[GM106] An orderly working meeting

On a date previously fixed by the centre representatives of our groups assembled at Sarzana for our periodic working meeting. As well as booking an appropriate venue for the meeting, the Ligurian comrades greeted and helped the comrades attending from elsewhere to get to the meeting rooms, and ensured they were all comfortably accommodated.

Some of those travelling from further afield were met by the Ligurians on the Friday, and others arrived on the Saturday in the morning and early afternoon. Written communications from those unable to attend, some for health reasons, were read out, and best wishes extended to them from all those present.

According to our now tried and tested method, the Saturday morning was given over to taking stock of work in progress and to considering what needed to be tackled in the future, while the Saturday morning and Sunday morning were devoted to listening to reports, which we endeavour, although not always successfully, to fit into the time available.

Clearly, all these writings of ours, although highly valued, aren’t to be viewed each on their own merits but as refractions in the present of a unique social force which is objective and historical, and to whose consistent theory and invariant political programme they tend ever more to approximate.

This exacting task can only be fully carried out by a militant body which adopts the form of the unique, centralised political party, as formulated at the outset by revolutionary Marxist communism.

This party, which through no wish of our own is today a small party, is to be considered as such – and in this it distinguishes itself from other inferior and partial forms – because of its commitment to creating a bridge between a school of thought, that is, an environment within which one teaches but at the same time learns, and a method of action, namely, the constant line which commits us to address ourselves to the class, our living class, which only we can see because we are aware of its past and its destiny; the class which forms our material base and fuels our existence as a party.

From the 3rd Volume of Capital, financial capital – Communism, the historic negation of democracy – The Foundations of Afghan Society – Course of the economy – Origins of the Trade Unions in Italy – Trade union Activity – The military question: the American Revolution