Antonio Gramsci 1921
Officialdom
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 4 March 1921
Text from Antonio Gramsci "Selections from political writings (1921-1926)", translated and edited by Quintin Hoare (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978), transcribed to the www with the kind permission of Quintin Hoare.
The Confederation's Livorno Congress is finished. No new
slogan, no line has come out of this congress. In vain have the
broad masses of the Italian people waited for an orientation. In
vain have they awaited a slogan that would enlighten them, that
would succeed in calming their anguish and giving a form to their
passion. The congress has not confronted or resolved a single one
of the problems which are vital for the proletariat in the present
historical period: neither the problem of emigration, nor the
problem of unemployment, nor the problem of relations between
workers and peasants, nor the problem of the institutions which
can best contain the development of the class struggle, nor the
problem of the material defence of working-class buildings and the
personal safety of working-class militants. The sole concern of
the majority at the congress was how to safeguard and guarantee
the position and the power (powerless power) of the Socialist
Party.
Our struggle against trade-union officialdom could not have
been better justified. In many regions of Italy the workers had
entered the field en masse to defend their elementary right to
life, freedom of movement on the streets, freedom of association,
freedom to hold meetings and to have their own premises for the
purpose. The field of struggle swiftly became a tragic one: fire
and flame, cannonades, machine-gun fire, many dozens killed. The
majority of the congress was not moved by these events. The
tragedy of the popular masses defending themselves desperately
from cruel, implacable enemies was not able to render serious this
majority made up of men with withered hearts and shrivelled brains,
or inspire it with a sense of its own historical
responsibilities. These men no longer live for the class struggle,
no longer feel the same passions, the same desires, the same hopes
as the masses. Between them and the masses an unbridgeable abyss
has opened up. The only contact between them and the masses is the
account-ledger and the membership file. These men no longer see
the enemy in the bourgeoisie, they see him in the communists. They
are afraid of competition; instead of leaders they have become
bankers of men in a monopoly situation, and the least hint of
competition makes them crazy with terror and despair.
The Confederal Congress at Livorno was an awesome experience
for us; our pessimism was outstripped by this experience. We of
L'Ordine Nuovo have always seen the trade-union problem,
the problem of organizing the broad masses and selecting the
leading personnel for their organization, as the central problem
of the modern revolutionary movement. But never as today have we
felt the full gravity and extent of the problem; never, as today,
have we felt the full scale of the gangrene which is eating away
at the movement. At the congress, the articles of L'Ordine
Nuovo were read, annotated, commented on, they filled the
hall with clamour and tumult. Yet these articles did not convey
even the tenth part of our pessimistic judgement on the inadequacy
of those men and institutions.
Moreover, this judgement has become still harsher since the
congress. Yes, because while the workers were fighting in the
streets and squares, while fire and flame were striking terror
into the hearts of the people and driving them in despair to
individual acts of fury and the most terrible reprisals, we could
never have imagined that the so-called delegates of these popular
masses would lose themselves in the swampy and miasmatic marshland
of private feuds. The masses were spilling their blood in the
streets and squares, cannon and machine-guns were appearing on the
scene; and these leaders, these men at the top, these future
administrators of society, raged and foamed because of a newspaper
article, a caricature, a headline.
And they would like to convince us, these people, that we have
done wrong; that we have committed a crime in separating ourselves
from them. They would like to convince us that it is we who are
lightminded, that it is we who are irresponsible, that it is we
who seek "miracles", that it is we who are not capable of
understanding and weighing the difficulties of historical
situations and revolutionary movements. They would like us to
become convinced that in them are realized the wisdom, the
competence, the skill, the good sense, the political and
administrative capability accumulated by the proletariat in the
course of its struggles and historical experiences as a
class. Come away with them! The Confederal Congress rehabilitates
Parliament, rehabilitates the worst assemblies of the classes
which in the past have shown themselves most corrupt and
putrefied.
Our pessimism has increased, our will has not diminished. The
officials do not represent the base. The absolutist States were
precisely officials' States, States of the bureaucracy. They did
not represent the popular masses and were replaced by
parliamentary States. The Confederation represents, in the
historical development of the proletariat, what the absolute State
represented in the historical development of the bourgeois
classes. It will be replaced by the organization of the Councils,
which are the working-class parliaments, which have the function
of eating away bureaucratic sediments and transforming old
organizational relations. Our pessimism has increased, but our
motto is still alive and to the point: pessimism of the
intelligence, optimism of the will.