Declining American imperialism is turning into a rabid dog

The capitalist mode of production, which has enabled the development of impressive productive forces that could form the basis of a benevolent communist society, has for over a century been a rotting corpse that survives on the backs of the working people and no longer generates the benefits of scientific achievements and fascinating human creations, but rather horrors of oppression and increasingly numerous, bloody, and destructive conflicts in every corner of the planet. Nations no longer play any role in progress, nor do they have the possibility of being autonomous; instead, based on the balance of power, they align themselves with one or the other of the most powerful and feared imperialist countries from an economic and military standpoint, the two leading powers of which are today the United States and China. And the crisis of the capitalist mode of production, with its overwhelming overproduction, is a terrifying specter for the bourgeoisie. 

World War II enabled the United States to assume global economic and military hegemony, but China, with its younger and more vigorous form of capitalism, is advancing its interests methodically, subtly, yet very effectively throughout the world. That “international law,” which in fact represented the law of the strongest—that is, the Western countries led by the U.S.—is being “respected” less and less, as Putin’s so-called war against Ukraine has kicked off the race toward “illegal” predation. We emphasize, among other things, that one would have to be quite naive to believe in “international law”, since the regular violations of “international law,” committed by the two victorious imperialist powers, the US and the USSR, immediately after 1945, and also by Israel since its formation in 1948, has already exposed the lies underlying this “law” that was said to protect nations and which the UN was supposed to safeguard. From Ukraine to the Caucasus, from the Middle East to the Far East, from America to Africa, conflicts continue to escalate as if the “order” imposed by “international law” since 1945 were crumbling and plunging into a downward spiral. The “Cold War” and “armed peace” have run their course; deregulation is in full swing.

Today, Trump’s America no longer has any “insecurities” and is issuing a barrage of decrees, even going so far as to intervene in Greenland, the Caribbean, and Venezuela! Now it is showing up in the Middle East after vowing never to set foot there again, with the aim of carrying out joint action with its Israeli ally. Leading an operation dubbed “Epic Fury,” Trump brutally launches an attack without a UN mandate, without consulting Congress or NATO members, and without the consent of his “allies” in the Persian Gulf or Europe. In fact, for those two rogue cowboys, Trump and Netanyahu, in the midst of deceptive negotiations with the mullahs, the goal was to crush the recalcitrant Iranian enemy once and for all and to complete the policing and ethnic cleansing campaign that Israel has been waging for years in the Middle East, acting as a bridgehead for the United States. Now, faced with China’s economic advance in every corner of the world, America wants to assert its “protectorate” in the Middle East, South America, Antarctica, and soon, above all, in the Pacific, which is usually China’s hunting ground.

America is in an uproar because it is truly in danger.

The United States and Israel clearly hold air superiority over Iran while the conflict, which began in early March, appears increasingly asymmetrical. But the mullahs are holding their ground and have more than one trick up their sleeves. Contrary to the predictions of some experts in the region, the Iranians have struck back and continue to launch repeated attacks, using missiles and, above all, drones against the Gulf states because of those countries’ ties to the United States.  Their attacks also target Israel, whose “Iron Dome” has some vulnerabilities; Netanyahu reportedly traveled to Germany in early March to seek an agreement with the automotive giant Volkswagen regarding the production of components for this defense system.

The Iranian regime, composed of the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards, has demonstrated its ability to rise again, much like the mythological nine-headed Lernaean Hydra, whose heads grew back in double numbers after each cut, despite the decimation of most of its leaders by killer drones, and today it exploits its control over the Strait of Hormuz.  In this way, it holds the global economy hostage, and the drone war can do nothing about it, since a war without ground troops is not enough, and the war robots are not yet ready.

On the other hand, the mullahs’ regime has not yet made use of one of its most devastating weapons: the “martyrs”—or, more precisely, suicide attacks. They knew how to use it in the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, which caused, by conservative estimates, 500,000 deaths; The Iraqi army possessed overwhelming material and technological superiority, while the Iranians could count on significant demographic superiority, and the weapon of “martyrdom” was thus employed, with Iranians, often very young, voluntarily detonating mines strapped to their bodies or throwing themselves with grenades under enemy tanks. Subsequently, the cult of martyrdom spread rapidly to Lebanon in the 1980s, when the Iranians began training Hezbollah forces. The Lebanese Shiite organization has, in fact, expanded the repertoire of “martyrdom tactics” to include suicide bombings. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda which is a Sunni organization, learned from this by adopting suicide attacks and incorporating them into his own narrative of martyrdom. Successor groups and rivals, such as the Islamic State, would take the horror of suicide attacks to new extremes in the mid-2010s. To carry out suicide attacks, the Iranian regime now has auxiliary forces that can be deployed abroad: ultra-radical militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and cells of Shiite fanatics scattered throughout the world. In early 2026, for example, Iraqi militias such as Kataib Hezbollah openly called on their fighters to take part in “martyrdom operations”. Hundreds of them are said to have volunteered for suicide missions in order to defend Tehran. This strategy could be used not only against U.S. interests or against Jewish or Israeli institutions in the Arab-Muslim world, but also in Europe and the United States. In the space of a single week in early March 2026, four arson attacks targeted Jewish institutions across the continent. A synagogue in Liège, Belgium, on Monday, March 9; a Jewish community center in Greece (not claimed or confirmed as a terrorist act); an incendiary bomb left outside a synagogue in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on March 13; and a Jewish school in Amsterdam on Saturday, March 14. A few days later, on Monday, March 23, a car was set on fire in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter; the day before, a fire had destroyed four ambulances near a synagogue in London. This entire series of attacks is systematic, geographically dispersed, and, above all, claimed by a single group—the “Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya” (Islamic Movement of the Supporters of the Righteous), which was previously unknown but undoubtedly stems from Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There have been reports of additional attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, a Jewish community center in Michigan, and other locations. Germany, which has hundreds of Hezbollah supporters, is ramping up security measures. 

But on the Iranian side, whether or not they are sleeper cells, the Islamic State—a Sunni organization—and other Sunni factions hostile to the Tehran regime, not to mention the opposition from Iran’s Kurdish population, could seize the moment to carry out bloody attacks against Iran, as already happened in January 2024, or attempt to engage in clashes with the Iranian military. 

New AI driven warfare techniques

For the time being, it seems unthinkable that the U.S. government would set foot in these regions; instead, it merely flies over them, bombing them and experimenting with an “artificial intelligence”-led air war, sending drones and missiles to the countries it seeks to conquer—or rather, to subjugate—and, above all, to terrorize, in order to conclude pseudo-negotiations. One certainly cannot count on a popular uprising, as Trump’s appeals seemed to suggest to the Iranians, because the “liberation” brought about by the aggressors’ bombs is worse than the mullahs’ rule. The social demands put forward by any rioting masses would certainly not fare any better than they do now, partly because the victor always prefers to install docile puppets in power—puppets dedicated to subjugating the people.

In Ukraine, Palestine, and the Persian Gulf, aerial warfare involving drones, missiles, and bombings is raging. These air raids were first tested during World War I and in the colonies (Italian bombing in Libya in 1911, bombing in October 1925 in Syria by the French Air Force in Damascus), during the Spanish Civil War, and were then systematized during World War II to bring the conflict to an end, deliberately using them as a weapon of destruction against civilian populations, and thus as a weapon of terror. In addition to saving the lives of soldiers at the expense of civilians, air power has a psychological dimension, as noted by British Viscount Trenchard, founder of the Royal Air Force and a theorist of aerial warfare in the 1920s and 1930s, who hoped that bombing campaigns would prompt the population to rebel against their own government. Therefore, civilian casualties are never “collateral damage,” but rather a weapon of mass destruction that targets not only military objectives but also hospitals, schools, and markets. The recent innovation in this field of war lies in artificial intelligence, which analyzes an overwhelming amount of information captured from videos at breakneck speed, thereby enabling the targeting of specific material and human targets without sparing the civilian population. Yet history shows that air wars have never been enough to secure victory without sending in ground troops to take control of territory, and the U.S. military knows this all too well after the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Syria, as well as in many other theaters of war. 

In the face of the current global economic crisis, the world’s leading economic and military power is in fact becoming increasingly aggressive, relying no longer on its now-declining economic strength but on its military might, which remains unrivaled. His greatest enemy, who is plotting to seize the top spot in the world and impose his own goods and an economy even more prosperous than that of the American “King Kong,” is the Chinese dragon.The struggle between the two capitalist giants over the division of global markets is now taking on diverse and varied forms of conflict, but these are increasingly harmful to humanity and, above all, to workers in every country. The clown Trump lashes out with vulgarity that above all reflects the brutality and arrogance of the American bourgeoisie that supports “the artist with the blond streak,” and above all kills with drones, injures civilians, and cynically starves a portion of humanity, casting aside the hypocritical mask of morality and compassionate democracy that the Democratic administration of Obama and Biden once flaunted. Enough with the subterfuge, the subtleties, the compassion. The U.S. Department of Defense became The Department of War in September 2025, because there the focus is no longer on defense but on offense.

Trump comes across as a performer who spews threats, lies, and surprising, ever-changing strategies; a puppet whose rhetoric reflects the positions of the American business elite—whether on oil, weapons, or now AI, and so on. Every possible means is being sought to profit from the international situation for the benefit of their own businesses. And in this macabre dance, the big bankers and corporate executives are fully aligned with the military leaders, who are themselves tied to the booming AI industry. For the past decade, at the Pentagon – the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense – most decision-makers have focused on the military threat posed by China, raising the possibility of a third world war. These strategists are well aware that China will eventually catch up with them in the field of armaments, and they are seeking new weapons of mass destruction, much like the atomic bomb during World War II.

The U.S. Army led the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, the use of which led to the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Technology capable of replacing humans would be welcome to achieve the same end. AI could then help wage war in place of humans, making it possible to use machines and robots, a true science fiction fantasy. Two key figures will play an important role in this process: Colonel Robert O. Work, who will provide strategic guidance, and Colonel Drew Cukor, a U.S. Air Force officer specializing in intelligence and air operations, who will oversee the practical implementation.

As early as 2015, Colonel Bob Work, who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense under the Obama and Trump administrations, introduced the use of AI in decision-making and the deployment of unmanned systems, thereby sparing “human lives.” During a public speech in 2015, he declared: “Let me tell you this right off the bat: if, in ten years’ time, the first person to break through enemy lines isn’t a robot, shame on us”. “We can do it”. Even in war, both the military and capitalists try to do away with human aid, without realizing that this is precisely where their downfall lies! Work had the support of experts from Amazon, Google, and IBM. But the Pentagon’s budget, though colossal in 2016, was not enough to embark on the AI venture; and even though the Internet was a Pentagon creation, the U.S. military leadership was still hesitant to make the technological leap. In 2016, Drew Cukor joined the Pentagon’s intelligence office and, together with Bob Work, was determined to introduce the use of AI into the operations of the armed forces. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. military had increased its drone sorties on the battlefield from 54 to 8,000 by 2010 (in Afghanistan, Iraq, and North and East Africa; in the fight against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS), but there was significant “collateral” damage. In addition, the video recordings were unusable because they were too large, and human analysts were overwhelmed by the workload.

The Maven project (Algorithmic Warfare Cross-functional Team) was launched in 2017 within the Department of Defense to use AI in analyzing drone footage that provides U.S. military intelligence, particularly in the areas of intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, as well as geospatial intelligence. Data from drones, satellites, and other sensors (such as surveillance cameras installed in urban areas) is analyzed using AI, enabling operational decisions to be made. The human workload has been drastically reduced, and military efficiency has improved.

Since the use of AI was becoming inevitable, Cukor was put in charge of Project Maven. It wasn’t just a matter of reaching out to AI providers and tech giants; the United States military also had to engage with the business community to secure cash investments.

Cukor reached out to companies in Silicon Valley, where the top AI talent was concentrated, as well as to self-driving car manufacturers like Tesla, Waymo, and Uber, which were equipping their vehicles with cameras capable of analyzing the surrounding environment to avoid obstacles.

The Maven project is now set to become the Department of Defense’s largest investment. The goal with this new investment is to carry out targeted operations against high-value targets in order to shorten the “kill chain”. For Cukor and Work, AI would change warfare forever, as the United States Military would now be able to cope with large floods of data in order to act quickly and effectively. However, within the Pentagon, the use of AI will lead to job cuts and a drastic reduction in bureaucracy, and as a result, Cukor and Work’s mission may face numerous obstacles. Silicon Valley, which once proclaimed itself libertarian, has gradually been co-opted, and even though some AI providers today fear that their expertise might be used for military purposes, they are all now deeply involved in the future battles involving killer robots targeting humans, and are vying for military defense contracts in pursuit of lucrative profits. Palantir Technologies (one of the world’s most highly valued American companies), Scale AI (49% owned by Meta), Anthropic, and OpenAI are throwing themselves into the arms race, which is becoming an extraordinary commercial outlet for their generative AI platforms, as the pursuit of profit takes precedence over libertarian values and the defense of the homeland. Google is also involved in the Maven project, while Apple has refused to participate. The Maven team within the Pentagon has therefore been instrumental in pushing the U.S. military to use systems that have yet to be thoroughly tested in combat. Ten years after the launch of Cukor’s initiative, AI-based decision-making systems are in use on the battlefield and across all branches of the U.S. military, in submarine sonar systems, and in space operations that integrate the work of more than 50 companies.NATO began using a version of the system in the spring of 2025, and ten Alliance members are seeking to acquire it. AI-based targeting systems are integrated into at least two highly classified systems—one airborne and the other underwater—capable of monitoring, selecting, and eliminating targets completely autonomously, intended for the defense of Taiwan.

Not only is Silicon Valley a loyal servant of the U.S. military, but so, of course, is the business community. Since 2024, Drew Cukor has been heading the department dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence for Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the investment bank JP Morgan and a close associate of Trump. In fact, American business leaders invest billions in the military industry (missiles, drones, ammunition) and boast that their business interests align with the defense of the country and a powerful military to deter others from “misdeeds”. “Today, the situation has changed dramatically from defense to offence: we are facing a full-scale war in Europe and a much greater threat in the Indo-Pacific region…And now is the time to act,” Jamie Dimon declared in December 2025 during the Reagan National Defense Forum, alongside entrepreneur Christopher T. Calio, president and CEO of RTX (Raytheon Technologies Corporation). He leads a global team of more than 180,000 employees who are advancing aviation, designing integrated defense systems, and developing next-generation technologies in the aerospace and defense sectors. Colonel Work has served on the company’s board of directors since 2017.

But AI won’t be the one to save the U.S. economy, because its competitor and archrival, China, is racing ahead in AI and will even surpass it in this sector!

Global Capitalism in the Storm of the Middle East

Why on earth did Trump get himself into this mess, which is—as anyone could have expected—leading to a supply crisis involving oil, gas, fertilizers, and etc. due to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces, which could lead to a crisis in the functioning of global capitalist supply chains—and thus also in the U.S. component of that system? Not to mention the enormous cost of this initiative for the U.S. government, which is already heavily in debt. China, too—which relies on oil from Iran and the Persian Gulf countries (and, having anticipated the crisis, holds substantial energy reserves sufficient for 4 to 6 months)—could be affected by the drop in demand if soaring energy and food costs were to curb consumption in the countries to which it exports, such as Europe, the United States, and others. In Japan, the currency is depreciating, exacerbating existing inflation, with the price of a barrel of oil reaching $140 due to the yen’s depreciation; yet its situation is already dire, with a record debt-to-GDP ratio of 250%, which could force the government to sell U.S. Treasury securities, thereby worsening the U.S. Treasury’s situation. The United States has embarked on a war that is costing it between $1 billion and $2 billion a day and has already borrowed $1 trillion over the past five months. 

As for Putin’s Russia, this war suits them well because, thanks to their “ghost fleet”—which nothing seems to be able to stop—when oil prices rise, the state coffers, which are in dire need of funds, are replenished. Russia therefore has every interest in ensuring that this war lasts as long as possible. On the other hand, it cannot allow its only remaining ally in the Middle East to collapse, at the risk of losing all credibility. The Moscow-Tehran strategic alliance is vital for Russia if it wants to maintain even a modicum of influence in the Middle East. Putin is thus supporting the Iranians by providing them with technological upgrades for their drones, as well as experts who can use satellite imagery to strike U.S. bases with greater precision. For their part, the Americans are forced to rely on the Ukrainians to defend their military bases from Iranian drones, since the Ukrainian military is the only one with real expertise in this field. In fact, they intercept 95% of Russian drones using inexpensive drones—costing between 10,000 and 20,000 euros—while the Americans use missiles costing millions of euros to destroy a single drone.

Hasn’t the U.S. air campaign, combined with that of its Israeli proxy, opened Pandora’s box? 

The Arab allies in the Gulf, who oppose this intervention, have in fact found themselves caught up in it and have been particularly hit hard by the Iranian attacks. The global economy could be severely destabilized by a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which supplies oil, gas, fertilizers, and other chemicals to countries that need them. Stock markets skyrocket, overheat, rates rise and fall throughout the day depending on statements from various parties, central banks are in a tizzy, and no one can say who the real winner is because on the ground, the Iranian leaders, even though decimated, keep rising again and again and manage to hold out by sending inexpensive drones or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, letting “friendly” ships pass— Chinese in this case, or even blackmailing the others with exorbitant prices. How will Trump’s inner circle—comprising political, military, and business figures—manage to extricate itself from this mess without suffering economic losses, given that this air war involving artificial intelligence is costing them a great deal of money?

This “law of the jungle” atmosphere has the middle classes fearing a descent into hell—a global economic crisis that could lead to a world war. Wars involving AI provide an opportunity to test an increasing number of new weapons that could be used in a future conflict against China, with the participation of vassal “allies,” a division of labor among the belligerents, with Russia handling Europe on China’s behalf, and China handling the U.S.—the American bourgeoisie having no need to concern itself with Europe, whose countries will have armed themselves to the teeth… or nearly so! Against this backdrop of aggression against Iran, NATO appears to be growing stronger; middle powers such as European countries and Canada, despite being threatened and blackmailed by the United States, have lined up behind their master, absolving him of his aggression against Iran.

Only the working classes of all countries—both aggressors and victims—will be able to oppose these infamous wars, which the bourgeoisie, driven by the inexorable decline in their rate of profit, will be forced to unleash. But to do so, the proletariat must rise up, reject all forms of national solidarity, organize economically into genuine class-based unions, and join the only party that embodies the millennia-old experience of social struggles against class society and capitalism—a party that can thus lead them in a relentless struggle against the bourgeoisie, transforming the war between states into a class war: the International Communist Party, which has remained faithful to the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the Italian Left.

More than four years have passed since Russia’s large-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Our press has already covered this conflict extensively, as there is much to say about the various capitalist interests involved in this tragic event: the roles of the United States, the European Union, and Russia.

Let’s take a look at the situation in Poland and its role in this war. Given its border with Ukraine, which stretches over 500 kilometers, and its close ties to the Western bourgeoisie, this country occupies a key position in the ongoing conflict. One might think that Poland has every interest in seeing this war end, but appearances are often deceiving, and a closer examination of the situation in the region reveals deeper underlying issues.

Faced with the tragedy unfolding just across the border, which has inflicted unimaginable suffering on the Ukrainian working class, the Polish ruling class has not hesitated to exploit the situation to its fullest. Not only has the war brought an influx of Ukrainian women to Poland, and many men, willing to take on any job to survive, but it has also provided public opinion with an ideal scapegoat: the “lazy immigrant,” a stereotype particularly dear to the bourgeoisie worldwide. In this way, the Polish proletariat is driven to feel contempt and aversion toward their Ukrainian brothers, if not fear, fueled also by the Russian threat looming in this “war of civilizations,” in the words of Polish President Karol Nawrocki. Fear and panic, fueled by the bourgeois press and media, are insinuating themselves into daily life.

Furthermore, this conflict is not only a constant threat to workers but also a means of further exploiting the working class. As the war has dragged on, the material consequences for the proletariat have worsened, with a considerable portion of economic resources being diverted to armaments and the military. On the other hand, the massive influx of Ukrainian labor, while helping to alleviate shortages in certain sectors, has also intensified competition for jobs, and the country’s social infrastructure has been put under severe strain. Finally, the length of the war has led Polish workers to begin distancing themselves from the chaos reigning on the other side of the border. The latest polls have recorded the worst results in terms of Polish support for Ukrainian refugees, falling from 94% in 2022 to just 48% in 2026.

The conclusion is clear: the population is growing weary of the seemingly never-ending conflict on its borders. Some are seeking answers by supporting the most reactionary wings of the bourgeoisie, as evidenced by the rise of nationalist and ultra-nationalist parties (such as the Confederation) which, despite their still-limited influence, maintain their popularity amid this chaos. The same is true of the reformist left wing of the bourgeoisie, such as the “Ensemble” party, which, following the last elections, refused to cooperate with the current parliamentary bloc and has seen its popularity grow, playing a more significant role in major cities, industrial centers, and universities. Both sets of parties are tools serving the ruling class in Poland.

Poland depends on economic support from the EU, but it also depends on U.S. military support (arms supplies, intelligence) as a deterrent against Russia. All of this places Poland in a delicate situation in light of the recent tensions between the ruling classes of Europe and America, which, despite being antagonistic, are ultimately nothing more than the two poles of a single imperialist bloc. Consequently, the recently elected Polish president, Karol Nawrocki, of the conservative “Law and Justice” party, is seeking greater cooperation with the American ruling class, while the Parliament is inclined to support the European Union.

The Polish middle class, however, is united in its stance on the war in Ukraine. This unity is also supported by the more left-wing factions in Parliament, such as the “Ensemble” and Left parties, already mentioned, which, although small in number (Poland has never been fertile ground for the rise of social-democratic opportunism), urge the government to act in light of the need to build a “strong and effective” army. This is evidenced by the statement from Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who emphasizes the need to develop the military apparatus and increase arms production in the face of the threat posed by Russian imperialism. Consequently, Poland has seen a sharp increase in its military budget, with funding rising from 2.4% of Poland’s GDP in 2022 to 4.7% in 2025. Today, the Polish army’s strength has grown from 164,000 soldiers in 2022 to 213,000 in 2025, making it one of the largest in Europe.

The same is true across Europe, where various nation-states have recently launched an ambitious rearmament plan, driven by the need to participate in the imperialist war currently unfolding in Ukraine and various other parts of the world; in the course of this war, European states are also being called upon to play a role in defending their respective national interests.

The proletariat of Western countries is constantly bombarded with the horrors of the war in Ukraine on social media, and this also applies to Poland, a country bordering the conflict. Polish workers are not only exploited by their capitalist masters, but are also terrorized by their bourgeois press, which incessantly repeats, “Ukraine today, Poland tomorrow,” sowing anguish in the minds of an already exhausted proletariat, who don’t believe the war will end tomorrow. And so everything continues to function, because the wheels must turn for the capitalist machine to keep going, while the proletariat is terrified of what might happen next, fully convinced that there is nothing else to do but support their nation, their bourgeoisie, their exploiters in these terrible times.

But is it really impossible to do anything? Is the future really so bleak, with war and death as the only prospects on the horizon? Yes; as long as the bourgeoisie and capitalist relations persist, the continuation of wars—and their escalation toward a third imperialist world war—will be inevitable. Only the communist revolution—which stands in opposition to this prospect, under the leadership of the International Communist Party, whose necessity Marx and Lenin long ago emphasized—will put an end to the madness of the horrors created by capitalism. The proletariat must become aware of its own power and refuse to play along with the game so meticulously devised by the capitalists—a game with clearly defined limits and multiple facets, such as democraticism and electoralism, which, in the end, all converge toward a single goal: the total domination of the bourgeois order. The proletariat must understand that it is the only class capable of advancing history; the only one capable of abolishing the current state of affairs; the only one capable of abolishing even itself as an expression of this society. That is why the work of the International Communist Party is more important than ever; in these times of fear and uncertainty, it is the only party capable of dispelling bourgeois illusions and leading the proletariat to its final victory.

At a historic juncture in which the working class seems to lack momentum and no longer acts as a class in its own right but rather as a class in the service of its exploiters, on this day of struggle and defiance against the world of capital, our Party reaffirms the vitality and necessity of this struggle.

This May Day is marked by war, bombings, deaths, and devastation. The race toward World War III has begun.

The First World War, which devastated Europe in particular, was not halted at its inception by revolution; but towards its conclusion and in the immediate aftermath. The proletariat was ready to take to the streets, first and foremost in Russia, Germany, and also Italy, led and guided by left-wing proletarian parties and the Communist International.

The subsequent degeneration of the Communist Parties, which accompanied the Stalinist counterrevolution, resulted in leading the proletariat onto the battlefields of the second imperialist slaughter, and then, exhausted by the war and deprived of revolutionary leadership, into the arduous postwar reconstruction under “democratic” and post-fascist regimes that represented a continuation of fascism in their expression of the class rule of Capital.

Today, the winds of war once again accompany the crisis of overproduction, which demands a new cycle of destruction of commodities and productive forces, of cities and factories, and a new massacre of proletarians, all of which is already underway in various war zones. All of this is intended to give rise to a new cycle of accumulation that will allow capitalism to survive itself.

The third imperialist war is already underway in various parts of the world, a contingent expression of the will of the world’s leading gendarme, the United States of America, gripped by crisis and ready to unleash its firepower to secure raw materials and dominance over markets it cannot otherwise maintain. But the other major actors, China, Russia, and, trailing behind, Europe, are also rapidly rearming in anticipation of the spread of the conflict, which looms as a massive catastrophe. Soon, images of death and destruction, already not far from us, will become part of daily life in our countries, with young proletarians conscripted and sent to the front.

Comrades, workers,

This fate is not inevitable. If the working class is able to fight back, by refusing to show solidarity with its own states and ruling classes, by mobilizing in the class struggle against the sacrifices imposed for the war effort, and with a view toward its own emancipation through revolution, the march toward war mobilization can be stopped!

In opposition to spineless pacifist propaganda, only the preparation and unfolding of the revolutionary movement of the working classes can halt the third imperialist war. They must orient and mobilize themselves with this perspective in mind, reconstructing their organizations for economic defense and regaining the leadership of their own Class Party.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY

Among the news stories circulating lately in Russian media circles, one that stands out is the inevitable blacklisting of one service or another for refusing to cooperate with the Russian state. The latest “victim” of Rozkomnadzor (the Russian cyber-surveillance agency), the bureaucratic arm of the capitalist state, is Telegram, a service used by most Russians to stay informed and communicate. Instead of the stifled app, the state offers a “better” alternative (perhaps better for the police, to facilitate government surveillance)—a chat service curiously similar in design and functionality called Max (perhaps an acronym for “maximum-security prison”?), which has proven capable of blatantly spying on users, providing the government with direct access to their activities. Another problem has arisen from the fact that the app, being connected to government databases and storing all user information, is particularly vulnerable to breaches. By supposedly protecting the average Russian citizen from the “Western threat,” the state has played right into the hands of organized crime: brilliant! Many Russian middle-class people who love “democracy” and “freedom of speech” (some of whom masquerade as “Marxists”) have denounced all of this as an attack on the “dignity” of the average Russian. But here, for us revolutionary Marxists, a question arises spontaneously: What has changed for the Russian worker? Have food prices perhaps gone down? Has this “attack on dignity” perhaps caused more damage than the European-made ammunition fired by the proletarians forcibly conscripted into the Ukrainian army? Or is the “restriction of free speech” more significant than the many Russian proletarians fighting in the trenches? In fact, the defenders of “freedom”—even while claiming to be Marxists—cannot believe that the Russian proletariat has not staged uprisings or a “revolution” against this “injustice.” It must be noted, however, that these same bourgeois “socialists” have organized the most active workers into peaceful demonstrations, calling for the “abolition of censorship”! What a proposal! Where is the party that organizes workers into militant actions, rather than limiting itself to feeble cries for “freedom of information”? The workers followed these “Marxist” traitors straight into the hands of the omnipresent Russian police, resulting in dozens of arrests—just as had happened previously with the failed pacifist demonstrations “against the war.”

We can answer these questions posed by our “friends” with relative ease. In his work, “The German Ideology,” which was unpublished at the time, Marx wrote:

“While the bourgeoisie of every nation still upheld its own national interests, large-scale industry has created a class that shares the same interests in all nations and for which nationality is already a thing of the past…”

The Russian state, for example—or any other state—cannot stop the flow of information or stifle workers’ discontent simply by imposing restrictions on the Internet. Russia is still part of the international economy and cannot be isolated from the Internet, which, like every technology in the current capitalist system of production, is first and foremost a tool of commerce for the bourgeoisie. That is why the brazen claims by European nationalists to “exorcise” the Russian “barbarians” from the Internet have not materialized in the four years since the start of the imperialist war in Ukraine, and it is for the same reason that the Russian state has not blocked mass access to the Internet, despite the cries of its ideologues warning of “Western degeneration.” This or that faction of the bourgeoisie may restrict certain services, but the communications network must remain intact—and so we will resist. In fact, despite all the efforts

of the capitalists over the long centuries of communist struggle, despite all the arrests, surveillance, and censorship, our line still stands today and will stand until the victorious revolution of the proletariat.

As for the question raised by our bourgeois socialist “friends” regarding the apathy of the Russian proletariat, as we have already noted, material conditions—however dire—have not yet reached the lowest point for revolutionary action; the moment of awakening has not yet arrived; the proletariat is disorganized and holds back out of fear of state repression, which is a disguised advantage, because Russia currently lacks a party ready to lead the revolutionary vanguard in liberating both the Russian and the international worker.

We do not need appeals to bourgeois concepts of “freedom.” We need proletarian organizations committed to economic action and a party capable of leading them in class struggle. We need a revival of true revolutionary Marxism, which died out long ago in Russia with the demise of the October Revolution, but which continues to burn—albeit as a small flame—in the tradition of left-wing communism and the Communist International.

Developments in the war in Ukraine and the recent conflict with Iran have diverted attention away from all other active conflicts of varying nature and intensity, estimated at 56 worldwide, according to some specialized  research centers. Nevertheless, the vampiric system of capitalist production continues to organize itself adequately enough to continue plundering natural resources and raw materials in those desolate countries, better yet, in the silence that favors these infamous trafficking operations.

One such situation is unfolding on Italy’s so-called “fourth shore”: Libya, with its oil discovered by chance in 1939, and the maneuvers of Eni, the National Hydrocarbons Board. This Italian multinational has been active in the oil, gas, and various other energy sectors since 1959 and continues to play a leading role among the various oil companies holding exploration and extraction licenses.

We refer readers to an article we published in issue No. 415/2022 of this paper, titled “The precarious stalemate in Libya”, in which we provided a detailed account of events from the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 through his violent death and up to the cessation of hostilities in 2020 among the various armed groups that continue to vie for control of the country. A truce was necessary to hold new presidential elections and form a new central government for all of Libya; these elections have not yet been called due to the numerous objections raised by the various factions.

In fact, all parties vying for Libyan oil have had to accept the current, seemingly stabilized situation, under which they are forced to negotiate with the authorities in Tripoli, specifically, the Government of National Unity (Gnu) presided by Mohammed Dbeibah, and those in Benghazi, headed by General Khalifa Haftar, as their primary interlocutors, in addition to various small armed groups in Fezzan.

Despite frequent and recurring political tensions, the long-term agreement that guarantees Eni’s extraction activities through 2042 for oil and through 2047 for gas remains in effect. This is guaranteed by the Libyan authorities and the NOC (National Oil Corporation), Libya’s national oil company, which manages all activities related to the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources.

Respecting this agreement is very important for Italy’s energy-intensive capitalist system because, in the Libyan context, two major powers, Russia and Turkey, have recently been asserting their claim to operate the facilities, a role of primary importance in both the extractive and political sectors, to the detriment of the other countries involved, including, of course, Italy.

Against this backdrop, the four official trips that Italian Prime Minister Meloni has made since 2023, focusing on cooperation, migrants, gas, and oil, are quite understandable. It is also worth noting the six trips made by Interior Minister Piantedosi between Tripoli and Benghazi, primarily concerning security and migration flows, as well as the controversial and never clearly explained case of the repatriation via a government flight of Libyan General Almasri, who was arrested in Turin in 2025.

The circulation of goods and capital is vital to the existence of capitalism; a halt or even a mere slowdown in this circulation can trigger or exacerbate an economic crisis that is already underway. Libya’s precarious status quo currently ensures the regular flow of hydrocarbons and, at the same time, the flow of money derived from that source; there is no longer the financial uncertainty caused by the existence of two separate central banks resulting from the division of power between Tripoli and Benghazi. In fact, in August 2023, the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) officially announced the reunification of the two sides, with the primary aim of stabilizing the economy and managing oil revenues in a unified manner. This process was supported and guaranteed by the UN, but strong tensions persist between the two former factions, making full technical and administrative integration still very complex due to ongoing political fragmentation.

In this scenario, it is widely accepted that General Haftar’s Cyrenaica is increasing its political and military strength and presence in Libya at the detriment of Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity in Tripolitania. Due to the precarious health of both leaders, they are often replaced at key political meetings by their likely successors, chosen from within their respective family circles, an opportunity to further postpone any plans for new presidential elections.

The assassination on February 3 at his residence in Zintan, Tripolitania, of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, who had once designated him as his successor, has removed an influential figure capable of bridging the two main factions in the struggle for power in Libya. At the moment, there does not appear to be any intention to alter the status quo, which is based on the difficult management of local and tribal divisions that were once skillfully orchestrated by the Gaddafi regime.

Despite themselves, all political and economic partners have had to navigate this situation in an attempt to achieve their stated objectives.

Following the memorandum on the recognition of maritime borders in the southern Mediterranean signed with the Tripoli government in 2019, in direct opposition to similar plans by Greece and Egypt, Turkey is now negotiating with Benghazi, which does not recognize that agreement. This involves a 30% expansion of Turkey’s continental shelf at the expense of the area claimed by Cyprus and Greece, where work had already begun on developing a gas pipeline to provide a more efficient connection between the fields in the eastern Mediterranean and European markets. The interests at stake regarding areas designated for deep-sea fishing are also significant.

To bolster Turkey’s claims, the government in Ankara is funding and supporting the government in Tripoli. It is also consolidating its military presence in Tripolitania with a new military base in Misrata and a possible air base in Al-Watiyya, inland to the south of Sabrata.

Russia is pursuing two strategic objectives in Libya: the first involves continued support for Haftar’s government, which is necessary to maintain control over Cyrenaica and to strengthen the two key air bases at al-Khadim, 200 km east of Benghazi, and Matan As-Sarra in the desert near the border with Chad, serving as the primary logistical support for Russian military operations in Africa. Some reports indicate work being done on runways, depots, and various facilities, which underscore Russia’s strategic interest. The integration of Cyrenaica into Russia’s alliance system also involves military training, technical assistance, and the supply of weapons, all of which confirm Moscow’s strong interest in Libya.

The United Arab Emirates, for its part, is utilizing the remote Kufrah airport, 1,200 km southeast of Benghazi, as a base for supplying weapons and various types of materials to support the Sudanese paramilitary militias (RSF: Rapid Support Forces), which are in open armed conflict with the Sudanese armed forces, who in turn, are backed by Egypt, which recently carried out an airstrike against a convoy of weapons and fuel destined for the RSF.

The critical political and military issues have subsequently increased since the US became engaged in an exhausting mediation attempt between Tripoli and Bengasi, but at the moment they do not plan direct military involvement.

Underlying all this paid-for attention in addition to geostrategic plans is, fundamentally, the exploration, extraction, and transportation of high-quality hydrocarbons found underground in the desert and beneath the surface of the Libyan Sea.

Eni, too, had to navigate that web of agreements in an effort to secure the renewal of new extraction licenses.

In late January 2026, Eni obtained a modification to its agreement with NOC, the Libyan national oil company, aimed at securing a 9% increase in the Italian multinational’s share in exchange for a joint investment of $3.7 billion through long-term contracts. Naturally, other oil companies have also requested adjustments to their stakes and the duration of their concessions, given the substantial investments required, particularly for offshore facilities. In February, Eni announced that it had obtained a license for offshore exploration of Block O1, in the oil-rich province of Sirte covering 29,000 square kilometers in collaboration with QatarEnergy. Highly satisfied, Eni executives emphasized that the excellent synergy between Italian technology which has enabled the company to become the leading operator in the sector, with hydrocarbon production expected to reach approximately 162,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2025 and Qatar’s substantial economic strength, necessary for these investments, played a key role in the NOC’s decisions. In mid-March, Eni announced that the initial seismic surveys required to locate offshore fields had yielded very encouraging results.

The Italian middlemen and oil executives are all happy; but the suffering masses of migrants from the Libyan coast represent a massive human tragedy from which the capitalism of European states in search of cheap labor stands to gain.

Two Historic Texts on the Relationship Between the Party and the Class Struggle

Marxist doctrine teaches us that “The history of all so far existing society is the history of class struggle,” an uninterrupted struggle, even if it is not always overt.

The struggle that the proletariat wages against the bourgeoisie began with its very existence and will end only with the disappearance of social classes. All attempts the ruling class may devise to exorcise this irreconcilable antagonism will be in vain: neither the deceptive systems of democracy nor the dictatorial systems of fascism will be able to overcome it, because it is the capitalist mode of production itself that generates, develops, and intensifies it.

The proletariat in this society has nothing of its own to defend; it has only the historic task of destroying it, after seizing power through revolution.

To conduct its struggle, the proletariat naturally needs its own independent organization, and this organization, which the working class establishes for itself autonomously, goes through various stages of evolution.

“At first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze. […] At this stage, the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies. […] But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized. […] The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages. […] Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle” (K. Marx – Manifesto of the Communist Party)

As exhilarating as these latest statements are, painting a picture of a working class in full swing and eager to fight, it is equally depressing to observe how, save for a few very rare and isolated outbursts, the proletariat on an international level remains, for now, a passive victim of unchallenged capitalist domination.

Every class struggle is, therefore, a political struggle; but as long as there is no awareness of their respective interests, there are only classes in potential, or classes in themselves. Only when awareness of common interests and common goals is achieved, that is, when the class party is formed, only then does the proletariat, as a “class in itself,” reach the level of a “class for itself.”

It is Marx again who says: “Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance – combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, the unions, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favor of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favor of wages. In this struggle – a veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.

Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.”

It follows, therefore, that the organization of the proletariat as a class requires the presence of the political party. But while economic organization, the labor union, is the spontaneous product of the exploited class, the same cannot be said of the party, which is imposed on the class from the outside.

“A small section of the class stands apart from it and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.” This is what we call the “Reversal of Practice.”

Let us now turn to Lenin: “We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic [Today we would say: ‘communist’—Ed.] consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from the outside. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. […] Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course. […] Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. […] The spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism […] and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is […] to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy”

“The Social-Democracy leads the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich. Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers alone, but in its relation to all classes of modern society and to the state as an organised political force. Hence, it follows that not only must Social-Democrats not confine themselves exclusively to the economic struggle, but that they must not allow the organization of economic exposures to become the predominant part of their activities.” (Lenin-“What is to be Done”)

But if the proletariat needs the cooperation and guidance of defectors from the bourgeoisie, it is equally true that the bourgeoisie, too, makes use of traitors from the proletarian class to maintain its domination. It is Marx who says: “The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of a ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.” Just how true this concept is can be clearly seen in the behavior of all those former workers who, over time, have risen to lead opportunist and counterrevolutionary unions and parties.

In conclusion, only the intervention of the class-based political party can give the proletariat, by taking the lead in the unions, a truly class-based direction and a historic goal: the overthrow of the capitalist regime. On the other hand, the party, too, needs to base its strength on a militant workers’ movement organized within strong class-based unions; without these conditions, the revolution will remain nothing more than an unattainable myth.

Turning now to our two earlier trade-union writings, which we are republishing below, we can say that (apart from very minor, insignificant variations due to the current complete collapse of the official unions and the now-defunct opportunist parties, all of whom now declare themselves to be liberals and democrats), we fully stand by their content, and we consider all the practical guidelines to be highly valid and relevant today. Guidelines that, as the class struggle resumes, the proletariat must adopt and apply, both as a method of struggle and as demands.

However, there are two necessary conditions that are still lacking.

– A militant workers’ movement ready to take up the struggle in defense of its immediate interests and those of the working class as a whole

– A Party equipped with a vast organization and a strong hold on the working class, which, through its communist groups within factories and unions, strives to seize leadership of the unions and drive   the working masses, to revive substantial class action.

In the absence of these two essential factors, any attempt to provide guidance to the working class, whether in terms of demands or methods of struggle, that goes beyond the general principles set forth in Theses 23 and 25 of the “Bases for the Rebirth of the Workers’ Union” would amount to nothing more than wishful and inconclusive activism.

Foundations for the Rebirth of the Workers’ Union

from “Il Sindacato Rosso, 11/1969”

Amid the prevailing chaos, brought about by the struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie and the major international concentrations of finance capital, the workers’ movement is also sinking, due to parties that have betrayed and permanently abandoned the main path of the communist revolution, and to unions that yearn only to place themselves under the protection of the capitalist state. Confusion reigns supreme everywhere. What dominates is the practice characteristic of historical periods of general decline, the absolute absence of programs and of precise, unambiguous guidelines. The most absolute anarchy and the most unbridled existentialism reign supreme.

All the more so, in this pitiful state of affairs, the class-based political party, the true revolutionary Marxist party, has no reason to alter its traditional program of struggle; therefore, even on this occasion of the 7th National Congress of the CGIL, our party has no choice but to reaffirm its long-standing positions, including those regarding the working class’s struggle for demands, drawn from the classic and immutable principles, confirmed by over a century of proletarian struggles, and contained in the Communist Party’s time-honored program. On the occasion of the Sixth Congress of the CGIL in late March 1965, brief papers were drafted summarizing these classic positions, to provide revolutionary proletarians with an outline of social problems and a guide for revolutionary struggle. We have nothing to change, and we are republishing them in their original text, except for a few formal corrections and clarifications of certain aspects that have since become more clearly defined.

For decades, political parties and groups have continued to adapt to reality, dismantling and reassembling the positions of the previous day on a daily basis, yet things remain at square one: capitalism dominates society. Various protesters and storytellers have resurfaced, claiming to offer new and more concrete positions—only to vanish within a single day. Things have not changed. The whirlwind of turncoats borders on madness as the impetuous and tragic collapse of society approaches, a vortex into which dying capitalism would like to drag the propertyless class.

The communist program remains as unshakable as a lighthouse in a storm, showing the proletarian masses the path to salvation. Capitalism will collapse when the working class takes this luminous path. That is why all the energies of revolutionary communists are directed toward making this light shine, always, by every means, at any cost.

1. In today’s society, dominated by capitalist relations of production, in which labor has taken the form of wage labor and the products of labor have taken the form of capital, labor and capital as social forces that are hostile and irreconcilable to one another, the struggle between the fundamental classes into which it is divided: the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the landowners, is permanent and violent until the complete victory of socialism throughout the world.

The monopolistic development of capitalism increasingly exacerbates, rather than mitigates, class conflicts, since the imperialist phase characterizes the agonizing and decaying state of economic and social structures.

Capitalism is incapable of developing the productive forces for the benefit of society as a whole, and is historically ripe to give way to a new and youthful social formation. Capitalism is capable only of expressing its inherently parasitic nature; it subordinates every technical and scientific resource and all the forces of production to its existence, which is founded on the extortion of unpaid labor and profit, making part of the fruits of this system available to a stratum of intermediate classes, the petty and middle bourgeoisie, and the labor aristocracy, who are therefore interested in defending the present regime.

2. Driven by its internal contradictions, the capitalist economy tends to concentrate within the state, where the profit system finds its sole bulwark against the historic proletarian assault. State capitalism, foreseen by the classics of Marxism and brilliantly described in its recent development by Lenin, therefore constitutes the form best suited to perpetuating the conditions of exploitation of the proletariat.

3. Today, even more clearly and openly than in the past, it is evident that the central state represents the permanent historical interests of capitalism, regardless of the government in power or the party or coalition of parties holding power. For this reason, every struggle of the proletariat against capital, even if only in defense of current economic and wage conditions, inevitably clashes with the state of capital and constitutes, albeit still unconsciously, an action that subverts the established order.

4. In this historical, social, and political context, just as political programs that straddle the interests of various conflicting classes are impossible, so too is a trade union program that seeks to defend the immediate interests of the proletariat while simultaneously refusing to fight thoroughly against the power of the state representing the privileged classes absolutely inconceivable.

5. The economic struggles of the proletariat are not the product of anyone’s will; they are imposed by the existing social system, in which, on the one hand, the capitalist bourgeoisie, through its state, tends to squeeze the conditions of the working classes into ever-tighter constraints in defense of its privilege, and, on the other hand, the proletarian masses are driven to resist this constant capitalist assault so as not to be reduced to a state of slavery.

6. The trade union thus represents the proletariat’s instrument of economic defense. But the effectiveness of this instrument depends on the political forces that direct it, the objectives they set for themselves, and the means they employ.

7. For over forty years, no autonomous revolutionary struggles of the proletariat have appeared on the historical stage; the proletariat is completely captive to the opportunist parties that dominate unchallenged all mass organizations, including, first and foremost, the professional trade unions. The labor union, thus directed by non-revolutionary political forces, does not pose a threat to the capitalist regime even on the very terrain of economic struggle, although the strongest federation of all, the CGIL, still dares to call itself a “class-based union.”

8. The explicit proclamation of loyalty to democracy, the republican constitution, and the state constitutes proof of open betrayal of the historical interests of the proletariat and of the abandonment of any serious struggle on behalf of wage earners. Democracy is the typical form of the capitalist state, through which it is able much more easily to deceive the masses of the exploited by giving them the illusion that the current social system, founded on the exploitation of the labor force, is eternal and, at most, can be “corrected.” The democratic republican Constitution is the official charter of this deception and this illusion, intended to distract the proletariat from achieving its historical goals, which are the overthrow of the current inhuman system of production and life and the establishment of communist society.

9. While the leaders of the trade union apparatus brand revolutionary communists as reactionaries for their firm determination to propose to the entire proletariat the revolutionary solution to social conflicts, they are setting the labor movement back by more than half a century, leading the dispossessed masses toward a demagogic and disastrous prospect of reforming economic and social structures, thereby wiping away with a stroke of a sponge the tragic significance of fifty years of tremendous struggles, which gave rise to two bloody world wars and confirmed the dictatorship of capital.

The alternative facing the workers’ movement is not “democratic reformism or fascism,” but: “hidden dictatorship (democracy) or open dictatorship (fascism), or a victorious communist proletarian revolution.”

10. In fact, the prospect of structural reforms and “democratic planning” touted by the trade union federations leads back to a reformist past, which the history of recent decades has set out, often with the utmost violence, to destroy once and for all, demonstrating that capitalism is not to be reformed, but annihilated.

11. Therefore, confining the proletariat’s immediate struggles for demands to the limits of “structural reforms” means proclaiming in advance the trade union federations’ refusal to seriously defend wages and jobs; it means reinforcing the illusion that the wage-based system is eternal; it consequently means destroying the revolutionary will of the working masses.

12. The dismal reformist vision has always and entirely encompassed the trade union policy not only of organizations of bourgeois origin such as the CISL and the UIL, but, unfortunately, also of the CGIL. In the immediate postwar period, in concert with the opportunist parties constituting the two factions at the helm of the CGIL, the counterrevolutionary task of rebuilding the “national” economy was undertaken; and subsequently, when capitalist power had been reestablished and powerfully reinforced, that of the “struggle against monopolies.” During this period, the trade union federations subordinated their demands to the preservation of the productive apparatus and the national economy, that is, to the substantial privileges of the capitalist classes.

13. The struggles to demand differentiated wages have fostered the formation of a privileged, better-paid stratum of workers at the expense of the vast majority of wage earners. These fragmented struggles have further divided the working-class front, enabling the capitalist employers, company management, and the monopolies themselves to gradually absorb the workers’ pressure and demands without suffering any damage.

Demands for production bonuses, piecework pay, and overtime have contributed to the intensification of workers’ exploitation, the spread of unemployment, and, in general, the fragmentation of class unity.

14. Strikes that had all the prerequisites to succeed as impressive demonstrations of workers’ strength were neutralized in advance or diverted in the course of the struggle, with the overriding aim of preventing alliances between different occupational groups and out of fear that the struggles, driven by the tragic conditions of the working class, would spread and automatically call for a new and different political direction for the union.

First the economic collapse (the 1963 crisis) and then the recovery in production (1967–68), both resolved at the workers’ expense, led the trade union federations to sabotage any general defense of the workers, allowing layoffs, a real wage freeze, and an increase in the intensity and exploitation of the workforce take place with impunity company by company, allowing workers’ anger to dissipate into a thousand local and company-specific incidents, in order to prevent the proletariat, by converging into a single collective surge, from testing the validity of a direct and generalized struggle against capitalism, and at the same time from exposing, in the heat of the struggle, the betrayal of the union leaders.

15. The much-vaunted trade-union unity pursued by the CGIL leaders together with the “white” and “yellow” federations, CISL and UIL, which are expressions of open employer interests, since it is not and cannot be achieved on the basis of a program of general interests common to all proletarians, aims rather at the creation of a single counterrevolutionary trade-union organization that would ensnare all wage earners; just as yesterday the single trade union organization, the CGIL, was split by the formation of the CISL and the UIL with the intent of weakening the workers’ natural resistance as quickly as possible by dividing the proletarian front.

A return to proletarian unity either means, as is the case now, the CGIL’s complete abandonment of any semblance of class consciousness, or, as we hope, it will be the result of the growing class mobilization of wage earners determined to reestablish a single, united, and invincible organization, the prerequisite for which is the replacement of traitorous leaders with leaders loyal to the workers’ interests.

For the Communist Leadership of the Union

16. The economic crisis has highlighted the inability of union leaders to propose effective solutions to the proletariat in defense of wages and jobs; it has also clearly demonstrated the absolute impossibility, under the capitalist system, of avoiding economic disasters or achieving a harmonious evolution of the economy. New and deeper crises will bring to the fore the inevitable direct clash between the proletariat and the capitalist state to put an end to this mad rush toward the destruction of people, resources, and energy.

17. Revolutionary communists, drawing on the centuries-old experience of proletarian struggles, observe that the current unfaithful union leaders will not leave their leadership positions until they have been driven out by the workers through a protracted struggle aimed at purging their ranks of traitors and those sold out to the bourgeoisie. This struggle, an advanced form of the class struggle, will take place to the extent that the proletariat decides to move from passive acquiescence to opportunist influences to a firm determination to defend their livelihoods, their wages, and their jobs by any means necessary, refusing to defend national, patriotic, republican, or constitutional interests, behind which lie only capitalist privileges; refusing to subordinate their economic struggles to the demagogic struggle for structural reforms.

18. This struggle will be possible to the extent that the proletariat makes the revolutionary communist program its own; it will be victorious on the condition that it allows itself to be led by its class party, the International Communist Party. For this reason, revolutionary communists do not propose the creation of new unions as long as it is possible to carry out revolutionary work within the existing ones, as long as the CGIL does not formally renounce the class attributes to which it claims to adhere, and does not prohibit the formation of factions within its ranks.

They organize themselves into communist groups in factories and trade unions to spread the revolutionary program of the class party there and to work toward winning leadership positions in the trade unions.

19. The establishment of the revolutionary communist program within the trade unions will ensure that the struggle of the masses takes a revolutionary course, an essential prerequisite for preventing the trade unions from being co-opted by the capitalist state and enabling them to serve as the unified organization of the proletariat in defense of its economic interests and in preparation for the seizure of power.

20. As the clashes between the dispossessed masses on the one hand and the privileged classes and their state on the other intensify, it becomes increasingly impossible to continue a so-called neutral policy, one that maintains an equal distance from the parties and the state, which the CGIL bureaucrats boast of pursuing.

In reality, by declaring themselves faithful guardians of the democratic method, they objectively place themselves at the service of the capitalist regime and tie the conditions and fate of the proletariat to those of the capitalist state. According to the teachings of Lenin and the Left, trade unions cannot pursue a policy independent of political parties; they are either under the influence of opportunist parties, that is, agents of capitalism, or are led by the revolutionary Communist Party.

21. The work of revolutionary communists within the mass organizations of the proletariat is therefore essential, because it serves to expose the counterrevolutionary policies of the leaders, urges the proletariat to demand greater resolve in waging struggles and in setting their immediate objectives, and to remain vigilant so that no collusion occurs between union leaders and corporate management.

The primary task of communists is precisely to fight against the corporatism generated by company-centered unionism, to provide the entire proletariat with a comprehensive view of economic and political issues, and to imbue the struggles with a class perspective that transcends not only the narrow confines of the company but also those of the occupational category and sector, the region, and the nation, reaffirming that the proletariat’s struggle is an international struggle against a regime, the capitalist regime, which extends its dominion over the entire world.

For this reason, company-based union sections, conceived as “contractual agents,” “autonomous and independent” from the union, imprison the masses within individual companies and prevent their general and unified action.

22. In order to unite the forces of the proletariat and to unify their efforts and struggles, revolutionary communists advocate a return to the traditional function of the Chambers of Labor, where all proletarians come together across occupational categories and sectors, offices, and companies, for that mutual, physical, and natural contact that instills confidence in their own strength, breaks the isolation to which the proletariat is forced in the workplace, and reawakens in workers the consciousness of being a class and not mere aggregates or productive appendages of capitalist society.

This goal is achieved not through abstract organizational formulas (“grassroots democracy,” “workers’ committees,” etc.) but through a network of struggles that mobilize all sectors of the working class, which, in the heat of the battle, will produce appropriate leadership bodies, leaders loyal to the cause, and closer, more organic ties with the central leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

23. Revolutionary Communists do not claim to possess a magic formula that would guarantee, once they are at the helm of the trade unions, the full and continuous success of the struggles for workers’ demands.

Because of the consciousness they derive from being militants of the class-based party, they know full well that any achievement under the capitalist system is fleeting and ephemeral; and that the masses’ realization of the inevitability of communism’s victory over capitalism constitutes the indispensable and necessary prerequisite even for immediate struggles for specific demands.

Therefore, they will always propose immediate objectives that contain elements which unite, rather than divide, the many categories into which capitalism has separated workers in order to better dominate their forces and interests; elements that generalize workers’ struggles to elevate them to the higher political form of class struggle; objectives whose attainment, or even the mere struggle to achieve them, undermines capitalist interests and compels the capitalist state to cast off the infamous mask of the “state of the nation” or the “people,” that is, the democratic state, and to reveal itself in its true form as an instrument of the dictatorship of capital. Characteristic objectives include: the reduction of the workweek to at least 36 hours with no loss of pay; wage increases commensurate with the real needs of the proletariat; full wages for the unemployed, strikers, and retirees; the abolition of piecework and overtime; and the elimination of production bonuses and all forms of incentives that companies use to squeeze every last drop of energy from workers.

24. The myth of the employment contract shifts the focus of the struggle from its social and class-based terrain to a legal and formal one. On the basis of this legalistic practice, the trade union federations instill in the working classes the belief that everything is resolved once a contract is reached; when company management takes a hard line, they channel disputes into the labyrinth of government ministries to subject them to formal adjustments or ambiguous compromises, for the sole purpose of diverting workers’ attention from the political and class significance of their struggles for better conditions, and thus defuse workers’ anger while they await a legal resolution of the dispute. Labor contracts are won through struggle and in the streets, and they offer no guarantee to the proletariat unless they are defended by daily battles and struggles that put the bourgeois classes under intense pressure.

25. Revolutionary Communists call on the proletariat to put an end to the ignoble practice of timed strikes, those announced in advance to company management, prefectures, and police headquarters, strikes that instill no fear in the bourgeoisie and which, when, through the workers’ spontaneous initiative, they take on an unexpected class character, they serve as a rallying cry and an outlet for the hatred of the ruling classes, manifesting itself in harassment, arrests, and convictions of proletarians. The strike, as used today by the counterrevolutionary trade union federations, is a blunt and counterproductive weapon. Only a sudden strike, and one as widespread as possible, truly strikes at the economic interests of capitalism, while also preventing it from effectively preparing means of defense and immediate counterattack.

26. Neither the individual worker, nor the work unit, nor even the class conceived in statistical terms, and consequently not even the immediate organs of the working class themselves, the trade unions, can have an overall view of social struggles, understand their causes and effects, evaluate the choice of means of action, set objectives, or assume centralized and disciplined leadership of the struggles. Only the class-based political Party possesses these indispensable qualities for the victorious conduct of the historic battle against capitalism. Therefore, the demand that the Party voluntarily renounce this leadership would mean renouncing the victory of communism over capitalism. The revolutionary proletariat, therefore, is engaged on two fronts: against the privileged classes and their central state, and against opportunist parties and union leaders. All workers are called upon to join this struggle, and the International Communist Party relies on the lowest-paid and most exploited section of the proletariat to stir up the necessary momentum for the revolutionary class struggle.

Attempts to impose “allies” on the proletariat, recruited from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, “people,” and students, aim solely to perpetuate the “democratic infection” among the masses, which has kept them from the revolutionary resurgence of the class struggle.

The same goal is served by the stale propaganda of pseudo-left groups, which seek to discredit the workers’ trade union organization among the proletariat under the pretext that the unions are led by covert agents of the bourgeoisie.

In this way, it becomes clear that both groups operate as de facto allies of the enemies of the working class and the communist revolution; they act as elements of disintegration within the proletariat and seek to deprive it even of its organs of economic defense, after having worked to demolish the class-based political party.

27. Winning over the trade union to the revolutionary struggle, that is, transforming the CGIL into a Red Union, depends essentially on the formation within the Confederation of revolutionary communist groups, around which the most radical and determined section of the working class can be mobilized with the precise and explicit aim of wresting the leadership of the proletarian organizations from the hands of the bonzes, in order to turn the unions into fighting organs against capitalism and its state, under the leadership of the true Communist Party.

Communist proletarians do not renounce this aim, even if driven out of the unions by the traitorous leaders. They remain at their posts of struggle within the ranks of the workers to organize the defense of the union against the disruptive actions of the traitorous leaders.

28. The proletariat has nothing to defend, demand, or contest under the capitalist regime; rather, it must completely destroy it through its class violence, consciously organized by the class-based Party. It follows that, contrary to the increasingly clear and solemn assertions of union leaders and official political leaders, the proletariat must also organize itself within the unions to turn them into “powerful levers” with the specific aim of overthrowing the current social system, if it does not wish to perpetuate its condition as a modern slave, periodically forced to shed its blood on the altar of defending the fatherland, after having shed its sweat throughout its life on the altar of the national economy.

The Evolution and Dynamics of the Trade Union Form

Part Two of the report to the party’s general meeting of May 6–7, 1978, published in Issue 1 of Comunismo, January–April 1979.

The Phase of State Totalitarianism: State Trade Unions

a) 1926–1945: The Fascist Period

The crisis of 1929 passed without any revolutionary upsurge, and the bourgeoisie was subsequently able to resolve its contradictions through World War II, a slaughterhouse for millions of proletarians, which saw what had been the glorious Soviet Republic first allied with German imperialism, then fighting alongside American imperialism in the name of democracy. The attitude of the true communists during the First World War had been quite different: war against war, no to national solidarity, transformation of the imperialist war into a revolutionary class war.

With the revolutionary wave over and the World Communist Party destroyed, the bourgeoisie can calmly and unhindered implement its plan to bring workers under union control: they no longer have their own party; they no longer consider themselves an internationally linked class opposed to other classes, but rather a “factor of production,” a component of the people and the Nation, which, together with Capital, contributes to the good and prosperity of the Fatherland. In the fascist conception, wages must indeed be defended, but only if this does not harm the national economy; conflicts may arise, but above all else, the imperative of national solidarity applies to everyone. This is the reformist program that the bourgeoisie, unified in its fascist party, is attempting to implement in practice.

The entire proletariat is compulsorily organized into unions that are, to all intents and purposes, organs of the state; the bourgeoisie can no longer tolerate the existence of free trade unions, even if their leadership is not revolutionary. The Chamber of Corporations brings together representatives of the various “factors of production” (today we would say “social partners”): industrialists and so-called workers’ representatives who, under state supervision, settle any disputes.

At the same time, the state imposes from above a series of social security and welfare measures aimed at regulating the exploitation of the workforce, ensuring production, and preventing class action: these measures are nothing more than the reforms, the long-standing banner of the Social Democrats.

Simultaneously, the state evolves in a totalitarian direction. The bourgeoisie no longer needs parliament and eliminates the forms of elective democracy, perfecting its state apparatus, which increasingly takes the form of a gigantic administrative-bureaucratic-military apparatus that dictates over all sectors of society. Maximum centralization, a single party, absolute dominance of the executive branch, and an attempt to plan and regulate every sector of economic and social life.

This process corresponds to the evolution of the economy toward a monopolistic structure. The conflict between the various factions of the bourgeoisie has long since been definitively resolved in favor of finance capital, which now reigns unchallenged. The entire economy is in the hands of large financial holdings that operate as monopolies in every productive sector. The state itself intervenes massively in the economy, and in Italy in particular, it is the most powerful capitalist.

The nineteenth-century ironworks owner is gradually giving way to the manager, a state employee with a lavish salary, to the financier, and to the anonymous joint-stock company.

Monopolistic capital requires strict control over the labor market, uniform conditions throughout the entire country, and national labor contracts that are valid everywhere and enforced: this is why it must absolutely crush class-based unionism and bring all wage workers under the umbrella of state-controlled unions.

In countries with more developed capitalism, such as France, England, and the United States of America, where there was no strong revolutionary party, this process unfolds peacefully, and the bourgeoisie can maintain the forms of elective democracy and unions with formally free and voluntary membership. In other words, the same process takes place: the centralization of the state apparatus and the subjugation of the proletariat to national solidarity, without the need to resort to open dictatorship. All political forces spontaneously submit to the state, the working class, corrupted by welfare measures such as the American New Deal (adopted by Italian fascism), allows itself to be quietly led into war; and within this context, the tradition of a trade unionism willing to sacrifice everything for the defense of institutions and the regime takes hold, a unionism willing to sabotage any strike if it weakens the national economy, and willing to sign, as in Switzerland, an “eternal peace” between labor and capital. This is fascist trade unionism in disguise, which would also take hold in Italy and Germany after World War II and which our party would define as “tricolor trade unionism.”

b) 1945, the post-fascist period: Tricolor trade unionism

Once the war was won, the Allies, who had dragged the working class into slaughtering one another in the name of democracy, for “freedom” against the fascist dictatorship, imposed on the defeated Italy and Germany the restoration of democratic institutions: free elections, a parliament. In the trade union sphere, the parties previously united in the CLN established from above a trade union federation to be called the General Italian Confederation of Labor. But the tendencies that led to the rise of fascism as a method of governing the bourgeois state apparatus not only persisted but became increasingly pronounced: vast financial empires, massive state intervention and attempts to plan the economy, the strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus, and the executive branch’s absolute dominance over the legislative branch. Parliament has now been reduced to a “smoke-and-mirrors” charade: it serves only to make workers believe that the state is also their state, since they are free to elect their own representatives. It is today’s very same opportunists who implicitly confirm these facts when they complain about the almost exclusive reliance on decree-laws, the continued existence of fascist laws, and so on.

The so-called anti-fascist parties are in reality nothing more than a single party, having all submitted to the state, which today rightly finances them. The formally free trade unions formed after World War II are the successors to the fascist state trade union; they are “tailored to the Mussolini model.” Their function is, in fact, to keep the working class firmly anchored to national solidarity, to prevent it from acting on class grounds, and to ensure that workers do not feel like a separate class but rather a “component of the nation.” This is the trade unionism that the Party has called “tricolore.”

It inevitably tends toward open integration into the state apparatus.

State law, in fact, provides for the legal recognition of trade unions, that is, their institutionalization, and in this regard they have taken numerous steps, such as the establishment of the “delegation” system, that is, the method of collecting dues through state and employer offices (a method employed by an organization that has effectively signed a social peace agreement and renounced the class struggle forever), and the practice that has gradually taken hold of resolving disputes at the bargaining table, under the high patronage of the state, starting not from the needs of the workers but from those of the national economy.

Through the “Tricolor” unions, the Italian bourgeoisie has been able to rebuild, at the expense of the proletariat, its productive apparatus destroyed by the war, re-enter the world market, reap immense profits, and enrich itself beyond measure through the brutal exploitation of the workforce. What has the working class gained from this? Ten years of crumbs, of fleeting prosperity, and then once again, with the crisis, unemployment, sacrifices, and hunger.

Driven by pressure from the workers, the “Tricolor” unions are even forced to call strikes; however, they do so in such a way that these actions amount to mere demonstrations, formal protests, and never to genuine class struggles. They sabotage any demand, any struggle that threatens the capitalist order. Like the fascist unions, they operate by: “playing the tune of the struggle against the bosses in the key of national unity,” and their specific function is to “deprive future revolutionary class movements of the solid foundation of a truly autonomous workers’ union structure.”

The General Confederation of Labor of 1921, even though led by reformists, was an anti-capitalist class-based union, a purely workers’ organization born of struggle, which the proletariat could use for its own defense against the bosses and against the traitorous leaders themselves. Its charter stated:

“Article 1) The General Confederation of Labor is established in Italy to organize and direct the struggle of the working class against the capitalist system of production and labor (…)

“Article 2) The Confederation is composed of: a) all national industrial and professional federations that carry out functions of resistance and are guided by the principles of class struggle (…) b) all Chambers of Labor that adhere to their own general and complementary tasks of resistance, which are guided by the principles of class struggle.”

Article 3) established the Confederation’s functions as follows: “(…) the general leadership of the proletarian, industrial, and peasant movement, above any political distinction (…) so that every partial conflict between capital and labor may be resolved in the manner most favorable to the working class, and every general movement, brought about by the intensification of the class struggle, may be directed toward practical goals.”

The Fascist “Charter of Labor” stated:

“The good of the State must therefore take precedence over that of isolated individuals or groups of individuals who make up the Italian Nation. This concept underlies not only the Charter of Labor, but the entire Fascist policy (…) Trade union or professional organization is free. But only a union that is legally recognized and subject to state control has the right to legally represent the entire category of employers or workers for which it is established; to protect their interests vis-à-vis the state and other professional associations; to enter into collective bargaining agreements binding on all members of the category; to impose dues on them; and to exercise, with respect to them, delegated functions in the public interest (…)

“In the collective bargaining agreement, solidarity among the various factors of production finds its concrete expression through the reconciliation of the opposing interests of employers and workers and their subordination to the higher interests of production. This provision eliminates any cause for animosity between workers and employers, who, in their relations, no longer regard each other as enemies but as cordial collaborators in the common endeavor to improve production.”

Article 1 of the Statutes of the General Italian Confederation of Labor states:

“The General Italian Confederation of Labor (CGIL) is a national workers’ organization. It organizes workers who, regardless of political opinion, ideological conviction, religious faith, or membership in any ethnic group, by accepting and practicing the principles of its Statute, consider loyalty to freedom and democracy the permanent foundation of trade union activity (…)

“The CGIL bases its program and actions on the Constitution of the Italian Republic and pursues its full implementation, particularly with regard to the rights proclaimed therein and the economic and social reforms prescribed therein.”

And the Constitution states precisely that:

“Article 39) Trade union organization is free. No obligation may be imposed on trade unions other than their registration with local or central offices, in accordance with the law.

“A condition for registration is that the statutes of trade unions establish an internal structure based on democratic principles. Registered trade unions have legal personality. They may, represented collectively in proportion to their membership, enter into collective bargaining agreements that are binding on all members of the categories to which the agreement applies.

“Article 40) The right to strike is exercised within the framework of the laws governing it.”

Italian trade unionism, therefore, does not differ in its policies from that of the Fascist era.

Post-World War II trade unions, however, are not yet organs of the state, but inevitably tend to become so, and in this sense they have taken significant steps, such as the introduction of proxy voting.

The reestablishment in 1945 of formally free and voluntary union membership means that the bourgeoisie, thanks to the PCI and the PSI, was able to bind the exploited masses to itself without needing to resort to the coercive state union.

By leveraging a usurped tradition and the corruption of substantial sections of the labor aristocracy, the opportunist parties have succeeded in tying the exploited masses to the chariot of the bourgeois economy, which now—after ten years of “boom,” is once again pushing them into the same misery of the post-World War I period.

But just as the bourgeoisie’s tendency to imprison workers in regime-controlled unions is irreversible, so too is the crisis that will lead to the collapse of the capitalist economy, and with it, all the achievements once believed to be eternal, all the democratic deceptions, and all the pacifist illusions.

The exploited masses will have no alternative but to fight to defend their very means of existence. From this struggle, which will pit them against all the “tricolor” unions, all the political parties, and the entire state apparatus, the class-based union must rise again.

“Tricolor” unions and class-based unions are two antithetical terms; one excludes the other. Workers must break the apparatus that currently ties their conditions of existence to the vicissitudes of the profit-driven economy in order to assert by force their right to live and work even when corporate profits decline.

The rebirth of the class-based union, therefore, must take place in opposition to current union policy and structure, against national solidarity, and in favor of solidarity among all the exploited against the ruling classes.

More than 100 miners from the Vulcan, Lupeni, and Livezeni mines in the Jiu Valley went on strike Wednesday morning, refusing to work underground and demanding guarantees regarding the payment of the Easter bonuses to which they are entitled,  but  the representatives of the management of the Valea Jiului Energy Complex (CEVJ) cite alleged financial and regulatory constraints. The president of the board of directors stated that the company’s financial situation, combined with rigid regulations on state aid, makes it impossible to grant such benefits: “We cannot grant benefits that will later have to be reversed or recovered. There are precise rules for companies in this situation.” The bourgeoisie and its greed don’t know any bounds, and for this reason the proletariat must suffer the consequences.

CEVJ employs 2,000 people at the mines in Lonea, Lupeni, Livezeni, and Vulcan, as well as at the Paroșeni thermal power plant, which uses coal extracted from these mines. The mines in Lonea and Lupeni are expected to close by the end of the year.

Many workers are at risk of losing their jobs, which means they will be unable to feed themselves or their families, pay their bills, etc. Inflation in Romania stands at 9.6%, the prices continue to rise, and many people are desperate. The annual inflation rate is expected to exceed previous estimates due to rising fuel prices, caused by a significant increase in oil and natural gas prices due to the war in Iran.

These are hard times for the Romanian proletariat—but not only for them; the same is true for the international proletariat. The militarization of “peaceful Europe,” the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and rising prices for essential services are pushing the international proletariat to the breaking point, while the bourgeoisie couldn’t care less and continues to live its lavish lifestyle, built on the sweat and blood of the working class.

After a few hours, the protest came to an end. Tensions eased when management and the union reached an agreement to extend the employees’ fixed-term contracts for another four months. This is the limit of spontaneity alone. Without the leadership of the vanguard party—composed of the most conscious and disciplined workers, forged and educated by revolutionary theory and practice—the working class cannot emancipate itself. The task of communists now is to build ties with the unions and to inspire workers toward communism in order to rebuild the movement. This is the only path by which the proletariat can achieve a lasting victory. The only party that can achieve this goal is the International Communist Party, through the work of restoring revolutionary doctrine and the party organ, in contact with the working class, outside the sphere of personal politics and electoral maneuvering.

from “Battaglia Comunista”, 13/1949

When the 1921 Statute of the Communist Party of Italy was republished in 1949, this brief summary was appended to it, intended both to reaffirm its instrumental nature and to frame it within that precise vision of internal relations—of a purely dialectical nature—that characterizes the revolutionary class party, known as “organic centralism.”

Whether or not there is a codified set of rules (and for us, it will never have a definitive and absolute character), what matters is that all members are fully aware of its guiding principles, which are indeed unchanging insofar as they are prerequisites for the organization’s proper functioning and its unity in space and time, and which are binding on all the differentiated bodies, networks, and functions into which the party is structured, and upon whose complete integration (not mere equalization) its very existence depends. 

The intent of this text is to clarify a fundamental point of distinction for us regarding the organization of the Party.

What is written in the text reflects a situation in which the principles regarding the party’s internal structure had not yet been definitively established—a process that would be completed with the theses of 1951 and the three sets of theses from 1965–66. It is, however, powerful—and even prophetic—in its synthesis, forcefully reiterating some central tenets of party doctrine. We therefore present this text—little known to younger members—at a time when internal attacks on doctrinal consistency and the consequent staunch and persistent defense of that consistency have caused the Party serious losses and necessitated a process of organizational reconstruction, which is, in fact, currently underway.

*****

The Statutes and Regulations of the Party and its Federations and Sections constitute the practically indispensable set of permanent rules governing operation, coordination, and communication that underpin the life of the organization. With respect to the Party’s historical and social objectives, they serve merely as instruments and means to an end. In establishing and, if necessary, amending them, it makes no sense to draw upon analogous regulations of other bodies—such as the state and democratic parliaments—since, according to the Communist Party’s own conception, there are no fundamental constitutional principles or criteria that are common to and supersede the various social classes and their tasks of struggle in successive historical phases.

The party is not a crude collection of equivalent individual units, but a real organism shaped by social and historical determinants and needs, with networks, organs, and differentiated centers for the fulfillment of various tasks. A good relationship between these real needs and optimal functioning leads to good organization, and not the other way around. 

Consequently, the adoption and general or partial use of the criterion of consultation and deliberation based on numerical and majority principles—when enshrined in the statutes or in technical practice—is a means or expedient, not a matter of principle.

The foundations of the Party’s organization cannot, therefore, be traced back to norms specific to other classes and other historical dominations, such as the hierarchical obedience of rank-and-file members to leaders of various ranks—a practice drawn from pre-bourgeois military or theocratic organizations—or the abstract sovereignty of grassroots voters delegated to representative assemblies and executive committees, which are characteristic of the legal fiction typical of the capitalist world; since the critique and overthrow of such organizations is an essential task of the proletarian and communist revolution. 

The proper functional relationship between the central and peripheral organs of the movement is not based on constitutional frameworks but on the entire dialectical unfolding of the working class’s historical struggle against capitalism.

The fundamental basis of these relationships is, on the one hand, the continuous, uninterrupted, and consistent development of party theory as an assessment of the unfolding of present-day society and as a definition of the tasks of the class struggling to overthrow it; and, on the other hand, the international bond among revolutionary proletarians of all countries, united in purpose and struggle.

The party’s peripheral forces and all its members are required, in the practice of the movement, not to take local and contingent decisions on action on their own initiative that do not originate from the central bodies, and not to propose solutions to tactical problems that differ from those supported by the entire party. Correspondingly, the leading and central bodies cannot and must not, in their decisions and communications applicable to the entire party, abandon theoretical principles or alter the means of tactical action—not even on the grounds that situations have presented unexpected or unforeseen facts not included in the party’s perspectives. In the absence of these two reciprocal and complementary processes, statutory provisions are of no avail, and crises arise—of which the history of the proletarian movement offers no shortage of examples.

Consequently, while the party calls for the participation of all its members in the ongoing process of elaboration—which consists of analyzing events and social facts and clarifying the most appropriate tasks and methods of action—and facilitates this participation in the most suitable ways, whether through specific bodies or through periodic general consultations at party congresses, it absolutely does not permit groups of members within its ranks to form distinct organizations or factions and to carry out their work of study and contribution through networks of communication, correspondence, and internal and external dissemination that differ in any way from the party’s unified structure.

The party regards the formation of factions and the struggle between them within a political organization as a historical process that communists found useful and applied when an irremediable degeneration of the old parties and their leaderships had occurred and a party possessing revolutionary characteristics and functions was no longer in existence.

When such a party is formed and active, it does not harbor ideologically divided—much less organized—factions within its ranks; it admits only individual membership through grassroots organizations; and it does not employ the method of forming its own overt or covert organizations within other political parties, considering all such situations to be pathological and contradictory to the character of strict unity in the communist struggle.