Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.14
THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE DEGENERATIVE PROCESS OF THE NEW COURSE (1972-1982)
An assessment of the degeneration of “il Programma Comunista” between 1972 and 1982
Coinciding with the digitalization of our archive, we intend to initiate in this and following issues a deepening and development of the assessment of what was the degenerative process known internally as new course and our struggle (which was not the only one) against this revisionist process, in defense of the continuity of the communist program within the old Party.
To focus the question, it is not the immediate objective of this work to criticize the current positions of the publication “il Programma comunista”, without prejudice to face this more limited issue in the future. Likewise, we will face the criticism of the role played then by this and other current organizations that claim to be part of the Party[1], as a collateral result of this work, insofar as it is related to the degenerative process we are studying.
When we speak of making an account of the degeneration of “il Programma Comunista” we refer to the process lived in the seventies and early eighties within the Party reconstituted after the Second World War on the basis of the continuity of the communist program and of the lessons drawn from the degeneration of the Communist International and from the struggle of the Italian Communist Left within it, whose main organ was the review “il Programma Comunista”, as had been previously “Battaglia Comunista” and “Prometeo”, reviews where our fundamental texts are published.
As in the case of the Communist International, in the 1970s, a series of tactical deviations were transformed into programmatic deviations and led to a series of organizational deviations to impose the new course to the whole organization that reacted against these deviations, until leading to a series of internal ruptures, which took the form of expulsions and splits, which became generalized at the beginning of the 80s.
The subject is complex and requires a not inconsiderable extension to be able to adequately expose the different points of clash between the current (or, in reality, currents) that from the direction of the Party wanted to submit to revision its programmatic and tactical theoretical bases, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the current (in reality, also currents) that fought against this degeneration from a relative isolation imposed by the circumstances.
Faced with this problem it is notorious that the current publication of “il Programma Comunista” decided to draw a veil as if nothing had happened[2] and that, on the contrary, “le Prolétaire/il Comunista” has since then been regurgitating pretended “assessments” in which they defend the Center's performance at the time (their own performance), contradicting themselves at every step, changing the version of the facts and shedding their skin several times in the process; all with the aim of burying under a mountain of earth their positions and actions of the time.
Both fragments, originating from the degenerated center of that time, have in common that they circumscribe the degenerative crisis as of October 1982 in France and June 1983 in Italy. That is to say, both claim the tactical, programmatic and organizational line that they imposed on the Party since 1972 and situate the crisis at the moment when they were displaced from their leading positions (although it is notorious that the current leaders of “le Prolétaire/il Comunista” legalized “Combat” and controlled its economic fund), after having carried out all the work of internal destruction of the positions of the Left.
The bubo which exploded at the end of 1982 and which was bursting sequentially in the subsequent period of cannibalism among those who had imposed on the Party their interclassist and activist line, was being prepared in a process which began much earlier.
In this issue we will only be able to outline the themes that will be deepened later, the main objective being to present a synthetic but sufficiently detailed description of the physiognomy of the new course, how the degenerative process manifested itself externally.
The preceding crises
The crisis to which we refer is not the only crisis suffered by the formal Party reconstituted after the Second World War. Others, whose study is even more important, are both the break with Damenian activism that took control of Battaglia Comunista and Prometeo in 1952 (today “Internationalist Communist Tendency”) and the double break represented by the Theses of 1965-66 against the mystical-idealist deviation (which resulted in the review “Invariance”) and against the activist deviation that wanted to reintroduce democratic centralism in the Party (which resulted in “Rivoluzione Comunista”).
In the struggle against these deviations, the Party produced fundamental theoretical materials, reaffirming the continuity of the communist program, coming out strengthened in its theoretical, tactical and programmatic background. The “Characteristic Theses” (1951), the “Considerations on the organic activity of the Party when the general situation is historically unfavorable” (1965), the “Theses of Naples” (1965) and the “Theses of Milan” (1966) condense - together with other texts - the fundamental bases of the Party, in complete continuity with the “Theses of the Abstentionist Communist Faction” (1920), the “Theses on the tactics of the Communist Party of Rome” (1922), the “Theses on the tactics presented at the IV Congress of the CI” (1922) and the “Theses of Lyon” (1926).
The same cannot be said of the 1973 break[3] with the “Florentines” who today publish “il Partito comunista”. The positions defended then and carried out in the organization regarding trade union tactics were erroneous[4] and constituted a deviation from the analysis made by the Party on the nature of the big trade union organizations in the dynamics of integration into the State. But the positions of those who remained and joined the direction of the Party were equally confusing, oscillating and incorrect, as was subsequently manifested. Thus, when we analyze the tactical deviations and more concretely the trade union question, we will see that the “tesine sindacali”[5] of 1972 (published as “il partito di fronte alla questione sindacale” in “il programma comunista” No.3/1972) contain spontaneist and anti-union positions that suppose a revision of the approaches of the Party and that are at the basis of the later tactical errors. We will return to this subject in another issue to treat it with the depth it requires, but a great deal of the errors and tactical drifts that we will see next and that were developed during the seventies derive from the search for substitutes and surrogates of the obvious central aspect that the intervention in the labor union plane has in our tactics and in the texts of the Party[6].
It is important to note that in the crises of 1952 and 1964, the Party was accused of immobilism, of “attesista” or “attendista”[7], of not being political enough. This is exactly the same accusation that since the mid '70s and early '80s, the degenerate direction of the Party launched against the sections that opposed the new course. In 1952 and 1964 the Party rejected the activist deviations. In 1972-82, the tables had turned and it was activism which led the organization and consummated the destruction of the historical line of the Party from within.
The causes of degeneration
Let us say from the beginning that the causes of the successive crises of the formal Party, as well as of the degenerative process whose study we propose to undertake, cannot be sought in specific individuals or currents. Although we will have to follow the role played by one or the other to show the development of the degenerative process, it will never be the acts of this or that individual that will explain the causes of the degeneration.
The ultimate cause of the degeneration and of the process that led to it was the weight of the prolongation of the counterrevolution initiated in 1926, the effects of which are still a heavy burden today. We have always said that “the party cannot but resent the characters of the real situation that surrounds it” (Considerations of 1965) and the weight of the prolongation of a historically unfavorable situation was felt, despite the fact that the Party had the necessary navigational instruments in the Theses of Naples and Milan.
To this we must add, as an accelerating factor of the outcome, at the end of the seventies:
- The last flickers of the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movements in the colonies (a stage considered essentially closed by the Party in the entire Afro-Asiatic area as early as 1964[8] ), flickers that extend until 1975 (with the defeat of the USA in Vietnam and the formal independence of East Timor, Mozambique, Angola and Western Sahara from what remained of the European “metropolises”), with the corresponding reverberation in the boiling water of the petty bourgeoisie and, especially, the students.
- The massive entry of militants coming from the May '68 wave and other organizations (swallowed up without any possibility of digestion), actively sought by the Parisian and Milanese centers and the other exponents of the new course to substitute, replace or displace the existing militancy opposed to the change of course that was being imposed on the Party.
- A lack of understanding (or self-interested forgetfulness) of the Party's forecasts and conditioning factors in relation to the potentiality of the 1975 crisis, which led to an attempt to fill in the delay between the economic curve and the social curve, accusing the Party of an alleged “delay” in the “change of phase”.
These last factors generated a context of impatience and hustle and bustle, an assessment of a “decisive moment” to which everything was sacrificed, which was the catalyst for a whole series of previous errors consisting in a drift of the organization in an activist, movementist, democratic and nationalist sense, “discovering” new “practical” terrains and “new weapons” (il programma comunista, No.20, 1982).
The fight against the new course
In "il Comunista" No. 33, 1992, the inheritors of the new course themselves narrate the previous resistance offered by the ensemble of Party militants from multiple sections who opposed the revision of the Party's approaches, of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical line of the Communist Left, that is, who opposed the new course represented then – along with others – by the current editors of "il Comunista" (exCombat).
"For this part of the comrades, every decision taken outside of what and how had "already been done" before, every interest in questions in the field of political and theoretical criticism that had not been addressed and resolved with firm theses and points before (by the current party or by the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s), took on the appearance of a danger or even an attempt to deviate the party and invalidate its theoretical and political capacity.
Against such a view – which gradually became characterized as an all-out defense of what, not so much the communist left as a political current, but of the Italian left in particular and especially of the person Amadeo Bordiga, had said written done, without actually understanding the profound lessons of the class battles waged by the communist left – an internal political struggle developed, led in particular by the Center through the effort to reframe the problems of today and the differences of the historical situation without losing the thread of those class battles.
This circular of March 1976, like others before and after it, is part of this internal political struggle. (...) From this point of view, this circular marks a point in favor, if one may so express it, in the struggle both against the party conservatism unfortunately well rooted in the organization, and against that theoretical arrogance mixed with a verbal wishful thinking but practical immobility characteristic of the anti-dialectics attached to a mystical vision of the party, of the class struggle, of the proletariat and its movement, of revolution, of communism". (Premessa alla circolare of 1976, published in “il Comunista”, No.33, 1992, p. 9)[9].
The militants and sections in France and Italy who opposed this revision of the principles and tactics of the Party were labeled with the epithet “attendista”. In these sections which resisted the maneuverist and disciplinary pressure of the direction of the new course, the transmission of “the flame along the historic ‘thread of time’”[10] had not been broken and the young militants learned from the old militants not only the ABC of Marxism, but a method and the sense of militancy, the old guard had transmitted ”an uncorrupted and powerful motto to a young guard”10.
The Spanish section was formed by workers who had emigrated to the factories in Germany and there they had met old Italian militants of the Party who had also emigrated either due to the persecution of the Stalinists or for economic reasons. There they met, worked and militated together with an old guard from whom they were able to learn an uncorrupted motto that from that moment on they defended tooth and nail against any deviation, renovation or updating of the line of Marxism and the Sinistra. As in the sections that were opposing the new course these comrades learned a method and the sense of militancy, at a time when the new course was beginning to manifest itself in the direction of the formal organization.
These comrades returned to the Spanish state to develop a Party action that went from the publication of the review “El Comunista” (since 1974), the translation of the texts of the Party, the study and formation of sympathizers and militants, the monitoring of the bourgeois press and the development of the capitalist economy, at the heat of the intervention in the struggles of the working class, of the employed and unemployed. In the case of the Spanish section, given the impossibility of dispatching the issue with the qualification of “attendista” (falsely applied to others) given the obvious intensity of our activity at the labor union level, the bicephalous center (Paris-Milan) coined the qualification of “syndicalists and generically theoreticians”.
This was the new course's way of saying that we did not renounce to the study of the fundamental texts and to the fact that these were the basis for the formation of sympathizers and militants as well as the exclusive guide of all our action, at the same time that we developed our activity within the working class (that all the members of the section were part of, most of whom had known the Party in contact with Italian comrades in emigration, in the factories of Germany[11]), instead of in the interclassist organisms or in the committees of political united front where the new course wanted it to be carried out.
It must have been hard for the emissaries of the different currents of the degenerated center, in our section and in others that opposed the new course, to see worker comrades carrying forward not the innovative tactics of the new course but the tactics of the historic Party, of the line of the Communist Left, and not being able to trick them with methods of cheap intellectualism because these workers maintained the habit of individual and collective study and knew the fundamental texts of the Party better than the envoys of the center. Hence, the coining of the double label of “syndicalists and generically theoreticians” that some[12] continue to ruminate as an “explanation” for internal and external consumption about our existence.
An overview of the physiognomy of the new course
For the reader who has not lived through the degenerative process we are studying, it may be useful to make a non-exhaustive overview of the physiognomy of the new course by following the press of the organization. Given that some current organizations, such as “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” (exCombat), in an attempt to cover up their role in the new course from the very direction of the Party, repeat ad nauseam that the change of course was situated in October 1982 (France) or even in June 1983 (in Italy), we will go back a little further to have a broader perspective.
In 1972 the “tesine sindacali” were published. Written by someone later expelled by the direction of the new course, they have always been vindicated by the new course, since on this issue there was an identity of positions among them. In these “tesine” it is said of the intermediate organizations that: “these organizations may not be the labor unions. In the perspective of an abrupt change towards the revolutionary assault, they will not be the labor unions”[13]. This represented the restitution of Damenism[14] on the labor union question, the negation of the Party's always held stances contained in “Revolutionary Party and Economic Action” (1951) and in the “Characteristic Theses” (1951). In this same text, speaking of the groups of militant workers who organize themselves outside the integrated labor unionism to fight against the employers, the following is said: “but recognizing the symptom of an instinctive proletarian reaction against the state of impotence to which the unions reduce their struggles and organizations [the Party] must find in this a motive to instill in even a very small stratum of the exploited the consciousness that their efforts, however generous they may be, are doomed to remain sterile if the class does not find in itself the strength to carry out a total political overturn in order to move towards a direct and general assault on capitalist power” [15]. The function of the Party would no longer be “to foresee the forms and encourage the appearance of organizations with economic objectives for the immediate struggle” (Characteristic Theses, 1951) but to convince the combative proletarians of the sterility (sic) of their efforts if the class does not find “in itself” (can there be a cruder elimination of the function of the Party?) nothing less than “the strength to carry out a total political overturn in order to move towards a direct and general assault on capitalist power”. Even the most spontaneist of spontaneists is left as a mere apprentice of spontaneist before these authentic champions of spontaneism!
In 1974 the slogan of the United Proletarian Front was launched and formal proposals were made to other political groups[16].
Also in 1974 it calls for participation in the referendum on divorce stating that “the proletarians will rightly vote against the abrogation of the existing law”, adding “better a crumb than nothing” (il programma comunista, No. 7/1974, p. 2)[17], a position defended in issues 9 and 10 of that year. Similarly, participation in the referendum on immigration in Switzerland is described as “a gesture of elementary solidarity” (Le Prolétaire, No. 184/1974, p. 3).
In 1976, in the circular of March 26, the degenerate center theorized the intervention in interclass organizations to defend the “common immediate interests” (sic) of “proletarians and non-proletarians” (sic): “THE SECOND CASE (Interclassist base organizations) includes those non-proletarian base organizations in which questions are debated or interests are defended to which the working class is not and cannot be indifferent: women's committees, soldiers' committees, tenants' committees, school committees, etc. With the reservations considered in the previous case, we can and should join them, either simply to expose our positions, even for a single day and before a single proletarian, or to carry out a more or less continuous action, not putting as a precondition for our participation that the organization itself adopts class objectives to which in principle it is alien and refractory, but vigorously defending in its ranks 1) that the immediate interests common to the soldier, the woman, etc., proletarian and non-proletarian, can only be effectively defended in conjunction with the proletarian class struggle; 2) that the final solution to the problems that beset that social stratum is in socialism, and only in socialism; 3) that in both cases, the furrow in which one must move is the same as that of the revolutionary class par excellence, the proletariat.” [18]. These were the new interclassist “intermediate bodies” (no longer bodies of immediate struggle of the trade union type) to which the “tesine sindacali” had opened the door and in whose interclassist swamp the new course wanted to force the communist militants to drown, under penalty of being considered “attendista”.
Faced with the opposition of the sections of the Party against this interclassist approach that clashed with the whole line of the Party (and of the Left's struggle for separation first from opportunism and then against the degeneration of the Third International) that expressly vetoes the Party's action in interclassist organizations[19], the degenerate direction of the new course theorized: “that decisions taken at the central level sometimes give rise to perplexity and uncertainties, is a fact to be taken for granted and of which there is no cause for alarm as long as one has the courage and firmness to acknowledge it.”[20]. This is another innovation against the always held stances. On the contrary, the Left had defended at the IV Congress of the Communist International that a political organization “based on the voluntary adhesion of all its members, only responds to the demands of centralized action when its components know and accept the set of methods that can be ordered by the center to be applied in the different situations” and that “the prestige and the authority of the center, which does not have material sanctions, but makes use of parameters that belong to the domain of psychological factors, absolutely demand clarity, decision and continuity in the programmatic proclamations and in the methods of struggle” [21] . The direction of the new course was in full process of dynamiting the clarity, precision and continuity of our tactical positions, the only place where the Left has considered that “the only guarantee of being able to constitute a center of effective unitary action of the international proletariat”. The Left demands: “know and accept the set of methods that can be ordered”, “clarity, decision and continuity” but the degenerate center of the new course theorizes: “perplexity and uncertainties”.
In November 1977, a joint statement was signed by the Party and Maoist organizations in the struggle of the Sonacotra shelters[22] and later, in April 1978, calls were made with these same organizations and with the French Socialist Party (PS) and the Unified Socialist Party (PSU).
In 1978, the right of immigrant workers to vote was demanded: “This is the sense of our demand for the abolition of all discrimination in political rights (and therefore also in the right to vote) between workers of different nationalities.” (le Prolétaire, No.262, 1978, p.2).
In 1979 we have the artificial creation of the “Comitato Nazionale contro i Licenzamienti” (CNCL) on the basis of ten (yes, 10) dismissed workers from FIAT (“il programma comunista”, No.22/1979, p. 6), in an act of labor union activism which ends in a body in which there is no real workers' participation but only a parade of militants of different political organizations, serving in reality as a platform of political united front combined with an authentic and empty labor union activism.
In December 1981, the new course from “le Prolétaire” recovered the political united front (vetoed by our theses) renamed as “class front” (“le Prolétaire” No.349/1981, p. 3) including all kinds of possible agreements with other parties.
We also have the creation of RIPRA (Comité Riposte à la Répression en Algérie) in 1981 and meetings such as the one held on 22-05-1982 with the aim of “creating a unitary collective against repression in Algeria” in which participated from the Committee for the Defense of Cultural Rights in Algeria and the Trade Union Association of Algerian Students in France to a number of other organizations described by El-Oumami itself[23] as petty bourgeois. Despite the unsuccessful nature of the meeting, El-Oumami proposes the “minimum basis on which we can consider collaboration with other forces that have a program and ideology different from ours” (El-Oumami, No. 26, p. 4)[24].
That is to say, while the communist militants who carried out labor union activity were told ad nauseam that they had to remain in the straitjacket of integrated labor unionism or consider their efforts sterile, the direction of the Party in Italy and France dedicated itself to artificially creating activist committees of political united front, such as the CNCL, the RIPRA and the Committee of Solidarity Lebanon-Palestine (“Le Prolétaire”, No. 363 of 1982, p. 2). What is clear is what the new course wanted to exist and, on the other hand, what they did not want to see come into existence.
In 1980 the new course had already defended the “solidarity with the Irish political detainees”, literally defined as “heroic Irish rebels” (“il programma comunista”, No. 23, 1980, page 5).
In 1981 “the “encapuchados” of the 23 de enero neighborhood” are defined as the “honor of the Venezuelan proletariat” considering “a remarkable result in itself to keep alive the flame of the class revolt” (“il programma comunista”, No. 6/1981, p.6).
Continuing in 1981 an article is published on the “Struggles in the university canteen in Florence”. Is it perhaps the struggle of the workers of that canteen? No! It is the struggle so that “former students or ‘not very studious’ figures” who “are not in order with the exams” continue to eat there at a reduced price (“il programma comunista”, No. 12/1981, page 6).
In the same issue No. 12/1981, on the same page in a box there is the following: “NOTICE: We inform the sympathizers and readers of the Ivrea area not to use the address published until now as a point of contact with the party. This address has been suppressed as a consequence of a political disagreement that has developed within the positions defended in recent years by our biweekly, particularly in the field of immediate struggles.”
What is not said is that the comrades of the Ivrea section had been anti-organically expelled. This page illustrates in a very expressive way the essence of the new course. On the one hand, the Party militants whose factory group at Olivetti was respected among the workers and the most important in the Party, who defended the continuity of the communist program against the innovative activists of the new course, were expelled[25], labeling them as supposedly “attendists”. On the other hand, the “struggle” of the hippie students for subsidized food was praised as the ultimate proletarian struggle.
In 1981 the “Party” participates in the “Convegno nazionale contro la repressione” (National meeting against repression) where it “supports any initiative to coordinate in an immediate defense action against repression” and “we share the platform of the Milanese Coordination, as stated at the beginning of this debate, that is, a body in which different political lines are present, provided that they are all within the class front” ("il programma comunista, No. 13/1981)[26].
In the following passage of the Circular of October 1981, published in “il programma comunista” No. 19/1981, the nucleus of the tactical revisionism of the new course is well synthesized: “The youth, the immigrants, the homeless, the victims of repression, the political prisoners, are today, together with the unemployed in general, the vanguard patrols of a class war (...)”. (The course of world capitalism and the fundamental axes of intervention of the Party, Circular of October 1981, “il programma comunista” No. 19/1981, p. 2)[27].
Entering 1982, the new course publishes in the press organs of the organization: “The tyranny of space has prevented us from offering an image of the movement of occupation of the houses of Berlin at the moment when, during the spring, it reached the apogee of its vigor, intertwining with movements such as those of struggle against repression, in defense of political prisoners, against the preparations for war, etc., and thus allowing the comrades to intervene in a terrain less and less spurious from the class point of view. (...)
It is here that a fertile ground of agitation opens up for the party, to which objectively favorable conditions are also offered for its development by those 'free spaces' of collective life, of exchange of experiences of struggle and of discussion of social and political problems broader than those strictly linked to contingency, which in Berlin have become the 'squats'.” (“il programma comunista”, No. 3/1982, p. 6).
During 1982, the degenerate direction of the new course discovers also a “youth question” (“il programma comunista”, No. 9/1982), “the ability to question oneself on the path travelled” (il programma comunista, No. 10/1982) and that “The communists for this reason must try to lead themselves the national claim of the Palestinian proletarians” (“il programma comunista”, No. 19/1982).
In “Le Prolétaire”, No. 362 of June 1982, “a possibility of linking the anti-nuclear struggle with the workers' struggle” is affirmed and on the plane of “anti-militarism” it gives as an example that “militants of various organizations participated in the organization of this initiative” organized by the new course. In “Le Prolétaire”, No. 363 of 1982, p. 2, the new course declared “it is essential not to start from the criticism of the PLO”. The September 27, 1982 issue of El-Oumami carried on its cover the slogan “Palestine Vaincra!”.
And this places us in the moment immediately before all this activist and interclassist INFECTION accumulated by the organization's direction itself exploded. For a succinct description of the development following the outbreak of this bubo, see in “The Internationalist Proletarian” No. 13: “le Prolétaire/il Comunista: spearhead of revisionist degeneration of the new course”.
Aside: the Party's always held stance
All these manifestations that illustrate the physiognomy of the degenerative process known as the new course are completely antithetical to those of the Left, those of the Party:
“10.- The acceleration of the process derives, besides the deep social causes of the historical crises, from the work of proselytism and propaganda with the reduced means available. The party ABSOLUTELY EXCLUDES that the process can be stimulated with resources, maneuvers or expedients that rely on those groups, cadres and hierarchies that usurp the name of proletarians, socialists and communists. These means, which formed the tactics of the Third International, the day after Lenin's disappearance from political life, had no other effect than the disintegration of the Comintern, as an organizational theory and operative force of the movement, always leaving some shred of party on the path of “tactical expediency”. These methods are taken up and revalorized by the Trotskyist movement and by the IV International, erroneously considering them as communist methods.
To accelerate the new class ascent there are NO READY-MADE RECIPES. To make the proletarians hear the class voice there are no maneuvers and expedients, which as such would not make the party appear as it really is, but a disfigurement of its function, to the detriment and damage of the effective resumption of the revolutionary movement, which is based on the real maturity of the facts and the corresponding adjustment of the party, enabled for this only by its doctrinal and political INFLEXIBILITY
The Italian Left has always fought against expedientism in order to remain always afloat, denouncing it as a deviation of principle that has nothing to do with Marxist determinism.
The party, on the line of past experiences, ABSTAINS, therefore, from sending or accepting invitations, open letters or agitation slogans to form committees, fronts and mixed agreements with any political movement and organization”. (Characteristic Thesis, 1951).
"At the base of the relationship between militant and party there is a commitment; we have of that commitment a conception that, to get rid of the unpleasant contractual term, we can simply define as dialectic. The relationship is double, it constitutes a double flow in opposite directions, from the center to the base and from the base to the center; if the action directed from the center responds to the good functionality of this dialectic relationship, then the healthy reactions of the base will respond to it.
The problem, therefore, of the famous discipline consists in placing on the base militants a system of limits that is the intelligent reflection of the LIMITS placed on the action of the leaders. We have therefore always maintained that they MUST NOT HAVE THE FACULTY at important turning points in the political conjuncture TO DISCOVER, INVENT AND UNLEASH PURPORTED NEW PRINCIPLES, NEW FORMULAS, NEW NORMS FOR THE ACTION OF THE PARTY. It is in the history of these SURPRISE BLOWS that the shameful history of the betrayals of OPPORTUNISM is summarized.” (Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1947).
"6. Not being, then, conceivable abrupt returns of the masses to a functional organization of revolutionary attack, the best result that the coming time can give is the RE-PROPOSITION of the true proletarian and communist objectives and demands, and the reaffirmation of the lesson that any tactical improvisation that changes from situation to situation pretending to exploit unexpected data from them is DEFEATISM.
7. The stupid currentism-activism that adapts gestures and movements to the immediate data of today, true party existentialism, must be replaced by the reconstruction of the solid bridge that links the past to the future and whose broad lines the party dictates to itself once and for all, PROHIBITING gregarious but ABOVE ALL LEADERS from the tendentious search and DISCOVERY OF 'NEW PATHS'.". (Theory and Action, Forlì Meeting, December 1952).
For the direction of the new course, the LIMITS of the doctrine-program-tactic unity were uncomfortable because they did not let them "discover" nor use "new weapons" nor "broaden their vision", nor "reframe the problems of today" and, for this reason, they unleashed new rules of action to the Party to which they wanted to bend it and they undertook an "internal political struggle" against the sections and militants who resolutely defended these limits.
The organizational reflection of degeneration
In the formal organization, the new course had established in a general way a federalist functioning in which the different Italian and French “Centers”, as well as the publications, functioned autonomously and mutually contradicting each other.
It had also come to the creation of the Iskra publishing house for the publication of fundamental Party texts under an author's name, despite being Party texts and against the express will of a well-known comrade: “I do not want the name of Bordiga to be marketed, stupid bait for those who put it and those who bite it, and I am sure that it will not be done even after my death. Whoever does not understand why, has not understood a line of all the texts and history of the Left. I think about the date of death with serenity and leave to the superstitious the incantations. I do not fear to die, but that the whole movement would get dumb by commemorating me, this yes. Although I have decided not to leave a will of any kind, you force me to think of the measures I can take to avoid this super stupidity. I provide that anyone may use the texts free of charge on the condition that Bordiga's name does not appear in them. A problem of bourgeois practice and communist practice. If all of you were really mature, perhaps I would not have this concern: but I see weak points. If I violate the rights of History, of it I laugh above all else.” (Letter of November 16, 1962)[28].
The new course also introduced the theorization of the normality of the democratic debate and of the internal political struggle, which is the destruction of the organic centralism that has as a premise the political homogeneity. These concepts were introduced in the years prior to 1982, were taken to the caricatural extreme in the July 1983 to January 1984 issues of “il programma comunista”, were continued in “Combat” and have been repeatedly vindicated by “il Comunista” (exCombat) which still fails to understand or pretends not to understand why this internal political struggle and its action from the degenerate direction of the Party had to necessarily lead to what it led to: to the revision of all the Party bases.
Logically, there cannot be political homogeneity when it is assumed that the fundamental texts of the Party are insufficient to guide the activity of the Party. The direction of the new course needed to free itself from the fundamental texts: “(...) but it would be suicidal to want to evade them, either with the pretext that they are difficult, or with the pretext that it is enough to consult the paragraph of a text (moreover, often dedicated to the quite different - and preliminary - question of re-establishing the fundamental bases of the theory as a guide of the action in the most general sense of the term) to have them well resolved.” (Circular of 1974, published in “il Comunista”, No. 33, 1992, p. 8)[29].
The direction of the new course saw in the wave of new militants coming from May '68 and from leftist organizations of all kinds a mechanism perfectly aligned with its political objectives. This increase in numbers had the function of displacing the militancy that was opposing the new course for which the degenerated Center also arranged a change of course in the formation methods of sympathizers and militants.
In June 1981 an article was published entitled “For a party of revolutionary combat” (a rather explicit anticipation of what would become “Combat”, the work of the “Responsible Director” at that time of “il programma comunista”, then of “Combat” and finally “Editor in chief” of “il Comunista”) in which it speaks of “forging” a new type of militant who “is enthusiastic about all the struggles that break out no matter where, even in the most remote place on the planet“ and “is the one who in all the episodes of a struggle that embraces all the continents, and in all the phases of this multiform movement, acts with the very certainty of victory as if the revolution were near or developing under our gaze” (”il programma comunista”, June, No. 11/1981, p. 3)[30].
In this sense, the circular of the BCI[31] directed to the whole Party relative to the “Work with sympathizers and integration of new militants” (from June 1981, which reached us almost in November) was a point of no return for the Spanish section. In this circular the process of formation of the “new” type of militant of the new course is designed, breaking the method of formation of sympathizers and militants that had been followed until then in the Party, imposing an acceleration of the times, establishing as substitute reading for the texts of Marxism the “biographies of militants like the history of Big Bill or Mama Jones, experiences of struggle like Domitilia or even more simply news or novels that awaken to the struggle”. The June 1981 circular of the degenerate center admits: “Comrades will no doubt be surprised at the fact that the classic texts we have used up to now for the theoretical training of sympathizers have almost disappeared from the arsenal of the current material proposed“ affirming that “The workers' groups will assimilate much more effectively the positions by means of clear-cut answers than by means of extensive readings” and culminating with "It can be said in a general way that the classic texts we use today are necessarily obligatory texts for comrades who have a habit of orienting their comrades and framing other militants, but in no way are they an imperative study of every militant". This was the Party of activist militants trained in ignorance that the new course was imposing, against the method of political formation of the Party and to break the defense at all costs of the positions of the Italian Communist Left and Marxism: a party whose new cement was the discipline for discipline’s sake of activism, in which Marxism would be reserved for the “cadres” to be able to adulterate and deform it without finding resistance in the militant base of the Party.
This was the degenerative culmination at the organizational level (analogous to “Bolshevization” in the degenerative process of the 3rd International) which logically had to lead to the exasperation of discipline for discipline's sake and the poison of internal democracy. It was the destruction of organic centralism, whose premise is political homogeneity[32], the unity of doctrine-program-tactics, the immutable doctrine, the stable orientation and the continuity of the Party's action.
This work of destruction of the unity of doctrine-program-tactics was being carried out by the new course from the direction of the organization, a direction that had nothing else to offer apart from “perplexity and uncertainties”[33]. This was combined, as could not be otherwise, with the application of absurd “security” measures (which later were not followed by those who imposed them) to justify the compartmentalization and blocking of contacts between groups and sections of the Party, something suffered by the militants both in the emigration in Germany and later inside Spain and as suffered by the comrades in Italy and France. It is difficult to describe the sensation of the Spanish militants seeing a representative of the UCI (ufficio centrale italiano, Italian central office, Italian center) allowing herself to give lessons of clandestinity while wearing a pamela as a hat in a proletarian shanty town in Madrid. Very symptomatically, this representative of the Italian center who came to impose the discipline of the new course on the workers militants of the Party ended up being a counselor for the “greens” in Ivrea and a standard bearer of the “Kurdish cause”.
The demand for the legalization of the newspaper “El Comunista” which the Italian and Parisian center wanted to impose and which we rejected since mid-1979 deserves special mention. This demand for the legalization of the magazine was being demanded with increasing intensity by the Center; the same center whose pieces dispatched among themselves maneuvers of legalization of new magazines, of legal recovery of others, of hypocritical fussing on the matter between one and the other. “El Comunista” was never legalized and is still not legalized, without this having implied any limit to its distribution. Behind the demand for legalization there was only a question of control and property.
In the course of the years, in the letters of the Center, more and more contradictory evaluations were made on the development of the Spanish section, according to the fictitious jacket in which it was convenient to artificially corset the positions of those who resisted against the new course. Moreover, these letters were based in turn on the reports of the “secretary” of the section, imposed by the Center for the sole reason of not knowing the texts of the Party and, above all, of not having been in contact with the old Italian comrades in the emigration in Germany. Thus, a real factional work was carried out by the center to modify the methods of work and to eliminate those who defended the continuity of the positions of the Party. As part of the factional and liquidationist work of the direction of the new course, in mid-December 1981, the center communicated from Paris an “alarm” that there would be a coup d'état in Spain, that they had received reliable information from a foreign embassy in Paris. This was communicated at the last minute with the instruction to “clean” the houses of material and to transmit the order also to the sympathizers. Later, when evidently no coup d'état took place, they justified themselves by saying that it had been an order and that it had to have been carried out. The sole objective of this action was to liquidate the Spanish section, to eliminate political material and correspondence which revealed the contradictions of the Party direction.
This action was carried out by the same ones and has an obvious parallel with the completely conscious action in France of the liquidationist center that in October 1982 took the funds and the archive of the Party to prevent its continuation and the no less conscious decision to go through all the bookstores in Germany to ensure the withdrawal of the Party's material, so that no trace of the Left would remain. This is the “center” of the liquidators of the Party and of the Left who accused us of “syndicalists” and “culturalists” in the BCI circular of 12/2/82 with which they tried to explain the according to them “mini-crisis” of the Spanish section. This supposed “mini-crisis” meant that the group of comrades linked to the defense of the continuity of the communist program resumed the publication of the Party magazine “El Comunista” since May 1983 while the few who remained in the line of the new course disappeared almost immediately when their degenerated international referent successively exploded into pieces.
Our rupture with the new course
On page 11 of the first issue of "El Comunista" (nueva edición[34]), May 1983, with which we resumed the publication of the Party magazine in Spanish, we published some modest but sufficient notes with the title “La degeneración de programma comunista y nuestra batalla” [35] that summarize the historical causes of that degeneration, the main external manifestations of the process and the decision to break with the formal discipline of an organization that no longer represented the historical thread of the Party. These notes were not a "local" elaboration of the Spanish section but had been published by the comrades of the Schio section in February 1983 as part of the international effort to maintain the continuity of the Party outside the degenerated formal organization.
We had been expelled first substantially – as had been expelled the positions of the Left in general – and, because of this, in January 1982 we decided to break formal discipline with an organization that no longer represented the Party, which did not prevent the direction from pretending our formal “expulsion” in a disciplinary act in a vacuum. As the Theses of our Party state: “(...) those international and national centrals were on the road of deviation and treason; according to the theory of the Left, this is the condition that must take away from them any right to obtain, in the name of a hypocritical discipline, the blind obedience of the base”. (Theses of Naples, 1965).
Other sections opposed to the new course also broke with the degenerated organization in the following months (Schio, Torre Annunziata, Benevento-Ariano, etc.). The degenerated center had anti-organizationally expelled in the spring of 1981 the Turin, Ivrea and South of France sections that had opposed the new course.
The subsequent confirmation that the direction of this formal organization no longer represented the historical thread of the Party was not long in coming. That direction against whose degeneration we had fought our battle successively exploded into fragments a few months later in October 1982, in June 1983 when the openly democratic "internal debate" is given free rein and a part of the editors steps aside; in January 1984 when the latter part recovered the publication through the court and the other part began to publish "Combat"; in 1985 when "il Comunista" detaches from "Combat" and merges with "le Prolétaire".
It is important to note that our No. 1 of May 1983 was issued prior to the quarrel for the control of "il programma comunista" starting in June 1983 between the different variants of the new course. There we reaffirmed our intention to continue the historical thread of the Party, reclaiming the principles and method of work reaffirmed in the Party since 1952, together with all those comrades who work for the integral reaffirmation of the communist program.
Next steps
In the following issues of the review we will deepen in specific aspects of the new course and our struggle against it and in the development and limits of the contact and maintenance of the organization together with the sections expelled or split in Italy in opposition to the new course, as well as the development of contacts and subsequent joint organization with other comrades at the international level.
[1] On the process of cannibalism between the different activist currents that shared and disputed the direction of “il programma comunista” and especially the trajectory and the role played by one of them (the current “il Comunista”, which came out of “Combat”), see the article published in “The Internationalist Proletarian” No. 13, entitled: “le Prolétaire/il Comunista: spearhead of revisionist degeneration of the new course”.
[2] In the first issue of “Il Programma Comunista” of 1984, the article “Resuming the path” begins by saying: “The militants who have taken up again in their hands the thread of the ‘Programma Comunista’ unfortunately broken in issues 7-10 of 1983, (...)”. This evidences that they only considered incorrect, out of line, issues 7-10 of 1983, vindicating everything that had happened before. Which was logical because it was them who had done it together with those who published first “Combat” and then “il Comunista”/“Le Prolétaire” and also with those who decided to be coherent with their real activity and had tried to dissolve the formal wrapping.
[3] It was in fact an anti-organic expulsion of the Tuscan sections that anticipated the methods that would become generalized later.
[4] The erroneous positions began to be insinuated in 1965 and led to the claim of a supposed “class” character of the C.G.I.L. and to the formation of “committees for the defense of the class union” within it as of 1970. This clashed head-on with the characterization of the C.G.I.L. made by the Party after its reconstitution by the Comitato de Liberazione Nazionale (National Liberation Committee). The Party had characterized the C.G.I.L. (with the “i” of Italy, unlike the C.G.L. of the 1920s) by stating that: “it cannot dissimulate that not even the confederation that remains with the social-communists of Nenni and Togliatti is based on class autonomy. It is not a red organization, it is also a tricolor organization STITCHED ACCORDING TO THE MODEL OF MUSSOLINI." (The Trade Union Splits in Italy, 1949).
[5] Known like this within the Party as “small” theses.
[6] Faced with the process of trade union integration initiated by fascism and maintained after the second world war, the Party had established that "5. In the several phases of the bourgeois trajectory (revolutionary, reformist, counter-revolutionary), the dynamics of labor union action underwent profound changes (interdiction, tolerance, submission); but this does not alter the fact that it is organically indispensable to have among the mass of proletarians and the minority within the party an additional layer of organizations that are politically neutral in principle, but constitutionally accessible only to the workers, and that organizations of this type must re-emerge in the phase in which the revolution is approaching." (Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine, 1951).
For this reason, the Characteristic Theses of our Party, after stating that “7. The party never adopts the method of forming partial economic organizations comprising only workers who accept the principles and direction of the communist party”, impose a task to the militants and to the Party itself: “(...) It is the task of the party, in unfavorable periods and periods of passivity of the proletarian class, to foresee the forms and encourage the appearance of organizations with economic objectives for the immediate struggle, which may even assume totally new aspects in the future, after the well-known types of corporation, industry union, company council, etc. (...)”. (“Characteristics Theses, 1951); given that ”in any perspective of any general revolutionary movement these fundamental factors cannot be absent: 1) a large and numerous proletariat of pure wage earners, 2) a large movement of associations with economic content embracing an imposing part of the proletariat; 3) a strong class party, revolutionary, in which a minority of the workers militate, but to which the development of the struggle has allowed to validly and extensively counterpose its influence in the labor movement to that of the bourgeois class and power.” (Theory and action in the Marxist doctrine, Revolutionary Party and economic action, 1951) and given that the “(...) effective imprisonment of all union network in the articulations of bourgeois class power” is a “fundamental result to the defense and preservation of the capitalist regime precisely because the influence and utilization of union associationist network is an INDISPENSABLE STAGE for any revolutionary movement directed by the Communist Party.” (Theory and action in the Marxist doctrine, Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951).
[7] From “attesa” or “attendere”, which means “to wait” in Italian.
[8]“In Eastern Europe and Asia, the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions did not begin until 1905. The revolutions in Russia, Persia, Turkey, China, the wars in the Balkans, this is the chain of world events of our era in our East”. Today [1964, Ed.], this phase has also ended for the entire Afro-Asian area. Everywhere, at the end of the Second World War, more or less “independent”, more or less “popular” national states were created, promoting more or less “radically” the accumulation of capital.” (Theses on the Chinese question, general meeting of Marseille, il Programma Comunista No.23/1964).
[9] “Allo stesso modo, una forte resistenza con le parole e coi fatti veniva offerta da questi compagni ad ogni tentativo di intervento fuori dalle fabbriche – sulle questioni della casa, femminile, della repressione, ecc. – e di intervento nelle stesse fabbriche e sul terreno propriamente sindacale che non si facesse ridurre ad una stretta dipendenza dai tempi e dai modi dettati dalle strutture sindacali ufficiali.
Per questa parte di compagni ogni decisione presa al di fuori di quanto e di come era « già stato fatto » in precedenza, ogni interesse per problematiche che investivano il terreno della critica politica e teorica non affrontate e risolte con tesi e punti fermi in precedenza (dal partito attuale o dal partito comunista d'Italia negli anni Venti), assumeva l'aspetto del pericolo o addirittura del tentativo di portare il partito fuori dalla sua rotta e di inficiarne la capacità teorica e politica.
Contro una visione di tal genere - che andò via via caratterizzandosi come difesa ad oltranza di quanto, non tanto la sinistra comunista come corrente politica, ma di quella italiana in particolare e soprattutto della persona Amadeo Bordiga, aveva detto scritto fatto, senza comprendere in realtà la lezione profonde delle battaglie di classe condotte dalla sinistra comunista - si sviluppò una lotta politica interna condotta in particolare dal Centro attraverso lo sforzo di reinquadrare i problemi dell'oggi e le differenze di situazione storica senza perdere il filo conduttore di quelle battaglie di classe.
Questa circolare del marzo 1976, alla pari di altre precedenti e di successive, fa parte di questa lotta politica interna. (…)
Da questo punto di vista, questa circolare segna un punto a favore, se così ci si può esprimere, alla lotta sia contro il conservatorismo di partito ben radicato purtroppo nell'organizzazione, sia contro quell'arroganza teorica mescolata ad un velleitarismo verbale ma pratico immobilismo caratteristici degli antidialettici legati ad una visione mistica del partito, della lotta di classe, del proletariato e del suo movimento, della rivoluzione, del comunismo.”” (Premessa alla circolare de 1976, pubblicato en “il Comunista”, No.33, 1992, p. 9).
[10] Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the general situation is historically unfavorable, 1965.
[11] See in “The Internationalist Proletarian” n. 6, “An uncorrupted motto that transcends generations 'of the dead, the living and the yet to be born'”.
[12] Like the epigone of “le Proletáire/il Comunista” in Spanish (No.23 of July 2021) which, besides claiming the formation of the PSOE as “a milestone of Marxism in Spain” (sic), vindicated this artificed characterization made by the Parisian center, made only ten (10) months before this Parisian center abandoned the organization pretending furthermore its international dissolution. We will return elsewhere to this point.
[13] “Queste organizzazioni possono anche non essere i sindacati - e non lo saranno nella prospettiva di una brusca svolta nel senso dell'assalto rivoluzionario (…)” (“il programma comunista” No.3/1972)
[14] Letter by O. Damen: “In such a phase of advance or conquest of power, the regrouping of the forces of the proletariat will not wait for a repetition of the traditional practice of the labor union, but will take place through new mass organizations”
[15] “(…) ma, riconoscendovi il sintomo di una istintiva reazione proletaria allo stato di impotenza al quale i sindacati riducono le sue lotte e rivendicazioni, deve trarne motivo per inculcare in uno strato sia pure esile di sfruttati la coscienza di come i loro sforzi, per quanto generosi, siano condannati a rimanere sterili se la classe non trova in sé la forza di provocare e compiere una inversione completa di rotta politica in direzione dell'attacco diretto e generale al potere capitalistico.” (“il programma comunista” No.3/1972)
[16] It will be enough to recall one of the many texts in which the Left and the Party oppose the political united front: “For the tactical question it is enough to recall that the united front was born proposed as a method to ‘ruin’ the socialist parties, and to leave their leaders and general staffs deprived of the masses that followed them and had to pass with us. The evolution of this tactic has confirmed that it contained the danger of leading to a betrayal and an abandonment of the classist and revolutionary bases of our program.” (Theses of Naples, 1965).
[17] “(…) i proletari voteranno a giusta ragione contre l'abrogazione della legge esistente, (…) meglio una briciola che nulla (…).” (il programma comunista, No. 7/1974, p. 2)
[18] “NEL SECONDO CASO (Organismi a base interclassista) rientrano quegli organismi a base non soltanto proletaria in cui tuttavia si dibattono questioni o si difendono interessi ai quali la classe operaia non è e non può essere indifferente: comitati di donne, di soldati, di inquilini, della scuola ecc. Con le riserve considerate nel caso precedente, possiamo e dobbiamo entrarvi sia semplicemente per propagandare le nostre posizioni, fosse pure per un solo giorno e di fronte ad un solo proletario, sia per svolgervi un'azione più o meno continuativa, non ponendo come pregiudiziale alla nostra partecipazione la adozione da parte dello stesso organismo di obiettivi di classe ai quali esso è per origine estraneo e refrattario, ma sostenendo energicamente nel suo seno: 1) che gli interessi immediati comuni al soldato, alla donna ecc. proletari e non proletari si difendono efficacemente solo se si agisce in collegamento con la lotta proletaria di classe; 2) che la soluzione finale dei problemi assillanti quel certo strato sociale risiede nel socialismo e solo in esso; 3) che in entrambi i casi il solco su cui ci si deve muovere è il medesimo della classe per eccellenza rivoluzionaria, il proletariato.” (Circular of the direction, March 26, 1976, republished and vindicated by “il Comunista” in issue 34-35).
[19] “ 4.- (...) Above all, the party develops its activity of propaganda and attraction among the proletarian masses, especially in the circumstances in which these are set in motion to react against the conditions that capitalism has created to them, and within the organizations that the proletarians form to protect their immediate interests.
5.- The communists penetrate, therefore, in the proletarian cooperatives, in the unions, in the councils of enterprise, constituting in them groups of communist workers; trying to conquer there the majority and the leading positions, to obtain that the mass of proletarians enrolled in such associations subordinate their own action to the highest political and revolutionary aims of the struggle for communism.
6.- The communist party, on the contrary, keeps out of all institutions and associations in which proletarians and bourgeois participate with the same title or, even worse, whose direction and sponsorship belongs to the bourgeois (mutual aid societies, charities, schools of culture, popular universities, Masonic associations, etc.) and seeks to remove the proletarians from them, fighting against their action and their influence.” (Theses of the Abstentionist Communist Faction, 1920).
[20] “che le decisioni prese centralmente suscitino a volte perplessità e incertezze, è un fatto che deve considerarsi scontato è di cui non v'è ragione di allarmarsi purché si abbia il coraggio e la fermezza di guardarlo in faccia.” (Circular of the direction, March 26, 1976, republished and vindicated by “il Comunista” in issue 34-35).
[21] “To eliminate opportunist dangers and disciplinary crises the Communist International must support organizational centralization in the clarity and precision of tactical resolutions, and in the exact definition of the methods to be applied.
A political organization, that is to say, based on the voluntary adhesion of all its members, only responds to the demands of centralized action when its components know and accept the set of methods that can be ordered by the center to be applied in the different situations.
The prestige and the authority of the center, which does not have material sanctions, but makes use of parameters that belong to the domain of psychological factors, absolutely demand clarity, decision and continuity in the programmatic proclamations and in the methods of struggle. In this lies the only guarantee of being able to constitute a center of effective unitary action of the international proletariat.
A solid organization is only born out of the stability of its organizational norms; by assuring to each member its impartial application, it reduces to a minimum rebellions and desertions. The organizational statutes, as well as the ideology and the tactical norms, must give an impression of unity and continuity.
For these considerations, based on a rich experience, the passage from the period of construction of the International of the communist parties to that of the action of the International Communist Party makes necessary the elimination of totally abnormal organizational norms.” (Tactics of the Communist International in the project of thesis presented by the CP of Italy at the IV World Congress, Moscow 1922).
[22]Initially SONACOTRAL (SOciété NAtionale de COnstruction de logements pour les TRAvailleurs ALgériens) was renamed SONACOTRA after Algeria's independence.
[23]Organ of the Algerian section, epicenter of the nationalist degeneration of the formal organization.
[24]“base minimale que nous pourrons envisager de travailler en commun avec d’autres forces qui ont un programme et une idéologie différents des nôtres”
[25] Expelled with the excuse of “factionalism” for having held a meeting with comrades from the South of France in the face of the serious drift of the Party. Regardless of the fact that we cannot sympathize with the subsequent development of a part of these sections, the accusation of “factionalism” for having held a meeting was a mere pretext and the expulsion for this reason is completely unfounded. This action of the direction of the Party is worthy of the worst expression of the degeneration of the International and of a Togliatti of the worst kind. Indeed, the direction of the Party had fallen into the hands of inter-class activism and the sections that reacted against it were expelled with the (false) accusation of a “factionalism”, using the same methods as the degenerated International: “the spectre of ‘factionalism’ was seriously abused and the constant threat of expulsion of a current, artificially accused of preparing a split with the sole aim of making dangerous centrist errors prevail in the party's policy.” (Theses of Naples of 1965). The degenerate center of the time can be reminded that, in its battle against the degeneration of the International, the Left has always defended that: “It is absurd and sterile, and moreover very dangerous, to pretend that the party and the International are mysteriously insured against any relapse or tendency to relapse into opportunism. These effects may depend as much on changes in the situation as on the play of the remnants of the social-democratic traditions. In the resolution of our problems it must be admitted, then, that every difference of opinion, which cannot be reduced to cases of conscience or personal defeatism, can be usefully developed to preserve the party and the proletariat in general from grave dangers. If these dangers were accentuated, differentiation would inevitably, though usefully, assume the form of factionalism; this could lead to splits, but not for the childish reason of a lack of repressive energy on the part of the leaders, but only concrete in the event that the accursed hypothesis of the failure of the party and its subjection to counterrevolutionary influences were verified.” (Theses of Lyon, 1926).
[26] “In questo quadro condividiamo la piattaforma del Coordinamento milanese, come esposta all'inizio di questo dibattito, cioè di un organismo in cui siano presenti differenti linee politiche, ben inteso tutte interne al fronte di classe.” (“il programma comunista, No.13/1981)
[27] “Giovani, immigrati, senza-casa, vittime della repressione, detenuti politici, sono oggi, insieme ai disoccupati in generale, le pattuglie di avanguardia di una guerra di classe” (“il programma comunista” No.19/1981, p. 2)
[28]“Io non voglio che si getti in commercio il nome di Bordiga, stupida esca davvero per chi la porga e chi abbocchi, e sono certo che non si farà nemmeno dopo la mia morte. Chi non capisce il perché, non ha capito un rigo di tutti i testi e la storia della Sinistra. Alla data della morte io penso con serenità e lascio ai superstiziosi gli scongiuri. Non temo di morire, ma che si rincoglionisca tutto il movimento per commemorarmi, questo sì. Sebbene io abbia deciso di non lasciare testamenti di nessun genere, mi costringete a pensare alle misure che posso prendere per impedire tale superputtanata. Dispongo che chiunque possa usufruire gratis dei testi alla condizione che non vi sia il nome Bordiga. Un problema in prassi borghese e in prassi comunista. Se foste tutti maturi davvero, questa preoccupazione potrei non averla: ma scorgo le debolezze. Se violo diritti della Storia, ebbene, di lei soprattutto mi fotto". (Lettera di 16 novembre 1962)
[29]“ma sarebbe un suicidio volerli eludere sia col pretesto che difficili sono, sia con l'altro che basti consultare il capoverso di un testo (d'altronde spesso dedicato alla ben diversa - e preliminare - questione di ristabilire le basi fondamentali della teoria come guida all'azione nel senso più generale del termine) per averli bell'e risolti.” (Circular of 1974, published in “il Comunista”, No. 33, 1992, p. 8)
[30] “si entusiasma per tutte le lotte che scoppiano non importa dove, fosse pure nell'angolo più remoto del pianeta (…) E' colui che in tutti gli episodi di una lotta che abbraccia tutti i continenti, e in tutte le fasi di questo movimento multiforme, agisce con la stessa certezza della vittoria che se la rivoluzione fosse vicina o si svolgesse sotto i nostri occhi.” (“il programma comunista”, June, No.11/1981, p. 3)
[31] BCI, Bureau Centrale Internazionale.
[32]"“To the first we refute that the unity and real centralization – claimed by us more than by any other – in the action and in the way of organizing the Party is the product, the arrival point, not the cause and the starting point, of the unity and CENTRALIZATION OF THE DOCTRINE, OF THE PROGRAM AND OF THE SYSTEM OF TACTICAL NORMS: useless to look for those if these are missing; worse than useless, destructive and deadly. We are centralists (and this, if you will, is our only organizing principle) not because we recognize centralism as valid in and of itself, not because we deduce it from an eternal idea or an abstract scheme, but because the end to which we tend is unique and the direction in which we move in space (internationally) and in time (over the generations "of the dead, of the living and of those yet to be born") is unique; we are centralists by the force of the invariance of an IMMUTABLE DOCTRINE, which neither individuals nor groups are in a position to mutate; and of the CONTINUITY OF OUR ACTION in the ebb and flow of the historical contingencies, in the face of all the obstacles that the road of the working class is strewn with.
Our centralism is the way of being of a Party, which is not an army, although it has a rigorous discipline, as it is not a school although teaching is done, but it is a real historical force, defined by its STABLE ORIENTATION in the long war between the classes. It is around this inseparable and very hard knot, doctrine-program-tactics, collective and impersonal possession of the movement, that our organization crystallizes, and what holds it together is not the whip of the "organizing center", but the unique and uniform thread that binds "leaders" and "base", "center" and "periphery", committing themselves to the observation and defense of a system of ends and means, none of which is separable from the other.
In this real life of the Communist Party - not of any party, but only and precisely of it, as communist both in fact and in name – the puzzle that bothers the bourgeois democrat, – who decides: the "leadership" or the "base", the many or the few? who "commands" and who "obeys"? – is itself definitively dissolved: it is the unitary body of the Party, the one that embouchures and follows its path; and in it, as in the words of an obscure leveling soldier, "nobody commands and all are commanded", which does not mean that there are no orders but that these are adapted with the natural way of moving and acting of the Party, whoever may be the one who gives them. But break this unity of doctrine-program-tactics, and everything collapses, leaving nothing but a... coordination of block and direction at one end (maneuvering the masses of militants, as the general – supposed strategic "genius" – moves the little soldiers, supposed poor fools; perhaps making them pass with weapons and baggage to the enemy camp, or as the station master maneuvers his trains, perhaps making them crash one against the other) and an unlimited place of arms for all possible maneuvers, at the other end. Break this unity, and logically and historically justified comes Stalinism, as logically and historically justified comes the ruinous subordination of a Party like ours, whose first task is to ensure "the historical continuity and international unity of the movement" (point 4 of the Livorno Program, 1921), to the false and deceitful mechanism of the "democratic consultation". Break it and you will have destroyed the class Party." (The continuity of action of the party on the thread of the tradition of the Left, 1967).
[33] “che le decisioni prese centralmente suscitino a volte perplessità e incertezze, è un fatto che deve considerarsi scontato è di cui non v'è ragione di allarmarsi purché si abbia il coraggio e la fermezza di guardarlo in faccia.” (Circular of the direction, March 26, 1976, republished and vindicated by “il Comunista” in issue 34-35).
[34] New edition
[35] The degeneration of programma comunista and our battle