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International Communist Party |
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(“Theses of Naples”, July, 1965) |
1. The questions that were historically
enunciated as referred to
the
party’s ideology and doctrine, to its action in the various historical
situations, and therefore to its programme, its tactics and its
organizational
structure, are to be regarded as a single body; thus, in the course of
the Left’s struggle, they have several times been set to order and
enunciated
without ever introducing changes. The party press will be committed to
the reproduction of texts; for now, it is sufficient to recall some of
them, cornerstones of our doctrine:
(a) Complete Theses of the Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the
Italian Socialist Party, of 1919;
(b) Rome Theses, i.e. of the II Congress of the Communist Party of
Italy, March 1922;
(c) The positions taken by the Communist Left in the International
Congresses of 1922 and 1924 and in the Enlarged Executive of 1926;
(d) Theses of the Left at the illegal Conference of the Communist Party
of Italy, May 1924;
(e) Theses introduced by the Left at the III Congress of the Communist
Party of Italy, Lyon 1926.
2. In the above and in many other texts
that will be utilized, and
which
will be included, in a perfect continuity of positions, in the volumes
of the "History of the Communist Left", are constantly vindicated and
reaffirmed
certain former results, considered as heritage of revolutionary
Marxism;
it is there also that its classic and programmatic texts, such as the
Manifesto
of the Communist Party and the Statutes of the I International of 1864,
are set store
The programmatic cornerstones of the I and II
Congresses
of the III International founded in 1919 are likewise vindicated, as
well
as the fundamental and preceding theses of Lenin on the imperialist war
and on the Russian revolution. At the same time the Left, having taken
a clear stand, has as part of its heritage the historical and
programmatic
solutions that stemmed from the dénouement of great crises faced
by the
proletarian movement; in them the theory of counter-revolutions and the
doctrine of the struggle against the ever reviving opportunist danger
is
summarized.
Among these historical cornerstones bound, both
to the sound theoretical outlook and to the great battles of the
masses,
are, for example:
(a) The ridding, wanted by Marx, of petty-bourgeois and anarchist
currents,
which endangered the basic principles of centralization and discipline
to the centre of the organization, and the condemnation of the harmful
concepts of autonomy of local section and of federalism among the
sections
of the world party; in such deviations lies the cause of the shameful
ruin
of the II International, founded in 1889 and shattered in the 1914 war.
(b) The judgment of the glorious experience of the Paris Commune, given
in the texts that Marx wrote on the International’s behalf, which
confirmed
the parliamentarist methods being obsolete, and applauded the
insurrectional
and terrorist vigour of the great Paris movement.
(c) The condemnation from the true revolutionary Marxist Left, on the
verge of the first great war, not only of revisionist and evolutionist
reformism, risen in the whole International with the aim of dismantling
the vision of a revolutionary catastrophe, peculiar to Marxism; but
also
of the reaction to it – apparently proletarian in the "workerist" sense
and in perfect agreement with far right Labourism – that was the
revolutionary
syndicalism of Sorel and others. Such a current, on the pretext of
getting
back to the violence of direct action, condemned the fundamental
Marxist
position on the need for a revolutionary, centralized party and of a
dictatorial
and terrorist proletarian State; which are instead the sole instruments
able to lead the class insurrection to victory, and to strangle any
attempt
at revenge or corruption by the bourgeois counter-attack, thus laying
the
foundations of the classless and Stateless communist society which will
crown the victory on an international scale.
(d) The criticism and the relentless demolition, made by Lenin and
by the Left of all countries, of the ignoble betrayal of 1914; the most
lethal and ruinous form of such betrayal not being so much the shift
under
the patriotic national flags, as the return to deviations –
contemporary
with the birth of Marxist communism itself – according to which both
programme and action of the working class are to be framed within the
limits
of the bourgeois canons of freedom and of parliamentary democracy,
boasted
as eternal conquests of the early bourgeoisie.
3. As regards the subsequent period in the life of
the new International the enduring heritage of the communist Left is the correct
theoretical diagnosis and historical prediction of the new opportunistic dangers
that emerged over the course of the first years of the International. Avoiding
heavy intellectual theorizing, this point needs to be developed using the
historical method. The first manifestations denounced and opposed by the Left
occurred in the tactics regarding the relations to be established with the old
socialist parties of the Second International, from which the communists had
become organizationally separated as a result of splits; and consequently also
in erroneous measures in the realm of organizational structure.
The
third congress had correctly established that it wasn’t enough
(already in 1921 one could see that the great revolutionary wave that
came after the war in 1918 was petering out, and that capitalism
would attempt a counter-offensive on both the economic and political
fronts) to have formed communist parties strictly committed to the
programme of violent action, to the proletarian dictatorship and to
the communist state if a large part of the proletarian masses
remained under the influence of opportunist parties, which all
communists now considered the worst instruments of bourgeois
counter-revolution, and whose hands were covered in the blood of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. At the same time, the communist Left
did not accept the formula that made revolutionary action conditional
(to be denounced as the Blanquist initiative of small parties) on
the conquest of the “majority” of the proletariat (besides which
one never knew if this meant the “majority” of the actual waged
proletariat, or of the “people”, including propertied peasants
and micro-capitalists, artisans and all other petty bourgeois
layers). With its democratic allure, this formula of the “majority”
triggered the first alarm bells, unfortunately confirmed by history,
that opportunism could be reborn in the new International under the
familiar banner of homage to the deadly concepts of democracy and
electoral counts.
From the fourth congress, which took place at the end
of 1922, the Left stood by its pessimistic prediction and its vigorous struggle
to denounce dangerous tactics (united front between communist and socialist
parties, the slogan of “workers’ government”) and organizational errors
(attempts to increase the size of the parties not simply through an influx of
those proletarians who had abandoned the other parties with a social democratic
programme of action and structure, but by means of fusions that accepted entire
parties and portions of parties after negotiations with their leadership, and
also by admitting to the Comintern, as national sections, parties claiming to be
“sympathizers”, which was clearly an error in its drift towards federalism.
Taking the initiative on a third issue it was from this time that the Left
denounced, and ever more vigorously in the years that followed, the growth of
the opportunist danger: this third issue was the international’s method of
internal working, whereby the centre, represented by the Moscow executive,
resorted not only to the use of “ideological terror” in its dealings with the
parties, or the parts of them that had made political errors, but above all to
organizational pressure; which amounted to an erroneous application, and
eventually a total falsification, of the correct principles of centralization
and absolute discipline with no exceptions.
This method of working was tightened up in all
countries, but especially in Italy after 1923 – when the Left, with the whole
party behind it, displayed exemplary discipline by handing over the leadership
to the comrades of the right and centre appointed by Moscow – where the spectre
of “fractionalism” was being seriously abused, along with constant threats to
expel a current artificially accused of preparing a split from the party, with
the sole aim of allowing dangerous centrist errors to prevail in the party’s
politics. This third vital point was discussed in depth at the international
congresses and in Italy, and it is no less important than the condemnation of
the opportunist tactics and the federalist type organizational formulas. In Italy for
instance
the centrist leadership, while accusing the Left leadership of 1921 and
1922 of dictatorship over the party (which instead several times
demonstrated
to be in total agreement with the Left), kept using the spectre of
Moscow’s
orders, even daring to exploit the formula of "international communist
party"; as was done in 1925 during the pre-Lyon polemics by Palmiro
Togliatti,
real champion of the Communist International’s liquidationism.
4. It is worth showing how the
demonstration of the correctness of
such
criticisms and diagnoses is to be found in historical events; although
it was then easy to object to the Left, which denounced the warning
signs
of a mortal crisis, that it was merely based on doctrinal worries.
As for the tactical question, it is enough to recall
that the united front was born as a method to "ruin" the socialist
parties,
and to leave their leaders and headquarters deprived of the masses
which
supported them; while such masses were supposed to come over to us. The
evolution of such tactics demonstrated that it contained the danger of
leading to a betrayal and to an abandonment of the classist and
revolutionary
bases of our programme. The historical sons of the united front of
1922 are today well known: the popular fronts, created in order to
support
the second war of democratic capitalism; the anti-fascist "liberation
fronts",
which led to the most open class collaboration, extended to declaredly
bourgeois parties; and in the above is summarized the monstrous birth
of
the last opportunist wave, upon the corpse of the III International.
The
first organizational manoeuvres of the 1922 fusions laid the bases of
the
total confusion existing in the present parliamentary and democratic
policy
of all parties, including the communist party, which thus tore to
pieces
Lenin’s theses on parliament, of the II Congress. Since the Russian
party’s
XX Congress of 1956, while getting rid of the world organizational
unity
in order to admit the various socialist, workers, and even popular
parties
in this or that country, what the Left foresaw was done, that is the
abandonment
of the programme of proletarian dictatorship, reduced to a peculiarly
Russian
phenomenon; and the introduction of democratic and "national ways" to
socialism,
which only indicate a relapse into the same infamous opportunism of
1914;
or rather, as it is operated in the name of Lenin, into a much more
base
and infamous one.
Finally, the accusation of the method of work in
the International and of the wrongful pressures from above, while
seeing
in 1926 the misleading offer made by centrists of "a bit more democracy
within both party and International" – which was rightly rejected by
the Left, which remained on its opposition positions, though without
threatening
until then (1926) to leave the International or to split parties – is
historically confirmed by the ferocious Stalinist terror, employed in
order
to devastate the party from the inside, by means of State forces; that
is in order to crush, through tens of thousands of murders, a
resistance
which was led in the name of a return to revolutionary Marxism and to
the
great Leninist and Bolshevik traditions of the October revolution. All
those positions outlined a correct prevision of the future course of
events,
although unfortunately the force relations were such as to allow the
third
infamous opportunist wave to overwhelm everything.
The Left indicated in time the right terms of the
relations between parties and International, and between the Russian
party
and State. The reversal of such positions is to be historically related
to the issue of the relations between Russian state policy and
proletarian
policy in all other countries. When, under Stalin, who in the Enlarged
Executive of Autumn 1926 laid all his cards on the table, it was
declared
that the Russian State would give up the idea of making its future
conditioned
on a general class engagement, able to overthrow the power of capital
in
all other countries; and when it was stated that the watchword in
internal
social policy was that of "construction of socialism" – which in
Lenin’s
language only meant construction of capitalism – then the further
course
was a foregone conclusion; and it was confirmed by the bloody conflict
through which the opposition, too late arisen in Russia and crushed
just
in time under the loathsome accusation of fractionist work, was
exterminated.
The above is to be related to the delicate question
that – once a suffocating apparatus was imposed, in the name of a
falsified
centralism, on all parties which had in their ranks fervent
revolutionaries
– it was relied, not so much on the influence of huge names like
Bolshevism,
Lenin, October, as on the common economic fact that Moscow’s State had
the means by which the officials of the apparatus were paid. The Left
saw
all these shames in a remarkable silence, because it knew what other
tremendous
danger would have been the petty-bourgeois and anarchist deviation,
with
its chatterings: You may see that the end is always the same; where
there
is the State, where there is power, where there is a party there is
corruption,
and if the proletariat wants to free itself, it has to be done with no
parties and with no authoritarian State. We knew that too well, though
Stalin’s line meant, since 1926, the delivery of our victory to the
bourgeois
enemy, such aberrations of middle-class would-be intellectuals are
always
– we can now refer to an experience more than a century old – the best
guarantee for the survival of hateful capitalism, by snatching from the
hands of its executioners the only weapon able to kill it.
Along with the awkward influence of money, which
will disappear in communist society, but only after a long chain of
events
in which the achievement of the communist dictatorship is but the first
step, was added the wielding of an instrument of manoeuvre which we
openly
declared to be worthy of parliaments and bourgeois diplomacy, or of the
extremely bourgeois League of Nations, that is, the encouragement or
inculcation,
according to the circumstances, of careerism and vain ambition amongst
the swarming ranks of petty government officials, so that each of them
would be faced with an inexorable choice between immediate and
comfortable
notoriety, after prostrate acceptance of the theses of the omnipotent
central
leadership, or else permanent obscurity and possible poverty if he
wished
to defend the correct revolutionary theses which the central leadership
had deviated from.
Today, given the historical evidence, it is
beyond dispute that those international and national central
leaderships
really were on the path of deviation and betrayal. According to the
Left’s
unchanging theory, this is the condition that must deprive them of any
right to obtain, in the name of a hypocritical discipline, an
unquestioning
obedience from party members.
5. The work carried on to reconstitute
everywhere the class party
after
the end of the Second World War, found an extremely unfavourable
situation,
with the international and social events of such a tremendous
historical
period in every possible way favouring the opportunist plan of wiping
out
the policy of conflict among classes; thus emphasizing before the
blinded
proletarians the need of supporting the restoration on the whole world
of democratic-parliamentarian constitutionalisms.
In such a terrible position, worsened by the diving
of big proletarian masses into the stinking practice of electionism –
which was apologized by false revolutionaries in a much more shameless
way than that of II International revisionists – our movement, though
compelled to go against the stream, appealed to its whole heritage
coming
from the long and unfavourable historical event. Having adopted the old
watchword
"on the thread of time", our movement devoted itself to setting before
the eyes and minds of the proletariat the meaning of the historical
results
inscribed along the route of a long and painful retreat. It was not a
matter
of restricting our role to cultural diffusion or the propagandising of
petty doctrines, but of demonstrating that theory and action are
dialectically
inseparable fields, and that teachings are not book-learned or
academic,
but are derived from – not experiences exactly, a word we wish
to avoid as now fallen prey to Philistines – but from the dynamic
results
of confrontations between real forces of considerable size and range,
with
use made also of those cases in which the final result was a defeat of
the revolutionary forces. The latter is what we refer to, using the old
classical Marxist criteria, as "the lessons of the counter
revolutions".
6. Other difficulties, for the setting of
our movement on its own
bases,
arose from overly optimistic prospects; according to which, having the
end of the First World War bring a great revolutionary wave and the
condemnation
of the opportunist pest – thanks to the action of the Bolsheviks, of
Lenin, and of the Russian victory – the end of the II war in 1945 would
give rise to parallel historical phenomena, and make easy the
constituting
of a revolutionary party in conformity to the great traditions. Such a
prospect might be judged generous, but it was greatly wrong because it
did not take into account the "hunger for democracy" that had been
instilled
among proletarians, not so much by the more or less truculent exploits
of Italian and German fascisms, as by the ruinous relapse into the
false
hope that with the recovery of democracy everything would in a natural
way come back on the revolutionary lines; while the central position of
the Left is the consciousness that the biggest danger lies in the
populist
and social-democratic illusions, which are not the basis for a new
revolution,
supposed to make the Kerensky-Lenin step, but of opportunism, the most
powerful counter-revolutionary force.
For the Left opportunism is not a phenomenon of
a moral nature, caused by the corruption of individuals; it is instead
a phenomenon of a social and historical nature, owing to which the
proletarian
vanguard, in place of drawing up in the array that opposes the
reactionary
front of bourgeoisie and of petty-bourgeois strata – the latter much
more conservative than the former – gives way to a policy welding the
proletariat with the middle classes. In this sense the social
phenomenon
of opportunism does not differ from that of fascism, as it is in both
cases
a matter of subjection to the petty-bourgeoisie, of which the so-called
intellectuals, the so-called political and bureaucratic-administrative
class, form part – and which naturally are not classes able of
historical
vitality, but only base, marginal, and bootlicker strata, who are to be
recognized, not as the deserters of the bourgeoisie of whom Marx
describes
the fatal passing to the ranks of the revolutionary class, but as the
best
servants and select knights of capitalist conservation, living on
salaries
that come from the extortion of surplus value from workers. The new
movement
showed even signs of falling into the illusion that there would be
something
to do within bourgeois parliaments, although with the aim of giving new
life to the plan contained in the famous theses of Lenin; thus not
taking
into consideration the fact that an irrevocable historical result had
demonstrated
that such tactics could not end – however noble and grandiose they
would
be in 1920, when history seemed poised – with the perspectives of a
revolutionary
attack aiming to blow up parliaments from the inside; while instead all
was reduced to the vulgar revenge against fascism of Modigliani’s cry
"Long live parliament!".
7. It
was a matter of
a transition from one
generation
to another, of
the generation
which had lived through the glorious struggles of the first post-war
period and the Livorno split handing
over
to the new
proletarian generation, which needed to be delivered
from
the mad elation about
the collapse of fascism in
order to restore its awareness of the independent
action of the revolutionary party, which was
opposed to all other parties, and especially
the social-democratic party, in order to re-establish
forces
committed to the prospect of the dictatorship and proletarian terror
against the big bourgeoisie along
with all
its
rapacious instruments. This being the case,
the new movement, in an organic and spontaneous way, came up with a
structural form for its activity which has been tried
and tested over the last fifteen years.
The party fulfilled
aspirations
which had been expressed within
the Communist
Left
since the time of the Second
International, and afterwards
during
the historic
struggle against the first manifestations of opportunist danger
within the Third. This long-standing
aspiration is to struggle
against
democracy and prevent
this
vile
bourgeois myth from gaining
any
influence; it
has its roots
in Marxist critique, in the fundamental texts and early documents of
the proletarian organizations from the time of Communist
Manifesto
onwards.
If human history is not to
be
explained by the influence of exceptional individuals who have
managed
to excel through strength and physical valour, or by moral or
intellectual force,
if
political struggle is
seen,
in a way which is wrong
and diametrically opposed to ours, as a
selecting
of such exceptional personalities (whether believed to be the work of
divinities or entrusted to social aristocracies, or – in
the form most hostile to us of all
– entrusted to the
mechanism of vote-counting
to which all elements in society are eventually admitted); when in
fact
history is a history of class struggles, which
can
only be read
and applied to real
battles,
which are no longer ‘critiques’ but are violent and armed, by
laying bare the economic relations that classes
establish between themselves
within given forms of production; if this fundamental theorem has
been
confirmed by the blood shed by countless fighters, whose generous
efforts had
been
violated by democratic mystification; and if the heritage of the
Communist Left has
been erected on this balance sheet
of oppression, exploitation, and betrayal, then
the only road worth following was the one
which over the course of history had freed us, more and more, from
the lethal machinery of democracy, not only in society and the
various bodies organised within it, but also within the revolutionary
class itself, and above all in its political party.
This aspiration
of the Left, which
cannot be traced back
to
a miraculous
intuition or rational enlightenment
on the part of a great thinker,
but which
emerged
under the impact of a chain of real, violent, bloody, and merciless
struggles, even
when it ended in the defeat of the revolutionary forces,
has
left its historic traces in a whole series of manifestations of the
Left:
from when it was struggling against electoral coalitions and the
influence of Masonic ideologies, against the supporters firstly of
the colonial wars and then the gigantic first European war (which
triumphed over the proletarian aspiration to abandon their military
uniforms and turn their arms against those who had
forced them
to take them up, mainly by agitating
the lubricious phantom of
a fight for liberty and democracy); from
when finally in all the countries of Europe
when finally in all the countries of Europe
and under the leadership of the Russian revolutionary proletariat,
the Left threw itself into the battle to bring down the main
immediate enemy and target
which protected the heart of the capitalist bourgeoisie, the
social-democratic right-wing, and the even more ignoble centre which,
defaming
us
just
as
it defamed bolshevism, Leninism, and the Russian Soviet dictatorship,
did everything it could to place another
trapdoor between the proletarian advance and the criminal
idealisations of democracy.
At the same time the aspiration to rid even the word "democracy"
of any influence is evidenced in countless texts of the Left hurredly
indicated
at the start
of
these theses.
8. The working structure of the new movement,
convinced of the importance, difficulty and historical duration of its
task, which was bound to discourage dubious elements motivated by
career
considerations because it held no promise, indeed ruled out, any
historical
victories in the near future, was based on frequent meetings of envoys
sent from the organized party sections. Here no debates or polemics
between
conflicting theses took place, or anything arising out of nostalgia for
the malady of anti-fascism, and nothing needed to be voted on or
deliberated
over. There was simply the organic continuation of the serious
historical
work of handing on the fertile lessons of the past to present and
future
generations; to the new vanguards emerging from the ranks of the
proletarian
masses, beaten down, deceived, and disappointed over and over again but
eventually destined to rebel against a capitalist society now in a
state
of purulent decomposition; they
will
at least feel in their living flesh how the extreme and most poisonous
enemy are the ranks of populist opportunism, of bureaucrats of big
unions
and parties, and of the ridiculous pleiad of alleged cerebral
intellectuals
and artists, "committed" or "engaged" in earning some loaves for their
harmful activity, by entering through the traitor parties the rich
classes’
service like bootlickers, and by serving as well the bourgeois and
capitalist
soul of the middle classes posing as "people".
This work and this dynamic is inspired
by the classic teachings of Marx and Lenin, who presented the great
historical
revolutionary truths in the form of theses; and these reports and
theses
of ours, faithfully grounded in the great Marxist tradition, now over a
century old, were transmitted by all those present – thanks partly to
our press communications – at the local and regional meetings, where
this historic material was brought into contact with the party as a
whole.
It would be nonsense to claim they are perfect texts, irrevocable and
unchangeable,
because over the years the party has always said that it was material
under
continuous elaboration, destined to assume an ever better and more
complete
form; and in fact all ranks of the party, even the youngest elements
have
always, and with increasing frequency, made remarkable contributions
that
are in perfect keeping with the Left’s classical line.
It is only by developing our work along the
lines indicated above that we expect to see that quantitative growth in
our ranks and of the spontaneous adhesions to the party, which will one
day make it a greater social force.
9. Before moving on from the topic of the
party’s formation after the Second World War, it is worth reaffirming
a few outcomes which are today enshrined as characteristic party
positions;
insofar as they are de facto historical results, despite the limited
quantitative
extension of the movement, and neither discoveries of useless geniuses
nor solemn resolutions made by "sovereign" congresses.
The party soon realized that, even in an
extremely
unfavourable situation, even in places in which the situation was
absolutely
sterile, restricting the movement’s activity merely to propaganda and
political proselytism is dangerous and must be avoided. At all times in
all places and with no exceptions, the party must make an unceasing
effort
to insert its life into the life of the masses, and participate
in its protests as well, even when these are influenced by directives
in
conflict with our own. It is an old thesis of left-wing Marxism that we
must work in reactionary trade unions in which workers are present, and
the party abhors the individualistic positions of those who disdain to
set foot in them, and who go so far as to theorize the failure of the
few,
feeble strikes that today’s unions dare to call. In many regions the
party already has a remarkable record of activity in the trade unions,
although it always faces serious difficulties, and opposing forces
which
are greater than ours from a statistical point of view. It is important
to establish that, even where such work has not really got off the
ground,
we must reject the position in which the small party is reduced to
being
a set of closed circles with no connection with the outside world, or
limits
itself just to recruiting members in the world of opinion, which for
the
Marxist is a false world if not treated as a superstructure of the
world
of economic conflicts. Similarly it would be wrong to divide the party
or its local groupings into watertight compartments that are only
active
in one field, whether theory, study, historical research, propaganda,
proselytism
or trade union activity. This is because the very essence of our theory
and of our history is that these various fields are totally
inseparable,
and in principle accessible to each and every comrade.
Another position which marks a historical
conquest for the party, and one which it will never relinquish, is the
clear-cut rejection of all proposals to increase its membership through
the calling of congresses to bring together the countless other circles
and grouplets, which since the end of the war have popped up everywhere
elaborating distorted and disjointed theories, or whose condemnation of
Russian Stalinism and all of its local variations is the only positive
thing they have to offer.
10. Returning to the early years of the
Communist International, we will recall that its Russian leaders, who
had behind them not only a thorough knowledge of Marxist doctrine and
history, but also the outstanding outcome of the October
revolutionary victory, conceived of theses such as Lenin’s as
binding on all, although acknowledging that in the course of the
international party’s life there was room for further elaboration.
They never asked for them to be put to the vote because everything
was accepted by unanimous agreement and spontaneously confirmed by
everyone on the periphery of the organization; which in those
glorious years was living in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and even of
triumph.
The Left didn’t disagree with these generous
ambitions, but held that, in order to achieve the outcomes all of us
dreamt about, the communist party, sole and undivided, needed to have
some of its organisational and constitutional measures tightened up
and made more rigorous, and likewise its tactical norms clarified.
As soon as a certain relaxation in these vital
areas started to
emerge, denounced by us to the great Lenin himself, it started to
produce harmful effects, and we were forced to meet reports with
counter-reports, theses with counter-theses.
Unlike other
opposition groups, even those formed in Russia and the trotskist
current itself, we always carefully avoided having our work within
the International take the form of calls for democratic, electoral
consultations of the party membership as a whole, or for the election
of steering committees.
The Left hoped to be able to save the International,
and its vital core rich of traditions, without organizing scissionist
movements,
and always rejected the accusation of being organized, or of being
about
to organize itself, as a fraction, or as a party within the party. Nor
did the Left encourage or approve the practice of individual
resignations
from the party or from the International, even when the dispalys of the
rising opportunism were becoming more and more undeniable.
Nevertheless dozens of examples from previously
cited texts evidence that the Left, in its underlying thinking, has
always
rejected elections, and voting for named comrades, or for general
theses,
as a means of determining choices, and believed that the road to the
suppression
of these means leads likewise to the abolition of another nasty aspect
of politicians’ democraticism, that is, expulsions, removals, and
dissolutions
of local groups. On many occasions we have openly argued that such
disciplinary
procedures should be used less and less, until finally they disappear
altogether.
If the opposite should occur or, worse still,
if these disciplinary questions are wheeled out not to safeguard sound,
revolutionary principles, but rather to protect the conscious or
unconscious
positions of nascent opportunism, as happened in 1924, 1925, 1926, this
just means that the central function has been carried out in the wrong
way, which determined its loss of any influence on the base, from a
disciplinary
point of view; and the more that is the case, the more is phoney
disciplinary
rigour shamelessly praised.
In
the very early years the Left hoped the organizational and tactical
concessions might be justified by the fecundity of the historical
moment and have only temporary value, since Lenin’s prospect was
one of major revolutions in central and maybe western Europe, and
after these the line would return to the clear and all-encompassing
one which was in keeping with the vital principles. But the more that
such a hope came to be gradually replaced by the certainty we were
heading for opportunistic ruin – which inevitably assumed its
classic form of glorification and exaltation of democratic and
electoral intrigue – the more the Left conducted its historical
defence without undermining its mistrust of the democratic mechanism.
Such
a distrust was maintained even when we were forced, by electoral combines,
within parties, to accept the game; and, while such tricks had to be
welcomed
when made by fascism, which thus enabled workers to reply to the
provocation
by taking up arms, they had to be repudiated when impudently
perpetrated
by the fathers of the new opportunism, on the point of reconquering
both
parties and International; though if in theory it could give ironic
satisfaction
hearing them say: We are ten and we want to submit you, who are a
thousand;
as we were far too sure they would end their shameful career by
cheating
workers’ votes by the million.
11. It has always been a firm and
consistent position of the Left
that
if disciplinary crises multiply and become the rule, it signifies that
something in the general running of the party is not right, and the
problem
merits study. Naturally we won’t repudiate ourselves by committing the
infantile mistake of seeking salvation in a search for better people or
in the choice of leaders and semi-leaders, all of which we hold to be
part
and parcel of the opportunist phenomenon, historical antagonist of the
forward march of left revolutionary Marxism.
The Left staunchly defends another of Marx and
Lenin’s
fundamental theses, that is, that a remedy for the alternations and
historical
crises which will inevitably affect the party cannot be found in
constitutional
or organizational formulae magically endowed with the property of
protecting
the party against degeneration. Such a false hope is one amongst the
many
petty-bourgeois illusions dating back to Proudhon and which, via
numerous
connections, re-emerge in Italian Ordinovism, namely: that the social
question
can be resolved using a formula based on producers’ organizations. Over
the course of party evolution the path followed by the formal
parties
will undoubtedly be marked by continuous U-turns and ups and downs, and
also by ruinous precipices, and will clash with the ascending path of
the
historical
party. Left Marxists direct their efforts towards realigning the broken
curve of the contingent parties with the continuous and harmonious
curve
of the historical party. This is a position of principle, but it is
childish
to try to transform it into an organizational recipe. In accordance
with
the historical line, we utilize not only the knowledge of mankind’s,
the capitalist class and the proletarian class’s past and present, but
also a direct and certain knowledge of society’s and mankind’s future,
as mapped out by our doctrine in the certainty that it will culminate
in
the classless and Stateless society, which could in a certain sense be
considered a party-less society; unless one understands by ’party’
an organ which fights not against other parties, but which conducts the
defence of mankind against the dangers of physical nature and its
evolutionary
and eventually catastrophic processes.
The Communist Left has always considered that its
long battle against the sad contingencies of the proletariat’s
succession
of formal parties has been conducted by affirming positions that in a
continuous
and harmonious way are connected on the luminous trail of the
historical
party, which continues unbroken along the years and centuries, leading
from the first declarations of the nascent proletarian doctrine to the
society of the future, which we know very well, insofar as we have
thoroughly
identified the tissue and ganglia of the present avaricious society
which
the revolution must sweep away.
Engels’ proposal to adopt the good old German
word
Gemeinwesen (common being, i.e. social community) in place
of the word State, was connected to Marx’s judgment on the Commune,
which
was no longer a State, just because it was no longer a democratic body.
After Lenin, such a theoretical question does not require any further
explanations,
and there is no contradiction in his brilliant remark that, apparently,
Marx was much more of a "champion of the state" than Engels, as the
former
better explained the revolutionary dictatorship being a true State,
provided
with armed forces and repressive police, and with a political and
terroristic
law, which does not tie its own hands with legal traps. The question is
also to be referred to the two masters’ unanimous condemnation of the
German socialists’ revisionist idealization, in the foolish formula of
"free people’s State"; which not only sends out a stench of bourgeois
democratism, but above all reverses the whole notion of inexorable
conflict
between classes, which involves the destruction of the bourgeoisie’s
historical State and the erection on its ruins of the more unmerciful,
eversive proletarian State, indifferent to eternal constitutions.
It was not therefore the matter of finding a "model"
of the future state in constitutional or organizational features; which
is just as stupid as the attempt to erect, in the first country won to
dictatorship, a model for other countries’ socialist States and
societies.
But equally futile, maybe more so, is the idea of
constructing a model of the perfect party, an idea redolent of the
decadent
weaknesses of the bourgeoisie, which, unable to defend its power, to
maintain
its crumbling economic system, or even to exert control over its
doctrinal
thinking, takes refuge in distorted robotic technologisms, in order,
through
these stupid, formal, automatic models, to ensure its own survival, and
to escape scientific certainty, which as far its epoch of history and
civilization
is concerned can be summed up in one word: Death!
12. Among the doctrinal processes, that we
can for a moment name
philosophical,
included in the tasks of the Communist Left and of its international
movement,
is the development of the above mentioned thesis, that we supplied with
quite a few contributions, by carrying out a research that demonstrates
its consistency to the classic positions of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
The first truth that man will be able to gain is
the notion of future communist society. Such a structure does not
require
any material coming from the present infamous society, with its
capitalist,
democratic, and paltry Christian features, and does not regard the
alleged
positive science, created by the bourgeois revolution, as a human
heritage
on which to be founded; as for us it is a class science, to be
destroyed
and replaced piece by piece, just as well as religions and scholastics,
belonging to previous forms of production. In the field of the theory
of
economic transformations that from capitalism – the sturcture of which
we well know, and official economists completely ignore – lead to
communism,
we do as well without the contributions of bourgeois science; the same
contempt we have for its technology, which is highly praised, above all
by the imbecile opportunist traitors, as on the path of great
conquests.
In a totally revolutionary way we set up the science of society’s life
and future outlet. When such a work of human mind will be perfect –
which
won’t be possible before the killing of capitalism, of its
civilization,
of its schools, of its science, and of its technology worthy of thieves
– man will, for the first time, be able to write also both science and
history of physical nature, and to know the great problems of the
universe’s
life, to start with what is still called creation by the scientists won
back to the dogma, till all its infinite and infinitesimal
implications,
in the so far undeciphered future.
13. The above and other problems are the
field of action of the
party
we keep alive, not unworthy to get into the same line of the great
historical
party. But such concepts of high theory are not resources, able to
solve
petty disputes and small human doubts, which will unfortunately last as
long as the presence of individuals – surrounded and dominated by the
barbarian environment of capitalist civilization – among our ranks will
last. Thence such developments cannot be used to explain how the
opportunist-free
party’s way of living takes place, as it lies in organic centralism and
cannot arise from a "revelation".
Such an evident Marxist thesis can be found, as
a heritage of the Left, in all polemics against the Moscow Centre’s
degeneration.
The party is at the same time a factor and a result of situations’
historical
course, and can never be seen as an extraneous and abstract element and
able to dominate the surrounding environment, without falling again
into
a new and faint utopianism.
The fact that within the party there may be an
inclination
to give life to a fiercely anti-bourgeois background, widely
anticipating
the character of communist society, is an old enunciation, made also,
for
instance, by the young Italian communists in 1912.
But such a worthy aspiration cannot lead us to
consider
the ideal party as a phalanstery, surrounded by insurmountable walls.
The screening of party members in the organic
centralist
scheme is carried out in a way we have always supported against the
Moscow centrists. The party continues to hone and refine the
distinctive features of its doctrine, of its action and tactics with
a unique methodology that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries.
Clearly all those who are uncomfortable with these delineations can
just leave.
Not even after the seizure of power has taken place can we conceive of having forced membership in our ranks; which is why organic centralism excludes terroristic pressures in the disciplinary field, which can’t help but adopt even the very language of abused bourgeois constitutional forms, such as the power of the executive power to dissolve and reassemble elective formations – all forms that for a long time we have considered obsolete, not only for the proletarian party, but even for the revolutionary and temporary State of the victorious proletariat. The party does not have to display, to those who want to join it, any constitutional or legal plans for the future society, as such forms are only proper to class societies. Those who, seeing the party continuing on its clear way, that we attempted to summarize in the these theses to be set out at Naples’ general meeting (July, 1965), do not yet feel up to such a historical level, know very well that they can take any other direction turning away from ours. We do not have to take any other steps on the matter.