity along the thread of time, the subdivision into chapters and titles is of a purely technical and functional character.

For the most part the quotations are drawn from the following texts, to which we refer readers and militants who wish to read them in their entirety:

• Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution, 1920
• Party and Class, 1921
• Party and Class Action, 1921
• The Democratic Principle, 1922
• The Tactics of the Communist International, 1922
• The Rome Theses, 1922
• Theses of the P.C.d’I. at the IV Congress of the C.I., 1922
• Communist Organisation and Discipline, 1924
• Motion of the Left of the P.C.d’I. at the National Conference in Como, 1924
• Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924
• The Left’s Speeches and Motions at the V Congress of the C.I.,  1924
• The Left’s Platform, 1925
• The International and the Dangers of Opportunism, 1925
• The Lyon Theses, 1926
• Speech by the Left’s Representative at the IV Session of the 6^th ECCI,  1926
• The Party’s Political Platform, 1945
• Post-war Perspectives in Relation to the Party’s Platform, 1946
• The Historical Cycle of Bourgeois Political Domination, 1947
• The Historical Course of the Proletarian Class Movement, 1947
• Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party of the Workig Class, 1947
• Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1948
• General Guiding Principles, 1949
• Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951
• Dogs’ Legs, 1952
• Essential Politics (Politique d’abord), 1952
• The Corpse Still Walks, 1953
• The Great Man in History, 1953
• Croaking Praxis, 1953
• The „Racial” Pressure of the Peasantry…, 1953
• Russia and Revolution in the Marxist Theory, 1955
• Dialogue with the Dead, 1956
• Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today, 1957
• Notes for the Theses on the Question of Organisation, 1964
• Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party…, 1965
• Theses on the World C.P’s Historical Task, Action and Structure…, 1965
• Supplementary Theses on the Historical Task…, 1966
• Continuity of Action of the Party in Line with the Tradition of the Left, 1967
• Introductions to the Volume „In Defence of the Continuity of the Communist Programme”, 1970

As the reader can see, it is all the historical patrimony of the Communist Left and of the International Communist Party which arose on the basis of Communist left’s positions in 1952, and it is here reclaimed and restated in its entirety.

The necessity for a comprehensive restating of this historic patrimony is linked to the troubling events which have affected the organisation of the International Communist Party over the past few years, prompting the need for a new party organ, Il Partito Comunista, to be set up as the organisational point of reference for all those wishing to militate on the Left’s positions. Only in total allegiance to these positions can the International Communist Party arise, develop and survive; that is, only on these genuinely Marxist foundations can the compact and powerful World Communist Party, indispensable organ of the proletarian revolution and the class dictatorship which will follow, be organised.
 
 

PART I

Ch. 1 CENTRALISM AND DISCIPLINE, CORNERSTONES OF PARTY ORGANISATION

In order to tackle the problem of how to characterise the party organ, the following thesis, which sets out the only genuine and distinctly Marxist vision of the problem, must first be established: the class political party is the indispensable organ of the proletarian struggle, before, during and after the violent revolution and the conquest of power. The party is the sole organ that can wield the proletarian class dictatorship, which therefore, according to the correct Marxist vision, cannot be transferred to other forms of proletarian organisation even if composed solely of proletarians (trades unions, soviets or any other type of immediate proletarian organisation). The political party will therefore wield the dictatorship, exclusively and directly, and operate the levers of the dictatorial State of the proletariat, bringing under its control all other forms of proletarian organisation, which are able to carry out a revolutionary function only insofar as they follow and are influenced by the party. From as far back as the 1848 Manifesto, the Marxist conception has held that the proletariat only really becomes a class when its political party arises. Without the party the class is just a statistical entity incapable of taking unitary action to achieve revolutionary objectives, insofar as it is only due to the party that consciousness of the class’s general historic interests and consequent objectives can arise. The class’s consciousness resides in its party alone, not within proletarians taken individually or as a statistical mass. All these concepts can be found in Marx, Lenin and within the entire tradition of the revolutionary communist movement.

We wrote:

6 – Party and Class, 1921
    We should perceive the concept of class as dynamic, not static. When we detect a social tendency, or a movement oriented towards a given end, the class exists in the true sense of the word; because then the class party must also exist, in a material if not yet in a formal way.
A living party goes hand in hand with a living doctrine and a method of action. A party is a school of political thought and consequently an organisation of struggle. The former is a factor of consciousness, the latter of will, or more precisely of a striving towards a final objective.
    Without these two characteristics, we do not yet fulfil the definition of a class. We repeat, the cold recorder of facts may detect certain affinities in the living conditions of strata large or small, but it won’t leave its mark on historical developments.
    Only within the class party do we find these two characteristics condensed and concretised.
    … Including only a part of the class, it is still only the party which gives it unity of action and movement, because it amalgamates those elements who, by having overcome the limitations of locality and job category, are sensitive to the class and who represent it.
    … However if it is only remembered that the remaining individuals who compose the great masses have neither class consciousness nor class will, and live just for themselves, their trade, their village, or their nation, then it will be realised that in order to secure the action of the class as a whole in the historical movement, it is necessary to have an organ which inspires, unites and leads it – in short which officers it; it will be realised that the party is actually the vital nucleus, without which there would be no reason to consider the remaining masses as a mobilisation of forces.
    The class presupposes the party, because to exist and to act in history it must have both a critical doctrine of history and a historical purpose.
    The only true revolutionary conception of class action is that which delegates its leadership to the party. Doctrinal analyses, along with an accumulation of historical experience, allow us to easily reduce any tendency that denies the necessity and predominance of the party’s function to the level of petty bourgeois and anti-revolutionary ideology.

An important Marxist thesis, which necessarily follows on from our comprehensive theoretical vision and its inevitable consequence – the primary function of the party – is that the party must possess a centralised and disciplined organisation. This organisation must achieve a very strict unity of movement in space and time. And that means the party organisation must possess organs of direction and co-ordination of its activity as a whole, to whose orders is owed absolute discipline from all its adherents. It would be completely absurd, and would contradict everything we have ever said about the function of the party, to allow any autonomy to the local and national sections, or any ‘liberty’ of action on the part of individuals or groups within the party. In the Communist Party all militants are bound to observe maximum discipline towards central regulations, and to the execution of orders issuing from the centre of the organisation.

There follow a number of quotes that clearly demonstrate how this has always been the thinking of the Communist Left and our party, in line with Marx and Lenin, in open opposition to the spontaneists, anarchists, and various types of autonomists who have infested the workers’ movement.

QUOTATIONS

7 – Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in The Proletarian Revolution, 2^nd Congress of the Communist International, 1920
    13…. The Communist Party must be built on the basis of an iron proletarian centralism (…) The Communist Party must create an iron military order in its own ranks (…) Without the strictest discipline, complete centralism and full comradely confidence of all the party organizations in the leading party centre, the victory of the workers is impossible.
    14…. The unconditional and indispensable binding authority of all directives from the higher bodies to the lower, and the existence of a strong party centre whose authority cannot be contested by anybody, are essential principles of centralisation.
    15…. The Communist Party (…) is forced to give its leading centre the right whenever necessary to make important decisions which are binding on every party member.
    16. The advocacy of widespread ’autonomy’ for the individual local party branches can only weaken the ranks of the Communist Party.

8 – Party and Class, 1921
    … A living party goes hand in hand with a living doctrine and a method of action. A party is a school of political thought and consequently an organisation of struggle. The former is a factor of consciousness, the latter of will, or more precisely of a striving towards a final objective (…)
    Revolution requires an ordering of the active and positive forces, bound together by one doctrine and one final purpose (…) The class sets out from an immediate homogeneity of economic conditions that appear to us to be the prime mover of the tendency to go beyond, and destroy, the present mode of production. But in order to assume this great task, the class must have its own thought, its own critical method, its own will bent to achieving ends defined by research and criticism, its own organisation of struggle which with the utmost efficiency channels and utilises every effort and sacrifice. All this is the Party.

9 – Party and Class Action, 1921
    … The political party is the only organism which possesses on one hand a general historical vision of the revolutionary process and of its necessities and on the other hand a strict organisational discipline ensuring the complete subordination of all its particular functions to the final general aim of the class (…)
    The indispensable task of the party is therefore presented in two ways, as factor of consciousness, and then as factor of will: the former translates into a theoretical conception of the revolutionary process which all members must share; the second into the acceptance of a precise discipline that ensures a co-ordinated effort and thus the success of the relevant action.

10 – The Democratic Principle, 1922
    … Democracy cannot be a principle for us: centralism indisputably is, since the essential characteristics of party organisation must be unity of structure and action.

11 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the P.C. d’I (Rome Theses), 1922
    I, 2. The integration of all elemental thrusts into a unitary action occurs by virtue of two main factors: one of critical consciousness, from which the party draws its programme; the other of will, expressed in the instrument with which the party acts, its disciplined and centralized organization.

12 – Theses of the P.C. d’I on Tactics of the C.I. at the IVth Congress, 1922
    … In order to carry out its task of unifying proletarian struggles in every country around the final objective of the world revolution, the Communist International has first of all the duty to ensure its own programmatic and organisational unity. In virtue of having adhered to the principles of the Communist International, every section and every militant must be committed to the common programme of the Communist International.
    The International organisation, by eliminating every vestige of the old international’s federalism, has to ensure maximum centralisation and discipline.

13 – General Guiding Norms, 1949
    … The forces on the periphery of the party and all party members are bound by the movement’s customary practice not to take local initiatives or contingent decisions that don’t originate from the central organs, nor to resolve tactical problems in a different way from the rest of the party. Similarly the leading central organs, when making decisions and issuing instructions on behalf of the entire party, mustn’t abandon their theoretical principles nor modify the means of tactical action, not even when a situation presents unexpected or unforeseen factors which affect the party’s outlook. The history of the proletarian movement is littered with examples showing that when these two reciprocal and complementary processes are lacking, statutory measures are not enough and a crisis results.
    As a consequence of this, whereas the party requires all members to participate in the continual process of elaboration which consists in analysing events and social facts and clarifying the party’s tasks and the most appropriate methods of action; and whereas it aims to achieve such participation in the most appropriate way, whether via specific organs or via its general periodic consultations at congresses, it nevertheless absolutely does not allow groups of adherents to meet together as distinct organisations and fractions within the party in order to conduct their studies, and make their contribution, by means of networks of internal and external connections and correspondence and propaganda which are nevertheless different from the party’s unitary way.

14 – Marxism and Authority, 1956
    29…. No Marxist can disparage the need for centralism. The party would cease to exist if it was admitted that its various parts could operate on their own account. No autonomy of the local organisations with regard to political procedure. These are old struggles conducted before within the parties of the 2^nd International, against for example self-determination of the party’s parliamentary group with regard to its tactical manoeuvring; against the local sections and federations operating on a case by case basis in the communes and the provinces, and against individual members of the party operating on a case by case basis in the various economic organisations, and so on and so forth.

15 – ‘Extremism’, Condemnation of the Renegades to Come, 1961
    III. -… Before Lenin explains the vital necessity of the discipline factor, suspected and contested by so many, and defines as befits him the meaning of discipline within both party and class, we’ll jump ahead to quote a passage in which the fundamental communist concept of discipline is placed in parallel with the no less essential concept of centralisation, keystone of any Marxist construction.
    “I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown, even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter, that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline in the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie”.
    Lenin knew at the time that, even amongst those who described themselves as ‘left’, hesitations existed about those two particularly bitter-tasting formulae: “absolute centralisation” and “iron discipline”.
    The resistance to these formulae derives from the bourgeois ideology diffused throughout the petty bourgeoisie and which dangerously overflows into proletariat; the real danger, in fact, that prompted this classic text.

16 – Notes for the Theses on the Question of Organisation, 1964
    1 -… Such a current was strongly represented at the 2^nd Congress, especially by the English, Americans and Dutch, and also by the French syndicalists and even the Spanish anarchists. The Italian Communist Left considered it important to immediately differentiate itself from these currents which, as well as failing to understand the theses on the party, hadn’t assimilated correctly the ones on centralisation and strict discipline which even Zinoviev had vigorously defended at the time.

17 – Our Perception of the Theses, Then and Now, 1965
    … According to the left’s conception of organic centralism, congresses shouldn’t pass judgement on the work of the centre or decide who does what, rather it should make decisions about questions of general orientation in a way that is consistent with the invariant historical doctrine of the world party.

Ch. 2 TOUT-COURT CENTRALISM

The formula used by Lenin to define the structure and dynamic of the party organ was ‘Democratic Centralism’. If such a term described the 2^nd International parties very accurately, our current didn’t think it adequately defined how the communist parties that formed in the post 1^st World War period, which were distinguished by the definitive separation of coherently Marxist revolutionaries from the reformists, were going about things, and we would counter it with the more appropriate term, ‘organic centralism’. But the quotations which follow show that Marxists have never understood the term ‘democratic centralism’ to indicate a praxis and dynamic by means of which the party would somehow mitigate absolute centralism (considered necessary for it to perform its functions and responding fully to the Marxist conception of historical progress) by applying a praxis of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’ inside the organisation. Nowadays there is not a single pseudo Marxist group which doesn’t interpret Lenin’s formula as ‘centralism mitigated by democracy’, whilst Lenin himself took it as meaning that the use of formal democratic mechanisms were required in order to obtain maximum centralism and organisational discipline in the party, which in the socialist and social-democratic parties of the 2^nd International was the case.

We will cover this problem more fully, but meanwhile we affirm that, as far as authentic Marxists are concerned, the sole organisational principle is centralism and the application of democratic mechanisms has merely been an episode that was historically necessary to achieve maximum organisational centralisation. To show that we Marxists oppose all demands for ‘autonomy’ or ‘liberty’, and are in favour of unqualified centralism, let us line up the evidence. There’s the struggle of the ‘authoritarian’ Marxists against the ‘libertarians’ at the time of the 1^st International; there’s Lenin’s battle to establish ‘bureaucratic centralism’ against the Mensheviks from 1903 onwards; and there’s our position: “Those who devote themselves to protesting against unqualified centralism are nothing other than aiders and abetters of the bourgeoisie”.

QUOTATIONS

18 – The Fundamentals of Marxist Revolutionary Communism, 1957
    III – It’s the same old controversy (…) Their ultimate heart-felt cry is always „Bureaucratic centralism, or class autonomy?” If such indeed were the antithesis, instead of Marx and Lenin’s „capitalist dictatorship or proletarian dictatorship”, we would have no hesitation about opting for bureaucratic centralism (oh, horror of horrors!), which at certain key historical junctures may be a necessary evil, and which would be easily controllable by a party which didn’t „haggle over principles” (Marx), which was free from organisational slackness and tactical acrobatics, and which was immune to the plague of autonomism and federalism. As to „class autonomy”, all we can say is that it is complete and utter crap.

19 – Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today, 1957
    114 -… It was then that Lenin, in the interests of the internal life of the International, presented his historic theses containing the expression ‘democratic centralism’. We in the Italian Left proposed – and yet again events have proved us right – replacing this term, which we considered dangerous, with ‘organic centralism’. We will explain this shortly, but you compel us to write as a matter of urgency that he who tries to get rid of centralism, unqualified centralism, violates Marx, Lenin and the revolutionary cause, and becomes just another aider and abetter of capitalist conservation.

Ch. 3 DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONS

Asserting the necessity of disciplined and centralised party organisation clearly implies, amongst other things, a hierarchical differentiation which sees individual militants assigned different roles of various levels of importance. The party needs leaders and persons to fulfil various functions. There need to be order givers and order takers and there must be appropriately differentiated organs to perform these functions. Our conception of the party organisation is of a many-faceted structure, which we define as pyramidal, in which all of the impulses deriving from the various points of the structure converge towards one central node, from which emerges the regulation and direction of the entire organised network. The natural and organic way in which the different organs are differentiated and militants placed in different roles and on different rungs of the hierarchical ladder, which bears no relation to the practice of bourgeois careerism or involves any attempt to mimic it, we will go on to explain. But if we want to talk about centralised organisation and show that this isn’t just the Communist Left’s vision, but also Marx and Lenin’s, it will suffice for now to set out the relevant quotations.

QUOTATIONS

20 – Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924
    … The organisation as a party, which allows the class to truly be such and live as such, can be viewed as a unitary mechanism in which the various ‘brains’ (not just brains of course, but other individual organs as well) perform different tasks according to aptitude and capacity, all of them in the service of a common goal and interest which progressively unifies them ever more intimately ‘in time and space’ (…) Therefore, not every individual in the organisation occupies the same position or is at the same level. The gradual putting into practice of this division of tasks according to a rational plan (and what goes for today’s party-class will be the case for tomorrow’s society) completely excludes those higher up having privileges over the rest. Our revolutionary evolution isn’t heading towards disintegration, but towards an ever more scientific mutual connection between individuals.

21 – General Guiding Principles, 1949
    … The party isn’t an inanimate lump composed of identical particles, but a real organism brought into being and determined by social and historical requirements, with networks, organs and centres differentiated to carry out its various tasks. Establishing a good relationship between such real requirements and the best way of working leads to good organisation, but not vice versa.

22 – Original Content of the Communist Program…, 1958
    19 -… The party, which we are sure to see arise again in a more radiant future, will be composed of a vigorous minority of proletarians and anonymous revolutionaries who will carry out different functions as though organs of the same living being, but all will be linked, from the centre to the base, to inflexible party norms which are binding on all as regards theory, organisational rigour and continuity, and a precise method regarding strategic action, in which the range of allowable possibilities, and corresponding vetoed possibilities, is drawn from terrible historical lessons about the havoc which opportunism wreaks.

23 – Reunion of Milan: Supplementary Theses…, 1966
    8 – Owing to its necessity of an organic action, and to be able to have a collective function, that goes beyond and leaves out all personalism and individualism, the party must distribute its members among the various functions and activities that constitute its life. The rotation of comrades in such functions is a natural fact, which cannot be regulated by rules similar to those concerning the careers within bourgeois bureaucracies. In the party there are not competitive examinations, in which people compete to reach more or less brilliant or in the public eye positions; we must instead aim at organically achieving our goal, which is not an aping of the bourgeois division of labour, but the natural adaptation of the complex and articulated organ (the party) to its function.

PART II

INTRODUCTION

We have described the form and the structure of the organ ‘Party’: centralized structure, existence of differentiated organs and a central organ capable of coordinating, directing, and issuing orders to the entire network; all members of the organization observing absolute discipline with respect to carrying out orders issued by the centre; non-autonomy of the sections and local groups; rejection of communication networks which diverge from the unitary one which connects the centre to the perimeter, and perimeter to centre.

This centralized structure is not a typical feature of the world communist party alone, but also of other organisations. The railways must operate in accordance with a similar centralized structure or else grind to a halt, and the same applies to the big capitalist factories. The strongly centralized structure which the revolutionary bourgeoisie laid claim to in its fight against feudal autonomy is a feature of both the bourgeois and proletarian States; the Stalinist parties are famous for their rigid centralization and the iron and terrorist discipline imposed on their militants; the fascist party has made the same boast of absolute centrality, as does the catholic church, etc. Hence, the recognition that a centralized organizational structure exists is not enough to set the class party apart from other parties and organisms. It is not the centralized organizational structure alone that characterizes the class party. Centralism is not an a priori category, a sort of metaphysical entity or principle that can be applied to various historical stages, to various classes and class organisms. If this were the case, we could conceive of historical development as a progressive affirmation of the principle of authority or, vice versa, as a constant, immanent struggle of the principle of authority with that of freedom and autonomy.

Such a view would mean substituting Marxist materialism with the most hackneyed idealism. According to Marxism there are no fixed and immanent principles regulating the real development of history; neither the authority principle, nor the democratic and libertarian principle.

From the materialist point of view it can be ascertained that, over the course of history, all economic, social or political organisms have always had an organized structure, the features of which depend on the functions they are required to fulfill. Hence it is correct to uphold, as Marxists do, that whereas both the bourgeois State and the proletarian State have a centralized, despotic and repressive structure, they are, nevertheless, in total opposition to one another. And this is due not only to the social strata on which they rest, and the functions they are required to carry out, but also, as a consequence of these factors, to the way these structures manifest themselves and perform their functions. If, from a structural point of view, the proletarian State were identical to the bourgeois State, just expelling the bourgeoisie from the management of the State machine and installing the proletarian party in its place – with possibly only proletarians allowed to vote – would suffice. But the fact of the matter is that the bourgeoisie realizes centralism with its own means, forms and features, just as in the future the proletariat will achieve State centralism with forms, methods, instruments that are characteristic of the proletarian class. This is true to the extent that Marxism does not only predict the violent conquest of the bourgeois State machine but its complete destruction and substitution with another, completely different, State machine; even if that too will be utilized for the purposes of dictatorship, violence and terror.

For the petty bourgeois, whose historical impotence prevents them from seeing beyond appearances, it is impossible to understand that the structure of the party machine set up by Mussolini or by Hitler was a very different thing to the equally centralized machine formed by the Bolshevik party in Russia in Lenin’s time; a difference due not just to the social basis and the objectives and principles to which the two organisms responded, and which were completely opposed to one another, but also, as a consequence, due to the methods, instruments, praxis and organic dynamics of the two organisms. Thus Mussolini and Lenin are associated in the mind of the democratic petty bourgeois with the terrifying, for them, spectre of dictatorship and terror.

For us Marxists there is a direct relationship between the social class of which a given movement is an expression, its principles, its objectives, and the means needed to achieve the latter, and the distinctive features, the means, and the methods it must use to achieve a centralized and unitary action and structure. Consequently, it is correct to say that the bourgeois State realizes its own centralism, inherent in its class nature, on the basis of the farce of the periodically consulted popular will, but in reality by creating an enormous bureaucratic and military machine, kept together not by consensus, but rather by coercion and money. The proletarian State will not realize its centralism with democratic elections, whether by involving the “people” as a whole, or just proletarians; rather it will achieve this through an ever increasing participation in the actual functioning of the State, and, as a consequence, through the progressive disappearance of the bureaucratic apparatus. We will therefore have repression, class violence and absolute centralization, but no bureaucracy or permanent army: this is the lesson of the Paris Commune, which Marx would reproach for not having been sufficiently terrorist and centralist, but which he also praised for managing to have leaders, leaderships with absolute power and class terrorism, but no bureaucrats or professional military bodies. The equation, centralism equals bureaucratism, is therefore false. What is historically true for the bourgeois State is not true for the proletarian State unless we wish to renounce Marxism altogether.

Primitive communities realized a very strict centralism and an absolute discipline of the single individual to the social group without the need for coercion or any specific mechanisms. This was because it was founded exclusively on an identity of interests, and the solidarity of all, in the struggle against the adverse natural environment and other social groups. The primitive community is an example of centralized and differentiated organization without coercion. In the future communist society it will be the same. Indeed a fundamental Marxist thesis holds that only when an irreconcilable conflict of interests arose among members of a social group was it necessary to have a special coercive structure in order to obtain the same centralization that in the primitive community was obtained in a natural, spontaneous and organic manner.

That the centralistic execution of functions and the existence of a bureaucratic and coercive apparatus are definitely not the same thing is a concept only the social-democrats, pilloried by Lenin in State and Revolution, are incapable of understanding; they, that is, who used to maintain that the need for a State machine was eternal, as otherwise individual interests would cause social breakdown, whereas, on the contrary, both a principle, and a goal, of communism is a stateless society in which there is no coercion of men; in which centralization will be total and far more complete than in present society, and founded on a natural and spontaneous solidarity among men.

But in communist society won’t everyone be the same? Won’t everyone be more or less a carbon copy of everyone else throughout the entire species? It is an old bourgeois refrain, similar to the one about production collectively grinding to a halt if people aren’t forced to work. There will be Individuals with different characteristics, more or less endowed with different physical and mental capacities; society will see a diversification of its various functions and the relevant organs to perform them, and will distribute the various individuals naturally and organically across these functions. What there will be no more of will be the social and technical division of work, and society will ensure that all men will be capable of carrying out all essential functions (Engels: Antidühring). The means of production and of life will be the property of society as a whole and, as a consequence, the possibility of more gifted individuals assuming privileges in relation to others will be forever excluded; on the contrary, anyone with “superior” capacities will be of benefit, and of service, to society.

If, then, these considerations are to remain in line with the Marxist tradition, it isn’t enough to perceive the party as a centralized organization, with all of its members responding as one man to impulses issuing from one central point. It is neither enough to say, as the anarchists were wont to do, that communists are “authoritarian” too, and that the “freedom” of the individual needs to be defended against them; nor is it enough to stupidly maintain that, vice versa, we are for subjection to the principle of authority, and that consequently any centralism is good for us as long as it is centralism, any discipline goes as long as it is discipline. All this is something we have denied a thousand times over in the course of our party’s history.

From a Marxist point of view, having once established that the party organ, in order to realize the tasks history requires of it, needs an absolutely centralized structure, it is still necessary to analyze how this structure can exist in a particular organism like the communist party. We therefore have to study the physiology of this organism, the dynamics of its development and activity, its diseases and degenerations, and discern what influence the historical events of class struggle have on it. Only then will we be able to give a less superficial description of the essence of the centralism and discipline typical of this particular historical organ: the organ that is the communist party. But not any old centralism or any old discipline, a trivial description of which could be summed up in one phrase: “there must be a centre which rules and a rank and file which obeys”; although we should add that, since we are antidemocratic, we don’t want head counts or leadership elections either, and that total rule by a small committee, or even by one man without the need for his power to be sanctioned by the democratically consulted majority of members, holds no fear for us. All these things we accept, but it doesn’t help explain the real dynamics by which the organ ’party’ realizes its maximum centralization or, vice versa, loses it and degenerates during less favourable phases of the revolutionary class struggle; nor does it help us understand how the organ ’party’ strengthens, grows and consolidates itself so as to be able to rid itself of the diseases that may affect it. All this needs to be explained if we are to reach an understanding of the essence of centralism and of communist discipline.

As is the case with all our theses, and the 1965 Naples theses in particular, it is not a matter of providing an organizational recipe (the ’recipe’ here being expressed by the very term ’centralism’), but rather of describing the communist party’s actual life, the ups and downs of its long history, the diseases that over and over again have afflicted it and the efficacy of the remedies we thought to apply on each occasion in order to effect a cure. We must study the party’s history from 1848 to the present, perceive it as moving through real historical events, traversing both the attacking and retreating phases of the revolution as it unfolds on the global scale. Only by doing this can we draw lessons which may, indeed must, be assimilated to good purpose by today’s party, making it stronger and better able to resist those material, negative events which destroyed three Internationals, and a proletarian revolutionary movement which seemed set to win a spectacular victory on a planet-wide scale in the post WW1 period.

Palming us off with the paltry doctrine that everything boils down to a lack of centralism, and claiming the only lesson to be drawn is the need for a structure even more centralized than the Bolshevik Party and the Third International, is tantamount to betraying the party and falsifying its entire tradition. How to obtain maximum centralization of the party? What diseases undermine absolute centralization and absolute discipline? Is it by having a cast of leaders who are even more rigid and totalitarian than, say, Lenin, Trotski and Zinoviev? By having militants in the rank and file who are yet more disciplined, more devoted to the cause of communism, more obedient and heroic than the militants of the always under-centralized German party? Or is it by providing better instruction in historical Marxist doctrine to each of our militants, in the infernal sequence according to which a militant who has not properly studied all the party texts, who is not ’programmed’, cannot serve in the organization in a disciplined way?

These questions can be answered by analyzing party history and the lessons derived by the Left from it; lessons that are codified in texts and in theses that we cannot modify, update, or simply forget to quote as they are part of a continuous line that extends from 1912 to 1970. For over 50 years that is, and during that time the problem of the life, development and degeneration of the party organ has always been formulated and solved in the same way. Let us therefore start by examining the characteristics of this party organ. That is the only way we will come to understand the best ways of achieving a really centralized and disciplined party, or, vice versa, of how to disrupt and destroy it.

Ch. 1 HISTORICAL PARTY AND FORMAL PARTY

As recalled in our 1965 theses, it was Marx who first made use of the distinction between the party understood in the historical sense and the contingent or formal party, that is, the various organised formations of revolutionary combatants in which, over the course of history, the doctrine, the program and the principles of the communist party have been incarnated. It is, in other words, the entrenchment, the barricade established by history over a hundred years ago on which successive generations of revolutionary proletarians, with varying degrees of success, have taken their stand. It wasn’t today that the proletariat arose as a revolutionary class, it wasn’t today that it expressed its class party for the first time, expressed the political organ without which it is incapable of unitary action in pursuit of a common goal, without which it isn’t a class. The party was expressed by the proletariat at the dawn of capitalist society, in far-off 1848, when it was able, on the one hand, to launch the first armed insurrections, and on the other to embrace a theory brought to maturity by the development of the productive forces and human theoretical thinking; a theory which, by its very nature, was only useable by a revolutionary class which could see in the complete destruction of the capitalist regime its own road to emancipation. From then on the meeting of Marxist theory with the burning reality of the social struggle has brought into being the communist party as a phalanx of revolutionary militants, which, collectively endowed with the powerful weapon of the Marxist interpretation of history, is capable, as a consequence, of deriving useful experiences and lessons not only from proletarian victories, but also from its defeats. “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”: that is Lenin’s thesis. And the party exists insofar as a large or small nucleus of revolutionaries, impelled to fight against the present society by obscure social determinations, grasps the weapon of theory and uses it as a guide to action.

When we say that class consciousness exists in the party, and only in the party, we refer to the consciousness which consists of historical lessons, derived from proletarian struggles on a worldwide scale stretching back to the earliest times, interpreted with the key of the unique and invariant theory which present and future revolutionary formations have the duty to grasp and to respect it in its entirety, using this lengthy, global experience – which Marxism alone is able to interpret correctly, and which remains darkly obscure to all non-Marxist ideologies and doctrines – to illuminate action.

There have been times, due to various pressures and influences, when this historical inheritance – comprising theory, principles and final goals but also historical experience, derived from the relentless march of the revolution – has been abandoned. Every time this has happened the formal party, that is, the fighting organisation of a given epoch and given proletarian generation has inevitably abandoned the correct path and found itself, eventually, on the side of the class enemy. For us, then, the party exists, and grows, and marches towards victory only insofar as it is capable of remaining faithful to its base in the historical party. If this base is even so much as scratched then you have all those betrayals and desertions of which the history of the formal party is so full. Now the fact of the revolutionary organisation remaining faithful to the cardinal principles of the historical party from which it emanates isn’t guaranteed by factors of the cultural or didactic variety, according to which, once you’d learnt a couple of theses by heart, you’d have satisfied all the historical party’s requirements or some-such rubbish. The party’s historical heritage, even on a day-to-day basis and with regard to strictly limited actions, has to shape and permeate the entire activity of the formal party. And this continuous transfusion of historical experience into the current activity of the party is first of all something done collectively by the organisation, not on an individual basis by particularly enlightened or brainy people. What must become an absolutely essential part of our heritage is the notion of the existence of this strict connexion between the militant organisation’s action, between what they say and do today, and its theories, principles, and past historical experience; and that it is the latter (theory, principles, etc.), and not individual or even collective opinions which will always be the final arbiter as regards all party questions. Who gives the orders in the party? We have always maintained that the historical party, to which we owe unswerving obedience and loyalty, effectively gives the orders. And through what microphone does the historical party transmit its orders? It could be one man, or a million men; it could be the leadership of the organisation, or even the rank-and-file recalling the leadership to observance of that data without which the very organisation ceases to exist.

In the party – we quote a text from 1967 – no-one commands and everyone is commanded; no-one commands, because it is not in one individual’s head that the solution of the problem is sought; and everyone is commanded, because even the best of Centres mustn’t give orders that depart from the continuous line of the historical party.

Dictatorship of the principles, traditions and aims of communism over everybody, from rank-and-file to Centre; legitimate expectation of the Centre to be obeyed without opposition as long as its orders respond to this line – a line which must be evident in everything the party does; expectation of the rank-and-file not to be consulted about every order it is given, but to carry them out only if they follow the impersonal line of the historical party which everyone accepts. In the party there are therefore leaders and hierarchies; it is a case of technical instruments that the party cannot do without, because every action it takes must be unitary and centralised, must aspire to maximum efficiency and discipline. But the course of action is not decided by party organs on the basis of flashes of genius issuing from particular brains; they in their turn have to submit to decisions taken, above all, by history; decisions which have become the collective and impersonal inheritance of the organ ‘party’.

QUOTATIONS

24 – Marxism and Authority, 1956
    29 -… Regarding the question of the general Authority on which revolutionary communism necessarily depends; we go back to finding the criteria in economic, social and historical analysis. It isn’t possible to get the dead and alive and the yet to be born to cast votes. And yet, in the original dialectic of the organ class party, such an operation becomes a genuine and fruitful possibility, even if it is a long, hard road, with tremendous struggles and challenges along the way.

25 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable, 1965
    12 -… When we infer from the invariant doctrine that the revolutionary victory of the working class can be achieved only by the class party and its dictatorship, and then go on to affirm, supported by Marx’s writings, that the pre revolutionary and communist party proletariat may be a class as far as bourgeois science is concerned, but isn’t by Marx or ourselves, then the conclusion to be deduced is that for victory to be achieved it will be necessary to have a party worthy of being described both as the historical and as the formal party, i.e., a party which has resolved within active historical reality the apparent contradiction – cause of so many problems in the past – between the historical party, and therefore as regards content (historical, invariant programme), and the contingent party, concerning its form, which acts as the force and physical praxis of a decisive part of the proletariat in struggle.
    13 -… If the section arisen in Italy from the ruins of the old party of the Second International was particularly prone, not by virtue of particular persons certainly, but for historical reasons, to feeling the necessity of welding the historical movement to its present form, this was due to the hard struggles it had waged against degenerated forms and its consequent refusal to tolerate infiltrations; which were attempted not only by forces dominated by nationalist, parliamentary and democratic type positions, but also by those (in Italy, maximalism) influenced by anarcho-syndicalist, petty-bourgeois revolutionism. This left-wing current fought in particular to establish more rigid membership conditions (construction of the new formal structure), and it applied them fully in Italy; and when they gave imperfect results in France, Germany etc., it was the first to sense the danger to the International as a whole.
    The historical situation, in which the proletarian State had only been formed in one country, whilst the conquest of power had not been achieved in any of the others, rendered the clear organic solution, that of leaving the helm of the world organisation in the hands of the Russian section, highly problematic.
    The Left was the first to notice that whenever there were deviations in the conduct of the Russian State, both in relation to domestic economy and international relations, a discrepancy would arise between the policies of the historical party, i.e. of all revolutionary communists throughout the world, and those of the formal party, which was defending the interests of the contingent Russian State.
    14. Since then the abyss has deepened to the extent that the “apparent” sections, which are dependent on the Russian leader-party, are now involved, in the ephemeral sense, in a vulgar policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie that is no better than the traditional collaboration of the corrupted parties of the Second International.
    This has produced a situation in which the groups derived from the struggle of the Italian Left against Moscow’s degeneration have been given the chance (we don’t say the right) to better understand the road which the real, active (and therefore formal) party must follow in order to remain faithful to those features which distinguish the revolutionary, historical party; a party which has existed, at least in a potential sense, since 1847, whilst from a practical point of view it has established itself in key historical events as a participant in the tragic series of revolutionary defeats.

26 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    11 -… Undoubtedly in the course of party evolution the path followed by the formal parties, which is characterised by continuous U-turns, ups and downs and ruinous precipices may 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…
    The Communist Left has always considered that the way its long battle against the depressing contingent alternation of the proletariat’s formal parties has been conducted is by affirming positions that are linked together continuously and harmoniously in the luminous wake of the historical party, which continues unbroken over the years and centuries, running from the first statements of the nascent proletarian doctrine to the society of the future; a society we know very well, insofar as we have thoroughly differentiated the tissue and ganglia of the present hateful society, which the revolution must sweep away.

Ch. 2 JOINING THE PARTY

Just as we deny that the party is a collection of brainy people, of apostles or heroes, so the correct Marxist view denies that joining the party occurs through an act of rational comprehension on the part of individuals, who having once understood the party’s positions choose to work in their defence. Our thesis is that not only are rational comprehension and action inseparable from one other, but, as far as the individual is concerned, action always comes before understanding and consciousness. And so it is for individuals who join the party too. For us there exists first of all the development of the productive forces, which determines the division of society into classes and forces people to take positions in relation to this conflict, which they are conscious of to varying degrees, and never completely.

If Marxism maintains that societies are not identifiable by the consciousness they have of themselves but rather that it is necessary to analyse the economic anatomy of these societies in order to understand their idealised expressions, then this is also the case for historical classes that have carried out a revolutionary role, since the consciousness of their historical role has inevitably been mystified and distorted. Only the modern proletariat has been able to forge for itself a scientific consciousness of historical progress, of how it operates and where it is heading. But this consciousness isn’t possessed by all workers, whether considered individually or collectively, who are propelled unconsciously into battle by material causes; and nor does it exist within particular individuals who are members of the class party, since they, in like manner, are predisposed to line up on the front of communism by material and social factors, just as these same factors can also cause individuals to abandon the fight.

The historical struggle is one which sees two social classes arrayed, each with interests which no-one can reconcile or eliminate because the struggle is rooted in the productive mechanism of the present society, which in turn causes individuals to line up on one or the other front independently of their own particular awareness of how the troops are arrayed or of the overall battle plan. It is material, social and historical forces that propel individuals to join the party, even if they have never read a word of Marx or Lenin, and to accept what we have always referred to as the unequivocal unity of theory and action that constitutes the party.

Consciousness doesn’t reside within the individual person either before or after they join the party, or even after a very long time as a militant, but in the collective organ which is composed of old and young, educated and uneducated, and which performs a complex and continuous action in line with a doctrine and a tradition which is invariant.

It is the organ ‘party’ that possesses class consciousness, because this possession is denied to the individual, and this consciousness can only exist in an organisation which is able to align its every act, its behaviour, its internal and external dynamics to the pre-existing lines of doctrine, programme and tactics, and which is able to grow and develop on that foundation; which is accepted en bloc even without having been preventively understood. Having a ‘mystical’ side to joining the party is a notion that only scares the Enlightenment influenced petty bourgeois, convinced, as he is, that everything can be learned from books.

In 1912 we opposed the culturists who wanted to transform the Young Socialist Federation into a ‘party school’ according to the ill-fated formula: “Learning first, then action”. We pointed out that it is enthusiasm, instinct and faith that cause young people to join our battlefront, not cultural reasons. And that such is pure materialism is clear even to the bourgeois, who knows that his mighty educational system is incapable of getting anything taught unless the students are ‘interested’, that is, unless there are material incentives to get them to learn.

Within the party, ideas are understood and clarified by participating in the complex collective work, which is carried out on three levels: defence of and ‘sculpting’ of theory, active participation in mass struggles, and organisation. Comprehension and understanding cannot be attained without participating in the actual work of the party. Inside the party we engage in a continuous work of theoretical preparation, of close examination of the party’s programmatic and tactical features, and of explanation, in the light of the doctrine, of events taking place in the social arena, and contemporaneously and seamlessly we carry out the practical, organisational work of penetrating the proletariat and battling alongside it. The militant learns from actively participating in this complex work and by becoming totally immersed in it. There is no other way to learn, and our theses have always asserted how deadly it is to place theoretical and practical activity into separate compartments, not only for the party but also for each individual militant.

Having described the way in which the party-organ transmits its revolutionary theory and revolutionary traditions from one generation to the next, and allows itself to be permeated by said theory and tradition, we can see that it is plainly incompatible with the type of educational scheme according to which young people drawn to the party should first of all be indoctrinated as quickly as possible by expert teachers of Marxism and invited to attend ‘short courses’, and only after that move on to become party militants and participate in real battles. We envisage instead a collectivity, that studies whilst it fights and fights whilst it studies, which learns in the study and on the battlefield; we envisage, that is, an active collectivity, an organ whose survival depends on partaking in a complex and varied activity whose various aspects are inseparable the one from the other. And young people are attracted to and become committed to this complex work, become immersed in it, and, organically find their role within it, precisely by getting involved and taking part in it. Nobody needs a degree either before or after they join, and neither need they sit any exams: everyone is tested instead by the work they do, which selects individuals in an organic way for particular tasks.

To join the party it requires more than a ‘Marxist’ education and a personal knowledge of our doctrine; it requires those gifts that Lenin described as courage, abnegation, heroism and a willingness to fight. It is through verifying these qualities that we come to discriminate between the sympathiser or prospect, and the militant, the active soldier of the revolutionary army; and we certainly don’t define the sympathiser by the fact he doesn’t yet ‘know’, whilst the militant does. Were this not so the entire Marxist scheme would collapse, because during times of revolutionary tumult the communist party is an organisation which has to organise millions of people who don’t have time to attend courses on Marxism, whether short or not, and nor do they need to; they will join us not because they know, but because they feel, “in an instinctive and spontaneous way, without attending even the briefest of brief courses of study which mimic educational qualifications”. And it would not only be anti-Marxist but just plain stupid to consider that these “late arrivals” should serve as “rank-and-file” whilst only those who had had time to “learn” and “prepare themselves” should be leaders. You get yourself ready in one way, and one way alone: by taking part in the collective work of the party. As far as we are concerned you don’t have to know all about the doctrine and programme to be a party militant; a party militant is someone who “has managed to forget, to renounce, to wrench from his heart and his mind the classification under which he is inscribed in the registry of this putrefying society; one who can see and immerse himself in the entire millenary trajectory linking the ancestral tribal man, struggling with wild beasts, to the member of the future community, fraternal in the joyous harmony of the social man”  (‘Considerations…’, Il Programma Comunista, no.2/1965, point 11).

One thing is for sure, those who think you need to know everything and understand everything before you can act, or who see the party as an academy for training ‘cadres’, have wrenched precisely nothing from their hearts or minds. They are still up to their necks in the most putrid myth of this putrefying society: the one which holds that the individual, with his miserable little brain, can learn about, or make decisions about, anything other than that which has already been dictated by those astute manipulators of culture and ideas: the ruling classes.

QUOTATIONS

27 – Motion by the Left Current on “Education and Culture”, Bologna, 1912
This Congress, taking into consideration that under the capitalist regime the school represents a powerful weapon of self-preservation in the hands of the dominant class, whose aim is to give young people an education which instils in them a sense of loyalty and resignation toward the present regime, and prevents them from seeing its essential contradictions, highlighting therefore the artificial character of today’s culture and official teachings throughout all its successive phases, and believing that no trust should be placed in a reform of the schools, in a lay and democratic sense (…) believes that the attention of young socialists should rather be turned towards the development of socialist character and sensibility;
Taking into consideration that the proletarian milieu alone can provide such an education when it is dedicated to the class struggle in the sense of preparation for the proletariat’s ultimate victory, rejecting the scholastic definition of our movement and all discussion about its so-called technical function, it believes that, just as young people find in every proletarian class protest the best terrain in which to develop their revolutionary consciousness, so also can workers’ organisations benefit from the active participation of their youngest and most enthusiastic elements in order to draw on that socialist faith that alone can save them from utilitarian and corporativist degeneration;
It affirms, in short, that young people learn more through action than in study which is regulated by quasi-bureaucratic norms and systems, and in consequence it exhorts all members of the young socialist’s movement:
a) To meet together much more often than prescribed by the statutes in order to discuss the problems of socialist action, passing on the results of your observations and personal readings to others and increasingly habituating yourselves to the moral solidarity of the socialist milieu;
b) To take an active part in the life of the trade organisations.

28 – Carlylean Phantoms, 1953
3 -… Theoretical consciousness – staunchly defended by the Left as common patrimony of the party and of the youth movement – mustn’t be used as a condition to paralyse all those who are simply moved to fight under the impulse of the socialist sentiments and enthusiasm which social conditions provoke in the natural course of things. Those who were incapable of understanding such a dialectical position, and who even saw it, as far as the driving forces acting within in a young soul are concerned, as putting faith and ‘fanaticism’ before science and philosophy talked total and absolute rubbish, and spoke of it as reviving the cult of the hero, and… of dropping Marx for Carlyle!

29 – Marx and ‘Primitive’ Communism, 1959
   … As the great Marxist Lenin masterfully demonstrated in What is to be Done?, what is required of the communist militant before orientation of thinking and consciousness is the will to fight.

30 – It’s Easy to Laugh, 1959
   … When at a certain point our banal opposer (…) tells us that this is tantamount to us constructing our own mysticism (setting himself up, poor man, as one who has overcome all faiths and mysticisms) and mocks us with religious terminology, saying we are prostrating ourselves before Mosaic or Talmudic, Biblical or Koranic, evangelical or catechistic tables, to him we reply that not even that will make us feel obliged to go on the defensive, and in fact – leaving aside the usefulness of annoying the new crop of philistines which every age throws up – we have no reason to be offended by the statement that our movement, until such time as has triumphed in reality (which precedes according to our method every subsequent conquest of human knowledge) may still need a mysticism, or if you wish, a myth.

31 – ‘Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’, a Condemnation of the Renegades to Come, 1961
18 -… The basis of discipline comes in the first place from the “class consciousness of the proletarian vanguard”, i.e., of the proletarian minority gathered in the party; Lenin then immediately goes on to draw attention to the qualities of such a vanguard using “passionate” rather than rational language, by pointing out, like in many other of his writings (What is to be Done?) that the communist proletarian joins the party instinctively rather than rationally. Such a thesis had already been defended by Italian socialist youth back in 1912 against the “immediatists” (who like the anarchists are always “educationalists”) in the battle between the culturalists and the anti-culturalists, as they were called at the time. In this battle the latter, by requiring faith and passion from young revolutionaries rather than exam results, proved to comply with strict materialism and with the rigour of party theory. Lenin, who’s holding an enlistment rather than teaching in an academy, refers to qualities of “devotion, tenacity, self-sacrifice, and heroism”. We, his distant pupils, have recently, with dialectical resolve, dared to openly refer to the fact of joining the party as a “mystical” occurrence.

32 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable, 1965
11 – The violent sparks flashing between the rheophores of our dialectics have taught us that a revolutionary and militant communist comrade is one who has managed to forget, to renounce, to wrench from his heart and his mind the classification under which he has been inscribed in the registry of this putrefying society; one who can see and immerse himself in the entire millenary trajectory linking the ancestral tribal man, struggling with wild beasts, to the member of the future community, fraternal in the joyous harmony of the social man.

Ch. 3 THE PARTY AS ORGANISATION OF PEOPLE

    The party is an organisation made up of people: an old and undeniable definition.
    The fighting organisation is composed of individuals with different traits and capacities, emanating from different social backgrounds and bringing with them different individual experiences. It is a matter of knowing what unites these people together in one organisation: evidently what unites them is adherence to the sum of the theory, principles, final aims and line of action that has historically typified the communist party organ, and which the individual members, from wherever they originate, accept as such and are led to obey. What unites them is their adherence to a battle position; a front line that history has set out before them and to which they owe absolute faith.
    The individuals who compose the party aren’t individually conscious of this historical patrimony, rather they adhere to it in an instinctive way, indeed in a mystical way as we have stated elsewhere.
    Consciousness is possessed by the collective organ, not only in the sense of the common activity of all party members, an activity that is both theoretical and practical, but in the broader sense of collective activity on the basis of tactical, programmatic and theoretical norms, and of aims that pre-exist in the collectivity itself operating at a given time and in a given place.
    One thing alone is required of this working collectivity: that it remain true, in all that it does, to the continuous thread linking the past to the future, changing nothing, inventing nothing, discovering nothing. Of the individual members of the collectivity it is asked that they contribute their mental and physical energies to ensure that the organisation remains true to its founding postulates, which are binding on all. But who then decides party policy? What is the party collectivity supposed to say and do? This is decided by translating the party’s programme, aims, principles and theory into activity; the activity of study, research and interpretation of social events and actively intervening within them. It is from this collective activity that the practical decisions emerge; decisions that mustn’t in any way be at odds with the historical foundations on which the party stands. It is the world centre which issues orders to the rest of the network and although it is a role which can be performed by one person or by a group of people, the centre itself is a function of the party, is the product of the collective activity of the party, and orders don’t emerge from it as result of its greater or lesser cerebral capacity, rather they constitute the nodal point within an activity that involves the entire organisation and which must be based on the historical party.
    In our scheme, the orientation of the party is neither decided by the totality of individuals who compose it, nor by the group that happens to be performing the role of centre, which only expresses decisions that are binding on all militants insofar as they derive from the party’s historical patrimony, and are the result of the work of, and contributions from, the organisation as a whole. Our thesis, therefore, is that it is not individuals who are responsible for how well the party performs, and nor indeed are they to blame if the party falls apart. We will never consider the question as one of finding “the best people” to guarantee the work is carried out correctly; nor will we ever attempt, in accordance with our theses, to remedy a mistake by juggling individuals around within the party’s hierarchical structure. As to individuals separately considered our theory denies them consciousness, merit or blame and considers them exclusively as more or less valid instruments of the collective activity; likewise it considers their actions, whether right or wrong, not as the fruit of their personal intentions but due to impersonal and anonymous determinations. It is the collective work itself, based on sound tradition, which selects individuals for the various levels in the hierarchy and for the various roles and tasks that define the party organisation. But the guarantee that the tasks will be performed correctly cannot be provided by the brain-power and will-power of an individual or a group: it is, on the contrary, the result of the development of the party work as a whole.

QUOTATIONS

33 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Rome Theses), 1922
    I, 2…. It would be erroneous to consider these two factors of consciousness and will as powers that can be obtained by, or are to be expected of, individuals since they are only realisable through the integration of the activity of many individuals into a unitary collective organism.
    III, 16. Any conception of the party organism based on the requirement of perfect critical consciousness and a complete spirit of sacrifice on the part of each of its members, individually considered (…) would be totally erroneous.

34 – Communist Organisation and Discipline, 1924
    … Orders emanating from the central hierarchies are not the starting point, but rather the result of the functioning of the movement understood as a collective. This is not to be understood in a foolishly democratic or legalistic way but in a realistic and historical sense. We are not defending, by saying this, “the right” of the communist masses to devise policies which the leaders must then follow: we are noting that the formation of a class party presents itself in these terms, and that an examination of the question must be based on these premises. That is how we tentatively sketch out a set of conclusions with regard to this matter.
    There is no mechanical discipline that can reliably ensure that orders and regulations from on high „whatever they are” will be put into effect; there is however a cluster of orders and regulations responding to the real origins of the movement which can guarantee the maximum of discipline, that is, unitary action of the whole organism, whereas there are other directives which if issued from the centre could compromise both discipline and organisational solidity.
    It is, therefore, a matter of demarcating the duty of the leading organs. But who is supposed to do that? The whole party should do it, that’s who, the whole organisation, and not in the trite and parliamentary sense of a right to be consulted about the „mandate” to be conferred on the elected leaders and how restricted it will be, but in a dialectical sense that takes into consideration the movement’s traditions, preparedness, and real continuity in its thinking and action.

35 – Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924
The role of the leader
    … The way individuals develop and the roles they take on are determined by general environmental conditions and by society, including the latter’s history. Whatever is processed in a person’s brain has been previously prepared in the course of relations with other men and is due to the existence of other men, including in an intellectual sense. Some privileged and practised brains, better constructed and perfected mechanisms that they are, better translate, express and elaborate a wealth of knowledge and experiences that wouldn’t exist if not supported by the life of the collective.
    The leader’s brain is a material instrument functioning as a result of its links to the class and to the party. The formulations that the leader dictates in his capacity as theoretician and the norms he prescribes as practical leader are not his own creations but clarifications, precise specifications based on a knowledge whose material components, the products of immense experience, belong to the class-party. Not all of this data presents itself to the leader in the form of mechanical erudition, and this provides a realistic explanation for certain phenomena of intuition deemed to be divinatory but which, far from giving evidence of the transcendence of some individuals over the mass, demonstrate instead the correctness of our assumption that the leader is the operating instrument, rather than the motor force, of collective thinking and common action (…)
    The organisation into a party, which allows the class to truly function as such and to live as such, can be viewed as a unitary mechanism in which the various ‘brains’ (not just brains of course, but other organs as well) perform different tasks according to aptitude and capacity, all of them in the service of a common goal and interest which progressively unifies them ever more intimately ‘in time and space’ (a convenient expression meant in an empirical rather than a transcendent way). Therefore, not every individual in the organisation occupies the same position or is at the same level. The gradual putting into practice of this division of tasks according to a rational plan (and what goes for today’s party-class will be the case for tomorrow’s society) completely excludes those higher up having privileges over the rest. Our revolutionary evolution isn’t heading towards disintegration, but towards an ever more scientific mutual connection between individuals.
    It is anti-individualist insofar as it is materialist. It doesn’t believe in the soul, or that individuals have metaphysical or transcendental content, but rather assigns the individual, according to his or her role, a place within the collective framework, creating a hierarchy which tends ever more towards an elimination of coercion, which it replaces with technical rationality. The party is already an example of a coercion-free collective (…)
     The question doesn’t present itself to us as a juridical matter but as a technical problem uncompromised by the philosophemes of constitutional law, or worse still, of natural law. There is no reason, in principle, why ‘Leader’ or ‘committee of leaders’ should be inscribed in our statutes. In fact it is on these premises that a Marxist solution to the question of choice is based: choices are made, more than anything else, by the dynamic history of the movement and not by the humdrum routine of consultative elections. We prefer not to include the word ‘leader’ in our organisational rules because individuals of the calibre of Marx or Lenin won’t always be among us. In conclusion: if an exceptional person, an exceptional ‘instrument’ should appear, the movement will make use of them. But the movement lives on even when there are no such eminent personalities. Our theory of the leader is very different from the cretinous rubbish used by theologians and official politicians to demonstrate the need for priests, kings, ‘first citizens’, dictators and Duces, all wretched puppets convinced it is they who make history.
    Furthermore: this process of elaboration of material belonging to a collectivity, which we see manifesting in the person of the leader as he draws energy from the collective, developing, transforming it and then returning it, cannot therefore be removed from the circle on his passing. The death of the organism Lenin certainly doesn’t mean his role is over, especially since, as we have shown, the material he elaborated is in fact sure to continue to remain a vital source of nourishment for the class and the party.

36 – The Left’s Theses at the 3^rd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Lyon Theses), 1926
    I, 3 -… The organ in which, on the contrary, is summed up the full extent of volitional possibilities and initiative in all fields of activity is the political party. Not just any old party though, but the party of the proletarian class, the communist party, linked as though by an unbroken thread to the ultimate goals in the future. The party’s power of volition, as well as its consciousness and theoretical knowledge are functions that are exquisitely collective. Marxism explains that the leaders in the party itself are given their job because they are considered as instruments and operators who best manifest the capacity to comprehend and explain facts and to lead and will action, with such capacities nevertheless maintaining their origin in the existence and character of the collective organ. By way of these considerations, the marxist conception of the party and its activity, as we have stated, thus shuns fatalism, which would have us remain passive spectators of phenomena into which no direct intervention is felt possible. Likewise, it rejects every voluntarist conception, as regards individuals, according to which the qualities of theoretical preparation, force of will, and the spirit of sacrifice – in short, a special type of moral figure and a requisite level of „purity” – set the required standards for every single party militant without exception, reducing the latter to an elite, distinct and superior to the rest of the elements that compose the working class.

37 – Speech by the Left’s Representative to the Sixth ECCI Plenum, 1926
    … This also relates to the question of leaders that comrade Trotski raised in the preface to Nineteen Seventeen, in an analysis of the causes of our defeat, and I entirely agree with the conclusions he came to. Trotski does not speak of leaders as though Heaven needs to delegate men for this purpose. On the contrary, he approaches the problem quite differently. Even leaders are the result of party activity, of party working methods, and a product of the confidence the party is able to inspire. If the party, in spite of changeable and often unfavourable circumstances, follows the revolutionary line and fights opportunist deviation, then the selection of leaders, the formation of a General Staff, will go well; and during the final struggle we will have, if not always a Lenin, at least a compact and courageous leadership-something that today, given the current state our organizations are in, we have little cause to expect.

38 – Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1948
    V… Neither does this task of possessing the theoretical consciousness fall to a band or group of superior individuals whose mission is to help humanity. It falls instead to an organism, to a mechanism differentiated within the mass, utilizing the individual elements as cells that compose the tissue and elevating them to a function made possible only by this complex of relationships. This organism, this system, this complex of elements each with its own function, (analogous to the animal organism with its extremely complicated systems of tissues, networks, vessels, etc.) is the class organism, the party, which in a certain way defines the class before itself and gives it the capacity to make its own history.

39 – The Reversal of Praxis in Marxist Doctrine (Rome Meeting), 1951
10… In the party, the contribution made by all the individual and class influences which flow into it from below are shaped into the means of establishing a critical and theoretical view, and a will to act, which makes it possible to instil into individual proletarians and militants an explanation of situations and historical processes, and an ability to make correct decisions about actions and struggles.
11 – Thus, whilst determinism denies the individual the possibility of achieving will and consciousness prior to action, the reversal of praxis does allow this within the party, and only within the party, as a result of a general historical elaboration. However, although will and consciousness can be attributed to the party, it is not the case that the party is formed by a concurrence of the consciousness and will of individual members of a group; and nor can such a group be in any way considered as free of the determining physical, economic and social factors weighing on the class as a whole.
12 – The so-called analysis, which alleges that all the conditions for the revolution are in place but a revolutionary leadership, is therefore meaningless. It is correct to say that an organ of leadership is indispensable, but its arising depends on the general conditions of struggle themselves, and never on the cleverness or bravery of a leader or vanguard.

40 – Characteristic Theses of the Party (Florence Theses), 1951
    II. 5… The Party is not formed on the basis of individual consciousness: not only is it not possible for each proletarian to become conscious and still less to master the class doctrine in a cultural way, but neither is it possible for each individual militant, not even for the leaders of the Party. Consciousness consists in the organic unity of the Party alone.
In the same way, therefore, that we reject notions based on individual acts or even on mass action when not linked to the party framework, so we must reject any conception of the party as a group of enlightened scholars or conscious individuals. On the contrary, the Party is the organic tissue whose function inside the working class is to carry out its revolutionary task in all its aspects and in all its complex stages.

41 – The Dogs’ Legs, 1952
   … Put bluntly, this is our position: new facts do not lead us to correct the old positions, nor to supplement or rectify them. Today we interpret the original Marxist texts in the same way as we did in 1921 and even before that; and we interpret later facts in the same way; the old proposals regarding methods of organisation and action remain valid.
    This work is neither entrusted to individuals nor committees, much less so to bureaus. In timing and quality, it is part of a unitary operation that has been unfolding for over a century, going well beyond the birth and death of generations. It is not inscribed in anyone’s curriculum vitae, not even of those who have spent an extremely long time coherently elaborating and mulling over the results. In this work of elaboration of key texts, and also of studies interpreting the historical process that surrounds us, the movement prohibits, and has to prohibit, personal, extemporary and contingent initiatives being taken.
    The idea that some obliging bloke, with pen and inkwell and an hour or so to spare, starts writing texts from scratch, or else, the ‘Cyrenic’, long-suffering „base” is urged to do so by some circular letter or by some ephemeral academic meeting, whether noisily public or in secret, well, it is just childish. The results of such efforts should be disqualified from the outset; especially when such an array of dictates is the work of those who are obsessed with the effect of human intervention in history. Is it men in general, particular men, or a given Man with a capital M who intervenes? It’s an old question. Men make history, it’s just that they have very little idea how and why they make it. As a rule, all the ‘fans’ of human action, and those who mock what they allege to be fatalist automatism, are generally the very people who privately nurture the idea that their own wee bodies contain that predestined Man. And they are the very ones who do not and cannot understand anything at all: they fail to see that whether they sleep like logs, or realize their noble dream of rushing around like men possessed, history will not be affected one iota.
    With icy cynicism, and without the least pity for any of these super-activist specimens who are more or less convinced of their own importance, to them, and to every assembly of innovators and would-be helmsmen, we repeat: „Go back to sleep!” You can’t even set an alarm clock.
    The task of setting the Theses in order and straightening out all the dogs’ legs veering off on all sides – a task which always arises when least expected – needs considerably more than a short speech or an hour or so at some little congress. It isn’t easy to compile an index of all the places where it is necessary to plug the holes, a work evidently seen as inglorious by those born to „pass into history”, whose style, rather than patching up, is to totally destroy. Still, we think a small index might be useful, even though it obviously won’t be perfect and will contain repetitions and inversions. We will compare correct with erroneous theses: we won’t however call the latter anti-theses since such a term is easily confused with antithesis, which suggests two different theses side by side in opposition. We prefer to use the term counter-theses.
    Also, purely for clarity’s sake, we will divide the points we wish to make into three obviously interconnected sections, namely: History, Economy and (in inverted commas) Philosophy (…)
    Further elucidation of these synthetic outlines is scattered throughout numerous party writings and in conference and meeting reports.
     Putting a break on dangerous improvisations isn’t a task that should be considered a monopoly, or an exclusive right, of anyone in particular.
     There is still room for improvement in the presentation of the arguments; the exposition can be made clearer and more effective. Another seven years work and study, seven hours a week, and maybe it will have improved a bit.
     If little groups of whiz-kids do then show up, it will be proper to say (as we recall the cold Zinoviev once saying) that people have arrived who only appear once every five hundred years; and he was referring to Lenin.
     We will wait for them to be embalmed. We don’t feel we deserve such an honour.

42 – Politique D’abord, 1952
     … Once respect for the party’s principles, theses and norms of action, considered as an impersonal entity, has been replaced by blind faith in a name; once the ingenuous support of the masses and even of militants has ensured the influence of some particular individual, who as well as exhibiting burning ambition, latent or otherwise, is also endowed with a certain intelligence, culture, eloquence, ability or courage (although ninety nine times out of a hundred these gifts are entirely spurious) only then does it become historically possible for those phenomenal upsets to occur, those incredible changes of direction in which we see entire parties and major party factions breaking their doctrinal, traditional line, and getting the revolutionary class to abandon its battle front, sometimes even by swapping sides.
    Incredibly, many militants and masses of proletarians have accepted these astonishing formulaic and prescriptive changes, and when not fooled, they have got bogged down in ruinous indecision. For example, Mussolini’s attempt to draw the Italian socialist party into the war hysteria failed, but when the socialist section in Milan unanimously expelled him in October 1914, in his parting shot he had the nerve to shout out: you hate me because you love me!
    So, our long, tragic experience should have taught us that whilst it is necessary to utilise everyone’s particular skills and aptitudes in party operations, ‘it is not necessary to love anyone’; indeed we need to be prepared to chuck anyone out, even if they’ve spent eleven out of twelve months in prison every year of their life. At important junctures, decisions about the course of action to follow have to be made without relying on the personal ‘authority’ of teachers, leaders or executives, and on the basis of rules of principle and of conduct that our movement has fixed in advance. A very difficult concept, we know, but without it we cannot see how a powerful movement will reappear.
    The exaltation of the ‘res gestae’, of the glorious deeds of this or that alleged captain of the masses, the oceanic fluctuations following his speeches and attitudes have always paved the way to the most surprising manipulations of the movement’s principles. On countless occasions both followers and leaders have become so involved in the dramatic externalisms of the struggle that they have ignored, forgotten, or maybe never really understood, the ‘tables’ of theory and conduct without which there is no party, and therefore no ascent and victory for the revolution. Thus it is that when the leader deceives both himself, and others, by ‘reinterpreting’ these tables, confusion and disorientation almost inevitably results.

43 – The Battilocchio in History, 1953
    … Let us put a stop to this tendency right now and, as far as is practically possible do away, not with men, but with the Man with such and such a Name, with such and such a curriculum vitae…
    I know the easy riposte that ingenuous comrades will come up with. Lenin. All right, it is indisputable that after 1917 we won many militants to the revolutionary struggle because they were convinced that Lenin had known how to fight and win the revolution. They came, fought and later deepened their understanding of our programme. By this expedient proletarians and entire masses who might otherwise have remained dormant were awoken. I admit it. But later on? The same name is used to support the total opportunist corruption of the proletariat: we are reduced to a situation where the class vanguard is much weaker than before 1917, when few had heard that name.
    So I say that in the theses and directives established by Lenin is summed up the best of the collective proletarian doctrine, of the political class reality, but that the name, as such, presents a debit balance. Evidently it has gone too far. Lenin himself was fed up to the back teeth with his personal importance being inflated. It is only insignificant little people who believe they are historically indispensable. He used to laugh whole-heartedly when he heard such nonsense. He was followed, adored and misunderstood.
    Have I managed to give you an idea of the problem with these few words? A time is bound to come when there will be a strong class movement with the correct theory and practice but without any need to exploit a fondness for names. I believe it will come. Whoever does not believe this must lack confidence in the new Marxist vision of history, or even worse, be a leader of the oppressed who has sold out to the enemy.
    … Certainly the bourgeois revolution has to have a symbol and a name even though, in the final instance, it too is made up of anonymous forces and material relations. It is the last revolution to be unaware of its anonymity: thus we think of it as a romantic revolution.
 Our revolution will appear when there is no more kow-towing to individuals, cowardly and confused for the most part, and when as the instrument of its own class power it has a party which has melded together all its doctrinal, organizational and militant characteristics; a party within which names and individual merit count for nothing; a party which denies that the individual possesses consciousness, will, initiative, merit or blame, in order to fuse everyone together into its unified and sharply defined whole.

44 – Croaking about Praxis, 1953
    19 – (…) Activity is down to the workers; consciousness exists in their party alone. Activity, praxis, is direct and spontaneous whilst consciousness is delayed, reflected; it is anticipated only in the party, and only when the latter exists and is operational does the class cease to exist in a coldly statistical sense and become an active force in the ‘age of subversion’, attacking a hostile world with actions directed towards a known and desired end; known and desired not by individuals, be they followers or leaders, soldiers or generals, but by the impersonal party collective; a collective which encompasses distant countries and successive generations, and which isn’t, therefore, a patrimony which is enclosed in one head (testa), but rather within texts (testi) – since no better technical means of conducting a ‘sifting process’ of soldiers and above all of generals is available to us; whereas the idea of an inherent conflict existing between those who give orders and those who follow them – the latest insipid blague from across the Alps – is really very banal.
    The right-wing of the Russian party would like party members to be drawn from the workers’ professional or factory groups federated to the party (the Russians used to call the trade unions ‘professional associations’). But it was in a polemical sense that Lenin forged the historic expression of the party being, above all, an organisation of professional revolutionaries. The latter are not asked: are you workers? What is your trade? Are you a mechanic, a tinsmith, a carpenter? They are as likely to be factory workers as students, or even sons of nobles; they will reply; I’m a revolutionary, that’s my trade. Only Stalinist cretinism could interpret the phrase to mean revolutionary in a career sense, of being on the party payroll. Such a useless formulation still leaves the question unanswered of whether the employees of the apparatus should be drawn from amongst the workers, or from other classes as well,. But it wasn’t really anything to do with that anyway.

45 – ‘Racial’ Pressure of the Peasantry; Class Pressure of the Coloured Peoples, 1953
   Freedom neither in theory nor in tactics. This key concept of the Left must be clearly understood.
   The party’s substantive, organic unity-diametrically opposed to the formal, hierarchical unity of the Stalinists-must be understood as a requirement of doctrine, programme and of so-called tactics. If we understand by tactics means of action, these can only be decided upon by undertaking the same kind of investigation that led us, on the basis of the data of past history, to decide upon our final, integral programmatic demands.
   The means cannot vary or be dispensed indiscriminately, either at a later time or worse still by distinct groups, without a corresponding change in the programmatic goals and the path one intends to pursue to achieve them.
    It is obvious that the means are not chosen out of any regard to their intrinsic qualities: according to whether they are nice or nasty, gentle or harsh, mild or severe. However, rather than simply depending on ‘whatever seems right at the time’, being able to make a rough forecast of the sequence of tactics likely to be applicable is an essential tool in the collective party armoury. This is an old warhorse of the Left. And therein also lies the organisational formula that the so-called ‘base’ can only be counted on to execute actions indicated by the centre insofar as the Centre is restricted to ‘a shortlist’ of previously anticipated potential moves corresponding to a no less anticipated range of eventualities. Establishing this dialectical link is the one thing that allows us to rise above the paltry level achievable by applying internal consultative democracy, an exercise we have repeatedly shown to be absolutely pointless. Indeed everyone defends internal democracy within organisations; just as everyone, from top to bottom, is ready to make a exhibition of themselves in the strange, convoluted power games and coup de theatres that take place within them.

46 – Dialogue with the Dead, 1956
    74 -… Marxism-and here we need to embark on a short historico-philosophical treatise-sees neither the great individual, nor any collective system of individuals, as the subject of historical decision. This is because Marxism draws out historical relationships and the causes of events from the relationships of things with people, in such a way that the results brought to light are common to every individual, regardless of particular individual attributes.
    Since in resolving ‘the social question’ Marxism rejects any ‘constitutional’ or ‘juridicial’ formulation as premise to the concrete historical course, it refuses to express a choice when faced with the badly framed question: should one person, a college of persons, the party as whole, or the class as a whole decide everything? First of all nobody decides but rather a ‘field’ of economic-productive relations common to large human groups. It is not a case of forcing history along a certain path, but of deciphering it, of discovering the currents that exist within it, and the sole means of participating in their dynamic motion is to obtain a certain level of scientific knowledge regarding them, the extent to which this is possible differing greatly according to the historical phase.
    So, who is the best at deciphering history? Who can explain it scientifically and see what we need to do? It depends. One individual may be better than a committee, the party, or the class. The consultation of ‘all the workers’ gets us no further forward than consulting all citizens with stupid ‘head counts’. Marxism fights against labourism and workerism in the sense that it knows that in most cases the resolutions will be counter-revolutionary and opportunist… As for the party, even after screening out those who reject its doctrinal ‘corner stones’ as a matter of principle, its historical mechanism still doesn’t boil down to ‘the rank-and-file is always right’. The party is a real historical unit, not a colony of men-microbes. The Communist Left has always proposed that the ‘democratic centralism’ formula ascribed to Lenin should be replaced with that of organic centralism. Finally, as regards committees, countless historical examples have demonstrated the futility of ‘collegial’ or joint leaderships: suffice to recall the relationsip between Lenin and the party and Lenin and the central committee in April 1917 and October 1917.
    The best detector of the revolutionary influences in history’s force field, in the context of given social and productive relations, may be the mass, the crowd, a committee, or just one individual. But the discriminating element lies elsewhere.
    75 -… In quoting from Lenin they didn’t notice a magnificent synthetic passage that goes way beyond… Central Committees.
    «The working class… in its worldwide struggle… needs authority… in the way that the young worker needs the experience of veteran fighters against oppression and exploitation, of those who have organised many strikes, have taken part in a number of revolutions, who are wise in revolutionary traditions, and have a broad political outlook. The proletarians of every country need the authority of the worldwide struggle of the proletariat… The collective body of the progressive class-conscious workers immediately engaged in the struggle in each country will always remain the highest authority on all such questions».
    At the heart of this passage lie the concepts of time and space taken to their ultimate extent, i.e., the historical tradition of struggle, and the international field within which it operates. Let us also include within our tradition the future, the programme of tomorrow’s struggles.
    Converging from every continent, and unbounded by time, how will this Leninite collective body, to which we give supreme power within the party, come together? It is composed of the living, the dead and the yet to be born. So, this isn’t a formula we ‘came up with’; it’s in Marxism, it’s in Lenin’s writings.
    Who can chatter idly now about power and authority entrusted to a leader, to an executive committee, to such and such a consultative body in such and such an area? Any decision is fine by us as long as it remains in line with that broad, global vision. Maybe one person will see it, maybe a million will.
    This theory of Marx and Engels grew out of an explanation they gave, in contradistinction to the libertarians, of the authoritarian nature of the process of class revolutions, in which the individual, with all his claims to autonomy, disappears and becomes a negligible quantity but, nevertheless, is not subordinated to a chief, to a hero, nor to a hierarchy derived from bygone institutions.

47 – Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today, 1956
    35 -… Everything that Lenin declares and inscribes on the pages of those historic theses is terribly opposed to what they did in Russia; not just to what the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties did, but to what the workers’ parties and even his own party did as well. But at the same time it is entirely consistent with what had already been written, with the course plotted out by Marx and Engels in 1848 and a hundred times confirmed and with the course marked out by Lenin himself from 1900 onwards in Russia.
    Those who are impatient, who get all excited every time they hear about a new modern directive, should understand this: we defend the immutability of the road ahead, yes, but not its rectilinearity. It contains many twists and turns. But, as Trotski said, these aren’t figments of the leader’s imagination. The word ‘leader’ in fact signifies a driver, but the party leader isn’t a car driver, who can grab the wheel and drive off wherever he wants, rather he is a train or tram-driver. His strength lies in recognising that the railway track is already in place, even though certainly not always straight, and he knows the stations he’ll be passing through, the bends and the slopes, and the destination towards which he is headed.
    And of course not just the leader alone knows this. The historical route map doesn’t belong to one, thinking head but to an organisation that transcends individuals, above all in temporal sense; an organisation composed of living history, and of – a word you won’t like – codified doctrine.
    If this is renounced we have as good as abandoned the struggle and the next Lenin will be unable to save us. Clutching our posters, books and Theses it will be off to the pulping plant, with us solely to blame for our own complete bankruptcy.

48 – ‘Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’, a Condemnation of the Renegades to Come, 1961
    14 -… From which microphone does such a collective force broadcast its orders? We have always denied that a mechanical and formalistic rule could decide. It isn’t the fifty-plus-one-per-cent who have the right to speak, although such a bourgeois method can often be useful; and neither do we accept the metaphysical rule of ‘head counts’ in the party, trade union, councils or class: sometimes the decisive voice will be that of the restless masses, at other times that of a group within the party structure (Lenin, as we have seen, isn’t afraid of using the word oligarchy), sometimes that of just one individual, a Lenin, as in April 1917 and even October itself, against the opinion of ‘all’.

49 – The Great Light was Obscured, 1961
    … The party requires more than just theoretical strength to develop the link between class doctrine and class action to its fullest extent. Amongst party militants there may well exist conviction and enthusiasm, but they can’t always generate it amongst the masses simply through their activity as orators, agitators and writers. It isn’t a rhetorical process that prompts the masses to rally around the party, nor the latter having in its possession an elect group, the famous ‘leaders’ whose impact on history, or rather ‘headline grabbing’, is entirely lamentable. The process is rather one of social physics. One doesn’t provoke the facts, one records them.
    We consider the thesis that it isn’t a matter of choosing a group of people to form the party’s ‘general staff’ as an enormously important one: that is, it isn’t a case of ‘casting for the big roles’, of finding the right people to constitute some kind of ‘brain trust’. It is best to steer well clear of this contemptible and highly superficial attitude. It is an illusion that has never been encouraged in good faith and it is simply the external manifestation of careerism: that curse of the political democracies by which certain individuals, whose defining qualities are craftiness and enslavement to pathological ambition, or to anyone above them, elbow their way to the top of the pile, and in all cases it is the pushiest ones who get there. All vain people are cowards.
    And the story of the Comintern’s miserable decline, after its memorable but all too brief ascent, is precisely characterised by a frantic search for the right people. In time we denounced unreservedly what was in fact a negative, back-to-front selection. Maybe in certain cases the Russian comrades believed that these components of the party machine could soon enough be put aside after the expected rapid burn out. But we didn’t accept this criterion, accusing it of relying far too much on an extremely artificial voluntarism.

50 – Considerations on the Party’s Organic Activity when the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable, 1965
    9 -… As we all know, when the situation becomes radicalised huge numbers of people, acting instinctively and unencumbered by the need to ape academia and attain qualifications, will immediately take our side.
    14 -… The transmission of this un-deformed tradition into efforts to form a new international party organisation without any historic breaks, may not, in an organisational sense, be based on men chosen because they would be best at it or most knowledgeable about the historical doctrine, and yet, in an organic sense, such a transmission nevertheless has to remain totally faithful to the line connecting the actions of the group which first gave expression to it forty years ago to the line as is exists today. The new movement should expect neither supermen nor messiahs, but must be based on a rekindling of as much as it has been possible to preserve over the long intervening period, and the preservation cannot be restricted to just theses and documents but must also include the living instruments who constitute the old guard, entrusted with the task of handing on the uncorrupted and powerful party tradition to the young guard.

51 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    11-… Naturally we won’t disavow ourselves by committing the childish error of seeking salvation in a search for the best people, or in the choice of leaders and semi-leaders, all of which we hold to be baggage characteristic of the opportunist phenomenon, historically opposed to the march of left revolutionary Marxism.

52 – Supplementary Theses… (The Milan Theses), 1966
    9 -… Amongst the many tasks within the party’s difficult brief is its current effort to free itself, once and for all, from the treacherous impulse that seems to emanate from well-known people, and from the despicable function of manufacturing, in order to attain its aims and victories, a stupid fame and publicity through other big names. The party in every one of its various twists and turns must never waver in its decision to fight courageously and decisively for such an outcome, considering it to be the true anticipation of the society of the future.

53 – Preface to the ‘post 1945 Theses’, 1970
    Organisation, same as discipline, isn’t a point of departure but a point of arrival; it has no need of statutory codification and disciplinary regulation; it recognises no contradiction between the ‘base’ and the ‘summit’; it excludes the rigid barriers of a division of labour inherited from the capitalist regime not because leaders’ and ‘experts’ in specific areas aren’t needed, but because these are, and necessarily have to be, committed (in the same way as the most ‘lowly’ of its militants, only more so) to a program, a doctrine and to a clear and unequivocal definition of tactical norms shared by the entire party, known to each of its members, publicly affirmed and above all translated into practice in full view of the class as whole. And just as leaders and experts are necessary, they are likewise dispensable as soon as they cease to fulfil the role which, via natural selection rather than by stupid head counts, the party had entrusted to them; or when, worse still, they deviate from the path which had been marked out for all to follow. A party of this type (as ours tends and strives to become; without however making any anti-historical claim to ‘purity’ or ‘perfection’) doesn’t adapt its entire internal life, its development, its – let’s say it – hierarchy of technical functions to fit in with whimsical decisions made on the spur of the moment or decreed by a majority, but rather it grows and is reinforced by the dynamics of the class struggle in general and by its own intervention within it in particular. The party creates its instruments of battle, its ‘organs’ at all levels, without predicting them in advance; it doesn’t need – apart from in exceptional circumstances – to expel, after ‘a proper trial’, those who no longer feel like following our immutable, common road because it has to be capable of eliminating them from within itself in the same way a healthy organism spontaneously eliminates its waste matter.
    ‘Revolution isn’t a question of forms of organisation’. On the contrary, organisation, in all its various forms, is constituted in response to the various demands of the revolution with not just the outcome forecast, but the path leading up to it forecast as well. Consultations, constitutions and statutes are characteristic of societies divided into classes, and of the parties that, in their turn, express not the historic trajectory of a class but the intersection of the divergent or not fully convergent trajectories of several classes. Internal democracy and ‘bureaucratism’, worship of individual or group ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘ideological terrorism’ are terms that are not so much antithetical as dialectically connected: unity of doctrine and tactical action, and organic character of organisational centralism. They can equally be two sides of the same coin.

Ch. 4 THE PARTY AS PREFIGURATION OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY

    From what we have said about the characteristics of the party organ it should have become evident, as regards its internal dynamics and the relationship between the various organs and molecules of which it is composed, that the party prefigures the future classless and stateless communist society.
    The party, actor and subject of the violent revolution and the dictatorship, isn’t just any old party; it is the communist party; thus a party linked to a specific historic perspective from which it derives its programme and activity; a perspective which is the expression of a particular class, whose struggle doesn’t aim to re-establish the rule of one class over other classes but to destroy society’s division into classes altogether. The ultimate goal is a society without classes; a society without exchange values; a society in which individual interests and those of the species no longer stand in opposition; a society in which each will give according to their ability and receive according to their need; a society, in short, in which the adherence of every individual to the general social interest will be obtained without coercion, organically and spontaneously.
    The violent class struggle, which the party must have no qualms about leading, just as it must have no qualms about personally directing State violence and terrorism, appears, therefore, not as an end in itself but as a means to achieving an end already anticipated within the party’s internal dynamics. Indeed within the party, which expresses the interests of a single class that is fighting to eliminate classes altogether, there are no conflicts of social interests; consequently it is able to achieve a hierarchy of organic functions without the need to resort to coercive machinery or to any kind of legalistic apparatus. In the party, relationships of a mercantile type no longer exist and the cement that holds the organisation together is the voluntary commitment of all of its cells to the struggle and to sacrifice for a common end. The cement that keeps the various members of the organisation together and which links the centre to the periphery and, vice versa, which ensures that everybody obeys orders is the reciprocal trust and solidarity between comrades, all of whom recognise one final goal; all of whom work in common for a common end (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?).
    The party will have to be the general staff of the revolution and the dictatorship, but it will be so only insofar as it has managed to establish an internal dynamic that shuns all those relations between people which are typical of present-day society. The less that internal relations are based on individual squabbles and battles between different groups (the expression of class interests) the less will hierarchies be formal, mechanical, democratic and bureaucratic; the less will the allocation of roles to the various members of the organisation mimic the bourgeois division of labour; the less will individual names count for anything, and the more will there predominate a solid and rational research into the best solutions; the more will there prevail a spontaneous and natural discipline to an approach which is supported by all as a common goal prevail; and the more will there be realised an anonymous, impersonal and collective work of all the cells of which the party organism is composed.
    Only insofar as all political struggle ceases within the party can it be an effective organ of the political struggle between classes; only insofar as there is no repression or dictatorship inside the party can it function as an effective organ of dictatorial repression.
    The party meanwhile acts as “general staff” insofar as it foreshadows the natural and spontaneous organisation that will distinguish future communist humanity. If the party were to lose this characteristic, if internal struggles between competing interests, coercion, bureaucracy, formalism, careerism and the worship of big names, etc., were to gain the upper hand then its primary function as a political organ, as the general staff of the proletarian revolution, would be weakened. Does this mean the party should be conceived of as “a phalanstery encircled by insurmountable walls”, as “an island of communism in the viscera of present society”? Absolutely not! And why not? Because the party has to exist within the society it is fighting against, and it is exposed to its influence. Thus its organic mode of functioning, its foreshadowing of the future human society, doesn’t arise from a statutory formula premised as the basis on which to organise but as the fruit of a continuous party struggle, from a continuous work directed towards making this a reality; an accomplishment which, same as discipline, is not a point of departure but rather a point of arrival.
    Our thesis, which is dynamic rather than static, is that the party grows and becomes stronger in the measure that it manages to realise the mode of functioning appropriate to it; it is weakened in the measure that specific historical situations prevent it from doing so; it dies whenever it ceases to pursue this path or strive for this end, or even if, as in the case of the 3^rd international after 1923, it theorizes as appropriate for itself a dynamic typical of societies divided into classes and the parties which represent them.

QUOTATIONS

54 – Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924
    The party organisation, which allows the class to truly exist as such and lead a life as such, can be viewed as a unitary mechanism in which the various ‘brains’ (not just brains of course, but other organs as well) perform different tasks according to aptitude and capacity, all of them in the service of a common goal and interest which is progressively unified ever more intimately ‘in time and space’.
    It is anti-individualist insofar as it is materialist. It doesn’t believe in the soul, or that individuals have metaphysical or transcendental content, but rather assigns the individual, according to his or her role, a place within the collective framework, creating a hierarchy which tends ever more towards an elimination of coercion, which it replaces with technical rationality. The party is already an example of a coercion-free collective.

55 – Powerhouse of Production or Commercial Swamp?, 1954
    15 – (…) In one sense the party is the advance depository of reliable knowledge about a society that is yet to come into existence, indeed one that won’t arise until after the political victory and dictatorship of the proletariat. Neither is there anything magical about this, considering that the phenomenon is historically observable in every mode of production, including the bourgeoisie’s, whose theoretical precursors and early political fighters carried out a critique of the forms and values of the time by defending theses which later became generally accepted, whilst in the environment which surrounded them the real bourgeois themselves followed ancient and conformist faiths, not recognising their own palpable material interests in these theoretical enunciations.

56 – Russia and Revolution in the Marxist Theory, 1955
    II, 39 – (…) To be exact, there never will be a proletarian consciousness. There is a doctrine, communist knowledge, but this is found within the proletarian party, not in the class (…) Its possession of the revolutionary doctrine makes the party act as the reservoir of the attitudes and positions that the communist social person of the future will adopt.

57 – The Fundamentals of Marxist Revolutionary Communism, 1957
    III – (…) The way to overcome this short-coming – which will involve many battles along the way – is through forming organs which avoid modelling themselves on those drawn from the bourgeois world, and which can be nothing but the proletarian party and the proletarian State, within which the society of tomorrow crystallizes in advance of its actual historical existence. Within those organs which we define as „immediate”, which copy and bear the physiological imprint of present-day society, nothing can occur but a crystallization and perpetuation of this society.

58 – Original Content of the Communist Programme…, 1958
    10 – (…) The capacity to describe in advance and hasten the arrival of the communist future, dialectically sought neither in the individual nor in the universal, may be found in a formula that synthesises the party’s historical potential: the political party, actor and subject of the dictatorship.
    If ‘the personality’ represents a danger – in fact he is nothing but a millennial delusion arising from men’s ignorance, separating them from their history as a species – the only way to fight such a danger lies in the qualitatively universal ‘unitarity’ of the party, within which the revolutionary concentration of forces is accomplished, transcending local and national limitations, professional or job categories and the workplace-prison of the wage-earners; the party within which the future society without classes and without exchange already exists.

59 – The Struggles of Classes and States in the Non-white People’s World…, 1958
    13 – (…) The Communist Party has no big names or stars, not even Marx and Lenin. It is a force that draws its strength and potential from the humanity which is yet to arise, and whose one life will be a collective and species life, from the simplest of manual roles up to the most complex and arduous mental activities. We define the party as follows: the projection of tomorrow’s Mankind-Society into the present.
    That is what we mean in our other texts when we write about the party foreshadowing a future society without classes and without exchange; within which individualism, and any personal ideology or praxis, will die away.

60 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
    13 – (…) That within the party there is a tendency to try and create a fiercely anti-bourgeois environment, broadly anticipating the character of communist society, has long been stated, for instance, by the young Italian communists back in 1912.
     But such a worthy aspiration should not lead us to consider the ideal party as a phalanstery encircled by insurmountable walls.

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.

PART IV

Ch. 1 THE PARTY STRUCTURE

Re-establishing itself on its classical foundations in 1952, our party differed not only in possessing a store of valid doctrine and theory and a correct programme and tactics, derived from applying the invariant and unbroken Marxist doctrine to the lessons of fifty years of counter-revolution, differed not only in its preparedness to fight whenever there was „the least glimmer of hope” of strengthening its connection with the proletarian masses – without ever compromising its vital principles – wherever these were compelled to struggle, even if only for partial and immediate objectives; but also, and as a consequence of the above, it differed because it had forged an organisational framework, with a centralised method of working, which was suited to the party’s tasks. This working structure is broadly defined in the quotations which follow. Since 1952 it has been based on the existence of a centre which issues instructions to the whole of the network in the form of „organisational circulars”; on frequent liaison between the centre and the various parts of the organisation engaged in various aspects of party work; on feedback from the territorial sections, groups and individual militants to the centre; and on periodic meetings of the whole of the organisation in order to take stock, via detailed reports, of the party work carried out, in both the theoretical and the practical fields, over a given period of time. The extensive material from these periodic meetings is published in the party press and forms an object of study and of further elaboration in the local and regional meetings. This structure has allowed the party to regularly publish its press organs for which contributors and distributors are required; and allowed it to continuously „fine-sculpt” the movement’s theoretical, programmatic and tactical features and make constant interventions in the thick of the workers’ struggles. In 1962, we felt it necessary to publish a specific trade union organ to enable us to co-ordinate and to get to the head of these struggles, and in 1968 we created a co-ordinating organ called „the central trade union office”.

It is indeed a possibility that this framework hasn’t been functioning properly, and consequently we support all attempts to bolster it and strengthen it by intensifying the contact between the centre and the sections and vice versa and by expecting greater regularity and precision in this two way flow by deploying at the relevant points in the party machine as much manpower as is required. Evidently as the party’s tasks intensify, and become more complicated, further instruments of co-ordination and centralisation will be required. As the number of party members increases along with the complexity of the tasks, militants will need to be screened more and more; there will have to be an ever greater specification of functions, of the appropriate organs to carry out those functions, and of the men who are allocated to those various organs. But this is something that happens organically, not voluntaristically; it is determined not by anyone’s volition but by the extent to which the party’s tasks have developed. The differentiated organs that the party possesses at any time should be the result of functional necessities arising from the party’s activity, not derived from an organisational scheme plucked from thin air, and considered necessary merely because it corresponds to an idea of a perfect party or perfect mechanism that exists in somebody’s head.

In What is to be Done, Lenin argued that, while it is true that the party’s increasingly complex organisation results from the party’s own developing tasks, it is likewise true that the forms of organisation can in their turn either favour, or restrict, the development of these tasks. That is to say, the party must at all times structure all its activities in such a way as to favour their development rather than bogging them down. So then, are the forms of organisation adopted by the party between 1952 and 1970 perhaps not adequate to contain the rapid increase in its activities, or, does the existence of these forms prevent the party from carrying out its tasks as fully as it should, or from carrying them out better? The question deserves attention and rational investigation. But on that plane alone, not on others, i.e., which are the fruit of fevered imaginations.

You may say the centralised structure of the 1952-1970 period needs to be strengthened and improved so it can better respond to the more far-reaching tasks the party now faces, but you can’t say “our existence has been that of a small circle up to now”; “we are struggling to give the party an organised form” etc. Statements of this kind not only falsify the real history of the party, which «in 1952 gave itself, in an organic and spontaneous way, a structural framework for its activity that has been put to the test over the last fifteen years» (Theses…, 1965), but can also have deadly consequences as far as the Marxist conception of the party is concerned. The first consequence might be that it can be alleged that the latter organisation never existed, because in fact the party never existed, and that it was actually a group of apprentice theoreticians, or a Marxist circle. And from this it follows that the transformation of this group, or circle, into a party was just an organisational matter and, as a consequence, the party is yet to arise, and will only do so to the extent it can forge an organisation of such and such a type. This would mean relapsing into an idealistic „organisational model” of what characterises the party, in opposition to the thinking of Marx, Lenin and the Left. But an even worse deviation would be to define whether or not a centralised organisational structure exists on the basis of organisational formalities such as statutes, rules, special types of bureaucratic machinery, etc., and State that one can only talk of an organised structure when these exist. Statements of this kind lead directly to an idealistic view of the party. Marxism has stated that there existed in the past, and will exist again, a society which, although with distinct organs and absolute centralism, did not and will not need to maintain its structural integrity by means of statutes, laws, or a specialized machinery distinct from the social body itself, which is something in fact which characterise societies divided into classes. This society will instead rely on a hierarchy of technical functions, with individuals selected to carry them out in an organic way according to their fitness for the tasks; and who will be “as necessary as they are dispensable”, knowing that they, as individuals, serve the technical functions, and not vice versa. Elsewhere we have made it clear that it is in this sense that the party prefigures future society.

In 1952, the party abandoned all internal statutory codifications and renounced all use of internal democratic mechanisms, including the convocation of “Sovereign congresses”. This was not because it was a scholarly sect or a “circle” with no organisation, but because it concluded it could give a structure to the party organisation without resorting to these mechanisms. But it didn’t renounce them with a view to eventually returning to them once the “circle” phase was over, it renounced them for good.

We will leave it to our corrected tradition to demonstrate this:

1) in 1967 (Il Programma Comunista, no 5/1967) we wrote:

     «The unstinting concern of comrades that the party organisation functions in a steady, consistent and uniform way, is focused therefore – as advised by Lenin in his Letter to a comrade – not on finding statutes, rules and constitutions, or, worse still, „specially talented” people, but rather the best way each and every comrade can contribute to the harmonious performance of those functions without which the party would cease to exist as a unifying force and guide and representative of the class. This is the only way the party can be helped – as outlined by Lenin in What is to be Done, where the newspaper is referred to as a „collective organiser” – to resolve, „on its own”, its day to day problems, and helped to decide what actions it should take. It is here we find the key to „organic centralism”; it is here we find the weapon we can rely on in the historic battle between classes, not in the empty abstraction of alleged „rules” about how perfect mechanisms should work or, even worse, sordid trials of the men, „high” and „low”, who through a process of organic selection were give the job of operating these mechanisms».

And, a bit earlier on:

     «As a real force operating in History, identifiable by its rigorous continuity, the party lives and acts (and here is our response to the second deviation) not on the basis of a set of inherited statutory norms, precepts and constitutional forms, in the way that bourgeois legalism hypocritically aspires to, or as is naively dreamed about by pre-Marxist utopianism (architect of highly elaborate structures which were plonked, fully formed, into the middle of living historical reality), but on the basis of its nature as an organism, shaped by an incessant succession of theoretical and practical battles on an unchanging line of march. As written in our 1945 Platform: „the party’s organisational norms are in keeping with the dialectical concept of its function; they do not rely on prescribed or legalistic recipes and they transcend the fetish of having to gain the approval of the majority”. It is through the discharging of its functions, all of them, not just one of them, that the party creates its organs, apparatuses and mechanisms; and in the course of this same discharging of these functions that it dismantles and recreates them too, and not by obeying metaphysical dictates or constitutional paradigms, but in response to the real and genuinely organic requirements of its development. None of these mechanisms is „theorisable”, either beforehand or in hindsight».

2) And in 1970, in confirmation of what is written above as in line with the party’s unchanging doctrine (from “In Defense of the Continuity of the Communist Program”, p.131):

«Organisation, like discipline, is not a point of departure but a point of arrival. It does not require statutory codifications or disciplinary regulations (…) Consultations, constitutions and statutes are typical of societies divided into classes, and characteristic of the parties which express, in their turn, not the historical path of one class but rather an intersection of paths, where the divergent or not fully convergent paths of several classes meet. Internal democracy and „bureaucratism”; respect for „freedom of expression” of individuals or groups, and „ideological terrorism”, are not antithetical aims; they are dialectically connected».

We draw the following conclusion. Since 1945, our party claims to have equipped itself with a centralised structure which is differentiated into a hierarchy of technical functions (“In Defense…”, p.131), and to have done it without statutes, democratic mechanisms, bureaucratic apparatuses, disciplinary procedures, expulsions, or selection of „especially talented” men. Anyone who sees in this an absence of structure is organically outside of our party because the party sees in it instead, as evidenced by all the quotations which follow: «the achievement of aspirations expressed by the Communist Left since the time of the 2^nd International» (Naples Theses) and «the elimination from our own structure of one of the initial errors of the Moscow International» („Considerations…”).

QUOTATIONS

117 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
     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 needed to be freed from the mad elation which followed the collapse of fascism, and to have its consciousness restored of 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, beaten down, deceived, and disappointed over and over again but eventually destined to rebel against a capitalist society now in a state of purulent decomposition (…)
     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.
     It is only by developing our work along the lines indicated above that we expect to see that quantitative growth in our ranks and of the spontaneous adhesions to the party, which will one day make it a greater social force.
     9. Before moving on from the topic of the party’s formation after the Second World War, it is worth reaffirming a few outcomes which are today enshrined as characteristic party positions; insofar as they are de facto historical results, despite the limited quantitative extension of the movement, and neither discoveries of useless geniuses nor solemn resolutions made by „sovereign” congresses.
     The party soon realized that, even in an extremely unfavourable situation, even in places in which the situation was absolutely sterile, restricting the movement’s activity merely to propaganda and political proselytism is dangerous and must be avoided. At all times in all places and with no exceptions, the party must make an unceasing effort to integrate its own life with the life of the masses, and participate in its protests as well, even when these are influenced by directives in conflict with our own. It is an old thesis of left-wing Marxism that we must work in reactionary trade unions in which workers are present, and the party abhors the individualistic positions of those who disdain to set foot in them, and who go so far as to theorize the failure of the few, feeble strikes that today’s unions dare to call. In many regions the party already has a remarkable record of activity in the trade unions, although it always faces serious difficulties, and opposing forces which are greater than ours from a statistical point of view. It is important to establish that, even where such work has not really got off the ground, we must reject the position in which the small party is reduced to being a set of closed circles with no connection with the outside world, or limits itself just to recruiting members in the world of opinion, which for the Marxist is a false world if not treated as a superstructure of the world of economic conflicts. Similarly it would be wrong to divide the party or its local groupings into watertight compartments that are only active in one field, whether theory, study, historical research, propaganda, proselytism or trade union activity. This is because the very essence of our theory and of our history is that these various fields are totally inseparable, and in principle accessible to each and every comrade.
     Another position which marks a historical conquest for the party, and one which it will never relinquish, is the clear-cut rejection of all proposals to increase its membership through the calling of congresses to bring together the countless other circles and grouplets, which since the end of the war have popped up everywhere elaborating distorted and disjointed theories, or whose condemnation of Russian Stalinism and all of its local variations is the only positive thing they have to offer.

118 – Supplementary Theses… (Milan Theses) – 1966
     8 – (…) Well do we know that historical dialectics leads all fighting organisms to improve their offensive capacity by using the techniques of their enemy. From this we deduce that in the phase of armed struggle communists will have a military organization with a definite hierarchy, moving forward as one to ensure the success of the actions of the party as a whole. That is true, but simply imitating this across all areas of party activity, including the non-military ones, is pointless. The way operational directives are transmitted must be clear, but this lesson derived from bourgeois bureaucracy mustn’t make us forget how the latter can also become corrupt and degenerate, even when adopted by workers’ organisms. The organic unity of the party does not require that a comrade specifically appointed to pass on instructions from above be seen by other comrades as the personification of the party form. At the same time, this transference between the molecules which compose the party is always a two-way process; and the dynamics of each unit are integrated into the historical dynamics of the whole. The abuse of organizational formalities for no good reason has been and always will be a defect; one which is stupid, dangerous and highly suspect.

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Ch. 2 THE “PHASES” OF PARTY DEVELOPMENT

From the quotes that follow, starting with the Rome Theses of 1922 and ending with excerpts from the preface to „In Defence” published in 1970, the model of political party development typical of the revolutionary Marxist school is clearly described. Marxist theory has dissolved humanity’s old dilemma – the separation between thought and action, between theory and practice – demonstrating that these terms are in fact closely and inextricably linked. In human society it is action that determines consciousness and this is also true for the working class, whose action is determined by facts and material needs. In the class party, consciousness and action are inextricably linked and cannot exist without each other. The only difference is that the party organ is susceptible, unlike all others, to conscious action, that is, consciousness preceding action in the theatre of social struggles.

We are in the presence of the class party when, in the dynamics of a given group, the three factors already described in the Rome Theses are present: defence and definition of theory and of historical analysis; physical organisation of a militant core; intervention and activity in the actual proletarian struggle. These three tasks are contained simultaneously in every instance of party activity, because they are the tasks that define the party. The proportion of energy taken up by each of these tasks may vary according to the historical period and the objective situations in which the party acts, but none of them are ever neglected, and it remains the inclination of the party even when totally negative circumstances have reduced it to virtually nothing. In a counter-revolutionary situation like now, 95 percent of the party’s energies are devoted to the restoration of correct doctrine and only 5 percent to organizational work and intervention in labour conflicts. In a situation of revolutionary upsurge and attack on the bourgeois power, the ratio of energy will necessarily be reversed, with 95 percent of it devoted to organization and interventions in the struggle. But this depends solely and exclusively on the situation outside the party, which affects not only the more or less limited operational reach of the organization, but also imposes a particular distribution of energy within the party. This is determined by historical circumstances but never at any point in its life does the party renounce action in any of its vital fields of activity. The relationship between the various forms of energy is quantitative, determined by the external situation rather than by the Party. But from the qualitative point of view, the party’s functions remain the same throughout every moment of its existence. At certain points in history the practical work carried out among the proletarian masses may appear, from an immediate perspective, to be non-existent, but the party’s predisposition to carry out this work, by taking advantage of every slightest chance, must remain at all times. The same goes for armed organization and illegal work, the need for which must be ever present in the party, even when, in practice, it is not carrying out any of this type of activity.

From the distribution of the party’s energy across various activities – theoretical work, propaganda, proselytising, industrial action, armed action, etc. – nothing can be inferred, and nothing can be concluded about the nature of the party, because nothing changes qualitatively. If one hundred percent of the membership were dedicated to theoretical work – something solely dependant on objective external conditions – to deduce that the party is in the ’stage’ of theoretical preparation, and that the practical work of organization and class penetration is useless or secondary, is anti-Marxist rubbish, in that it destroys the party by reducing it to a group of thinkers who wouldn’t even be capable of learning the theory, because part of the nature of our theory is that it can only be the patrimony of a fighting organ, and cannot be learned intellectually by a group of „professors”. So, as stated in our theses, whoever conceives of the Party’s activity, and that of single militants, as divided into separate temporal „phases” (first you learn the theory and principles of the movement, read and study all the Marxist texts to attain full intellectual mastery, then you set to work to provide an organizational structure for those who have „learnt”, to turn the „Marxist professors” into „an organisation’s militants”, until at last the organization, equipped with the newly learnt theory, is launched into the field of external action) places himself outside the entire conception of Marxism.

It is a Marxist thesis that the three manifestations of energy either go together or do not exist. It is a tried and tested Marxist theory that theory can be „learned” only by an organized nucleus immersed in practical work. Otherwise there is no learning, no clarification, no ‘sculpting’ of theory, because learning about the theory of Marxism, a weapon of the party, cannot happen on an individual or cultural basis, but only collectively within the Party organ, where it happens as part of the co-ordinated process of carrying out the party’s various tasks.

This is why our small group has had, since the time of its reconstruction, the right to call itself the Communist Party. It was and is very small in numerical terms, but it has never ceased to perform its organic functions: although the range of its external activities has been quantitatively limited, it hasn’t been reduced to a group of thinkers or scholars; it hasn’t relapsed into the activism and immediatism which characterises every leftist faction. It has been able to link an absolute faith in, and strict defence of, the theory, principles and historical experience of the proletariat, to the undertaking of as much practical action as possible in these counter-revolutionary times, never missing an opportunity to intervene in even the smallest workers’ struggle in an organized manner, and in a way clearly distinct from any other group or grouping. It is by this coherent line, this theoretical and practical battle, that the Party can be recognised. And it is on this firm foundation that the progress of the capitalist crisis and the return of the proletariat to the struggle, at least on economic grounds, will bring into the ranks of our small group the young revolutionary guards who are seeking the vital weapon they need to fight the social war. Given, that is, that the party has managed to maintain this organic continuity of program and action.

Outside of this conception of the Party there lies nothing but death. It is completely absurd to think that there is the historical Party – a programme defended by a nucleus of intellectuals and scholars; then there is the “propaganda machine”; and then, on the proviso it has equipped itself with a suitable organization, there is the core of the Party. It is very debilitating that such mechanistic and idealistic constructs, which can only be obtained by falsifying Lenin and the Left tradition, still find ways of contaminating the labour movement.

If the party maintains this continuity, this dialectical connection between the various tasks and functions that make up its organic life, the organization develops, diversifies, and gives itself a structure not because someone wills it, but due to the needs which arise from the carrying out, the extension, and the ever increasing complexity of Party activity. New organs are created because the party’s functions become increasingly complicated and require an appropriate structure for their needs; because the activity of the party requires the right tools to help it operate as best it can in all fields. They are not created for the childish reason that one day someone thinks it’s time to finally give an organised structure to the Party and decides, in his little head, to come up with a model of organization, maybe by copying out the last writings of Lenin who, although little read and little understood, is constantly being quoted indiscriminately even to resolve petty little problems like going to the lavatory.

The Party, as opposed to the propaganda machine or „club”, was formed once and for all in 1952 when it specified in a definitive manner its doctrinal, tactical and programmatic cornerstones (Nature, Function and Tactics, Characteristic Theses, etc.) and started to carry out all of its activities on that basis, bar none. Since 1952 it has endowed itself with an organizational structure appropriate to its numerical size and the carrying out of its activities, to the degree the external social temperature permits. This structure is described extensively in the 1965-1966 Theses. It is a structure which will certainly change, becoming more complex, more compact, more differentiated and with clearer and more distinct characteristics. This process will be driven by the extension of the network of organised members, by how our work develops and by the party’s growing influence over the working class and not by the beautiful discovery of some „useless genius” or some „sovereign congress”, which discovers that we cannot call ourselves a Party unless we have the same apparatus they reckon to have found described in Lenin.

QUOTATIONS

119 – Characteristic Theses of the Party (Florence Theses) – 1951
     II, 4 – The Party defends and propagates the theory of the movement for the socialist revolution; it defends and strengthens its inner organization by propagating the communist theory and programme and by being constantly active in the ranks of the proletariat wherever the latter is forced to fight for its economic interests; such are its tasks before, during and after the struggle of the armed proletariat for State power.
     IV, 4 – Today we are in the depths of the political depression, and although the possibilities of action are considerably reduced, the party, following revolutionary tradition, has no intention of breaking the historical line of preparation for a future large scale resurgence of the class struggle, which will integrate all the results of past experience. Restriction of practical activity does not imply the renunciation of revolutionary objectives. The party recognizes that in certain sectors its activity is quantitatively reduced, but this does not mean that the multi-faceted totality of its activity is altered, and it does not expressly renounce any of them.
     IV, 7 – Although small in number and having but few links with the proletarian masses, the party is nevertheless jealously attached to its theoretical tasks which are of prime importance, and because of this true appreciation of its revolutionary duties in the present period, it absolutely refuses to be considered either as a circle of thinkers in search of new truths, or as “renovators” who consider past truths insufficient (…)
     IV, 9 – It is events, and not the desire or the decision of militants, which determine the depth of the Party’s penetration amongst the masses, limiting it today to a small part of its activity. Nevertheless, the Party loses no occasion to intervene in the clashes and vicissitudes of the class struggle, well aware that there can be no revival until this intervention has developed much further and become the main area of Party activity.
     IV, 10 – The acceleration of the process depends not only on profound social causes, that is to say historical crises, but also on the proselytism and propaganda of the party, even with the reduced means at its disposal.

120 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable – 1965
     8 – Given that the degenerating social complex is focused on falsifying and destroying theory and sound doctrine, clearly the predominant task of today’s small party is the restoration of principles with doctrinal value, although unfortunately the favourable setting in which Lenin worked after the disaster of the First World War is lacking. But this does not mean we should erect a barrier between theory and practical action; beyond a certain limit that would destroy us along with our basic principles. We thus lay claim to all forms of activity peculiar to the favourable periods insofar as the real balance of forces render them possible.
     9 – We should go into all this in a lot more depth, but we can still reach a conclusion about the party’s organizational structure during such a difficult transition. It would be a fatal error to consider the party as divisible into two groups, one dedicated to study and the other to action, because such a distinction is deadly not only for the party as a whole, but for the individual militant too. The underlying meaning of unitarism and of organic centralism is that the party develops within itself the organs suited to its various functions, called by us propaganda, proselytism, proletarian organization, union work, etc., until, in the future, there is the need for the armed organization; but nothing can be inferred from the number of comrades assigned to each function, since no comrade, as a matter of principle, should be uninvolved with any of them.
     The fact that in the current phase the amount of comrades devoted to theory and the movement’s history may seem too many, and those ready for action too few, is historically fortuitous. It would be totally pointless to investigate how many are dedicated to each of these manifestations of energy. As we all know, when the situation becomes radicalized huge numbers of people, acting instinctively and unencumbered by the need to ape academia and get qualifications, will immediately take our side.

121 – 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 results inscribed along the route of a long and painful retreat. It was not a matter of restricting our role to cultural diffusion or the propagandising of 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 – not experiences exactly, a word we wish to avoid as now fallen prey to Philistines – but from the dynamic results of confrontations between real forces of considerable size and range, with use made also of those cases in which the final result was a defeat of the revolutionary forces. The latter is what we refer to, using the old classical Marxist criteria, as „the lessons of the counter revolutions”.

122 – Introduction to “Theses after 1945” – 1970
     We can say that only in the second half of 1951, and particularly from 1952, the party assumed a clear, homogeneous orientation, based on its reconnection with the basic theses of the 1920-1926 period and the dynamic balance sheet of the subsequent quarter of a century, which rendered those theses even more clear and unmistakable; and it gave itself a structure corresponding to this theoretical achievement around the new fortnightly organ “Il Programma Comunista”.
     The central problem was undoubtedly the integral re-presentation of the Marxist doctrine, a thousand times trampled underfoot and defaced by the Stalinist counter-revolution. But, in theory and practice, this task could not be separated, and never was, from the constant effort not only to propagandize our theoretical and programmatic positions, but also to “import” them, according to Lenin’s classical definition, into the working class; with the latter achieved by participating, according to our capacity, in the class struggles for immediate and contingent goals; never turning the party, however small it might be, into an academy of thinkers, an illuminati club, or a sect of armed conspirators equipped with inestimable baggage, known only to the acolytes.

Ch. 3 THE PARTY AND THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL

 
The following quotations show the Left’s position on the 3^rd international, and the lessons the party derived from its degeneration and destruction at the hand of the Stalinist counter-revolution. In terms of identifying the cause of this degenerative process, the downturn in the international revolutionary movement was certainly a decisive factor, due to the negative influence it inevitably had on the party, affected as it always is by external social developments insofar as the party is the product of ongoing situations and these situations naturally influence it, and either impede or favour it. It will be seen, however, that we never viewed this as the only cause: we also attributed the International’s degeneration to weaknesses in the way the new organisation was formed; weaknesses which, when the revolutionary downturn actually occurred, inevitably had an adverse effect on the organisation’s capacity to react to the unfavourable circumstances.

These organic ‘weaknesses’ in the organisation of the 3^rd International are equated by the left with the following facts:

     «It must be said that if the restoration of revolutionary values was impressive and complete as far as doctrinal principals, theoretical training and the central question of state power were concerned, the systematic organization of the new International and training in its tactics and that of its member parties was, on the contrary, not similarly complete».
     «In the situation after the First World War, which appeared objectively revolutionary, the leadership of the International became guided by the concern – which was not unfounded – of finding itself unprepared and poorly followed within the masses at the outbreak of a general European movement that could lead to the conquest of power in some of the large capitalist countries. The possibility of a rapid collapse of the capitalist world was so important for the Leninist International, which today we understand as the hope of being able to direct vaster masses in the struggle for the European revolution, that it was too free in the acceptance of the adherence of movements that were not true communist parties and it searched, in the elastic tactic of the united front, to maintain contact with the masses who were outside the hierarchy of parties oscillating between conservatism and revolution.
     «If the favorable outcome has occurred, the consequences for the politics and the economy of the first proletarian power in Russia would have been sufficiently powerful to allow the very rapid restoration of the national and international organizations of the communist parties».
     «Given that the less favorable outcome had occurred, i.e. the re-establishment of capitalism, instead of this the revolutionary proletariat had to resume the struggle and the course with a movement which, having sacrificed its own clear political preparation and its own homogeneity of composition and organization, was exposed to new opportunist degenerations.
     «But the mistake that opened the Third International’s doors to the new and more serious opportunist wave was not just a mistake in calculating the future likelihood of the proletariat becoming revolutionary; it was a mistake of preparation and of historical interpretation consisting in the desire to generalize the experiences and methods of Russian bolshevism, applying them to countries with a much more advanced bourgeois and capitalist civilization» (from Nature, Function and Tactics…, 1947).
    «Internal organisation was subjected to similar confusion, and the difficult task of sorting out revolutionary members from opportunist ones in the various parties and countries would be compromised. It was believed that new party members, more amenable to co-operating with the centre, could be procured by wresting away entire left wings of the old social democratic parties; whereas in fact, once the new International had gone through its initial period of formation, it needed to function permanently as the world party and only have new converts joining its national sections on an individual basis. Wanting to win over large groups of workers, deals were struck instead with the leaders and the movement’s cadres were thrown into disorder, and dissolved and recombined during periods of active struggle. Recognising Fractions and groups within the opportunist parties as ‘communist’, they would be absorbed by means of organisational mergers; thus almost all of the parties, instead of preparing for the struggle, were kept in a state of permanent crisis. Lacking continuity of action and with no clear boundaries set between friend and foe, they would register one failure after another, and on an international scale. The Left lays claim to organisational unicity and continuity» (from Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951).

On these four points, therefore, the International exhibited weaknesses which made it possible for opportunism to recapture it; weaknesses which only the Italian Left identified, as far back as 1920. It was the Italian Left which insisted on making the Conditions of Admission (1920) more rigid and which succeeded in getting some essential clarifications inserted into the 21 points; although it didn’t manage to have excluded the clause on “national peculiarities”, to which the Italian Maximalists would later have recourse to in their game of false support, which the leadership of the International accepted as sincere from 1921 when it proposed a possible review of the P.C.d ‘I’s irrevocable split from the Socialist Party that same year (see “Moscow and the Italian Question” in Rassegna Comunista, 1921).

Thus, throughout the 2^nd Congress still, the Left would express its doubts about notions of the “party as class fraction” and “democratic centralism” not out of any mania for literary purity, but because of the dangers that the inadequacy of these formulations expressed. At the same 2^nd Congress the Left would also oppose the tactic of revolutionary parliamentarism not just on the grounds that it was the wrong tactic for Western Europe, but also because it made it impossible to draw a definitive line of demarcation with the so-called “electionist communists”, i.e., the maximalists.

At the 3^rd Congress, the Left opposes the dubious formulation of “the conquest of the majority”, which, even if Trotski and Lenin’s interpretation of it was precise and correct, posed immense dangers for the young communist parties in the West. After 1921 the Left is opposed to the practice of mergers, of uniting parts of other parties with the communist party, holding that there can only be one party and that this can only be joined on an individual basis. The Left is thus also opposed to the practice of infiltrating communist fractions into other parties and calls for the organisational rules to be tightened up. In December 1921 the Theses on the United Front are adopted and the Left puts forward its well known reservations about them, even if it was actually the Left which first adopted the tactic of the united front from below in Italy. At the Rome Congress in 1922, the Left votes through the famous theses on tactics, in which is asserted the necessity for the International to predict and delimit tactical means, at least in its general outlines and as applicable over long timescales and large areas, with a view to preventing the bad practice, which would eventually become entrenched in the International, of fluctuating tactics and diktats based exclusively on knee-jerk reactions to changing situations.

The Rome Theses, which were proposed as a project for the International as a whole, would be criticised and rejected by the latter, and accused of “abstractionism” “schematism” and “formalism”, etc. It would therefore be absurd to say that the differences between the Left and the International were just secondary ones of a tactical nature. There were profound differences between the Left and the International on the overall question of how to formulate tactical problems in general. And the subsequent collapse of the International confirmed that, while it had managed to resolve the questions of principle and theory in a definitive manner, it hadn’t managed to set out the question of tactics in nearly as definitive and appropriate a way and through this open breech the new opportunism was able to pass. The material and historical reasons why this necessary systematisation of the tactical question wasn’t possible is clearly explained in our theses. The fact remains, however, that there was no systematisation despite the Left continually calling for it; and the Left would be accused of doctrinarism and abstractionism by the International precisely because it did call for it. Thus it would be just as inaccurate to maintain that the Bolshevik party in Russia continued to make every effort to formulate the International’s problems in a consistently Marxist manner, but found itself having to deal in the West with human material which, with the exception of the Left, refused to accept this correct formulation. On the contrary, it is clear that the Bolshevik party’s own situation, forced to fight on as an isolated power, influenced the way it formulated and resolved the International’s problems, dominated as it was by the pressing need for a revolutionary victory in the West at any cost. Thus the Bolshevik Party became more relaxed about accepting groups and fractions which weren’t absolutely Marxist; and having already opened a breach with the twenty one points and with the tactics of revolutionary parliamentarism, it widened it with its tactical wavering and wrong organisational practice, thus making it much more difficult in turn to form true communist parties in the West.

The Western communist parties, and the German and French ones in particular, remained full of reformists not for the stupid reason that the latter were hiding within the organisation and the Moscow centre lacked the repressive energy to expel them en masse, but because the boundaries of the organisation were becoming increasingly vague not in the sphere of disciplinary regulations and the screening of new recruits, but in the vital field of tactics and organisational norms; and such they would remain, in fact becoming even more vague, because the leadership of the International was betting everything on victory in neighbouring Germany and, in order to have a party capable of leading the insurgent proletariat, it widened the mesh of its organisational net even more. It widened its net not by forgetting to enforce checks on individual recruits, or by omitting to have individual militants undergo a rigid curriculum consisting of a progression from reader, listener, sympathiser to comrade (the way in which organisational rigidity might be best understood by “Lotta Comunista” type groups) but by neglecting the rule that people should only join the party as individuals; by making allowances for national differences; by bargaining over fusions and filterings of other groups; by throwing open the door to notorious right-wingers and centrists merely because they had some influence over the proletarian masses, and finally, by leaving tactical norms as a blank page. This practice ensured that, once the revolutionary movement had run out of steam, it found itself having to get to grips with parties which hadn’t progressed towards communism but were still imbued with a social democratic or even parliamentary mentality.

Let us then return to our correct formulation of the organisational questions. Our theses at no point say that the International’s weakness was in anyway due to a failure to launch a successful witch hunt against social democrats lurking in the communist parties. The social-democrats were able to ‘hide’ inside the communist parties because the International hadn’t made a clean break with parliamentary praxis; because it had endorsed fusions and blocs; because it denied that tactical norms should have set limits and not because there weren’t enough ‘inspectors’ to ‘supervise’ the sections. If the organisational and tactical physiognomy of the communist parties had been rendered sharper and clearer, the social democrats hiding in the organisation would have leapt out ‘organically’ of their own accord. If this adjustment, not in the field of discipline but in that of organisation and tactics, wasn’t possible, it was vain to seek a remedy for the lack of it in a tightening of disciplinary rules, a stiffening of penalties, and in expulsions. This is the Left’s battle.

QUOTATIONS

 123 – Draft Theses Presented by the Left at the 3^rd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyon Theses) – 1926
     II, 1 – The crisis in the 2^nd International caused by the world war has, with the constitution of the Communist International, been completely and definitively resolved as far as the restoration of revolutionary doctrine is concerned, whereas, from the organisational and tactical point of view, despite the formation of the Comintern certainly constituting an immense historical victory, the crisis in the proletarian movement has not been resolved to the same extent.
     A fundamental factor in the formation of the new International was the Russian Revolution, first glorious victory of the world proletariat. However, owing to the social conditions in Russia, the Russian revolution hasn’t provided the general historical model for revolutions in other countries on the tactical side. In it, in the transition from feudal autocratic power to the proletarian dictatorship, there was no epoch of political dominion by the bourgeois class, organised in its own exclusive and stable State apparatus.
     It is precisely for this reason that the historical confirmation of the conceptions of the Marxist programme in the Russian revolution has been of such enormous significance, and of such great use in routing social democratic revisionism in the realm of principles. In the organisational field, however, the struggle against the 2^nd International – an integral part of the struggle against global capitalism – hasn’t met with the same decisive success, and a multitude of errors has been committed which have resulted in the Communist parties not being as effective as objective conditions would have allowed.
     The same has to be said as regards the field of tactics, where many problems have not been resolved, and still haven’t been properly resolved today, in the sector where figure: bourgeoisie, modern bourgeois parliamentary state with a historically stable apparatus, proletariat; and the communist parties have not always derived all they could have from the proletarian offensive against capitalism and from the liquidation of the social democratic parties, i.e. the political organs of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.

     II, 4 – During the founding of the Comintern, the view that it was necessary to establish a vast concentration of revolutionary forces carried a lot of weight because it was predicted at the time that objective conditions would develop much more rapidly than they did. Nevertheless, in retrospect we can see that it would have been preferable to establish organisational criteria which were more rigorous. The formation of parties and the conquest of the masses has been favoured neither by making concessions to anarchist and syndicalist groups, nor by the small compromises made with the centrists allowed for in the 21 conditions; neither by organic fusions with parties or fractions of parties as a result of political ‘infiltration’, nor by tolerating in some countries a dual communist organisation alongside sympathiser parties. The watchword of organising the party on the basis of factory cells, launched after the 5^th congress, hasn’t achieved its aim of remedying the glaring defects concordantly observed in the various sections of the International.

     III, 4 – The Rome Congress, held in March 1922, crystallized a theoretical divergence between the Italian Left and the majority of the International. It was a divergence which had been expressed before, rather badly, by our delegations to the 3^rd World Congress and the Enlarged Executive of February 1922, where, especially on the first occasion, some errors of the infantilist variety were certainly committed. The Rome Theses would constitute the happy theoretical and political liquidation of any peril of left-wing opportunism in the Italian Party.
     As far as Party practice was concerned the only divergence with the international was over what tactic to adopt towards the maximalists, but such divergences appeared resolved by the unitary results which emerged from the socialist Congress in October 1921.
     The Rome Theses were adopted as a contribution by the party to the International’s decision-making and not as an immediate line of action; this was confirmed by the party directorate at the Enlarged Executive of 1922, and we didn’t embark on a theoretical debate precisely out of discipline to the International and its ruling against it.
     In August 1922, however, the International didn’t interpret the various factors in the same way as the Party directorate, but reckoned that the Italian situation was unstable in the sense of the State’s weakened resistance and thought of reinforcing the party on the basis of a fusion with the maximalists considering as the decisive factor not the lessons learnt during the vast strike manoeuvre in August, but the split between the maximalists and the Unitarians.
     It is from this moment that the two political lines diverge in a definitive way. At the 4^th World Congress in December 1922, the old Directorate opposed the majority thesis and, on their return to Italy, the delegates would pass the matter over to the merger Commission, unanimously declining to take any responsibility for the decision, though of course retaining their administrative functions.
     Then came the arrests in February 1923 and the big offensive against the party; finally during the Enlarged Executive meeting in June 1923 the old executive was deposed and completely replaced and several party leaders would simply resign as a logical consequence. In May 1924, a party consultative conference would still give the Left an overwhelming majority over the Centre and the Right and thus it would attend the 5^th World Congress in 1924.

124 – Nature, Function and Tactics of the Working Class Revolutionary Party – 1947
     As a result of the Russian Revolution, the Third International responded to this disastrous direction for the workers’ movement. It must however be said, that if the restoration of revolutionary values was impressive and complete as far as doctrinal principals, theoretical training and the central question of state power were concerned, the systematic organization of the new International and training in its tactics and that of its member parties was, on the contrary, not similarly complete.
     The critique of the opportunists of the Second International was nevertheless absolute and decisive, not only with regard to their total abandonment of Marxist principles, but also with regard to their tactic of coalition and collaboration with bourgeois governments and parties.
     It was made abundantly clear that the particularist and temporary direction given to the old socialist parties had not led in the slightest to assuring the workers of small benefits and material improvements in exchange for the renunciation of preparing and carrying out the total attack on bourgeois institutions and power. Instead, by compromising both the minimum and maximum programs it led to an even worse situation, i.e. the use of proletarians’ organizations, forces, combativity, personnel and lives to achieve goals that were not the political and historical goals of their class, but led instead to the strengthening of capitalist imperialism. During the war capitalist imperialism had thus overcome, for at least an entire historical phase, the intrinsic threat posed by the contradictions of its productive mechanism, and had also overcome the political crisis wrought by the war and its repercussions by means of the subjugation to itself of the trade union and political formations of the opposing class, by means of the politics of national coalitions.
     This amounted, according to Leninist critique, to a complete distortion of the role and function of the proletarian party, which is not there to save the bourgeois fatherland or the institutions of so-called bourgeois freedom from declared dangers, but to keep the workers’ forces deployed on the movement’s own general line of direction, which must culminate in the total conquest of political power, breaking the bourgeois State.
     In the war’s immediate aftermath, when the so-called subjective conditions for the revolution (i.e. the effectiveness of the organization and parties of the proletariat) seemed unfavorable, but the objective conditions appeared to be favorable, as the crisis of the bourgeois world was fully exposed, the task was to improve the subjective conditions through the prompt reorganization of the revolutionary International.
     The process was dominated, as it must be, by the great historical reality of the first working class revolutionary victory in Russia, which had made it possible to bring broad communist aims into the clear light of day. But it would draw the tactics of communist parties, which in other countries brought together groups of socialists opposed to the wartime opportunism, into direct imitation of the tactics victoriously applied in Russia by the Bolshevik party in its conquest of power through the historic struggle from February to November 1917.
     From the outset this approach gave rise to important debates about the tactical methods of the International, and especially the one called the „united front”, consisting of frequent invitations to other proletarian and socialist parties to joint agitation and action, with the goal of highlighting the inadequacy of the method of those parties and moving their traditional influence over the masses to the advantage of the communists.
     In fact, despite the open warnings of the Italian Left and other oppositionist groups, the leaders of the International did not realize that this tactic of the united front, by pushing revolutionary organizations alongside social-democratic, social-patriotic and opportunist organizations, from which they were hardly distinguishable as an inflexible opposition, not only would disorient the masses, rendering the advantages that they were expecting from this tactic impossible, but would – which was even more serious – pollute the revolutionary parties themselves. It is true that the revolutionary party is the best and the least constrained factor in history, but it does not cease to be at the same time a product of history, and undergoes mutations and repositionings with every modification of social forces. We cannot think of the tactical problem as the handling of a weapon, which, pointed in whatever direction, stays the same; the tactics of the party influence and change the party itself. If no tactic can be condemned in the name of a priori dogmas, as a precondition every tactic must be analyzed and discussed in the light of a question such as this: in earning an eventual greater influence of the party over the masses, won’t the character of the party be compromised, together with its ability to lead these masses to the final objective?
     The adoption of the united front tactic on the part of the Third International meant, in reality, that also the Communist International entered on the path of opportunism that had led the Second International to defeat and liquidation. Characteristic of the opportunist tactic had been the sacrifice of the final and total victory to partial and contingent successes; the tactic of the united front revealed itself as opportunistic, as in reality it sacrificed the primary and irreplaceable guarantee of the total and final victory (the revolutionary potential of the class party) to contingent action that should have assured momentary and partial advantages to the proletariat (increasing the influence of the party over the masses and greater compactness of the proletariat in the struggle for the gradual improvement of its material conditions and for the maintenance of any actual achievements).
     In the situation after the First World War, which appeared objectively revolutionary, the leadership of the International became guided by the concern – which was not unfounded – of finding itself unprepared and poorly followed within the masses at the outbreak of a general European movement that could lead to the conquest of power in some of the large capitalist countries. The possibility of a rapid collapse of the capitalist world was so important for the Leninist International, which today we understand as the hope of being able to direct vaster masses in the struggle for the European revolution, that it was too free in the acceptance of the adherence of movements that were not true communist parties and it searched, in the elastic tactic of the united front, to maintain contact with the masses who were outside the hierarchy of parties oscillating between conservatism and revolution.
     If the favorable outcome has occurred, the consequences for the politics and the economy of the first proletarian power in Russia would have been sufficiently powerful to allow the very rapid restoration of the national and international organizations of the communist parties.
     Given that the less favorable outcome had occurred, i.e. the re-establishment of capitalism, instead of this the revolutionary proletariat had to resume the struggle and the course with a movement which, having sacrificed its own clear political preparation and its own homogeneity of composition and organization, was exposed to new opportunist degenerations.
     But the mistake that opened the Third International’s doors to the new and more serious opportunist wave was not just a mistake in calculating the future likelihood of the proletariat becoming revolutionary; it was a mistake of preparation and of historical interpretation consisting in the desire to generalize the experiences and methods of Russian bolshevism, applying them to countries with a much more advanced bourgeois and capitalist civilization. The Russia that existed before February 1917 was still a feudal Russia in which the capitalist productive forces were held back under the weight of old relations of production: it was obvious that in this situation, similar to that of France in 1789 and Germany in 1848, the proletarian party had to fight against Tsarism even if it seemed impossible to avoid the consequence that after its overthrow, a bourgeois capitalist regime would establish itself; and as a consequence it was likewise obvious that the Bolshevik party could accept contacts with other political groupings, contacts made necessary by the struggle against Tsarism. Between February and October 1917, the Bolshevik party observed that the objective conditions were favorable for a much more ambitious project: that of grafting the revolutionary conquest of power by the proletariat on the destruction of Tsarism. It therefore hardened its tactical positions, adopting open and ruthless positions against all the other political formations, from the reactionary advocates of a return to Tsarism and feudalism, to the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. But the fact that an effective return of reactionary absolutist and theocratic feudalism could be feared, and the fact that the state and political formations in the hands of, or influenced by, the bourgeoisie no longer had the strength and capacity to attract and absorb autonomous proletarian forces in the extremely fluid and unstable situation, put the Bolshevik Party in a position to be able to accept contacts and provisional accords with other organizations having a proletarian following, as happened during the Kornilov episode.
     The Bolshevik Party, in building the united front against Kornilov, was in reality struggling against a return of reactionary feudalism and, moreover, it had nothing to fear in terms of succumbing to the influence of the greater strength of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary organizations, nor in terms of a solid state power benefiting from the contingent alliance with the Bolsheviks in order to then turn against them.
     The situation and the balance of forces were completely different in the countries with an advanced bourgeois culture. In these countries one could no longer imagine (and all the more so today) the prospect of a reactionary return to feudalism, and therefore every possible objective of common action with other parties is absent. Moreover, in these countries state power and bourgeois groupings were consolidated in their success and the tradition of dominion to such an extent that you could well predict that the autonomous organizations of the proletariat, if pushed towards frequent and close contacts for the united front tactic, would be exposed to an almost inevitable influence and absorption by those bourgeois forces.
     Ignoring this profound difference between the situations, and wanting to apply the Bolsheviks’ tactical methods in the advanced countries, which were adapted to the situation of the nascent bourgeois regime in Russia, led the Communist International into a series of ever greater disasters, and finally to its inglorious liquidation.
     The tactic of the united front was driven into making commitments that were different from the party’s program on the problem of the state, supporting the demand for, and realization of, workers’ governments, and therefore of governments formed from mixed delegations of communists and social democrats, who came together in power via the normal parliamentary routes, without violently breaking the bourgeois state apparatus. Such talk of workers’ government was presented at the 5th Congress of the Communist International as the logical and natural corollary of the united front; and it was applied in Germany, resulting in a serious defeat for the German proletariat and its communist party.

125 – Characteristic Theses of the Party (Florence Theses) – 1951

     lll.6 – The Third International arises on a basis that is both anti-social democratic and anti-social patriotic.
     Not only throughout the whole of the proletarian International are no alliances entered into with other parties to wield parliamentary power; more than that, it is denied that power can be conquered, even in an “intransigent” way, just by the proletarian party through legal means, and the need is reasserted, amidst the ruins of capitalism’s peaceful phase, for armed violence and dictatorship.
     Not only are no alliances entered into with governments at war even in the case of “defensive“ wars, and class opposition kept up even during war; more than that, every effort is made, by means of defeatist propaganda at the front, to turn the imperialistic war between States into a civil war between classes.

     III. 7 – The response to the first wave of opportunism was the formula: no electoral, parliamentary or ministerial alliances to obtain reforms.
     The response to the second wave was another tactical formula: no war alliances (since 1871) with the State and bourgeoisie.
     Delayed reactions would prevent the critical turning point of 1914-18 being turned to advantage by engaging in a wide-scale struggle for defeatism in war and for the destruction of the bourgeois State.

     III.8 – One great exception is the victory in Russia in October 1917. Russia was the only major European State still ruled by a feudal power where penetration by capitalist forms of production was weak. In Russia there was a party, not large but with a tradition firmly anchored in Marxism, which had not only opposed the two consecutive waves of opportunism in the Second International, but which at the same time, after the great trials of 1905, was up to posing the problems of how to graft two revolutions, the bourgeois and the proletarian, together.
     In February 1917 this party struggles alongside others against Tsarism, then immediately afterwards not only against the bourgeois liberal parties but also against the opportunist proletarian parties, and it defeats them all. What is more, it then becomes the centre of the reconstitution of the revolutionary International.

     III.11 – Evidence of the pressing need to accelerate the taking of power in Europe, to prevent the violent collapse of the Soviet State or else its involution into a capitalistic state in a few years at the very most, appeared as soon as bourgeois society consolidated after the serious shock of the First World War. But the communist parties didn’t manage to take power, except in a few attempts which were rapidly crushed, and this led them to ask themselves what they could do to counter the fact that large sections of the proletariat were still prey to social democratic and opportunistic influences.
     There were two conflicting methods: the one which considered the parties of the Second International, which were openly conducting an unremitting struggle both against the communist programme and against revolutionary Russia, as open enemies, and struggled against them as the most dangerous part of the bourgeois front – and the other which relied on expedients to reduce the influence of the social democratic parties over the masses to the advantage of the communist party, using strategic and tactical ”manoeuvres“.

     III.12 – To justify the latter method the experiences of the Bolshevik policy in Russia were misapplied, departing from the correct historical line. The offer of alliances with petit-bourgeois and even bourgeois parties was justified historically by the fact that the Tsarist power, by banning all of these movements, forced them to engage in insurrectional struggle. In Europe, on the other hand, the only common actions which were proposed, even as a manoeuvre, were ones respectful of legality, whether within the trade-unions or within parliament. In Russia, the phase of liberal parliamentarism had been very short (in 1905 and a few months in 1917) and it was the same as far as legal recognition of the trade union movement was concerned. In the rest of Europe, meanwhile, half a century of degeneration of the proletarian movement had made these two fields of action propitious terrain on which to dull revolutionary energies and corrupt the workers’ leaders. The guarantee which lay in the Bolshevik Party’s solidity of organisation and principle was not the same as the guarantee offered by the existence of the state power in Moscow, which due to social conditions and international relations was more liable, as history has showed, to succumb to a renunciation of revolutionary principles and policy.

     III.14 – Between 1921 and 1926, increasingly opportunistic versions of the International’s tactical method were imposed at its congresses (third, fourth, fifth and at the Enlarged Executive Committee in 1926). At the root of the method was the simple formula: alter the tactics to fit the circumstances. By means of so-called analyses, every six months or so new stages of capitalism were identified and new manoeuvres proposed to address them. This is essentially revisionism, which has always been ‘voluntarist’; in other words, when it realised its predictions about the advent of socialism hadn’t come true, it decided to force the pace of history with a new praxis; but in so doing it also ceased to struggle for the proletarian and socialist objectives of our maximum programme. Back in 1900 the reformists said that the circumstances ruled out all possibility of insurrection. We shouldn’t expect the impossible, they said, let us work instead to win elections and to change the law, and to make economic gains via the trades unions. And when this method failed it provoked a reaction from the essentially voluntarist anarcho-syndicalist current, who blamed party politics and politics in general, predicting that change would come through the effort of bold minorities in a general strike, led by the trade unions alone. Similarly, the Communist International, once it saw the West-European proletariat wasn’t going to fight for the dictatorship, preferred to rely on substitutes as a way of getting through the impasse. And what came of all this, once capitalist equilibrium had been restored, was that it neither modified the objective situation nor the balance of power, but did weaken and corrupt the workers’ movement; just as had happened when the impatient revisionists of right and left ended up in the service of the bourgeoisie in the war coalitions. All the theoretical preparation and the restoration of revolutionary principles was sabotaged by confusing the communist programme of taking power by revolutionary means with the accession of so-called ‘kindred’ governments by means of support and participation in parliament and bourgeois cabinets by communists; in Saxony and Thuringia it would end in farce, where two policemen were enough to overthrow the government’s communist leader.

     III.15 – Internal organisation was subjected to similar confusion, and the difficult task of sorting out revolutionary members from opportunist ones in the various parties and countries would be compromised. It was believed that new party members, more amenable to co-operating with the centre, could be procured by wresting away entire left wings of the old social democratic parties (whereas in fact, once the new International had gone through its initial period of formation, it needed to function permanently as the world party and only have new converts joining its national sections on an individual basis). Wanting to win over large groups of workers, deals were struck instead with the leaders and the movement’s cadres were thrown into disorder, and dissolved and recombined during periods of active struggle. Recognising Fractions and groups within the opportunist parties as ‘communist’, they would be absorbed by means of organisational mergers; thus almost all of the parties, instead of preparing for the struggle, were kept in a state of permanent crisis. Lacking continuity of action and with no clear boundaries set between friend and foe, they would register one failure after another, and on an international scale. The Left lays claim to organisational unicity and continuity.

126 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable – 1965
     14 – (…) Having also missed this historic chance to save, if not the revolution, at least the core of its historical party, today we are starting from scratch in a situation which is objectively torpid and indifferent, among a proletariat infected to the marrow by petty-bourgeois democraticism. But the nascent organisation, which utilizes all of the traditional doctrine and praxis established over the years as history proves its timely forecasts to be correct, also applies it in its day to day practice, seeking to re-establish ever wider contacts with the exploited masses, and it eliminates from its own structure one of the parting errors of the Moscow International, by getting rid of democratic centralism and the application of any voting mechanism, just as it has eliminated from the ideology of every last one of its members any concession to democratic, pacifist, autonomist or libertarian trends.

127 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965

     3 – As regards the subsequent period in the life of the new International, the correct theoretical diagnosis and historical prediction of new opportunist dangers slowly emerging during the early years of the new International form an enduring heritage of the Communist Left. The point will be developed with the historical method, avoiding any heavy theorising. The first manifestations denounced and opposed by the Left appeared in the tactical sphere apropos of the relations to be established with the old parties of the Second International, from which the communists had been separated organizationally by means of splits; and consequently also in wrong measures in the realm of organizational structure.
     By 1921 it could already be seen that the great revolutionary surge which followed the end of the war in 1918 was petering out, and that capitalism would attempt to counter-attack on both the economic and the political fronts. Faced with this prospect, the 3^rd Congress had correctly noted that it was not enough to have formed communist parties firmly committed to the programme of violent action, proletarian dictatorship and the communist State if a large part of the proletarian masses were still amenable to the influence of the opportunist parties; who were considered by all of us at the time as the worst instruments of bourgeois counter-revolution, their hands stained with Karl and Rosa’s blood. And yet the Communist Left, while continuing to deplore Blanquist initiatives by small parties, didn’t accept that the winning over of the „majority” of the proletariat was the condition for revolutionary action either (besides which one never quite knew whether it was the true wage-earning proletariat being referred to or the „people”, understood to include property owning peasants, micro-capitalists, artisans, and the rest of the petty-bourgeois). This formula of the „majority” with its democratic aroma would trigger a first warning, later proved to be fully justified, that opportunism could arise again, introduced under the familiar banner of homage to the deadly concepts of democracy and electoral balance sheets.
     From the time of the 4^th Congress at the end of 1922 onwards, the Left would stand by its pessimistic forecast as and continue its vigorous struggle against dangerous tactics (united front of communist and socialist parties, the „workers’ government” slogan) and organisational errors (by which the International attempted to increase the size of the parties not just with the proletarians flocking to join them after abandoning the parties whose programme, activity and structure were social-democratic, but by means of fusions which admitted entire parties or portions of parties following negotiations with their headquarters, and even by allowing the so-called „sympathizer” parties to join the Comintern as national sections, a clear error due to its federalistic slant. In a third direction, the Left denounces, and ever more vigorously as the years go by, the looming danger of opportunism. This third issue concerns the internal functioning of the International, and the methods used by the centre, represented by the Moscow Executive, against parties or sections of parties which had made errors of political judgement; methods involving not only „ideological terror” but above all organizational pressure which constitutes a misapplication of, and leads to a total falsification of, the correct principles of centralization and of discipline admitting of no exceptions (…)

     10 – Returning to the early years of the Communist International, we will recall that its Russian leaders, who had behind them not only a thorough knowledge of Marxist doctrine and history, but also the outstanding outcome of the October revolutionary victory, conceived of theses such as Lenin’s as binding on all, although acknowledging that in the course of the international party’s life there was room for further elaboration. They never asked for them to be put to the vote because everything was accepted by unanimous agreement and spontaneously confirmed by everyone on the periphery of the organization; which in those glorious years was living in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and even of triumph.
     The Left didn’t disagree with these generous ambitions, but held that, in order to achieve the outcomes all of us dreamt about, the communist party, sole and undivided, needed to have some of its organisational and constitutional measures tightened up and made more rigorous, and likewise its tactical norms clarified.
     As soon as a certain relaxation in these vital areas started to emerge, denounced by us to the great Lenin himself, it started to produce harmful effects, and we were forced to meet reports with counter-reports, theses with counter-theses.
     Unlike other opposition groups, even those formed in Russia and the trotskist current itself, we always carefully avoided having our work within the International take the form of calls for democratic, electoral consultations of the party membership as a whole, or for the election of steering committees (…)
     In the very early years the Left hoped the organizational and tactical concessions might be justified by the fecundity of the historical moment and have only temporary value, since Lenin’s prospect was one of major revolutions in central and maybe western Europe, and after these the line would return to the clear and all-encompassing one which was in keeping with the vital principles. But the more that such a hope came to be gradually replaced by the certainty we were heading for opportunistic ruin – which inevitably assumed its classic form of glorification and exaltation of democratic and electoral intrigue – the more the Left conducted its historical defence without undermining its mistrust of the democratic mechanism.

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Ch. 4 DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM AND ORGANIC CENTRALISM

The quotations we have cited provide evidence that the difference between democratic centralism and organic centralism is not merely “terminological”. Today it is customary to declare that, in the party, “democratic centralism and organic centralism is the same thing”, that we “suggested calling centralism organic in order to define the term more precisely”, and that everything, in the end, can be reduced to the call for “unqualified centralism”. Organic centralism is just taken to mean, surrounded as we are by a putrescent capitalism, that we need a centralism which is yet more rigid than the Bolshevik Party’s. And the need for a “more rigid” centralism is said to have dictated our position on the elimination of democratic processes as a means of internal consultation. This may be summed up as follows: democratic centralism implies a less complete centralism, because it is invalidated by the need for periodic consultation of the rank-and-file; organic centralism implies ‘absolute centralism’ insofar as no longer is anyone consulted and all decisions are referred to the leading centre whose power is absolute and whose decision is final. In short: democratic centralism, minus democratic processes, equals organic centralism. It remains to be explained why we were capable of doing this subtraction sum whereas the parties of the 2^nd International used the mechanisms of internal democracy. It is obvious that the parties of the 2^nd International must have a different dynamic, a different way of proceeding, of existing, of developing to us, and indeed to the 3^rd International; but whereas the Bolsheviks, let’s say in 1903 or 1905, had to theorise the formula ‘democratic centralism’ and adopt within their organisation the machinery of elective democracy, we can say today that in our party we have rid ourselves of the latter for ever, after having advised the Communist International that they could do without it as well.

An initial distinction, embedded within all of our theses, should be made between democratic mechanisms posed as a ‘matter of principle’, and their necessary use by the party in a particular historical period. We have already established that Lenin attributed no inherent value to democracy either inside or outside the party; in fact whenever he could, and whenever necessary, he didn’t hesitate to transgress it and stamp it underfoot; but in order to build the party organisation, he was obliged to use it as an ‘circumstantial mechanism’ with all its statutory, formalistic and bureaucratic baggage. As for us, we not only never attributed any value to it ‘as a principle’, but we have rid ourselves of it for good, along with all the attendant rubbish about its use as an instrument for building the party. In 1920 we proposed that we no longer say we subscribed to the principle of “democratic centralism” since democracy is not a principle we can ever uphold, while centralism is one we surely can.

The correct formulation should have been: a centralism which may also use democratic procedures as a useful practical mechanism. In 1965 we established that not only we don’t want the principle of democracy, but that we don’t consider its machinery to be of any use either, and we jettisoned the lot for good. It is not a case of countering a very strict centralism to one that is less strict, thereby arriving at the aberrant conclusion that, organic or not, we are pro-centralism, of whatever sort. Democratic centralism, in fact, was not less strict at all, but was rather centralisation of party action obtained through the use of democratic processes. And organic centralism is not centralism which is ‘stricter’, but is centralisation obtained without the use of democratic processes. Informed as we are today not only by our theses but also by Lenin’s (What is to be Done? One Step Forward, Two Steps Back), when we talk about democratic processes we are obliged to refer not only to periodic consultations of the rank-and-file but also the whole of the paraphernalia connected with it, i.e., sovereign deliberative congresses, statutes, rules, bureaucratic machinery, expulsions, repression of a legalistic nature as the party’s mode of existence, choice or election of particular comrades, etc, etc.

Bureaucracy and democracy are not antithetical terms but are dialectically and intimately connected. This is clearly spelled out in all our writings. The consequence of expelling democracy from our organisation is therefore that bureaucracy has been expelled from it as well. If we had kept bureaucracy, then sooner or later internal democracy would have crept back in.

The practice of democratic centralism was both appropriate and necessary for the parties of the 2^nd International insofar as they effectively proceeded on a basis which was not completely homogeneous, through a clash of opposed currents and fractions who frequently disagreed not only over tactics but about the programme as well. It was a case of different currents, expressing different class interests, converging within the party organisation, and despite finding some points of agreement in common still disagreeing on others, with no real possibility of reconciliation. At the beginning of the century it was clear to Lenin and to every revolutionary that the revisionists and the Mensheviks were expressing the influence of the reformist worker-aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie inside the proletarian party. The party was thus the product of the convergence of various strata and hence of various tactics, even if a common goal was supposedly recognised by all. The party organisation would thus end up divided into divergent currents not just occasionally, but physiologically, as a general rule. Internal political struggle therefore became a way of life for these parties, in fact the way of life. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks engage in a struggle to gain control of the party because there are two tactical lines which stand in opposition to each other: the revolutionary and the reformist wing, which are to be found within all of the socialist and social-democratic parties. But in order to prevent the internal struggle from immobilising the party’s practical struggle, the party had to be regulated by a legal mechanism which was accepted and recognised by all; the duties and rights of the ‘majority’ and the ‘minority’ had to be defined. Since unity of the practical movement is always a consequence of unity at a tactical level and since the tactical lines the party follows are always at least two, the only way of getting the party to follow a single line in practice is through the predomination of one line over the other through the convocation of democratic congresses which are “arenas of struggle” for one current to triumph over the other. The hierarchy which emerges from these congresses, in which a ‘majority’ and a ‘minority’ are formed, inevitably takes on a bureaucratic character because it does not represent the whole of the party, but the victory of one part of the party over the other.

The party centre, to gain respect for its orders, is unable to refer to a patrimony of tactical norms which are shared by the party as a whole, are publicly available, and are accepted by all militants but necessarily has to refer to resolutions having legal value insofar as they are the expression of the opinion of the majority; he must refer back to statutes, congressional resolutions, etc. Through democratic resolutions at the congresses is thus created a bureaucratic hierarchy, which derives its power from the congress’s decisions and from statutes which nobody can break under pain of incurring sanctions, up to and including expulsion. The men who lead the party and fill the various offices are chosen at congress, but not on the basis of whether they are capable or not of filling a particular role, but according to whether or not they subscribe to a particular political line. And thus they must be well-known, named individuals; they must in a certain sense wear a special badge to identify themselves. All militants, belonging to both the victorious and defeated wings at the congress, must observe absolute discipline to the orders of that particular man, with that particular badge.

The Communist International, founded on the homogeneous basis of the Marxist doctrine and programme, of clearly stated unitary principles and of unique aims, would have no further need this praxis and these mechanisms to the extent it progressed towards a delimitation of tactical means and regularised the organisational measures it took. The International began to overcome democratic praxis and replace it with an ‘organic’ one in many sectors, as is clearly explained in our Notes on the Question of Organisation. But it didn’t manage to overcome it completely because the communist parties had not been formed and were still not being formed on a completely homogeneous basis, to the extent that one single tactic for the International as a whole was never established and ‘national particularities’ and organisational mergers would be allowed. The way the International had been formed was influenced by the Bolshevik’s view that a European revolution was imminent, and that in order to lead this revolution what was needed was not an organisation which was completely homogeneous but one capable of leading the proletarian attack. The Left, while it yielded to this perspective considered valid by all, urged that the residual democratic praxis inside the parties and the International should not to be elevated to the level of principle, but be considered merely as a ‘circumstantial mechanism’, whereas the real building of the party would come about by following an organic method founded on the achievement of ever greater homogeneity in the tactical and organisational fields. If the International had taken this path, the effect in the organisational sphere would have been the elimination of what democratic machinery and internal bureaucracy still remained.

As a consequence the party resurrected during the Second World War did no more than draw conclusions from a process which had been initiated back in 1919 and which the collapse of the International had interrupted and reversed. In the world communist party, based on a theory which is unique and recognised as valid and unchanging all of its members, on principles and goals that are unique, and on a single programme and a set of tactical norms deduced from principles and rendered the patrimony of all militants; in the communist party which rejects the practice of fusions, infiltrations of other parties, and ‘national and local exceptions’, but which admits members solely and exclusively as individuals, there is no longer a place for either democracy or bureaucracy; no longer a place for ‘choosing from lists of comrades and voting on general theses’; no longer a place for the struggle between currents and fractions, that is, for internal political struggle.

The rank-and-file’s obedience to the centre’s orders is no longer guaranteed by observing the articles of a statute or a code, but by making sure the orders are in line with the party’s common patrimony. The party hierarchy no longer has to be elected by the rank-and-file, nor nominated from above, because the sole criterion for selection remains that of capacity to carry out the party organ’s various functions. The fact that one individual happens to be at the centre rather than another won’t change the party’s political line or its tactics: it may affect the centre’s effectiveness to a greater or lesser degree, but the appointment of the comrades most suited to the various roles still remains something that is ‘natural and spontaneous’, with no need for a particular form of ratification. The party hierarchy thus becomes an organic rather than a political hierarchy. The party is composed of various organs and roles, which in order to function require actual people; but these people are no longer asked whether they are Mensheviks or Bolsheviks, whether they belong to the right or left of the party. They are asked only if they are able to fill the role required of them by the party, however high or low it may figure in the hierarchical order. And, as a consequence, it is no longer crucial to know which individual is giving the orders, but only to insist that the orders don’t conflict with the party’s traditional line upheld by all of its members, that they don’t depart from it, and that the orders are timely and relevant. That is to say, the requirement is that whoever carries out the ‘central’ function performs it to the best of their ability in conformity with the party line. And the internal life of the party no longer manifests as a constant battle between divergent currents, that is, as a political struggle to dominate the organisation’s central power and impose a particular tactical line on it. Given that we don’t argue about our doctrine, programme or core tactics, it means that internal relations assume the form of a joint, shared work which all party members participate in, the common aim being, on the basis of their shared patrimony, to seek the best solutions to the various problems that arise.

The movement’s theoretical cornerstones have to be made clearer and clearer, its tactical lines have to be honed more and more and, in the light of the common principals, common tactics and examination of the situations in which the Party finds it has to act, complex problems regarding practical action have to be resolved and the most efficient organisational tools to co-ordinate the party’s activity as a whole have to be found. What is more, we have to work towards acquiring the entire practical and theoretical patrimony of the movement and transmit it to new generations of militants. None of this takes place by means of confrontations and congresses or consultations to solicit opinions; it occurs as a result of a rational and scientific search for solutions, it being clearly understood that whatever they are they mustn’t transgress the boundaries the party has set itself in all fields.

On this basis, even the mistakes which a particular party organ, including the ‘central’ organ, may make in the course of providing a solution to a given problem doesn’t entail that the individuals concerned have to be condemned or replaced, but rather a common search for what caused the mistake, in the light of our doctrine and our tactical norms. Certainly there may be more than one answer to a given tactical problem. In this case there may be temporary and localised disagreement between groups of militants over the issue. But even in this case it is not a situation of political struggle which is thereby created, because the fundamental requirement is always that, whichever of the two solutions is adopted, it will not conflict with the principles and main tactical lines established by the party. That the party adopts the most appropriate solution to the problems it faces is entrusted not to a consultation of the majority, or an assumed infallibility on the part of the central organ or leader, but rather to the developing and deepening of the party’s work and hence of its experience in every field of theory as much as in its practical activity.

The party’s tactical, programmatic and theoretical homogeneity is certainly not something that is given once and for all; it has to be maintained and defended in everything the party does. If at a given moment the party’s action were to contradict this homogeneous patrimony (which may happen under the weight of unfavourable external situations or because the party was unable to meet the demands of the situation and carry out its task) then the effect at the organisational level will necessarily be the creation of internal dissension, currents, and even fractions. As a classic thesis of ours states, such a state of malaise in the party must indicate that “something has gone wrong in the work and the general running of the party”, “that some aspect of the party’s activity is wrong or misaligned with the foundations on which the party rests”, and a remedy should be sought not through ‘bureaucratic’ repression of the dissension, not through invoking “discipline for discipline’s sake” which only represents a temporary and partial solution of the problem, but through the clarification of what the cornerstones of the party are, through objective research and by the reproposal to the organisation as a whole of those nodal points of theory and praxis which dictate the party’s action. The line of continuity which links the party’s past to its present and to its future will need to be identified and the directives regarding action adjusted to fit in with this line and militants called upon to accept discipline on this basis.

The petty bourgeoisie will, of course, make the following objection: who can stop individuals from doing what they want, who disobey because in every individual, including party militants, there lurks the germ of individualism, of self-celebration, of anarchism, etc? Who can stop people from raising problems just for sake of raising them or being critical? 50 years ago the Left had already replied to objections of this type, and it goes something like this: in an organized body such as the party, which is formed on the basis of a voluntary commitment to take a shared stand which involves long-term combativeness and sacrifice, such manifestations of individuality have to remain rare exceptions, and as such may even be repressed by bureaucratic means; but if these manifestations develop and multiply instead of dwindling and gradually disappearing it means that something about the party’s complex activity and the way it is run by the centre isn’t right; if only because, instead of attracting sound individuals prepared to relinquish their own individualist itches, it begins to attract fops and windbags. And the solution to this, too, is found not just in chasing out the windbags, but rather in finding out why the party organ is attracting them in the first place; and the remedy lies in rendering the physiognomy of the party even clearer and more precise in all its practical and theoretical manifestations, such that it serves to discourage any adherence except from those who are disposed to become genuine revolutionary militants.

As far as the Left is concerned, the solution can never be to have more bureaucratic barbed wire and organisational repression, which, as we have always said, we can very well do without, for the same reason we can do without headcounts.

QUOTATIONS

128 – The Democratic Principle – 1922
     (…) The democratic criterion so far has been for us an incidental material factor in the construction of our internal organization and in the formulation of our party statutes; it is not their indispensable platform. We will not, therefore, raise the organizational formula known as „democratic centralism” to the level of a principle. Democracy cannot be a principle for us: centralism indisputably is, since the essential characteristics of party organization must be unity of structure and action. In order to express the continuity of party structure in space, the term centralism is sufficient, but in order to introduce the essential idea of continuity in time – the historical continuity of the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances towards the same goal – we will propose saying, linking these two essential ideas of unity together, that the communist party bases its organization on „organic centralism„. Thus, while preserving as much of the incidental democratic mechanism as may be of use to us, we will eliminate the use of the term „democracy”, so dear to the worst demagogues but tainted with irony for the exploited, oppressed and cheated, abandoning it to the exclusive usage of the bourgeoisie and the champions of liberalism, who appear in various guises, sometimes extremist.

129 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the P.C.d’I (Rome Theses) – 1922
     3. – The precise definition of the theoretical and critical consciousness of the communist movement, contained in the programmatic declarations of individual parties and of the Communist International, as well as the organization of the one and the other, was and still is being arrived at through the examination and study of the history of human society and its structure in the present capitalist epoch, carried out on the basis of facts, experience and through active participation in the actual proletarian struggle.
     4. The announcement of these programmatic declarations, and the appointment of the men to whom are entrusted the various positions in the party organization, is formally carried out by means of a consultation, democratic in form, of the party’s representative assemblies, but in reality they must be understood as a product of the real process which accumulates elements of experience and realizes the preparation and selection of leaders, thus shaping both the programmatic content and the hierarchical constitution of the party.

130 –  Theses of the Left at the III Congress del P.C.d’I. (Lyon Theses) – 1926
     II. 5 – (…) The communist parties must achieve 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.

131 – Notes for the Theses on the Question of Organisation – 1964
     2. – The formula quoted above is in Point 14 of Zinoviev’s theses, and is formulated thus: “The Communist Party has to be based on a democratic centralisation. The constitution by means of elections of secondary Committees, the obligatory submission of all committees to the committee above them, and the existence of a Centre equipped with full powers, whose authority, in the interval between Congresses, may be contested by no-one; such are the principles of democratic centralisation”.
     These theses don’t go into greater detail and, as regards the concept of subordination of the periphery to the Centre, the Left had no reason not to accept them. The doubts arose over the manner of nominating the Committees from the periphery to the Centre and the use of the electoral mechanism of vote counting, to which the adjective democratic evidently makes reference, as opposed to the noun centralism (…)
     12. – When the Communist Left developed its critique of the 3^rd International’s deviations on the question of tactics further, it also made a critique of the organizational criteria, and subsequent historical events have shown how those deviations led to the fatal abandonment of key programmatic and theoretical positions (…)
     What our formula organic centralism really wanted to express was not just that the party is a particular organ of the class, but also that it is only when the party exists that the class acts as a historical organized body, and not as a statistical section that any bourgeois would be quite prepared to accept. Marx, in Lenin’s historically fundamental and irrevocable reconstruction, not only said that he didn’t discover classes, but that he didn’t discover class struggle either, indicating as the identifying feature of his original theory the dictatorship of the proletariat: that is to say that only by means of the communist party can the proletariat achieve its dictatorship. The two notions of party and class therefore do not stand opposed to each other in a numerical sense, the party being small and the class large, but historically and organically; because only when on class terrain there has formed the energizing organ that is the party does the class actually become such, and start to complete the task which our doctrine of history assigns to it.
     13. – Replacing the adjective democratic with the adjective organic isn’t merely justified by the greater exactness of a biological image compared to a lifeless arithmetical one, but also because for a political struggle to be really effective it needs to be freed from the notion of democracy, and having once disposed of it we were able, with Lenin, to rebuild the revolutionary international.
     14. – (…) On the other hand, the Left’s criticisms of the International’s organizational work was consistent with its claim that the concept of organicity in the distribution of roles within the movement shouldn’t be confused with the demand for freedom of thought, much less with respect for elective and numeric democracy (…)
     These historical precedents confirm that the mechanism of vote counting is always and everywhere fraudulent and misleading, whether in society, in the class, or in the party; but the best resistance to it was offered by the Italian Party, precisely insofar as its deep-rooted political tradition refused to pay any homage at all to democracy’s historical exploits, its mechanisms or to its vote-counting.

132 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the Situation is Historically Unfavourable – 1965
     14. – (…) The Left actually tried, without breaking from the principle of globally centralised discipline, to wage a revolutionary defensive war by keeping the vanguard proletariat immunised against the collusion of the middle classes, their parties and their doomed-to-defeat ideologies. Since this historic chance of saving if not the revolution at least the core of its historical party was also missed, today it has started again in a situation which is objectively torpid and indifferent, in the midst of a proletariat riddled with petty-bourgeois democratism; but the nascent organisation, using its entire doctrinal tradition and praxis, verified historically by its timely predictions, also applies it in its everyday activity too, through its efforts to re-establish ever wider contact with the exploited masses; and it also eliminates from its own structure one of the parting errors of the Moscow International, by getting rid of the thesis of democratic centralism and the application of any voting mechanism, just as it has eliminated from the thought processes of every last one of its members any concession to democratic, pacifist, autonomist or libertarian tendencies.

133 – Theses on the Historical Duty, Action and Structure of the World Communist Party… (’Theses of Naples’), 1965
     7. – It was a matter of a transition from one generation to another, of the generation which had lived through the glorious struggles of the first post-war period and the Livorno split handing over to the new proletarian generation, which needed to be delivered from the mad elation about the collapse of fascism in order to restore its awareness of the independent action of the revolutionary party, which was opposed to all other parties, and especially the social-democratic party, in order to re-establish forces committed to the prospect of the dictatorship and proletarian terror against the big bourgeoisie along with all its rapacious instruments. This being the case, the new movement, in an organic and spontaneous way, came up with a structural form for its activity which has been tried and tested over the last fifteen years. The party fulfilled aspirations which had been expressed within the Communist Left since the time of the Second International, and afterwards during the historic struggle against the first manifestations of opportunist danger within the Third. This long-standing aspiration is to struggle against democracy and prevent this vile bourgeois myth from gaining any influence; it has its roots in Marxist critique, in the fundamental texts and early documents of the proletarian organizations from the time of Communist Manifesto onwards.
     If human history is not to be explained by the influence of exceptional individuals who have managed to excel through strength and physical valour, or by moral or intellectual force, if political struggle is seen, in a way which is wrong and diametrically opposed to ours, as a selecting of such exceptional personalities (whether believed to be the work of divinities or entrusted to social aristocracies, or – in the form most hostile to us of all – entrusted to the mechanism of vote-counting to which all elements in society are eventually admitted); when in fact history is a history of class struggles, which can only be read and applied to real battles, which are no longer ‘critiques’ but are violent and armed, by laying bare the economic relations that classes establish between themselves within given forms of production; if this fundamental theorem has been confirmed by the blood shed by countless fighters, whose generous efforts had been violated by democratic mystification; and if the heritage of the Communist Left has been erected on this balance sheet of oppression, exploitation, and betrayal, then the only road worth following was the one which over the course of history had freed us, more and more, from the lethal machinery of democracy, not only in society and the various bodies organised within it, but also within the revolutionary class itself, and above all in its political party.
     This aspiration of the Left, which cannot be traced back to a miraculous intuition or rational enlightenment on the part of a great thinker, but which emerged under the impact of a chain of real, violent, bloody, and merciless struggles, even when it ended in the defeat of the revolutionary forces, has left its historic traces in a whole series of manifestations of the Left: from when it was struggling against electoral coalitions and the influence of Masonic ideologies, against the supporters firstly of the colonial wars and then the gigantic first European war (which triumphed over the proletarian aspiration to abandon their military uniforms and turn their arms against those who had forced them to take them up, mainly by agitating the lubricious phantom of a fight for liberty and democracy); from when finally in all the countries of Europe when finally in all the countries of Europe and under the leadership of the Russian revolutionary proletariat, the Left threw itself into the battle to bring down the main immediate enemy and target which protected the heart of the capitalist bourgeoisie, the social-democratic right-wing, and the even more ignoble centre which, defaming us just as it defamed bolshevism, Leninism, and the Russian Soviet dictatorship, did everything it could to place another trapdoor between the proletarian advance and the criminal idealisations of democracy. At the same time the aspiration to rid even the word „democracy” of any influence is evidenced in countless texts of the Left hurredly indicated at the start of these theses.
     13. – (…) The screening of party members in the organic centralist scheme is carried out in a way we have always supported against 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.
     Not even after the seizure of power has taken place can we conceive of having forced membership in our ranks; which is why organic centralism excludes terroristic pressures in the disciplinary field, which can’t help but adopt even the very language of abused bourgeois constitutional forms, such as the power of the executive power to dissolve and reassemble elective formations – all forms that for a long time we have considered obsolete, not only for the proletarian party, but even for the revolutionary and temporary State of the victorious proletariat.

134 – Our Perception of the Theses, Then and Now – 1965
     (…) The fourteenth thesis defines democratic centralism thus: election of secondary committees by primary ones – obligatory subordination of every committee to the one above it – centre with full powers, non-incontestable from one congress to the next. We will merely note that, in the Left’s conception of organic centralism, even congresses shouldn’t sit in judgement on the Centre’s work and who is chosen to fill particular roles, but rather decide on questions of policy, in a way that is consistent with the invariant historical doctrine of the world party.

135 – Introduction to the ‘Post 1945 Theses’ – 1970
     (…) It is precisely to these ever present requirements, which the militant must find clearly and definitely satisfied in the programmatic basis of the party, that the ‘Considerations’ respond. Written at the end of 1964, and published at the beginning of 1965, they arrive at a synthesis which is so pithy, so clear, that, amongst other things, they give the lie, once and for all, to the ridiculous, oft-repeated accusation against the Left that they dreamed of an ‘elite’ of ‘pure’ revolutionaries, leading a perfect existence within their ‘ivory tower’. The ‘Considerations’ conclude by defending that same ‘organic centralism’ which was counter posed to the ‘democratic centralism’ of the 3^rd International. This has been a constant postulate of the Left since 1921, but one which only today can be fully put into effect with no possibility of going back, with the exclusion of any recourse to democratic mechanisms, also inside the party organisation (…)
     In fact organic centralism, insofar as it stands opposed to democratic centralism, is far from being just a question of… terminology. In its contradictoriness it is as if the noun within the second formulation reflects the aspiration to the one world party which we have always wanted, whereas the adjective reflects the reality of parties which are still heterogeneous in terms of their historical formation and doctrinal base, among whom there sits as supreme arbiter (rather than as apex of a pyramid, united to the base by a single homogeneous thread continuously reeled out from one to the other and vice versa) an Executive Committee or a homonymous entity, the which, not being in its turn linked to that single thread but free to take decisions which vary and fluctuate ‘according to circumstances’ and the highs and lows of the social conflict, periodically resorts – as in the far from contradictory tradition of democracy – one minute to the farce of ‘consulting’ the periphery (secure as it is in its capacity to ensure unanimous, or almost unanimous, support), and the next minute to the weapon of intimidation and ‘ideological terror’, which in the case of the Communist International is backed up with physical force and the ‘secular arm’ of the State.
     Within our vision, on the other hand, the party has organic centrality as one of its characteristics, because it isn’t a ‘part’, however advanced, of the proletarian class, but rather its organ, the synthesiser of all its elementary thrusts, as well as all of its militants, from whatever source they may come, and it is such on the strength of its possession of a theory, a set of principles, and a programme, which oversteps the limitations of the present day in order to express the historical tendency, final objective and the mode of operating of the proletarian and communist generations of past, present and future, and which transcends the borders of nationality and of State so as to incarnate the interests of the revolutionary wage-earners of the entire world; and it is such, we may add, also on the strength of its forecast, or rough outline at least, of how historical situations are likely to unfold, and therefore of its capacity to fix a body of directives and obligatory tactical norms binding on all (although obviously taking into account that “double revolutions” and “pure proletarian revolutions” also need to be forecast, involving well defined, although different, tactical approaches). If the party is in possession of such theoretical and practical homogeneity (although such possession is not guaranteed for all time, but is rather a reality to be defended tooth and claw, and if necessary 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, bar none.
     Organisation, same as discipline, isn’t a point of departure but a point of arrival; it has no need of statutory codification and disciplinary regulation; it recognises no contradiction between the ‘base’ and the ‘summit’; it excludes the rigid barriers of a division of labour inherited from the capitalist regime not because leaders’ and ‘experts’ in specific areas aren’t needed, but because these are, and necessarily have to be, committed (in the same way as the most ‘lowly’ of its militants, only more so) to a program, a doctrine and to a clear and unequivocal definition of tactical norms shared by the entire party, known to each of its members, publicly affirmed and above all expressed in practice in full view of the class as whole. And just as leaders and experts are necessary, they are likewise dispensable as soon as they cease to fulfil the role which, via natural selection rather than by phony head counts, the party had entrusted to them; or when, worse still, they deviate from the path marked out for all to follow. A party of this type (as ours tends to be and tries to become, without however making any anti-historical claim to ‘purity’ or ‘perfection’) doesn’t adapt its entire internal life, its development, its – let’s just say it – hierarchy of technical functions to fit in with whimsical decisions made on the spur of the moment or decreed by a majority; it grows and is strengthened by the dynamics of the class struggle in general, and by its own interventions within it in particular; it creates, without prefiguring them, its instruments of battle, its ‘organs’, at all levels; it doesn’t need – except in pathological cases – to expel after ‘due process’ those who no longer feel like following the common, unchanging road, because it must be capable of getting rid of them in the same way a healthy organism spontaneously eliminates its waste matter.
     ‘Revolution isn’t a question of forms of organisation’. On the contrary, organisation, in all its various forms, arises in response to the various demands of the revolution, not only the outcome of which has been predicted, but also how to get there. Consultations, constitutions and statutes are typical of societies divided into classes, and of the parties which express in their turn not the historic trajectory of a class, but the criss-crossing of the divergent or not fully convergent trajectories of several classes. Internal democracy and ‘bureaucratism’, the worship of individual or group ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘ideological terrorism’, all are terms that are not so much antithetical as dialectically connected. Similarly, unity of doctrine and tactical action, and the organic character of organisational centralism are equally two sides of the same coin.

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Ch. 5 THE REAL LIFE OF THE PARTY  

We would like to conclude this part of the work by republishing the entire final part of a report that was presented at our General Meeting and published in Programma Comunista Number 5 in 1967. The conclusion to this report is entitled “The Real Life of the Party” and we stand by everything stated therein, adding nothing and removing nothing.

QUOTATIONS

136 – The Party’s Continuity of Action in the Line of the Left Tradition – 1967

 The lengthy passages just quoted already make abundantly clear that we not only consider the problems of organisation and functioning of the revolutionary party to be linked to the fundamental questions of doctrine, programme and tactics, but also believe that a correct resolution of the latter is prejudicial to the correct formulation and resolution of the former. Here as well, in 1926, the Left completed the cycle of a battle it had been waging, year on year, without ever allowing itself to be deflected, inside the International. And it is something we would like commemorated in the conclusion to this already too lengthy report, referring readers to the Rome Theses, and the Naples and Milan Theses for a more detailed account.

By this time, there had been a complete maturation of that process, promptly and “stubbornly” denounced by ourselves in its later stages, by which the Comintern, to the same degree and for the same reason it adopted tactics which were heterogeneous, eclectic and unplanned, and carried out sudden and disorientating zig-zags and about-turns, to arrive eventually at the theorisation that any means could be used to achieve the end; to the same degree and for the same reason that, acting in such a way, it caused irreparable damage to the unitary fabric of the political action of the world party, it claimed to be imposing on it a formal unity very similar, in fact identical, to that of an army, thanks to which it would supposedly recover its lost political homogeneity; laying the basis on which Stalinism would build its edifice of “unity” based on bullying and intimidation, first by using against both right and left the weapon of disciplinary intervention and ‘ideological terror’, then by applying physical pressure, supported by the “secular arm” of State power. However, we never criticised this formal, barrack-like centralisation because it ‘trampled upon freedom’ but on the contrary because it gave the leading centre total freedom to trample on the one, invariable and impersonal programme. And rather than contradicting this false centralism the designation ‘democratic’ fit it like a glove, since for Marxism democracy isn’t a means of expressing the so-called “general” or “majority will”, but a means of manipulating the majority into sanctioning decisions which have already been taken behind its back: a means of bullying. But in order to be free to violate the programme over and over again, without giving a damn about how the famous and much courted “base” would react, in fact to prevent their reaction before it happened, it would be necessary to impose an empty shell of centralisation, modelled on the General Staffs which all armies have (not for nothing the International was full of ex-Mensheviks and ex-social democrats at this time, awarded senior positions in the hierarchy; the Martinovs, the Smerals, etc, who Trotski described as always ready to live down their past in a present which rehabilitated their political traditions, to “stand to attention” like so many quarter masters) theorising discipline for discipline’s sake, obedience for obedience sake, whatever the orders coming down from above, or rather, from the Almighty.

Side by side with this, and for the same reason, an “organisational model”, a type of constitutional charter defined once and for all, would be held up as the guarantee of the compactness and efficiency of the Party (in this case, the cell organisation) and it would be called, with bestial impudence, “bolshevisation”. Faced with these two momentous deviations, harbingers of all the muck and blood of the next thirty years, our response – which largely constituted the courageous battle fought within the Enlarged Executive of February-March 1926 – was clear and definitive. To begin with, we replied that the unity and the real centralisation of the party organisation and its activity – something we have always been the first to defend – is the product, the point of arrival and not the cause and the point of departure of unity and centrality of doctrine, programme, and of the system of tactical norms: pointless it was to seek the former if the latter was lacking; worse than pointless, it was destructive, in fact lethal. We are centralists (and this, if you like, is our one organisational principle) not because we see centralism as valid per se, not because we have deduced it from an eternal idea or an abstract plan, but because there is only one objective towards which we strive, and only one way to reach it in space (internationally) and in time (across the generations “of the dead, the living and the yet to be born”); we are centralists on the strength of the invariance of a doctrine which it isn’t within the power of either individuals or groups to change, and of the continuity of our action within the ebb and flow of historical circumstances, faced with all the obstacles that are strewn across the path of the working class. Our centralism is the mode of being of a party, which is not an army even if it does observe a rigorous discipline, not a school even if it has lessons to teach. Rather it is a real historical force defined by its stable orientation within the long battle between the classes.

It is around this indivisible and rock-hard kernel of doctrine-programme-tactics, the collective and impersonal possession of the movement, that our organisation crystallises; and what keeps it united is not the “kernel” of the “organizing centre”, but the unique and uniform thread which links “leaders” and “base”, “centre” and “periphery”, binding them in observance and defence of a system of ends and means which are mutually inseparable. In this real life of the communist party – not of any party but specifically the one that not only calls itself communist but actually is communist – the conundrum which so torments the bourgeois democrat, the question of “who makes the decisions?”, is it the top or the bottom, the many or the few? – melts away forever, of its own accord: it is the body of the party as a whole, which has embarked on and continues to go its own way; and within it, in the words of an obscure Leveller soldier “no-one commands and all are commanded”; which is not to say there are no orders but that, whoever happens to be giving them, they will coincide with the party’s natural mode of proceeding. But once you break this unity of doctrine-programme-tactics, everything comes crashing down; all that is left, at one extreme, is… a road block, a command post marshalling the mass of militants (like the General – allegedly a strategic “genius” – deploys his poor supposedly stupid recruits, even if this means sending them over the top into a wall of fire, or like the stationmaster marshals his trains, even if they end up colliding with one another) and at the other extreme, a boundless parade ground for all possible kinds of manoeuvring. Once you break this unity, Stalinism becomes logical and historically justified. Likewise, the ruinous subordination of a party like ours, whose first duty is ensuring “the historical continuity and international unity of the movement” (Point 4 of the Livorno programme of 1921), to the false and deceitful mechanism of “constitutional democracy”, also becomes logical and historically justified. Break this unity and you destroy the class party.

A real force operating in history and characterised by its rigorous continuity, the party lives and acts (and this is our response to the second deviation) not on the basis of a set of inherited statutory norms, precepts and constitutional forms, in the way hypocritically desired by bourgeois legalism, or naively dreamt up by pre-Marxist utopianism, with its carefully planned structures which quickly succumb to history’s dynamic reality; rather, the party’s life and activity is founded on its nature as an organisation which takes shape, during an uninterrupted succession of theoretical and practical battles, in the course of its constant forward march: as we wrote in our 1945 “Platform”: “the party’s organisational norms are consistent with the dialectical conception of its function; they don’t rely on legal formulations and regulations and have transcended the fetish of majority consultation”. It is in the execution of its duties, all of them, not just one of them, that the party creates its own specific organs, systems and mechanisms; and in the course of exercising them it also dismantles and recreates them, obeying neither metaphysical precepts nor constitutional precedents but the real and exquisitely organic requirements of its own development. None of these mechanisms can be theorised either a priori or a posteriori; nothing authorises us to say – to give a very down-to-earth example – that the best way of ensuring that any of them conforms to the purpose for which it was created is for it to be managed by one or more militants, when all one can really demand is that the militants, however many there are, manage it as though with one will, consistent with the entire past and future trajectory of the party. And if there is just one militant, that he manage it as though in his own arms and his own brain the impersonal and collective force of the party was at work, with the final verdict on how far such a demand had been satisfied given not by articles of law, but by praxis, by history. The revolution is a question of force, not form; and the same goes for the party in its real life, in its organisation and in its doctrine. Even the organisational criterion which we defend, of a territorial rather than a ‘cellular’ type, is not deduced from abstract principles that are unrelated to time and place, or considered to be a perfect and eternal solution; we adopt it merely because it is the other side of the primary synthesising function (of groups, trade categories, elementary pressures) which we assign to the party.

The generous concern of comrades that the party organisation should function securely and in a linear and homogeneous way therefore turns – as Lenin himself warned in his ‘Letter to a comrade’ – not on finding statutes, rules and constitutions or, worse still, ‘especially talented’ people, but on finding the best way that each and every one of us can contribute towards the harmonious execution of the functions without which the party would cease to exist as the unifying force and guide, and representative, of the class; this is the only way to help it resolve the challenges of its daily existence and activity “on its own”, on a day-to-day basis – as described in Lenin’s What is to be Done?, in which the newspaper is referred to as a “collective organiser”. Herein lies the key to “organic centralism”, herein lies the reliable weapon in the historic battle of the classes, not in the empty abstraction of so-called operational “rules” for managing perfect systems or, worse, in the squalid processes for the organic selection of men who get together to manage them, “at the top” or “from below”: these are also mechanisms and systems and they are efficient or inefficient not in themselves, or by virtue of the presence or lack of personal qualities, but to the extent that the entire party sets them in motion – its dictatorial programme, its invariable doctrine, its tactics anticipated in advance, the reciprocal relations within the party between the different parts of an organism whose members, whose “limbs”, live and die together insofar as the same blood circulates or ceases to circulate in the central muscle and the peripheral fibres.

The theses of 1920, 1922, 1926, 1945, 1966, in fact, forever, leave us no other “choice”: either we proceed on this track or on two apparently separate, but in reality convergent tracks, one of them chaotic and arbitrary democratism and the other menacing Stalinist authoritarianism.

PART V

FOREWORD – THE PARTY’S TACTICS

The party is not a circle of thinkers or disciples of a particular philosophy, but rather an organ of combat of the class war, wielding theory and knowledge as a weapon. From this it must therefore be inferred, as all our theses do, that the party’s action is not limited to propaganda and setting out its position, or solely to a critique of social and political facts. The party actively intervenes in these facts and struggles in a physical connection with the proletarian class, which also advances through partial and immediate objectives; the party organises it, guides it, and urges it to fight. The action that the party must develop as a political agent of the proletarian class is therefore very complex, but it is essential for preparing the proletariat in the revolutionary direction, a preparation that will never be the product of simple theoretical propaganda or by demonstrating the interpretative superiority of communists. If, for Marxism, consciousness follows action, it is clear that the party cannot hope to be at the head of the class simply on the basis of propaganda or of educational or pedagogical activity; it is necessary that a thousand bonds are formed through material facts and the party’s intervention in them, the party being recognised by the class as a physical entity with a well defined presence, thanks to elements that are not about rational understanding, study, or propaganda.

The combination of methods that the party must use throughout the many and varied events of the class struggle, turning them in a manner favourable to its purposes, attracting the proletariat under its banner, tearing it from the ranks of non-communist parties, demoralising and finally breaking down the class enemy: this is the tactical challenge, which the Left has always defined as “serious and difficult”, never imagining that it can evade it or replace it metaphysically with a pure and simple propaganda of theoretical principles or with a simple action of rational analysis.

If we recognise that the development of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a complex process characterised by innumerable and diverse material sequences of events, and that the proletariat does not simply rely on its party out of rational conviction, this raises the problem of how the party is to intervene in the reality of the struggle, in other words, this raises the problem of the party’s tactics.

Our starting point in this respect, based on our materialist understanding, is a ruthless critique of what we have always defined as “infantilism”: tactical methods are not chosen according to moral, aesthetic or formalistic criteria; the decision to take a given action is not made according to whether or not it is more or less in line with a moral purpose that we claim to be our own. On this basis, Lenin mocked those who rejected “compromises” as a matter of principle, and the Left has always been in agreement with him on this point.

But the Left, together with Marx and Lenin, has always claimed that a choice of tactical methods must be made for the simple reason that not all tactical methods are adequate for achieving the goal. Methods which appear to deliver an immediate success to the party’s activity can, on the contrary, be shown to contradict the long-term development and ultimate purpose of the activity itself.

The choice of tactical methods is not guided by moral prejudices, but by a correct evaluation, in the light of our materialist doctrine, of the real relations between the various classes and between the parties that express the politics of these classes, and by an assessment of the course of events that the struggle may follow and of the actions that the party must undertake, according to the diverse situations that may arise; this is done so that these actions best serve to strengthen the party and prepare the proletarian forces for the final battle. This choice must be made in advance, and forms a part of our heritage, as does the party’s invariant doctrine.

It is theory that allows the party to define its programme, which contains the hypothesis of an uninterrupted series of events, through which the class struggle will arrive at the predicted outcome. It is theory that allows the party to outline the field of action of social forces, to evaluate their reciprocal relations, and to establish the possible responses given a set of decisive factors. The lessons of historical facts, read in the light of theory, lead the party to establish that the road to communism necessarily proceeds through violent revolution, the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, revolutionary violence and terror exercised by the proletarian class under the direction of its party and through the state apparatus of the proletarian dictatorship.

The party must equally be in a position to foresee and engineer the methods which, in the concrete historical situation, are suited to lead to these final outcomes: the forces that are in play; the actions and reactions existing between these forces; and the means which, on the contrary, must not be used because they would militate against the achievement of the revolutionary goal. Critical analysis leads the party to establish, in the first place, the different historical-political contexts, the historical phases through which its activity must develop and in which the relations and the attitudes of social forces struggling against one another are different, and consequently the methods applied by the party must be different. If this analysis and this foresight are not possible, Marxism will crumble as a revolutionary theory, and therefore one will no longer even be able to speak of the communist party and the party of the proletarian class.

The historical contexts to which the party’s tactics are applied have been thus defined at the general meeting that took place in Genoa on 26 April 1953:

     «1. The position of the Communist Left distinguishes itself clearly (in addition to its rejection of eclecticism in the determination of the party’s tactical manoeuvres) from the coarse simplification of those who reduce the entire struggle to the dualism, constantly and everywhere repeated, of two conventional classes, acting alone; the strategy of the modern proletarian movement has precise and stable lines applicable to any possible future action, which are to be related to the distinct geographical “regions” into which the inhabited world is divided, and to distinct time cycles.
     «2. The region in which the first, classic interplay of forces led to the irrevocable theory of the course of socialist revolution is England. From 1688 the bourgeois revolution abolished feudal power and quickly eradicated feudal forms of production; from 1840 it was possible to deduce the Marxist conception of the interplay of three basic classes: bourgeois ownership of the land; industrial, commercial and financial capital; and the proletariat, in struggle with the first two.
     «3. In the Western European region (France, Germany, Italy, smaller countries), the bourgeois struggle against feudalism lasted from 1789 to 1871, and in the situations presented in this course of history the alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was the order of the day when the latter fought in armed struggle to overturn feudal power, while the workers’ parties had already rejected all ideological confusion with the economic and political argumentations of bourgeois society.
     «4. In 1866 the United States of America found itself in the conditions pertaining in Western Europe after 1871, having destroyed spurious capitalist forms through the victory over the rural and pro-slavery South. Since 1871, radical Marxists in the entire Euro-American region have refused every alliance and every united front with bourgeois parties, under any circumstances.
     «5. The situation before 1871, as in point 3, lasted in Russia and in other countries of Eastern Europe until 1917; in these countries the challenge already known in Germany in 1848 presented itself: to provoke two revolutions, and consequently to struggle also in favour of the tasks of the capitalist revolution. The condition for passing directly to the second, proletarian revolution was a political revolution in the West. This did not occur, but the Russian proletarian class nevertheless succeeded in capturing political power on its own, holding on to it for several years.
    «6. Whilst one can now consider that in the Eastern European region the capitalist mode of production and exchange has supplanted the feudal mode, in the Asian region the revolution against feudalism and against even older regimes is in full flow, conducted by a united revolutionary front of bourgeois, petty bourgeois and working classes (…)
    «9. In the Asian countries, where the local agrarian economy, based on patriarchy and feudalism still dominates, the struggle, including the political struggle, of the “four classes” is a factor in the victory in the international communist struggle, even if in the short term it results in the establishment of national and bourgeois powers; this is as much because of the formation of new regions where socialist demands will be the order of the day, as because of the blows that these insurrections will deal to Euro-American imperialism».

Our Rome Theses of 1922 make a distinction between five historical phases which were at the same time a distinction between geographical regions:

     «Absolutist feudal power; bourgeois democratic power; social-democratic government; intermediate period of social war in which the state foundations are weakened; proletarian power in the dictatorship of the councils».

And they further warned:

     «In a certain sense, the problem of tactics is not only a matter of choosing the right path for effective action, but also of avoiding that the party’s action falls outside its proper limits, retreating to methods corresponding to outdated conditions, which would result in a shutdown of the process of development of the party and a retreat from revolutionary preparations».

Our current has therefore always maintained that the tactical methods that the party can use in specific historical and social contexts and in relation to the occurrence of specific situations must be foreseen and “combined in clear rules of action”, which constitute the basis of the party’s organisation. If it were not possible to determine tactical rules, a “shortlist of eventualities”, a valid plan for a very long arc of time and for large territories, it would not even be possible to achieve organisational homogeneity and centralisation. It is not a matter, as we have said, of defining the totality of the methods, being guided by a priori postulates, but of determining, in the light of the doctrine and in an increasingly complete and profound manner, the historical “context” within which the party struggles and the interplay of the social forces within this “context”.

Based on this practical necessity, the “limits” beyond which the party cannot go, on pain of negative consequences for the party itself, are increasingly well defined and clarified by the collective work and experience of the party. This is why another of our assertions of a fundamental nature is that the tactics used by the party are reflected in the organisation and influence it, as in the party’s principles; tactics are the party’s mode of behaviour and cannot contradict its essence without its very essence changing, sooner or later. This is what the Communist International did when it claimed, after 1922, to be able to adopt any and every method or manoeuvre without breaking the party in its organisational totality and in its theoretical and programmatic stability. Our Lyons Theses of 1926 draw the lesson of this catastrophic pretension at the precise moment when the International was about to be definitively conquered by the Stalinist counter-revolution: «It is not only the good party that makes good tactics, but good tactics that make the good party».

And this is evident if, as Marxists, we believe that it is insufficient to declare that we adhere to a certain doctrine, programme, principles and given final outcomes if the latter do not inform in themselves all of the party’s real activity, and do not determine their characteristics and even their most limited manifestations. If the real life of the party, its activity, its way of advancing in the face of social and political forces, ends up contradicting its statements of principle, it is clear that these very statements will fall in the long run, even if we continue to proclaim respect for them or to propagandise and agitate for them. This constitutes the classic path of opportunism, which proclaims a platonic adherence to communist principles whilst practicing the most obscene deviations from them.

For us, adhering to and being faithful to principles manifests itself in the colossal and extremely difficult effort to ensure that the entire life of the party is adapted to them, and is consistent with them. And this is not just for the sake of doctrinaire luxury, but with respect to the practical necessities of the struggle. The shining example of the revolution in Russia shows that a party will only be able to win the revolutionary struggle if the party organism has been able to base a coherent game plan on the granite foundations of Marxism, remaining faithful to it throughout the ups and downs that occur in the course of struggle, never giving up an inch, nor sacrificing this continuity and rigidity of position in pursuit of easy and momentary successes: the “quagmire” which Lenin speaks about in What is to be done? and which is always ready to welcome all of those who abandon the foreseen and codified line, believing, indeed, that they can use whatever method and whatever manoeuvre, under the illusion that this will not have an impact on their very essence.

The condition that should be given priority in the choice of methods and tactical manoeuvres is that they serve to enhance rather than invalidate the party’s appearance in sharp contrast to all the other parties and the political State. The tactical challenge embraces two fundamental factors: the party, as conscious entity capable of predicting the outcome of the class struggle, and the proletarian masses who should be, in the course of the development of physical and material activity, led to follow the party, the path it shows, and the methods that it proposes. The condition which must therefore be posed as the basis of the solution to every tactical challenge is that in order to realise the second factor we don’t distort or deform the first and fundamental factor. If this proves to be the case, the masses may still move into action, but the party, by having strayed from its own course, will no longer be the useful instrument for conducting the revolutionary struggle. This is the essential and valid criterion for every historical situation within which the class struggle takes place. This general principle is strictly associated with another: the party must always present itself in to the proletarian masses as opposed to all the other political parties and the State, demonstrating to the proletariat practically, in the course of action, the need to embrace revolutionary methods of struggle and discounting the use of movements and actions that arise within the framework of current institutions, thereby tending to prove to the masses that the resolution of their problems, big or small, immediate or general, is impossible by peaceful and legal means, without the organised force of the proletariat clashing with legal institutions in their entirety.

Using our Rome Theses (1922) as a basis we will sketch out the broad outlines of the party’s tactics in the Western European and American arena in the imperialist epoch. In this arena and in this historical epoch the cardinal points, the broad outlines which delineate all of the party’s tactics are as follows:
     a) no alliance, front or bloc with other political parties including pseudo-proletarian parties on the basis of contingent common watchwords (united trade union front on the basis of direct action by the proletarian masses, as opposed to political united front and common actions carried out in the legal-democratic institutional arena);
     b) no participation by the party in electoral campaigns of any sort; permanent discounting of the electoral method of counting opinions, not simply because this is useless for conquering political power, but because it is even counter-productive for defending the class’s immediate interests. Permanent urging and demonstration of the necessity for the proletariat to move from the arena of legal and pacific struggle to that of direct action, even for the defence of its most elementary interests;
     c) against the “apparent” division of the bourgeois camp between “right” and “left” blocs and the seductively interesting proposition for the working class that the “left” bloc claims to want to achieve, permanent criticism of the latter, demonstration that it forms an anti-revolutionary front alongside the “right”; demonstration that these propositions, to the extent that they genuinely interest the proletarian masses, can only be achieved on the basis of the mobilisation of the class struggle, and not by peaceful and legal means. The party may even promote the struggle for goals that the “left” bloc proclaims demagogically, yet which truly affect the working class, calling on the proletariat itself to affirm and defend them by constituting its immediate economic organisations into a front for the struggle, basing its action at the level of the general strike; thereby demonstrating in practice that those parties that wish to move only on the level of legal-institutional action in fact betray the goals that they support in words, precisely because they reject the use of the very means that could enable their achievement or their defence. On the basis of this real historical observation is founded, since 1920, the electoral (and not just parliamentary) abstentionism of the Communist Party in the West, and our polemic at the time against the theses of revolutionary parliamentarism supported by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
     d) faced with the possible existence of a government of the “left”, permanent and preventive demonstration that it does not constitute an improvement of any sort or in any domain for the proletariat. Assessment that the “social-democratic experience” can be positive, but only because it would demonstrate to the masses in practical terms the counter-revolutionary nature of opportunist parties, which could be converted into increased strenght for the revolutionary party, so long as the party had denounced the experience from the very outset, has indicated to the masses its inevitable failure, and has been able to distinguish its own responsibilities from those of the opportunist parties. Absolutely no solidarity of the party with a government of this nature, even if it is violently attacked by the parties of the “right”. If, in such a circumstance, the proletariat was called upon by the opportunist parties to take up arms against the “right”, the party would have the task of orienting the armed proletarians towards the conquest of political power and class dictatorship, denouncing every defence of the existing power and openly proclaiming that the latter is every bit as hostile to the proletariat as the forces attacking it, and that the two sides must submit to the armed power of the proletariat, led by the Communist Party.

These cardinal points of the party’s tactics, openly declared in the Rome Theses of 1922, while the fascist offensive was developing in Italy, were confirmed and verified in the Lyons Theses of 1926, which drew the lesson from this period in which fascism was establishing itself and in which the party tilted dangerously towards finding “political allies” against it, not only among pseudo-workers’ parties but also among the “democratic” bourgeois parties (Aventine etc.). In this body of theses the broad outlines described above are further elaborated:

     a) denial that the party should, in the presence of class struggles and political parties, which are not yet on its specific terrain, «choose between the two contending forces the one which represents a development of the situation which most favours general historical evolution, and join forces with it more or less openly». No choice between “reactionary governments of the right” and “governments of the left”: demonstrate to the proletariat that «the bourgeoisie tries to alternate its methods and its parties of government according to its counter-revolutionary interests” and that “the triumph of opportunism has always come about via proletarian fervour for the ongoing drama of bourgeois politics»;

     b) accordingly: «The Communist Party, in the presence of struggles that cannot yet result in the final struggle for proletarian victory, will not make itself the manager of transitions and accomplishments that do not directly affect the class that it represents, and it will not barter away its character or its autonomous stance to participate in a kind of insurance company for all the political movements for so-called “change”, or for all those political political systems and governments menaced by an allegedly ‘worse’ government»;

In perfect continuity with the analysis developed by Lenin, the Left identifies in the totalitarian order of the capitalist economy in the imperialist epoch the objective precondition for the replacement of democratic and parliamentary forms of bourgeois domination by totalitarian forms of government: the “modern and progressive” fascist method which, given clearest expression in Italy and Germany, thenceforth asserts itself in all of the great imperialist states in the world, everywhere destroying the old and reactionary democratic-liberal form, or at most maintaining it as “smoke and mirrors for the proletariat”. In this imperialist phase of capitalism, up until the Second World War, «the economic, social and political postulates of liberalism and democracy are anti-historical, illusory and reactionary, and the world is in a phase in which, in the large countries, liberal organisation must disappear and give way to the fascist, more modern system» (Nature, function and tactics of the revolutionary party of the working class, 1947).

The cardinal points on tactics already set forth in the Rome and Lyons Theses are reiterated and underlined in the passages that follow:

     1) The party must not apply any «tactic which, even if only formal, involves attitudes and slogans that are acceptable to opportunist political movements» (idem);
     2) The political praxis of the party «rejects manoeuvres, combinations, alliances, blocs which are based on the common, contingent postulates or slogans of several parties» (idem).
     3) «In the daily economic struggle as much as in general and global politics, the proletarian class has nothing to lose and therefore nothing to defend: attack and conquest are its sole tasks. In consequence, the revolutionary party must above all recognise in the appearance of capitalism’s concentrated, unitary and totalitarian forms the confirmation of its doctrine, and therefore of its complete ideological victory. It must therefore only concern itself with the real relation of forces in preparation for the revolutionary civil war, relations which only the successive waves of opportunist and gradualist degeneration have so far rendered unfavourable» (Characteristic Theses of the Party, 1951);
     4) «Even where they seem to survive, the traditional elected parliamentary institutions are increasingly devoid of content retaining only their phraseology; and in moments of social crisis they allow the dictatorial nature of the State to reveal itself in broad daylight as capitalism’s last resort, against which the violence of the revolutionary proletariat must exert itself. Therefore the party, facing this state of affairs and the actual relations of social forces, takes no interest in democratic elections of any sort and does not engage in this domain» (idem).

It is within these precise “limits”, dictated by history, that the complex challenge of the tactics of the Communist Party must develop in the Western arena. This is why, in the last two paragraphs of this part of the work, we include quotes to demonstrate that the party’s analysis of fascism and totalitarianism is “progressive” in relation to the old liberal democracy. We are not in the phase and on the historic-political region within which the proletarian party supports the bourgeois-democratic movements against the old regimes in terms of armed action whilst retaining complete autonomy of programme, tactics, organisation (alliances and blocs of political parties were admissible then), nor in the one, typical of 1871-1914 Europe, when bourgeois revolution “to the bitter end” was on the agenda, and bourgeois democracy, while no longer revolutionary, was at least genuinely “progressive” (and the party fought alongside the petty bourgeoisie for the extension of democracy, for reforms, for universal suffrage etc.); we find ourselves in the epoch in which state totalitarianism prevails, substantially, if not formally, eliminating the last vestiges of parliamentary democracy with its entire cohort of “guarantees” and “rights”.

The proletarian party must coordinate its action with this statement of fact, which distinguishes it, as highlighted in our theses on the second post-war period, from all other political groups for whom, even those on the “extreme left”, democracy will always be a “benefit” to defend or to reconquer, and fascism is “the worst of all evils”. For the party democracy is now dead and buried even as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned and the modern world organises itself on totalitarian and fascist forms even where it may find it opportune to maintain the appearance of “free institutions” in order to deceive the proletariat. This is why the last paragraph of the work brings together quotations that express the thinking of the party on electoralism and on parliamentarism, which are summarised in the obvious conclusion that, if in 1920 using the electoral mechanism was still a means of ensuring the rule of the bourgeoisie, and parliament was attacked and unmasked as an instrument of the bourgeoisie, today, after the victory of totalitarianism, the bourgeoisie itself no longer rules through parliaments and elections, but uses them for the sole purpose of concealing its true instruments of power from the eyes of the proletariat. Hence the clear tactical directive expressed in our Dialogue with the Dead (1956): «Since 1920, the party no longer participates (or should n’t participate) in elections”. It is only on the basis of these fundamental cornerstones that party activity in various different situations within the Euro-American region should be studied and evaluated.

Ch. 1 THE NEED FOR FORECASTING AND TACTICAL PROGRAMMING

QUOTATIONS

137 – The tactics of the Communist International – 1922

    II. (…) There is no Marxist who does not stand by Lenin in denouncing as an infantile disorder a criterion for action which excludes certain possibilities for initiatives based simply on the consideration that they are not sufficiently straightforward and embedded within the formal schema of our ideas, with which they clash and create unsightly deformations. That the means can have aspects which are contrary to the ends for which we adopt them lies at the heart of our critical thinking: for an objective that is superior, noble and seductive the means may appear wretched, tortuous and vulgar: what matters is being able to calculate their effectiveness, and whoever does so by simply comparing appearances sinks to the level of a subjective and idealistic view of historical causalities, which is somewhat Quakerish; it ignores the superior resources of our critique, which is today becoming a strategy, and which is brought alive by the brilliant realistic understanding of Marx’s materialism (…)
 
As there is no serious argument that can exclude the utility of adopting the bourgeoisie’s own methods to defeat the bourgeoisie, it is not possible to deny a priori that the adoption of the tactics of the social democrats cannot defeat the social democrats.

We do not want to be misunderstood but we will postpone an explanation of our thinking until later on, and those who want to understand its main outlines need only study our theses on tactics in any case. When we say that the field of possible and admissible tactics cannot be restricted by considerations dictated by a falsely doctrinal over-simplification, metaphysically dedicated to formal comparisons and preoccupied with purity and rectitude as ends in themselves, we do not mean to say that the field of tactics should remain unlimited and that all methods are good to achieve our purposes. It would be an error to entrust the difficult resolution of the search for suitable methods to the simple consideration that there is an intention to use them to achieve communist objectives. You would only repeat the mistake which consists in rendering an objective problem subjective, contenting yourself with the fact that they who choose, arrange and direct initiatives have decided to struggle for communist outcomes and allow themselves to be guided by the latter.

There exists, and therefore it can always be elaborated better, a criterion which is profoundly Marxist and anything but infantile which outlines the limits to tactical initiatives; it has nothing to do with the preconceptions and prejudices of an erroneous extremism, but by another path arrives at a useful forecast of the otherwise complex links which bind the tactical expedients to the results we anticipated and the final outcomes (…)
 
As soon as our understanding of the dialectical basis of this situation is deepened, we see that all of the intransigently simplistic objections completely collapse. Alliance with the defeatists and those who betray the revolution, to support the revolution? exclaims the appalled communist of Fourth International stamp, or the centrist bootlicker type between Second and the Third, But we will not linger on this terminological exercise (…)
 
V. (…) Because the party is not the invariable and indigestible “subject” of philosophical abstruseries, but is in its turn an objective part of the situation. The solution to the very difficult problem of the party’s tactics is still not analogous to that of the problems of the military art; in politics you can correct, but not manipulate the situation according to your liking: the data of the problem are not our army and the enemy’s army, but the formation of the army, from indifferent strata and from the ranks of the enemy itself – and as much on one side as the other – while hostilities are taking place.

138 – Theses on the Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome Theses) – 1922

   24 – (…) The Communist Party’s programme contains the perspective of a series of situations related to a series of actions which in the course of an unfolding process are generally attributed to them. There is, therefore, a close connection between the programmatic directives and the tactical rules. Studying the situation thus appears as an integral part of resolving tactical problems, considering that the party, on the basis of its consciousness and critical experience, has already predicted how various situations might unfold, and hence defined the tactical possibilities corresponding to the actions to be followed in the various phases. Examination of the situation serves as a check on the accuracy of the party’s programmatic positions. On the day that any substantial revision of them should become necessary, the problem will be far more serious than any that could be resolved by means of a simple tactical switch, and the inevitable rectification of programmatic outlook cannot but have serious consequences on the strength and organisation of the party. The latter must therefore strive to forecast how situations might unfold, in order to exercise the maximum possible degree of influence on them; but waiting for situations to arise in order to subject them, in an eclectic and discontinuous manner, to the guidelines and suggestions they have prompted, is a method characteristic of social-democratic opportunism (…)

    26 – The party, however, cannot utilise its will and its initiative in a capricious way or to an arbitrary degree; the limits which it can and must set to both the one and the other are imposed upon it precisely by its programmatic directives, and by the existing possibilities and opportunities for action, which can be deduced from an examination of the contingent situation.

    27 – Having examined the situation, an assessment needs to be made of the party forces and the relation between these and those of enemy movements. Above all, it is necessary to take care to assess the degree of support the party could expect from the proletariat if the latter undertook an action or engaged in a struggle. This means forming a precise idea of the repercussions and spontaneous actions which the economic situation produces among the masses, and of the possibility of developing these actions, as a result of the initiatives of the Communist Party and the attitude of the other parties (…)

    28 – The integrative elements of this study are extremely varied. They consist in examining the real tendencies involved in the constitution and development of the proletariat’s organisations and the reactions – including psychological reactions – produced upon it by, on the one hand, economic conditions, and on the other, by the specific attitudes and social and political initiatives of the ruling class and its parties. Examination of the situation is effected in the political field by examining the positions and forces of the various classes and parties in relation to the power of the State. With respect to this it is possible to classify the situations in which the Communist Party may find itself taking action into fundamental phases; situations which in the normal course of things lead it to grow stronger, by extending its membership, and at the same time define ever more precisely the limits of its tactical field. These phases can be specified as follows: Absolutist feudal power – democratic bourgeois power – social-democratic government – intermediate period of social war in which the bases of the State become unstable – proletarian power in the dictatorship of the Councils. In a certain sense, the question of tactics consists not just in choosing the right course for an effective action, but also in preventing the party’s activity from going beyond the appropriate limits, and falling back upon methods that correspond to past situations – the consequence of which would be to arrest the party’s process of development to the detriment of its revolutionary preparation (…)

     29 – (…) Thus it is incumbent upon the party and the International to explain the totality of its general tactical rules in a systematic manner – since it might eventually call upon those within its own ranks, and within the strata of the proletariat which have rallied around them, to put these tactical rules into practice and to make sacrifices on their behalf – showing how such rules and prospects for action constitute the inevitable route leading to victory. It is, therefore, a practical and organisational necessity, and not the desire to theorise and schematise the complexity of the manoeuvres that the party may be called upon to undertake, which leads us to establish the terms and limits of the party’s tactics. And it is for these entirely concrete reasons that the party must take decisions which appear to restrict its possibilities for action, but which alone provide a guarantee of the organic unity of its activity in the proletarian struggle.

    47 – (…) It is not theoretical preconceptions or ethical and aesthetic preoccupations that dictate the tactics of the Communist Party; its entire tactics are dictated solely by the real appropriateness of the means to the end and to the reality of the historical process, applying that dialectical synthesis of doctrine and action which is the patrimony of a movement destined to play the lead role in an immense social renewal, the commander of the great revolutionary war.

139 – Theses of the Left at the 3^rd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyon Theses) – 1926

    I, 3. (…) It must be emphatically stated that in certain situations, past, present and future, the proletariat has, does, and inevitably will adopt a non-revolutionary stance, either through inertia or collaboration with the enemy as the case may be; but despite everything, the proletariat everywhere and always remains the potentially revolutionary class entrusted with the revolutionary counter-attack, but only insofar as within it there exists the communist party and where, without ever renouncing coherent interventions when appropriate, this party avoids taking paths, which although apparently the easiest routes to instant popularity, would divert it from its task and thereby remove the essential point of support for ensuring the proletariat’s recovery. On dialectical and Marxist grounds such as these (and never on aesthetic and sentimental grounds) we reject the bestial expression of opportunism, which maintains that a communist party is free to adopt all means and all methods. It is said by some that precisely because the party is truly communist, sound in principles and organisation, it can indulge in the most acrobatic of political manoeuvrings, but what this assertion forgets is that the party itself is both factor and product of historical development, and the even more malleable proletariat is yet more so. The proletariat will not be influenced by the contorted justifications for such “manoeuvres” offered by party leaders but by actual results, and the party must know how to anticipate these results mainly by using the experience of past mistakes. It is not just by theoretical credos and organisational sanctions that the party will be guaranteed against degeneration, but by acting correctly in the field of tactics, and by making a determined effort to block off false paths with precise and respected rules of action (…)

    To construct communist tactics with a formalist rather than a dialectical method would be a repudiation of Marx and Lenin. It would, therefore, be a major error to assert that the means should correspond to the ends not by way of their historical and dialectical succession in the process of development, but depending on similarities and analogous aspects that means and ends may assume in a certain immediate sense and which we might call ethical, psychological and aesthetic. We don’t need to make in the realm of tactics the mistake made by anarchists and reformists in the realm of principle, for whom it seems absurd that the suppression of both classes and State power is prepared via the domination of the proletarian class and its dictatorship, and that the abolition of all social violence is realised by employing both offensive and defensive revolutionary violence; revolutionary to overthrow the existing power and conservative to maintain the proletarian power.

     And it would be equally mistaken to make the following assertions: that a revolutionary party must struggle at all times without taking into account the strength of friends and foes; that in the case of a strike, for example, the communist must always insist it be continue to the bitter end; that a communist must shun certain means of dissimulation, trickery, espionage, etc., because they aren’t particularly noble or pleasant. Marxism and Lenin’s critique of the superficial pseudo-revolutionism that fouls the path of the proletariat consists of attempts to eliminate these stupid and sentimental criteria as ways of resolving the problem of tactics. This critique is a definitively acquired part of the communist movement’s experience (…)

But this critique of “infantilism” doesn’t however mean that indeterminacy, chaos and arbitrariness must govern tactics, or that “all means” are appropriate to achieve our aims. To say that the guarantee of the co-ordination of the means with the ends resides in the revolutionary nature acquired by the party and in the contributions that eminent men or groups backed up by a brilliant tradition will bring to its decision-making, is just a non-Marxist play on words, because it doesn’t take into account the repercussions that its means of action themselves have on the party within the dialectical play of cause and effect, and the fact that we ascribe no value whatsoever to the “intentions” which dictate individual or group initiatives; let alone our “suspiciousness”, without meaning to give offence, about such intentions, which the bloody experience of the past means we can never set aside entirely.

In his pamphlet on infantilism, Lenin wrote that the tactical means must be chosen in advance in order to fulfil the final revolutionary objective and be governed by a clear historical vision of the proletarian struggle and its final goal. He showed it would be absurd to reject some tactical expedient just because it appeared “unpleasant” or was deserving of the definition “compromise”: what was necessary instead was to decide whether or not it was a means corresponding with the final goal. The collective activity of the party and the Communist International poses and will continue to pose this formidable task. If in matters of theoretical principle we can say that Marx and Lenin have bequeathed us a sound heritage, although that is not to say there are no new tasks of theoretical research for communism to accomplish, the same cannot be said as regards tactical matters, not even after the Russian revolution and the experience of the first years of the life of the new International, which was deprived of Lenin all too soon. The question of tactics is much too complex to be resolved by the simplistic and sentimental answers of the “infantiles”, and it requires in-depth contributions from the whole of the international communist movement in the light of its experience, old and new. Marx and Lenin aren’t being contradicted if we state that in order to resolve this question, rules of conduct must be followed which, whilst not as vital and fundamental as principles, are nevertheless binding both on party members and the leading organs of the movement, who should forecast the different ways in which situations may develop so as to plan with the greatest possible degree of accuracy how the party should act when one of these hypothetical scenarios assumes specific dimensions.

Comprehending and weighing up the situation has to be the key requirement for making tactical decisions because this allows us to signal to the movement that the time has come for an action which has already been anticipated as far as possible; it doesn’t however allow arbitrary “improvisations” and “surprises” on the part of the leaders. To reject the possibility of predicting tactics in their broad outlines – not predicting situations, which is possible with even less certainty, but of predicting what we should do in the various hypothetical scenarios based on the progression of objective situations – is to reject the party’s role, and to reject the only guarantee we can give that party militants and the masses, in all circumstances, will agree to take orders from the leading centre.

140 – Perspectives on the Post-war Situation in Relation to the Party’s 1945 Platform – 1946

     (…) The central and distinguishing characteristic of our position, which during decades of struggle countered those of the opportunists and deserters of the class struggle, is the establishment of extremely clear directives for party action in advance of the major, predictable turning points in the historical life of the capitalist world which we are fighting against. What must be totally excluded in the party – and, if it is up to the task, the same goes for the class it embodies – is the central leadership and its organised groups discovering, at the outbreak of the most significant and cataclysmic events, that the course of events indicates new paths and slogans contrast with those already firmly established and followed by the movement.

    Such is the condition which will not only allow a revolutionary movement to rise again, but also to avoid being submerged during crises such as those of the social-nationalism of 1914 and the national-communism imposed by Moscow during the historical phase of the Second World War (…)

    The essence of the practical task of the party and of its ability to influence the balance of forces in action and the course of events lies in fact not in improvising and contriving clever remedies and manoeuvres whenever new situations arise, but in the strict continuity of its critical positions and its propaganda and battle slogans throughout the succession and counter-position of the different phases of historical development.

141 – Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party of the Working Class – 1947

     Principles and doctrines do not exist for themselves as a fundament that emerges and establishes itself before action; the former and the latter are formed through a parallel process. In practice, competing material interests push social groups into struggle, and the action that arises from such material interests forms the theory that becomes the characteristic inheritance of the party. If the relationships between these interests, the incentives towards action and their practical directions are brushed aside, then the doctrine of the party is brushed aside and deformed.

     To think that this might be made sacred and inviolable through its codification in a programmatic text and by means of a strict organizational and disciplinary body of the party organism, and that we can therefore agree to a variety and multiplicity of directions and maneuvers in tactical action, implies not seeing in a Marxist way what is the real problem to be resolved to arrive at the choice of methods of action (…)

     Today it is possible to conclude, without recalling the totality of the key arguments from the texts of the contemporary discussions, that the balance-sheet of over-elastic and over-manipulated tactics not only had negative results, but was ruinous (…)

    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.

142 – Theory and Action, Forli Reunion – 1952

    I – 1. Given the current situation in which revolutionary energy is at an all-time low, the party’s practical task is to examine the historic course of the struggle in its entirety, and it is a mistake to define this as an activity of a literary or intellectual type and to contrast it with who knows what descent into the thick of mass action.

    – 6. Since an abrupt return by the masses to an organising activity suited to a revolutionary offensive is thus not conceivable, the best result that can be expected in the immediate future is a restating of the true proletarian and communist goals and demands, and a reaffirmation of the lesson according to which every tactical improvisation which changes from one situation to the next under the pretext of taking advantage of unexpected factors within them, is nothing but defeatism.

    – 7. The stupid actualism-activism which adapts its gestures and moves to the immediate facts of the day, a veritable party existentialism, must be replaced by the reconstruction of a solid bridge linking the past to the future, and whose main lines the party sets out for itself once and for all, forbidding members, but especially leaders, from tendentious attempting to seek and discover “new paths”.

    – 8. This bad habit, especially when it slanders or neglects doctrinal work and the restoration of theory, just as necessary today as it was for Lenin in 1914-18, assumes that action and struggle are all that matter and ends up destroying Marxist dialectics and determinism, replacing the immense historical research into the rare moments and crucial points on which it is built with a dissolute voluntarism, which then adapts itself in the worst and crassest of ways to the status quo and its wretched immediate perspectives.

    – 11. Such an undertaking is long and difficult and it requires years; on the other hand, the balance of forces in the global situation will take decades to be overturned. So every stupid and falsely revolutionary short-term adventure seeking must be rejected with disdain, as it is a characteristic of those who do not know how to stand firm on the revolutionary position and who abandon the great highway for the blind alleys of short-term success, as many examples in the history of deviations show.

143 – Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party when the General Situation is Historicaly Unfavourable – 1965

     5 – The relation that exists between tactical solutions, such as not to be condemned by doctrinal and theoretical principles, and the multi-faceted development of objective situations, which are, in a certain sense, external to the party, is undoubtedly very mutable; but the Left has asserted that the party must master and anticipate such relations in advance, as developed in the Rome Theses on tactics, which was intended as a proposal for tactics at the international level.

Ch. 2 THE PRIORITY ELEMENT IN TACTICS: ABSOLUTE AUTONOMY OF THE PARTY

QUOTATIONS

144 – The Tactics of the Communist International – 1922

     IV – (…) We believe that such a plan is based on a contradiction and in practice contains the elements of an inevitable failure. There is no doubt that the Communist Party must also resolve to utilise the non-conscious movements of the broad masses, and cannot devote itself to negative purely theoretical preaching when it is faced with a general tendency towards other paths of action that are not specific to its doctrine and praxis. But this utilisation can only be productive if by placing itself on the terrain on which the broad masses move, and thus working at one of the two factors essential for revolutionary success, we are sure that we are not compromising the other no less indispensable factor which consists of the existence and progressive strengthening of the party and of that organisation of the part of the proletariat that has already been led onto the terrain to which the party’s slogans apply (…)

    If one day, after a more or less prolonged period of struggles and incidents, the working masses should finally arrive at the vague realisation that any attempted counter-attack is useless unless it fights back against the bourgeois state apparatus itself, but in the earlier stages of the struggle the organisation of the Communist Party and those of the movements on its flanks (such as the trade union and the military organisation) had been seriously compromised, the proletariat would find itself deprived of the very weapons it needs for its struggle; of the indispensable contribution of that minority which possesses a clear vision of the tasks that need to be carried out, and which by having had, and held onto, this vision over a long period without ever losing sight of it, had undertaken that indispensable training, and equipped itself with the indispensable weoponry, in the broad sense of the term, needed to ensure the victory of the broad masses.

We think that this would happen, demonstrating the sterility of all tactical plans like those we are examining, if the Communist Party overwhelmingly and blatantly assumed a political stance that annulled and invalidated its intangible character as the party of opposition in relation to the State and other political parties (…)

In fact, oppositional activity means constant preaching of our theses on the inadequacy of all action directed towards conquering power by democratic means and of all political struggle that wishes to stay on legal and peaceful terrain, fidelity to it being exercised through constant criticism of the work of governments and legal parties and avoiding any joint responsibility for it; and through the creation, drilling and training of the organs of struggle that only an anti-legalist party such as ours can build, outside and against the mechanism that is there for the defence of the bourgeoisie (…)

    In this respect, we, loyal to the radiant tradition of the Communist International, do not apply to the political parties the same criterion we do to the trade union economic organisms, that is to say, considering them on the grounds of the recruitment of its members and the class terrain on which they recruit, but on the basis of their attitude towards the State and its representative machinery. A party that keeps voluntarily within the confines of the law, or can conceive of no other political action than that which can be developed without the use of violence against the civil institutions of the bourgeois democratic constitution, is not a proletarian party but rather a bourgeois party; and in a certain sense, the mere fact that a political movement, even those that place themselves outside the boundaries of the law like the democratic and syndicalist ones, refuses to accept the concept of the state organisation of the proletarian revolutionary power, i.e. the dictatorship, is enough for us to deliver this negative judgement. At this point we can only state the platform defended by our party: proletarian trade union united front, unceasing political opposition towards the bourgeois government and all of its legal parties

     V – (…) The bourgeoisie and its allies work within the proletariat to spread the conviction that violent methods are not required in its struggle to improve its standard of living, and that the peaceful employment of the democratic representative apparatus within the orbit of legal institutions are the weapons it should use.Such ideas severely undermine the chances of revolution because at a certain point they are bound to fail, but at the same time such a failure will not cause the masses to lend their support to the struggle against the bourgeois legal and state apparatus by means of the revolutionary war, nor proclaim and support the class dictatorship, the sole means of crushing the enemy class. The proletariat’s reluctance and inexperience in the use these crucial weapons will be entirely to the bourgeoisie’s advantage. Thus the task of the Communist Party is to destroy, among as many proletarians as possible, this subjective repugnance to delivering the decisive blow against the enemy and to prepare it for what will be required to take such action. Although it is fanciful to pursue this task by the ideological preparation and drilling in class warfare of every single proletarian, it is nevertheless indispensable to ensure it by developing and consolidating a collective organism whose work and behaviour in this sphere represents an appeal to the largest possible part of the working class, so that by possessing a point of reference and support the inevitable disillusionment which will eventually dispel the democratic lies will be followed by an effective conversion to the methods of revolutionary struggle (…)

    The path of the revolution becomes a blind alley if the proletariat, in order to realise that the multi-coloured façade of liberal and popular democracy conceals the iron bastions of the class state, were to proceed to the bitter end without thinking to equip itself with the appropriate means of demolishing the last decisive obstacle, until the point when the ferocious forces of reaction, armed to the teeth, emerge from the fortress of bourgeois domination and throw themselves against it. The party is necessary to the revolutionary victory inasmuch as it is necessary that well before it a minority of the proletariat starts shouting incessantly at the rest that they must take up arms for the final battle, equipping and training itself for the inevitable struggle. This is precisely why the party, in order to accomplish its specific task, must not only preach and show through reasoned arguments that the peaceful and legal path is an insidious path, but must prevent the most advanced section of the proletariat from being lulled to sleep by democratic illusions, and organise it within structures and focus it within formations which, on the one hand, begin to prepare it for the technical requirements of the struggle by confronting the sporadic actions of bourgeois reaction, and on the other hand accustom it, and a large section of the masses close to it, to the political and ideological requirements of decisive action with its incessant criticism of the social democratic parties and its struggle against them inside the trade unions (…)

    The action of the broad masses in the united front therefore can only be achieved in the context of direct action and co-operation with the trade unions in all places and of whatever category and tendency, and it is up to the Communist Party to initiate this agitation, since the other parties, by supporting the inaction of the masses in the face of the provocations of the ruling and exploiting class and by diverting it onto the legal and democratic terrain of the State, have shown that they have deserted the proletarian cause, allowing us to push to the maximum the struggle to lead the proletariat into action with communist directives and with communist methods, upheld alongside the humblest section of the exploited who just want a crust of bread or are defending it against the insatiable greed of the bosses, but against the mechanism of the current institutions and against whoever places themselves on their terrain.

145 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome Theses) – 1922

VI.30 – (…) The initiatives and attitudes to adopt in such a case constitute a delicate problem, and the basic condition which must be laid down that they must on no account be or appear to be in contradiction with the long-term requirements of the party’s specific struggle, in accordance with the programme of which it is the sole proponent and for which at the decisive moment the proletariat will need to fight. Any stance which causes or entails the demotion to a secondary level of the complete affirmation of this propaganda, which not only has theoretical value, but is mainly derived from day-to-day positions adopted within the actual proletarian struggle, and which continually has to emphasise the need for the proletariat to embrace the communist programme and methods; any stance which made the reaching of given contingent benchmarks appear to be an end in itself rather than a means to proceed further would lead to a weakening of the party structure and its influence in preparing the masses for the revolution.

     36. (…) The Communist Party will then raise these same postulates, emphasising and clarifying them, as a banner of struggle for the entire proletariat, pushing the latter forward to force the parties which only talk about them for opportunist reasons to engage with them and commit themselves to taking steps to actually conquering them. Whether it be economic demands, or those of a political nature, the Communist Party will propose them as the objectives of a coalition of trade union organisations, avoiding the formation of executive committees of struggle and agitation in which the Communist Party would be involved and represented alongside other political parties; and this is always to focus the attention of the masses specifically on the communist programme and to maintain its own freedom of movement, so it can choose when to widen its sphere of action by supplanting the other parties who have proved themselves impotent and been abandoned by the masses. The trade union united front, understood in this way, offers the possibility of combined actions by the whole of the working class; and the communist method can only emerge victorious from this for it is the only method capable of providing the unitary movement of the proletariat with real substance, free from any co-responsibility for the activity of the parties which, out of opportunism and with counter-revolutionary intentions, express merely verbal support for the proletarian cause.

Ch. 3 THE PARTY’S  TACTICS IN THE WESTERN EUROPEAN REGION: THE ROME THESES

QUOTATIONS

146 – Theses on Tactics at the 2^nd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome Theses) – 1922

     31 – In the historico-political situation which corresponds to democratic bourgeois power there generally takes place a division in the political field into two currents or “blocs” – the left and the right – which vie with each other to run the State. The left bloc is normally supported more or less openly by the social-democratic parties, which favour coalitions on principle. How this contest unfolds is not a matter of indifference to the Communist Party, both because it concerns points and demands which affect the proletarian masses and attract their attention, and because its settlement in a victory of the left really can smooth the path to the proletarian revolution (…)

    32 – An essential task of the Communist party, in preparing the proletariat ideologically and practically for the revolutionary struggle for thedictatorship, is to engage in a ruthless criticism of the programme of the bourgeois left and of any programme that seeks to resolve social problems within the framework of bourgeois parliamentary democratic institutions. The substance of the disagreements between the bourgeois right and left for the most part affect the proletariat only insofar as they are demagogic falsifications, which naturally cannot be disarmed purely by theoretical criticism, but must be revealed for what they are in practice, in the thick of struggle. In general the political demands of the left, whose aims certainly do not at all include taking one step up the ladder to some intermediary rung between the economic and political system of capitalism and that of the proletariat, correspond to conditions which give more breathing space to modern capitalism and ensure its more effective defence, as much in their intrinsic value as because they tend to give the masses the impression that the existing institutions can be utilised to achieve their emancipation. This is true of the demands for extension of the suffrage and for other guarantees and improvements of liberalism, as it is of the anti-clerical struggle and the whole baggage of “masonic” politics. Legislative reforms in the economic or social fields have a similar value: either they will not be carried through, or they will be carried through only insofar as they create an obstacle to the revolutionary dynamic of the masses and with that intention.

    33 – The advent of a left bourgeois or even a social-democratic government may be seen as a preliminary to the final struggle for the proletarian dictatorship; but not in the sense that their practical activity would create useful preconditions of an economic or political kind, and certainly not in the expectation that they would allow the proletariat greater freedom to organise, prepare and engage in revolutionary action. The Communist Party knows and has the duty to proclaim, by force of critical reason and of bloody experience, that these governments will only respect the freedom of movement of the proletariat when it recognises them and defends them as its own representatives, whereas faced with an assault by the masses against the machinery of the democratic State, they would respond with the most ferocious reaction. It is thus in a very different sense that the advent of such governments may be useful: insofar as, that is, that their activity allows the proletariat to deduce from harsh experience that only the installation of its dictatorship can really defeat capitalism. Clearly the exploitation of such an experience will only be effective to the extent that the Communist Party has denounced the government’s failure in advance, and preserved a strong independent organisation around which the proletariat can regroup, after it is forced to abandon the groups and parties which it would have partly supported in their government experiment.

    34 – Thus not only would a coalition of the Communist Party with parties of the bourgeois left or of social-democracy damage revolutionary preparation and make it difficult to utilise a left government experiment, but also in practice it would normally postpone the victory of the left over the right bloc (…)

    35 – On the other hand, the Communist Party does not disregard the undeniable fact that the demands around which the left bloc focuses its agitation attract the interest of the masses and, in their formulation, often correspond to their real requirements. The Communist Party will not uphold the superficial thesis that such concessions should be rejected on the grounds that only the final and total revolutionary conquest merits the sacrifices of the proletariat. There would be no sense in proclaiming this since the only result would be that the proletariat would be sure to go behind the democrats and social-democrats and end up enslaved to them. The Communist Party will thus call upon the workers to accept the left’s concessions as an experiment but emphasize in its propaganda its pessimistic forecast as to that experiment’s outcome, and the necessity for the proletariat, if it is not to be ruined by this venture, not to stake its organisational and political independence upon it. The Communist Party will the masses to demand of the social-democratic parties – who guarantee the possibility of the promises of the bourgeois left being achieved – that they honour their commitments, and, with its independent and incessant criticism, it will prepare to reap the harvest of the negative outcome of such experiments by showing how the entire bourgeoisie is in fact arrayed in a united front against the revolutionary proletariat and how those parties which call themselves workers’ parties, but which support the coalition with part of the bourgeoisie, are merely its accomplices and agents.

    36 – The demands put forward by the left parties, and especially by the social-democrats, are often of a sort that it is appropriate to urge the proletariat to move directly to implement them; since if a struggle did get underway the inadequacy of the means by which the social-democrats proposed to arrive at a programme of benefits for the proletariat would at once become apparent. The Communist Party would then highlight those same demands, making them more specific, and raise them as a banner of struggle for the whole of the proletariat, urging the latter to compel the parties which talk of such demands purely for opportunist reasons to demonstrate their commitment to winning them. Whether these are economic demands or of a political nature, the Communist Party will propose them as the objectives of a coalition of trade-union organisms, shunning the setting up of committees to lead the struggle and agitation in which the Communist Party would be represented and involved alongside other political parties; the aim being always to focus the attention of the masses on the distinctive communist programme, and maintain its own freedom of movement so it can choose the right moment to widen its sphere of activity when it needs to by ousting the other parties who had revealed their impotence and been abandoned by the masses. The trade-union united front, understood in this way, offers the possibility of combined actions by the whole of the working class from which the communist method can only emerge victorious, it being the only method susceptible of lending the unitary movement of the proletariat real substance, free from any co-responsibility for the activity of parties which express their verbal support for the proletariat’s cause merely out of opportunism, and with counter-revolutionary intentions.

    37 – The situation which we are considering may take the form of an assault by the bourgeois right upon a democratic or social-democratic government. Even in this case the stance of the Communist Party cannot be one of proclaiming solidarity with governments of this sort since we cannot present to the proletariat as a gain to be defended a political order whose experiment we greeted, and are following, with the intention of accelerating in the proletariat the conviction that it is not one designed in its favour but for counter-revolutionary ends.

    38 – It may happen that the left government allows the right-wing organisations, the bourgeois white gangs, to engage in their dramatic exploits against the proletariat and its institutions, and not only does not ask for the proletariat’s support, but insists that the latter has no right to respond by organising armed resistance. In such a case the communists will demonstrate that it can only be actual complicity, indeed a division of functions between liberal government and reactionary irregular forces (…) In this situation, the real and most deadly enemy of revolutionary preparation is the liberal side in government: it tricks the proletariat into taking its side in the name of legality so that it can render it defenceless and disorganised, and so it can defeat it, in full collusion with the whites, on the day the proletariat finds itself forced by events to struggle against the legal apparatus which presides over its exploitation.

    39 – Another hypothesis is that the government and the left-wing parties which compose invite the proletariat to participate in the armed struggle against a right-wing attack. This invitation is inevitably a trap, and the Communist Party will reply to it by proclaiming that weapons in the hands of proletarians means advent of the proletarian power and State, and the disarming of the traditional bureaucratic and military machinery of the State, since the latter will never follow the orders of a left government which has attained power by legalitarian means when it summons the people to armed struggle, and since only the proletarian dictatorship could lend a stable character to a victory over the white bands. As a consequence no “loyalism” should be proclaimed or practiced towards such a government, and, most important of all, the masses will need to be made aware that the consolidation of the latter’s power with the help of the proletariat against a right-wing rising or attempted coup d’état, would be very dangerous, because it would mean the consolidation of the very organisation that will oppose the proletariat’s revolutionary advance when this has become its only way out; if control of the armed organisation of the State had been left in the hands of the democratic parties in government, in other words, if the proletariat had laid down its arms without having used them to overturn the existing political and state forms, against all the forces of the bourgeois class.

    40. (…) In other circumstances however the left and social-democratic parties are indifferent towards the immediate and urgent requirements of the working class, whether they are of a defensive nature or to do with future conquests. The Communist Party, not having sufficient strength at its disposal to call on the masses to make those conquests itself, because of the influence the social-democrats have over them, refrains from forging any alliance with the social-democrats and indeed declares the latter to have even betrayed the workers’ contingent and immediate interests, and goes on to formulate these objectives of proletarian struggle as ones to be accomplished by a proletarian united front to be realised on trade union terrain. The implementation of this front would find communist militants in the unions already at their posts the; but at the same time it would leave the party the possibility of intervening should the struggle develop in a direction against which the social democrats, inevitably, and the syndicalists and anarchists, sometimes, would line themselves up against. On the other hand, the refusal of the other proletarian parties to implement a trade-union united front for these objectives will be utilised by the Communist Party to combat their influence; not merely with criticism and propaganda to demonstrate their actual complicity with the bourgeoisie, but above all by participating in the front line in those partial actions of the proletariat which the situation is bound to give rise to on the basis of those essential points from which the party derived its proposal of the trade union united front of all local organisations and all categories, deriving from the latter a concrete demonstration that the social-democratic leaders by opposing the extension of its actions are preparing for its defeat (…)

Ch. 4 REJECTION OF PARTY BLOCS, ALLIANCES AND FRONTS WITH OTHER PARTIES

QUOTATIONS

147 – The Tactics of the Communist International – 1922

     II – (…) But the tactic of the united front as understood by us communists does not contain these elements of renunciation on our part. They remain only as a potential danger: which we believe becomes preponderant if the base of the united front is removed from the field of direct proletarian action and trade union organisation and encroaches on that of parliament and government; and we will say for what reasons, connected to the logical development of the latter tactic.
    The proletarian united front is not about a banal joint committee of representatives of various organisations, in favour of which communists relinquish their independence and freedom of action, bartering it for a degree of influence over the movements of a larger mass than would follow it if they acted entirely alone. It is something completely different.
    We propose the united front because we feel certain the situation is such that the joint movements of the proletariat as a whole, when the latter poses problems which are not of interest to just one category or locality, but to all of them, can only achieve their aims by taking the communist road, that is to say, the road we would take them down if it depended on us to guide the entire proletariat. We propose the defence of immediate interests and of the existing conditions of the proletariat against the bosses’ attacks, because this defence, which has never been at odds with our revolutionary principles, can be made only by preparing and effectuating the offensive in all its revolutionary developments just as we have every intention of doing (…)

    V – (…) The social-democratic experiment in certain situations is bound to happen and it should be utilised by communists, but one shouldn’t think of this ‘utilisation’ as an abrupt act which happens at the end of the experiment, but rather as the result of an incessant critique carried out by the Communist Party and for which a clear seperation of responsibility is indispensable.
    Hence our idea that the Communist Party can never abandon its position of political opposition to the State and to the other parties, considered an element of its work of constructing the subjective conditions for the revolution, which is its very raison d’être. A communist party confused with the pacifist and legalistic parties of social democracy, in a political, parliamentary or governmental campaign, no longer absolves the function of the Communist Party.

148 – Theses of the Left at the 3^rd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyon Theses) – 1926

    I – 3 (…) Another error pertaining to the general question of tactics, and one which can be clearly traced back to the classical opportunist positions dismantled by Marx and Lenin, has been formulated as follows: that the party, in the case of class and political struggles which aren’t yet on its specific terrain, must choose the side which represents the development of the situation which most favours general historical evolution, and should more or less openly support and coalesce with it. The pretext for this is that the conditions for the final, full proletarian revolution (to be set in motion by the party when the time comes) will have come about only when there has been a sufficient maturation and evolution of political and social forms.

    The assumption behind such a policy is wrong, because the typical scheme of a social and political evolution fixed in every detail, held up as the best preparation for the final advent of communism, belongs to the opportunist brand of „Marxism” and is used by the various Kautskys to justify their defamation the Russian Revolution and the present Communist movement. Neither can we establish as a general thesis that the most propitious conditions for the communist party are to be found under certain types of bourgeois regime, for example the most democratic ones. For whilst it is true that the reactionary and “right-wing” measures of bourgeois governments have checked the proletariat on many occasions, it is no less true, and has happened far more often, that the liberal and left-wing politics of bourgeois governments have also stifled the class struggle and deflected the working-class from taking decisive action. A more accurate evaluation, which is truly consistent with Marxism’s breaking of the democratic, evolutionist and progressive spell, is that the bourgeoisie tries, and often succeeds, in alternating its methods and its parties in government according to its counter-revolutionary interests. All our experience shows us that whenever the proletariat gets enthusiastic about the vicissitudes of bourgeois politics, opportunism triumphs.

     In the second place, even if it were true that certain changes of government under the present regime eased the further development of proletarian action, experience has clearly shown that this would be on one express condition: the existence of a party which had issued timely warnings to the masses about the disappointment which would follow what had been presented as an immediate success; and not just the existence of the party, but its capacity to act, even before the struggle to which we refer, in a manner that was clearly autonomous in the eyes of the proletariat, who follow the party because of the party’s practical approach and not just on the basis of schemes which might be convenient to adopt at an official level. The Communist Party, therefore, in the presence of struggles which are not yet able to develop into the definitive struggle for proletarian victory, doesn’t become the manager of transitional demands and accomplishments which are of no direct interest to the class it represents, and doesn’t trade its character and autonomous activity in order to become a kind of insurance society for all the movements for so-called political “renewal”, or for political systems and governments which are under threat from an allegedly “worse government”.

    Against the need to follow this line of action, Marx’s formulation that “communists support any movement directed against existing social conditions”, and all of Lenin’s catechism directed against “the infantile disorder of Communism”, are often brought forward. The attempted speculation on these declarations inside our movement doesn’t differ in its essentials from the analogous speculation continually being consucted by the revisionists and centrists, who in the name of Marx and Lenin, be their leaders called Bernstein or Nenni, have insisted on mocking the revolutionary Marxists.

    Regarding these statements we must first of all make two observations; they have a contingent historical value, with Marx referring to pre-bourgeois Germany, and Lenin’s book, which describes the Bolshevik experiment, referring to Tsarist Russia. But these grounds are not the only ones on which we should base the resolution of tactical questions under classical conditions, i.e. proletariat in conflict with a fully developed capitalist bourgeoisie. Secondly, the support Marx was talking about, and the “compromises” Lenin talked about, are support and compromises (a term Lenin especially liked “flirting“ with as a great Marxist dialectician, he who remained the champion of real, non-formal intransigence directed towards achieving an immutable goal,), support and compromises with movements still forced, even against the ideologies and long-term aims of their leaders, to clear the way with insurrection against outmoded forms, and the intervention of the Communist party therefore occurs as an intervention in a civil war setting: thus the Leninist formulation of the peasant and national questions, during the Kornilov affair, and in a hundred other cases. However, these two substantive observations aside, the sense of Lenin’s criticism of infantilism, and of all Marxist texts on the suppleness of revolutionary politics, does not in the least conflict with the barrier deliberately raised against opportunism, which Engels, and then Lenin, defined, as “absence of principles”, or abandonment of the final goal.

149 – The Political Platform of the International Communist Party – 1945

    7 – The Italian proletarian class has no interest, neither particular nor general, neither immediate nor historic, in supporting the politics of the groups and parties which, by profiting not from their own strength but from the military ruin of the fascist government, personify today the semblance of power that the armed victor thought fit to leave to an Italian state apparatus. The party, the expression of proletarian interests, must refuse not only to collaborate with these groups in government, but refuse to support any of their doctrinal, historical or political proclamations which talk of national class solidarity, of joint struggle of bourgeois and so-called proletarian parties in the name of freedom, democracy, and war against fascism and Nazism.
   The party’s rejection of all political collaboration does not only concern the organs of government, but also the National Liberation Committees ⁽⁵⁾ along with any other organisation or similar combination formed on the same, or different, political foundations (…)

    21 – The proletarian party, in Italy as in the rest of the world, must differentiate its fundamental historical approach from the jumbled mass of all the other political movements, or rather, from today’s pseudo-parties, by means of its original evaluation of the antithesis between democracy and fascism as types of organisation in the modern world. In order to accelerate any revolt against existing social conditions, the communist movement in its early days (around a hundred years ago) was forced to, and did, accept an alliance with the democratic parties because at that time they had a revolutionary historical role. That role expired a long time ago, and today those same parties carry out a counter-revolutionary function. Communism, despite the defeats of the proletariat in decisive battles, has made, as a movement, gigantic strides.
   Its characteristic today, from when capitalism became imperialist, from when the First World War exposed the counter-revolutionary function of democrats and social democrats, is to have historically broken with and denounced any policy of parallel action even temporary with democracy. In the situation following this crisis, communism will either disappear from history, engulfed in the shifting sands of “progressive democracy”, or it will act and fight alone.
   As regards political tactics, the revolutionary party of the proletariat, in Italy as in the rest of the world, will only revive to the extent it differentiates itself from all the other parties, and above all from the false communism that appeals to the present regime in Moscow, by having mercilessly denounced the defeatism of all the dubious penetration and encirclement manoeuvres presented as temporary commitment to objectives in common with other parties and movements, and justified by promising in secret or within the inner circle of members that such operations serve only to weaken and ensnare the adversary in order at a given moment to break the alliances and ententes, and pass onto the class offensive. This method has shown that it is liable to lead to the disintegration of the revolutionary party, to the incapacity of the working class to struggle for its own ends, and to the dissipation of its best energies in achieving results and conquests which only favour its enemies.
    As in the Manifesto a century ago, communists consider it unworthy to conceal their principles and their goals, and they declare openly that these goals can only be attained with the violent downfall of all the social organisations that have existed up until now.
    Within the framework of the current phase of world history, if by chance bourgeois democratic groups should retain a residual historical role due to the possible partial survival of the need for national liberation, or for the liquidation of backward pockets of feudalism and other similar relics from history, the way to ensure that such a task will be carried out in the most decisive and conclusive manner, to make way for the final cycle of the bourgeois crisis, is not achieved by the communist movement abdicating and passively adapting to demands which are not its own, but by virtue of an implacable opposition on the part of communist proletarians to the terminal weakness and laziness of petty-bourgeois groups and bourgeois parties of the left.
   Corresponding to these directives, which are entirely valid at the global level, a communist movement in Italy is bound to mean, in the terrible situation of dissolution of every social framework and the doctrinal and practical disorientation of all classes and parties, a vehement appeal for a relentless clarification of the situation.
   Fascists and antifascists, royalists and republicans, liberals and socialists, democrats and Catholics, engaged in their perpetual sterile debates devoid of any theoretical sense, in despicable rivalries, and in their repugnant manoeuvrings and horse-trading, should thus encounter a ruthless challenge, which should force them to lay bare the class interests, domestic and foreign, which they in fact reflect, and fulfil, if by chance they should have one, their historic mission.
   If, in the current disintegration and fragmentation of all collective and group interests, a new crystallisation of openly combative political forces is still possible in Italy, the resurgence of the revolutionary proletarian party will then be able to induce a new situation.
   When this movement, which will be the only one to proclaim its final class objectives, its party totalitarianism, and the harshly defined limits that separate it from other movements, finally sets its political compass to the revolutionary North, all the others will be challenged to confess their failure (…)

(5) The National Liberation Committee (Italian: Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, CLN) was a political umbrella organisation and the main representative of the Italian partisans fighting against the German occupation of Italy in the aftermath of the armistice of Cassibile. It was a multi-party entity, whose members were united by their anti-fascism.

150 – Nature, Function and Tactics of the Revolutionary Party of the Working Class – 1947

Based on the practical experiences of the opportunist crises and the struggles conducted by left Marxist groups against the revisionism of the Second International and against the progressive deviation of the Third International it is clear that it is not possible to maintain the programmatic approach, the political tradition and the organizational solidity of the party intact if the party applies a tactic which, even for formal positions alone, entails attitudes and rallying cries acceptable to opportunist political movements.

Similarly, every uncertainty and ideological tolerance is reflected in an opportunist tactic and action.

The party, therefore, is distinguished from all the others, whether openly hostile or supposedly alike, and also from those that claim to recruit their adherents from within the ranks of the working class, because its practice rejects maneuvers, combinations, alliances and blocs which traditionally form on the basis of contingent postulates and agitational slogans common to several parties.

This party position has an essentially historical validity, which distinguishes it in the tactical sphere from every other, just as it is distinguished by its original vision of the period which capitalist society is undergoing.

The revolutionary class party is the only one to understand that today, the economic, social and political postulates of liberalism and democracy are anti-historical, illusory and reactionary, and that the world is changing, whereby the liberal order in the large countries is disappearing and giving way to the more modern fascist system.

By contrast, at the time when the capitalist class had not yet initiated its liberal period, when it still had to destroy the old feudal power, or still had to run through considerable stages and phases of its own expansion in the major countries, and when it was still laissez-faire in terms of economic processes and democratic in terms of the functioning of the state, a transitory alliance between the communists and parties that were in the first instance openly revolutionary, outside the law and organized for armed struggle, and in the second instance carried out a task which assured useful and genuinely “progressive” conditions, was both understandable and acceptable – because the capitalist regime would accelerate the historical cycle that will lead to its downfall.

The passage of communist tactics between the two historical epochs cannot be broken down into a local and national case history, nor can it be consumed in the analysis of the complex uncertainties that the cycle of capitalist development undoubtedly presents, without giving rise to the practice deprecated by Lenin in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

The politics of the proletarian party has been first and foremost international (and this distinguishes it from all others) ever since the first statement of its program and the first appearance of the historic need for effective organization. Supporting every revolutionary movement everywhere that is directed against the present political and social state of affairs, Communists, as the Manifesto states, emphasize and assert, along with the question of ownership, those common interests of the whole proletariat, which are independent of nationality.

The outlook of communist revolutionary strategy, where not misled by Stalinism, is that the international communist tactic seeks to break the bourgeois front in the country in which the greatest opportunities appear, directing all of the movement’s resources to this end.

As a result, the tactic of insurrectionary alliances against the old regimes came to its historic end with the great fact of the Russian Revolution, which eliminated the final imposing military state apparatus of a non-capitalist character.

After this historical phase, the still theoretical possibility of tactical blocs must be considered formally and centrally denounced by the international revolutionary movement.

The excessive importance given, in the first years of the life of the Third International, to the application of the Russian tactical positions to countries with stable bourgeois regimes, and also to extra-European and colonial countries, was the first manifestation of the reappearance of the revisionist danger.

The nature of the second imperialist war and its already apparent consequences is the secure influence in every corner of the world, even the most backward kinds of indigenous societies, not so much of assertive capitalist economic forms, as of the inexorable political and military control on the part of the great imperial centers of capitalism; and for now of their gigantic coalitions, which include the Russian state.

Consequently local tactics can only be aspects of the general revolutionary strategy, whose first task is the restoration of the programmatic clarity of the worldwide proletarian party, followed by the reestablishment of the network of its organization in all countries.

This struggle unfolds within the context of the massive influence of traps and seductions presented by opportunism, which is returning ideologically in propaganda about the revival of liberty against fascism, and, with immediate effect, in the political practice of coalitions, blocs, fusions and illusory demands presented by the colluding hierarchies of innumerable parties, groups and movements.

Only in one way will the proletarian masses understand the necessity for the reconstitution of the revolutionary party, substantially different from all of the others, and that is when it proclaims the rejection of the practice of accords between parties, not as a contingent reaction to the opportunistic saturnalia and the acrobatics of the politicians, but as a fundamental and central directive.

None of the movements in which the party participates must be directed by a supra-party or by an organ superior to and over and above a group of party affiliates, not even in transitory phases.

In the modern historical phase of global politics, the proletarian masses will be able to mobilize in a revolutionary way once again only by realizing their class unity in the action of a party that is unitary and compact in theory, in action, in preparation of the insurrectionary attack and in the management of power.

Such a historical solution must appear to the masses in every manifestation, even limited, of the party as the only possible alternative to the international consolidation of the economic and political domination of the bourgeoisie and its finite, but nevertheless currently increasing capacity to control the contrasts and convulsions that menace the existence of its regime with formidable power.

Ch. 5 TOTALITARIANISM

QUOTATIONS

151 – Political Platform of the International Communist Party – 1945

4 – The central political position of the Internationalist Communist Party in all countries will not be to await, to push for and to demand, through agitation slogans, the reconstitution of the bourgeois order, typical of the outdated period of transitory liberal and democratic equilibrium. This position was already set out during the war and the apparent struggle of bourgeois regimes, which defined themselves as democratic, against the fascist forms of capitalist government. It applies equally to the present post-war period, in which the victorious states will inherit and will adopt the same fascist politics after a more or less adroit and more or less brusque conversion of their propaganda. The party therefore rejects all collaboration with bourgeois and pseudo-proletarian parties which proclaim the false and deceptive postulate of substituting fascism with “truly” democratic regimes. This politics is above all illusory because throughout its time of survival the capitalist world will no longer be able to organise itself in liberal forms, but will orient itself increasingly, in different countries, towards monstrous state units, armed with an increasingly strong police and ruthlessly expressing the economic concentration of the bosses; this politics is in the second place defeatist, because (even if democratic forms can briefly survive in some secondary sectors in the modern world) it sacrifices the most important vital characteristics of the movement to the pursuit of this democratic postulate, as far as doctrine, organisational class autonomy, and tactics capable of preparing and clearing the path to the final revolutionary struggle, the essential goal of the party, are concerned; in the third place it is counter-revolutionary, in that it gives credence in the eyes of the proletariat to ideologies, social groupings and parties, whose substance is scepticism and the impotence of reaching the objectives of this democracy that they profess in the abstract; whose sole function and sole goal (clearly corresponding to those of fascist movements) is to ward off at whatever price the independent progress and the direct assault of the exploited masses against the economic and juridical foundations of the bourgeois system.

152 – The Perspectives of the Post-war Period in Relation to the Party’s Platform – 1946

     (…) Thus the conclusions that a Marxist critique can reach, free from the opportunistic influences and degenerations since the dawn of the conflict that has now concluded, regarding the vacuity and lack of consistency of the agitational material used by bourgeois democrats and the fake proletarian Russian state, and with them by all the movements that were inspired by it and supported it, today appear simple and banal after the terrible disillusionment suffered by the masses who had largely believed in these declarations. The thesis that the war against the fascist states and the victory of their adversaries would not bring the outmoded and sterile idylls of liberalism and bourgeois democracy back to life, but would instead mark the global affirmation of the modern capitalist mode of existence, which is monopolist, imperialist, totalitarian and dictatorial, is today a thesis that everyone can grasp; but five or six years previously it could only have been formulated and defended by the vanguard revolutionaries who had remained resolutely faithful to the historical lines of the method of Marx and Lenin.
     The strength of the political class party of the proletariat must arise from the effectiveness of these anticipations, which simultaneously relate to critique and combat, and from the confirmation that they stem from the sequence of events and not from the game of compromises, accords and blocs which sustain the life of bourgeois and parliamentary politics.
     The new international class party will arise with a true historical efficacy, and will offer the proletarian masses the opportunity for a revival, only if it knows how to commit all of its future behaviour in strict consistency with previous class and revolutionary battles.
     While thus attributing maximum importance to the critique of erroneous positions taken by so-called socialist and communist parties during the war, of their interpretation of events, their propaganda, and their tactical behaviour, and while demanding what should have been the restoration of a class politics in the period of war, the Party must today equally trace the interpretative and tactical lines corresponding to the so-called peace that has followed the cessation of hostilities (…)
     Here too they want to prove to proletarians that the regime of parliamentary freedom is a conquest in which they have an interest, a historical inheritance that they risk losing and which is threatened, as yesterday by Teutonic or Japanese imperialism, tomorrow by that of Moscow.
     In the face of this propaganda and the invocation of the united warring front in the name of freedom, to which will adhere, along with a thousand petty bourgeois nuances, the socialists of the Second International sort (who, during the temporary truce would become anti-Russian like they did for other reasons during the time of Lenin), numerous anarchoids, the various basically bigoted and confessional social democrats who infest all countries, the proletarian class Party will reply the most resolute opposition to war, the denunciation of its propagandists, and, wherever it can, with direct class struggle based on that of the revolutionary vanguard in every country.
     And it will do this in alignment with the specific and critical evaluation of the present historic phase according to which, while the Russian regime is not a proletarian regime, and the Moscow state has become one of the sectors of capitalist imperialism, its centralised and totalitarian form nevertheless appears more modern than the outdated and dying form of parliamentary democracy; and the anachronistic restoration of democracy in place of totalitarian regimes within the limits of the capitalist future is not a postulate that the proletariat should defend.
     This postulate is in any case contrary to the general historical path, and is not achieved in imperialist wars through the victory of states which make themselves its champions.

153 – The Historical Cycle of the Bourgeoisie’s Political Domination – 1947

     Since, as the potential of industrial production has gradually increased, the number of labouring armies has increased, the critical conscience of the proletariat has sharpened, and its organisations have grown stronger, the bourgeois ruling class, in parallel to the transformation of its economic praxis from liberal to interventionist, needs to abandon its method of apparent tolerance to ideas and to political organisations in favour of an authoritarian and totalitarian method of government: and it is here that can be found the general direction of the current epoch. The new direction of bourgeois administration of the world levers the undeniable fact that all human activities, because of the very effect of progress in science and technology, proceed from the autonomism of isolated initiatives, specific to less modern and complex societies, towards the institution of increasingly dense networks of relationships and dependencies in all fields of activity, which gradually cover the entire world.
     Private initiative has achieved wonders and broken records from the first audacious navigators to the reckless and savage enterprises by the colonisers of the far corners of the earth. But today this is giving way to the predominance of the astounding interconnectedness of coordinated activities in the production of commodities and their distribution, in the management of collective services, and in scientific research in all domains.
     An autonomy of initiatives is unthinkable in the society which makes use of aerial navigation, radio-communications, cinema, television – all these discoveries being of exclusively social applications.
     Consequently, the governmental politics of the ruling class, for several decades now and with an ever-more decisive rhythm, is also evolving towards strict forms of control, unitary direction and strongly centralised hierarchical organisation. This stage and this modern political form – a superstructure born out of the monopolist and imperialist economic trend predicted by Lenin from 1916 with the affirmation that the political forms of the most recent capitalist phase can only apply tyranny and oppression – this phase which tends to replace that of classical democratic liberalism in general in the modern world, cannot be anything other than fascism.
     Confusing the birth of this new political form imposed by the period, the inevitable condition and consequence of the survival of the capitalist system of oppression in the face of the erosion of its internal contrasts, with the reactionary return of the social forces of feudal classes, which threaten to replace bourgeois democratic forms with a restoration of the despotisms of the ancient regime, is an enormous scientific and historical error, when the bourgeoisie has for centuries incapacitated and wiped out these feudal social forces in the greatest part of the world.
     Whoever suffers, even to the slightest degree, the effect of such an interpretation and follows, even to the slightest degree, the suggestions and preoccupations places himself outside communist arena and politics.
     The new form by which bourgeois capitalism will administer the world, up to the moment in which the proletariat’s revolution will overthrow it, makes its appearance according to a process which is not deciphered by the banal and scholastic methods of philistine critique.
     Marxists have never given credence to the objection according to which the first example of proletarian power must be provided by an advanced capitalist country and not by tsarist and feudal Russia, insofar as the alternations in class cycles is an international phenomenon and the play of forces at the global level, which manifest locally where favourable historical conditions are in play (wars, defeats, excessive survival of decrepit regimes, organic structure of the revolutionary party, etc.)
     One must be even less astonished when the manifestations of the passage from liberalism to fascism can dialectically present the most varied successions in different countries, since it is a less radical passage in which the ruling class itself does not change, but only the form of its domination.
     Fascism can thus be defined from the economic point of view as an attempt at auto-control and auto-limitation of capitalism, tending to brake the most alarming aspects of economic phenomena, which lead to the system’s contradictions becoming incurable, through a centralised discipline.
     From a social point of view, it can be defined as the attempt by the bourgeoisie, born with the philosophy and the psychology of absolute autonomy and individualism, to give itself a collective class conscience, and to oppose its ranks and political and military frameworks to the class forces that arise threateningly within the proletariat.
     Politically, fascism constitutes the stage at which the ruling class denounces schemas of liberal tolerance as useless, proclaims the method of single-party government, and liquidates the old hierarchies of servants of capital that have become too gangrened by using the methods of democratic trickery.
     Ideologically, finally, fascism (and with this it reveals itself not to be not only a revolution, but not even a historical resource, universal and secure, of the bourgeois counter-revolution) does not renounce, because it cannot, using a mythology of universal values and, while having overturned them dialectically, makes the liberal postulates of class collaboration its own, speaks of nation and not of class, proclaims the juridical equivalence of individuals before the law, and wants to present its organisational structure as resting on the entire social collectivity (…)
     As Lenin established through his economic diagnosis, he who deceives himself that monopolist and state capitalism can return to the liberal capitalism of the first classical forms is a reactionary; it is likewise clear today that he who evokes the mirage of a reaffirmation of liberal democratic politics opposed to that of fascist dictatorship, with which, at a certain point in evolution, bourgeois forces crush the autonomous organisations of the proletarian class via a frontal tactic, is equally reactionary.
     The doctrine of the proletarian party must put forward as its cornerstone the condemnation of the thesis according to which, faced with the fascist political phase of bourgeois domination, the slogan that should be raised is a return to the parliamentary democratic system of government, as opposed to which the revolutionary perspective affirms that the totalitarian bourgeois phase will quickly exhaust its task and will submit to the revolutionary upsurge of the working class, which, far from crying over the irremediable end of the lies of bourgeois freedoms, will move to crush by force the Liberty to own, to oppress and to exploit, which has been the banner of the bourgeois world, from its heroic birth in the flames of the anti-feudal revolution, through its passage to the pacific phase of liberal tolerance and to its pitiless unmasking in the final battle for the defence of the institutions, privilege and exploitation by the bosses.
     The ongoing war 1has been lost by the fascists, but won by fascism. Despite the use of democratic hucksterism on a vast scale, the capitalist world, having saved, even in this terrible crisis, the integrity and historical continuity of its most powerful state entities, will undertake a further huge effort to dominate the forces which threaten it, and will achieve an increasingly tight control of economic processes and the immobilisation of every social and political movement threatening to put the constituted order in jeopardy. As the legitimists who defeated Napoleon had to inherit the social and legal organisation of the new French regime, those who defeated the fascists and Nazis, in a more or less rapid process, will recognise through their acts, while denying it through empty ideological proclamations, the necessity of administering the world, terribly disturbed by the second imperialist war, with authoritarian ant totalitarian methods that were first tried out in the defeated states.
     This fundamental truth, rather than being the result of difficult and apparently paradoxical critiques, reveals itself every day in the work of organising for the economic, social and political control of the world.
     The bourgeoisie, once individualistic, national, liberal, isolationist, holds its world conferences and, just as the Holy Alliance tried to stop the bourgeois revolution by means of an absolutist international, today the capitalist world is trying to found its International, which can only be centralist and totalitarian.
     Will its basic task, which, under the cover of preventing a resurgence of fascism is in fact (and increasingly openly) that of repressing and breaking the revolutionary force of the proletarian International, be achieved?

154 – Trends and Socialism – 1947

     Gradualist reformism is however not dead in such a phase because capitalism itself needs it. The capitalism of recent decades has presented characteristics that are well known, and which have been analysed in Lenin’s Imperialism.
     These new economic forms of relationships, of monopoly and planning, have led it to new social and political forms. The bourgeoisie has organised itself not just as a political class but also as a social class; it has, moreover, sought to organise the proletarian movement itself, including it in its state and in its plans, and in return has incorporated the range of reforms long since advocated by the gradualist leaders of the proletariat in its own programmes. Thus the bourgeoisie, which has become fascist, corporatist and national-socialist, has glaringly cast aside the system based on individual liberty and electoral democracy, the system which was indispensable to it during its historical emergence, which was its oxygen but in no sense a concession to the classes that it dominated and exploited, nor a useful means of action for the latter…
     The communist movement in Italy, vigorous, independent, clear in theory and tactics, had to become a slave of soviet totalitarianism, which so much intrigues Saragat and his associates in the Initiative, by diverting it from its programmatic positions to obey the stupid orders to struggle for liberty in Italy. Liberty, in its modern sense, no longer serves the bourgeoisie, which is modernising and advancing in history by increasingly tightening the mesh entangling its individuals, its enterprises, its initiatives in every corner of the earth. It has thrown away its now useless weapon of individual liberty, and it has seized our weapon, that of revolutionary proletarians: sociality, classism, organisation, tearing it from our hands. Our response cannot consist in picking up its blunt and worn out weapon and using it to fight a struggle just as senseless and desperate as that which the artisan fought against the mechanised factory, or that the pirogue fought against the battleship, or the human torpedo fought against the atomic bomb (…)
     However, the relative historical superiority of the soviet version is in its totalitarianism, progressive because it plans and centralises, with brilliant high points of technical output, and unburdened by scruples for liberal tolerance. And therefore why take offence at the totalitarian epithet, why outwardly preach democracy and declare it progressive? The reason is pure demagoguery; it is the ground that best suits the momentum of the common offensive, the most gigantic swindle in human history – against the fascist monster, the model of its vanquishers.
     The key to putting these people in their place is thus simple: the sequence is not fascism, democracy, socialism – on the contrary it is democracy, fascism, dictatorship of the proletariat.

155 – The Historic Course of the Class Movement of the Proletariat – 1947

     Capitalism, at the imperialist age, as it endeavours to dominate its economic contradictions through a central control mechanism and to coordinate all the social and political facts in an hypertrophied state apparatus, thus modifies its action with regard to workers’ organisations. At first, the bourgeoisie had condemned them; later, it had authorised them and allowed them to grow; in a third phase, it understands that it can neither suppress them, nor let them develop on an autonomous platform, and attempts at integrating them by whatever means in the state apparatus, in an apparatus which, exclusively political at the start of the cycle, becomes in the imperialist epoch simultaneously a political and economic apparatus, transforming the state of the capitalists and bosses into a capitalist-state and a boss-state. Within this vast bureaucratic system positions in “golden prisons” are created for the leaders of the proletarian movement. Through a thousand forms of social arbitrations, welfare institutions, organisations that apparently serve to balance class interests, the leaders of the workers’ movements cease to rely on the latter’s autonomous forces, and come to be absorbed into the state bureaucracy (…)
     The movement of economic organisation of the proletariat will see itself imprisoned, in exactly the same fashion that was introduced by fascism, that’s to say with a tendency towards legal recognition of the trade unions, which signifies their transformation into organs of the bourgeois state. It will become evident that the plan to devoid of any content the workers’ movement, particular to reformist revisionism (labourism in England, economism in Russia, pure syndicalism in France, reformist syndicalism of the Cabrini and then Rigola-D’Aragona type in Italy) coincides substantially with that of fascist syndicalism, the corporatism of Mussolini, and the National Socialism of Hitler. The only difference is that the first method corresponds to a phase in which the bourgeoisie only thought of defending itself against the revolutionary danger, whereas in the second phase, because of the increased pressure from the proletariat, the bourgeoisie went on to the offensive. In neither of these two cases has it owned up to working in its class interests, but rather has always proclaimed that it wants to satisfy certain economic needs of the workers, and wants to achieve a class collaboration (…)
     Instead of a world of liberty, the war will have led to a world in which oppression is still greater. When the new fascist system, generated by the most recent imperialist phase of the bourgeois economy, launched its political blackmail and military challenge against the countries where the outmoded liberal lie could still circulate, relic of an obsolete historical phase, this challenge did not leave the dying liberalism a single favourable alternative: either the fascist states would have won the war or their adversaries would have won it, but only on condition that they adopted the political methodology of fascism. This was no conflict between two ideologies or between two approaches to social life, but the necessary process for the arrival of the new form of the bourgeois world, more intense, more totalitarian, more authoritarian, and more determined to preserve itself against revolution, whatever effort it takes (…)
     Faced with this new construction of the capitalist world, the proletarian class movement will only be able to respond if it understands that we can’t, and must not, regret the passing of the phase of liberal tolerance, of sovereign independence of small nations, but rather that history offers a sole path for eliminating all exploitation, all tyrannies and all forms of oppression; and this path is that of revolutionary class action, which in every country, whether it is a ruler or a vassal, places the working classes against the local bourgeoisie, in a complete autonomy of thought, organisation, political attitudes and combative actions, and which unites the forces of the workers of the world in a single organism, beyond frontiers of all countries, whether at peace or at war, whether in “normal” or “exceptional” situations, whether these are expected or unexpected by the schemes of tracherous philistinism, and whose action will not stop until the institutions of capitalism have been completely destroyed.

Ch. 6 ELECTORALISM – ABSTENTIONISM – ABSOLUTELY NO SOLIDARITY WITH THE DEFENCE OF DEMOCRACY

QUOTATIONS

156 – Theses of the Left at the 3^rd Congress of the Italian Communist Party (Lyon Theses) – 1926

«III, 2 – Immediately after the war, Il Soviet became the mouthpiece of the extreme left, and the first newspaper to support the policies of the Russian revolution and to confront anti-Marxist, opportunist, syndicalist, and anarchistic misinterpretations. It correctly set out the essential problems of the proletarian dictatorship and the party’s tasks, and from the very start defended the necessity of a split in the Socialist Party.

This same group supported electoral abstentionism but the 2^nd Congress of the International would dismiss its conclusions. Its abstentionism however didn’t derive from the anti-Marxist theoretical errors of the anarcho-syndicalist type, as its resolute polemics against the anarchist press have shown. The abstentionist tactic was recommended above all for fully developed parliamentary democracies, because this political environment creates particular obstacles to the winning over of the masses to an accurate understanding of the word “dictatorship”; difficulties which, in our opinion, continue to be underestimated by the International.

In the second place, abstentionism was proposed at a time when huge struggles were setting even bigger mass movements into motion (unfortunately not the case today), and not as a tactic applicable for all times and all places.

With the 1919 elections, the bourgeois Nitti government opened up an immense safety valve to the revolutionary pressure, and diverted the proletarian offensive and the attention of the party by exploiting its tradition of unbridled electoralism. Il Soviet’s abstentionism was then entirely correct, in that it responded to the true causes of the proletarian disaster that ensued.

At the subsequent Bologna Congress (October 1919), only the abstentionist minority correctly posed the question of a split with the reformists, but it sought in vain to come to an agreement with a section of the maximalists on this point, even after abstentionism had been renounced in order to achieve it. The attempt having failed, the abstentionist fraction remained the only section of the party, up until the 2^nd World Congress, which worked on a national scale for the formation of the communist party.

This was therefore the group that represented the spontaneous adherence, based on its own experiences and traditions, of the left of the Italian proletariat to the policies of Lenin and Bolshevism, which had lately emerged victorious with the Russian revolution.

157 – Platform of the International Communist Party – 1945

17 – In the same way that exchanging the monarchy for a republic does not represent a solution to the burning social problem in Italy, nor can the convocation of an elected representative constituent assembly be accepted as such. In the first place, the influence of such an assembly would be very restricted, due to the persistence within the territory, over which this assembly would have to exercise full sovereignty, first of the military forces of occupation, and then of the armed forces arranged and installed by the peace-time organisation that will follow the present conflict and which will enter into force in the satellite states. In any case, whatever the tactics of the party may be (merely participating in the election campaign with written and spoken propaganda; putting forward candidates; intervening within parliament), they will have to be inspired not only by its programmatic principles, but prompted by the open proclamation that consultation via the elective mechanism can never allow the exploited classes to give adequate expression to their needs and their interests, much less to achieve the administration of political power. The party will distinguish itself from all other present Italian parties, not only because it is not in the market of electoral combinations and groupings, but also because it takes the substantive social position that, while all others proclaim that the political programme to be implemented and accepted without further resistance is the unknown one that ends up winning a numerical majority in the assembly, the revolutionary party rejects this abdication from the outset, and, based on the abstract hypothesis (but also practical certainty) that electoral victory will leave the fundamental institutions of capitalism in place, the party continues its struggle to overthrow these institutions from without, even if only as a minority in the democratic sense. The historical conjuncture and the balance of forces (as opposed to the authority of constitutional majorities) will alone determine the extent of this struggle, which, according to the possibilities of class dynamics, proceeds from theoretical critique via the propaganda of political opposition to unceasing anti-capitalist agitation, and finally to the revolutionary armed assault. In particular, the party will denounce as counter-revolutionary any movement which declares, as a precautionary measure, with a view to easier agitation and electoral success, that it is useful to simulate deference to the sovereign validity of parliamentary consultation, and which claims to be capable of passing from this politics of equivocation -which has been tried often enough in history and which has always led to the corruption and disarming of revolutionary energies – to an attack against the established order.

In local elections the party cannot disregard, in pursuit of temporary interests, the general objective, which consists in seperating the responsibilities and the approach of the proletarian forces from all the others, and pursuing, in a consistent manner, agitation for its general historical demands.

As the situation moves into a more mature phase, which is only likely to occur in the presence of close inter- European connections, the party will prepare itself and the masses for the formation of soviets, class based representative organs which are simultaneously organs of struggle, and within which the right of the economically exploitative classes to be represented is entirely eliminated.

The party, in the construction of proletarian organs of any nature, before and after the revolution, makes no distinction between male and female workers; for it the question of granting the vote to women in the current representative government is a secondary issue, since it must be considered in conjunction with the critique that the exercise of the right to vote is a mere legal fiction in an environment where economic disparity creates insurmountable subjugations, one of which is the subjugation of the female, whose emancipation is only conceivable in an economy that is non-personal and non-familial.

158 – Perspectives on the Post-war Situation in Relation to the Party’s 1945 Platform – 1946

The attitude proclaimed for our movement, in the event of a third imperialist war, is therefore to deny and reject, on both sides in the great struggle, any watchword that remotely resembles “defencism” (a term that is already well known and which Lenin used in his critical and political battle against the first cycle of opportunism between 1914-18) and to oppose any “intermediatism”, by which we mean the claim to indicate, as the primary and preliminary objective towards which the revolutionary proletariat should direct its force and effort, not the overthrow of their class oppressors, but the achievement of certain changes in the way existing society is organised, which would provide it more favourable terrain for future conquests.

The “defencist” aspect of opportunism consists in the assertion that the working class, in the current social order, while being the class that the upper classes dominate and exploit, risks seeing its conditions worsened in a hundred and one ways if certain characteristics of the current social order come under threat.

We have therefore seen, dozens of times, the defeatist hierarchies of the proletariat calling for it to abandon the class struggle and dash off, in coalition with other social and political forces on the national or global level, to defend extremely varied postulates: freedom, democracy, the representative system of government, the fatherland, national independence, universal pacifism etc., etc., thus casting aside the Marxist theses according to which the proletariat, as the one revolutionary class, considers all these conventions of the bourgeois world as the best armour which capitalist privilege has to protect itself from time after time, and knows that it has nothing to lose but its chains in the revolutionary struggle. This proletariat, transformed into the manager of precious historical patrimony, into the saviour of the bankrupt ideals of bourgeois politics, is the one that “defencist” opportunism consigned, even more wretched and enslaved than ever, to its class enemies in the ruinous crises that arose during the first and second imperialist wars.

Under its complementary aspect of “intermediatism”, opportunist corruption no longer appears merely in the guise of protector of benefits that the working class enjoys and stands to lose, but also under the more appealing aspect of the preliminary conquests it might achieve – evidently with the complaisant and generous assistance of the most modern and developed section of the bourgeoisie and its parties – taking it to a place from which making the jump to its maximum conquests would be easier. “Intermediatism” triumphed in a thousand forms, always resulting, however, in class collaboration, from the revolutionary war which Italian socialists were called to by Mussolini in 1914, to the partisan insurrection and the progressive democracy which the renegades from the Third International came up with during the recent war, as a surrogate for the revolutionary struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, with the aggravating circumstance of camouflaging this trafficking of principles as the application of the elasticity of tactics which they attribute to Lenin. In a very similar vein are the meaningless and barely comprehensible expressions “proletarian Europe” and “the United States of the World” and other such ambiguous substitutes Marx and Lenin’s central programmatic postulate of the armed conquest of all political power by the proletariat.

In conclusion, the next time there is a rift in the world imperialist front, the revolutionary workers’ political movement will only be able to establish itself, put up a resistance and launch a historical insurrection if it knows how to avoid the two traps of “defencist” opportunism which would have it waste all its ammunition, on one front for the sake of the representative freedom of western democracies, and on the other, for the sake of Russian proletarian and communist power. Likewise, the condition for the resumption of classism is the analogous rejection of all “intermediatism”, which seeks to fool the masses by indicating the path to their subsequent revolutionary salvation as lying, on the one hand on the front which supports the parliamentary method of government against Muscovite totalitarianism, and on the other, in the extension of the pseudo-soviet regime to the western capitalist countries.

159 – After the ’Garibaldade’ – 1948

If however they had won, neither Barbarossa nor “grey moustache”¹ would have invaded Italy. It is not electoral counts that determine situations but economic factors that materialise in positions of power, in inexorable controls over production and consumption, in an organised, salaried police force, in the fleets cruising the sea their masters control.

Any person elected to the government of the republic would have no other choice than to offer his services to the global capitalist forces which manage the Italian vassal state, or quit. As for carrying out “sabotage”, this is another illusion about the role of the parliamentary standard bearer. It is the circles of bourgeois wheeler-dealerism and the high civil and military magistracies who have the petty politicians ‘with portfolio’ at their mercy, and who can sabotage them, and not vice versa.

The electoral mechanism has now fallen into the inexorable domain of conformism and the submission of the masses to the influence of the ‘centres of very high potential’, just as iron filings align submissively with magnetic force fields. The elector is not tied to an avowed ideology or to a party organisation, but rather to an evocation of power, and in the voting booth he certainly does not resolve the great challenges of history and social science, but ninety nine times out of a hundred the only thing that is within scope: who is going to win? He is thus like the player of a national lottery; he makes his best guess with absolutely no expertise in the game he is playing, while disavowing his own heartfelt sympathies at the same time.

This arduous problem of guessing who is the strongest is confronted by the candidate in relation to the government, and by the government in relation to the international scene. The elector faces it in relation to the candidate that he votes for; he searches for personal support in his difficult day-to-day struggle, but he doesn’t bring that support himself.

Had it been known on the day before the election, that De Gasperi² would win, he would have gained not just 50 percent but 90 percent of the vote. The dialectic of the frontists had got to this, and any serious subject was avoided and prostituted before the dominant preoccupation: we must win! (and we can pay, with the money of Pantalone³, canvassers, hangers on and charming “independent” acolytes). Mussolini said nothing else, De Gasperi said it and has no hesitation about doing so.

All of the policies and tactics of the adversaries of the Christian Democrats have been defeatist. The leaders of these so-called mass organisations have practised opportunism for so long it has led to a situation where it is no longer possible for a party with a programme and an attitude of principled opposition, which proclaims to electors its rejection of the illusion that the exploited class can nevertheless achieve power by the democratic path, to make any progress by taking part in battles on the electoral terrain.

Today, electoralism is only conceivable with the promise of power, marginal scraps of power, in mind.

160 – Characteristic Theses of the Party – 1951

III, 17. (…) It was instead to do with the full realization of the great historical event predicted by Marxism and by it alone: the economic concentration which having fully evidenced the social and global character of capitalist production had pushed the latter to unify its own machinery, and the consequent politics and social war which emerged from the final, long-awaited class confrontation, corresponding to that alternative scenario in which the pressure exerted by the proletariat was lower than the defensive capability of the capitalist class state.

The leaders of the International, due to a glaring historical confusion with the Kerenskyist period in Russia, relapsed instead not only into a serious error of theoretical interpretation, but into an inevitable inversion of tactics as a consequence. A strategy for the defence and conservation of existing conditions was outlined for the proletariat and communist parties, who were advised to form a united front with all those bourgeois groups which upheld that certain immediate advantages should be granted to the workers and that the people should not be deprived of their right to associate, vote, etc. Indeed, the very groups which were the least decided and enlightened, and thus very unreliable allies.

The International failed to understand that Fascism or National Socialism was neither to do with an attempt to return to despotic and feudal forms of government, nor with a victory of the so-called right-wing bourgeois sections over the more advanced capitalist class in big industry, or with an attempt by the intermediate classes between the employers and the proletariat to form a government of their own. It also failed to understand that by freeing itself from a hypocritical parliamentarism, fascism inherited pseudo-Marxist reformism in full, and that with a series of measures, of interventions by the class State, in the interests of conserving capitalism, it secured for the least fortunate classes not only a living wage but a series of improvements in their welfare. The Communist International thus launched the slogan “struggle for freedom”, which was forced upon the Communist Party of Italy by the president of the International from 1926 onwards. Yet to conduct the fight against fascism, which had been in power for four years, nearly all the militants of the Party wanted to pursue an autonomous class policy, not a policy of uniting with all the democratic, monarchist and Catholic parties to demand the restoration of constitutional and parliamentary guarantees. From then on the Italian communists would want to discredit the antifascism of all the bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and pseudo-proletarian parties and show the real reasons behind it; and they would warn, in vain, that the degenerative path (eventually leading to the Committees of National Liberation) being followed by the International, would totally squander all the revolutionary energy.

The policy of the communist party is, by its very nature, offensive and in no case may it struggle for the illusory preservation of conditions peculiar to capitalism. If, before 1871, the working class had to fight side by side with bourgeois forces, this was not so the latter could maintain its position or to prevent the loss of existing historical forms, but rather so they could destroy out-grown political and social forms and move beyond them. In everyday economic policy, just as in general politics, the working class has nothing to lose and therefore nothing to defend. Attack and conquest, those are its only tasks.

Consequently, in response to manifestations of capitalist concentration, unitarity and totalitarianism, the revolutionary party must above all recognise that this marks the confirmation of its doctrine and therefore its complete ideological victory, and that therefore its only concern should be the effective strength of the proletarian class in relation to its oppressor in order to get ready for the revolutionary civil war. This relationship has only ever been made unfavourable by opportunism and gradualism. The revolutionary party shall do all in its power to stir up the final attack, and where this is impossible, face up to defeat, but without ever enouncing a defeatist and stupid “get thee behind me, Satan” which is equivalent to begging foolishly for tolerance and forgiveness from the enemy class.

IV,12. The party is not a derivation of the Abstentionist fraction of the Italian Socialist Party, although the latter played a major role in the foundation of the Italian Communist Party at Leghorn in 1921. The opposition of the Left inside the Italian Communist Party and the Communist International was never based on abstentionism but on much more fundamental issues.

With the development of the capitalist state, which will openly take on the form of class dictatorship identified by Marxism from the start, parliamentarism gradually loses its importance. Even where they appear to survive, the elective parliamentary institutions of the traditional bourgeoisies become devoid of content, with just empty talk remaining; and in moments of social crisis they allow the dictatorial nature of the state to come to the fore, as capitalism’s last resort, against which the violence of the revolutionary proletariat must be exercised. Given this current state of affairs and the balance of forces, the party therefore takes no interest in democratic elections of any sort and does not carry out its activity in this domain.

161 – The Corpse is Still Walking – 1953

It is clear that the main problem is the elimination of the social-pacifists from the proletarian party, and whether or not it should participate in elections is a secondary question, both in Lenin’s thinking at the time and in the subsequent debates and theses on parliamentarism at the Second Congress not long afterwards.

But for us today it is also clear what we were advocating back then, just after the war: that the only way to achieve the transfer of forces onto revolutionary terrain was by making an enormous effort to neutralise the tremendous attraction of democracy and elections, which had already celebrated too many Saturnalia.

The tactic desired by Moscow was followed by the party of Leghorn with discipline and engagement. But unfortunately, the subordination of the revolution to the corrupting demands of democracy was already underway at both the international and local levels, and the Leninist way of accommodating the two problems, as well as their relative weight, became insupportable. Like catching your coat tail in a machine, the parliamentary system inevitably sucks you in and crushes you. Its use in “reactionary” times, as advocated by Lenin, was feasible; but at times when a revolutionary attack is possible it is a manoeuvre in which the bourgeois counter-revolution too easily gains the upper hand. Over and over again, and in many different contexts, history has proved there is no better diversion from revolution than electoralism (…)

If we are recalling all this once again, it is to establish the close link that exists between every assertion of electoralism, parliamentarism, democracy and liberty, and a defeat, a backward step in proletarian class potential (…)

The same has to be said of the “historic battle” against the “Fraud Law”⁴. Elections are not only fraudulent per se, but are all the more so when they claim to give equal weight to each individual vote. In Italy the whole hodgepodge is concocted by a few thousand cooks, sous-chefs and bottlewashers, who shepherd the 20 million voters into the various improvised sheep pens.

If the purpose of parliament was actually to administer something technically, and not just to fool the citizens, it would not dedicate, out of its maximum five year life span, one of them to elections and another to debating the law on how to constitute itself!

162 – The Western Anti-capitalist Revolution – 1953

All of the following points will have to be demonstrated to recoup the situation: that socialism is not being built in Russia; that the Russian state, if it does fight, will fight not for socialism but due to imperialist rivalries; and, especially in the West, that not only are democratic, popular and progressive objectives of absolutely no interest to the working class but they serve to keep a decrepit capitalism on its feet.

163 – Easy Derision – 1959

Drawing on the same resources which we tapped so long ago we have now arrived at the point where we slap down all superstitious beliefs in the method which tots up personal opinions, considering them all to be of equal weight; and by the same token we declare that anyone who employs this method at the societal, class, or even party level is a charlatan: because these wretched impostors talk of class and party as forces that transform society but conceive of them as bad parodies of democratic-bourgeois society, from whose filthy mush they are unable to extricate themselves.

CONCLUSION

This lengthy work, as was stated in the introduction, is aimed at party comrades and is a reminder of the fundamental concepts on which the party was reconstituted after the Second World War and which must continue to be the basis for its activity, on pain of it degenerating and perishing. At the same time it forms an exposition of the line of thinking and action of the group which was “expelled” by the organisation in November 1973; a line which it refuses to be deflected from and will continue to follow.

Since the basis of these organisational splits must be found in divergences of positions, our intention has been to explain in a systematic work, without engaging in polemics and accusations, the positions which for 50 years have been characteristic of the Communist Left, deriving these not from our “opinions” but from our fundamental texts; from everything the party has asserted and written in the course of its long and difficult life.

We don’t want “dialogues” with anyone. All we want, in 1974, is for the militant organisation which bears the name of the International Communist Party to clearly reclaim these positions as its own, since these alone constitute the line of continuity which all of us, leaders and rank and file, must follow. It is on the basis of the clear-cut enunciation of positions that we stay or go; that we unite or separate. We have been unable to express “our” positions in any other way than by referring back to citations from our fundamental texts which exist in a continuous line from 1920 to 1970.

If what has been written in the preceding pages is the basis on which the current organisation intends to go forward we have no reason to remain separate from it and we can place ourselves fully at the organisation’s disposal. If this is not the case, and if for those campaigning under the banner of Programma Comunista everything that has been written constitutes a “kind of pond for geese to splash around in”, then this means history has put on the agenda the defence and reaffirmation of these positions on a different path to that taken by the present organised formation, insofar as the latter defends positions that diverge from them. If this is the case, the organisational split is plainly justified, since we have absolutely no intention of abandoning our faith in the positions which we subscribed to, once and all, when we joined the party.

We maintain that in the party there remain only those who are loyal to these positions; those who abandon, mystify or forget them leave in an organic way. We refer all comrades to these considerations. There is nothing more to add.

1. The party as organic leader of the class

The first point of departure is that the party is aware that there will never be any revolutionary victory if the historic conditions that would allow the party itself to constitute the organic leadership of the revolutionary proletariat should not materialize.

The party organizes those militants who not only have chosen to struggle for the victory of the revolution, but who are also aware of the objectives that the party is pursuing and know the methods that are necessary for their accomplishment.

This does not mean that individual consciousness is a condition for admission to the party, which we rule out absolutely; nevertheless this fundamental and principled thesis implies that every organic party relationship ceases to exist when explicit, or worse, diplomatic methods of physical coercion are used within its ranks, which we rule out before, during and after the revolution. This thesis also demonstrates that the members of the party should be considered not as raw material that should be subjected to propaganda and agitation, but as comrades with whom a common effort for the common revolutionary preparation is carried out: in which is also contained the thesis that the party represents the class for itself in its historic evolution independently of the specific circumstances.

164 – Discourse of the representative of the Left at the 6th Enlarged Executive of the C.I – 1926
    It is absolutely indispensable that the party should be allowed to form an opinion and express it with frankness. At the congress of the Italian party I said that the mistake had been not making a distinction, within the party, between agitation and propaganda. Agitation is carried out among a large mass of people to make clear a given number of very simple ideas; propaganda, by contrast, concerns a relatively limited stratum of comrades to whom we set out a greater number of complex ideas. The error that we succumbed to was to limit ourselves to agitation within the party; to consider the mass of party members, in principle, as mentally handicapped; to treat them as elements that can be set in motion, and not as an active factor of the common effort. An agitation based on formulae learnt by heart is up to a certain extent conceivable when it is intended to set the broad masses in motion, and if initiative and consciousness play a secondary role. But within the party things are completely different. We ask that, within the party, these methods are stopped. The party must gather within itself that part of the working class which possesses class consciousness and in which class consciousness prevails – unless you advocate precisely the elitist theory that previously served as an accusation (and a baseless accusation) against us. It is necessary that the mass of the party members develops a collective political consciousness, that they study the problems that the communist party faces in depth. In this sense, it is a matter of the utmost urgency to change the internal regime of the party.

It is only in rare moments of history that the physical class corresponds to the class for itself and it is an objective process on which the party can exert very little influence even in the moments when it is numerically substantial. On the contrary, the party’s work of revolutionary preparation is always accomplished in an exquisitely subjective manner, which will certainly be affected by external influences and evolving situations, but in any case this task can only be achieved through a continuous effort by the formal organization to keep itself at the level of the historical party.

2. Objective factors of the degeneration of the Communist International

As stated many times in texts and theses it is necessary to return to the battle that the Left conducted with the centre of the International from 1922 to 1926, because it was precisely by means of this battle that the historical conditions for the rebirth of the world party from the ashes of the Third International were revealed. Defeat of the revolution and rebirth of the party on the basis of the lessons derived precisely from the victory of the counter-revolution are thus inseparably welded together.

We can only understand the significance of the Left’s battle against Stalinism in the crucial years 1922-1926 in the light of our exclusive thesis according to which it was objective factors that determined the victory of the counter-revolution. All those who have put too much emphasis on the subjective aspects (errors of the International’s centre) have ended up abandoning the most elementary communist principles themselves precisely because they have ruled out the very possibility of understanding the class significance of the Russian and European events of this period.

Our thesis is reaffirmed in all the texts and this distinguishes us not only from official opportunism of the Muscovite stamp, but also from the opportunism, in many ways even more fetid, of the thousands of so-called revolutionary groupings.

165 – Economic and social structure of Russia today – 1957
     118 – In Russia the revolutionary phase was mature enough to bring new forces into play and to break down dead forms in a brief cycle; outside of Russia, in Europe, the situation was falsely revolutionary and the array of forces was not decisive; the uncertainty and volatility of behaviour was an effect and not a cause of the deflection of the historical curve of the class’s potential. If error there was, and if it actually makes sense to talk of human and political error at all, this did not consist in having missed the historical bus that one could have taken, but rather, in having seen, in the struggle in Russia, the presence of the supreme situation, in believing that in Europe it could be replaced by clever illusionists’ tricks, in not having had the strength to say from the movement’s perspective, that the omnibus of proletarian power in the west had not yet arrived, and that it was therefore a lie to signal the arrival of the socialist economy in Russia.

However, we have repeatedly underlined that the tactical and organizational errors of the early years of the Communist International should not be underestimated, not because the counter-revolution would not have happened without these errors, but because the material possibility of setting the party on the correct revolutionary path lies precisely in dealing collectively with the significance of these errors and the timely response of the Left.

The weaknesses that were immediately indicated by the Left to the International were related to the way of posing the question of tactics (lack of clear and precise limits); the impatient, although not unwarranted, attitude towards the struggle to seize political power in the European capitalist countries, from whence the manoeuvrism, the generalization of the Russian experience to the large European capitalist countries (confusing tactics in the area of double revolutions with those in the area of single revolution); and the practice, in the organizational field, of fusionism by the communist parties with non-revolutionary parties.

We have written several times that such weaknesses were not ascribed by the Left to the alleged subjective incapacities of the leaders of the International. Nevertheless, the Left knew that insisting on the practice of such weaknesses would lead to the weakening and then the destruction of the International. For this reason from the II Congress the Left acted to reduce to the minimum the negative effects of such weaknesses on the International as a whole with the clear intention of preserving if not the entire party, at least the backbone which had given life to the International. The course of later events was, however, the worst it could have been for obtaining even this limited result. The later collapse of the International confirmed that while the latter had definitively settled the questions of theory and principle, it had not tackled the question of tactics in so definitive a way, and as a result, opportunism was once again able to enter through this breach.

3. Evaluation of the historical situation and the tasks of the party

The correct evaluation of the historical situation is of fundamental importance, because otherwise not only the tactical connotations would become vague, but as a result also the physiognomy of the party, its function and its specific tasks.

The lesson that we must draw from the years 1919-26 is that, in the final analysis, it was capitalism’s capacity to resist the powerful revolutionary tide that also explains the subjective errors of the International. In the ensuing years global capitalism was able to allow the working class of the imperialist countries participation in the exploitation of the world, with substantial crumbs from the table. From a materialist point of view, there can be no other explanation for the total submission of the bulk of the western working class to the requirements of capitalism, which was expressed through the political control of the class itself by the opportunist parties; otherwise we would have to consider opportunism not as a social and economic, but as a moral phenomenon. However, no concessions must be made to the theory of “integration” of the working class into the capitalist system, because we must also reaffirm the certain prediction that the same working class of the western and imperialist countries will necessarily return to express the class struggle for the achievement of its historical objectives as powerfully, if not more so, than in 1919. But when? When the material basis for the alliance between imperialism and the working class of the imperialist countries breaks down, likewise for material reasons.

The party’s tactical and organizational tasks, both permanent and temporary, must be directly correlated to this historical process, which determines the revival of the revolutionary class struggle. The party must not adopt methods and behaviours which are unsupported by a material situation corresponding to the forecasts, and which have not been extensively explained in the light of theory, otherwise these would compromise the fundamental characteristics of the party itself. Without a precise correlation between objectives, principles, tactics and analysis of the situation the party would end up assuming behaviours which prejudice its distinctive characteristics, and just as inevitably would sink into activism and voluntarism.

166 – Theses of the Left at the Third Congress of the CP of Italy (Lyons Theses) – 1926
     I, 3 – Situations must be studied and understood before tactical decisions can be taken, because this signals to the movement that the time has come for an action that has already been anticipated to the greatest extent possible; they should not lead, at the arbitrary decisions of the leaders, to “improvisations” and “surprises. To deny the possibility of predicting tactics in their broad outlines – not of predicting situations, which is possible with even less certainty, but of predicting what we should do in the various hypothetical scenarios based on the progression of objective situations – is to deny the party’s task, and to reject the sole guarantee we can give that the party members and the masses will respond, in any eventuality, to the orders of the centre.
     In this sense the party is not an army, nor even a state apparatus, that is to say an organ in which hierarchical authority prevails and voluntary adhesion counts for nothing; it is obvious that for the party member there always remains an option of not executing the orders, which doesn’t involve material sanctions: leaving the party. A good tactic is one which, should the situations change and the centre not have time to consult the party and still less the masses, does not lead to unexpected repercussions within the party itself and within the proletariat which could pull in the opposite direction to the success of the revolutionary campaign. The art of predicting how the party will react to orders, and which orders will obtain a good response, is the art of revolutionary tactics: this can only be entrusted to the collective use of the experience gained from past action, summarized in clear rules of action; by entrusting to leaders the fulfilment of these tasks, militants ensure that these leaders will not betray their mandate, and they undertake substantially, and not just apparently, to carry out the orders of the movement productively and decisively. Given that the party is perfectible and not perfect, we do not hesitate to say that much has to be sacrificed to the clarity and to the power of persuasion of the tactical guidelines, even if this involves a certain schematization: should our tactical schemes break down under the weight of circumstances, we will not remedy this by falling back into opportunism and eclecticism; rather, we will have to make renewed efforts to bring tactics back into line with the party’s tasks. It is not just the good party that makes good tactics, but good tactics that make the good party, and good tactics can only be those understood and chosen by everyone in their fundamentals.
     Basically, what we oppose is that the party’s collective work of defining its tactical guidelines should be stifled by demands for unconditional obedience to one man, one committee, or one particular party of the International and its traditional ruling apparatus.
     The party’s activity takes on a strategic aspect at crucial moments in the struggle for power, at which point it assumes an essentially military character. In the preceding situations the party’s action is not restricted, however, to its purely ideological, propagandistic and organizational functions, but consists, as we’ve already stated, of active participation in the individual struggles initiated by the proletariat. This being so, the system of tactical guidelines must therefore be constructed with the precise aim of establishing under what conditions the intervention of the party and its activity within such movements, its agitation at the heart of the proletarian struggle, connects with the ultimate and revolutionary objective whilst simultaneously guaranteeing the advantageous progress of ideological, organizational and tactical preparation.

4. The need for the continuous preparation of the party

In determining when the party should intervene in given historical situations we must avoid the voluntarist error which almost always comes down to a devaluation of the party, attributing the quintessentially revolutionary functions of the party to immediate organs of the class. This in particular is the syndicalist tradition. By contrast we must be aware that when the historical situation truly matures in a revolutionary direction, numerous revolutionary militants will side, even instinctively, with the party; and this will actually be one of the clearest signs of an acceleration in the process of revolutionary recovery.

167 – Characteristic theses of the party (Florence Theses) – 1951
     IV, 10 – The acceleration of the process depends not only on the profound social causes of historical crises, but also on the proselytism and propaganda of the party, even with the reduced means at its disposal. The party totally rules out the possibility of stimulating this process by means of devices, stratagems and manoeuvres aimed at groups, leaders or parties who have usurped the name “proletarian”, “socialist” or “communist”. These manoeuvres, which permeated the tactics of the Third International as soon as Lenin withdrew from political life, only resulted in the disintegration of the Comintern as the theoretical and organizational force of the movement, ever ready to shed fragments of the party on the road of “tactical expediency”. These methods were recalled and re-evaluated by the trotskist movement of the Fourth International, which wrongly considered them to be communist methods.
     There are no ready-made recipes that will accelerate the resurgence of the class struggle. No manoeuvres and expedients exist that will get proletarians to listen to the voice of the class; such manoeuvres and expedients would not make the party appear to be what it truly is, but would be a misrepresentation of its function, to the detriment and prejudice of the effective resurgence of the revolutionary movement, which is based on the situation having really matured and the corresponding ability of the party to respond, being fit for this purpose only because of its doctrinaire and political inflexibility.
     The Italian Left has always fought against resorting to expedients as a way of keeping its head above water, denouncing this as a deviation from principle which in no way adheres to Marxist determinism.

The opposite error to voluntarism is trite fatalism. In the historical process which sees the working class genuinely taking back its revolutionary instruments, the party not only can, but must intervene as a voluntary factor. In contingent historical situations the party must therefore intervene with its unique principles, with the purpose of consolidating the broadest possible relations with the class. But it is not just any old relationship with the class that interests the party (this would be pure opportunism), but only those that do not contradict our framework for the revolutionary perspective: class defensive struggle, reconstruction of the class union, strengthening of the party, revolutionary struggle to seize political power. Vice versa, to claim to direct the class, or even to influence it, without taking our perspective into account, has the inevitable consequence of compromising the compactness of the party because of the repercussions that such a type of activity is bound to have on the organization.

168 – Theses of the Left at the Third Congress of the CP of Italy (Lyons Theses) – 1926
     I, 3 – (…) The party cannot and must not restrict its activity either to conserving the purity of theoretical principles and of the organizational collective, or to achieving immediate successes and numerical popularity regardless of the cost. At all times and in all situations, this activity must incorporate the following three points:
 a)     Defence and clarification of the fundamental programmatic postulates in the light of new facts as they arise, that is to say of the theoretical consciousness of the working class;
 b)     Assurance of the continuity of the party’s organizational unity and efficiency, and its defence against contamination by extraneous influences that are opposed to the revolutionary interests of the proletariat;
 c)     Active participation in all of the struggles of the working class, including those arising from partial and limited interests, in order to encourage their development, but constantly highlighting their connection with the final revolutionary objectives and presenting the conquests of the class struggle as a bridge of passage to the indispensable struggles to come, by denouncing the danger of settling for partial achievements as if they were ends in themselves, to be bartered in exchange for the conditions of proletarian class activity and combativity, such as the autonomy and independence of its ideology and of its own organizations, the party being first and foremost among these.
     The supreme purpose of this complex party activity is the creation of the subjective conditions for the proletariat’s readiness, so that it is in a position to profit from revolutionary possibilities as soon as history presents them, and so that it emerges from the struggle victor rather than vanquished.
     (…) It must be clearly stated that in certain situations, past, present and future, the majority of the proletariat has adopted, does, and inevitably will adopt a non-revolutionary stance, either through inertia or collaboration with the enemy as the case may be. Nevertheless, despite everything, the proletariat everywhere and always remains the potentially revolutionary class entrusted with the revolutionary counter-attack; but only insofar as within it there exists the communist party and where, without ever renouncing coherent interventions when appropriate, this party knows how to avoid taking paths, which although apparently the easiest way to instant popularity, would divert it from its task and thereby remove the essential point of support for ensuring the proletariat’s recovery. On dialectical and Marxist grounds such as these (and never on aesthetic and sentimental grounds) we reject the bestial expression of opportunism, which maintains that a communist party is free to adopt all means and all methods. It is said by some that precisely because the party is truly communist, sound in principles and organization, it can indulge in the most acrobatic of political manoeuvrings, but what this assertion forgets is that the party itself is both factor and product of historical development, and the even more malleable proletariat is yet more so. The proletariat will not be influenced by the contorted justifications for such “manoeuvres” offered by party leaders but by actual results, and the party must know how to anticipate these results, mainly by using the experience of past mistakes. It is not just by theoretical credos and organizational sanctions that the party will be guaranteed against degeneration, but by acting correctly in the field of tactics, and by making a determined effort to block off false paths with precise and respected rules of action.

The party must prepare itself to become the indispensable organ of the revolution, and it can only do this by “defending in the present the future tasks of the proletarian movement”. In this lie both the sense and the importance of the necessity of the party’s preparation, which is actually the main task in the historic period that we are still traversing today. When the proletarian masses line up once again on the terrain of class struggle there won’t be time to prepare a party capable of carrying out its revolutionary tasks in an effective manner. Historical experience demonstrates that revolutionary situations overwhelm parties that have not solidly prepared themselves on revolutionary terrain (e.g. the collapse of the Second International at the outbreak of the First World War), whereas it is only parties that have prepared in advance which can lead the proletariat to victory in revolutionary crises (Bolshevik Party, Russia 1917). It is therefore not for the movement, not even that of the revolutionary proletariat, to determine the clarity of the party’s programmes and its compactness of action, but on the contrary it is the programmatic and tactical clarity and the organizational compactness previously conquered by the party that will enable the revolutionary proletariat to achieve victory over the capitalist state. Otherwise on what would we base our fundamental notion that the dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of the party?

5. The compactness and unitary nature of the party result from its organic activity

The party’s work of revolutionary preparation must consist in the continuous dissemination, and in all its parts, of the doctrine and of the historical tradition, with the objective of accomplishing the indispensable level of collective assimilation so that the party itself can assume the function of organ of the revolution when the situation has matured. Consciousness of this necessity, even though an original aspiration of the Left, has only emerged during the struggle against Stalinism. Defeat in practice of the revolutionary movement but theoretical victory insofar as consciousness of the unique possibility of the future revolutionary victory are welded together inseparably in the experiences of the Left, which by this time is outside the Stalinized International. So it is to this experience alone that we must refer in our daily party work and above all to the battle conducted by the Left against the first symptoms of degeneration of the International, when the first instruments and antidotes were forged against the first attempts, later successful, of opportunism to take its revenge on the party.

169 – Supplementary theses (Milan Theses) – 1966
     2 – (…) Even accepting the party’s restricted dimensions, we must realize that we are preparing the true party, sound and efficient at the same time, for the momentous period in which the infamies of the contemporary social fabric will compel the insurgent masses to return to the vanguard of history; a resurgence that could once again fail if there is no party; a party that is compact and powerful, rather than inflated in numbers, the indispensable organ of the revolution. Painful as the contradictions of this period are, they can be overcome by drawing the dialectical lessons from the bitter disappointments of times past, and by courageously signalling the dangers that the Left warned about, and denounced as they appeared, along with all the insidious forms in which the ominous opportunist infection reveals itself time and time again.
     3 – With this objective we will further develop our work of critical presentation of the past battles of the revolutionary and Marxist Left and their ongoing responses to the historical waves of deviation and disorientation which have blocked the path of proletarian revolution for more than a century. By referring to the phases in which the conditions for a really bitter class struggle were present, but in which the factor of revolutionary theory and strategy was lacking, and above all by referring to the historic events which nullified the Third International (just when it seemed that the crucial tipping point had finally been reached) and the critical positions that the Left assumed in order to ward off the towering danger, and the disaster which unfortunately followed, we will be able to consecrate lessons that are not, nor claim to be, recipes for success, but rather serve as stern admonitions to help us protect ourselves against those dangers and weaknesses, and the pitfalls and traps they gave rise to, from a time when history often caused the downfall of forces which seemed devoted to the cause of the revolutionary advance.

These instruments, by now exposed several times to a process of historical selection, were: the reaction of the Left against tactical eclecticism (randomness of the term “conquest of the majority” used at the third congress of the International in 1921, lack of precise tactical guidelines, political united front, etc.); the reaction of the left against organizational methods involving fusion with other parties; a denunciation of the approach that involved hunting down those supposedly responsible for failures which were attributed to a wrong application of the tactical standards dictated by the International’s Presidium, when, on the contrary, they could only be attributed to unfavourable objective conditions, to which the worst way of responding was precisely with tactical eclecticism; the struggle of the Left against an internal method of working that consisted in hunting down the spectre of fractionalism instead of engaging in a joint search for the correct positions. While they were professing to be overturning situations which were historically unfavourable, which is materially impossible, the party organism was destroyed. These vicissitudes convinced the party that it was only possible to achieve organizational cohesion and compactness as a result of an activity (both theoretical and practical) which involved all of the party, from the centre to the periphery; as a result, therefore, of a method of working from which internal political struggle had been excluded as a matter of principle.

170 – Theses on the historical task, action and structure of the party (Naples Theses) – 1965
     3 – As regards the subsequent period in the life of the new International the enduring heritage of the communist Left is the correct theoretical diagnosis and historical prediction of the new opportunistic dangers that emerged over the course of the first years of the International. Avoiding heavy intellectual theorizing, this point needs to be developed using the historical method. The first manifestations denounced and opposed by the Left occurred in the tactics regarding the relations to be established with the old socialist parties of the Second International, from which the communists had become organizationally separated as a result of splits; and consequently also in erroneous measures in the realm of organizational structure.
     The third congress had correctly established that it wasn’t enough (already in 1921 one could see that the great revolutionary wave that came after the war in 1918 was petering out, and that capitalism would attempt a counter-offensive on both the economic and political fronts) to have formed communist parties strictly committed to the programme of violent action, to the proletarian dictatorship and to the communist state if a large part of the proletarian masses remained under the influence of opportunist parties, which all communists now considered the worst instruments of bourgeois counter-revolution, and whose hands were covered in the blood of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. At the same time, the communist Left did not accept the formula that made revolutionary action conditional (to be denounced when the Blanquist initiative of small parties) on the conquest of the “majority” of the proletariat (besides which one never knew if this meant the “majority” of the actual waged proletariat, or of the “people”, including propertied peasants and micro-capitalists, artisans and all other petty bourgeois layers). With its democratic allure, this formula of the “majority” triggered the first alarm bells, unfortunately confirmed by history, that opportunism could be reborn in the new International under the familiar banner of homage to the deadly concepts of democracy and electoral counts.
     From the fourth congress, which took place at the end of 1922, the Left stood by its pessimistic prediction and its vigorous struggle to denounce dangerous tactics (united front between communist and socialist parties, the slogan of “workers’ government”) and organizational errors (attempts to increase the size of the parties not simply through an influx of those proletarians who had abandoned the other parties with a social democratic programme of action and structure, but by means of fusions that accepted entire parties and portions of parties after negotiations with their leadership, and also by admitting to the Comintern, as national sections, parties claiming to be “sympathizers”, which was clearly an error in its drift towards federalism. Taking the initiative on a third issue it was from this time that the Left denounced, and ever more vigorously in the years that followed, the growth of the opportunist danger: this third issue was the international’s method of internal working, whereby the centre, represented by the Moscow executive, resorted not only to the use of “ideological terror” in its dealings with the parties, or the parts of them that had made political errors, but above all to organizational pressure; which amounted to an erroneous application, and eventually a total falsification, of the correct principles of centralization and absolute discipline with no exceptions. This method of working was tightened up in all countries, but especially in Italy after 1923 – when the Left, with the whole party behind it, displayed exemplary discipline by handing over the leadership to the comrades of the right and centre appointed by Moscow – where the spectre of “fractionalism” was being seriously abused, along with constant threats to expel a current artificially accused of preparing a split from the party, with the sole aim of allowing dangerous centrist errors to prevail in the party’s politics. This third vital point was discussed in depth at the international congresses and in Italy, and it is no less important than the condemnation of the opportunist tactics and the federalist type organizational formulas.

Despite the unstinting and timely attempts to save the International it became, within a few years, totally prey to the new and more potent opportunism. The lesson contained in the events of the time is confirmed by what happened afterwards and is twofold: there are no recipes for preventing recurrent crises in the party, but it would be criminal not to treasure the experiences gained in this period.

Maintaining the correct method of internal working is indispensable in order to ensure that the party does not degenerate, and so its function of transmitting the correct revolutionary positions to new generations is carried out in full. It is our thesis that the party cannot be unaffected by the external environment within which it is forced to act, an environment that today is the worst and most steeped in opportunism that it is possible to imagine. It is therefore in the theoretical coherence of its positions alone that the party has to find the strength to oppose rampant opportunism. And it is precisely here that the question of the maintenance of principles and correct tactics comes to the fore.

The best solution of this question, of capital importance if we are to know how to orient ourselves in our daily work, consists:
     a) In making sure that the party’s struggle against opportunism (which is a struggle of the entire party against an external enemy) isn’t turned against a section of the party itself, accused by the other side of “opportunism”. The internal political struggle has been banned for ever;
     b) In becoming increasingly knowledgeable about our positions and about the history of left communism’s battle against opportunist positions, because otherwise the party will end up no longer knowing how to recognize its own revolutionary positions.

Only in this manner will the party be able to acquire the collective capacity to separate ever more clearly the positions of various forms of opportunism from those that are authentically revolutionary. And this capacity does not consist in attributing “opportunist positions” to individual comrades or parts of the party, but in recognizing, in a timely manner, the dangers denounced at the time by the Left, so that the party can defend itself against them in the best possible way.

This outcome is a perpetual victory for the party and, since it can always be clarified and reinforced, it is necessary and vital to clarify continuously – in the course of the party’s complex and connected activity, including the frequent physical and epistolary contacts between comrades – the aims of our activity and their relationship with the means necessary to accomplish them.

171 – Force-violence-dictatorship in the class struggle – 1948
     V- (…) Thus, there are no rules or recipes that can be applied to prevent the party from succumbing to crises of opportunism, or necessarily having to react to them with fractionalism. There is, however, the experience of the proletarian struggle over many decades, which allows us to identify certain conditions, the study, defence and realization of which must be the indefatigable task of our movement. We indicate in conclusion the main ones:
 1) The party must defend and affirm the maximum clarity and continuity of the communist doctrine, which has been extrapolated in its successive applications to historical developments, and must not consent to proclamations of principle that run counter, even partially, to its fundamental theoretical principles.
 2) The party must in each historical situation openly proclaim the entire content of its programme with regards to how to realize it economically, socially and politically, and above all as regards the question of power: its conquest by armed force, and its exercise through the dictatorship.
   Dictatorships that degenerate to the benefit of a limited circle of bureaucrats and praetorians have always been preceded by ideological proclamations that are hypocritically masked under formulas of a populist nature, whether democratic or national, and under the pretext of having the broad popular masses behind them. The revolutionary party, on the other hand, does not hesitate to declare its intention to attack the state and its institutions and to hold the defeated class under the despotic weight of the dictatorship, even when it admits that only an advanced minority of the oppressed class has been able to understand this requirement of the struggle.
    “The communists – says the Manifesto – disdain to conceal their views and aims.” Only renegades from communism boast of achieving them while keeping them cunningly disguised.
 3) The party must effect a strict organizational rigour in the sense that it does not accept self-enlargement by means of compromises with other groups, large or small, or worse still through bargaining over concessions with alleged bosses and leaders in order to win rank-and-file members.
 4) The party must struggle for a clear historical comprehension of the basic antagonism that underlies the struggle. Communists claim the initiative in leading the assault against an entire world of structures and traditions; they know they constitute a danger for the privileged as a whole, and call on the masses to embark on an offensive struggle, and not a defensive one against the alleged dangers of losing so-called benefits and advancements, conquered within the capitalist world. Communists do not rent out nor lend out their party to take remedial actions in defence of causes that are not their own, and of non-proletarian objectives such as freedom, the fatherland, democracy and other such lies. “The workers know they have nothing to lose in the struggle except their chains.”
 5) Communists renounce the entire spectrum of tactical expedients which have been invoked on the back of demands to accelerate the adherence of broad layers of the masses to the revolutionary programme. These expedients are: the political compromise, alliances with other parties, the united front, and the various formulas regarding the state used as a substitute for the proletarian dictatorship – workers’ and peasants’ government, popular government, progressive democracy.
Communists recognize that historically one of the main conditions for the dissolution of the proletarian movement and of the soviet communist regime lay precisely in the use of these tactical methods, and they consider those who deplore the opportunist plague of the Stalinist movement, yet at the same time advocate this tactical paraphernalia, to be more dangerous enemies than the selfsame Stalinists.

In fact the party does not consider tactics in the same manner as bourgeois politics does, in other words as though they consisted of a collection of parliamentary and diplomatic intrigues and expedients. The historical necessity of the communist revolution is not something that we have pulled out of our heads and which we want to impose with sly tricks on a reluctant world; it is the very necessity of historical evolution. It is up to the party, as the factor of will and consciousness, to play a determining role: that of the direction of the class, which will be compelled to struggle for power within very precise material conditions. And the party will be in a position to carry out this role to the extent that it pitches itself, united and resolute, against all of the other parties, which will look to impede the revolution by every means.

To be able to carry out such a function it needs centralism, but not any old kind. It is necessary that the functioning of the party is organically tied to the functions around which it centralizes. It is crucial that the party gain this experience today, to form the specific characteristic of the party that will materially guide the revolution tomorrow. If all of our work to reintroduce theory and revolutionary action into the working class has any meaning, most important of all is to fulfil this criterion, which governs the way we function and our method of operation, because without the crucial experience of today’s small organisation, it is difficult to foresee the sudden appearance of a party with hundreds of thousands of members characterized by these organizational principles, which at any rate the party that guides the revolution will have to be.

6. The lessons of counter‑revolutions

The historical events of the period 1919-1926 do not only mark the defeat of the revolutionary movement, but also the rebirth of the party from the ashes of the Third International. They are events whose most profound causes are not to be sought either in the betrayals or in the loyalty to the revolution of brilliant and illustrious men, but rather in the objective determinations of history. Just as the causes of the defeat of the revolutionary forces were objective, since in Europe the situation was falsely revolutionary and the uncertain and changing behaviour of the European communist parties and the International were effects, not causes, of the deflection of the curve of class potential, so the causes which determined the struggle of the Left against Stalinism were also objective. It was in the course of this struggle, and due to historical determinations and certainly not due to individuals, that the positions were selected which, from that point on, would form the fundamental framework for the party destined to lead the next revolutionary wave against the capitalist powers; and it is for this reason that all of the party’s theses continually refer to this struggle and to these positions, because it is here that it is possible to find the answer to every question, away from personal politicking, in relation to the entire revolutionary tradition.

Only the Left kept theory intact and it is only in this theory that the premise for the re-emergence of the revolutionary movement is crystallized, but all of this is inseparable from the fact that only the Left denounced from the outset the first tactical deviations as the first symptoms of a new opportunism which would eventually become fully manifest. The conclusion drawn by the party is that every tactic which is “elastic and manipulated” cannot but have a disastrous and ruinous outcome for the revolution.

The Left was the first to warn that from the moment the Russian state started to deviate, by subjecting the CPSU and the International to itself, it would open an ever widening gulf between the interests of the global proletariat and those of the Russian state. It was alone in asserting that this would begin a counter-revolutionary process, and it remained alone in understanding that the formal party would have to be born again to remain in keeping with the historic party, contrary to all the other schools which maintained and still maintain that it is possible to halt the degeneration of a “workers’” party and State from within.

It is for this reason that the transmission of this uncorrupted tradition, away from these degenerations, can only be done using, in the most faithful way possible, the lessons of the class battle conducted by the Left in the years after 1919; a battle that was interrupted, above all, by the bond of dependency on a centre that was degenerating. By making continual reference to the sequence of events which invalidated the Third International, and to all the critical positions that the Left upheld in order to ward off the danger of a new opportunism, one is obliged to draw lessons that have to be considered absolutely “sacred”, not so much because we claim to have discovered in them recipes for success, but because they constitute “severe warnings” to defend ourselves from the dangers and the weaknesses into which revolutionary forces have fallen on many occasions and into which every organisation is susceptible to falling again. The party must keep these fundamental lessons intact and maintain, as its never-to-be-forgotten heritage, the correct theoretical diagnoses and historical predictions made by the Left about the new opportunistic dangers as they slowly took shape in the early years of the life of the new International. Included in this heritage is a clear Marxist thesis of fundamental importance; one which has been affirmed by the Left in all of its polemics against the degeneration of Moscow: that the party is at the same time both a factor and a product of historical development, and is thus not surrounded by impregnable walls, but rather feels the effects of its own action carried out towards the outside.

In the space of a few years the Russian Communist Party and the International, which had led the glorious October Revolution and had made the global bourgeoisie tremble with fear, had fallen into an abyss so deep that the very possibility of even maintaining a tenuous organizational thread to pass on the correct positions and the correct revolutionary tradition was entrusted to just a small number of militants. Despite this, over the entire course of the extremely counter-revolutionary period which commenced with Stalinism’s victory, the historical direction of the rebirth of the party and the maintenance of organizational party relationships has always been that of preparing the true party for the historical period in which the proletariat will return to the vanguard of history, in the absolute conviction that the next revolutionary assault would undoubtedly fail as well if the indispensable organ of the revolution, the party, were lacking. Such a party cannot be improvised, nor propelled into existence by spontaneous suggestions and movements, but can only be the result of a long and difficult work of maintaining intact the link uniting uncorrupted theory to revolutionary action. This tremendous historical respite and the profound awareness of preparing the actual, efficiently functioning organ of the revolution must always be present in the party, even if a profound gulf still separates us from the revolutionary era.

In the “Lyons Theses”, which draw up the balance-sheet of the struggle against Stalinism, are posited, despite the extremely negative outcome as regards the immediate effects of this struggle, the fundamental principles concerning what the party’s activity should be at all times and in all the situations, and these fundamental principles must be considered sacred not just for today’s party, but also for tomorrow’s, in particular because they derive from those causes which then worked in the favour of the counter-revolution, but which could work in future historical conditions to the advantage of the revolution. From these sacred lessons we have learned that at all times and in all situations the party’s activity must never be limited to the conservation of the purity of theoretical principles or of the organizational group, nor to the achievement of immediate successes at any cost. It must always combine the defence of fundamental programmatic postulates, even when so-called new factors bring any of them into question, with the assurance of the continuity of the organization, of its efficient functioning and of its defence against objectives that are extraneous to the interests of the revolution; and it must combine this with active participation in every proletarian struggle, even those arising from partial and limited interests, always encouraging their development, but also always bringing to the fore the connection of each struggle with the final revolutionary aims; never presenting any conquests obtained with the method of the class struggle as final destinations, but rather as bridges of passage to the indispensable struggle to come. The supreme aim of all this activity is to prepare the subjective conditions that will allow the proletariat to profit from the objective possibilities that history will present, so as to emerge from the struggle as the victor, not as the vanquished.

It is in adhering to this complex vision of the party’s activity that it is possible to keep the party itself on the correct revolutionary path, removed from all bluster and inconclusive activism which claims, with its own willpower, to create the objective conditions for the revolution, not understanding that those conditions are a product of history and consequently mistaking it for its own willpower; and equally, outside of all spontaneism which devalues all of the subjective preparatory activity of the party, claiming that the clarity and the efficiency of the party’s orientation are a product of the action of the masses and not a quality of the party, which the party must know how to acquire before the explosion of the revolution, on pain of the defeat of the revolution itself.

7. Relationship between principles, programme and tactics

The degeneration of the communist movement in the 1920s confirmed in a decisive manner that the only way to pose the tactical problem while staying true to revolutionary principles is the one defended by the Left since the early days of the Third International: there is a close connection between programmatic guidelines and tactical rules and therefore the study of the situation must be understood only as a supplementary element in resolving tactical problems. The party, in its consciousness and critical experience, must predict how situations may develop and define the tactical possibilities corresponding to them, while the contrasting method of waiting for situations in order to directly experience and be influenced by them is typical of the opportunist method. The system of tactical standards must thus be built with the specific purpose of establishing under what conditions the intervention of the party and its activity is in tune with the final revolutionary objective. It is a practical and organizational necessity, and not the desire to theorize and schematize the complexity of social movements, which imposes on the party the need to establish the terms and limits of its own action. For those who overestimate the general movement and those who deny the primary role of the party, this method appears to restrict its freedom of action, whereas on the contrary it alone can assure the organic unity of the party itself and therefore the fundamental condition for the victory of the revolution.

For this reason it is necessary that the entire party endorse this system of tactical norms which must be binding on all. To this end it must be studied and applied, where possible, so that the whole party is ready to make use of it when the anticipated historical conditions arise. One cannot however accept the idea that the party, in developing its tactical plans, is “immune from criticism”, for by this much more meandering path we would be returning to the theorization of waiting for situations in order to be conditioned by them, in other words returning to tactical freedom. By proceeding from the correct theory and the correct evaluation of the historical phase, without which the party itself would not exist, we are bound to arrive at the correct tactics, which, in permeating the entire organization, also assure the organic nature and compactness of the party.

We have never supported the view that the party, as a conscious organ, is free to deduce any and every tactical implication from its principles, nor have we ever sought the guarantee of the coordination of methods with revolutionary objectives in the revolutionary nature of the party, or in the contribution of eminent and gifted men with a good grounding in Marxism, because this disregards the repercussions that the party’s own actions have on the party itself. From the historical struggle of the Left against emerging Stalinism, and from the balance-sheet of this struggle, we have instead concluded that it is only by knowing how to act in the field of tactics and energetically closing off any false paths with precise and respected standards of action, that the party guarantees itself against degenerations, never simply by resorting to theoretical credos and administrative sanctions. Thus our aversion to the approach of tactical freedom leads to the denial of such freedom for our own party, too, in the sense that the party itself cannot enforce improvised tactics whose significance and correlation with the final revolutionary objective have not permeated the entire organization. The voluntary element in the party consists in the possibility of deciding to apply its tactical plan at the moment when the revolutionary forces will be at their most effective; and therein lies its supremacy vis-a-vis the enemy, for it is impossible for any other organization to know the effects of its own actions on the development of the situation. Here is why, in order to realize its revolutionary potential, the party must be ready for action long before the anticipated historic events become reality, and herein lies the importance of preparing for such tasks, even if the activity takes place in dark and dreary times like these, when it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the meaning and importance of the activity being carried out is with a view to the triumph of the revolution.

Today it is not a matter of elaborating something new, because in the party’s tradition, in its texts and theses, each element of our tactical plan is amply foreseen and explained. It is therefore a matter of organizing the party’s work in such a way that the entire organization can acquire the elements of tactics, as comprehensively as possible, and practice them through propaganda and the social struggle in all areas of the party’s activity. This task might seem of little account, but it is so important that without its appropriate development today the revolution of tomorrow would not be possible, because the party cannot be improvised when revolutions break out. The general guidelines on tactics that the party will apply in all countries must take into account the practical experiences of the opportunist crises, and the struggles led by the Left against the revisionism of the Second International and against the progressive deviation of the Third; from which the conclusion has been drawn that it is not possible to maintain the integrity of the programmatic positions, of the practical experience and of the organizational structure of the party if the latter applies a tactic which, even in its purely formal positions, includes attitudes and watchwords acceptable to opportunist political movements. From this derives the fundamental notion, on which the whole party’s tactical plan is based, according to which our political praxis rejects manoeuvres, combinations and blocs which traditionally take shape on the basis of postulates and slogans common to several parties. This fundamental concept regarding the field of tactics has an essentially historical value, that is to say it cannot be put under discussion with contingent evaluations, and it distinguishes the party precisely in the same way that its original vision of the period that capitalist society is currently traversing distinguishes it; a period increasingly characterized not by a return to the democratic-liberal forms of the pre-fascist period, but by monstrous, totalitarian state entities, the ruthless expression of economic concentration.

8. Against political struggle within the party

Another sacred lesson that derives from the struggle of the Left against Stalinism in the 1920s is that the preparation of the party for the execution of its revolutionary tasks must take place by means of an internal operational method that rules out, on principle, the criterion of political struggle. In fact the party is characterized, apart from by its unique theoretical and programmatic principles, by precise tactical and organizational frontiers, whose annulment would bring about the annulment of the party itself. Another fundamental concept therefore applies: the party is in a continuous struggle against an external enemy, which it cannot expect to defeat by convincing it of the justice of our revolutionary principles, because the solution to the problem of the revolution solely depends on a question of force. However, the same method cannot be used for the internal work of preparation for the execution of revolutionary tasks, because this has as its aim not the destruction of an enemy but the collective acquisition of the correct positions. In this work, not only the method of political struggle is deadly, but so too is that of administrative pressure: more than sufficient proof of this is provided by the methods employed by the Moscow Executive in the 1920s against parties which had succumbed to grave political errors, but which were subjected to methods of “ideological terror” and “administrative pressure” which constituted an erroneous application and, in the end, a complete falsification of the correct principles of centralization and discipline. This method was applied by the Moscow Executive against all the parties of the International, but particularly against the Italian party in the years after 1923, by seriously abusing the spectre of fractionalism and the constant threat to expel the Left current artificially accused of preparing a split; and all this with the aim of ensuring that dangerous centrist errors prevailed in the politics of the International.

We have deduced from the disastrous and bankrupt balance-sheet of this method that when we draw from the invariant doctrine the conclusion that the revolutionary victory of the working class can only be achieved with the class party and its dictatorship; when, on the basis of Marx’s words we maintain that without a revolutionary and communist party, the proletariat may be a class for bourgeois science, but it is not for us and Marx himself; then the conclusion to be deduced is that, in order to achieve victory, it will be necessary to have a party, worthy at the same time of both characteristics, those of historical party (as regards its content) and formal party (as regards its form, which acts as physical force and praxis of a decisive part of the fighting proletariat); this means that the apparent contradiction must be resolved in the reality of action and history. Every effort should therefore be devoted to achieving such a result and not to the ridiculous struggles between groups that claim to possess the only and exclusive notion of the correct methods and correct positions. That is why it is no longer possible to be in perfect order with regard to the historical party while not giving a damn about the formal party: because our historical task today is not one of elaborating revolutionary theory, which we possess in full, but rather converting that theory into the flesh and blood of the contingent and formal party. Only through such activity is it possible to realize the fundamental condition that will enable the party to take advantage of the objective opportunities that history offers, so that the party emerges from the clash as the victor, and not as the vanquished.

9. Conclusions

Historical experience and in particular the sequence of events relating to the degeneration of the Third International have taught us that it is a serious error to consider the party as a result that has been attained once and for all, because every organism can degenerate. The vehicle of the degeneration of the Third International was the insufficient coherence between tactics and programmatic guidelines and from then on it was by means of this vehicle that the degeneration of the party could occur. This element is much more insidious and difficult to identify than the open repudiation of principles, because it might very well be reconciled with a formal respect for these principles. For this reason it is indispensable to boldly signal the dangers that the Left warned about and denounced in the face of Moscow’s degeneration in order to prevent the same dangers which led to the degeneration of the Third International from playing the same ill-fated role again. Guarantees against opportunism are not just relevant to the past, but must be present and real in party life at all times. After all, there exist no serious disadvantages in an exaggerated preoccupation with the opportunist danger because, even if this is the product of the cogitations of individual militants and not the real reflection of something that is not working, it will certainly not do the party the least harm, whereas, on the contrary, the danger for the party is extremely serious if the disease spreads before someone, somewhere, dares to raise the alarm. These, too, are lessons we should not forget, which derive from the Left’s struggle in the 1920s, and which lead us to conclude, now as then, that criticism in the absence of error is not one thousandth as harmful as error without criticism. This is certainly not to exalt freedom of thought and criticism in the party as the right of every individual, but is rather to establish the physiological functioning and working of a revolutionary party.

The Left was politicised against in this way: the Left says that the International is mistaken, but because the International cannot make mistakes, the Left that is wrong. The Left by contrast did not expect anyone to recognise its reasons, but it insisted the question be posed very differently: the Left says that the International is mistaken, but for the following reasons related to the issue raised we demonstrate instead that it is the Left that is mistaken, and it is this that proves that the International has not committed errors. The Left was also accused of continuously suspecting the International’s leaders of opportunism, which did not deflect it from denouncing the dangerous errors. But if the Left expected something other than the usual cries of “look who is accusing the International of opportunism and undoubtedly deserves to be crucified”, hoping instead for a serious demonstration of guarantees that might serve to separate opportunist practices from revolutionary action, it hoped in vain.

Despite the generous attempts by the Left to save the International from the new and even more fetid opportunism, within a few years the latter was completely triumphant. The conclusion we have drawn from this is that there are no rules or recipes for preventing the party from relapsing into opportunist crises. There is however the experience of the Left’s struggle, which allows us to specify a few conditions of the party’s organic life, whose realization must be our unstinting task:

     1) We rule out that the activity of the party may lead to the setting up of fractions which compete for control of the party. As we rule out the setting up of fractions at the periphery for the “conquest” of the party’s centre, so we rule out that the centre conceives of its function as entirely directed towards “maintenance” of the leadership of the party.
Since it is fruitless and absurd, as well as extremely dangerous, to claim that the party is mysteriously guaranteed against every relapse or tendency to relapse into opportunism, we must admit the possibility of the formation of fractions to protect the party from serious dangers and to defend its programmatic integrity, and that this might lead to splits, not however for the infantile reason of lack of repressive energy on the part of the centre, but in the damnable eventuality of the failure of the party and its subjection to counter-revolutionary influences. Therefore the question of fractions should not be posed from a moral point of view. “Is there a single example in history of a comrade who has organized a fraction for the fun of it?” asked the Left, when it was accused of fractionalism at the fourth Enlarged Executive of the International. “No – it replied – such a case has never arisen and, to be able to say that it is a bourgeois manoeuvre to infiltrate the party, you need to supply the evidence. Experience proves, on the contrary, that opportunism always penetrates our ranks behind the mask of unity”. The genesis of a fraction indicates that there is something not right in the party and to cure the illness there is no alternative but to address the causes and these causes always reside in the party’s ideological and political errors. Therefore the way to prevent, and to cure, the illness which appears with the symptoms of fractionalism is to refine and to clarify the correct positions of principle and tactics.

     2) For the same reasons we do not see fractions, as such, as the disease that has to be fought always and everywhere; we do not consider unity at any cost to be a benefit in itself. The maintenance of the unity of the party is certainly a benefit to be safeguarded, and we must fear the loss of even the smallest part of our slender forces as we would the loss of an eye, but this is inseparable from the maintenance of the correct positions in all areas, because the danger of bourgeois influence on the class party historically presents itself as an insidious infiltration exerting a uniform demagogy and working as a dictatorship from on high.

     3) The work of the entire party must be directed towards obtaining a homogenous organization, without diverse groupings within it. This is an end towards which the entire party is required to work and it is achievable on condition that all the ideological, tactical and organizational questions are correctly posited and resolved. For this reason it would be a mistake to adopt the formula of absolute obedience in executing orders from on high when they concern the party’s internal relations between the central executive and the periphery. In fact the orders emanating from the centre are not the point of departure, but the result of the functioning of the movement as a collective. Consequently there is no mechanical discipline which is any good as far as the carrying out of orders and higher instructions “whatever they may be” is concerned; there is a set of orders and instructions corresponding to the true origins of the movement which can guarantee maximum discipline, that is to say, uniform action by the entire organization, while there are other directives that may compromise organizational solidity. The question of discipline and internal relations between periphery and centre thus consists in delineating the duties of the executive organs, something which must be done by the entire party, although certainly not in the democratic sense of the mandate that the periphery confers on the centre, but in the dialectical sense that takes into account the tradition, the preparation, and the material continuity in the thinking and the action of the movement.

The maintenance of the correct method of internal working is nevertheless inseparable from the way in which the party behaves towards the world outside. Internal relations themselves would therefore be destined to degenerate if the party should deviate even partially from its tasks, the most important of which we recapitulate as follows:

     1) The party must defend and affirm to the utmost degree the clarity and continuity of the communist doctrine, refusing to acknowledge proclamations of principle that are in contrast, even partially, to its fundamental theoretical principles.

     2) The party must, in every historical situation, openly proclaim the entire content of its programme with regard to economic, social and political accomplishments and above all as concerns the question of power, its conquest by armed force, and its exercise through dictatorship.

     3) The party must adopt a strict organizational rigour, in the sense that it will not consent to increasing its size by means of compromises with other groups, large or small or, worse still, by doing deals, in order to win rank and file adherents, by making concessions to alleged bosses and leaders.

     4) The party must struggle for a clear historical understanding of the basic antagonism that underlies the struggle; it claims the initiative in the attack on an entire world of structures and traditions and summons the masses to the offensive struggle, not one of defence against the so-called dangers of losing alleged advantages and improvements conquered within the capitalist world.

     5) The party rejects the entire range of tactical expedients which were advocated on the pretext that they accelerated the crystallization of the support of large layers of the masses around the revolutionary programme. These expedients are the political compromise, the alliance with other parties, the united political front, and the various formulas in which the State is used as a surrogate for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The party recognizes in the use of these tactical means one of the principal historical conditions for the dissolution of the proletarian movement and it considers those who deplore the opportunist plague of the Stalinist movement while at the same time advocating the same tactical paraphernalia to be even more dangerous than the Stalinists themselves.