The Communist Party 18

Leaflet for a strike at the Port of Genoa, Monday 17 February

Peace is impossible in capitalism because war is a product of its irreformable economic laws.

On the one hand, war is the military continuation of economic competition. In times of economic growth this competition is predominantly contained in the commercial sphere. In times of crisis, it becomes so bitter as to lead States, the defenders of the general interests of all national capitalisms, into the clash of war. Hints of this epilogue are economic protectionism, accompanied by nationalism – both right and «left» – in the political field, all of which are well present today.

But war is the only solution that capitalism, as a whole, has to the devastating crisis of overproduction in its economy. This solution comes before and beyond any means of dividing the world market among the bourgeoisie of every country. This immense destruction of goods already produced – infrastructure, industries, cities and «labor force» – prevents a further valorization of capital (vulgarly called «growth»). War comes to save all national capitalisms, winners and losers, offering a bath of youth to a dying and anti‑historical way of production.

Capitalism thus offers both the greatest progress and the greatest barbarity that human history has ever experienced. The so‑called «economic miracle» after World War II was only possible because of the immense destruction and deaths of over 50 million people during the war; almost all of which were proletarians and poor farmers in the metropolises and colonies. After which, the brutal exploitation of the working class intensified in the name of «national reconstruction».

It was the World War – by the admission of the bourgeois economists themselves – which solved the economic crisis in which capitalism sank in the first half of the 20th century. The policies of State intervention in the economy create no solutions to the crisis. These policies had been applied indifferently by all bourgeois regimes, democratic and Nazi‑Fascist alike, before the World War. They are now invoked by the reformist Left as an alternative to so‑called «neo‑liberalism». The national ways out of the crisis brings war, not socialism, closer.

All the bourgeois States, even in times of peace, never stop maneuvering with anticipation of the general clash to come. They are aware that any lost position is granted to the «enemy». Hence the hundreds of unceasing local wars, with millions of victims, have characterized the «peace» that followed the Second World War. These are conducted by stirring up national, ethnic and religious hatred with terrorist massacres. Such as is happening in recent weeks in northern Syria, where the clash between the regional imperialism of Syria and Turkey is consuming the skin of more than three million civilians unable to escape.

Just as contemporary war has a deeper function than the division of the world market – to save the whole of capitalism from its crisis – so too are all national bourgeoisies united in having an enemy superior to that which each of them faces militarily: the working class of all countries. Every national bourgeoisie always has two fronts and two enemies to fight: one external and one internal.

Faced with the inevitable twisting of the economic crisis that crushes the workers into misery. In the increases of exploitation of the employed and the army of the unemployed, war is a means of hindering the social revolt which, if led by the Communist Party, becomes revolution. A part of the working class is removed from the cities and led to the front to the fratricidal massacre against workers in another uniform. The bombardments on the cities further decimate the working class and reduce its strength.

This is the only solution available to the bourgeois regimes. But it is always very risky for them because it involves arming the workers. If strikes in factories and city riots break out during the war – for example in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1918, Italy in 1943, Iraq in 1991 – the internal front can collapse and rebellion can easily infect the army.

For this reason, war cannot be explained to the workers of every country by every national bourgeois regime for its authentic reasons of cowardly economic order. Nor can it be explained as an inevitable product of the economic course of the whole of capitalism. War must always be justified as a product of the will of a political party and of particularly reactionary, evil, warmongering nations, which oppress that people and nation. This is employed so as to convince the proletarian masses to support the war effort and not to rebel against the terrible living conditions it entails.

To this end, the bourgeoisie welcomes the false workers’ parties within each country. All of which are always ready for the «less worse» policy – which the bourgeoisie punctually prepares «the worst» – to set up «single political fronts» in defense of democracy and «against the right». This is never to fight against all the bourgeois parties, right and left, for the revolutionary conquest of power. So on the international level and in the face of the dangers of war they always identify an alliance with the «less worse» capitalist States for which to lead the workers to be slaughtered.

WAR ON WAR is not a slogan of generic opposition to the militarist violence of capitalism. It is the practical indication with which the Bolshevik party in Russia, the Spartachists in Germany, and the Communist Left in Italy, proclaimed to the workers in the First World War. To «transform the war between States into war between the classes», to apply «revolutionary defeatism» against one’s own country at war. Rather than shoot at the class brothers of other countries, turn the gun 180° to overthrow the regime of one’s own national ruling class.

The Bolshevik party, by virtue of this address, was the only one in the history of capitalism to stop the imperialist war; even when the pacifist bleating of the bourgeois left never succeeded. They did so at the price of enormous territorial losses for Russia, thus following a deeply anti‑national conduct. However the objective was the international proletarian revolution, not the struggle to «defend one’s own country».

The inability to recognize the Stalinist counter-revolution and the capitalist nature of the USSR led the false workers’ parties to deny this direction. They instead deployed the proletariat on one of the two imperialist fronts in World War II, just as Social Democracy had done in the first. In more recent examples, support has been thrown to bourgeois regimes that oppressed and massacred poor workers and peasants like that of Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Nicaragua, Venezuela or that of Moscow in the war in the Donbass (Ukraine).

This inability to understand how the contemporary world has for decades been entirely capitalist. In not recognizing how the fight against imperialism and fascism cannot mean the fight against capitalism as a whole. Leads these false workers’ parties to fall into the ideological traps with which the national bourgeoisies try to lead the workers to war.

Only the working class has the strength to prevent or stop the war. This can be done by striking the economy of the nation at war in the factories and at the front by laying down arms and fraternizing with the workers of other countries. In so doing, conveying social revolt over national borders.

* * *

For this reason the initiative of the port workers of Genoa adhering to the Autonomous Port Workers Collective is important:

    — because anti‑militarism returns to stir anti‑militarism not as a generic pacifism to be advocated with inter‑classist demonstrations, but as a consequent action among the workers and in the trade union movement;

    — because it happens as a result of similar repeated actions in other ports of Europe and therefore takes a first practical step of international action by the workers.

It is necessary to fight so that all the conflictual trade unionism – that is, the rank and file trade unions and the opposition in CGIL – gives unitary and practical support to these initiatives, both by participating in the garrisons and the pickets and by proclaiming the strike.

It is necessary to fight for the unmasking and defeat in the workers’ movement of those opportunist parties that bend proletarian anti‑militarism and internationalism to partial political objectives. These objectives being completely compatible with those of national and international bourgeoisie fractions. This includes the exit from NATO and the closure of its bases in Italy. They are clearly implicit in putting these objectives before the conquest of political power by the working class. But this is the only revolutionary political objective for the working class. In abandoning it they only lend their support to that part of the national bourgeoisie eager to throw off its subjection to American imperialism and move on to Russian and, above all, Chinese imperialism. This has the disastrous result of favoring the deployment of the workers on one of the imperialist fronts, once again betraying internationalism.

For the international unity of the workers!
Against every front of the imperialist war!
Against every military mission of the bourgeoisie!

American capitalism in its self-assured manner has come face to face with a foe it was never prepared to fight: a quickly spreading viral outbreak. Despite much warning from the situation in China and repeated caution from the Centers for Disease Control, the ruling class did nothing for the countries it benefits from and claims to be custodian of. To the surprise of no one, the virus has spread across the planet. In the wake of this impending pandemic, the markets have wavered and crashed, and media-fueled panics have set in across the population. What has resulted is an economic crisis on top of the viral outbreak.

The ruling class government has only recognized the rupture in what was previously a booming financial up turn. In response the United States has acted with lighting efficiency to inject funding into the economy. Much of the financial relief, to the sum of $1.5 trillion in short-term loans, will be used to smooth out market fluctuations. The working class will only hope for some of this to trickle down to them in the future, and long after the pandemic has passed. Where legislators have proposed paid sick leave in the House of Representatives, the bureaucratic sparring in the federal government for the bipartisanship required to pass the legislation in the senate further delays this relief. Further, the language of the bill provides businesses and corporations the opportunity to opt out of providing sick leave altogether. The government’s immediate proposals for financial support to working class people and their families is all in the form of tax cuts. Any material support the working class can find will come from their continued subjection to the employment regime, even at the risk of becoming ill.

Along with quick mobilization to support finance capital, the American federal government has also begun extensive slashing of social services to make up for costs. Reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), now provide for only 3 months of food stamps unless participants are working to receive more in the future. A holiday for student loan interest has also been proposed. However, graduates will still need to go to work to come up with the money to pay off their loans if they are to hope to be rid of as much debt as possible before the interest rate returns. Even the supposed support for the fuel of capitalist social institutions crumbles in the face of this viral outbreak – it truly becomes every person for themselves. The ruling class has shown where their priorities lie, and it’s not with the working class, but with the continued economic high achieved from successful markets and profitability. To keep the economy going, the ruling class will continue to force working class people to keep working through the pandemic to ensure this happens.

These skewed priorities also bleed into the management of the health crisis. Despite the increased chance of infection that comes with continuing to work, the federal government has all but abandoned the need for viral testing. Similarly, the insinuation that another capitalist firm of the United States would be coordinated enough to recognize when the president declared their cooperation in a testing scheme and would already have viral testing facilities prepared is farcical at best. The medical system, being privatized, does not offer the ability for appropriate responses to a rapid viral outbreak. The past interests of capital have shaped the American health system, and that is now materializing as the inability to provide medical aid to the working class and the unemployed who run the risk of infection every day the pandemic continues.

This problem is not isolated to the United States: across the globe the interests of capitalism are colliding with the ensuing viral pandemic. Working class people everywhere are still expected to go to work, despite the fact that people are aware of their infection only after they have become contagious. In China, where work has continued since February, the rising price of food is creating intolerable living conditions. Despite the Chinese government having the power to redistribute food to where it’s needed, the only thing the ruling party can request is that people return to work to drive down food prices later. Even with the increased pressure to work, all recreational events have been cancelled, and in Italy a ban on labor assemblies has been imposed. Capitalist society has thrown off its facade of peaceful existence between classes to lay bare its attitude towards the working class, and it’s to work towards a profitable economy despite the pandemic.

This has resulted in many working class organizations demanding that work be stopped in all nonessential industries until the pandemic has passed.

In Italy strikes are spreading across the whole country and major rank and file unions – Usb, S.I. Cobas, Cub – are supporting them calling for national strikes across all nonessential industries to the fight against the pandemic, asking for close the factories and full salaries payment. Regime unions (Cgil, Cisl, Uil) instead on 14th March have signed an agreement with bosses and government to don’t stop the production. This is being done to push the Italian government to accommodate the safety and needs of the working class people of Italy.

Workers at vehicle assembly plants in Canada have similarly refused to work due to concerns over their well-being. In the United Kingdom, where Parliament and the Prime Minister have all but decided to wait for the viral outbreak to pass “naturally”, workers have begun staging strikes to force the British government and their employers to recognize the working class’ needs and safety.

It is only through the union of the working class along this industrial front that capitalist governments will acknowledge the class’ needs and demands. And all of these working class strikes have similar demands: universal access to relief and the stoppage of work during the outbreak.

In the United States, the bureaucratic structure of The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) has done nothing to force the hand of the American government. Despite being in a position to form a similar industrial front as the Italians, the AFL-CIO leadership has only proposed petitions. Petitioning capitalist governments to forsake economic progress in order to mitigate the harm caused by a pandemic is as farcical as the government hoping for capitalist firms to have a commitment to collective action. By appealing to the illusory “common interests” capitalist firms and the ruling class have with the working class, AFL-CIO union bosses demonstrate they only wish to maintain their positive relationships with the ruling class. They do this even at the expense of the American working class, both those they represent and those they don’t.

Where the union leadership drags their feet, working class people across the country affected by the outbreak begin to move. Medical workers in New Orleans, who must work excessively in hazardous conditions during the health crisis, have begun to demand the needed material support that the unions have failed to call for. In New York City, where the mayor has kept the public schools open, teachers are calling for sick outs to push for school closures. And where the capitalist government refuses to alleviate material shortages caused by the panic, working class people support one another with what resources they have. The demands of the working class in the United States are the same as the demands of the class across the planet: total and immediate relief during the course of the pandemic.

Only the working class together is capable of making their objections to the mindless activity of the ruling capitalist governments known. Joining hand in hand with the working class of Europe and Canada who are already striking, and in solidarity with the suffering workers of East Asia, the American working class can demand the desperately needed medical relief and a pause to work during the pandemic as a class. Through this very united class front, the international working class can change society and prioritize the human needs during this crisis and into the future. This class union, in coordination with the International Communist Party, can smash the demands of the market for the continued profitability of institutions that will never feel pain in their lungs. Where the ruling class of capitalist society will expend all of its energy to treat the ailments of a contradicting system, the united working class can bring its own relief.

On February 5, after three years of breathless anticipation from the Democrats, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in his impeachment trial. The acquittal on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress allows him to remain in office until at least the end of his current term. The Republicans could hardly contain their excitement. At the same time the Democratic Party primary election process began with the catastrophic failure of the election system in Iowa. Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, has emerged as the leader in the Democratic field, having come in second in Iowa and South Carolina, and first in New Hampshire and Nevada. For his followers, Sanders is the face of “resistance” to the Trump presidency, the savior of democracy in the United States. In truth, the democratic system can only reinforce the rule of the bourgeoisie, whether a  false reformist or a open reactionary holds office.

Impeachment: Democracy is Not Justice

The impeachment of Donald Trump was a show trial in reverse. The defendant’s acquittal was certain from the beginning, and the rest only existed to keep up the act. The Republicans pretended to stand for due process; the Democrats pretended to prosecute. In their own ways, both parties acted as propagandists for the bourgeois State and its system of justice. For the Democrats, impeachment would be the triumph of the separation of powers, of civic duty separated from personal interest, of the sovereignty of the people in the abstract. The Republicans, for their part, would show their dedication to a patronizing form of order, one predicated on a single untouchable personality. Trump’s sovereignty depends on him being untouchable (this is the man who declared in 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”). The defenders of the bourgeois State are always innocent, while workers who defend themselves are always guilty. The financial burden of going to trial causes most criminal defendants to plead guilty, while the billionaire head of State does not even have to argue his innocence. Such is bourgeois justice!

The charges against the president provide further evidence of the reactionary nature of the whole impeachment act. Trump’s crime was to modify the United States’ existing imperialist strategy in Ukraine. The “abuse of power” that offended the Democrats was to put military aid to the Ukrainian government on hold until the country would announce a criminal investigation into business dealings by Joe Biden’s son, which Trump presumably hoped would hurt Biden in the 2020 election. The crime was not aiding the rightist government of Ukraine, which the Democrats fully and enthusiastically support, but using that aid for personal ends.

The Sanders Movement Offers No Alternative

Bernie Sanders and his supporters believe that they are bringing about a “political revolution” in the United States. Very well. When will this revolution occur, and what will change? What will they due to ensure that it happens in the face of massive opposition?

Every revolution has faced questions like these. The uprising in Russia succeeded in 1917 because the Communist Party had the right answers, a party prepared and hardened for many years, on the basis of the intransigent program of revolutionary Marxism. The insurrection would occur around the Second All‑Russian Congress of Soviets, when the political base of support for the party would be gathered together. It would establish a dictatorship of the proletariat based on the soviet system of representation. The Military-Revolutionary Committees and the Red Guards would support the revolution by force of arms.

So what of Sanders and the democratic socialists in the United States? Their supposed revolution is either coming soon or already occurring, depending on the campaign speech one listens to. First and foremost it will make Bernie president, and then perhaps install the kind of welfare State that is disintegrating before our eyes in other countries. And what will support these very moderate demands? The military and the police hate them bitterly, and will not hesitate to do the bidding of the bourgeoisie. Civilian reactionaries despise them and are heavily armed. So do they form militias of their own? Quite the opposite, they demand that all arms should be in the hands of the bourgeois State!

There are only two options for this political revolution. It will fail completely against opposition that its own forces cannot match, or it will restrict itself so severely that it will become a liberal civic movement, no different from the Democratic Party we have long been familiar with. In either case, its petty-bourgeois idealist character will be readily apparent.

A revolution is a fight for the real liberation of an oppressed class, the proletariat these days. When capitalism is becoming economically impossible, than the proletariat can free itself. This is what Marx and Engels meant when they called communism “the real movement which abolishes the present State of things”, that is, which completely uproots capitalism and free the society which is ripe inside it.

Political Revolutions are not made through the will of politicians and activists. Only classes, directed by a revolutionary class party, make revolutions. Marx and Engels wrote that “every class struggle is a political struggle”.

Sanders, the Democrats, and U.S. brand of democratic socialism cannot abolish the present society, and so they will never open the way to the next one, even if they wished to. Only the communist party, as the most aware and militant representative of the international proletariat, can accomplish those tasks.

From a public meeting in Paris
November 23, 2019

The massive destruction and massacres of the Second World War allowed world capitalism to emerge from the crisis of 1929 and start a new cycle of capital accumulation, almost without a crisis of overproduction: the famous “Glorious Thirty” [the French economic boom of 1945‑75] of economists and journalists. But this cycle ended definitively with the first crisis of international overproduction in 1974‑1975. Since then, following a cycle of 7 to 10 years as in Marx’s time, capitalism has experienced, after a phase of growth, an international crisis of overproduction: international and national trade plummet, bankruptcies of commercial and industrial enterprises explode, the national and international markets are engorged with goods which are difficult to buy. Bankruptcies lead to mass unemployment and restructuring. As arrears accumulate, the banks themselves go bankrupt and bond and share prices fall in turn, capital enters a deflationary spiral.

Faced with a crisis of the economic system which guarantees it immense privileges, the bourgeoisie, both industrial and financial, responds by systematically resorting to subcontracting, outsourcing, and making workers ever more precarious. Monopolies, which are the multinationals, respond with massive offshoring to countries where cheap labor can be exploited without restraint, such as in China. This “globalization”, as economists in the service of the bourgeoisie call it, has given world capitalism about thirty years of security.

To this is added frenzied speculation in all areas: on raw materials (like oil and gas), cereals, housing, etc. This is accompanied by general deregulation and the destruction of public services that capitalism is no longer capable of providing. This is all good for profits. The bourgeoisie does not care about the suffering it inflicts on workers through its policies. What worries the bourgeoisie and its governments are the social outbursts caused by its worldwide economic policy, and the general crisis of capitalism.

But the economic policy led by the bourgeoisie and its governments does not solve anything! On the contrary, from crisis to crisis, the situation worsens: from cycle to cycle, growth only slows down, while the debts of companies, families and States become so gigantic that they jeopardize the system itself. Even the central banks themselves hold trillions in debt in the form of bonds, many of which will never be repaid, bringing the crisis to the heart of the financial system.

However, a solution exists: capitalism, by socializing the productive forces, has developed on a considerable scale the economic bases of communist society – this is its great historical role. The crisis of capitalism exposes the need to transition to a communist society: a classless society, communal and without commodity production, where the goal of production will be the satisfaction of human needs. The goal of production under capitalism is only the accumulation of capital.Capitalism – and the bourgeoisie with it – has become a parasitic organism that hampers the development of humanity, drawing it into pointless wars and inflicting excruciating pain on a large portion of humanity, while destroying nature in the process.

The monstrous course of this economic system cannot be stopped peacefully. The transition to communism requires the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, its expropriation, and the abolition of wage labor and capital, by replacing the management of production and distribution for profit with a communist management, that is to say, a management that is based on physical and not monetary accounting and on human needs, while taking into account the protection of nature.

Below we’re publishing the flyer that the ICP distributed at a strike march on Saturday, January 18 in Prato. It was also translated into English.

The rally, called by the SI Cobas, was successful, with about 2 thousand demonstrators, mostly workers, participating. The citizens of Prato had certainly not seen such a workers’ parade for years. And never on the initiative of a rank and file trade union.

This must have worried the petite-bourgeoisie, the bosses and the local authorities. Equally, it certainly gave energy and courage to the workers who had joined SI Cobas and to those who still did not have the courage to join the fight, for fear of company retaliation, in this important textile district.

Another positive fact was the adherence of almost of the fighting unions, albeit mostly with limited representation. In addition to SI Cobas members, who made up the majority of the march, there were members of the CGIL opposition, with factory groups such as the GKN of Florence and the Piaggio of Pontedera, the Cobas Confederation as well as smaller groups from the CUB and the USB. The ADL Cobas, acting with SI Cobas, was the only other able to form a significant part of the strike march. The Coordination of Workers for Class Unity (CLA) was also present, with a banner, about twenty marchers and distributed a flyer.

In short, it was a small example of the united action of fighting trade unionism, the slogan that our party acts within the trade union movement and to which the CLA Coordination is inspired by. But there is still a long way to go for it to assert itself, and it needs such episodes of struggle to multiply and not remain occasional. At the same time, the activity of the Coordination must continue in the awareness of how far and uphill the road taken is the right one. The shortcuts are political and trade union opportunism.

* * *

The fines for «roadblocks» placed on the Superlativa Laundry workers and student supporters in Prato, for a picket cleared by force by the police. Both the fines and police actions are part of a repressive framework aimed at preventing the return to the struggle of the working class.

Hundreds of expulsion orders, injunctions and legal complaints have now been handed out. In the last few days alone, in Genoa alone, 19 injunctions with fines of €5,000 each have been imposed for «On‑the‑Job Violence» and in Desenzano sul Garda (Brescia), for «extortion», again for striking and organizing pickets.

When SI Cobas organizes in a workplace, company repression begins with the threats, discrimination and dismissals. If this doesn’t work, the company is rescued by the State. The police and carabinieri are sent in to clear picket lines, with clubs and gas if necessary. This has happened dozens of times. If even this does not stop the struggle, the courts take over. The legal system, using methods which the bourgeois political regime has developed to protect companies against workers struggles. These measures have been historically continuous, alternating between democratic to fascist and back to democratic regimes. The most recent measures being these so‑called «security decrees».

The police, courts and government are all cogs of the bourgeois State machine whose aim is to keep the working class oppressed and exploited.

Today, repression by employers is focused on SI Cobas because it is the union which has successfully organized workers’ struggle in recent years. The bosses try to prevent the struggles of the SI Cobas and its methods of unionism, from contagiously affecting the rest of the working class. The working class currently remains largely passive, a victim of individualism, resignation, distrust in collective action. This distrust, caused by decades of class collaborationist unionism by Cgil, Cisl and Uil, which led workers from defeat to defeat, losing many of the conquests made in the three decades after the Second World War.

Repression is also increasingly affecting the other grassroots trade unions and as well as the opposition in Cgil – with disciplinary measures and dismissals against their members and supporters. Often militant unionists find themselves isolated, in jobs where the threat of company retaliation and the intrigues of class collaborationist unions on the other, prevents real solidarity to develop and therefore calls for a fight in their defence.

In order to break the power of companies, bourgeois State and regime trade unionism, it is necessary to pursue unity of action by militant unions.

Today’s action in Prato, where a majority of the local grassroots union federations as well as the Cgil opposition, various Rsu and factory collectives and the Workers’ Coordination for the Unity of the Class have unified to support today’s demonstration. The latter organization was set up specifically with the aim of coordinating the efforts of all those who want to fight for unity of action within the Base Unions.

We need to fight so today’s protest is not unique. Such shows of unity in action need to become the goal which the rank and file unions as well as the Cgil opposition. Such actions should be constantly and increasingly unified.

Only the formation of a United Class Union Front will we be able to offer workers a credible and strong alternative to the regime trade unions (Cgil, CISL, UIL, UGL). Such a front will also be able to fight the dominant trade union opportunism within rank and file unions.

Mixed fronts between unions and parties need to be rejected. Despite proclamations in favour of unity of action by workers, they can only generate more and more economic fronts divided between parties. Each front in competition with each other. Each with its share of union bodies or currents under its control. They are therefore organizations which divide rather than unify an establishment of a constant and organic unity of class unionist action.

Fight today for unity of action of militant unionism. It’s objective being building a United Class Union Front, with its goal being the formation of a single Class Union. By doing this, the working class can be brought back into the struggle with the most favorable conditions of strength. This is the only material basis that will allow a sufficiently active part of it to return to its revolutionary positions, linking it to the authentic communist party willing to lead it to the conquest of political power.