Le notizie che giungono dalla Russia sono lietissime per la situazione militare dell’esercito rivoluzionario.

Le soldatesche della controrivoluzione si vanno fondendo e disciogliendo: i capi sono fuggiti e scomparsi, i più protervi dei loro arnesi cadono nelle mani dei reparti dell’esercito rosso, le masse vanno sempre maggiormente orientandosi verso il programma soviettista.

Ciò non vuol dire che le difficoltà contro le quali lottano i compagni russi siano scomparse. Sebbene anche la opposizione politica interna vada diminuendo, ed i partiti social-riformisti esautorati e scoraggiati rinunzino uno dopo l’altro alla loro attività chiedendo di essere tollerati nella vita del proletariato russo, mille e mille altri ostacoli che intralciano l’opera dei rivoluzionari esistono ancora; dalle arti sabotatrici dei governi borghesi esteri, ai problemi ponderosi della ricostruzione economica.

La repressione violenta delle conquiste del comunismo russo è però sempre un sogno svanito della borghesia internazionale e dei suoi sicari.

Quasi come contrapposto alla confortantissima situazione russa, giungono le notizie delle feroci persecuzioni contro i comunisti degli altri paesi che ancora lottano contro il dominio del capitalismo.

In Ungheria il terrore bianco impera, la caccia ai comunisti diviene ogni giorno più feroce e, dopo simulacri di processi, diecine e diecine di nostri compagni vengono condotti al capestro, mentre chi sa quante altre centinaia ne sono stati trucidati brutalmente dagli sgherri della restaurazione.

Il governo reazionario Ungherese fa l’impossibile per ottenere dalla vicina anfibia repubblica Austriaca la consegna dei capi comunisti che si sono rifugiati sul suo territorio. Esso è avido di altre vendette.

Anche in altri paesi ove pure il movimento comunista non ha avuto ancora neanche una parentesi di possesso del potere, le persecuzioni s’intensificano da parte dei governi capitalisti che sentono mancarsi la terra sotto i piedi.

In prima linea tra le varie repubbliche è la democratica America di Wilson. E’ qui che la polizia più feroce e sopraffattrice gode della maggiore impunità. Qui sono ormai all’ordine del giorno gli arresti arbitrari, gli scioglimenti delle associazioni politiche proletarie, le condanne da parte di una magistratura che è delle più asservite agli ordini del capitale.

Presentemente vanno effettuandosi le espulsioni di propagandisti e organizzatori comunisti stranieri dagli Stati Uniti; mentre quelli nazionali vengono posti fuori della legge.

Le più assurde leggende vengono inventate per giustificare questi sfratti politici.

Tra l’altro si giunge a dire e a far dire che i bolscevichi avevano organizzato la stampa di banconote false americane, allo scopo di far crollare la finanza mondiale!

Dinanzi a tutti questi fatti che è superfluo seguitare ad elencare, il proletariato degli altri paesi e specialmente quello italiano che è indubbiamente in condizioni molto meno aspre, hanno il dovere di ricorrere ai mezzi che la situazione consiglia per venire in aiuto dei loro fratelli.

Sono poca cosa le interrogazioni parlamentari, e la tradizionale politica di attendersi un’azione qualsiasi in pro delle vittime, anche se di nazionalità italiana, dal governo borghese, in nome di tradizioni democratiche e liberali.

La reazione capitalistica è logica quando si difende con tutte le sue forze: ai suoi colpi solo i colpi egualmente formidabili di altre forze possono venire utilmente opposti.

Se proprio le forze del proletariato italiano non sono pronte per intervenire su questo terreno non è evidente almeno la necessità di ometterne il pericoloso addormentamento nella aspettativa morbosa dello scioglimento degli spettacoli parlamentari?

La lettera di Lenin

L’influenza grandissima che esercita la sapiente parola del grande comunista ci obbliga a commentare questa ultima lettera pubblicata sull’Avanti! pochi giorni or sono, diretta ai comunisti tedeschi, nella quale egli consiglia loro di parteci­pare al parlamento borghese. Già altra volta Lenin in una breve lettera al com­pagno Serrati aveva espresso la sua approvazione al proposito del Partito socia­lista italiano di partecipare alle elezioni al parlamento, in contrasto quindi col nostro punto di vista decisamente astensionista. Lenin, che sa quanto grande, e meritatamente, sia il suo prestigio, si affretta in tutte e due le lettere, molto sag­giamente, a premettere che egli ha notizie assai scarse, e ciò per mettere in guardia coloro che volessero fare eccessiva valutazione del suo giudizio, che egli ammette senz’altro possibilmente inesatto per difetto di dati precisi.

Del socialismo italiano egli, che fu a Zimmerwald, conosce la decisa av­versione del partito alla guerra, che insieme all’adesione alla III Internazionale ha fatto acquistare al partito stesso fuori del nostro paese un credito superiore ai suoi meriti facendolo passare per un partito a forte carattere rivoluzionario; il che non è proprio assolutamente esatto.

La ripercussione del fenomeno guerra fu, in seno al partito, più che un prodotto di valutazione teorica, di natura prevalentemente sentimentale e perciò spesso assurda e contraddittoria.

Non sono pochi i nostri compagni e dei migliori che, accaniti avversari del­la guerra, si dichiarano altrettanto accaniti avversari di ogni violenza per qual­siasi motivo esercitata. Furono contrari alla guerra molti fra i più tenaci rifor­misti che accettano il concetto della difesa della patria. Molti per calcolo, per prudenza, pochi per profonda intima convinzione. Perciò l’atteggiamento contrario non andò mai oltre l’esercizio verbale. Durante la crisi di Caporetto, nessun ten­tativo fu fatto per cercare di trarre profitto dal difficile momento della borghe­sia, che non incontrò alcun ostacolo per superare il passo periglioso. Il partito si affannò anzi in quell’ora e poi a scagionarsi della responsabilità che la borghesia voleva addossargli di aver partecipato a provocare quel fenomeno, senza rivendi­care quel tanto che poteva spettargli per la propaganda contraria fatta costante­mente, che non aveva potuto non dare qualche frutto.

In quei giorni Turati, oratore del gruppo parlamentare, faceva eco alle pa­role del presidente del consiglio che incitava alla resistenza, esclamando: La pa­tria è sul Grappa, e sul giornale scriveva del pericolo del secondo nemico (lo straniero) senza che il partito elevasse protesta, anzi col consenso quasi generale di questo.

Quanto pochi in quell’ora tennero fermo nell’interno dell’animo e non in­vocarono la liberatrice democratica vittoria delle armi dell’Intesa che avrebbe rea­lizzato il vangelo wilsoniano! I più furbi tacquero ed attesero l’ora propizia della lotta elettorale per presentare alle masse scevro da macchie il proprio certificato di opposizione alla guerra, laddove i più imprudenti parlarono e oggi ne scontano il fio.

E questo per quanto riguarda l’avversione alla guerra, il cui merito spetta solo a ben pochi. Non parliamo dell’adesione alla Terza Internazionale. La since­rità di questa adesione e la coscienza di essa è nel modo con cui fu fatta la vota­zione, cioè per acclamazione.

Quelli che sono lontani ed hanno poco precise notizie, tra cui quindi il compagno Lenin, ritengono che il partito italiano sia omogeneamente ed autenti­camente rivoluzionario, cioè che si sia già epurato di tutta la vecchia zavorra socialdemocratica.

Chissà quali considerazioni farebbe Lenin se sapesse ad esempio che i comunisti italiani, cui egli crede di rivolgersi, non sono già tali ma semplicemente socialisti (ormai l’importanza che ha assunto la diversità della denominazione non è più messa in dubbio da nessuno) o se, per esempio, sapesse che nel partito vi sono dei socialdemocratici che sono assai più a destra del rinnegato traditore Kautsky e che sono assai più esplicitamente e tenacemente di lui nemici dichia­rati del bolscevismo; e tutto questo per volere del direttore di Comunismo e dei massimalisti, in opposizione alle proposte della nostra frazione, pel solo fatto che non bisognava spezzare l’unità del partito nell’imminenza della battaglia a colpi di… scheda per la conquista di un maggior numero di seggi nel Parlamento nazionale.

Lenin dice che non vi può essere pace, che non si può lavorare insieme coi Kautsky, Adler ecc.; qui da noi non si tratta di lavorare insieme; purtroppo si tratta di vivere insieme nello stesso partito, con la stessa disciplina ed, ironia!, anche con lo stesso programma… elettorale.

Così pure non si tratta di unire il lavoro illegale al legale; purtroppo da noi non si fa che quest’ultimo, che è il solo che molta parte del partito ritiene utile e doveroso dover fare perché il solo veramente rivoluzionario.

Circa la partecipazione al parlamento borghese consigliata ai comunisti te­deschi, non vale ricordare l’atteggiamento vario tenuto dai bolscevichi in rapporto alla Duma, non essendo atteggiamenti che possano valutarsi per analogia.

Per noi la ragione fondamentale per la non partecipazione è riposta soprat­tutto nella valutazione del periodo storico che si attraversa, ritenendo, come abbiamo altre volte ampiamente svolto, che nel periodo rivoluzionario il com­pito unico e solo del partito comunista sia quello di dedicare ogni sua attività alla preparazione dell’azione rivoluzionaria tendente ad abbattere con la violenza lo stato borghese ed a preparare la realizzazione del comunismo.

Una questione di tanto cardinale importanza involge tutta la sostanziale funzione del partito, come è apparso nettamente in Germania nell’ora del crollo del vecchio impero, durante la quale coloro come Scheidemann, Kautsky ecc. che volevano l’azione parlamentare apparvero e furono conseguentemente opportunisti.

Nei paesi ove la democrazia non ha tradizione, come in Russia, questa apparenza si manifesta in quelle ore critiche; nei nostri paesi, ove la democrazia vive da lungo periodo, non vi ha bisogno di attendere queste crisi per giudicare della condotta di certe frazioni, le quali hanno fatto costantemente opera opportuni­stica, collaborazionista ed antirivoluzionaria, quale la funzione parlamentare esige e impone.

A noi meraviglia che Lenin metta insieme, come fossero la medesima cosa, la rinunzia alla partecipazione ai parlamenti borghesi e quella ai sindacati rea­zionari, ai consigli di fabbrica ecc. che alcuni comunisti tedeschi sostengono.

Per noi sono due cose che non possono andare riunite: il parlamento è un organo borghese, né può avere altra funzione se non nell’interesse della borghesia; deve quindi scomparire col cadere del dominio borghese. Il sindacato ope­raio, all’inverso, è organo schiettamente di classe, il quale se pure per incoscienza dei capi svolge opera reazionaria potrà, anzi dovrà, essere richiamato alla vera sua funzione.

L’intervento al parlamento pei comunisti non interessa dal momento che deve essere abbattuto; non così il sindacato, il consiglio operaio ecc., i quali in tanto fanno opera rivoluzionaria in regime borghese, in quanto sono pervasi di spirito comunista ed agiscono sulle direttive comuniste sotto la spinta ed il con­trollo dei comunisti; per altrettanto saranno organi utili e positivamente fattivi in regime comunista non solo per la forma della loro costituzione.

Se i comunisti tedeschi vogliono boicottare questi organismi operai, è pos­sibile anche che ciò essi siano costretti a fare per ragioni di difesa e di conser­vazione, per sottrarsi alle persecuzioni della socialcanaglia Noske che in questi organismi ha sguinzagliato le sue spie.

Che se invece ciò facessero per tendenza alla concezione anarchico-individualista della rivoluzione, allora non avremmo bisogno di ricordare che noi siamo decisamente contrari a tale atteggiamento poiché siamo in perfettissimo accordo con Lenin sulla necessità di avere un forte partito politico, centralizzato, che sia cervello, anima e guida sicura del proletariato nella lotta per la sua redenzione.

A questo fine noi continuiamo la nostra tenace azione per la divisione dei comunisti dai socialdemocratici, divisione che per noi è fattore indispensabile per la vittoria del comunismo.

II

Prior to getting down to discussing the practical problems of setting up workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils in Italy, and bearing in mind the general considerations contained in the article we published in our last issue, we wish to examine the programmatic guidelines or the Soviet system as they are developed in the documents of the Russian revolution and in the declarations of principle issued by some or the Italian maximalist currents, such as the programme adopted by the Bologna Congress, the motion proposed by Leone and other comrades to the same congress; and the writings of L’Ordine Nuovo on the Turin factory council movement.

The Councils and the Bolshevik Program

In the documents of the 3rd International and the Russian Communist Party, in the masterly reports of those formidable exponents of doctrine, the leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement – Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin – there recurs at frequent intervals the idea that the Russian revolution did not invent new and unforeseen structures, but merely confirmed the predictions of Marxist theory concerning the revolutionary process.

The core of the imposing phenomenon of the Russian revolution is the conquest of political power on the part of the working masses, and the establishment of their dictatorship, as the result of an authentic class war.

The Soviets – and it is well to recall that the word soviet simply means council, and can be employed to describe any sort of representative body – the Soviets, as far as history is concerned, are the system of representation employed by the proletarian class once it has taken power. The Soviets are the organs that take the place of parliament and the bourgeois administrative assemblies and gradually replace all the other ramifications of the State. To put it in the words of the most recent congress of the Russian communists, as quoted by Comrade Zinoviev, “the Soviets are the State organizations of the workers and poor peasants; they exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat during the stage when all previous forms of the State are being extinguished.

In the final analysis, this system of State organizations gives representation to all producers in their capacity as members of the working class, and not as members of a particular trade or industrial sector. According to the latest manifesto of the Third International, the Soviets represent “a new type of mass organization, one which embraces the working class in its entirety, irrespective of individual trades or levels of political maturity”. The basic units of the Soviet administrative network are the urban and rural councils; the network culminates in the government of commissars.

And yet it is true that during the phase of economic transformation, other organs are emerging parallel to this system, such as the system of workers’ control and the people’s economy. It is also true, as we have stressed many times, that this economic system will gradually absorb the political system, once the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is completed and there is no further need for a central authority. But the essential problem during the revolutionary period, as emerges clearly from all the Russian documents, is that of keeping the various local and sectional demands and interests subordinate to the general interest (in space and time) of the revolutionary movement.

Not until the two sets of organs are merged will the network of production be thoroughly communist, and only then will that principle (which in our view is being given exaggerated importance) of a perfect match between the system of representation and the mechanisms of the productive system be successfully realized. Prior to that stage, while the bourgeoisie is still resisting and above all while it still holds power, the problem is to achieve a representative system m which the general interest prevails. Today, while the economy is still based on individualism and competition, the only form in which this higher collective interest can be manifested is a system of political representation in which the communist political party is active.

We shall come back to this question, and demonstrate how the desire to over-concretize and technically determine the Soviet system, especially when the bourgeoisie is still in power, puts the cart before the horse and lapses into the old errors of syndicalism and reformism. For the moment we quote these non-ambiguous words of Zinoviev: “The communist party unifies that vanguard of the proletariat which is struggling, in conscious fashion, to put the communist programme into effect. In particular it is striving to introduce its programme into the State organizations, the Soviets, and to achieve complete dominance within them.

To conclude, the Russian Soviet Republic is led by the Soviets, which represent ten million workers out of a total population of about eighty million. But essentially, appointments to the executive committees of the local and central Soviets are settled in the sections and congresses of the great Communist Party which has mastery over the Soviets. This corresponds to the stirring defence by Radek of the revolutionary role of minorities. It would be as well not to create a majoritarian-workerist fetishism which could only be to the advantage of reformism and the bourgeoisie. The party is in the front line of the revolution in so far as it is potentially composed of men who think and act like members of the future working humanity in which all will be producers harmoniously inserted into a marvellous mechanism of functions and representation.

The Bologna Programme and the Councils

It is to be deplored that in the Party’s current programme there is no trace of the Marxist proposition that the class party is the instrument of proletarian emancipation; there is just the anodyne codicil: “decides (Who decides? Even grammar was sacrificed in the haste to decide – in favour of elections.) to base the organization of the Italian Socialist Party on the above-mentioned principles”.

As regards the paragraph which denies the transformation of any State organ into an organ of struggle for the liberation of the proletariat, there are certain points to be made – but it will have to be done on another occasion, after an indispensable previous clarification of terms. But we dissent still more strongly from the programme where it states that the new proletarian organs will function initially, under the bourgeois regime, as instruments of the violent struggle for liberation, and will subsequently become organs of social and economic transformation; for among the organs mentioned are not only workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils, but also councils of the public economy, which are inconceivable under a bourgeois regime. Even the workers’ political councils should be seen primarily as vehicles for the communists’ activity of liberating the proletariat.

Even quite recently Comrade Serrati, in flagrant opposition to Marx and Lenin, has undervalued the role of the class party in the revolution. As Lenin says: “Together with the working masses, the Marxist, centralized political party, the vanguard of the proletariat, will lead the people along the right road, towards the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat, towards proletarian not bourgeois democracy, towards Soviet power and the socialist order.” The Party’s current programme smacks of libertarian scruples and a lack of theoretical preparation.

The Councils and the Leone Motion

This motion was summarized in four points expounded in the author’s evocative style.

The first of these points finds miraculous inspiration in the statement that the class struggle is the real engine of history and that it has smashed social-national unions. But then the motion proceeds to exalt the Soviets as the organs of revolutionary synthesis, which they are supposed to bring about virtually through the very mechanism of their being created; it states that only Soviets, rather than schools, parties or corporations, can bring the great historical initiatives to a triumphant conclusion.

This idea of Leone’s, and of the many comrades who signed his motion, is quite different from our own, which we have deduced from Marxism and from the lessons of the Russian revolution. What they are doing is over-emphasizing a form in place of a force, just as the syndicalists did in the case of the trade unions, attributing to their minimalist practice the magical virtue of being able to transform itself into the social revolution. Just as syndicalism was demolished in the first place by the criticism of true Marxists, and subsequently by the experience of the syndicalist movements which all over the world have collaborated with the bourgeois regime, providing it with elements for its preservation, so Leone’s idea collapses before the experience of the counter-revolutionary, social-democratic workers’ councils, which are precisely those which have not been penetrated successfully by the communist political programme.

Only the party can embody the dynamic revolutionary energies of the class. It would be trivial to object that socialist parties too have compromised, since we are not exalting the virtues of the party form, but those of the dynamic content which is to be found only in the communist party. Every party defines itself on the basis of its own programme, and its functions cannot be compared with those of other parties, whereas of necessity all the trade unions and even, in a technical sense, all the workers’ councils have functions in common with one another. The shortcoming of the social-reformist parties was not that they were parties, but that they were not communist and revolutionary parties. These parties led the counter-revolution, whereas the communist parties, in opposition to them, led and nourished revolutionary action. Thus there are no organs which are revolutionary by virtue of their form; there are only social forces that are revolutionary on account of their orientation. These forces transform themselves into a party that goes into battle with a programme.

The Councils and the initiative of L’Ordine Nuovo in Turin

In our view, the comrades around the newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo go even further than this. They are not even happy with the wording of the Party’s programme, because they claim that the Soviets, including those of a technical-economic character (the factory councils), not only are already in existence and functioning as organs of the proletarian liberation struggle under the bourgeois regime, but have already become organs for the reconstruction of the communist economy.

In fact they publish in their newspaper the section of the Party’s programme that we quoted above, leaving out a few words so as to transform its meaning in accordance with their own point of view:

“They will have to be opposed by new proletarian organs (workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils, councils of the public economy, etc.) – … organs of social and economic transformation and for the reconstruction of the new communist order.” But this article is already a long one, so we postpone to our next issue the exposition of our profound dissension from this principle; in our view, it runs the risk of ending up as a purely reformist experiment involving modification of certain functions of the trade unions and perhaps the promulgation of a bourgeois law on workers’ councils.”

Note: This article was first published in English as the second part of a collection of three articles, collectively entited Three Texts of the Italian Left on Anarchism, and includes Socialism and Anarchy and Bolshevism Defamed by the Anarchists.

1992 English Introduction

The period following March 1919, which saw the founding of the new Communist International and a rising revolutionary movement in many lands, were real “days of hope” for the communist left. Increasing costs of living were met by the Italian working class with massive struggles, which took the form of strike waves and real street battles. This was the period when the revolutionary initiative should have been taken; however, the communist left was too small to accomplish the task by itself, and the bulk of the PSI wasn’t up to the job. The History of the Communist Left expresses the situation clearly: “The will cannot make revolutions nor can the party create then, it can and must favour them with its conscious action by barring in time the false directions in which opportunism draws the generous multitude, and force, of proletarians. The resource that history offered then and which the party let slip from its grasp, was to block the way to the manoeuvre of the enemy, which knew that by opening the flow of the urns it could avert the impact cf the revolutionary flood. If the proletariat, freeing itself from the democratic illusions, had left the parliamentary vessel burning behind it, the struggle would have finished quite differently. The revolutionary party had the duty of trying for this great outcome, by throwing itself athwart the other. But revolutionary, the party was not” (Vol. I, p.175).

At the time the following text was written, the PSI was under increasing stress: the events of the previous year had made it obvious that a split was only a matter of time, Communist groups including the abstentionist fraction were still hammering out their differences. Among these was the “Ordine Nuovo” group of Turin, led by Antonio Gramsci. This tendency, which was later hammered into shape sufficiently to contribute to the formation of the Communist Party of Italy, actually shared many of the confusions of the anarchists on the question of the state and the conception of the economic transition to socialism. The ordinovists thought of the soviets as organs of economic management based upon the factory. In other words, they saw factory councils as the basis of the communist state, This conception confused economic and political organisation of the proletariat, in a manner reminiscent of Proudhon. Modern leftists naturally regard Gramsci as the paragon of marxism (conceived of as a “flexible doctrine”), imagining that workers’ management of production through factory councils is a very progressive step. In reality, as the article below points out, the communist programme aims at a far more radical goal: suppression of the “freedom of production”.

Socialists and Anarchists

We’re resuming an – unhurried! – polemic with “Volontà” of Ancona, which from the 1^st November has devoted a sesquipedal article to polemicising with us.

The anarchist columnist digresses first, then excuses himself in order to revolve a bit around his phobia for the state; and finally comes to the point that we have defined as essential.

The anarchists – we said – think that the economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie will be instantaneous, and simultaneous with the proletarian insurrection which will knock dawn the bourgeois power.

On this premise – which is simply fictitious – they construct their other illusion en the uselessness of every form of power, of state, of proletarian government.

This goes at the same time with the fallacy of the anarchist economic conception, based on the liberty of producers’ and consumers’ groups in the field of the production and distribution of goods – a conception that while superseding the bourgeois system of private enterprise, or that of Mazzinian associations a, remains well below the formidable original content of the communist economic concept: suppression of the “freedom of production”.

Not understanding this gigantic task of the communist revolution, all convinced that it will suffice to kill off this cursed State (metaphysically thought of as immanent, independent of capitalism, the same whatever class possesses it!) because everything goes into place by itself – the anarchists imagine possible the instantaneous substitution of the socialist economy for the bourgeois one.

That we’ve hit the right key, is demonstrated by the polemical enormities which ’’Volontà” resorts to in the face of our approach to the question.

To hold that after the political revolution there will continue to be bourgeois who aren’t yet expropriated is, according to our anarchist friends, utopian socialism!

Engels, if he were to live again, would chase us back into the prehistory of socialism! Poor us… and poor Engels!

What if precisely utopianism used to dream of the new society without being conscious of the historical process which leads to it! What if precisely Marx and Engels indicated the necessary means of this process, fixing the exact criteria of which we are modest but dogged supporters! But let the columnist of “Volontà” reread; not only the constitution of the Russian Republic and the other documents of the Third International which we’ve recorded at another time, but precisely the last two pages the chapter “proletarians and Communists” of the Communist Manifesto. There he will see discussed the gradual process of expropriation after the conquest of power.

The whole problem of Dictatorship, which the anarchist journal has discussed chaotically, is right here. It’s in the existence or not of the period;and some socialists die if they don’t immediately add transitory) or gradual expropriation of the bourgeois by the proletariat organised as dominant class.

We’ve written before in polemic with the anarchists that this period (of transition, its true, since there can’t be a period that isn’t transitional, if it has a beginning and an end) would last at least a generation.

Well then, in the work of comrade Radek published in “Comunismo” on the “Evolution of Socialism from science to action” and inspired directly by the doctrines of classical marxism, are these very clear propositions:
    “Dictatorship is the form of rule, in which one class dictates its will bluntly to the other classes.”
    “The socialist revolution is a long process, which commences with the dethroning of the capitalist class but it ends only with the transformation of the capitalist economy into the socialist economy, in the workers’ “cooperative” republic. This process will require at East a generation in every country, and this period of time Is exactly the period of the proletarian dictatorship, the period in which the proletariat with one hand must incessantly repress the capitalist class, while on the other which remains free, it can work for socialist reconstruction.”

“Volontà” puts on our conscience an “opposition to the expropriating function of the revolution”!!

As if it was due to our caprice that the revolutionary process will be so complex, as Marx saw it and the above words of the… counter-revolutionary Radek described it.

The reasoning of “Volontà” is specious. Instead of dealing with the historical; social and technical possibility of its expropiation-insurrection, it devotes itself to showing that, if the management of socialisation is entrusted to a State the revolution will fail; even more if economic privilege is allowed to exist for a bit.

In possession of this magnificent sophism, our contradictor can become a good bourgeois again, presenting it to the capitalist world as a life insurance policy!

“Volontà” calls conservation of economic privilege the performance of that programme which according to us is the most rapid process of eradication of economic privilege.

We would wish – certainly – a more rapid one, as long as it could be developed on the surface of the planet that we inhabit, rather than among the wild fancies of anarchism.

But, to support the absurd concept of instantaneous socialisation, a marxism played by ear is invoked, and it’s objected: there’s economic privilege? It will determine political privilege. The state which you want to conserve, between the two classes of which you, socialists, want to conserve the privileged one, will choose to support the bosses’ class.

But this is marxism fossilized into metaphysics! In the concept af the marxist dialectic the state doesn’t have permanent characteristics and functions in history: every class state follows the evolution of that class: it’s first a revolutionary motor, then an instrument of conservation. Thus the bourgeois state smashes feudal privileges in a colossal struggle, and afterwards struggles for the defence of those of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

But the coming to power of the proletariat (we paraphrase with our poor words the immortal thought of the Master) transcends the meaning of the accession of a new dominant class. The proletariat has – first in the lifetime of humanity – the consciousness of the laws of the economy; and of history, “in the triumph of its revolution human prehistory comes to a close”.

The proletarian state breaks the bonds of the capitalist system to substitute it with a rational system of exercise of men’s activity in the universal interests of humanity. The proletarian state remains standing during the period of elimination of the capitalist class, but doesn’t create any other dominated class. Its historical task is the elimination of classes, with which will be eliminated the very necessity of the political power of the state.

This does not mean to say that future society will not have “representatives” and will not have central administration.

It only means that this will not have a political! function, because it will not have to act any more for one class of men against another class – it will only have economic and technical functions because it will usefully and rationally harmonise the action of all men against hostile nature.

Il Soviet, the organ of the Communist fraction, resumes publication.

We welcome this resumption of activity, as it will enable us to popularize the communist ideal and, at the same time, make the working class understand the difference between socialism and communism.

It would be naive to expect that the vast communist program will be unfurled before us overnight.. we, direct sympathizers, have an obligation to ask our dear Soviet friends for some of the key points of their program, both to ease our conscience and to avoid making any mistakes, for better or worse, in our direct contact with the illiterate or semi-illiterate masses.

And we ask:

1. What consideration and attitude will the new Communist Party have towards workers’ and peasants’ organizations?

2. Which of the two methods and schools will it embrace: that of the labor confederation, or that of the trade union?

3. What line will it follow in the possible dispute between capital and labor?

The consideration that prompts me to ask the above questions is a nagging doubt about the present.

Given the existing alliance between the labor confederation and the Socialist Party, and with the Communist fraction remaining in the ranks of the official Socialist Party, will it be possible to propagate a new line to the organizations without moral and political incompatibility?

Do you not believe, dear Soviet, that a decisive step must be taken to remove misunderstandings and possible conflicts between organizations and between militants of the same ranks?

Now, if organizations as constituted entities must follow the direction of the labor confederation, it is better for true communists to distance themselves from any trade union movement and embrace the adopted policy in all its consequences.

This separation of people is necessary, as we cannot continue with the eternal misunderstanding of the revolutionary in politics and the collaborator in economics.

Therefore, if the Communist Party’s clear and transparent program includes the conquest of organizations, must we break with the labor confederation pact? If we break with it, will we still have a place in the official Socialist Party?

I hope that my deeply convinced communist comrades will answer my questions, as they aim to clarify a necessary direction to embrace or reject.

ANGELO RUSSO