The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the PCI
“The Lyons theses”
Gramsci; Togliatti
Lyons, January 1926
Five series of Theses were drafted by the majority
of the PCI leadership and published in L’Unitá during
October and November 1925: 1. on the international situation;
2. on the national and colonial question; 3. on the agrarian
question; 4. on the Italian situation and the Bolshevization of
the PCI; 5. on the trade unions. By far the most important was
the fourth, translated here. It was republished in pamphlet form
with the new title given here after it had been approved by the
Lyons Congress – by a majority of 90 – 8 per cent to 9.2 per
cent for the Left. – Note from “Selections from political writings 1921-1926”
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.
1. The transformation of the communist
parties, in which the vanguard of the working class is assembled,
into Bolshevik parties can be considered at the present moment as
the fundamental task of the Communist International. This task
must be related to the historical development of the international
workers’ movement, and in particular to the struggle which has
taken place within it between Marxism and the currents which
represented a deviation from the principles and practice of the
revolutionary class struggle.
In Italy, the task of creating a Bolshevik party takes on its
full dimensions only if one bears in mind the vicissitudes of the
workers’ movement since its origins, and the fundamental
deficiencies which have revealed themselves therein.
2. The birth of the working-class movement
took place in different forms in every country. What was common
everywhere was the spontaneous revolt of the proletariat against
capitalism. This revolt, however, took a specific form in each
nation, which was a reflection and consequence of the particular
national characteristics of the elements which, originating from
the petty bourgeoisie and peasantry, contributed to forming the
great bulk of the industrial proletariat.
Marxism represented the conscious, scientific element, superior
to the particularism of the various tendencies of a national
character and origin; and it waged a struggle against these, both
in the theoretical field and in the field of organization. The
whole formative process of the Ist International was hinged upon
this struggle, which concluded with the expulsion of Bakuninism
from the International. When the Ist International ceased to
exist, Marxism had already triumphed in the working-class
movement. The IInd International was, in fact, formed of parties
which all called themselves Marxist and took Marxism as the basis
of their tactics on all essential questions.
After the victory of Marxism, the tendencies of a national
character over which it had triumphed sought to manifest
themselves in other ways, re-emerging within Marxism itself as
forms of revisionism. This process was encouraged by the
development of the imperialist phase of capitalism. The following
three facts are closely connected with this phenomenon: the
disappearance in the ranks of the working-class movement of
criticism of the State, an essential element of Marxist doctrine,
and its replacement by democratic utopias; the formation of a
labour aristocracy; and a new mass transfer of petty bourgeois and
peasants into the working class, hence a new dissemination within
the proletariat of ideological currents of a national character,
conflicting with Marxism. The process of degeneration of the IInd
International thus took the form of a struggle against Marxism
which unfolded within Marxism itself. It culminated in the
collapse provoked by the War.
The one party which escaped degeneration was the Bolshevik
Party, which succeeded in maintaining itself at the head of the
workers’ movement in its own country, expelled the anti-Marxist
tendencies from its own ranks, and through the experience of three
revolutions evolved Leninism, which is the Marxism of the epoch of
monopoly capitalism, imperialist wars and proletarian
revolution. Thus, the position of the Bolshevik Party in the
foundation and at the head of the IIIrd International was
historically determined, and the terms of the problem of forming
Bolshevik parties in every country were laid down: it is the
problem of recalling the proletarian vanguard to the doctrine and
practice of revolutionary Marxism, overcoming and completely
liquidating every anti-Marxist current.
3. In Italy, the origins and vicissitudes of
the workers’ movement were such, that before the War there was
never constituted a Marxist left current with any permanent or
continuous character. The original character of the Italian
working-class movement was very confused. Various tendencies
converged within it, from Mazzinian idealism to the generic
humanitarianism of the cooperators and proponents of mutual help;
and to Bakuninism, which maintained that the conditions existed in
Italy – even before a development of capitalism – to pass
immediately to socialism. The late origin and weakness of
industrialism meant that the clarifying element provided by the
existence of a strong proletariat was missing. One consequence was
that even the split of the anarchists from the socialists took
place after a delay of twenty years (1892, Genoa Congress).
In the Italian Socialist Party as it emerged from the Genoa
Congress, there were two dominant currents. On the one hand, there
was a group of intellectuals who represented nothing more than a
tendency towards democratic reform of the State: their Marxism did
not go beyond the aim of arousing and organizing the forces of the
proletariat in order to prepare them for the foundation of democracy
(Turati, Bissolati, etc.). On the other hand, there was a group
more directly tied to the proletarian movement, representing a
working class tendency, but lacking any adequate theoretical
consciousness (Lazzari). Up till 1900, the Party set itself no
aims other than ones of a democratic character. After 1900, once
the freedom to organize had been won and a democratic phase began,
the incapacity of all the groups which made it up to give it the
physiognomy of a Marxist party of the proletariat was
manifest.
The intellectual elements indeed detached themselves more and
more from the working class. Nothing, moreover, came of the
attempt by another layer of intellectuals and petty bourgeois to
create a Marxist left in the shape of syndicalism. As a reaction
to this latter attempt, the Party was conquered by the integralist
faction. This was the expression, with its empty conciliationist
verbalism, of a fundamental characteristic of the Italian
working-class movement – also to be explained by the weakness of
industrialism and the deficient critical consciousness of the
proletariat. The revolutionism of the years preceding the War kept
this characteristic intact, never managing to transcend the limits
of a generic populism or to construct a party of the working class
and apply the method of the class struggle.
Within this revolutionary current, even before the War, a “far
left” group began to separate itself off; this upheld the theses
of revolutionary Marxism, but in a spasmodic manner and without
managing to exercise a real influence on the development of the
workers’ movement.
This is what explains the negative and ambiguous character
which the Socialist Party’s opposition to the War assumed; it also
explains how the Socialist Party after the War found itself
confronted by an immediately revolutionary situation, without
having either resolved or so much as posed any of the fundamental
problems which the political organization of the proletariat must
resolve in order to fulfil its tasks: first of all, the problem of
“choice of class” and the organizational form appropriate to it;
then the problems of the party’s programme and ideology; and
lastly problems of strategy and tactics, whose solution could have
grouped around the proletariat those forces which are its natural
allies in the struggle against the State, and could thus have led
it to the conquest of power.
The systematic accumulation of an experience which could
contribute in a positive way to the resolution of these problems
began in Italy only after the War. Only with the Livorno Congress
were laid down the constitutive bases of the proletariat’s class
party, which, if it is to become a Bolshevik party and carry out
its function to the full, must liquidate all the anti-Marxist
tendencies that traditionally characterize the working-class
movement.
4. Capitalism is the predominant element in
Italian society, and the force which is decisive in determining
its development. This fundamental fact means that there is no
possibility of a revolution in Italy that is not the socialist
revolution. In the capitalist countries, the only class which can
accomplish a real, deep social transformation is the working
class. Only the working class is capable of translating into
action the changes of an economic and political character which
are necessary, if the energies of our country are to have complete
freedom and possibility to develop. The way in which it will
accomplish this revolutionary function is related to the degree of
development of capitalism in Italy, and to the social structure
which corresponds to it.
5. Industrialism, which is the essential part
of capitalism, is very weak in Italy. Its possibilities for
development are limited, both because of the geographical
situation and because of the lack of raw materials. It therefore
does not succeed in absorbing the majority of the Italian
population (4 million industrial workers exist side by side with 3
1/2 million agricultural workers and 4 million peasants). To
industrialism, there is counterposed an agriculture which
naturally presents itself as the basis of the country’s
economy. The extremely varied conditions of the terrain, and the
resulting differences in cultivation and in systems of tenancy,
however, cause a high degree of differentiation among the rural
strata, with a prevalence of poor strata, nearer to the conditions
of the proletariat and ore liable to be influenced by it and
accept its leadership. Between the industrial and agrarian
classes, there lies a fairly extensive urban petty bourgeoisie,
which is of very great significance. It consists mainly of
artisans, professional men and State employees.
6. The intrinsic weakness of capitalism
compels the industrial class to adopt expedients to guarantee its
control over the country’s economy. These expedients are basically
nothing more than a system of economic compromises between a part
of the industrialists and a part of the agricultural classes,
specifically the big landowners. One does not, therefore, find
here the traditional economic struggle between industrialists and
landowners, nor the rotation of ruling groups which this produces
in other countries. The industrialists, in any case, do not need
to defend against the landowners an economic policy ensuring a
continuous flow of labour from the countryside into the factories,
since this flow is guaranteed by the abundant poor rural
population which is characteristic of Italy. The
industrial-agrarian agreement is based on a solidarity of
interests between certain privileged groups, at the expense of the
general interests of production and of the majority of those who
work. It produces an accumulation of wealth in the hands of the
big industrialists, which is the result of a systematic plundering
of whole categories of the population and whole regions of the
country. The results of this economic policy have in fact been: to
create a deficit in the economic budget; to halt economic
development in entire regions (South, Islands); to block the
emergence and development of an economy better fitted to the
structure and resources of the country; growing poverty of the
working population; and the existence of a continuous stream of
emigration, with the resulting demographic impoverishment.
7. Just as it does not naturally control the
entire economy, so too the industrial class does not succeed in
organizing single-handed the whole of society and the State. The
construction of a national State is only made possible for it by
the exploitation of factors of international politics (so-called
Risorgimento). Its reinforcement and defence necessitate a
compromise with the classes upon which industry exercises a
limited hegemony: in particular, the landowners and petty
bourgeoisie. Thence derives a heterogeneity and weakness of the
entire social structure, and of the State which is its
expression.
7 bis. There was a typical reflection of the weakness
of the social structure, before the War, in the Army. A restricted
circle of officers, lacking the prestige of leaders (old agrarian
ruling classes, new industrial classes), had beneath it a
bureaucratized caste of junior officers (petty bourgeoisie), which
was incapable of serving as a link with the mass of soldiers,
undisciplined and abandoned to themselves. During the War, the
Army was forced to reorganize itself from the bottom up, after an
elimination of the upper ranks and a transformation of
organizational structure which corresponded to the appearance of a
new category of junior officers. This phenomenon foreshadowed the
analogous upheaval which fascism was to accomplish with respect to
the State on a vaster scale.
8. The relations between industry and
agriculture, which are essential for the economic life of a
country and for the determination of its political
superstructures, have a territorial basis in Italy. In the North,
agricultural production and the rural population are concentrated
in a few big centres. As a result of this, all the conflicts
inherent in the country’s social structure contain within them an
element which affects the unity of the State and puts it in
danger. The solution of the problem is sought by the bourgeois and
agrarian ruling groups through a compromise. None of these groups
naturally possesses a unitary character or a unitary function. The
compromise whereby unity is preserved is, moreover, such as to
make the situation more serious. It gives the toiling masses of
the South a position analogous to that of a colonial
population. The big industry of the North fulfils the function
vis-a-vis them of the capitalist metropoles. The big landowners
and even the middle bourgeoisie of the South, for their part, take
on the role of those categories in the colonies which ally
themselves to the metropoles in order to keep the mass of working
people subjugated. Economic exploitation and political oppression
thus unite to make of the working people of the South a force
continuously mobilized against the State.
9. The proletariat has greater importance in
Italy than in other European countries, even of a more advanced
capitalist nature: it is comparable only to that which existed in
Russia before the Revolution. This is above all related to the
fact that industry, because of the shortage of raw materials,
bases itself by preference on the labour force (specialized
skilled layers). It is also related to the heterogeneity and
conflicts of interest which weaken the ruling classes. In the face
of this heterogeneity, the proletariat appears as the only element
which by its nature has a unificatory function, capable of
coordinating the whole of society. Its class programme is the only
“unitary” programme: in other words, the only one whose
implementation does not lead to deepening the conflicts between
the various elements of the economy and of society, or to breaking
the unity of the State. Alongside the industrial proletariat,
there also exists a great mass of rural proletarians, centred
above all in the Po valley; these are easily influenced by the
workers in industry, and hence easily mobilized for the struggle
against capitalism and the State.
In Italy, there is a confirmation of the thesis that the most
favourable conditions for the proletarian revolution do not
necessarily always occur in those countries where capitalism and
industrialism have reached the highest level of development, but
may instead arise where the fabric of the capitalist system offers
least resistance, because of its structural weakness, to an attack
by the revolutionary class and its allies.
10. The aim which the Italian ruling classes
set themselves from the origin of the unitary State onwards, was
to keep the great mass of the working people subjugated and
prevent them from becoming by organizing around the industrial and
rural proletariat – a revolutionary force capable of carrying out
a complete social and political transformation, and giving birth
to a proletarian State. The intrinsic weakness of capitalism,
however, compelled it to base the economic disposition of the
bourgeois State upon a unity obtained by compromises between
non-homogeneous groups. In a vast historical perspective, this
system is clearly not adequate to its purpose. Every form of
compromise between the different groups ruling Italian society in
fact becomes an obstacle placed in the way of the development of
one or other part of the country’s economy. Thus new conflicts are
produced and new reactions from the majority of the population; it
becomes necessary to intensify the pressure on the masses; and the
result is a more and more decisive tendency for them to mobilize
in revolt against the State.
11. The first period in the life of the
Italian State (1870-90) was that of its greatest weakness. The
two elements which composed the ruling class, the bourgeois
intellectuals on the one hand and the capitalists on the other,
were united in their aim of maintaining unity, but divided on the
form to be given to the unitary State. There was no positive
homogeneity between them. The problems which the State tackled
were limited: they concerned rather the form than the substance of
the bourgeoisie’s political rule. Everything was dominated by the
problem of balancing the budget, which is a problem of pure
conservation. Awareness of the need to enlarge the basis of the
classes which ruled the State appeared only with the beginnings of
“transformism.”
The greatest weakness of the State in this period consisted in
the fact that outside it, the Vatican grouped around itself a
reactionary and anti-State bloc made up of the landowners and the
great mass of backward peasants, controlled and led by the rich
landlords and priests. The Vatican’s programme had two elements:
it sought to struggle against the unitary, “liberal” bourgeois
State; and at the same time, it aimed to form the peasants into a
reserve army against the advance of the socialist proletariat,
stimulated by the development of industry. The State reacted to
the sabotage carried out by the Vatican at its expense, with a
whole quantity of legislation that was anti-clerical in content
and aim.
12. In the period from 1890 to 1900, the
bourgeoisie boldly tackled the problem of organizing its own
dictatorship, and resolved it through a series of political and
economic measures which determined the subsequent history of
Italy.
First of all, the conflict between the intellectual bourgeoisie
and the industrialists was resolved: Crispi’s rise to power was
the sign of this. The bourgeoisie, thus strengthened, solved the
question of its foreign relations (Triple Alliance), and so won
the necessary security to try and enter the field of international
competition for colonial markets. At home, the bourgeois
dictatorship established itself politically by restricting the
right to vote, so reducing the electorate to little more than one
million voters out of a population of 30 million. In the economic
field, the introduction of industrial-agrarian protectionism
corresponded to capitalism’s aim to obtain control of all the
national wealth. Through it, an alliance was forged between the
industrialists and the landowners. This alliance stripped the
Vatican of a part of the forces it had grouped around itself,
especially among the landowners in the South, and brought these
into the framework of the bourgeois State. The Vatican itself,
moreover, saw the need to put more stress on the part of its
reactionary programme which related to resisting the working class
movement, and took position against socialism in the encyclical
Rerum Novarum. The ruling classes, however, reacted to
the danger which the Vatican continued to represent for the State
by giving themselves a unitary organization with an anti-clerical
programme, in the form of freemasonry.
The first real progress of the working-class movement in fact
took place in this period. The establishment of the
industrial-agrarian dictatorship posed the problem of revolution
in its real terms, determining its historical conditions. In the
North, an industrial and rural proletariat emerged, while in the
South the rural population, subjected to a “colonial” system of
exploitation, had to be held down with a stronger and stronger
political repression. The terms of the “Southern question” were
laid down clearly in this period. And spontaneously – without the
intervention of any conscious factor, and without the Socialist
Party even drawing any indication from this fact for its strategy
as the party of the working class – for the first time in this
period there occurred a convergence of insurrectionary attempts by
the Northern proletariat with a revolt of Southern peasants
(Sicilian Fasci).
13. Once it had broken the first attempts by
the proletariat and the peasantry to rise up against the State,
the strengthened Italian bourgeoisie was able to adopt the
external methods of democracy to impede the progress of the
working-class movement. The bourgeoisie also used the political
corruption of the most advanced part of the working population
(labour aristocracy), in order to make the latter an accomplice to
the reactionary dictatorship which it continued to exercise, and
to prevent it from becoming the centre of popular insurrection
against the State (Giolittism). However, between 1900 and 1910
there was a phase of industrial and agrarian concentration. The
rural proletariat grew by 50 per cent at the expense of the
categories of tied labourers, share-croppers and tenant
farmers.
The result was a wave of agricultural agitation, and a new
orientation of the peasantry which forced the Vatican itself to
react, with the foundation of Catholic Action and with a “social"
movement which in its most advanced forms actually took on the
appearance of a religious reform (Modernism). This reaction on
the part of the Vatican, aimed at maintaining its grip on the
masses, was matched by an agreement between Catholics and the
ruling classes to give the State a more secure basis (abolition of
the non expedit, Gentiloni pact). Again towards the end
of this third period (1914), the various partial movements of the
proletariat and the peasantry culminated in a new unconscious
attempt to weld the different mass anti-State forces into an
insurrection against the reactionary State. This attempt already
posed with great clarity the problem which was to appear in its
full dimensions after the War: i.e. the problem of the
proletariat’s need to organize within itself a class party which
would give it the ability to place itself at the head of the
insurrection and give it leadership.
14. The greatest economic concentration in the
industrial field occurred in the post-war period. The proletariat
reached its highest level of organization; and this corresponded
to the maximum disintegration of the ruling classes and the
State. All the contradictions inherent in the Italian social
organism came to the surface with extreme violence, as a result of
the reawakening to political life of even the most backward masses
that was brought about by the War and its immediate
consequences. As always, the advance of the industrial and
agricultural workers was accompanied by a massive agitation of the
peasant masses, both in the South and in the other regions. The
great strikes and the occupation of the factories took place
simultaneously with occupations of the land.
The resistance of the reactionary forces once again operated
along traditional lines. The Vatican allowed a real party to be
formed, alongside Catholic Action, which aimed to integrate the
peasant masses into the framework of the bourgeois State by
apparently satisfying their aspirations for economic redemption
and political democracy. The ruling classes in their turn
implemented in the grand style their plan to corrupt the
working-class movement and destroy it from within, by dangling
before the eyes of the opportunist leaders the possibility that a
labour aristocracy might collaborate in government, in an
attempted “reformist” solution of the problem of the State (left
government). But in a poor and disunited country like Italy, the
appearance of a “reformist” solution to the problem of the State
inevitably provokes a disintegration of the cohesion of State and
society; for this cannot resist the shock of the numerous groups
into which the ruling classes themselves and the intermediate
classes fragment. Each group has its own need for economic
protection and political autonomy; and in the absence of a
homogeneous class nucleus capable of imposing – through its
dictatorship – a discipline of work and production on the whole
country, routing and eliminating the capitalist and landowning
exploiters, government is made impossible and the crisis of power
is continuously open.
The defeat of the revolutionary proletariat in this decisive
period was due to political, organizational, tactical and
strategic deficiencies of the workers’ party. As a consequence of
these deficiencies, the proletariat did not succeed in placing
itself at the head of the insurrection of the great majority of
the population, and channelling it towards the creation of a
workers’ State. Instead, it was itself influenced by other social
classes, which paralysed its activity. The victory of fascism in
1922 must be seen, therefore, not as a victory won over the
revolution, but as a consequence of the defeat suffered by the
revolutionary forces through their own intrinsic weakness.
15. Fascism, as a movement of armed reaction
which set itself the task of fragmenting and disorganizing the
working class in order to immobilize it, fitted into the framework
of traditional Italian rulingclass policies, and into capitalism’s
struggle against the working class. It was, therefore, favoured in
its origins, in its organization and in its development by all the
old ruling groups without exception – but especially by the
landowners, who felt most threatened by the pressure of the rural
populace. Socially, however, fascism found its base in the urban
petty bourgeoisie, and in a new rural bourgeoisie thrown up by a
transformation of rural property in certain regions (phenomena of
agrarian capitalism in Emilia; origin of a category of middlemen
in the countryside; “land grants"; new divisions of holdings).
This circumstance – together with the fact that it found an
ideological and organizational unity in the military formations in
which wartime tradition lives again (arditismo), and
which serve for guerrilla actions against the workers – allowed
fascism to conceive and carry out a plan of conquest of the State,
against the old ruling strata. It would be absurd to call this a
revolution. The new categories which are regrouped around
fascism, however, derive from their origin a homogeneity and a
common mentality of “nascent capitalism.” This explains how it has
been possible for them to fight against the politicians of the
past, and how they have been able to justify this by an
ideological construction which conflicts with traditional theories
of the State and its relations with citizens. In substance,
fascism merely modifies the programme of conservation and reaction
which has always dominated Italian politics, through a different
way of conceiving the process of unification of the reactionary
forces. It replaces the tactic of agreements and compromises by
the project of achieving an organic unity of all the bourgeoisie’s
forces in a single political organism under the control of a
single centre, which would simultaneously direct the party, the
government and the State. This project corresponds to
the determination to resist to the last against any revolutionary
attack; it thus allows fascism to win the support of the most
decisively reactionary part of the industrial bourgeoisie and of
the landowners.
16. The fascist method of defending order,
property and the State tends, even more than the traditional
system of compromises and left policies, to shatter social
cohesion and the political superstructures which go with it. The
reactions which it provokes must be examined in relation to its
application in both the economic and in the political field.
In the political field, first of all, the organic unity of the
bourgeoisie in fascism was not achieved immediately after the
winning of power. Centres of a bourgeois opposition to the
régime remain outside fascism. On the one hand, the group
which remains faithful to the Giolittian solution of the problem
of the State has not been absorbed. This group is linked to
a section of the industrial bourgeoisie and, with a programme of
“labourist” reformism, exerts an influence on layers of workers
and petty bourgeois. On the other hand, the programme of basing
the State upon a rural democracy in the South and upon the
“healthy” part of Northern industry (Corriere della sera,
free-traders, Nitti) is tending to become the programme of a
political organization of opposition to fascism with a mass base
in the South (National Union).
Fascism is compelled to struggle very fiercely against these
surviving groups, and to struggle even more fiercely against
freemasonry, which it rightly considers as the organizing centre
of all the traditional forces supporting the State. This struggle,
which is the sign of a break in the bloc of conservative and
anti-proletarian forces, whatever the intentions, may in certain
circumstances favour the development and self-assertion of the
proletariat as a third and decisive factor of the political
situation.
In the economic field, fascism acts as the instrument of an
industrial and agrarian oligarchy, to concentrate control over all
the wealth of the country in the hands of capitalism. This cannot
fail to provoke discontent in the petty bourgeoisie, which
believed that with the arrival of fascism the hour of its rule had
struck.
A whole series of measures are being adopted by fascism to
encourage a new industrial concentration (abolition of death
duties; financial and fiscal policy; heightening of
protectionism), and to these there correspond other measures
favouring the landowners and directed against small and medium
farmers (taxes; duty on grain; “the grain battle”). The
accumulation which these measures achieve is not an increase in
the national wealth, but the plundering of one class in favour of
another: in other words, that of the working and middle classes in
favour of the plutocracy. The intention of favouring the
plutocracy is shamelessly revealed in the plan to legalize the
preference share system in the new commercial code; a little
handful of financiers will in this way be enabled, without
restriction, to dispose of vast masses of savings originating from
the middle and petty bourgeoisie, and these categories will be
stripped of the right to dispose of their wealth.
On the same level, but with bigger political consequences, must
be placed the plan to unite the issuing banks, i.e. in practice to
eliminate the two big Southern banks. These two banks today fulfil
the function of absorbing the savings of the South and the
remittances of the emigrants (600 million): in other words. the
function which in the past was fulfilled by the State through
issuing treasury bonds, and by the Banca di Sconto in the
interests of a part of Northern heavy industry. The Southern banks
have been controlled until now by the ruling classes of the South
themselves, which have found in this control a real basis for
their political domination. The elimination of the Southern banks
as issuing banks will transfer this function to the Northern big
industry which controls, via the Banca Commerciale, the
Bank of Italy. We shall thus see the “colonial” economic
exploitation and impoverishment of the South increased, and the
slow process of detachment of the Southern petty bourgeoisie from
the State accelerated.
The economic policy of fascism is completed by the measures
aimed at raising the value of the lira, stabilizing the
trade balance, paying war debts and encouraging the intervention
of Anglo-American capital in Italy. In all these fields, fascism
is carrying out the programme of the plutocracy (Nitti) and of an
industrial landowning minority, at the expense of the great
majority of the population, whose conditions of life are being
made progressively worse.
All the ideological propaganda and the political and economic
activity of fascism is crowned by its tendency to
“imperialism.” This tendency expresses the need felt by the
industrial/landowning ruling classes of Italy to find outside the
national domain the elements to resolve the crisis of Italian
society. It contains the germs of a war which in appearance will
be fought for Italian expansion, but in which fascist Italy will
in reality be an instrument in the hands of one of the imperialist
groups which are striving for world domination.
17. As a consequence of fascism’s policies,
deep reactions are provoked among the masses. The most serious
phenomenon is the sharper and sharper detachment of the rural
populations of the South and the Islands from the system of forces
which rule the State. The old local ruling class (Orlando, Di
Cesaro, De Nicola, etc.) no longer exercises in a systematic
fashion its function as a connecting link with the State. The
petty bourgeoisie thus tends to draw closer to the peasantry. The
system of exploitation and oppression of the Southern masses is
being carried to extremes by fascism; this facilitates the
radicalization of the intermediate categories too, and poses the
Southern question in its true terms, as a question which will only
be resolved by the insurrection of the peasants allied to the
proletariat, in a struggle against both capitalists and
landowers.
The middle and poor peasants of the other parts of Italy too
are taking on a revolutionary function, although in a slower
fashion. The Vatican – whose reactionary function has been taken
over by fascism – no longer controls the rural populations
completely through the priests, Catholic Action and the Popular
Party. There is a part of the peasantry which has been reawoken to
struggle in defence of its own interests, precisely by the
organizations authorized and directed by the ecclesiastical
authorities. Now, under the economic and political pressure of
fascism, this element is intensifying its own class orientation
and beginning to feel that its destiny cannot be separated from
that of the working class. A sign of this tendency is the Miglioli
phenomenon. A very interesting symptom of it is also the fact that
the White organizations – which since they are a part of Catholic
Action are directly controlled by the Vatican – have had to enter
inter-union committees with the Red peasant leagues: an expression
of that proletarian period which the catholics indicated from 1870
onwards was imminent for Italian society.
As for the proletariat, activity to shatter its forces is
finding a limit in the active resistance of the revolutionary
vanguard, and in a passive resistance of the broad masses, who
remain fundamentally class-conscious and give signs that they will
begin to move again, as soon as the physical pressure of fascism
is relaxed and the stimuli of class interest make themselves more
strongly felt. The attempt via the fascist unions to split their
ranks can be considered to have failed. The fascist unions,
changing their programme, are now becoming direct instruments of
reactionary repression in the service of the State.
18. Fascism reacts to the dangerous shifts and
new recruitment of forces provoked by its policies, by subjecting
the whole of society to the weight of a military force and
repressive system which hold the population riveted to the
mechanical fact of production – without any possibility of having
a life of its own, expressing a will of its own, or organizing to
defend its own interests.
So-called fascist legislation has no purpose other than to
consolidate this system and make it permanent. The new political
electoral law, the modifications to the administrative structure
with the introduction of the podesta in rural communes,
etc., are designed to mark the end of any participation by the
masses in the country’s political and administrative life. The
control over associations prevents any permanent “legal” form of
organization of the masses. The new trade-union policy strips the
Confederation of Labour and the class unions of any possibility of
negotiating agreements, in order to exclude them from contact with
the masses who had been organized around them. The proletarian
press is suppressed. The class party of the proletariat is reduced
to a purely illegal existence. Physical violence and police
persecution are utilized systematically, above all in the
countryside, to strike terror and preserve a situation of
emergency.
The result of this complex activity of reaction and repression
is an imbalance between the real relationship of social forces and
the relationship of organized forces, so that an apparent return
to normality and stability in fact corresponds to an
intensification of contradictions ready to break out at any
instant in new ways.
18 bis. The crisis which followed the Matteotti
assassination furnished an example of the possibility that the
apparent stability of the fascist régime might be shaken
from below, by the sudden outbreak of economic and political
conflicts which have grown sharper without being noticed. At the
same time, it furnished proof of the incapacity of the petty
bourgeoisie in the present historical period to lead the struggle
against industrial/landowning reaction to any outcome.
19. The motor forces of the Italian
revolution, as is now clear from our analysis, are in order of
their importance the following:
(a) the working class and the rural proletariat;
(b) the peasantry of the South and the Islands, and the peasantry in the other parts of Italy.
The development and speed of the revolutionary process cannot
be predicted, without an evaluation of subjective elements:
i.e. of the extent to which the working class succeeds in
acquiring its own political profile, a precise class consciousness
and an independence from all the other classes; and of the extent
to which it succeeds in organizing its own forces, i.e. in de
facto exercising leadership over the other elements and above
all in concretizing politically its alliance with the
peasantry.
One may in general assert, basing oneself moreover upon Italian
experience, that one will pass from the period of revolutionary
preparation to an “immediately” revolutionary period when the
industrial and rural proletariat of the North has succeeded in
regaining – thanks to the development of the objective situation,
and through a series of specific and immediate struggles – a high
level of organization and combativity.
As for the peasantry, that of the South and Islands must be
included in the front line among the forces upon which the
insurrection against the industrial/landowning dictatorship must
rely, although one should not attribute to them decisive
importance unless they are allied to the proletariat. The alliance
between them and the workers is the result of a natural and deep
historical process, encouraged by all the past experience of the
Italian State. For the peasants of the other parts of Italy, the
process of orientation towards an alliance with the proletariat is
slower and will have to be encouraged by careful political
activity on the part of the proletarian party. The successes
already obtained in Italy in this field indicate, moreover, that
the problem of breaking the alliance of the peasantry with the
reactionary forces must be posed, to a great extent, in other
western European countries too, as the problem of destroying the
influence of Catholic organizations on the rural masses.
20. The obstacles to the development of the
revolution do not derive only from fascist pressure, but are also
related to the variety of groups into which the bourgeoisie is
divided. Each of these groups strives to exert an influence on a
section of the working population, to prevent the influence of the
proletariat being extended; or on the proletariat itself, to cause
it to lose its profile and autonomy as a revolutionary class. In
this way a chain of reactionary forces is created, which starts
from fascism and includes: anti-fascist groups which do not have a
large mass base (liberals); those which have a base among the
peasants and petty bourgeoisie (democrats, war-veterans, Popular
Party, republicans) and in part also among the workers (Reformist
Party); and those which have a proletarian base, and tend to
maintain the working-class masses in a condition of passivity and
to induce them to follow the policies of other classes (Maximalist
Party). The group which leads the Confederation of Labour should
also be considered from this point of view, i.e. as the vehicle of
a disintegrative influence of other classes upon the workers. Each
of the groups we have mentioned holds a part of the Italian
working population in its grip. Modification of this state of
affairs can only be conceived of as the result of a systematic and
uninterrupted political activity of the proletarian vanguard
organized in the Communist Party.
Particular attention must be accorded to the groups and parties
which have a mass base – or seek to create one as either
democratic or regional parties – among the agricultural population
of the South and Islands (National Union; Sardinian Action Party;
Action Parties of Molise, Irpinia, etc.). These parties do not
exercise any direct influence upon the proletariat; but they are
an obstacle to realizing the alliance between workers and
peasants. Orienting the agricultural classes of the South towards
a rural democracy and towards regional democratic solutions, they
break the unity of the liberation process of the Italian working
people; prevent the peasants from bringing their struggle against
the economic and political exploitation of the bourgeoisie and the
landowners to an outcome; and prepare their transformation into
white guards of reaction. The political success of the working
class in this field too is dependent upon the political activity
of the proletariat’s party.
21. The possibility that action by so-called
democratic anti-fascist groups might bring down the fascist
régime would only exist if these groups succeeded in
neutralizing the activity of the proletariat, and in controlling a
mass movement that would enable it to brake the latter’s
development. The function of the democratic bourgeois opposition
is rather to collaborate with fascism, in preventing the
reorganization of the working class and the realization of its
class programme. In this sense, a compromise between fascism and
bourgeois opposition is in train, and will inspire the policies of
every “centre” formation which emerges from the ruins of the
Aventine. The opposition will only be able to become once again
the protagonist of the capitalist régime’s defence
activity, when fascist repression itself no longer succeeds in
preventing the unleashing of class conflict, and the danger of a
proletarian insurrection, welded to a peasant war, appears grave
and imminent. The possibility that the bourgeoisie and fascism
itself may resort to the system of reaction concealed by the
appearance of a “left government” must, therefore, be permanently
present in our perspectives (division of functions between fascism
and democracy, Theses of the Fifth World Congress).
22. From this analysis of the factors of
revolution and its perspectives, the tasks of the Communist Party
can be deduced. The criteria for the Party’s organizational and
political activity must be related to the analysis, from which the
basic coordinates of its programme derive.
23. Having victoriously resisted the
reactionary wave which sought to engulf it (1923); having
contributed with its own actions to marking a first halt in the
process of dispersal of the working-class forces (1924 elections);
having taken advantage of the Matteotti crisis to reorganize a
proletarian vanguard which, with notable success, opposed the
attempt to instal a petty-bourgeois predominance in political life
(Aventine); and having laid the basis of a real peasant policy of
the Italian proletariat – the party today finds itself in the
phase of political preparation of the revolution.
Its fundamental task can be indicated by these three points:
(a) to organize and unify the industrial and rural proletariat for the revolution;
(b) to organize and mobilize around the proletariat all the
forces necessary for the victory of the revolution and the
foundation of the workers’ State;
(c) to place before the proletariat and its allies the problem
of insurrection against the bourgeois State and of the struggle
for proletarian dictatorship, and to guide them politically and
materially towards their solution, through a series of partial
struggles.
24. The organization of the proletarian
vanguard in a Communist Party is the essential feature of our
organizational activity. The Italian workers have learnt from
their experience (1919-20) that where the leadership of a
Communist Party, built as the party of the working class and as
the party of revolution, is missing, no victorious outcome of the
struggle to overthrow the capitalist order is possible. The
construction of a Communist Party which really is the party of the
working class and the party of revolution – in other words, that
is a “Bolshevik” party – is directly related to the following
basic points:
(a) the party’s ideology;
(b) its form of organization and degree of cohesion;
(c) its capacity to operate in contact with the masses;
(d) its strategic and tactical capacity.
Each of these points is closely linked with the others, and
cannot logically be separated from them. Each of them, in fact,
points to and contains a series of problems whose solutions are
mutually interconnected and overlapping. Examining them separately
will only be useful if it is borne in mind that none of them can
be resolved, without all being tackled simultaneously and brought
to a solution.
25. The Communist Party needs complete
ideological unity in order to be able at all moments to fulfil its
function as leader of the working class. Ideological unity is an
element of the Party’s strength and political capacity; it is
indispensable, to make it into a Bolshevik Party. The basis of
ideological unity is the doctrine of Marxism and Leninism, this
last being understood as Marxist doctrine adapted to the problems
of the period of imperialism and the start of the proletarian
revolution (Theses on Bolshevization of the April 1925
Enlarged Executive meeting, numbers 4 and 6).
The Communist Party of Italy formed its ideology in the
struggle against social-democracy (reformists) and against the
political centrism represented by the Maximalist Party. However,
it did not find in the history of the Italian workers’ movement
any vigorous or continuous current of Marxist thought that it
could invoke. Moreover, there is no deep or widespread knowledge
in its ranks of the theories of Marxism and Leninism. Hence,
deviations are possible. Raising the Party’s ideological level
must be achieved by a systematic internal activity designed to
ensure that all members have a thorough awareness of the immediate
aims of the revolutionary movement, a certain capacity of Marxist
analysis of the situation, and a corresponding capacity for
political orientation (party school). Any conception must be
repudiated which asserts that factors of revolutionary
consciousness and awareness, which constitute ideology, can be
realized in the Party without being realized in a vast number of
the individuals who make it up.
26. In spite of the beginnings of a struggle
against rightist and centrist degenerations of the workers’
movement, the danger of rightist deviations is present within the
Communist Party of Italy. In the theoretical field, this danger is
represented by the attempts to revise Marxism made by comrade
Graziadei, in the guise of a “scientific” refinement of some of
the basic concepts of Marx’s doctrine. Graziadei’s attempts
certainly cannot lead to the creation of a current, and hence a
faction, which endangers the ideological unity and the cohesion of
the party. However, they imply a support for rightist currents and
political deviations. In any case, they point to the need for the
party to carry out a deep study of Marxism and to acquire a higher
and more solid theoretical consciousness.
The danger that a right-wing tendency might be created is
linked to the general situation in the country. The very
repression exercised by fascism tends to nourish the view that,
since the proletariat cannot soon overturn the régime, the
best tactic is one whose aim is, if not an actual bourgeois-proletarian
bloc for the constitutional elimination of fascism,
at least a passivity of the revolutionary vanguard and non-intervention
of the Communist Party in the immediate political
struggle, thus allowing the bourgeoisie to use the proletariat as
electoral troops against fascism. This programme is expressed
through the formula that the Communist Party must be the “left
wing” of an opposition of all the forces conspiring to bring down
the fascist régime. It is the expression of a profound
pessimism concerning the revolutionary capacities of the working
class.
The same pessimism and the same deviations lead to an incorrect
interpretation of the nature and historical function of the
social-democratic parties at the present time. They lead to
forgetting that social-democracy, although it still to a great
extent conserves its social base in the proletariat, must so far
as its ideology and the political function it fulfils are
concerned be considered, not as a right wing of the working-class
movement, but as a left wing of the bourgeoisie, and as such must
be unmasked in the eyes of the masses.
The right-wing danger must be fought through ideological
propaganda, by counterposing the revolutionary programme of the
working class and its party to the right-wing programme, and by
ordinary disciplinary means whenever the necessity arises.
27. There is a similar connection between the
origins of the Party and the general situation in the country on
the one hand, and the danger of a leftist deviation from Marxist
and Leninist ideology on the other. This is represented by the
ultra-left tendency led by comrade Bordiga. This tendency was
formed in the specific situation of disintegration and
programmatic, organizational, strategic and tactical incapacity in
which the Italian Socialist Party found itself from the end of the
War up to the Livorno Congress. Its origin and fortunes are,
moreover, related to the fact that, since the working class is a
minority in the Italian working population, there is a constant
danger that its party will be corrupted by infiltrations from
other classes, and in particular from the petty bourgeoisie. The
far left tendency reacted to this condition of the working class
and to the situation in the Italian Socialist Party with a
particular ideology, i.e. a conception of the nature of the Party
and its function and tactics which conflicts with that of Marxism
and Leninism.
(a) The far left, ignoring or under-estimating the Party’s
social content, defines it as an “organ” of the working class,
constituted through the synthesis of heterogeneous elements. In
reality, when defining the party it is necessary above all to
stress that it is a “part” of the working class. The error in
defining the party leads to an incorrect approach to
organizational problems and problems of tactics.
(b) For the far left, the function of the Party is not to lead
the class at all moments, striving to remain in contact with it
through all changes in the objective situation, but to form and
prepare cadres, who can lead the masses when the evolution of the
situation has brought them to the party and made them accept the
programmatic and principled positions it has fixed.
(c) As regards tactics, the far left maintains that these must
not be determined on the basis of the objective situation and the
position of the masses, in such a way as always to be in line with
reality and provide a constant contact with the broadest layers of
the working population; instead, they must be determined on the
basis of formalist concerns. Ultra-leftism is characterized by the
idea that deviations from the principles of communist politics are
not to be avoided by the construction of “Bolshevik” parties
capable of carrying out, without deviating, any political action
required to mobilize the masses and for the victory of revolution;
but that they can be avoided only by imposing rigid formal limits
of an external kind upon the party’s tactics. (In the
organizational field: “individual recruitment", i.e. rejection of
“fusions” – which can in fact, always given the right conditions,
be a very effective means of extending the party’s influence. In
the political field: misrepresentation of the terms of the problem
of winning a majority; trade-union united front, but no political
united front; no difference in the way of combating democracy,
according to the degree of mass support for counterrevolutionary
democratic formations, or to the imminence and gravity of a
reactionary danger; rejection of the slogan of workers’ and
peasants’ government.) As a consequence, the situation of mass
movements is only examined in order to check the line which has
been deduced on the basis of formalistic and sectarian
concerns. Thus, in determining the party’s policy, the specific
element is always missing; the unity and completeness of vision
which characterizes our method of political enquiry (dialectic) is
broken; the activity and the slogans of the party lose their
effectiveness and value, remaining simply propaganda activity and
propaganda slogans.
As a consequence of these positions, political passivity of the
party is inevitable. “Abstentionism” was an aspect of this in the
past. This allows us to relate ultra-leftism to maximalism and to
rightist deviations. It is, moreover, like the rightwing
tendencies, the expression of a scepticism concerning the
possibility for the working-class masses to organize, from within
themselves, a class party capable of leading the broad masses and
at the same time striving to keep them bound to it at all
times. The ideological struggle against ultra-leftism must be
waged by counterposing to it the Marxist and Leninist conception
of the proletarian party as a mass party. And by demonstrating the
need for the latter to adapt its tactics to situations in order to
be able to modify them; in order not to lose contact with the
masses; and in order to acquire continually new zones of
influence.
Ultra-leftism was the official ideology of the Italian party in
the first period of its existence. It is advocated by comrades who
were among the founders of the party and made a very great
contribution to its construction after Livorno. There are,
therefore, factors which explain how this conception was for a
long time deeply rooted in the majority of comrades. It was not so
much critically evaluated by them in any thorough-going manner, as
it was the consequence of a widespread state of mind. It is thus
evident that the leftist danger must be seen as an immediate
reality; as an obstacle not only to ideological unification and
refinement, but to the party’s political development and the
effectiveness of its activity. It must be combated as such, not
just through propaganda, but through political action and, if
necessary, through organizational measures.
28. One element of the party’s ideology is the
degree of internationalist spirit which has penetrated its
ranks. This is very strong among us as a spirit of international
solidarity, but as the awareness of belonging to a world party it
is not so strong. One thing which contributes to this weakness is
the tendency to present the far left’s conception as a national
conception ("originality” and “historical” value of the positions
of the “Italian Left”), which is counterposed to the Marxist and
Leninist conception of the Communist International and seeks to
replace it. Hence, the origins of a kind of “party patriotism",
which shrinks from becoming integrated into a world organization,
in accordance with the principles which are proper to that
organization (refusal of responsibilities, international faction
struggle, etc.). This weakness of internationalist spirit provides
the terrain for an echo within the party of the campaign which the
bourgeoisie wages against the Communist International, describing
it as an organ of the Russian State. Certain of the far left’s
theses on this question coincide with habitual theses of the
counter-revolutionary parties. They must be combated with extreme
vigour, and with propaganda designed to show how the Russian party
historically plays a predominant and directive function in the
construction of a Communist International, and to show what the
position of the Russian workers’ State – first and sole real
conquest of the working class in the struggle for power – is, with
respect to the international workers movement (Theses on the
International Situation).
29. All problems of organization are political
problems. Their solution must enable the party to carry out its
fundamental task of ensuring that the proletariat acquires
complete political independence; giving it a physiognomy, a
personality and a precise revolutionary consciousness; and
preventing any infiltration or disintegrative influence from
classes and elements which, even if they have interests contrary
to capitalism, are not willing to take the struggle against the
latter to its ultimate consequences.
First and foremost, there is a political problem: that of the
basis for organization. The party organization must be constructed
on the basis of production and hence of the work-place
(cells). This principle is essential for the creation of a
“Bolshevik” party. It depends on the fact that the party must be
equipped to lead the mass movement of the working class, which is
naturally unified by the development of capitalism in accordance
with the process of production. By locating the organizational
basis in the place of production, the party performs an act of
choice of the class on which it bases itself. It proclaims that it
is a class party and the party of a single class, the working
class.
All objections to the principle that bases party organization
on production derive from conceptions which are related to classes
alien to the proletariat, even if they are presented by comrades
and groups who call themselves “far left.” They are based on a
pessimistic view of the revolutionary capacities of the worker and
of the communist worker, and are an expression of the anti-proletarian
spirit of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who
believe they are the salt of the earth and see the workers as the
material instrument of social transformation rather than as the
conscious and intelligent protagonist of revolution.
There are being reproduced in the Italian party, with respect
to cells, the discussion and conflict which led in Russia to the
split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, with respect to the same
problem of choice of class: of the party’s class character, and
the way in which nonproletarian elements can join the party. This
fact, moreover, has a very great importance in relation to the
Italian situation. For it is the social structure itself, and the
conditions and traditions of political struggle, which in Italy
make the danger of building the party on the basis of a
“synthesis” of heterogeneous elements – i.e. the danger of opening
the way through these for a paralysing influence of other classes
– far more serious than elsewhere. This danger, moreover, will be
made all the more serious precisely by the policies of fascism,
which will drive whole strata of the petty bourgeoisie on to the
terrain of revolution.
It is certain that the Communist Party can be solely a party of
workers. The working class and its party cannot do without
intellectuals, nor can they ignore the problem of grouping around
themselves and giving a lead to all those elements who, in one way
or another, are driven to rebel against capitalism. Thus the
Communist Party cannot close its doors to peasants; indeed it must
contain peasants and use them to tighten the political bond
between the proletariat and the rural classes. But it is necessary
to reject vigorously, as counter-revolutionary, any conception
which makes the party into a “synthesis” of heterogeneous
elements – instead of maintaining, without any concessions of this
kind, that it is a part of the proletariat; that the proletariat
must mark it with the imprint of its own organization; and that
the proletariat must be guaranteed a leading function within the
party itself.
30. There is no consistency in the practical
objections to organization on the basis of production (cells),
according to which this organizational structure would not allow
us to transcend the competition between different categories of
worker and would leave the party at the mercy of
functionarism. The practice of the factory movement (1919-20) has
shown that only an organization adapted to the place and system of
production makes it possible to establish a contact between the
upper and lower strata of the working masses (skilled workers,
unskilled workers and labourers), and to create bonds of
solidarity which eliminate the basis for any phenomenon of ‘labour
aristocracy’.
Organization by cells leads to the formation within the party
of a very large layer of leading cadres (cell secretaries, members
of cell committees, etc.), who are part of the masses and remain
within them even though they exercise leading functions – unlike
the secretaries of territorial branches, who were necessarily
elements detached from the working masses. The party must pay
particular care to the education of these comrades, who form the
connecting fabric of the organization and are the instrument for
binding it to the masses. From whatever point of view it is
considered, the transformation of its structure on the basis of
production remains the party’s fundamental task in the present
period, and the means to solve the most important of its
problems. We must insist upon it, and intensify all ideological
and practical work relative to it.
31. The organization of a Bolshevik Party must
at all moments in the life of the party be a centralized
organization, led by the Central Committee not just in words but
also in deed. An iron proletarian discipline must reign in its
ranks. This does not mean that the party must be ruled from on
high with autocratic methods. Both the Central Committee and the
subordinate leading bodies are formed on the basis of election,
and on the basis of a selection of capable elements carried out
through the test of work and through the experience of the
movement. This second element guarantees that the criteria for the
formation of the local leading groups and of the central leading
group are not mechanical, external and “parliamentary", but
correspond to a real process of formation of a homogeneous
proletarian vanguard linked to the masses.
The principle of election of the leading bodies – internal
democracy – is not an absolute one, but relative to the conditions
of political struggle. Even when it is restricted, the central and
local organs must always consider their power not as being
super-imposed, but as springing from the party’s will, and must
strive to accentuate their proletarian character and to multiply
their links with the mass of comrades and with the working
class. This last necessity is felt particularly keenly in Italy,
where reaction has imposed and continues to impose a strict
limitation of internal democracy.
Internal democracy is also relative to the degree of political
capacity possessed by the local bodies, and by the individual
comrades working in the localities. The activity which the centre
carries on to increase this capacity makes possible an extension
of “democratic” methods, and a growing reduction of the system of
“cooptation” and of interventions from above to sort out local
organizational questions.
32. The centralization and cohesion of the
party require that there should not exist organized groups within
it which take on the character of factions. A Bolshevik Party is
sharply differentiated in this respect from social-democratic
parties, which contain a great variety of groups, and in which
factional struggle is the normal method of working out a political
orientation and selecting a leading group. The Communist Parties
and International emerged after a factional struggle waged inside
the IInd International. Establishing themselves as the parties and
the world organization of the proletariat, they chose as the norm
of their internal life and development, in place of factional
struggle, the organic collaboration of all tendencies through
participation in the leading bodies.
The existence of, and struggle between, factions are in fact
incompatible with the essence of the proletarian party, since they
break its unity and open a path for the influence of other
classes. This does not mean that tendencies may not arise in the
party, and that these tendencies may not on occasion seek to
organize themselves as factions; but it does mean that a vigorous
struggle must be conducted to prevent this latter eventuality, by
reducing tendency conflicts, theoretical discussions and the
selection of leaders to the form appropriate to communist parties,
i.e. to a process of real and unitary (dialectical) evolution and
not to “parliamentary” modes of debate or struggle.
33. The working-class movement failed as a
result of the impotence of the PSI, brought about by the faction
struggle and by the fact that each faction, independently of the
party, carried on its own policy, thus paralysing the activity of
the other factions and that of the party as a whole. This
experience provides a good terrain for creating and maintaining
the cohesion and centralization which must characterize a
Bolshevik party.
Among the different groups from which the Communist Party of
Italy drew its origin, there subsists some differentiation, which
must disappear as the common Marxist and Leninist ideology strikes
deeper roots. Only among the followers of the anti-Marxist
ideology of the far left have a homogeneity and solidarity of a
factional kind been long maintained. Indeed, an attempt was made
to pass from concealed factionalism to an open factional struggle,
with the setting up of the so-called Comitato
d’Intesa. The intensity of the party’s reaction to this
crazy attempt to split its forces gives a sure guarantee that any
attempt in this field to take us back to the habits of
social-democracy will meet with no response.
The danger of factionalism to some extent also exists as a
result of fusion with the IIIrd-Internationalists from the
Socialist Party. The IIIrd-Internationalists do not possess a
common ideology, but there exist links between them of an
essentially corporate nature, created during the two years in
which they were a faction inside the PSI. These links have been
steadily weakening, and it will not be difficult to eliminate them
totally.
The struggle against factionalism must above all involve
propaganda for correct organizational principles. But it will not
succeed until the Italian party is once again able to consider the
discussion of its own current problems and those of the
International as something normal, and to orient its tendencies in
relation to these problems.
34. A Bolshevik Party must be organized in
such a way that it can function in contact with the masses,
whatever the conditions may be. This principle takes on the
greatest importance among us, because of the repression exercised
by fascism with the aim of preventing the real relation of forces
from being translated into a relation of organized forces. Only
with the greatest concentration and intensity of party activity
can one succeed in neutralizing at least in part this negative
factor, and in preventing it from hampering greatly the
revolutionary process. It is, therefore, necessary to take into
account the following.
(a) The number of members and their political capacity; they
must be enough to allow a continous extension of our influence. It
is necessary to combat the tendency artificially to restrict
membership; this leads to passivity and to atrophy. Every member,
however, must be a politically active element, capable of
disseminating the party’s influence and translating its directives
into action on a daily basis, and leading a part of the working
masses.
(b) The utilization of all comrades in some practical work.
(c) The unitary coordination of the various kinds of activity,
by means of committees in which the whole party is articulated as
a working body among the masses.
(d) The collegiate functioning of the party’s central organs,
seen as a condition for the establishment of a homogeneous and
cohesive, ‘Bolshevik’ leading group.
(e) The capacity of comrades to work among the masses, to be
continuously present among them, to be in the first line in every
struggle, to be able on all occasions to take and keep the
position which is appropriate for the vanguard of the
proletariat. This point is stressed because the need to work
clandestinely, and the incorrect ideology of the “far left” have
resulted in a limitation of our capacity to work among the masses
and with the masses.
(f) The capacity of the local organisms and of individual
comrades, to confront unforeseen circumstances and take up correct
positions even before directives arrive from the leading
bodies. It is necessary to combat the form of passivity – once
again a residue of the false organizational conceptions of
ultra-leftism – which consists in only being able to “wait for
orders from above.” The party must be characterized by
“initiative” at the base; in other words, the base organs must be
able to react immediately to every unforeseen and unexpected
situation.
(g) The ability to carry out “underground” (illegal) activity
and defend the party from reaction of every kind, without losing
contact with the masses – indeed making that very contact with the
broadest layers of the working class serve as a defence. In the
present situation, defence of the party and its apparatus that is
achieved by confining oneself to carrying on simply an activity of
‘internal organization’ must be considered as an abandonment of
the revolutionary cause.
Each of these points must be considered with attention, because
it indicates both a weakness of the party and a progress which it
must achieve. They are all the more important insofar as it is to
be foreseen that the blows of reaction will further weaken the
apparatus linking the centre and the local organizations, however
great the efforts made to keep it intact.
35. The strategic and tactical capacity of the
party is the capacity to organize and unify around the proletarian
vanguard and the working class all the forces necessary for
revolutionary victory; and to lead these in fact towards the
revolution, taking advantage of objective circumstances and of the
shifts in the balance of forces which they bring about, both among
the working population and among the enemies of the working
class. With its strategy and tactics, the party “leads the working
class” in major historical movements and day-to-day struggles
alike. One form of leadership is linked to the other and
conditioned by it.
36. The principle that the party leads the
working class must not be interpreted in a mechanical manner. It
is not necessary to believe that the party can lead the working
class through an external imposition of authority. This is not
true, either with respect to the period which precedes the winning
of power, or with respect to the period which follows it. The
error of a mechanical interpretation of this principle must be
combated in the Italian party, as a possible consequence of the
ideological deviations of the far left. For these deviations lead
to an arbitrary, formal over-estimation of the party, so far as
its function as leader of the class is concerned. We assert that
the capacity to lead the class is related, not to the fact that
the party “proclaims” itself its revolutionary organ, but to the
fact that it “really” succeeds, as a part of the working class, in
linking itself with all the sections of that class and impressing
upon the masses a movement in the direction desired and favoured
by objective conditions. Only as a result of its activity among
the masses, will the party get the latter to recognize it as
“their” party (winning a majority); and only when this condition
has been realized, can it presume that it is able to draw the
working class behind it. The need for this activity among the
masses outweighs any party “patriotism.”
37. The party leads the class by penetrating
into all the organizations in which the working masses are
assembled; and by carrying out, in and through these, a systematic
mobilization of energies in line with the programme of the class
struggle, and an activity aimed at winning the majority to
communist directives.
The organizations in which the party works, and which tend by
their nature to incorporate the whole mass of workers, can never
substitute for the Communist Party, which is the political
organization of revolutionaries, in other words of the vanguard of
the proletariat. This excludes any relationship of subordination,
or of “equality” between the mass organizations and the party
(Stuttgart trade-union pact; pact of alliance between the Italian
Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labour). The
relationship between trade unions and party is a special one of
leadership, which is realized through the activity which the
communists carry out inside the unions. The communists organize
themselves into fractions in the unions, and in all the mass
formations, and participate in the front rank in the life of these
formations and the struggles which they wage, upholding their
party’s programme and slogans there. Every tendency to separate
oneself off from the life of those organizations, whatever they
may be, in which it is possible to make contact with the working
masses, is to be combated as a dangerous deviation, indicating
pessimism and generating passivity.
38. In the capitalist countries, trade unions
are the specific organs grouping the working masses. Activity in
the unions must be considered essential for the accomplishment of
the party’s aims. The party which renounces the struggle to
exercise its influence in the unions and to win leadership of
them, de facto renounces winning the mass of workers and
renounces the revolutionary struggle for power.
In Italy, activity in the unions takes on particular
importance; for such activity makes it possible to work with
greater intensity, and with better results, at that reorganization
of the industrial and rural proletariat which must restore it to a
predominant position vis-a-vis the other social classes. However,
fascist repression, and especially fascism’s new trade-union
policy, are creating a quite particular state of affairs. The
Confederation of Labour and the class unions are finding
themselves stripped of any possibility of carrying on an activity
of organization and economic defence in the traditional
forms. They are tending to become reduced to mere propaganda
offices. At the same time, however, the working class is being
driven by the pressure of the objective situation to reorder its
own forces on the basis of new forms of organization. Thus the
party must manage to carry out activity to defend the class union
and demand freedom for it; and at the same time it must encourage
and stimulate the tendency to create representative mass organisms
adapted to the system of production. With the class union’s
activity paralysed, defence of the workers’ immediate interests
tends to be carried out through a fragmentation of resistance and
struggle – by factory, by category, by workplace, etc. The
Communist Party must be able to follow all these struggles and
exercise a real leadership over them: ensuring that the unitary
and revolutionary character of class conflicts is not lost in
them, and indeed taking advantage of them to aid the mobilization
of the whole proletariat and its organization along a fighting
front (Trade-union Theses).
39. The party leads and unifies the working
class by taking part in all struggles of a partial nature, and by
formulating and agitating around a programme of demands of
immediate interest to the working class. Partial and limited
actions are considered by it as necessary steps to achieving the
progressive mobilization and unification of all the forces of the
working class.
The party combats the conception according to which one should
abstain from supporting or taking part in partial actions, because
the problems which interest the working class can be solved only
by the overthrow of the capitalist order and by a general action
on the part of all the anti-capitalist forces. It is aware of the
impossibility for the workers’ conditions to be improved in a
serious or lasting way, in the period of imperialism and before
the capitalist order has been overthrown. However, agitation
around a programme of immediate demands and support for partial
struggles is the only way of reaching the broad masses and
mobilizing them against capital. Moreover, any agitation carried
out or victory won by categories of workers in the field of
immediate demands makes the crisis of capitalism more acute, and
accelerates its fall subjectively too, insofar as it shifts the
unstable economic equilibrium upon which it bases its power
today.
The Communist Party links every immediate demand to a
revolutionary objective; makes use of every partial struggle to
teach the masses the need for general action and for insurrection
against the reactionary rule of capital; and seeks to ensure that
every struggle of a limited character is prepared and led in such
a way as to be able to lead to the mobilization and unification of
the proletarian forces, and not to their dispersal. It upholds
these conceptions inside the mass organizations leading partial
movements, or against the political parties which initiate
them. Or else it gives force to them by itself taking the
initiative in proposing partial actions, either within the mass
organizations or to other parties (united front tactics). In every
case, the party utilizes the experience of the movement in
question, and of the outcome of its own proposals, to increase its
influence – demonstrating through facts that its action programme
is the only one which corresponds to the interests of the masses
and to the objective situation – and to transport a backward
section of the working class onto a more advanced position.
Direct initiatives by the Communist Party for partial actions
may occur when it controls a notable part of the working class
through mass organisms; or when it is certain that one of its
direct slogans is followed likewise by a notable part of the
working class. The party will not, however, take this initiative
unless – depending on the objective situation – it leads to a
shift in its favour of the balance of forces, and represents a
step forward in the unification and mobilization of the class upon
revolutionary terrain.
It is excluded that a violent action by individuals or groups
can serve to shake the working-class masses out of their
passivity, if the party is not closely linked with them. In
particular, the activity of armed groups, even as a reaction to
the physical violence of the fascists, only has value insofar as
it is linked to a reaction of the masses or succeeds in provoking
or preparing one. Then it can acquire the same value in the field
of mobilization of material forces that strikes and specific
economic struggles have for the general mobilization of the
workers’ energies in defence of their class interests.
39 bis. It is an error to believe that immediate
demands and partial actions can have a purely economic
character. With the deepening of the crisis of capitalism, the
capitalist and landowning ruling classes are compelled, in order
to preserve their power, to limit and suppress the proletariat’s
organizational and political freedoms. Consequently, the demand
for these freedoms furnishes an excellent terrain for agitation
and partial struggles which may lead to the mobilization of vast
layers of the working population. All the legislation with which
the fascists in Italy suppress even the most elementary freedoms
of the working class, must therefore provide the Communist Party
with themes for agitating among the masses and mobilizing them. It
will be the Communist Party’s task to link each of the slogans it
launches in this field with the general directives of its
activity: in particular, with the practical demonstration of the
impossibility for the régime installed by fascism to
undergo radical limitations and transformations in a “liberal” and
“democratic” direction, without a mass struggle being unleashed
against fascism that will inevitably culminate in a civil
war. This conviction must be disseminated among the masses insofar
as we succeed, linking the partial demands of a political
character with those of an economic character, in transforming
“revolutionary democratic” movements into working-class, socialist
revolutionary movements.
This must be achieved in particular with respect to agitation
against the monarchy. The monarchy is one of the props of the
fascist régime; it is Italian fascism’s State form. The
anti-monarchic mobilization of the mass of the Italian population
is one of the aims which the Communist Party must set itself. It
will serve effectively to unmask certain of the socalled
anti-fascist groups who have coalesced in the Aventine. It must,
however, always be accompanied by agitation and struggle directed
against the other basic pillars of the fascist régime, the
industrial plutocracy and the landowners. In anti-monarchic
agitation, the problem of the form of the State will, moreover,
always be posed by the Communist Party in close connection with
the problem of the class content which the communists intend to
give the State. In the recent past (June 1925), the connection
between these problems was achieved by the party through basing
its political activity on the slogan: “Republican Assembly on the
basis of Workers’ and Peasants’ Committees; Workers’ Control of
Industry; Land to the Peasants."
40. The task of uniting the forces of the
proletariat and all the working class on a terrain of struggle is
the “positive” part of the united front tactic; in Italy, in the
present circumstances, this is the party’s fundamental
task. Communists must see the unity of the working class as a
concrete, real result to be achieved, in order to prevent
capitalism from implementing its plan of permanently fragmenting
the proletariat and making all revolutionary struggle
impossible. They must be capable of working in every way to
achieve this end. Above all, they must become capable of drawing
close to the workers of other parties and those without a party,
overcoming unwarranted hostility and incomprehension, and in all
cases presenting themselves as the advocates of unity of the class
in the struggle for its defence and liberation.
The “united front” of anti-fascist and anti-capitalist struggle
which the communists are striving to create must aim at being an
organized united front, i.e. at being based on bodies around which
the masses as a whole can regroup and find a form. Such are the
representative bodies which the masses themselves are tending to
create today, from the factories and on the occasion of every
struggle, since the possibilities for the trade unions to function
normally began to be limited. The communists must take account of
this tendency among the masses and be capable of stimulating it,
developing the positive elements which it contains and combating
the particularist deviations to which it may give rise. The matter
must be considered without fetishization of any particular form of
organization, bearing in mind that our fundamental purpose is to
achieve an ever-increasing mobilization and organic unity of
forces. To accomplish this purpose, it is necessary to be able to
adapt ourselves to every terrain offered us by reality; to make
use of every agitational theme; and to stress one form of
organization or another, depending on what is needed and depending
on each one’s possibilities for development (Trade-union
Theses: chapters dealing with internal commissions,
agitational committees and factory conferences).
41. The slogan of workers’ and peasants’
committees must be considered as a synthetic formula for all the
party’s activity, insofar as it proposes to create an organized
united front of the working class. The workers’ and peasants’
committees are organs of unity of the working class, whether
mobilized for a struggle of an immediate nature or for political
actions of broader scope. The slogan calling for the creation of
workers’ and peasants’ committees is thus a slogan to be
implemented immediately, in all cases where the party succeeds
through its activity in mobilizing a fairly extensive section of
the working class (more than a single factory, or a single
category in a locality). But at the same time it is a political
solution and an agitational slogan appropriate for a whole period
of the party’s existence and activity. It makes evident and
concrete the need for the workers to organize their forces, and
counterpose them in practice to those of all groups of bourgeois
origin and nature, in order to become the determining and
preponderant element in the political situation.
42. The tactic of the united front as
political activity (manoeuvre) designed to unmask so-called
proletarian and revolutionary parties and groups which have a mass
base, is closely linked with the problem of how the Communist
Party is to lead the masses and how it is to win a majority. In
the form in which it has been defined by the World Congresses, it
is applicable in all cases in which, because of the mass support
of the groups against which we are fighting, frontal struggle
against them is not sufficient to give us rapid and far-reaching
results. The success of this tactic is related to the degree to
which it is preceded or accompanied by an effective unification
and mobilization of the masses, achieved by the party through
action from below.
In Italy, the united front tactic must continue to be utilized
by the party, insofar as it is still far from having won a
decisive influence over the majority of the working class and the
working population. The specific Italian conditions ensure the
vitality of intermediate political formations, based on ambiguity
and favoured by the passivity of a great part of the masses
(Maximalists, Republicans, Unitary Socialists). The centre group
which will very probably emerge from the collapse of the Aventine
will be a formation of this kind. It is not possible to struggle
fully against the danger which these formations represent other
than through the united front tactic. But one should not rely on
achieving success except on the basis of the work carried out
simultaneously to wrench the masses from their passivity.
42 bis. The problem of the Maximalist party must be
considered in the context of the problem of all the other
intermediate formations which the Communist Party combats as
obstacles to the revolutionary preparation of the proletariat, and
towards which it adopts (depending on the circumstances) the
united front tactic. There is no doubt that in certain regions the
problem of winning a majority is specifically linked for us to the
problem of destroying the influence of the PSI and its
newspaper. The leaders of the Socialist Party, moreover, are
situating themselves more and more clearly among the
counter-revolutionary forces acting to preserve the capitalist
order (campaign for the intervention of American capital; de
facto solidarity with the reformist union leaders). Nothing
allows us to rule out entirely the possibility of their aligning
themselves with the Reformists, and subsequently fusing with
them. The Communist Party must bear this possibility in mind and
must already set itself the aim of ensuring that – in the event of
it occurring – the masses still controlled by the Maximalists but
nevertheless conserving a class outlook detach themselves
decisively from them, and link themselves as closely as possible
to the masses grouped around the communist vanguard. The good
results achieved by the fusion with the IIIrd-Internationalist
faction that was decided upon by the Fifth Congress have taught
the Italian party how, in given conditions, with a shrewd policy,
results can be achieved which could not be obtained through the
normal activity of propaganda and organization.
43. While it advances its programme of
immediate class demands, and concentrates its activity upon
achieving the mobilization and unification of the working-class
forces, the party – in order to facilitate the development of its
own activity – may present immediate solutions to general
political problems, and put forward these solutions among the
masses still supporting counter-revolutionary parties and
formations. This presentation of, and agitation around,
intermediate solutions – far removed both from the party’s own
slogans, and from the programme of inertia and passivity of the
groups we wish to combat – allows us to assemble broader forces
behind the party; to counterpose the words of the leaders of the
counter-revolutionary mass parties to their real intentions; to
push the masses towards revolutionary solutions; and to extend our
influence (example: the “Anti-parliament”). These intermediate
solutions cannot all be foreseen, because they must in all cases
be adapted to reality. But they must be such as to be able to
constitute a bridge towards the party’s slogans; and it must
always be evident to the masses that if they were to be realized,
this would lead to an acceleration of the revolutionary process
and a beginning of wider struggles.
The presentation of, and struggle for, such intermediate
solutions is the specific form of struggle which must be used
against the so-called democratic parties – which are in reality
one of the strongest props of the tottering capitalist order, and
as such alternate in power with the reactionary groups – when
these so-called democratic parties are linked to sizeable and
decisive layers of the working population (as in Italy, in the
first months of the Matteotti crisis), and when a serious
reactionary danger is imminent (tactic adopted by the Bolsheviks
towards Kerensky during the Kornilov coup). In such cases, the
Communist Party will obtain the best results by advancing the
actual solutions which would be those of the so-called democratic
parties, if they were in fact capable of waging a consistent
struggle for democracy with all the means required by the
situation. These parties, thus subjected to the test of deeds,
will unmask themselves before the masses and lose their influence
over them.
44. All the particular struggles led by the
party, and its activities on every front to mobilize and unite the
forces of the working class, must come together and be synthesized
in a political formula which can be easily understood by the
masses, and which has the greatest possible agitational value for
them. This formula is the “workers’ and peasants’ government.” It
indicates even to the most backward masses the need to win power
in order to solve the vital problems which interest them; and it
provides the means to transport them onto the terrain of the more
advanced proletarian vanguard (struggle for the dictatorship of
the proletariat). In this sense, it is an agitational slogan, but
only corresponds to a real phase of historical development in the
same sense as the intermediate solutions dealt with in the
preceding paragraph. The party cannot conceive of a realization of
this slogan except as the beginning of a direct revolutionary
struggle: i.e. of a civil war waged by the proletariat, in
alliance with the peasantry, with the aim of winning power. The
party could be led into serious deviations from its task as leader
of the revolution if it were to interpret the workers’ and
peasants’ government as corresponding to a real phase of
development of the struggle for power: in other words, if it
considered that this slogan indicated the possibility for the
problem of the State to be resolved in the interests of the
working class in any other form than the dictatorship of the
proletariat.