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International Communist Party | |||
(“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 correct theoretical diagnosis and historical prediction of new
opportunist dangers slowly emerging during the early years of the new
International form an enduring heritage of the Communist Left. The
point will be developed with the historical method, avoiding any
heavy theorising. The first manifestations denounced and opposed by
the Left appeared in the tactical sphere apropos of the relations to
be established with the old parties of the Second International, from
which the communists had been separated organizationally by means of
splits; and consequently also in wrong measures in the realm of
organizational structure.
By 1921 it could already be seen that
the great revolutionary surge which followed the end of the war in
1918 was petering out, and that capitalism would attempt to
counter-attack on both the economic and the political fronts. Faced
with this prospect, the 3rd Congress
had correctly noted that it was
not enough to have formed communist parties firmly committed to the
programme of violent action, proletarian dictatorship and the
communist State if a large part of the proletarian masses were still
amenable to the influence of the opportunist parties; who were
considered by all of us at the time as the worst instruments of
bourgeois counter-revolution, their hands stained with Karl and
Rosa’s blood. And yet the Communist Left, while continuing to
deplore Blanquist initiatives by small parties, didn’t accept that
the winning over of the "majority" of the proletariat was
the condition for revolutionary action either (besides which one
never quite knew whether it was the true wage-earning proletariat
being referred to or the "people", understood to include
property owning peasants, micro-capitalists, artisans, and the rest
of the petty-bourgeois). This formula of the "majority"
with its democratic aroma would trigger a first warning, later proved
to be fully justified, that opportunism could arise again, introduced
under the familiar banner of homage to the deadly concepts of
democracy and electoral balance sheets.
From the time of the
4th Congress at the end of 1922
onwards, the Left would
stand by its pessimistic forecast as and continue its vigorous
struggle against dangerous tactics (united front of communist and
socialist parties, the "workers’ government" slogan) and
organisational errors (by which the International attempted to
increase the size of the parties not just with the proletarians
flocking to join them after abandoning the parties whose programme,
activity and structure were social-democratic, but by means of fusions
which admitted entire parties or portions of parties
following negotiations with their headquarters, and even by allowing
the so-called "sympathizer" parties to join the Comintern
as national sections, a clear error due to its federalistic slant. In
a third direction, the Left denounces, and ever more vigorously as
the years go by, the looming danger of opportunism. This third issue
concerns the internal functioning of the International, and the
methods used by the centre, represented by the Moscow Executive,
against parties or sections of parties which had made errors of
political judgement; methods involving not only "ideological
terror" but above all organizational pressure which constitutes
a misapplication of, and leads to a total falsification of, the
correct principles of centralization and of discipline admitting of
no exceptions.
This method of
working
was everywhere exacerbated , but particularly in Italy in the years
after
1923 (where the Left, with the whole party behind it, displayed
exemplary
discipline by handing the leadership over to the rightist and centrist
comrades appointed by Moscow) when there was much abuse of the spectre
of "fractionation", and the constant threat of expelling from the party
a current cunningly accused of preparing a split, with the sole aim of
ensuring that dangerous centrist errors could predominate in party
policy.
This third vital point was thoroughly discussed in international
Congresses
and in Italy, and is no less important than the condemnation of
opportunist
tactics and of federalist-type organizational formulae. 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. Since it was a case of a transition, a hand over, from a
generation
which had lived through the glorious struggles of the first post-war
period
and the Livorno split to the proletarian generation which had to be
freed
from the mad elation which followed the collapse of fascism, and have
its
consciousness restored in the autonomous action of the revolutionary
party
against all other parties, and especially against the social-democratic
party; since this transition had to take place in order to reconstitute
a force which was committed to the prospect of the proletarian
dictatorship
and terror against the big bourgeoisie and all of its obnoxious
consequences,
the new movement, in an organic and spontaneous way, came up with a
structural
form for its activity which has been subjected to a fifteen-year-long
test.
The party put into effect aspirations that were well known in the
communist
Left ever since the times of the II International, and thence during
the
historical struggle against the first symptoms of opportunist dangers
within
the III. Such a century-old aspiration is the struggle against
democracy
and any influence of this shameful bourgeois myth ; it is well rooted
into
Marxist critique, in the fundamental texts and in the first documents
of
proletarian organizations, from the Communist Manifesto on.
Man’s history cannot be explained through the
influence of outstanding individuals who could excel by strength and
physical
valour, or even intellectually and morally, and political struggle is
seen
in a false and diametrically opposed way in respect to ours, when it
resides
in the choice of such exceptional personalities (be it thought to be
done
by divinities or entrusted to social aristocracies, or – in the most
hostile form for us of them all – referred to the votes "count"
mechanism,
to which all social elements would be finally admitted); history is
instead
the history of class struggles, and it can be read and used for
battles,
that are no longer critical but violent and armed, only by making clear
the economic relations that arise among classes, within given forms of
production; such a fundamental theorem having been confirmed by the
blood
shed by countless fighters, whose generous efforts were cancelled by
the
democratic mystification; and the heritage of the communist Left having
been erected on such a balance of oppression, exploitation, and
betrayal,
the road to be taken was only that which, in the course of history,
would
free us always more from the lethal democratic mechanism, not only in
the
society and the various organisms getting formed within it, but also
within
the revolutionary class itself and above all in its political party.
Such
an aspiration of the Left, which is not due to a miraculous intuition
or
to a rational illuminism of thinkers, but is on the contrary connected
to the effects of a chain of real, violent, bloody, and merciless
struggles
– even when they ended up in a defeat of the revolutionary force –
can historically be found in the series of the Left’s manifestations,
ever since its struggles against election coalitions and against the
influence
of Masonic ideologies, against war suggestions, first for colonial wars
and then for the gigantic first European war – which triumphed over the
proletarian aspiration to desert the military uniforms and to turn the
arms against those who forced the workers to take them up, by waving
above
all the lewd spectre of liberty and democratic achievements –; and,
finally,
ever since when in all European countries and under the leadership of
the
Russian revolutionary proletariat, the Left threw itself into the
battle
to knock down the prime and direct enemy and target still protecting
the
heart of the capitalist bourgeoisie, the social-democratic right-wing
and
the even more ignoble centre which, by defaming us as well as it
defamed
bolshevism, Leninism, and the Russian Soviet dictatorship, played upon
its attempt to create again the trap-door between the proletarian
advance
and the criminal democratic ideals. At the same time such hankering for
getting rid of any influence of even the word "democracy" itself can be
found in countless texts of the Left, which we briefly listed at the
beginning
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, ten, hundred times
struck,
deceived, and disappointed, which will finally rise up against the
painful
phenomenon of purulent decomposition of the capitalist society; 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.
Only from the development of the work in such a
direction, which we have just outlined, we expect the quantitative
growth
of our ranks and the spontaneous adhesions to the party, which will
make
of it one day a stronger social force.
9. Before leaving the subject of party formation after the Second
World
War, it’s worth reasserting a few results that today constitute
characteristic
points for the party, as they are de facto historical results, in spite
of the limited quantitative extension of the movement, and not
discoveries
of useless geniuses or solemn resolutions of "sovereign" congresses.
The party soon realized that, even in an extremely
unfavourable situation, where its sterility is at its utmost, the
danger
of conceiving the movement as a mere propaganda press and political
proselytism
activity is to be avoided. The party life must always, everywhere, and
with no exceptions, integrate, by an unceasing effort, into the masses’
life, as well as into all their displays, even if influenced by
directions
contrasting with ours. 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 those backgrounds, going so far as to theorize the
breakdown
of the few and weak strikes that today’s unions dare to call. In many
regions the party has by now an already remarkable activity in this
sense,
although we always have to face serious difficulties and contrary
forces,
superior to us on a statistical point of view. It is important to
assert
that, even where such work has not yet had a noteworthy start, the
position
is to be rejected for which the small party is reduced to closed
circles,
with no connections with the outside, or limited to find adhesions only
in the world of opinions, which is for the Marxist a false world if it
is 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, active in only one of the fields of
theory,
study, historical research, propaganda, proselytism, and trade union
activity;
as in the spirit of our theory and of our history they are absolutely
inseparable
and in principle accessible to each and every comrade.
Another historically conquered point, which the
party will never give up, is the clear-cut rejection of any proposal
aiming
to increase its strength and its bases by convening constituent
congresses,
together with those countless circles and grouplets, swarming
everywhere
since the end of the war, that elaborate distorted and disjointed
theories,
or whose only positive statement is the condemnation of Russian
Stalinism
and all its local derivations.
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 Trotskyist
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 declared to be contrary
to
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 may we admit forced membership within our ranks;
all
terroristic pressures in the disciplinary field are therefore out of
the
correct meaning of organic centralism; they even copy their vocabulary
from abused bourgeois constitutional forms, like the faculty of the
executive
power to dissolve and reassemble elective formations – all forms that
for a long time we consider 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.