Antonio Gramsci 1921
The communists and the Elections
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 12 April 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 Communist Party is the historically determined political
party of the revolutionary working class.
The working class was born and organized itself on the terrain
of bourgeois democracy, in the framework of the constitutional and
parliamentary régime. Tied to the fate of large-scale
modern industry, with its great factories and immense cities,
teeming with diverse, chaotic multitudes, the working class has
only become aware of its own unity and class destiny slowly and by
way of the cruellest experiences and most bitter
disappointments.
This is why, in the various phases of its development, the
working class has supported the most widely differing political
parties. It began by supporting the liberal parties: in other
words, it united with the urban bourgeoisie and struggled to
annihilate the remnants of economic feudalism in the
countryside. The industrial bourgeoisie thus succeeded in breaking
the monopoly of food-supplies, in introducing into the countryside
too a little economic liberalism, and in bringing down the cost of
living. But this whole enterprise turned out disastrously for the
working class, which saw its average wages cut. In a second period
the working class supported the petty-bourgeois democratic parties
and struggled to enlarge the framework of the bourgeois State: to
introduce new institutions and develop the existing
institutions. It was tricked a second time. The whole of the new
ruling personnel which had been formed in this struggle went over
with their weapons and equipment to the camp of the bourgeoisie,
renovating the old ruling class and furnishing new ministers and
high functionaries for the bureaucratic parliamentary State. The
State was not even transformed. It continued to exist within the
limits fixed by the Albertine Statute; no real freedom was won by
the people. The Crown continued to remain the only real power in
Italian society since, via the government, it continued to keep
the magistrature, Parliament and the armed forces of the country
subordinated to its every wish.
With the creation of the Communist Party, the working class has
broken all its traditions and asserted its political maturity. The
working class no longer wishes to collaborate with other classes
in the development or transformation of the bureaucratic
parliamentary State. It wishes to work positively for its own
autonomous development as a class. It submits its candidature as a
ruling class, and asserts that it can exercise this historical
function only in an institutional context that is different from
the existing one: in a new state system, and not within the
framework of the bureaucratic parliamentary State.
With the creation of the Communist Party, the working class
presents itself in the political struggle as an initiator, as a
leader, and no longer as an inert mass of troops directed and led
by the general staff of another social class. The working class
wants to govern the country. It asserts that it is the only class
capable, with its own means and with its national and
international institutions, of solving the problems placed on the
agenda by the general historical situation. What are the real
forces of the working class? How many proletarians in Italy have
gained a precise consciousness of the historical mission that
belongs to their class? What following does the Communist Party
have in Italian society? In the present confusion and chaos, do
the main lines of the new historical configuration already exist?
In this continuous process of disintegration and reintegration,
decomposition and recomposition of the social forces, classes and
strata of the Italian population, has there already been formed an
initial nucleus, compact and solid, permanently loyal to the ideas
and programmes of the Communist International and the world
revolution, around which the new and definitive political,
governmental, organization of the working class can take
place?
These are the questions which will be answered by the
elections. In order to obtain a positive, concrete answer which
can be verified and documented historically, the Communist Party
is contesting the elections. The Communist Party, in the process
whereby social forces are drawn up into battle units by the
electoral programmes, wants to identify its own units and to count
its forces. This is a necessary phase of the historical process
which must lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
foundation of the workers' State. The elections, for the
communists, are one among the many forms of political organization
characteristic of modern society. The party is the higher
organizational form; the trade union and the factory council are
intermediary organizational forms, in which the most conscious
proletarians enrol for the daily struggle against capital, and in
which the enrolment takes place on a trade-unionist platform. In
elections, the masses declare themselves for the highest political
goal, for the form of the State, for the assertion of the working
class as a ruling class.
The Communist Party is essentially the party of the
revolutionary proletariat, i.e. of the workers engaged in urban
industry; but it cannot reach its goal without the support and
consent of other layers, of the poor peasants and the intellectual
proletariat. That is the statement of principle. What is the force
of expansion today of the revolutionary proletariat? How many
elements from the other toiling classes recognize in the
proletariat the future ruling class and henceforward,
notwithstanding the terrorism exercised by reaction, intend to
support it in its labour of mobilization and organization? The
Communist Party does not harbour any illusions about the results -
especially since it has already shown that it is seeking to get
away from the methods of fairground demagogy whereby the Socialist
Party "drew a crowd" in the past. But the more the Italian
population has plunged into chaos and disorientation, and the more
the forces dissolving the past alignment of revolutionary forces
have operated and continue to operate, the more evidently
necessary it appears to bring about a new alignment of loyal and
trusty soldiers of the world revolution and of communism. The
murkier the situation, and the scantier the resources of the new
party presenting itself in the field of general Italian politics,
the greater will appear the dynamic and expansive value of this
new alignment.