Focusing on the Il Soviet group’s intense activity in the early post WWI period in workers’ economic organizations and in the heat of fierce class battles, the speaker of the History of the Communist Left (see the last issue of Il Programma) made a direct connection to the theme of the Party’s trade union activity.

This activity was outlined in June 1920, at the conference of the Abstentionist Fractions: 

“Communists therefore penetrate proletarian cooperatives, unions, factory councils, and form groups of communist workers within them. They strive to win a majority and posts of leadership so that the mass of proletarians mobilised by these associations subordinate their action to the highest political and revolutionary ends of the struggle for communism.”

We are alien to any improvisation, and obey a strict continuity of program that’s simultaneously a continuity of action. Despite the constraints of a situation far removed from the heated 1919-1920, we move on the same track today—the very track outlined in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and the General Statutes of the First International Workingmen’s Association of 1864.

Recalling Theory

When it came time not to launch a «new activity» but to initiate the coordination of an activity the Party had always claimed as its own—albeit constrained by the narrow and occasional limits imposed by the broader external situation—our groups and sections were reminded of the classical Marxist formulations. These formulations trace the process by which proletarians, compelled by economic struggle and its imperious demands, overcome the artificial barriers of interest and category created by the capitalist regime of production. Through this process, the proletariat creates a general and unitary organization that finds its first historical expression in leagues of trade unions—the immediate embodiment of the «growing (but perpetually threatened by competition) solidarity of the workers.» The ultimate crowning achievement of this process is the political party: the «independent political party, opposed to all other parties constituted by the propertied classes,» through which, and only through which, the proletariat can act as a class.

This process is not the consequence of consciousness; it’s a real and physical fact rooted not in the «brains» of individuals or collectives but in the clash between classes. This clash originates from material economic determinations and continually suprasses them. Its content lies in the creation and refinement of weapons of struggle—instruments for open conflict against bourgeois society. This is evident not only in the tamed organization of today or those which are (and will be) forged in the fire of the great revolutionary battles but even in the struggles and organisms of the proletariat in the early days of the workers’ movement.

In those days, Marx could call workers’ trade unions «schools of civil war.» Engels would smile at bourgeois economists’ astonishment at workers sacrificing weeks and weeks of wages to defend, in the streets and in clashes with police and military forces, the organizations safeguarding wage levels—and, if possible, raise them. These immediate organizations, even in periods of relative calm, carried what today might be called an immense “revolutionary charge.” Yet this charge was never, even in moments of intense social upheaval, the result of a fully developed consciousness of the ultimate aims of the proletarian struggle. Instead, it emerged from the immediate material necessities driving its own unfolding.

This applies to the class but also to the individual. The formula is not consciousness first and action later, but rather economic drive first, action later, and then finally consciousness. Furthermore, this consciousness is not realized in the individual, but in the party. Militants, however few they may be (and they will always be a minority of the working class) join the party not because they have previously acquired a complete consciousness of the program, but by a selection process that took place in the struggle and through the struggle. Only in the course of their party militancy will they be able, again not as individuals but as an organized body, to “overthrow praxis” and make revolutionary theory the sine qua non in revolutionary action.

Just as it is not a matter of consciousness, the process of organizing the proletariat as a class is not a gradual evolutionary fact, a slow and progressive maturation. It’s a tumultuous succession of qualitative leaps corresponding to violent and often bloody clashes between classes. Through this, the proletariat—those without reserves—overcomes in a single stroke the more coarse and immediate forms of organization, which are divided by locality and sector and are discontinuous in time and space. The proletariat breaks through the narrow limits of the parochial and the company, subordinating the personal, local, and corporate interests of individuals and groups to ever broader interests and aims. This culminates in the political party, where every boundary of group, category, and nation is obliterated and every act obeys the imperatives of the ultimate and general aims of the class.

This is a dialectical process that has nothing to do with the idealistic interpretation of history, whereby each stage is annulled by the next and, having reached the summit of “consciousness,” humanity enters once and for all the “reign of reason.”

The party, itself a product of material determinations, is a battle line. As it possesses superior theoretical and organizational weapons, it is called upon not only to defend them against the converging attacks of capitalist society—and even against the persistent pressures of the material determinations to which it owes its existence—but also to carry them as instruments of decisive action within the immediate organizations into which they continually flow. This process is driven by the pressures of capitalist society and the relentless proletarianization of the middle classes, which produces new levers of wage-earners. The party is, therefore, called to radiate that which—in periods of the ebbs of class struggle—may be only the “light” of the historic revolutionary program. This is destined to become, in fiery periods of social conflict, the great “magnetic field” of polarization for all the subversive forces unleashed from the underground of the bourgeois social and political order.

The party is not the Spirit of biblical mythology, hovering above the waters and observing from on high the chaotic movements and struggles of a humanity bound by the chains of the flesh. Nor is it a Demiurge that descends into the arena at some decisive moment to single-handedly reshape the world. Rather, it is a material force whose decisive role in the grand unfolding of history depends entirely on its connection with a massive, driving force.

This force emerges «from below»—raw and «uncultivated,» like a natural and physical phenomenon—neither guided nor shaped by conscious ideologies or explicit concepts. As Engels remarked in 1890, “it will be the non-socialists who will make the socialist revolution.” This raw energy will inevitably be drawn to act within the framework of the program that the party, even in its darkest moments, has upheld and defended against all opposition, even within the ranks and organizations of wage earners in their struggle against capital.

There’s no contradiction (except for those who have understood nothing of the materialist dialectic) between the superb proclamation of the theses of the Third International on the role of the communist party in the proletarian revolution—“The Communist Party differs from the whole working class because it has an overall view of the whole historical road of the working class in its totality and because at every turn in this road it strives to defend not just the interests of a single group or a single trade, but the interests of the working class in its totality.”—and the task which the same theses assign to it of working within the proletarian economic organizations—“The task of communism does not lie in accommodating to these backward parts of the working class, but in raising the whole of the working class to the level of the communist vanguard.”—since “Every class struggle is a political struggle. The aim of this struggle, which inevitably turns into civil war, is the conquest of political power. Political power can only be seized, organized and led by a political party, and in no other way.” 

In other words, “The class struggle of the proletariat demands a concerted agitation that illuminates the different stages of the struggle from a uniform point of view and at every given moment directs the attention of the proletariat towards specific tasks common to the whole class. That cannot be done without a centralized political apparatus, that is to say outside of a political party.”

Practical Tasks of the Movement

The connection between economic struggle and political struggle—between wage‑ earning masses moving under the impetus of immediate interests and the party fighting for the ultimate goals of communist revolution—and, as a logical corollary, our active presence in trade union organizations and workers’ agitations, is thus a matter of principle. In reaffirming it we merely reiterate one of our Characteristic Theses, enunciated at the Florence meeting in December 1951: 

«The Party will never set up economic associations which exclude those workers who do not accept its principles and leadership. But the Party recognises without any reserve that not only the situation which precedes insurrectional struggle but also all phases of substantial growth of Party influence amongst the masses cannot arise without the expansion between the Party and the working class of a series of organisations with short term economic objectives with a large number of participants. Within such organisations the party will set a network of communist cells and groups, as well as a communist fraction in the union. […] Although it could never be free of all enemy influence and has often acted as the vehicle of deep deviations; although it is not specifically a revolutionary instrument, the union cannot remain indifferent to the party which never gives up willingly to work there, which distinguishes it clearly from all other political groups who claim to be of the ‘opposition.’”

Therefore, if we seek to extend and better coordinate this work today, it is not because some “new and original idea” has passed through anyone’s mind. Rather, it is because the general situation and development—however disorganized—of class struggles, along with the consolidation of the party network, require us to translate into continuous and systematic action a task we recognize as permanent. This remains true even when “events, and not the desire or the decision of militants,” limited it (as they still partly do) “to a small part of its activity.”

This was the necessary response to questions that arose, both on the periphery and at the center of the party, from ongoing agitations. We can now give this response on a larger scale than in the past, precisely because, during the long and not yet completed phase of the “re-establishment of the theory of Marxist communism” that occupied the last decade of our organizational life, the relationship between our ideologically strengthened network and the (still slender) strata of proletarians has been expanding and strengthening. This is not a “turning point” but a continuation of work that never ceased, even when external circumstances—beyond the will or desires of even the most combative and enthusiastic militant—limited its scope.

The infamous policy of fragmenting the struggles of militant groups, such as metalworkers or agricultural wage workers, has re-proposed—and continues to re-propose—the revolutionary party’s imperative to reaffirm the fundamental principles of class struggle. This task remains critical before, during, and after agitations that frequently escalate into open and direct clashes between proletarians and the forces of law and order, which are often backed by union piecards.

The party must remind workers that

• No economic victory is lasting, nor does it serve the general interests of the class, if it does not result in growing solidarity among the exploited. Therefore, the abandonment of the general strike—without time limits and without distinction of factory, sector, or category—not only fails to secure immediate economic gains but also undermines and destroys the future and general prospects for the proletarian assault on the capitalist regime of exploitation.
• The “tactics” of articulate bargaining, of demanding additional qualifications by category, of seeking productivity bonuses and company incentives, and of striking for ridiculously short periods, only increase—instead of reducing—the competition among workers and their isolation from one another. 
• So-called “apoliticism of the union” actually conceals the union’s abandonment of class politics in favor of backing central bourgeois power. 
• There are no “particular” issues to which a solution can be found outside the general vision of the historical interests of the working class.

For these answers to be—both now and even more so in the future—given by the entire party to the entire array of forces of opportunism, it became necessary to supplement the central party organ, Il Programma Comunista, with a central bulletin of programmatic and combative character, Spartaco. Meanwhile, in various groups and sections, the long work of connecting to proletarians in struggle bore positive fruit. This made it urgent to coordinate the general Party activity according to clear and uniform directives.

This coordination did not—and does not—set goals that the situation, not only in Italy but especially internationally, forbids. It does not aim to achieve rapid and radical shifts in the direction that a forty-year period of super-opportunism has inevitably imprinted on the—albeit lively—struggles of entire sectors of the industrial and agricultural proletariat. It does not dream of the short-term possibility of liberating the trade union from the tutelage of counter-revolutionary parties—even if, locally and for a short time, it does not exclude the possibility (which has actually occurred) that the leadership of agitations and even of workers’ economic bodies be taken and kept by our comrades. Its aim is to weave and strengthen our network of physical connections with the proletariat, taking advantage of a slowly recovering situation—but with full knowledge that the fruits of this methodical, stubborn work (as is our custom) can and must be reaped only at an advanced stage of the workers’ movement, certainly not in the near future.

At the meeting in Rome, on April 1st, 1951, it was reaffirmed that “[t]he correct Marxist praxis asserts that the consciousness of both the individual and the mass follow action; and that action follows the thrust of economic interest. Only within the class party does consciousness, and, in given circumstances, the decision to act, precede class conflict; but this possibility is organically inseparable from the molecular interplay of the initial physical and economic impulses. […] According to all the traditions of Marxism and of the Italian and International Left working and struggling inside the proletarian economic organizations is one of the indispensable conditions for successful revolutionary struggle; along with the pressure of the productive forces on production relations, and with the correct theoretical, organizational and tactical continuity of the political party.”

To separate these three inseparable terms—isolating the possibilities for success offered by the theoretical and organizational strengthening of the party on the one hand, and the work and struggle in economic associations on the other—from the objective reality of the maturing process of internal contradictions in capitalist society would be to undermine precisely the theoretical, organizational, and tactical continuity that the party has painstakingly reconstructed in recent years. We must, therefore, fight with the utmost energy against any attitude of aristocratic disinterest in economic struggles. Any claim—even if inspired by a healthy fear of taking opportunist paths—that the party should merely proclaim and defend “general” postulates and refuse to engage with “particular” questions must be vigorously combated. Such claims are based on the false assumption that “particular” questions can somehow be isolated from the “general” questions of the proletarian movement, or vice versa—the separation of these areas is precisely the dominant characteristic of opportunism.

Similarly, the opposite claim—even if inspired by genuine enthusiasm—must also be dispelled. We must energetically oppose assigning the party tasks that the real development of class struggle prevents from being fulfilled. The party must not set objectives for itself that can only take shape and substance due to events of international importance—which condition the development of the international revolutionary party.

Let’s then take care to carry out our work of penetration and proselytizing among the proletarian masses serenely, methodically, and continuously. Let’s not allow ourselves to be caught up either in discouragement over failures—failures that we must foresee and discount in advance—or in the hysterics of “action for the sake of action.” Above all, let’s not indulge in the illusion that the “times” of revolutionary recovery can be accelerated by means of tactical recipes or organizational expedients, which would isolate the work conventionally labeled as “trade union work” from the general and political work of the movement.

It’s a responsibility we are proud to finally take on. We must carry forward with the knowledge that we are fulfilling not a national but an international task. We are working for the future of a proletarian movement and a class party that has and recognizes no time limits or State borders.