Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.18
THE ROLE OF THE LABOR UNION QUESTION IN THE DEGENERATIVE PROCESS OF THE PARTY (1972–1982)
The dynamics of labor union integration within the tentacles of the bourgeois State after World War II were one of the stumbling blocks the formal Party encountered beginning in the second half of the 1960s, leading it to make a series of zigzags on this issue that paved the way for the process of degeneration suffered by the Party’s center (or rather centers, the Italian and French ones) known as the new course [1].
This is a specific aspect of the difficulties arising from the prolongation of a counterrevolutionary situation that has been giving rise to deviations in either an activist or a mystical-idealistic direction[2], depending on whether impatience and a lack of understanding of the historical process result in an attempt to move history forward through an act of one’s own will (throwing tactics overboard and, a few steps later, the program itself) or in an attempt to avoid the difficulties of the hard work of maintaining the organizational thread even during the most unfavorable periods.
Although, as we shall see, the process of the labor union network being imprisoned by the bourgeois state was a phenomenon foreseen in the Party Theses themselves, and although those Theses contain the tactical guidelines necessary to navigate this phenomenon even in an unfavorable and blatantly counterrevolutionary situation, the material weight of this situation’s prolongation led to a series of errors of an activist nature on the part of the Direction, which resulted in the abandonment of the correct tactics.
The Party's position on the labor union question
Without prejudice to a broader examination of the labor union question in Marxism, we will focus here on determining what the Party’s classical assessment of the issue had been after World War II, using the two texts that formed the basis for Party membership in 1951–52: “Theory and action in Marxist doctrine” and the “Characteristic theses”.
"Even where, after the Second War, according to current political formulation, capitalist totalitarianism seems to have been replaced by democratic liberalism, the labor union dynamic continued uninterruptedly to unfold in the full sense of state control and insertion into official administrative bodies. Fascism, the dialectical realizer of the old reformist instances, carried out that of the legal recognition of the union so that it could be the holder of collective agreements with the bosses until the effective imprisonment of all union network in the articulations of bourgeois class power.
This 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 Marxist Doctrine, Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951).
"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).
"8.- Over and above the contingent problem of the participation – or non-participation – of the revolutionary communist party in certain types of labor unions in a given country, the elements of the question summarized up to this point lead to the conclusion 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 Marxist Doctrine, Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951).
“6.- Marxism has vigorously rejected, whenever it has arisen, syndicalist theory, which endows the class with economic organs – associations based on occupational category, industry, or enterprise – believing them capable of waging the struggle and bringing about social transformation.
While Marxism considers the labor union, on its own, insufficient for the revolution, it nevertheless regards it as an indispensable instrument for the mobilization of the class on the political and revolutionary level, achieved through the presence and influence of the communist party within the class’s economic organizations. In the difficult stages involved in the formation of economic associations, those associations are considered suitable for the party’s task that comprise only proletarians and to which they join spontaneously, but without the obligation to profess specific political, religious, or social views. This character is lost in confessional associations and those with mandatory membership, or in those that have become an integral part of the state.
7.- The party never adopts the method of forming partial economic organizations comprising only workers who accept the principles and leadership of the communist party. But the party acknowledges without reservation that not only the situation preceding the insurrectionary fight, but also any phase of strong increase of the party's influence among the masses, cannot develop without the extension between the party and the class of a layer of organizations with immediate economic objectives and with high numerical participation, within which there is a network emanating from the party (nuclei, groups and communist labor union faction). 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, industrial union, enterprise council, etc. The party always encourages those forms of organization which facilitate contact and common action among the workers of various localities and of different professions, rejecting closed forms.” (Characteristic Thesis, 1951).
“11.- The party does not hide that in the resumption phases it will not be strengthened autonomously, if a form of mass labor-union economic associationism does not arise. Although the union has never been free from the ideological influence of hostile classes and has served as a vehicle for continuous and profound deviations and distortions, and although it is not a specific revolutionary instrument, it is nonetheless of interest to the party, which does not voluntarily refrain from working within it, thereby clearly distinguishing itself from all other political groups. The party recognizes that today it can carry out union work only sporadically; however, as soon as the actual numerical ratio between its members, sympathizers, and those organized within a given union becomes significant, and provided that such an organization has not ruled out the final theoretical and statutory possibility of autonomous class activity, the party will seek to penetrate it and attempt to win control of its direction.” (Characteristic Thesis, 1951).
The loss of labor union tactics: the CGIL characterized as a class union
Our Party Theses establish a central role for the tactic of influence and penetration within the network of immediate struggle at the labor union level, expressly excluding from its application those organizations that are confessional or that are an integral part of the bourgeois state. However, attempts were made to apply this tactic, intended for non-integrated organizations, to those organizations within the integrated labor union movement that had become an integral part of the state and that, in many areas, are directly subsidized by the state and employers, to the point that in several countries they have even come to form a genuine corporate network of their own, functioning in reality as labor union service companies.
In Italy, the supplement “sindacato rosso” began to be published, and it eventually launched the slogan “For the defense committees of the class union!” (Il sindacato rosso, No.3, March 1971). In France, beginning in July 1969, a supplement to Le Prolétaire titled “syndicat de classe” began to be published; it emulated the approach of the Italian “sindacato rosso,” calling for “A Red CGT; (…) let’s form groups of the International Communist Party within the CGT!” [3].
This was in direct conflict with the Party’s characterization of the C.G.I.L. following its reconstitution by the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (National Liberation Committee). The Party had characterized the C.G.I.L. (with the “i” standing for 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).
The misjudgment regarding the nature of the organizations they were trying to win over was compounded by forgetting the tactical premises that allow for and even require a split in the field of the labor union faced with the expulsions of revolutionaries by the opportunist direction. Issue No.17 of “il sindacato rosso” (November 1969) provides a clear picture of the situation. It explains how “In Belluno, our comrades, after denouncing the dirty tricks that the Communist Party of Italy and its allies pull off every day at local factories, particularly at Faesite, Corono-costruzioni, etc., were expelled from the CGIL, even though the unanimous assembly of the Sindacato-Scuola, to which our militants belong, rejected this despicable measure” [4] stating thereafter “Let's repeat once again that communists do not leave class unions”. Does this mean that any expulsion or disciplinary proceeding should have led or should lead to a split? Obviously not. But when these expulsions become recurrent, when groups of militants are expelled, when there is unanimous support from a union assembly that rejects the expulsion, allowing oneself to be expelled while arguing that one cannot leave these organizations because they are class unions when they were already integrated unions is a serious mistake whose repetition becomes a deviation. It would have been possible and necessary to establish a union reference point from which to build a non-integrated network, outside these integrated apparatuses, without abandoning them immediately but rather as a result of the maturation of outreach efforts with groups of workers who were either pushed to break away in order to carry out struggles without the direction’s constant betrayal, or expelled by the opportunist union direction once it realized it could not control the situation.
The Party was steeped in the belief that communists could under no circumstances take the initiative in helping to create independent labor union organizations, but that this could only be a spontaneous decision by non-communist workers, thus condemning the Party to be a passive player in this area, able only to attempt, subsequently, to gain influence within the organizational landscape determined by others. This was based on a biased interpretation of point 7 of the Characteristic theses (1951), which distorted the correct thesis “The party never adopts the method of forming partial economic organizations comprising only workers who accept the principles and leadership of the communist party” into this castrated and sterile version: “The party never adopts the method of forming partial economic organizations”, which, moreover, is in complete contradiction with the continuation of that same point in the Theses: “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”.
The Party had no shortage of examples from its own experience in the 1920s regarding clandestine action within fascist unions when circumstances precluded other courses of action, with a clear focus on the limits and objectives of such action:
“8) There are local situations in which the combined effects of unemployment and brutal violence have forced the entire population to join the autonomous (fascist) unions, as has happened almost exclusively among certain rural populations. In these cases, everything justifies the decision to allow Party members and sympathizers to join the masses in joining the autonomous unions when any other course of action becomes impossible. Experience shows that in such cases not only the union network but also the Party organization itself, especially in small centers, must become illegal. Although there have been instances where this tactic has been used to secure leadership positions within fascist unions, the objective of such action is to sabotage the fascist organization and bring the masses back into the ranks of the red organization. In general, the Communist Party will set itself the goal of demonstrating that fascist unions do not guarantee the immediate interests of workers and peasants and act as instruments of the employers and landowners, despite certain initial appearances to the contrary.” (Draft Program of Action of the Communist Party of Italy, contained in the Report of the Communist Party of Italy to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, November 1922).
Even the Theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International (1920) provided tactical tools in line with the Party’s positions cited above. Communists do not renounce labor union activity wherever it is possible, nor do they act on the basis of a splittist approach as a matter of principle; however, this does not mean that they cannot and indeed should not promote a split when a labor union organization led by opportunists (all the more so if it is an integrated labor union apparatus) expels revolutionary militants, dissolves combative union sections, and hinders and blocks revolutionary propaganda work[5]:
“4.- (…) All voluntary withdrawals from the industrial movement, every artificial attempt to organise special unions, without being compelled thereto by exceptional acts of violence on the part of the trade union bureaucracy such as the expulsion of separate revolutionary local branches of the unions by the opportunist officials, or by their narrow-minded aristocratic policy, which prohibits the unskilled workers from entering into the organisation – represents a great danger to the Communist movement (…)
5.- Placing the object and the essence of labour organisations before them, the Communists ought not to hesitate before a split in such organisations, if a refusal to split would mean abandoning revolutionary work in the trade unions, and giving up the attempt to make of them an instrument of revolutionary struggle, the attempt to organise the most exploited section of the proletariat. (…) The Communists, in case a necessity for a split arises, must continuously and attentively discuss the question as to whether such a split might not lead to their isolation from the working masses” [6].
But instead of working to revive a network of non-integrated union struggle, agreeing to join the integrated unions solely to avoid isolation, with the aim of exposing their bourgeois class character and pulling workers away from their influence, using the abuses and excesses of the opportunist union directions to gradually draw groups of combative workers toward a non-integrated union pole, it was theorized that the CGIL (or the CGT in France) was a genuine class union that had to be defended, and that communists and workers should remain within it despite the recurring expulsion of militants who sought to carry out their communist work.
While these apparatuses served to suppress workers’ struggles rather than to expand them, to denounce communist militants, leading to their expulsion and even dismissal from the company, the Italian and French Party centers painted a rosy picture of the cell in which the labor struggle is imprisoned, fantasizing that this would allow them to gain greater influence among the working class. In this way, control of the struggle in the labor union arena is effectively handed over to opportunism, and any attempt to wrest it from the clutches of integration is thwarted: all that is needed is to expel the communist militants when the situation demands it, and they are automatically disarmed by this castrated interpretation of the theses, which prevents them from proposing an organized alternative[7].
It was, therefore, an activist deviation that, rather than working toward the resurgence of the non-integrated union network, imagined it as already existing, thereby disorienting the working class and the activists themselves and preventing a break from the Mussolinian straitjacket.
As was to be expected, this tactical deviation disconcerted and confused large groups of militants within the Party, paving the way for the anti-union deviation that would subsequently take hold through increasingly elaborate tactical twists leading to a complete abandonment of the Party’s positions on the labor union question and ultimately to its collapse into anti-nuclear, pacifist, squatter, Palestinian nationalist movements, etc.
The deviation of the Scandinavian sections
In contrast to the recovery of integrated labor unions such as the CGT in France or the CGIL in Italy, the Scandinavian sections (practically newborn, formed in 1967) deviated in 1970–71 toward openly councilist positions, openly advocating for the “revolutionary unions” theorized by this current and rejecting the possibility of a union network not integrated into the state. In their 1971 thesis draft on the labor union question, they stated: “9.- (…) We must combat the trade unionist illusions that there are still unions in the imperialist metropolises with opportunist leaderships capable of being ‘won over’ by ‘the communist faction within the union’ and used as a ‘transmission belt’ for the class political party.” And while it was true in 1971 that neither the French CGT nor the CGIL met the requirements set forth in the Party’s Theses for the application of the union tactic of penetration and conquest, the premises underlying this assertion were a denial of the very possibility of a non-integrated union network in which the Party could apply the aforementioned tactic and extend its influence. Later on, the anti-union position becomes clearer: “11. Thus, the Communist Party in the imperialist metropolises must demonstrate that the trade union cannot be conquered. It must prepare the class to follow, without hesitation, its own historical tendency in the revolutionary period: the tendency to provide political leadership from the standpoint of the program and the organization (the party). (…)”.
Here, the issue is no longer one of denouncing the integrated unions and freeing the workers trapped within them in order to encourage and promote the formation of a network of union struggle (the class union) that is not integrated; rather, the theory holds that, during a revolutionary period, there should be no “mass labor-union economic associationism” between the Party and the working class, which the Characteristic theses consider indispensable.
The members of this councilist deviation evolved naturally and rapidly toward the mystical-idealist positions of Invariance.
The labor union “tesine” of 1972
Just one year after the Scandinavian sections left, the Direction of the party wrote the “tesine sindacali” of 1972 (published as “il partito di fronte alla questione sindacale" in “il programma comunista” No.3/1972) which are a compilation of spontaneous and anti-union positions.
In the “tesine sindacali”[8] it is stated, speaking of the intermediate organizations: “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 (…)” [9].
This slides the theory that intermediate organizations with economic struggle content (of labor union type) may not be necessary, a theory linked to the prospect of an abrupt change that would magically transport us from the period of counterrevolutionary depression directly to the revolutionary assault. It is difficult not to see the continuity between this approach and that of the Scandinavian sections: a rejection of union-based intermediate organizations between the Party and the working class as a whole. The difference is that here the anti-union position does not explicitly advocate councilism, although the spontaneousist and anti-union positions are the same. It is, in fact, a restoration of Damenism, which was thrown out the door in 1951 and is now being brought back in through the window: “I believe that the current corporatist union (whether fascist, social democratic, or communist, it makes no difference), by virtue of its role as an indispensable organ for sustaining the capitalist system, is destined to endure the economic, social, and political vicissitudes of moribund capitalism until the very end, and will only be broken along with the imperialist state by the onslaught of the revolutionary proletariat. In such a phase of advance or conquest of power, the regrouping of the forces of the proletariat will not wait for the traditional practice of the labor union to be repeated (…).” (Letter of O. Damen, 1951).
Speaking of the groups of combative workers who organize themselves outside the integrated labor unionism to fight against the employers, this text states the following monstrosity: “but recognizing the symptom of an instinctive proletarian reaction against the state of impotence to which the unions reduce their struggles and demands [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” [10].
That is, with regard to the combative workers’ groups that are breaking free from the straitjacket of mainstream unionism, the Party’s role would not be to rally these comrades and help weave a network of immediate struggle (union-based, even if that word is unpleasant to some…) but rather to convince them that their efforts are futile and to wait for the working class to “find in itself” (pure and simple spontaneism) the strength for a direct and general assault on capitalist power (this phase in which we were previously told that the intermediate organizations would not be of an economic or union nature). Thus, it is no longer stated that the French CGT or the Italian CGIL are class unions to be defended, yet the actual blockade against the creation of a non-integrated union network, the class union, remains in place.
These 1972 “tesine” represented a political compromise between the workerist spontaneism of southern France (which was effectively responsible for writing them) and the Italian and French centers that saw in them a clear path toward interclass activism in the search for these other non-union intermediate organizations: open interclassist organizations and united political fronts, which would be given free rein in the years that followed. As is also well known, the sections in southern France were later expelled in 1981 due to their subsequent resistance to the interclassist drift of the Italian and French directions, though this does not detract from the fact that they contributed to that drift through their confusing stance on union matters.
The result of this compromise was the anti-organizational expulsion the following year (1973) of the Tuscan sections. While we cannot say that these sections (the “Florentines”) were on the correct line, given their particularly significant role in previous tactical errors (the “sindacato rosso” was published in Florence), it is indisputable that they were not expelled for this reason but because they maintained a considerable labor union presence and were an obstacle to the free development of the new movementist course, just as were the other Party sections with a strong working-class membership and considerable labor union activity in 1981 and 1982, in Italy and Spain.
It is no coincidence that the two political heirs to the degeneration of the new course – the current “il programma comunista” and “le prolétaire”/“il comunista” (formerly Combat) – which prevailed thereafter, vindicate these “tesine sindacali” which may well be considered their founding document.
The drowning in movementism
In “The physiognomy of the degenerative process of the new course (1972-1982)” (The Internationalist Proletarian No.14) and “le Prolétaire/il Comunista: spearhead of revisionist degeneration of the new course” (The Internationalist Proletarian No.13) we have published a more detailed analysis of the many ways in which the degenerate Direction of the new course had been dismantling the line of the historical Party, and we refer the reader to these articles for further details. In any case, we will reproduce here the most relevant section regarding the topic we are treating.
The effects and practical interpretation of the 1972 labor union “tesine” were felt almost immediately. 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 (…)” [11].
In 1979 we have the artificial creation of the “Comitato Nazionale contro i Licenziamenti” (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.
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[12] 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) [13].
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.
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[14], labeling them as supposedly “attendists” [15]. On the other hand, the “struggle” of the hippie students for subsidized food was praised as the ultimate proletarian struggle.
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’” [16] 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” 16.
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[17]), instead of in the interclassist organisms or in the committees of political united front where the new course wanted it to be carried out[18].
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[19] continue to ruminate as an “explanation” for internal and external consumption about our existence.
[1] For a more detailed analysis of this degenerative process within the Party direction, see “The degeneration of programma comunista and our battle” (El Comunista No.1), as well as “The physiognomy of the degenerative process of the new course (1972–1982)” (The Internationalist Proletarian No.14) and “Le Prolétaire/il Comunista: spearhead of revisionist degeneration of the new course” (The Internationalist Proletarian No.13).
[2] We refer the reader to the introductions on the splits of 1952 (The Internationalist Proletarian No.16) and 1965–66 (The Internationalist Proletarian No.17), as well as the articles mentioned in the previous note, to observe the recurrence and correlation of the nature of the deviations.
[3] “Pour une C.G.T. rouge ; pour l’unité prolétarienne, contre le front syndical avec les organisations jaunes (F.O. et C.F.D.T.) ; (…) formons des groupes du Parti communiste international dans la C.G.T. !“ (Syndicat de classe, No.8, supplement to “Prolétaire”, March 1970).
[4] “A Belluno i nostri compagni, a seguito della denuncia delle porcherie che PCI e affini combinano ogni giorno negli stabilimenti locali, in particolare alla Faesite, alla Corono-costruzioni, ecc. sono stati espulsi dalla CGIL, benché l’assemblea unanime del Sindacato-Scuola, in cui sono inquadrati i nostri militanti, abbia respinto questo sporco provvedimento”.
[5] For those who regard Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder” as the sole reference on labor union matters, we would like to remind that this text was a polemical pamphlet prepared for the Second Congress of the Communist International (“cursory notes of a publicist” in Lenin’s own words), but that at that Congress, the Theses on “Trade Union Movement, Factory Committees and the Third International” were adopted as a positive tactical guideline for the actions of communists in labor union matters at the international level, precisely addressing the various anticipated situations and how to act in each of them.
[6] Let us recall the assessment regarding the process of sterilizing integrated trade unionism, which even extended to the once-fertile battleground of the Chambers of Labor: “Even this last resort has been destroyed in the current phase of the wave of Stalinist opportunism, since the Labor Chamber, as the venue for feverish gatherings of the most combative workers, has ceased to exist (traditionally, thousands of workers attended the nightly meetings, and it was easy to spread their decisions throughout the entire area by the following morning). In its place, the pink and red clerical cliques have built a corridor lined with bureaucratic rows of windows, where each isolated and intimidated worker goes to ask what his rights are or what the “instructions” from above are regarding some ridiculous move of today’s ones, then mumbles the slogans he has received and weeps over the castrated strikes.” (Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism, 1957). Under these conditions, isolation from the working class occurs precisely by remaining within these organizations and ensuring that others remain trapped in this straitjacket of integrated trade unionism, whose primary function is precisely to isolate and atomize the struggles of the working class.
[7] In 1996, after yet another expulsion of our militants in Spain due to their communist activities and positions, in this case in “Solidaridad Obrera” (SO) expelled by the anarchist minority within that union (members of Lucha Autónoma), who imposed their will by force with the help of Stalinist and pro-Cuban groups, among others (see “El Comunista” No.32, November 1996), the Spanish Section of the Party decided to apply point 7 of the Characteristic theses, promoting and helping to establish an organization for immediate struggle composed of the organized groups that opposed the expulsion, a process that led to the formation of “Solidaridad y Unidad de los Trabajadores” (SUT). This step cannot be taken artificially at any time because the conditions must mature, and this is a complex process. But it should have been taken in the past when other favorable opportunities were blocked and squandered by the (Italian and French) Direction of the new course, which had degenerated into a movementist orientation that used a sterilized interpretation of point 7 of the Characteristic theses to avoid labor union action. As anyone who reads the SUT statutes can see, not only is there no requirement to accept a specific political discipline, but this possibility is expressly ruled out: “The class workers’ union cannot be monolithic by statute, since different currents of thought converge within it.” At the same time, one can also see that the closed forms of company- or sector-based unionism are rejected, establishing a unified territorial organization whose subdivisions are territorial in nature, thereby stripping company-level union sections of any autonomy, without prejudice to the maximum freedom to act on behalf of and in conjunction with the union as a whole: “Since the Union’s objective is to promote solidarity and mutual support among all its members, this is incompatible with the existence of divisions regarding its financial or other resources. The commitment to solidarity at all levels among members and organized groups, overcoming geographical barriers and distances, as well as corporate or sectoral divisions, leads to the conclusion that the finances and resources of the organized movement must be unified.” and also: “The cancer of the labor movement is company-based unionism. The union’s organization is territorial because this is the best way to overcome corporatism and the limitations of company-based unionism. The Union Sections that members establish within their respective areas are neither autonomous nor independent from the Assembly of the Territorial Section nor the Union’s General Assembly, and may not hold funds separate from the rest of the union. Union Sections are a legal instrument through which the union operates in a specific area, but they do not replace its decision-making bodies: the Assembly of the Territorial Section and the Union’s General Assembly. The assemblies and meetings of the Union Sections shall be open to all other members of the union. In any case, the Union Branches may call a strike on behalf of the Union and initiate, on behalf of the Union, any type of administrative or judicial action in defense of the interests of the working class, as well as appoint Union Delegates.” In “Force, Violence, and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle” (1947), the following position is stated regarding the false “Bolshevization” that imposed company cells as the basis of the Communist Parties: “If the party’s organic function, which cannot be replaced by any other body, is to develop sectoral and local economic struggles into the unified general struggle of the proletarian class on the social and political levels, then no serious reflection of that task can take place at a meeting attended only by workers from the same occupational category and the same production enterprise. Such an environment will be attuned only to narrow, corporatist demands, the expression of the party’s unified leadership will reach it only from above and as something foreign”. If the above is vitally true for the Party, it remains true – although to a lesser degree, given that the primary revolutionary function lies with the Party – for the network of organizations engaged in immediate struggle within which the Party must exert its influence and carry out its activities; for this reason, the Characteristic Theses unequivocally state that “The party always encourages those forms of organization which facilitate contact and common action among the workers of various localities and of different professions, rejecting closed forms”. This conclusion can also be drawn from the lessons of the influence of the Chambers of Labor – which were not subdivided by sector – in Italy in the 1920s: “Consequently, within the labor union network, we see above all the powerlessness of the local union and the national professional federation, with the national federation controlled almost everywhere by opportunist parties, whereas the only center of class action once lay in the inter-union headquarters of cities and provinces.” (Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism, 1957). As we have reminded, communists place “the object and the essence of labour organisations before them”, the problem of “of the participation – or non-participation – of the revolutionary communist party in certain types of labor unions in a given country” is a “contingent problem” and the Characteristic Theses state that the organisms of economical struggle may “even assume totally new aspects in the future, after the well-known types of corporation, industrial union, enterprise council, etc.”. Therefore, it is not a particular form or contingent organization that interests us, one from which we cannot rule out the possibility of regression – something we cannot rule out even for the formal Party – or even integration, should the dynamics of political influence change in the future. In Venezuela, our comrades participate in the Núcleo Proletario Clasista, an immediate action group that coordinates participation in workers’ groups organized within other labor unions to the extent that the conditions for forming a new organization are not yet met, leaving open the possibility of its transformation from a coordinating body into a union in its own right or its participation in the formation of a new, non-affiliated labor organization. In Italy and Chile, our comrades can carry out union work only sporadically, both within and outside existing union organizations. But what is indisputable is that this experience in Spain has not only not isolated us from the immediate struggle of the working class but, on the contrary, has made the Party’s influence more fruitful and widespread by bringing in an influx of comrades who have come to Marxism through the reality of struggle (this “school of war” that strikes represent, though we must remember, as Lenin did, that it should not be confused with war itself), and to train militants with real experience in struggle and genuine organizational skills, far from the bleak landscape of marshals without troops who would not even know where to begin organizing a strike and who are all too common in the “communist left” scene, even among those bearing our very own Party name. We draw from this further confirmation that – regardless of the development and vicissitudes of existing or future organizations for immediate struggle – communists must not fail to encourage and help bring about a network of independent union struggle, striving to extend their influence within it and achieve leadership through their participation in it, without preemptively establishing this situation through statutory provisions.
[8] “Tesine”, as this article was known within the Party, it means “small theses” in Italian.
[9] “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)
[10] “(…) 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)
[11] Circular of the direction, March 26, 1976, republished and vindicated by “il Comunista” in issue 34-35.
[12] Organ of the Algerian section, epicenter of the nationalist degeneration of the formal organization.
[13] “base minimale que nous pourrons envisager de travailler en commun avec d’autres forces qui ont un programme et une idéologie différente des nôtres”
[14] 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.
[15] From “attesa” or “attendere”, which means “to wait” in Italian.
[16] Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the general situation is historically unfavorable, 1965.
[17] See in “The Internationalist Proletarian” No. 6, “An uncorrupted motto that transcends generations 'of the dead, the living and the yet to be born'”.
[18] 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!”.
[19] 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.
<<Against the capitalist cement sewer: communist space and oxygen
>>The historical cycle of the degeneration of the 3rd International (VI)