Antonio Gramsci 1921
Referendum
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 29 June 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 working-class trade-union association can function in three
ways: by a general assembly of the membership, by "referendum", or
by an assembly of shop-floor delegates. Which of these three forms
best expresses the conscious will of the mass of union
members?
Questions concerning the structure and functioning of
working-class trade-union associations aroused no interest and
attracted no attention in the period before the imperialist war of
1914-18, because the unions then only organized a tiny part of the
working masses. After the Armistice, there was a sudden gigantic
growth of the workers' unions. In Turin, for instance, the FIOM
section organized between 30 and 35,000 metalworkers, and the
problem was at once posed: how could one enable a membership on
this scale to participate in the union's internal life? How could
one enable it to express its will and exercise its sovereign right
of deliberation?
The problem was an extremely important one, vital for the
communists. For what is communism in essence? It is the
spontaneous, historically determined movement of the broad working
masses, who want to free themselves from capitalist oppression and
exploitation, and to found a society organized in such a way that
it is able to guarantee the autonomous and unlimited development
of men without property. The communists thus have every interest
in ensuring that the broadest masses take a direct interest in
general questions, in political discussion, in administrative and
organizational problems. The indifference of the broad masses
means the stagnation and death of communism; the interest and
enthusiasm of the broad masses means the development and the
victory of communism. But how does one go about enabling 30 or
35,000 workers to take part in the life of their union? Even if it
were possible to get them all into one hall, would so gigantic an
assembly have any deliberative value? It would be a rally, not a
deliberative assembly. The speeches would have to be shouted
through a megaphone. The proceedings would not even be understood
by everybody. All educative utility would be annihilated by the
impossibility of serious argument or discussion.
These problems did not interest the trade-union mandarins or
the reformists in general - or rather, they interested them
negatively. For the reformists, just like the bourgeois, do not
want the intervention of the broad masses. Oh yes, they want the
broad masses to join unions, to pay dues, to be orderly and
obedient. But they fear enthusiasm and a revolutionary spirit like
the plague, and always seek to avert any participation in
discussion by the popular masses. The tradeunion mandarins have
the same mentality as the great war bankers: they see themselves
as "bankers of men". The masses for them are a means, an
instrument, not an end. They say: we, trade-union mandarins, stand
politically for the hundreds of thousands, the millions of workers
who are organized in the union federations and the
Confederation. Just as a banker overturns a government by
manipulating his millions, corrupting and depraving the political
personnel of parliament and the bureaucracy, so-we mandarins
overturn a government by manipulating the masses organized in the
trade unions. But if the workers participate directly in union
life; if they want to see clearly in all things; if they want to
control; if they want to have all the deliberative power and only
leave the administrative, executive, bureaucratic function to the
mandarins - how, under these conditions, is it possible to carry
on manipulating? The mandarins would no longer be mandarins.
So thus it is that the mandarins seek by every means to prevent
the broad masses from participating in discussion. The assemblies
are rigged: when a critic speaks, the little groups of reformists
resort to systematic heckling; but when a reformist takes the
floor, bursts of applause punctuate his speech. The reformists
deliver interminable orations, seek to divert attention from the
main problems, provoke incidents, etc., etc. When the moment comes
for discussion, the assembly has dwindled in size, because many
have grown impatient and decamped. Those who have remained feel
suffocated, bewildered, stupefied by all the manoeuvres; so the
reformists win a maority.
The reformist cliques are so strong and well-organized in some
centres, that the communists are denied any possibility of making
propaganda. Let us give an example. Once last year, at the
invitation of the young socialists, comrade Togliatti went to
Milan to give a meeting on the Factory Councils. The young
socialists advertised the meeting in Avanti! and notified
the Internal Commissions. The reformists put about a rumour in the
Internal Commissions that the meeting was postponed for three
days. Still not sure of having done enough to sabotage the
meeting, they managed to get the municipal council - which they
controlled - to interrupt the tram service for two hours on all
lines leading to the hall where it was taking place. This is how
the Milan reformists took care to prevent the "Turin contagion"
from infecting the Milanese proletariat. And what did Giuseppe
Bianchi, secretary of the CGL, do at the PSI National Council
meeting in Florence? He asked the party leadership to establish a
cordon sanitaire around Piedmont, to prevent Factory
Council propaganda from spreading which would have endangered the
economic and political positions of the mandarins. Had the general
assembly then become physically impossible, because of the immense
dimensions attained by the unions? What was to be done? Resort to
the "referendum"? But the referendum cannot be a normal method of
government, it can only be an exceptional method. If one had to
have recourse to a referendum for every vote, the unions would
cease to function. The communists are also on principle opposed to
referendums, since they place the most advanced and active
workers, who make the greatest sacrifices, on the same plane as
the lazy, ignorant, idle workers. If one wants direct, individual
consultation, then this must take place in assemblies, after an
organized debate, and the vote must presuppose knowledge of what
is at stake and a sense of responsibility. A referendum can only
be called for in exceptional circumstances, if one wishes to avoid
appearing as saboteurs and disrupters.
The communists worked out the system of workshop delegates, as
a reasonable solution to the present organizational problems. The
delegates' assembly is an assembly performing the function of a
referendum. The delegate is elected by a work squad, imperatively
mandated, and instantly recallable. The delegates' assembly thus
represents the whole mass of workers, and can be assumed to be
made up of the best elements from that mass. Since the mandate is
imperative and revocable, it can also be assumed that the
delegates' assembly represents the opinion of the mass of workers
at all times.
The general membership assembly has the same relation to the
delegates' assembly as the gathering of a Roman or Germanic tribe
has to a bourgeois parliament. The representative principle was a
great step forward in the practice of government, for every
class. In Rome, the people or plebs took part in the running of
public affairs by gathering together and appointing tribunes. In
the Middle Ages, the Germanic tribes too gathered in great
assemblies to discuss, beating their lances on the
ground. Parliaments replaced these barbaric and irrational forms
of popular government. The same thing has occurred in the
working-class organizations. When general membership assemblies
were called, they were deafened by words, swindled by reformist
demagogy, and ruled by the clapping of hands and the raising of
arms. The delegates' assembly, embryonic form of the soviet, is
the natural form of representation of the working class. It is
working-class "parliamentarism", which seeks to abolish monarchic
absolutism in the trade unions, just as the national parliament
abolished monarchic absolutism in the State. The communists wanted
the whole mass of workers to interest themselves in union
problems, and at the same time wanted to retain those elements
contained in the general assembly that were beneficial from an
educative point of view. They succeeded in solving the problem in
a historically concrete manner with the system of delegates, which
synthesizes the referendum and the general membership
assembly.
The reformists, with the offensive they have launched in
combination with that of the industrialists, are aiming to wreck
the workers' organizations - which today can only live and develop
in soviet-type forms. One of the reformists' weapons is the
continual demand for referendums. The aim of these is to reduce
the masses once more to the conditions of apathy and indifference
which characterized the period preceding the imperialist war, and
thus to restore the absolute power of the mandarins. The
reformists frequently and readily accuse the communists of being
ambitious and arriviste. The reply is simple: it may very
well be that the communists are ambitious (ambition has always
been one of the great forces in history); but at least the
"ambitious" communists, as they rise, seek to raise the broad
popular masses with them. But you, people who have already
"arrived", in order to keep your positions you press the masses
down and degrade them. The ambition of the communist, who knows he
cannot rise without raising the mass of workers, is a noble
thing. Yours, o mandarins, is not even ambition; it is an ignoble
imitation of the bourgeois methods whereby one man oppresses
another.