Antonio Gramsci 1921
Masses and leaders
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 30 October 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 struggle which the Communist Party has launched to form a
tradeunion united front against the capitalist offensive has had
the merit of creating a united front of all the trade-union
mandarins. Against the "dictatorship" of the Communist Party and
the Moscow Executive, Armando Borghi finds himself in agreement
with Ludovico D'Aragona, Errico Malatesta finds himself in
agreement with Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Sbrana and Castrucci find
themselves in agreement with Guarnieri and Colombino. This does
not surprise us communists at all. The worker comrades who
followed the campaign waged for the Factory Council movement in
the weekly Ordine Nuovo no doubt remember how we foresaw
that this phenomenon would appear in Italy too. For it had already
appeared in other countries and could therefore already be seen as
universal - as one of the most characteristic features of the
present historical period.
Trade-union organization, whether it had a reformist, anarchist
or syndicalist label, had brought about the emergence of a whole
hierarchy of lesser and greater leaders, whose best-known
characteristics were vanity, a mania for wielding uncontrolled
power, incompetence and unrestrained demagogy. The most ridiculous
and absurd role in this whole comedy was that played by the
anarchists. The more they shrieked at authoritarianism, the more
authoritarian they were. The more they howled about wanting
freedom, autonomy and spontaneous initiative, the more they
sacrificed the real will of the broad masses and the spontaneous
flowering of their libertarian tendencies. Especially in Italy,
the union movement fell low and became a fairground hubbub:
everyone wanted to create his own "movement", his own 11
organization", his own "real union" of workers. Borghi represented
one registered trade-mark, De Ambris another registered
trade-mark, D'Aragona a third, Sbrana and Castrucci a fourth and
Captain Giulietti a fifth. All these people, naturally, showed
themselves hostile to the interference of political parties in the
trade-union movement, asserting that the union is self-sufficient:
that the union is the "true" nucleus of the future society; that
in the union are to be found the structural elements of the new
economic and political order of the proletariat.
In the weekly Ordine Nuovo, without parti
pris and with a libertarian method, i.e. without letting
ourselves be diverted by ideological preconceptions (hence with a
Marxist method, given that Marx is the greatest libertarian to
have appeared in the history of the human race), we examined what
the real nature and structure of the trade union are. We began by
showing that it is absurd and puerile to maintain that the trade
union in itself possesses the capability to overthrow
capitalism. Objectively, the trade union is nothing other
than a commercial company, of a purely capitalistic type, which
aims to secure, in the interests of the proletariat, the maximum
price for the commodity labour, and to establish a monopoly over
this commodity in the national and international fields. The trade
union is distinguished from capitalist mercantilism only
subjectively, insofar as, being formed necessarily of
workers, it tends to create among the workers an awareness that it
is impossible to achieve industrial autonomy of the producers
within the bounds of trade-unionism; an awareness that for this it
is necessary to take over the State (i.e. deprive the bourgeoisie
of State power) and utilize its power to reorganize the entire
apparatus of production and exchange.
We then showed that the trade union cannot be, or become, the
basic cell of the future society of producers. The trade union, in
fact, appears in two forms: the general assembly and the leading
bureaucracy. The general assembly is never called upon to
discuss and deliberate upon problems of production and exchange,
or upon technical industrial problems. It is normally convened to
discuss and decide upon the relations between entrepreneurs and
labour-force, i.e. on problems which are specific to capitalist
society and which will be transformed fundamentally by the
proletarian revolution. Nor does the selection of trade-union
officials take place upon the terrain of industrial technique. A
metalworking trade union does not ask a would-be official if he is
competent in the metal-working industry, or whether he is capable
of administering the metal-working industry of a city, a region,
or the entire country. It simply asks him if he is capable of
arguing the workers' case in a dispute, if he is capable of
drawing up a report and if he is capable of addressing a
meeting.
The French syndicalists of Vie Ouvrière tried
before the War to create industrial skills among tradeunion
officials. They promoted a whole series of research-studies and
publications on the technical organization of production. (For
example: how does it come about that hide from a Chinese ox
becomes the shoe of a Paris cocotte? What route does this
hide follow? How is the transport of this commodity organized?
What are the costs of transport? How does the manufacture of
international "taste" operate, so far as leather goods are
concerned? etc.) But this attempt sank without trace. The
trade-union movement, as it has expanded, has created a body of
officials who are completely detached from the individual
industries, and who obey purely commercial laws. A metal-workers'
official can pass on indifferently to the bricklayers, the
bootmakers or the joiners. He is not obliged to know the real
technical conditions of the industry, just the private legislation
which regulates the relations between entrepreneurs and labour
force.
One may assert, without fear of being contradicted by any
experimental demonstration, that the theory of
syndicalism has now been revealed as an ingenious castle in the
air constructed by politicians who only hated politics because,
before the War, politics meant nothing except parliamentary
activity and reformist compromise.
The trade-union movement is nothing but a political
movement, the union leaders are nothing but political
leaders who reach the posts they fill by appointment
rather than by democratic election. In many respects a union
leader represents a social type similar to the banker. An
experienced banker, who has a good business head and is able to
foresee with some accuracy the movement of stocks and bonds, wins
credit for his institution and attracts depositors and
investors. A trade-union leader who can foresee the possible
outcome as conflicting social forces clash, attracts the masses
into his organization and becomes a banker of men. From
this point of view, D'Aragona, insofar as he was backed by the
Socialist Party which called itself maximalist, was a better
banker than Armando Borghi, distinguished confusionist, a
man without character or political direction, a fairground pedlar
more than a modern banker.
That the Confederation of Labour is essentially a political
movement can be seen from the fact that its greatest expansion
coincided with the greatest expansion of the Socialist Party. Its
leaders, however, thought that they could ignore party policy,
i.e. that they could follow individual policies without
the nuisance of controls or disciplinary obligations. This is the
reason for that noisy revolt of the union leaders against the
"dictatorship" of the Communist Party and the notorious Moscow
Executive. The masses instinctively understand that they are
powerless to control the leaders or force them to respect the
decisions of assemblies and congresses. Therefore, the masses want
the trade-union movement to be controlled by a party. They want
the union leaders to belong to a well-organized party which has a
definite line, which is able to see that its discipline is
respected and which will uphold freely contracted commitments.
The "dictatorship" of the Communist Party does not terrify the
masses, because the masses understand that this "terrible
dictatorship" is the best guarantee of their freedom, the best
guarantee against betrayals and intrigues. The united front which
the trade-union mandarins of every subversive variety form against
the Communist Party shows just one thing: that our party has
finally become the party of the broad masses, and that it truly
represents the permanent interests of the working class and the
peasantry. To the united front of all bourgeois strata against the
revolutionary proletariat there corresponds the united front of
all union mandarins against the communists. Giolitti, in order to
defeat the workers, has made peace with Mussolini and given arms
to the fascists. Armando Borghi, in order not to lose his position
as the Grand Senusso of revolutionary syndicalism, will reach an
agreement with D'Aragona, the High Bonze of parliamentary
reformism.
What a lesson for the working class, which must follow not men,
but organized parties that can subject individual men to
discipline, seriousness and respect for voluntarily contracted
commitments!