Antonio Gramsci 1924
Problems of today and tomorrow
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 1 and 15 April 1924.
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.
From an old subscriber and friend of L'Ordine Nuovo,
we have received the following letter :
"It seems to me that our disagreement is especially of a
chronological order. I accept a great deal of what you write to
me, but as solutions to problems which will arise after
the fall of fascism. It is very useful to study them and prepare
oneself to confront them; but the problems of today are
very different. Let us discuss this. I stand by my opinion that
the working class is totally absent from political life. And I can
only conclude that the Communist Party, today, can do
nothing or almost nothing positive. The situation is strikingly
similar to that of 1916-17; and so too is my state of mind, which
you say is shared by other friends who write to you. My political
opinions are unchanged - or worse still, I have become fixed in
them; just as up till 1917, 1 was fixed in the pacifist socialism
of 1914-15 - which I was shaken out of by the discovery, made
after Caporetto and the Russian Revolution of November, that guns
were precisely in the hands of the worker-soldiers. Unfortunately,
the analogy does not extend so far. But just as at that time,
although we knew rationally that the War would have to end one
day, we all "felt" that it would never end and could not see
how peace could come - so it is today with fascism. It is
quite easy for me to accept your opinion that this state of
affairs cannot last, and that major events are imminent: it is
perfectly logical, but one cannot "feel" it or "see" it.
There will be no possibility of working-class political action,
so long as the concrete problems which present themselves to each
worker have to be resolved individually and privately, as is the
case today. He has to preserve his job, his pay, his house and his
family. The union and the party cannot help in any way, indeed the
reverse is true. A little peace can only be won if one makes
oneself as small as possible, if one scatters. One can only
increase one's pay a bit by working a lot or looking for
supplementary jobs, competing with the other workers, etc. The
very negation of the party and the union. The economic crisis has
now diminished, so that if there was even a minimum of trade-union
freedom and public order, union organization, industrial action,
etc., could start up again (as in England, for example). The
urgent question, which conditions all others, is that of "freedom"
and "order": the others will come later, but for now they cannot
even interest the workers.
Now, I do not think that a relaxation of fascist pressure can
be secured by the Communist Party; today is the hour of the
democratic opposition, and I think it is necessary to let them
proceed and even help them. What is necessary, first of all, is a
"bourgeois revolution", which will then allow the development of a
working-class politics. Basically, it seems to me that -just like
during the War - there is nothing to be done except to wait for it
to pass. I would like to know your opinion on this subject. I do
not feel that my own is incompatible with being a Communist
(though a non-active one). For the function -which I attribute to
the "lefts" will be accomplished very quickly, I believe. And it
would certainly not be right for the Communist Party to compromise
itself with them, since in any case it could not make any real
contribution to a campaign of such a kind. But I also think that
it is an error to set oneself openly against them, and to spend
too much time (as L'Unitá does, for example)
deriding bourgeois "freedom". Fair or foul, it is what the workers
feel most keenly the need for today, and it is the precondition
for any further advance. Just as during the War neutralism was
certainly not a socialist policy, but it was certainly the best
policy for the Socialist Party out of those which were possible,
because it meant most to the masses.
The Communist Party cannot - because of the contradiction it
would involve - wage a campaign for freedom and against
dictatorship in general. But it commits a grave error when it
gives the impression it is sabotaging an alliance of the
opposition forces - as it did with its sudden declaration that it
would participate in the electoral struggle, when the other
parties pretended to threaten abstention. Its function, for now,
is that of a coach-fly, since afterwards it will be
necessary for a mass party to have distinguished itself in the
struggle against fascism: again, just as in the War. Meanwhile, it
would be a good thing to take advantage of this experience to
prepare a concrete programme for afterwards: then, certainly, the
Southern question and that of unity will be in the foreground. But
not today. I do not think that the fascists' fight to have Orlando
and Co. on their slate has the significance you attribute to
it. It can be explained more simply as an obvious electoral
expedient, necessary to avoid a fiasco. This explanation is also
more worthy of the prefect of Naples and of Mussolini. You say
that fascism is precisely destroying the unity of the State, hence
the question is urgent and relevant today; but I do not think it
is of the kind you say. It seems to me to be more of a police
question than a social one. The fact is that fascism pays its
supporters not so much with money as with crumbs of State
authority; with permission to swagger and strut, for amusement and
for private interest. The remedy will lie in an efficient
police-force independent of the local chieftains, no matter
whether it is centralized or local. In short, it comes back to a
question of public order, not to a territorial one.
I was really moved at the sight of the first issue of
L'Ordine Nuovo. I hope that, as in 1919, it will succeed
in finding the slogan which is lacking today and which is
needed. I hope too that it will be able to draw a balance-sheet of
the past: not to determine the blame or merit of individuals or
parties; not to repeat "I told you so"; above all, not to draw a
balance-sheet of your enemies, but rather -of yourselves and your
own comrades - which is more useful, and alone can make experience
useful. You certainly need great courage to carry out an autopsy
on yourselves, but the old Ordine Nuovo will perhaps have
that courage." S.
Liquidatory Elements
This letter contains all the necessary and sufficient elements
to liquidate a revolutionary organization such as our party is and
must be. And yet, this is not the intention of our friend S., who
even though he is not a member, even though he is only on the
fringes of our movement and our propaganda, has faith in our party
and considers it the only one capable of permanently resolving the
problems posed and the situation created by fascism. Is the
position adopted in the letter purely personal? We do not think
so. It cannot but be the position of a large circle of
intellectuals who, in the years 1919-20, sympathized with the
proletarian revolution, and who subsequently refused to prostitute
themselves to triumphant fascism. It is also, unconsciously, the
position of a part of the proletariat itself, even of members of
our party, who have not succeeded in resisting the torturing daily
drip of reactionary events, in the state of isolation and
dispersal created for them by fascist terror. This is clear from a
whole series of facts, and is openly confessed in private
correspondence. Our friend S. does not adopt the viewpoint of an
organized party. So he does not perceive the consequences of his
views or the numerous contradictions into which he falls, but
arrives at an absurd position and thus himself highlights the
weakness and falsity of his argument.
S. believes that the future will belong to our party. But how
could the Communist Party continue to exist, how could it develop,
how in other words could it become capable of dominating and
guiding events after the fall of fascism, if it annihilated itself
today in the attitude of total passivity proposed by
S. himself?. Predestination does not exist for individuals, and
even less does it do so for parties. All that exists is the
concrete activity, the ceaseless work, the continuous contact with
developing historical reality that give individuals and parties a
position of preeminence, a role of guide and vanguard. Our party
is an organized fraction of the proletariat and of the peasant
masses, i.e. of the classes which are today oppressed and crushed
by fascism. If our party did not find for today
independent solutions of its own to the overall, Italian problems,
the classes which are its natural base would turn en
masse towards those political currents which give some
solution to these problems that is not the fascist one.
If that occurred, the fact would have an immense historical
significance. It would mean that the present is not a
revolutionary socialist period, but we are still living in an
epoch of bourgeois capitalist development. It would mean that not
only the subjective conditions of organization and political
preparation are lacking, but also the objective material
conditions for the proletariat to attain power. Then, indeed, we
too would face the problem of taking up not an independent
revolutionary position, but that of a mere radical fraction of the
constitutional opposition, called by history to realize the
"bourgeois revolution" - in other words, an indispensable and
inevitable stage in the process which will culminate in
socialism. Does the Italian situation perhaps authorize one to
believe this? S. himself does not believe it, because he writes
that the task of the constitutional opposition will be
chronologically very brief, without any direct development other
than towards a proletarian revolution.
S. refers to the period of the War, and presents the stance of
the Socialist Party during the War as exemplary. How absurd this
reference is, and how much it proves its author wrong, is at once
clear from even the briefest and most hasty analysis. Socialist
neutralism was an essentially opportunist tactic, dictated by the
tradititional need to balance the three tendencies making up the
party (which we will indicate simply with the three names of
Turati, Lazzari and Bordiga). It was not a political line
established after an examination of the situation and of the
relationship of forces which existed in Italy in 1914-15. Instead,
it was a result of the conception of "party unity above all else,
even above the revolution" which still characterizes
maximalism. The fact that our friend S. only discovered that arms
were in the hands of the workersoldiers after the November
revolution and the defeat at Caporetto, merely demonstrates the
way in which this opportunist tactic had left the Socialist masses
in the dark about the discussions which had already taken place on
this subject at the international level. The Zimmerwald Left had
made this "discovery" back in 1915, and it had determined the
tactics of the Russian Bolshevik Party. For that reason, the
defeat of the Russian armies, after the offensives imposed on the
Kerensky government by the Entente, was followed by proletarian
revolution and transformation of the imperialist war into a civil
war. The defeat at Caporetto, however, was only followed by a
resolution which confined itself to reasserting parliamentary
opposition to the government and the rejection of war credits.
The attitude which the Socialist Party maintained during the
War also illuminates subsequent events up to the Livorno Congress,
the Socialists' Rome Congress and the formation of the Unitary
Socialist Party. It is the same tactic, basically, taking on 'a
new aspect for each new situation: the same tactic of passivity;
"neutralism"; unity for unity's sake; the party for the party's
sake; faith in the predestination of the Socialist Party to be the
party of the Italian workers. The results which this attitude has
today, when there exist the Unitary Socialist Party to the right
and the Communist Party to the left, are clear even to our friend
S.: permanent internal crises and split after split, none of which
ever resolve the situation, because the communist tendency
continually re-emerges and the right (favourable to fusion with
the Unitary Socialists) is continually reinforced.
Residues of Old Ideologies
Our friend S. has not yet succeeded in destroying in himself
all the ideological traces of his democratic-liberal intellectual
formation, normative and Kantian rather than dialectical and
Marxist. What meaning do his statements have that the working
class is "absent"; that the situation is against unions and
parties; that fascist violence is a problem of "order", i.e of
"police", and not a "social" problem?
The Italian situation is certainly complicated and
contradictory, but not so much so that one cannot grasp definite
unitary lines of development in it. The proletariat, i.e. the
revolutionary class par excellence is a minority of the
toiling population oppressed and exploited by capitalism, and is
mainly concentrated in a single zone - that of the North. In the
years 1919-20, the proletariat's political strength consisted in
finding itself automatically at the head of all the
working population; and in centralizing objectively - by
its direct and immediate action against capitalism - all the
revolts of the other popular strata, amorphous and
directionless. Its weakness was revealed in its failure to
organize these revolutionary relations; and in the fact that it
did not even consider the problem of the need to organize these
relations into a concrete political system and a government
programme. Fascist repression, following the line of least
resistance, began with these other social strata and came to the
proletariat last.
Today, systematic and legal repression is kept up against the
proletariat. But it has by contrast diminished at the periphery,
against those strata who in 1920 were only objectively the
proletariat's allies - and which are becoming reorganized;
entering partially into struggle again; revealing the softer
features of a constitutional opposition, i.e. their most markedly
petty-bourgeois features. What then does it mean that the working
class is 'absent'? The 'presence' of the working class, in the
sense our friend S. understands this, would mean revolution;
because it would mean that once more, as in 1919-20, not
democratic petty bourgeois are standing at the head of the working
population, but the most revolutionary class of the nation. But
fascism is precisely the negation of such a state of affairs;
fascism was born and developed precisely in order to destroy such
a state of affairs, and to prevent it from reappearing.
How then is the problem posed today? It seems to us that it is
posed in the following terms: the working class is, and will
remain, "absent" to the extent that the Communist Party allows the
constitutional opposition to monopolize the reawakening to
struggle of the. social strata which are historically the
proletariat's allies. The emergence and consolidation of the
constitutional opposition is infusing the proletariat with new
strength, so that it is once again flocking into the party and the
unions. If the Communist Party intervenes actively in the process
whereby the opposition is formed, works to bring about a class
differentiation in the social base of the opposition, and ensures
that the peasant masses orient themselves towards the programme of
a workers' and peasants' government, then the proletariat is no
longer "absent" as before. Then there is a line of political work
in which both the problems of today and those of tomorrow are
resolved, and in which tomorrow is prepared and organized, not
just awaited from the lap of fate.
This line of political work is thus opposed as much to the
constitutional opposition as it is to fascism - even if the
constitutional opposition upholds a programme of freedom and order
which would be preferable to fascism's one of violence and
arbitrary power. The truth is that the constitutional opposition
will never realize its programme, which is a pure instrument of
anti-fascist agitation. It will not realize it, because to do so
would mean that so great a "catastrophe" would occur so soon; and
because the entire development of the situation in Italy is
controlled by the armed force of the national
militia. Nevertheless, the development of the opposition and the
features which it assumes are extremely important phenomena. They
are the proof of fascism's powerlessness to resolve the vital
problems of the nation. They are a daily reminder of the objective
reality which no volley of insults can annihilate. For us, they
represent the environment in which we must move and work, if we
wish to remain in contact with historical reality, and not become
a meditational sect; the environment in which we must seek the
concreteness of our slogans and our immediate programmes for
action and agitation.
Three Points to Summarize
We can sum up the main features of our conception of the
present needs and tasks of the proletarian movement, in
counter-position to that of our friend S., as follows: 1. to give
our party a sharper awareness of the concrete problems which the
situation created by fascism has posed for the working class, in
such a way that organization becomes not an end in itself, but an
instrument for spreading revolutionary slogans among the broadest
masses; 2. to work for the political unity of the proletariat
under the banner of the Communist International, hastening the
process of decomposition and recomposition that was begun at the
Livorno Congress; 3. to establish concretely the meaning in Italy
of the workers' and peasants' government slogan, and to give this
slogan a national political substance - which can only happen if
we study the most crucial and pressing problems of the peasant
masses, and therefore first and foremost those specific problems
which are summed up in the general term "the Southern
question".
Intellectuals like our friend S. who have not allowed
themselves to be carried away by fascism, and who in one way or
another have not been prepared to disavow their attitudes in the
years 1919 and 1920, can once again find in L'Ordine
Nuovo a centre of discussion and regroupment.