PDF-Version: Programme Communiste – Materials for a Review of the Party’s Crises – Part I

In memory of Bruno Maffi

The defence of the programmatic and political foundations of the Communist left also implies the fight against the ever-rising democratic and personalist deviations

Bruno Maffi, who devoted his entire life to activity against bourgeois and capitalist society, died at the age of 94 in August 2003.

Bruno, whose political life took place outside the noise and lights of the intellectual world, left in silence, despite the shift towards the personalism in which the party had been drawn during the crisis of 1982, a personalism that had been accentuated by the creation of an intellectual mausoleum called the “Amadeo Bordiga Foundation”[1]. Rarely in the party did he talk about himself, but the little we know about his personal life is enough to say that he has never put forward personal interests, an individual “prestige”, according to the almost inevitable tendency for intellectuals in this society to constantly emphasise what places them above the others.

After spending a little over ten years in the antifascist group “Justice and Freedom”, Bruno had been attracted to the movement claiming to be part of the so-called “Italian” Communist Left. And when the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) was founded in northern Italy in 1943, he became one of its leaders. This organisation was shaken in 1951-52 by a deep crisis which concerned the historical and political appreciation of the period as well as the very conception of the party and its method of formation. It then split in two: a fraction, led by Onorato Damen, who “claimed” in court the commercial ownership of the party newspaper, Battaglia Comunista, and its magazine, Prometeo, had a democratic conception of the party.

The other, inspired by Amadeo Bordiga, was organised – keeping the name of Internationalist Communist Party (before taking the name of International Communist Party in 1965)[2] – around the newspaper Il Programma Comunista, with the central objective of working to restore Marxist doctrine, the indispensable basis for the political organisation of the working class, the class party. It was this organisation that Bruno Maffi fully joined. When Bordiga died in 1970 after more than two years of illness, it was Bruno who, by natural selection, took over the role of central party leader, which he kept until the 1982-84 crisis[3].

***

We do not intend to give Bruno an obituary, to hypocritically sing his praises as it is traditional in these cases, even and especially when during his lifetime the deceased had to suffer the most serious insults. Nor do we want to obey a kind of “moral duty” towards a political leader (however small the size of the party) who may have known a certain “notoriety” and take advantage of it to advertise his work.

Some called him a “carbonaro”, like the Turinese during the 1952 crisis[4], while others praised him as the true heir to Bordiga, like those who followed him after the 1982 crisis. Some, such as the members of the former French centre, considered him the “wise father” before rebelling against this “father”; others finally described him as a little despot claiming to be right simply because he was the director in charge of the party newspaper.

But what interests us is to examine his role within the communist left, from the point of view of the class battle for the restoration of Marxist doctrine, as well as his defence and diffusion and the formation of the party organ.

The conception of anonymity, which we inherited from the teaching of Amadeo Bordiga and which we have always defended, is not based on the negation of the physical and material existence of men, with their individual strengths, qualities and weaknesses. The struggle against the cult of the individual, against the worship of a “head”, is based on the concept that each individual is part of a social whole, that he is the product of social life and that he can therefore never determine the course of history individually. The famous “individual consciousness” is only the reflection of a social and historical consciousness, generated by the developments of the struggle between classes. Historical developments and the movement of social forces determine the role of individuals, as well as their qualities, strengths or weaknesses at all levels.

There have been – and perhaps will continue to be – historical periods in which the action of certain individuals, because they condense particularly important historical experiences and demonstrate in practice a consistency of doctrine and practical action, may have been seen as the result of their individual capacities and personal will. But in reality it is the result of the dynamics of the movement of social forces, and more precisely, the struggle of social classes, the engine of historical development, which concentrates the “consciousness” and “will” of the goals of the revolutionary movement in a specific organ, the party, beyond the period of the life of individuals; while on the other hand it concentrates the “consciousness” and “will” of the interests of conservation and resistance to the process of historical development in other specific bodies, the political parties of the bourgeoisie (or pre-capitalist classes in earlier times) which are also sometimes represented in history by “great personalities”.

There are historical periods when the “party” of the revolution, organic and impersonal, is represented in the most effective way possible by certain particular militants of the communist revolution – as was the case for Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bordiga – or even only by certain texts, theses, writings, periodically “forgotten” or falsified and altered, as during the long period of Stalinism, which makes the work of reconquering the integral and invariant Marxist theory particularly slow, difficult and painful.

It is thanks to this perspective that we are also fighting against the cult of the masses, of the sociologically understood class, of the worker as a worker, of the wage-labourer… with callous hands, as the socialists and Stalinists once said; this mass cult is derived from a democratic, and therefore bourgeois, conception of society in which the majority is always right.

To talk about Bruno Maffi is therefore to talk about the vital issues of the class party.

Bruno played a role in the effort of reconstruction of the organ of reconstruction of the essential organ of the future proletarian revolution, the party, which has been provided by our movement, in the tradition of the Communist Left. It would be a serious snag to materialism to drown one’s specific activity as a central party leader, especially after the death of Amadeo Bordiga, in an abstract conception of the centre – or in an individualistic conception of one’s function. Our conception of the party is neither romantic nor individualistic, but neither is it falsely impersonal; the functions necessary for the disciplined coordination of the party’s activity do not “develop” by themselves, are not immanent, do not correspond to a bureaucratic mechanism, and it would be stupid (and hypocritically democratic) to think that any militant has the ability to perform the various functions necessary to the functioning of the organisation solely because he is a member of the party. No militant is not in principle excluded from any function (in the true class party, there can be no noble tasks reserved for leaders, and no thankless tasks reserved for a basic militant workforce), but some tasks require particular capacities that must be demonstrated over time. There is no vote, no investiture, no discrimination of any kind; it is a true natural selection on the basis of practical needs and technical efficiency that is at work.

Let us be clear: we do not have the cult of natural selection, we do not believe that comrades “selected” at a given time always and in all circumstances express, for this reason, the most effective centralism, the best doctrinal coherence and the most irreproachable militant behaviour.

As leader of the party, Bruno assumed responsibility for all the decisions, directions and choices that had to be made in order to carry out a coordinated, homogeneous and coherent activity. Leaders can make mistakes, deviate from the correct Marxist path, and, in the worst case, become arrivests or traitors; examples are unfortunately too numerous in the history of the international labour movement.

A leader, a centre must undoubtedly lead, this is their own function; but they must do so according to a set of rules constantly reaffirmed in the life of the party, even if they have not always been applied consistently, which constitute the only possible “guarantees”.

Here is the synthetic description of it in our party text “Dialogue with the Dead” (1956, about the 20th Congress of the CPSU and its supposed “return to the origins” after Stalin’s denials):

“Where will we find the guarantees against the misuse of the movement and the degeneration of its party? In a man? But man is little: he is mortal and vulnerable to the enemy. Even if we could believe for a moment that he is likely to represent one, it would be a very fragile guarantee, especially if he were alone.

Should we seriously believe that with collegial management we discovered, after the disappearance of the director who practised personal arbitrariness, the guarantee we were looking for? That is what Moscow is bragging about, but this is all a joke. In Russia, there is nothing left to save, since everything has already been lost. The turning point in relation to Stalin is even worse than the Stalinist degeneration, of which it has not and could not correct any of its defects.

Our guarantees are well known and very simple:

1. Theory.

As we have already said, theory does not arise just at any time in history – nor does it wait for the coming of the Great Man, the Genie. It is born at certain turning points in the development of human society, but if we know the date of this birth, we do not know who the father is.

Our theory was to be born after 1830 on the basis of English economy. Even if we admit that it is useless to give ourselves the goal of absolute truth and science, and that all we can do is to push forward in the fight against error, it constitutes a guarantee, but only if we firmly maintain it on the guidelines that make it a complete system. Throughout its historical course, it has only two alternatives: either to be realised or to disappear. The theory of the party is a system of laws that govern past and future history. The guarantee we propose is therefore the following: prohibition to revise and even enrich the theory. No creativity.

2. Organisation.

It must be continuous throughout history, that is, it must remain faithful both to its own theory and to the continuity of the thread of the experiences of the proletariat’s struggle. Great victories only come when this condition is achieved in vast areas of the globe and for long periods of time.

In relation to the party’s centre, the guarantee consists in denying it any right to create, and in obeying it only as far as its directives fall within the precise limits of the movement’s doctrine and historical perspective, established on the basis of long cycles and for the whole world. Any tendency to exploit local or national, “special” situations, unforeseen events or particular contingencies must therefore be suppressed. Indeed, either it is possible to establish that in history certain general phenomena reproduce themselves from one place and time to another, however distant they may be in space and time, or it is useless to speak of a revolutionary party fighting for a new form of society. As we have often explained, there are large historical and “geographical” subdivisions that determine the fundamental cycles of proletarian action, cycles that extend to half continents and fifty years and that no party leadership has the right to proclaim change from one year to the next. We have a theorem, based on a thousand experimental checks: the announcer of a “new course” is a traitor.

In relation to the base, the guarantee is that unitary and central action, the famous “discipline”, is achieved when the leadership is firmly committed to the theoretical and practical rules just mentioned and when local groups are forbidden to “create” autonomous programmes, perspectives and movements on their behalf.

This dialectical relationship between the base and the top of the pyramid (that thirty years ago, in Moscow, we asked to overthrow) is the key to ensuring that the impersonal and unique organ of the party has the exclusive ability to decipher history, the ability to intervene in it and the ability to signal the moment when this possibility appears. From Stalin to the current committee of sub-Stalinists, nothing has been overthrown.

3. Tactical.

Strategic “creativity” is eliminated from the functioning of the party. The plan of operations is public and well-known, as well as the precise limits of these operations in history and space. A simple example: in Europe, since 1871, the party has no longer supported any state war. In Europe, since 1919, the party has not participated (or should not have participated…) in elections. In Asia and the East, even today, the party still supports the democratic and national revolutionary movements and the alliance of the proletariat with other classes, including the local bourgeoisie itself, in the struggle. We give these examples so that we cannot talk about the rigidity of a scheme that supposedly remains the same at all times and in all places, and to avoid the common accusation that this conception derives from immutable assumptions of an ethical, aesthetic or even mystical nature, when it is entirely materialistic and historical. The class and party dictatorship does not degenerate into oligarchic forms provided that it is openly a dictatorship, that it declares itself publicly linked to a broad historical perspective that has been prepared in advance, and that it does not hypocritically condition its existence to majority controls, but only at the apex of the struggle with the enemy. The Marxist party does not blush at the stark conclusions of its materialist doctrine and no sentimental or decorative position can prevent it from drawing them.

The programme must clearly contain the broad outlines of the future society as a negation of the entire skeleton of the present society and the end point of all history, for all countries. Describing the present society is only one part of the revolutionary tasks. It is not our business to deplore its existence or defame it, nor to build the future society on its flanks. But the current relations of production must be mercilessly broken down according to a clear programme: the party’s doctrine scientifically predicts how the new forms of social organisation will appear on their ruins”.[5]

The 1952 split and the birth of the party

As far as we know, Bruno had a role during the period in which a crisis that led to the split in 1952 matured within the reorganised movement in 1943.

From 1943 until the end of the war, he was in charge, alongside Damen and other militants with central responsibilities as editor, propagandist and organiser. Amadeo Bordiga, constantly solicited by various anti-Stalinist groups – before, during and after the war – decided in 1946 to contribute, in terms of theoretical and political work, to the group called Partito Communista Internationalizta – Battaglia Comunista, without formally joining it. His contribution took the form of a gigantic work of revival and theoretical restoration of Marxism, which the party felt was a vital necessity and which it could effectively tackle thanks to the decisive contribution of the formidable class war machine that Amadeo Bordiga had provided.

This work of Amadeo to restore the Marxist doctrine in the face of the furious attacks of Stalinist opportunism could never have been realised if it had not been rooted in the political necessity to draw all the lessons and to take stock of the international communist movement, from the October 17 revolution to its defeat. And moreover, this work of assessment and defence of Marxism could not be the work of a single comrade, however educated, skilled and solid he may be. Far from the party of yesterday and today as well as of Amadeo the idea that “great men” make history!

It was to be a “party” work, the work of a political organisation taking the path of the Livorno Party in 1921, the Communist International of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party in its best years, of an organisation claiming the revolutionary foundations of the international communist movement, without claiming to “update”, “renew” or “adapt” to so-called “new and unexpected” situations the programme and principles based on the Marxism that were already restored by Lenin. The Partito Communista Internazionalista – Battaglia comunista, born underground in 1943 and acting since the end of the war in broad daylight, was the political force capable of forming the basis of this “difficult work of restoring the doctrine and the revolutionary organ, in contact with the working class, outside any personal or electoralist politics”, as our newspaper’s headline says.

Historical and dialectical materialism makes it clear that the struggle against Stalinist opportunism and for the restoration of the Marxist doctrine and the formation of the class party could not be carried out smoothly, as if on a calm sea. It was not only a question of reappropriating the 1921 Livorno Programme and the 1922 Statutes of the Communist Party of Italy, nor of centrally reorganising the groups of comrades that had been dispersed by Stalinism and fascism. The disfigurement of Marxism and the destruction of the international communist movement carried out by Stalinism, resulting in the disorientation of the proletariat and the annihilation of the old communist guard at the international level, could not be understood and explained by some quick formulas. The proletarian forces that had resisted the pressure and repression of bourgeois counter-revolution, of which Stalinism constituted the advanced frontline, had to have the concrete possibility and time to reorient themselves on the ground of Marxism. The Second World War, with the alignment of Russia – the so-called socialist country – on one of the two imperialist fronts, with the open rallying of the so-called communist parties in defence of the bourgeois state in the name of “democracy”, and with the enormous massacre of proletarians caused by the war, opened the eyes of many.

But the real problem remained to understand why proletarian revolution had been defeated, why fascism had defeated in Italy and Germany, Stalinism in Russia and the imperialist democracy throughout the world. It was necessary to demonstrate that Marxist theory was able to explain these events; to analyse the Russian social structure and determine whether elements of socialism existed there despite Stalinism as supported by Trotskyists; to predict the course of events in the post-war period, and to determine whether revolution was still “on the agenda” or whether the proletariat had to take other paths, for example that of democracy, to reach power and transform capitalist society into socialist society. It had to be established whether the party, as a centralist and centralised political organisation in the manner of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin or the Communist Party of Italy of 1921, was still the necessary political form for the proletariat, or whether, on the contrary, it should seek other forms, other alternatives. The assessment of the prolonged crisis of the international communist movement, the lessons of counter-revolutions was an imperative of theoretical and political work with its necessary consequences on the tactical and organisational orientations of the party.

Faced with these difficulties, it was inevitable that opinions, convictions, expectations and positions would emerge within the political grouping that had been formed at the end of the 1940s, which were diverse and even in opposition. It was also inevitable and above all necessary for an internal political struggle to be waged to clarify positions, demarcation points and distinctive lines. There was no other way to overcome the phase of political and theoretical disorientation that followed the reorganisation of the weak class forces that had survived the decimation carried out by fascism and Stalinism.

The original positions of the Communist Left in Italy as well as the work of restoring the Marxist doctrine carried out in particular by Amadeo Bordiga, succeeded in convincing many comrades, including those who emigrated. Bruno Maffi had become a convinced supporter of it, as he demonstrated during the internal struggle that divided the party in 1952. Maffi, with Perrone (Vercesi), Suzanne Voute, Piccino, Giovannini, Comunello, Danielis, Ceglia, La Camera and many other comrades, found themselves during these years of political reorganisation on positions very close to those of the Communist Party of Italy when the left was at its helm, which were the same positions expressed after 1945 by Bordiga (see, for example, the Party’s Platform in 1945, the contributions by Amadeo to the “Prometeo” theoretical review of the party: Elements of Marxist Orientation, Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, Post-war Perspectives, Theses of the Left, Property and Capital (Editor’s note: Part I can be found here), Elements of the Marxist Economy, etc., as well as the articles published in “Battaglia comunista” from 1949 and entitled “On the Thread of Time“).

The group “Battaglia comunista” subsequently interpreted this political struggle as a personal opposition between Amadeo Bordiga and Onorato Damen. In 1971, after Bordiga’s death, it published a brochure entitled “Amadeo Bordiga, validity and limits of an experience”, which includes five letters between Bordiga and Damen from July to October 1951, focusing in particular on the function of the Russian economy and on the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary process.

In fact, the differences related to questions of the party, the assessment of the historical situation and the record of the revolution and counter-revolution in Russia. As usual, these oppositions were translated into organisational terms. The party’s ultimately democratic conception (the demand for a congress was one of the central demands of the opponents) justified the autonomy of thought and action of its supporters. As the theoretical elements of the differences (on the conception of the party, on the trade unions, on the anti-colonial movements, on the analysis of the counter-revolution, on Russia, etc.) matured, Damen, Steffanini, Bottaioli and Lecci (members of the Central Committee at the time) put into circulation in 1951 in the organisation under the name of a so-called “Italian Left”, an “internal bulletin” containing their positions on the problems that the political movement was then facing. They thus asserted themselves as an alternative centre to the existing one. It is therefore logical that the Executive, by a circular dated 5/10/1951[6], expelled the promoters of this initiative.

It was at the meeting in Florence in December 1951 that the Foundations for Party Membership were presented to clarify the central questions of programme and analysis of the historical situation that defined the party’s short and long-term goals. These Foundations for Membership were published, in summary form, in “Battaglia comunista” of 6-20 March 1952. A “Central Committee communiqué”, preceding the Membership Foundations, was published in the same issue. It began as follows: “This decision, taken unanimously by the C.C. on 24/2/1952, responds to the need to systematise the organisation and activity of the party by putting an end to a period of serious and repeated acts of indiscipline and open disintegration, which must be regarded as definitively outdated”. In fact, while the serious acts of indiscipline could be considered to have ended, the political crisis that caused them had not yet had its full impact. A further step was taken in October-November 1952 by Damen’s supporters, when, relying on the purely administrative fact that one of them was the commercial owner of the party’s newspaper, approached the bourgeois courts to prevent the tendency opposing them from publishing it further; they obtained through legal action what they had not been able to obtain politically.

The last issue of “Battaglia comunista” as an organ of the party, before the court’s decision to hand it over to its “owner”, was number 16 (12-28 September 1952). It contained the following warning to readers: “We point out that the change in the title of the newspaper (…) is not due to our initiative, but to legal actions whose provenance we will never be interested in pointing out. It was a case of asserting against the party, against its ideological and organisational continuity, and of course after seizing it, a fictitious commercial property that only exists because of legal obligations. We will not allow ourselves to be challenged and contradicted by people; we will suffer executive impositions without going onto the terrain of established justice.

Those who have used it will no longer be able to return to the terrain of the revolutionary party. There is no need to mention their names or actions, today or tomorrow. The newspaper will continue to place itself on the line that has always defined it and which constitutes its titles, not ‘ownership’, but programmatic and political continuity, in accordance with the fundamental texts of the movement, the platform and programme of the Left, the series of ‘Thread of Time’ and other publications”.

Amadeo Bordiga led a fierce struggle against “intellectual property”, the worst product of the mercantilist conception of bourgeois life; he thus made anonymity in the work of the party a function of preparation for the struggle against the mercantile and personalist habits specific to the bourgeoisie. It is on this basis that the legal actions carried out by the “owners” of the party newspapers (who disagreed with a fraction of the party) to ensure their control (and therefore their political notoriety) must be considered as the crossing of the line between a party action on the class field and a pseudo-classist, democratic activity in fact and therefore on a bourgeois field. In 1952, during the split with Damen’s supporters, as in 1982, at the time of the separation between the liquidators of the party and Bruno Maffi and his supporters, such actions reveal a cult of individualism in the background.

In 1952, Bruno was one of the leaders of the party but also the editor of the newspaper “Battaglia comunista”. Although his attachment to the latter was strong, he did not answer to Damen and his supporters on the judicial terrain that they used. He followed Bordiga’s instructions to abandon those who went to the courts to this bourgeois land, and to publish another newspaper whose name was “Il programma comunista”. The first issue under this title appeared on 10-24 October 1952, with the publication of the first part of “Dialogue with Stalin“.

The crises of the 1970s that decided the fate of the party born in 1952

Bruno’s role as a leader was subsequently decisive, in a positive or negative sense, at different times in the party’s life.

Positive contributions. For example, the work necessary to restore the party’s position was dangerously oriented towards voluntarism, as at the time of the so-called “Florentine” crisis on the trade union question in 1969-73. The activists leading the Florence section and who were responsible for leading the party’s trade union activity had come up with the idea of defending the CGIL trade union (the Italian CGT) against the threat that the trade union unification projects would have posed to its supposed class nature. They put forward the slogan of the formation of so-called “Red CGIL Defence Committees” (1970-71) to oppose the unification of the CGIL with the ICFTU and UIL, “unification” falsely judged as “inevitably leading” to a “fascist” union. At the time, under the influence of the student and social struggles of 1968-69, the party deviated towards spontaneity, which it corrected only thanks to the vigorous reaction of many comrades from the “base” who succeeded in imposing a rectification of the “trade union question”, which the centre quickly adopted, relying in particular on texts from Bordiga (see the “Thread of Time” of 1949 “Trade Union Scissions in Italy“)[7].

The Theses on the trade union question of 1972 (the result of contributions from the whole party and to which Bruno, after a period of hesitation, made an important contribution) put back in place both the analysis of the tricolour unions (collaborationists with the ruling class, but not “fascists” in the sense of the single state union with compulsory membership), and the attitude and tactics of the party in the so-called trade union activity and proletarian struggles both within and outside the unions[8]. At the time, the differences revolved around different analyses of the situation and the party’s “priorities”. Some argued that the proletarian movement was able to assimilate the revolutionary orientations of the party, provided that its activity in the trade unions increased exponentially until it conquered its leaderships; they argued that this was the only way to develop the party and increase its influence on the proletariat. It was therefore necessary to set the objective of driving out the opportunist leaders of the trade unions and replacing them with revolutionary proletarians.

In reality, the proletarian movement was still a prisoner of opportunism; it was still having to take the first steps towards struggles independent of opportunism. It could begin to move in this direction, including through the contribution of the revolutionary communists whose task was therefore not only to “import Marxist theory into the class”, but also to participate in the efforts, including organisational efforts, of the proletarians in and outside the unions to free themselves from the tutelage of opportunism and place themselves on the field of the immediate struggle to defend their class interests only.

Certain militants, on the other hand, considered that the organised proletariat in the trade unions was almost ready to abandon the opportunists in order to follow the vanguards of the class (and the revolutionary communists where they existed); it was therefore important to be present, to fight against the trade union leaders and to be elected in their place; these elements claimed with unreasonable optimism that “reformism is losing its influence over the proletariat”. But the latter was still subject to the influence of opportunism and the resumption of class struggle was still slow to manifest itself. In this situation, the revolutionary communists had to fight against the monks of the tricolour trade unions, but with the objective of pushing the proletarians to take direct control of their struggles, by giving their contribution to the organisation and defence of these struggles by the proletarians themselves.

Discussions of this type will reappear regularly and will again be at the centre of subsequent internal crises. The trade union theses did not solve all the problems that had accumulated in the party and moreover they did not claim it. But they created a barrier between those who considered the years 1968-69 as a “pre-revolutionary” period (pending the general crisis of capitalism predicted in 1975) and the 1970s as the decade of “kicking” (according to an expression of Bordiga defining the revolutionary period as one in which the working class would return to the forefront of history and kick out the characters who occupy it today), i.e. the world proletarian revolution – hence this ultimatism in the question of trade union unification and a frenzy of intervention with the objective of rapidly increasing the number of militants; and those who placed the forecast of the revolutionary crisis on the scale of historical events and in the context of a more correct assessment of the state of the workers’ movement in Europe and in the world, thus assessing in a more realistic way the balance of power between the classes. That is, those who gave real weight to proletarian forces tending to break social peace on the one hand, and to the general system of political and social collaboration on the other, of which the so-called workers parties were indispensable pillars, considering that these forces could regress – which they did – and that they were not the first steps towards the resumption of the sustainable and vast international class struggle hoped for by all.

We know that 1968 was considered by the vast majority of political movements and parties as a kind of second turn (after the resistance of antifascist partisans) between the period when traditional parliamentary parties had a monopoly on “politics” and the period when “politics” was seized, when it was experienced by movements emerging from below, emerging from social pressures, and hardly recovered by traditional reformism.

In Europe 1968 (which was reminiscent of the 1964 student movement in the United States) was generally characterised by movements of diverse cultural origins but all essentially students; a so-called new intelligentsia worked to conquer the limelight and put its demands in front of the powers (from the university to the local and then governmental level): “imagination in power”, “will and power”, “no to partitocracy, yes to autonomy”, and so forth. For us it was clear that these were not “class” movements: they were neither proletarian nor revolutionary, even if most of these movements presented themselves as the movement of a “new class” – that of students, which claimed to compare itself to the proletarian – revolutionary class. In reality, they were in fact petty-bourgeois movements, those petty-bourgeois layers who – smelling the economic crisis and therefore the danger of being thrown out of their conditions of privilege and social promotion to that of the proletarians – rebelled against this perspective. But, as is always the case, the petty bourgeoisie, in order to be taken “seriously” by the big bourgeoisie, which has all the decisive economic, social and political levers, must impress and frighten it; which by nature it is incapable of doing.

The attention then turned to a social force that by its struggle has the capacity to disturb the big bourgeoisie: the proletariat. The “student spring of 1968” did not modify by a millimetre the relationships of social forces: a lot of noise with no result. But when the workers began to move, fighting and striking to defend their living conditions, the dominant bourgeoisie began to worry. It is for this reason that student movements have always at some point sought to connect with workers’ movements: it is the power of the workers that makes them feel strong, that makes them dare to oppose the authority of institutions and the state, that pushes them to seek a more solid “contractual power” to defend more effectively, and obtain, the social promotions for which they are setting out in motion.

The organisational weight and ideological influence of Stalinism have for decades made the proletariat bow to the interests of the bourgeoisie to the point of making it permeable to the various forms of opportunism and interclassism – not only those of Stalinism and Maoism but also those expressed by student movements despite the superficiality of their actions, even if they were sometimes violent. In France, 1968 actually started from workers’ struggles and quickly attracted student movements who sought to use it for the purpose of petty-bourgeois social promotion. Stalinism had long since succeeded in lowering the workers’ struggle movement to the ground of democracy, participation in the defence of the national economy, etc.; the student movement did nothing more than try to cling to the forces of the workers to give its own material and ideological aspirations a strength and “nobility” to which they could not reach on their own.

In Italy, the student movement preceded, to a certain extent, the proletarian social struggles that appeared on the scene in an explosive way that same year but especially the year following with the famous “hot autumn”; it tried to infiltrate the workers movement with its rebellious character and its “ideological innovations” of the Potere Operaio type; but it actually played a role of additional deviation from workers’ struggles by diverting combative proletarians towards powerless forms of extremism, ranging from spontaneity to armed struggle.

It was very important at the time for our party to lead the theoretical struggle against the so-called new forms of revision of Marxism (from Lotta continua to Avanguardia operaia, from Maoism to Third World Guévarism and Potere operaio) as well as to lead the internal struggle to defend the party against the movement’s contagion. Amadeo Bordiga’s last contribution, before his illness practically prevented him from speaking and writing, was devoted to the student movement of 1968: it was the article “Elementary Note on Students“[9] in which he fought against in particular the idea that students were a “new class”.

At that time, some party militants imagined that 1968-69 could constitute a kind of reissue of the “biennio rosso” – the famous “two red years” of 1919-20 – and open a “pre-revolutionary” period. The need to combat the idea that students constituted a “new class” which, moreover, could lead to the beginning of a resumption of the revolutionary struggle, was therefore compounded by the need to give a correct assessment of the period and situation and to clarify clearly the question of the crisis and the revolution. It was on this question, that is, on the meaning of revolutionary forecasts and on the correct “reading” of economic and social facts, that Bruno made an important contribution.

In the article entitled “Crise et Révolution”, of July 1974[10], which includes fundamental Marxist writings (the Critique of Political Economy and the Manifesto of the Communist Party) and Trotsky’s 1921 text, The First Five Years of the Communist International, it clearly criticises the “evolutionist” vision of the capitalist crisis according to which “the social productive force of labour”, even if with irregular oscillations, grows to a materially impassable peak, then slows down its course and finally gradually falls to zero – and it is then the stop, the crisis which is therefore synonymous with the exhaustion of the momentum of which capitalism had nevertheless been the world protagonist (…). For the old-style social democrat, the zero point of the crisis indicates the quiet transition from the power of the dying bourgeoisie to the proletariat prepared to reap its legacy. For the centrist, the zero point does not “exclude” either revolution or dictatorship, but these constitute only a temporary accident; when we arrive there, both disappear on the horizon, and we must hurry to propose emergency measures, structural reforms, ministerial combinations, etc., under the pretext that, as the damage is done, the more we preserve the legacy of social wealth, the more productive forces we save, the less painful the new society’s sufferings will become. Finally, for the immediatist, revolution and even dictatorship have reached zero point, welcome and inevitable, all subjective and objective conditions being automatically fulfilled. The tree of the associated economy is only waiting to be shaken so that the ripe fruit does not fall into the arms of the inheritor.

The result is for all of us an observation, like seeing a comet crossing the starry sky. For some, the transition to socialism is a notarial act recording a death, a fact that could not fail to happen. For others, it is the product of forces arising from determinations identical to those determining the natural outcome of the death of a living organism. The former – social democrats and centrists – “prepare” technicians and experts for the transition to the lukewarm atmosphere of cooperatives, parliaments, trade unions and municipalities. The latter expect this passage to prepare by itself its technicians and experts, whether they are physical persons or mysterious organisms. At best, they see it as a prefiguration of the human and material mechanisms that come from “power in the factory”. For them, the event is predictable as a fact and unpredictable as a form. The bourgeoisie leaves the stage and the proletariat enters it, but the historical scene has little to do with the theatrical scene.

The correct Marxist interpretation is quite different, and it is clearly expressed in our text Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine[11], particularly in the schematics representing the “false theory of the downward curve of capitalism”, and the other “alternation of class regimes in the revolutionary movement”.

“Marx did not reveal the development and then the decline of capitalism but, on the contrary, simultaneously and dialectically, the augmentation of the mass of productive forces controlled by capitalism, and the antagonistic reaction constituted by that of the subjugated forces, that of the proletariat”. The general productive and economic potential increases until the equilibrium is broken, and then there is a phase of revolutionary explosion during which, in a short space of time, breaking with the old forms of production, the forces of production fall back to give themselves new bases and resume a more powerful ascent.

In this powerfully dialectical vision, in contrast to the thousand forms of voluntarism and fatalism, the historical cycle of capitalism is generally presented as an ascending curve traversed by more or less sudden oscillations, at an ever shorter pace, which makes it the most chaotic and uncertain mode of production in history. The possibility that at the top of the curve the entire system will collapse does not result from a mechanical accumulation of economic contradictions; it depends strictly on the double condition that the greatest productive force created by bourgeois society, the proletarian class, make its armed and organised appearance on the scene, and that it meets its guiding organisation, that of the decisive battle, the party.

This is where the second and most serious of the gradualist and formalist “mistakes” comes into play, that of “linking the economic process and the political process through pure formalism”[12]. Or, even worse, to assume that the economic process is taking place in a vacuum, as is done by itself, instead of placing it within the complex set of actions and reactions between superstructure and infrastructure. As if constant capital and variable capital were solid bodies, liquid or gaseous, instead of historical forces, and their collision was a conflict between abstract “metaphysical categories” instead of a conflict between physical classes. As if the bourgeoisie grew in parallel with the dynamics of the productive forces, and the proletariat with the growth (or decline) of the bourgeoisie, and that the condemnation pronounced by history against the latter did not execute itself – for reasons of… age limit. This means, against all Engels’ work, reducing historical materialism to a vulgar economic materialism.

It was in this serious mistake consisting of linking mechanically the economic process and the political process that many comrades fell into at the time. It was to them that the effort was made, particularly from the centre of the party, to put the organisation back on a solid footing in terms of the correct interpretation of the economic crisis in action and what the party should expect from it both in terms of class resumption and its own development. But this effort does not succeed in preventing the factors that separate the theoretical gains from the party’s action towards the class from continuing to work on it in depth, gradually eroding the party’s theoretical and political strength.

In February 1975, in the article “Le prolétariat et la crise”, Bruno insisted on the fundamental points of the analysis of the situation: “It is essential, in the face of the current economic situation, to understand in which phase (economic, political, social, super structural) it (the crisis) fits in, and it follows two extremely important points: 1) Economic crisis and crisis of the bourgeois system do not coincide insofar as the “political curve” does not mechanically follow the “economic curve” but is linked to all the events preceding it and which make it take one direction or the other; 2) the weight of opportunism in the historical phase that can be traced back to the fall of the revolutionary movement in the 1920s, the concomitant victory of Nazism, fascism and Stalinism and the process of strengthening world domination by the great imperialist monsters, led by the United States, is greater than all previous historical periods and connects with all the phenomena we have indicated”[13].

In the period before the simultaneous economic crisis of the major imperialist countries broke out, our party had a duty to explain what it expected from this crisis and how to prepare for it. For more than twenty years it had been predicting this world capitalist crisis, which it had linked to the forecast of a revolutionary crisis, which obviously interested the revolutionary party, the only one in the world to represent the authentic Marxist theory. Yesterday’s party devoted various meetings to this work of analysing and explaining the course of world imperialism and the party’s tasks[14]. The effort to formulate a correct Marxist evaluation of the historical period it was going through and of the simultaneous global crisis of the most important national capitalisms was not enough to strengthen the doctrine of the whole party, which, on the contrary, was moving towards several internal crises.

The global capitalist economic crisis and its repercussions on the party

From 1973 to 1979, the party developed numerically but suffered significant and repeated internal crises.

In 1973, the oil crisis broke out. The developed capitalist world seemed to have its back to the wall by the oil-producing countries. Taking advantage of a favourable balance of power thanks to the production of the famous black gold on which the most important imperialist countries in the world depended, they imposed more advantageous conditions on Americans and Europeans for the extraction, refining and marketing of oil and its derivatives.

For the first time, the dominant industrialised countries of the world were caught off guard by commodity producing countries. This will not happen again, but the oil crisis revealed the weak point of the major capitalist countries and led to the international economic crisis in 1975. This set in motion the proletarians of all developed countries, and at the same time gave a boost to the anti-colonial movement of certain peoples such as Mozambique or Angola, not to mention Vietnam, which after having defeated the French had been fighting for several years against the Americans to form an independent nation.

In Italy, it was the period of the CUBs (Base Unitary Committees) and an endless series of attempts to form proletarian organisations outside the direct control of tricolour trade unionism. These attempts failed in practice to maintain their independence from trade union collaborationism, especially because of the “defence of democracy” of the many so-called extra-parliamentary groups that filled the “gaps” left by traditional trade unionism. These groups succeeded in recovering the most combative proletarians who tended to escape the control of trade union collaborationism and bring them back into the fold of reformism, consultation, pacifism and legalism. These were the years when, as in France its colleague the CFDT, the yellow and Catholic ICFTU competed with the CGIL in “radicalism” in verbal declarations in order to find union members and executives. The CUBs and then the Factory Councils, born in reaction to the trade union structures of factories (the Internal Commissions) sold to the employers, were gradually recovered by the official trade union organisations.

Politically, it was against the background of the “historical compromise” in which the PCI proposed an indirect alliance with Democrazia Cristiana that various groups, mainly of Stalinist origin, tried to direct workers’ combativity towards “armed struggle”. Revolutionary “Impatience” and “despair”, sons of petty-bourgeois illusions and immediatism, played a deadly role throughout the 1970s in diverting workers’ combativity from the class field to that of interclassist agitation modelled on the Resistance model, with Democrazia Cristiana being presented as a… reincarnation of fascism.

In this period when, moreover, union and political reformism showed that it was no longer able to maintain total control over the proletarian masses (the economic crisis had weakened the powerful arm of social shock absorbers, forcing them to replace demands for wage increases, etc., with the call to sacrifice), and when the patron bourgeoisie, the target of leftist terrorist groups, became more fearful, the opportunities for action that were actually opened up to workers and revolutionaries were particularly important.

Social reality posed problems for the party related to immediate workers’ defence, and the need for a clear political delimitation from the many political groupings that were emerging to the left of the traditional reformist parties (PSI and PCI). These were problems that required quick, clear, unambiguous and coherent responses. The party had not planned, for example, the “period of red terrorism”, even if it was able to clearly understand its characteristics and historical role, and take a totally correct class position. It should be recalled that the “red terrorism” of the 1970s was born in Italy (where it had an unknown scale and influence elsewhere in Europe) following coup attempts and bloody far-right attacks (Milan, Brescia, Milan-Naples train in 1969), and that it initially attacked employer despotism in factories, targeting both the bosses and the managers. Only then did the Red Brigades “raise their sights” to the point of kidnapping and murdering Aldo Moro, the president of the main bourgeois party, Democrazia Cristiana. For the BRs, Aldo Moro was the man of the “historical compromise” – the alliance with the Italian Communist Party – that they wanted to prevent at all costs in their perspective from bringing it back to its so-called “revolutionary” positions of the Stalinist era…

There was then a tendency to unite bourgeois forces proper with the reformists of official trade unions and so-called workers’ parties in order to defend the national economy, its competitiveness and development. The party began work on questions related to the need for proletarian organisation, and on the perspective of the proletarian united front at the grassroots, in the field of defending living and working conditions. This perspective of a united front at the grassroots provided for the possibility of specific actions with militants or factory or trade union groups belonging to other political groups[15]. On this thorny terrain of relations between party and class, and between party and other organisations, there was a courageous and difficult internal political struggle, especially since the somewhat broader activity of yesterday’s party then encountered many difficulties that were reflected in the form of activist, voluntarist, contingentist crises, crises that in turn gave rise to tendencies and positions of the wait-and-see and indifferent type.

Towards the end of 1974, an activist crisis of the “movementist” and “Trotskyist” type hit the strong Milan section in particular, with some repercussions in other sections in Liguria and France. This split essentially revolved around the question of the party’s relations with the far-left formations with whom possibilities for joint practical action on the ground of immediate workers’ demands could be possible, while maintaining complete political, programmatic and organisational independence. The discussions also focused on the party’s relationship with political movements such as anti-nuclear movements, etc. The splitters argued that the party should reduce its criticism of other groups when it was carrying out joint actions with them on the ground immediately. This actually amounted to masking the political and programmatic characteristics of the party so that it would be easier to associate with other formations in order to become “more numerous” and “more influential” with the proletariat. The elements that then split, “united” against the party but disunited among themselves, tried unsuccessfully to constitute an embryonic organisation.

Faced with these defections, Bruno was more bored than anything else, and did not try to explain how such opportunistic positions had emerged in the party. In a series of circulars, the Centre reported that the comrade had “on a whim” abandoned the organisation without taking a position on a particular issue[16]. It is a fact that this crisis broke out over the practical positions of the party in relation to social movements, be it the workers’ factory movement or the “anti-imperialist”, “anti-nuclear”, etc. movements. The Centre did not see in this crisis the manifestation of a process of abandoning the theory, of the democratoid and activist type, which had begun to manifest itself in the party as early as 1969-72, and which gave its first negative results during the Florence crisis in 1973. Gradually transforming itself into political superficiality, this process will intensify until the explosive crisis of 1982-84.

In 1977, the party experienced another crisis, this time on the central issue of the party, in opposition with our classical positions. The Cividale (Friuli) section and some others influenced by it in the region, theorised that the true compact and powerful party of tomorrow – since it was still not realised at the fateful date of 1975 – would be the result of the merger of organisations that “tended” to become the class party and which should unite after having confronted their respective programmes and positions by working together to choose the “best” from each other. On this occasion too, although it was easier to oppose a so-called “creuset party” by taking up the classic positions of the Communist left on the class party, Bruno limited himself to “classifying” this crisis as a “incident de parcours”. This crisis was therefore not understood, either by Bruno or by the party, as a new sign of a process of erosion that was inevitably beginning to show strong localist characteristics. It was from these people that the Marxist Initiative Centre of Naples was born, which became the OIC (“Organisation Communiste Internationaliste”) publishing the newspaper “Che Fare?” (What is to be done?).

In the following period, in reaction to voluntarism and activism, “indifferentist” (or “attentist”) positions appeared, reticent towards the intervention of the party in workers’ struggles as for example during the crisis in Turin (1979-81). It was therefore necessary to recall that the party’s activity towards the class cannot be limited to “importing Marxist theory” into it, which would reduce this activity to propaganda and literary action; but that this activity, inside and outside the trade unions, must go so far as to give a practical contribution to the birth and strengthening of immediate fighting organisations based on the exclusive and effective defence of the proletarian class’s interests. Practical contribution both in terms of classist orientation of the objectives, means and methods of struggle, as well as in effective participation, where possible, in the constitution of the fighting bodies of the proletarians (strike committees, coordinations, etc.). These bodies must not be the emanation of political parties, but the grouping of non-commissioned workers (“politicised” or not), for the sole purpose of defending proletarian interests, regardless of the political or religious convictions of each party.

To penetrate all the gaps left by reformism and collaborationism, according to the party’s precise indications, but for what purpose? To bring into the working class, its struggles and daily life, the classist orientation and lessons, the assessment of past struggles, so that the proletarians can rely on the historical tradition of the hidden and falsified class struggles by the collaborationists. The active presence, participation in struggles and organisational efforts, of revolutionary communist militants is essential to demonstrate that they are not big mouths or smooth talkers, utopians or scavengers of struggles for an electoral or shopkeeper purpose, but the most lucid, determined workers militants who stand up against all of their class positions.

Several sections (Turin, Ivrea, Torre Annunziata, Schio) contested the central tactical orientation of the party on the issue of struggles and proletarian fighting organisations (strike committees, committees against dismissals – as in FIAT -, coordination of strike committees, inside and more often outside trade union organisations, particularly among railway staff, hospital workers, teachers, etc.), seeing it as a risk of a united political front against other political organisations and unionism. Faced with the danger of splitting, Bruno responded with organisational expedients which – as we want to demonstrate – not only did not prevent the split but weakened the party and its centre in the internal political struggle against fractionalist positions on the organisational, romantic and metaphysical levels on the theoretical-political level. Thus, in the face of controversy and continuous discussions with the heads of these sections, a confrontational meeting of the Italian sections was held in March 1981, at which the dissidents presented their report to which the centre had to respond immediately. Democratic practice, after being driven out by the door, came in through the window, and with the blessing of the centre! All the elements for the 1982 crisis was now in place to take on an explosive character.

The centre had undoubtedly made every effort to demonstrate the validity of the tactical orientations of the 1972 trade union theses (not only to intervene in workers’ struggles in order to orient them towards class objectives and the use of classist means and methods of struggle, but to encourage and contribute practically to organise struggles on the class scene outside of tricolour collaborationism). But in the face of criticism, especially from comrades who used theoretical and programmatic arguments to deny these new tasks of the party, it gave way on the organisational level under the illusion that a democratic debate was better able to make the party understand the correctness of the central tactical orientations.

The use of these expedients was not only ineffective since it did not avoid the split; but above all it had the great disadvantage of preventing collective work, the militants withdrawing to their sections to elaborate “their” positions and leaving the centre to manage the discussions with the Turin section.

***

During the difficult period characterised by brigadist terrorism leading to the assassination of Aldo Mauro in 1978, Bruno’s action was on the contrary precious. It is he who formulates the correct political answer in the article entitled “Terrorism and the Difficult Road to a General Resurgence of the Class Struggle“, of 1978[17], work that allowed the party to fight the individualistic and conspiratorial conception of the classist and revolutionary resumption of the proletariat, and at the same time to claim violence as a factor of history inherent to this same class struggle, even before the proletarian conquest of political power.

In this particularly difficult period when any combative proletarian and disrespectful of pacifism and legalism, even to the point of nausea through opportunism, was pointed out, isolated, accused of being a “fellow traveller” of the BR. Our comrades were often slanderously accused of “collusion with the armed struggle”. The party made every effort to reaffirm the positions of revolutionary Marxism on all fronts:

1) Question of violence, force and dictatorship in the class struggle – to use the title of a fundamental text by Amadeo Bordiga – where we claim the use of force and violence in the proletarian struggle, while fighting as a deviation the carbonarist conceptions of the “guerrilla” groups that turn their backs on the perspective of the classist reorganisation of the proletariat.

2) Clear distinction between revolutionary communists and all those, whether they call themselves communists, socialists, Marxists or revolutionaries, who come together in the despicable defence of bourgeois democracy and the denunciation of all forms of violence under the pretext of “the fight against terrorism” – by putting on the same footing, for example, red terrorism which attacked very specific individuals, and black terrorism which committed massacres of crowds.

3) Fight against the repression and terrorism of the bourgeois state, its police and army, a fight that was to break with the pacifism and legalism of the collaborationism of the tricolour trade unions and the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties.

The party then succeeded in distinguishing itself clearly from all the other political formations of the so-called “extreme left” by avoiding the various traps set in a situation that the media at the time called the “strategy of tension”.

The most important effects of the bourgeois offensive actively supported by reformism were as follows: 1) any violent protest, even if only verbal, during struggles not only with government and state power but above all with trade union and political power, could be taken as action favouring “armed struggle” groups, in particular BRs; 2) the refusal to declare itself publicly “against any form of violence” could be interpreted as a connection with “armed struggle”; 3) any workers’ demand supported by means and methods of class struggle (unlimited strike, picket lines, roadblocks, occupation of stations, factories, offices, etc., fight against repression) could be considered “anti-democratic” and manipulated by brigadists. In essence, the climate created by the attacks on the living, working and fighting conditions of the workers, and by the retaliation of the supporters of the “armed struggle”, facilitated police repression and intimidation on the one hand, and the retreat of the so-called “avant-gardes” towards the most coarse democracy for fear of being confused with terrorists on the other hand.

The French trade unionists demonstrated their fanatical attachment to the status quo, to social peace, to collaboration between the classes and their anger towards the proletarians who placed themselves even if only tendentially on the class field of the struggle against employer demands; true guardians of the established order they denounced the most combative workers. In such a climate it was certainly not easy for the comrades of the party, while the workers’ struggles could not free themselves from the collaborationist obstacles, to lead in the factories, the unions, the demonstrations, their anti-democratic propaganda and individual anti-terrorism at the same time as the agitation work for the independent classist reorganisation of the working class. In other words, without a proper and solid framework for the question of “terrorism and communism”, the party would then have risked being drawn into serious deviations, as were all the so-called revolutionary organisations.

Source: Programme Communiste, No. 99, February 2006.

[1] We have already criticised the creation of the “Amadeo Bordiga Foundation”, founded by a group of intellectuals and joined by Bruno Maffi, then head of the Partito Comunista Internazionale – il programma comunista, as well as other militants of this organisation (see “Les constructeurs d’icônes inoffensives à la oeuvre: creation de la Fondation Amadeo Bordiga”). Until today “Il P.C.” has not devoted a single line of commentary – neither criticism nor support – to this foundation, as if it did not exist, although its leaders are part of it. And as if the decision of these leaders to participate and contribute to the birth of an organisation outside the party (as is the case) dedicated to the historical leader of the party (and with funding from the bourgeois state), was a private matter that did not concern either the party or the readers of its press. A fine example of consistency with the party discipline for which the left has always fought!

[2] The change of name is not a simple formality. After the general meetings of the party in July and November 1964, where the organisational issues were discussed in depth, which in turn served as a basis, along with many other contributions from the party, for the final theses on organisation (Naples Theses of 1965 and Milan Additional Theses of 1966), the party organ explained this change as follows: “During our reconstitution on Italian territory alone in 1943, the name “Internationalist Communist Party” was chosen to distinguish us from so many shameful entities (the Italian Communist Party – editor’s note). Today, thanks to our real dialectical development, our organisation is the same in Italy and beyond its borders, and it is not new to see that it acts, even if in a quantitatively limited way, as an international organisation. The name “International Communist Party” cannot be new to anyone if we consider that it was stated in Moscow at the end of 1922, even if it was not then decided to change the names of the sections (of the International, editor’s note)” cf. “Il PC” n°1/1965.

It was then that the question of organic centralism was definitively clarified with a new reaffirmation of the struggle against democracy not only in terms of ideology and principles but also in terms of its practical application in the internal life of the party.

[3] We have devoted work and an assessment to the 1982-84 crisis and previous crises since the first issue of “Il Comunista” in 1985.

[4] See the “Open letter to former comrade Amadeo Bordiga” of 5/4/1952 of the Federation of Turin, annexed to the 1997 brochure of “Battaglia Comunista”, “Among the shadows of Bordigism and its Epigones”. The supporters of “Battaglia Comunista” claim in this brochure that they were at the root of the Italian left, and they affirm: “it has often been confused, especially towards communists from other countries, because of Bordigism, or rather the name of Bordiga and the theoretical formulations that have characterised his thinking”. For once we will agree with them: we are happy to leave them the Italianness they claim. We have always claimed, like Amadeo, that our origin was common to that of the international Marxist left, of which Lenin and Liebknecht, Luxembourg and Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, Bukharin and Bordiga were among the most famous names, even if for some the membership of this left was imperfect and incoherent. As for the method used at the time by the Federation of Turin, that of the “open letter”, characteristic of the democratic practice of comparing opinions and positions, it says a lot about the conception of the party professed by “Battaglia Comunista”.

[5] See “Dialogue with the Dead”, published in episodes in the newspaper of the then party, “Il Programma Comunista”, from n° 5 to n° 10 of 1956. It was published in a brochure in French some time later. A reissue with a completely revised translation is in preparation.

[6] The text of the circular is as follows:

“P.C. Internationaliste. To the entire organisation. Circular 5/10/1951.

The C.E. took note of the publication – after the publication of No. 1 of the Party’s Internal Bulletin, open to any contribution dedicated to clarifying the central problems of the movement – of a bulletin published under the signature of four members of the C.E., Onorato Damen, Luciano Stefanini, Aldo Lecci, Giovanni Bottaioli, signed “La gauche italienne” as an initiative by groups and sections. It observes – regardless of any organisational consideration – that there is no political reason for a publication in which the assertion of differences with the centre are neither specified nor defined as a result of the fact that they are arbitrarily reduced to a so-called “trade union position of the Executive” presented as denying economic struggles, their past and future role for the working class, and which completely ignores the current historical phase and the possibilities of the party in it, does not go beyond the limits of a pamphlet, even in the absence of a distant political justification, and considers that an initiative of this kind, which undermines the organic nature and continuity of the Marxist party’s principles and action, is likely to destroy the fundamental subjective conditions for a serious congress, radically breaks with the movement’s permanent organisational criteria and places its promoters outside the organisation. It is faced with the need to ratify this fact and to proceed, following the decision of the C.C. at its meeting of 1/7/51, to their expulsion from the party with immediate effect. It is confident that the entire organisation, inspired by the principles that have always guided the movement, will not be diverted from its hard struggle by an attempt at confusion and confirms its firm decision to prepare the internal discussion for the party congress on the sole path of preparing and presenting texts and theses on the fundamental problems of the proletarian struggle.

The Executive”.

[7] The aforementioned “Thread of Time” was published in No. 21 of 25 May – 1 June 1949 of “Battaglia Comunista”; after recalling that the pre-fascist trade union was red, i. e. workers and independent of the State, it demonstrated that the new organisation built after the victory of Democracy over Fascism, the CGIL, although separate from the Christian Democrats, Republicans and Right Socialists, did not escape the historical tendency of “enslaving the trade union to the bourgeois State” but strengthened it: “the consequences, in a defeated country whose local bourgeoisie is deprived of state autonomy, of the influence of the large foreign state complexes that quarrel on these lands no longer belonging to anyone, cannot hide the fact that even the Confederation, which remained in the hands of the social communists of Nenni and Togliatti, is not based on class autonomy. It is not a red organisation but a tricolour organisation manufactured on the model of Mussolini”.

As for the crisis to which reference is made, it is called “the Florence crisis” because the positions that were at the root of the 1973 split then matured in the Florence section and those of Tuscany that were attached to it. After the 1973 split, this group, which claimed to be the party’s true successor, continued to be called “Partito Communista Internazionale”; it is also known as its newspaper: “Il Partito Comunista”. The head of the Central Trade Union Office, a member of the centre, was the leader of this section, a member of the centre of the party, the head of the “Central Trade Union Office” which published, from July 1968, the political-union bulletin “Il Sindacato Rosso”. This bulletin followed on from “Spartaco” (first published as a local bulletin in Florence) with the intention of providing a response in terms of economic struggles (with the general slogan of the struggle for a “red union”) to the strong strike movements that marked 1968 and especially in 1969, with what has been called the “hot autumn”. In the headlines, “Sindacato rosso” carried a statement that was like a synthesis of a revolutionary trade unionist deviation spreading throughout the party: “For the class union! For proletarian unity against corporatist unification ICFTU-UIL! For the unification and generalisation of workers’ demands and struggles, against reformism and organised struggles! For the emancipation of workers from capitalism! That the organs of the party, the communist factory and trade union groups, are born as part of the revolutionary leadership of the proletarian masses”. No. 7 (January 1969) of this bulletin specified its objective: “Sindacato rosso” does not want to be “a new trade union centre” but “an orientation for conscious proletarians serving to transform their trade union into a weapon of anti-capitalist and revolutionary struggle. It is a class battle cry to rebuild in the CGIL, today, a communist opposition capable of dragging the great masses into the field of revolutionary preparation for the crushing of capitalist power, for the constitution of proletarian dictatorship to achieve the emancipation of labour from the exploitation of capital”. In France, at the same time, a supplement to the “Prolétaire” entitled “Syndicat de classe” was published, with the same position.

The party centre initially supported the position of “defending the red union” – that is, the CGIL, whose workers were asked to drive out the monks from it and replace them with revolutionary militants. But it was during this period that the CGIL expelled about sixty workers from the FIOM in Turin and Ivrea because they had paid their contributions to the factory delegates instead of paying them to the boss as required by the contractual agreements. Among them were all our comrades from Turin and Ivrea who had been agitating for years among the workers and within the CGIL.

[8] “Il P. C.” published a whole series of texts and theses illustrating the continuity of the doctrine, politics and tactics of the communist left in 5 consecutive issues (under the title: “Historico-programmatic bases of revolutionary communism on the relations between party, class, class action and proletarian economic associations”) from n°22/1971 until n° 2/1972. No. 3/1972 contained the text “Le parti devant la ‘question syndicale'”, the French original of which was published on No. 53-54 of this review, while Bruno’s report to the General Meeting of Milan on 12-13/2/1972, “Marxisme et question syndicale”, was published in Italian on No. 10/1972 of “Il Programma Communista” and in French on No. 126, 127 and 128 of “Prolétaire”.

[9] See “Elementary Note on Students and the Authentic Marxism of the Left“, “Il P. C.” n°8/1968. It can be read, for example: “Defending, in this rotting year of 1968, the autonomy of a student movement is only further proof of the depth of the shifting sands of betrayal where the false communism of Stalin’s successors, now sealed by the worst social-democratic reformism, has sunk, lured by the prospect of an obscene electoral manoeuvre, defend the vulgar thesis that students form a social class, and consider as the extreme left those incoherent movements that invoke Mao’s China and adopt, as their theoretical formula for the state, that of “workers’ power”. (…) According to Marx, the proletariat is a class not only because without its work no production of goods is possible (…) but because the proletariat, in addition to producing everything, reproduces itself, that is, realises the production of producers (…). Workers of both sexes can by mating engender new workers for the army of labour in future years, while so far it is not obvious that students give birth to other students, even among those peoples to whom has been generously granted the freedom to study to the sons of workers and peasants”.

[10] See “Crise et révolution”, “Programme Communiste” n°62 (March-April-May 1974).

[11] See “Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine“, report to the April 1951 meeting of the Party of Rome.

[12] See “Lessons of the Counterrevolutions“, report to the Naples Party meeting of September 1951.

[13] See “The Proletariat and the Crisis”, “Il Programma Comunista” n° 4/1975.

[14] Of particular note was the June 1974 general meeting on the question of “The Course of World Imperialism“, whose extended report was published in “Programme Communiste” No. 64 of October 1974 (with an annex published in No. 65 on the development of capitalist concentration, while a summary report was published in No. 14 (13 July 1974) of “Il programma comunista”. Among the many aspects highlighted in relation to the beginning of the crisis of Western capitalism, we can recall the one relating to the disarray of the ruling class in the face of the 1973 oil crisis and then the 1974-75 crisis, and what we should not expect from it: “This disarray of the adversary in the face of convulsions in his mode of production can obviously only delight us communists. We deduce neither the weakening of bourgeois states (on the contrary!) nor the spontaneous and mechanical birth of a generalised social struggle resulting from this crisis, and even less a revolutionary crisis capable of settling the score for bourgeois society, while subjective conditions are still terribly behind. On the contrary, we deduce more than ever, far from any blissful optimism, the need to work on revolutionary preparation”.

As for the question of the dialectic between crisis and revolution, Bruno takes up the thread in the article “Once again on Crisis and Revolution” (“Programme Communiste” n°66). It recalls the framework of the forecast made by the party and the consequences to be drawn from it, taking into account the situation of backwardness of the proletarian movement and the absence of a strong proletarian party:

“Capitalism can only emerge from a crisis whose exact date we had predicted by creating the conditions for even larger and deeper crises, and, ultimately, from a third world conflict that is only a threat today and that could be a fierce reality tomorrow. If there is a “train not to be missed” it is not that of a revolution of which irresponsible people claim to possess all the keys except one – which is naturally, as always, the decisive key – but that of the preparation of its elementary subjective conditions. They do not fall from the sky; they only arise from social conflicts if the party, however embryonic its physical strength, makes them fruitful through its action, fighting with as much tenacity for the immediate objectives as for the final goals of the proletarian movement, accepting the ground of the protest struggles but building in these struggles and beyond them the ground of class war for the communist revolution.

This is the “great opportunity” that, despite everything, the current economic crisis offers to the proletarian vanguard”.

[15] On the question of the proletarian united front, among many articles, we can point out “Objective Bases and Programmatic Delimitation of the Proletarian United Front”, “Il Programma Comunista”, n° 6 and 7 of 1975.

[16] This circular from the centre, recalling that the activity of the party in contact with the working class must extend to the intervention of its militants in struggles and in struggle organisations, states in particular: “This activity has its centre of gravity and its natural ground in action within trade unions, in local organisations that are not linked to it and are not recognised by them, among unorganised workers, etc.; union action which, as specified in the theses of the Third Congress of the CI and as recalled by the theses, manifestos and internal provisions of the PC d’I, necessarily has undeniably political consequences (just think of the claim to the right of association and assembly, or even the most embryonic workers’ self-defence, passing through a series of stages), and is directed not only towards nuclei or layers of workers, whatever their political orientations, but also towards specific trade union bodies linked to political formations which differ from us on the programmatic level but are ready to fight for specific objectives with class struggle methods (…).

It is important here to have clearly in mind that this extension and articulation of our party action is not extensible, that it is outside any frenetic Garibaldism and that it is linked to the firm decision to work more incisively, with continuity and coherence, on a ground inseparable from the permanent tasks of the party, intended to crystallise around a specific defence action at least a part of the proletarians to whom we address ourselves as proletarians and not as supporters of our programme, and this action: a) is always a party action, and the fact that it takes place mainly under the name or through our trade union or factory groups does not change this; b) it must not contradict (which would be fatal) the programmatic points that distinguish and characterise us, in practice, before everyone’s eyes, or hide them; c) it does not compromise (other side of the same problem) the political and organisational autonomy of the party and the continuity of its external manifestations; d) it is not conceived as isolated from the complex work of formation and internal political preparation, which is the condition for a sound orientation in action, especially in the grey and difficult period in which we are still living and which imposes on us the duty to take advantage of all opportunities, even the slightest ones, to react to them” (circular n° 9 of 8 October 1974).

Circular No. 11 of 20 October 1974, which dealt with the division of the Ligurian sections, tries to explain what the incumbents were unable to express, their opposition to all the positions of the party.

“Starting from the requirement, which we share and which is imposed by a historical cycle that is slowly getting under way, to seriously confront the problems of “external” activity towards the class and the internal organisation of the party, these comrades tended to lose (we can now affirm that it was already lost) a clear vision of the limits that it is necessary to respect, otherwise the line that separates us from others (which, moreover, arises at least on certain specific points of problems similar to ours), and under penalty of a fracture that is difficult to repair in the continuity of our proclamations and our actions; theoretical-programmatic limits against which no “tactical manoeuvre” can prevail; practical limits related to the evaluation of real power relations and the greater or lesser possibility of having an influence on them according to our general objectives.

This resulted in a tendency to put at the centre of the party’s practical activity, even when it was proclaimed secondary, the problem of relations with other groups to carry out specific joint actions, as well as a tendency to extend the scope of these initiatives beyond the limit from which the party loses its characteristic features, or at least no longer defends them responsibly, and its constant efforts to link them to positions of principle – which is essential so as not to destroy what is to be built, as shown by a long historical record”.

In addition, “there was a tendency to consider as insignificant (or, at best, incomplete) the assessment that the left, unlike other currents, had been able to draw in the second post-war period from the Stalinist counter-revolution (which should not fill us with false sufficiency or a feeling of artificial superiority, but that it would be defeatist to ignore) to join in bloc and without reservations all the theses of the first four CI congresses. (on the “biographical” level, as long as Lenin and Trotsky were able to exert a decisive influence), while we maintain the reservations, especially for the IVth Congress, without this taking anything away from the powerful contributions of the two greatest Bolshevik theorists; or to relate, albeit with subtle distinctions, to the positions of the international left-wing opposition (biographically, since Trotsky inspired and led his organisation) as if the tactical differences with the Pre-Stalinist International, and sometimes, later, with Trotsky, including in principle, had not existed or were marginal and therefore no longer meant anything for us.

For these comrades it was not only true that we could not and should not boast of being anything other than an embryo of the World Communist Party, which is indisputable; we were not even that because we had no political line or, if we had one, it not only had to be better defined in its practical applications (which is certain, unlike in the past period) but radically redefined through a process (as has been said) of “aggregation”. For the same reasons, since the party did not actually exist, there was no centre either, but simply currents of the workers’ movement, of which they were ready to support one against the other”. This conception of the formation of the future World Communist Party through a process of fusion between political groups of different origins and formations will reappear in subsequent internal crises.

[17] See “Terrorism and the Difficult Road to a General Revival of the Class Struggle”, n°77 and 78 – Part I and Part II.