the internationalist n.7 a publication of the International Communist Party

Winter 2020/2021 www.internationalcommunistparty.org £.4.50, $.6.00, Euros 5.00 [email protected]

What distinguishes our Party is the political continuity which goes from Marx to Lenin, to the foundation of the Communist Party of Italy (Livorno, 1921); the struggle of the Communist Left against the degeneration of the Third International, against the theory of “socialism in one country”, against the Stalinist counterrevolution; the rejection of the Popular Fronts and the Resistance Blocs; the difficult task of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and organization in close interrelationship with the proletarian class, against all personal and electoral politics.

The Social Use inside of the Epidemic In a series of articles in our press during the 1950s, parallel to the And When the Emergency long study on the “Course of Capitalism”, we demonstrated, with the is Over?...... 3 classical texts of communism to hand, how the “murderous and sinister dramas of modern social decadence” (floods and hydro-geological USA: Racism, Class Struggle upheavals, overbuilding, collapsing dams, sinking liners and so on) must and the Need for all be attributed to the capitalist mode of production. Those were the years the Revolutionary Party...... 6 of post-war reconstruction and an unbridled economic boom: after the unspeakable destruction of the second inter-imperialist world massacre After Minneapolis. (and precisely thanks to it!), the capitalist production machinery had Let the revolt of the american started to function again full speed ahead – indeed, at a previously unheard proletarians be an example to of pace. And we could already see, before our very eyes, just as we see proletarians in all metropolises . 10 even more clearly today, the results of that unbridled hyper-production that has lasted at least three decades and, from the mid-seventies onwards, Three Texts from the Sixties ...... 11 has foundered on the systemic crisis we are still immersed in. A few examples? An acceleration in environmental devastation, over-crowding Virus and class struggle ...... 17 in megalopolises and depopulation in the countryside, food adulteration and air and water pollution, galloping deforestation and desertification, The Long, Long Night increasingly difficult living and working conditions, an exponential of the Living Dead...... 22 increase in poverty, “professional” illnesses from exposure to asbestos and other toxic substances, factory farming and the threat of its consequences, huge economic and social imbalances between countries (that unequal The winds of war blowing development so well known to communists), as well as dreadful and across the entire middle east destructive conflicts in whole areas of the planet… And we can add, proclaim the need to prepare because the example is clearly to be seen by one and all (as we write in mid- for revolution...... 23 March 2020), the increasingly evident obsequience of scientific research to the law of profit, the enormous power of pharmaceutical companies, The Bourgeois State is a Tool widespread dependence on pharmaceuticals, the progressive dismantling of Oppression and Repression.... 24 of healthcare structures, etc. etc. Don’t let us forget what Quite apart from any medical explanation, which is not our field of May Day is! ...... 26 competence, this is precisely the breeding ground for the umpteenth epidemic now gripping the world (but how many have there been over the What distinguishes our Party..... 27 past decades? Mad cow, Chicken ‘flu, Ebola, Sars, Mers, Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue...). In brief, coronavirus or Covid-19 is a child of capitalism, the What Is Communism?...... 32 child of a society divided into classes and totally, globally subjected to the law of profit. The “pure souls” drugged by mainstream ideology, for whom Day by day the need this is despite everything “the best of all possible worlds”, should keep their for communism grows silence. The society of capital is the society of catastrophes, emergencies, dramatically ...... 36 fear and, above all, is incapable of dealing with the crises that it itself fuels and spreads – on the plane of economics as on that of health or of daily life. Why we are not “bordigists”...... 38 follow ➝

Editorial Office: Edizioni il programma comunista - Casella postale 272- 20101 Milano (Italy) Supplement to n. 5-6/2020 of “il programma comunista” the internationalist n. 7

We do not want to dwell on this here, for the future war is effected, when conditions (and it will be interesting however: there are other aspects we the State exhorts “all its citizens”, to observe if and when the statistics should like to examine. We want “united and embracing the flag” to on deaths at work and due to work to insist on the social (political, “close ranks with its own troops”, will start circulating again!). ideological, military) use of the committed to “defending the epidemic. Albeit in different ways Fatherland against the enemy.” An encouraging and revealing and with different timing, the ruling symptom for us, after the rebellions class in all countries has grabbed There is more. Firstly, as mentioned in overcrowded prisons with sanitary this opportunity to elaborate and above, more or less everywhere conditions that are miserable to say put into practice siege measures (Italy, Germany, Great Britain, the the least of it, is the spontaneous projected way beyond the current USA), the healthcare system is at outbreak of labour struggles all around situation of the virus epidemic and tipping point and the measures for Italy, France and possibly elsewhere, contemplating scenarios well known “containing the virus” seem to be with improvised strikes (unforeseen to it, of both class war and the war aiming primarily at avoiding its by the mastiffs of the State unions) between imperialisms – i.e. measures total collapse: but this is happening by workers from factories and of State terrorism and territorial precisely because of the continuous warehouses, as well as by delivery control, both at an ideological cuts to welfare (the welfare that staff and riders, protesting against and at a military level. As well was the carnation in the buttonhole the lack of even minimum safety as the distorted use, bordering on of all the countries emerging from measures at their places of work. A manipulation, of data, statistics and the massacres of the Second World further demonstration, on the one judgements – often contradictory War) over at least the past two hand that proletarians do not become ones – on the rate of infection and decades, not because of one evil visible until they take action and, on mortality and the constant arguments government or governor or another the other, that precisely when they between “experts”, politicians, but out of capital’s need, when faced take action without the control of the technicians, intellectuals, there with a crisis that, with peaks and union hierarchy, the State is obliged comes a non-stop appeal from all the dips, has been dragging on since to make concessions, whatever the mass media to all citizens, regarding the mid-‘seventies, to eliminate entity of them. On these occasions “collective responsibility”, “national as far as possible any spending on the workers experienced and proved unity” and “becoming the State”, unproductive expenses. Secondly, their potential power and it will be the exercise of power over “others”, it should be remembered that the the task of us communists to ensure flinging open the door to grassing so-called “recession” was already that this experience was not in vain or on your neighbour, today on those ongoing, both in Italy and in Germany that it might be destroyed or forgotten who don’t fully respect the decisions and other countries, WELL AHEAD in the rank and file of the proletariat. from above, tomorrow on those of the outbreak of the epidemic, As to the real consistency and above who do not fully identify with the as has been documented over and all the respect of the measures taken, State and indeed intend fighting it; over again in our press: capital is we reserve our doubts: we shall and this call to arms – helped along already taking advantage of this see, we shall see… In short, from by the skilfully induced separation opportunity to make the epidemic the prison of prisons to the prison of and isolation of individuals – is shoulder the blame for the inevitable wage earning, there have been some accompanied by suspicion and mass present and future measures “to feeble but telling responses, and the psychosis. The poor individual, save the national economy”, with all “cannon fodder” has made its voice the poor “community”, celebrated the accompanying unemployment heard. as the high point and guarantee measures, layoffs, step-ups in the of democracy and then invariably pace of work, suspensions and This epidemic, like those that have trampled on, shaken up and derided! repression of conflicts – thus without preceded it and those that will follow, Here, democratic dictatorship having to take the trouble to cast will pass. But it is important that a assumes increasingly clearer outlines around for excuses to deny that this few cracks have appeared in the steel and – with them – evident practical is an out-dated and murderous mode wall concealing the real, destructive preparation, though as yet in its of production! Proletarians will be and murderous nature of this mode of early stages, for the management of in the front line once again in this production that has become so out- future conflicts requiring the utmost emergency, the first to pay the price dated and disastrous for the human patriotic cohesion. Proletarians of the serious consequences of the species. beware! This is how the preparation epidemic on living and working 16/3/2020

2 the internationalist n. 7

And When the Emergency is Over?

The measures adopted (or not to safeguard the health of the people (financialization of the economy to adopted) by all governments in who work in them. Class interests, by-pass a production which, from the face of the spreading Covid-19 then: the capitalist economy first and the point of view of the average pandemic have unmasked for the foremost, profit first and foremost! profit rate, proved to be increasingly umpteenth time the true reality of This is the true, repulsive class feeble; the increasingly bulimic the capitalist mode of production. violence – everyday, hypocritical, public debt) have merely served to This pandemic, just like those that pitiless –, which the struggling swell speculative bubbles destined to have preceded it over time, has its proletariat will have to sweep away burst in their turn and cause further origins in a class structure, with once and for all, seizing power, social slaughter. The most recent all the imbalances, devastation and wrenching it from a fierce and economic crisis, which opened in tragedies that this involves and murderous ruling class, which is 2008-9, never really ended: well continues to produce and reproduce by now parasitical and historically before the pandemic spread, in many – in the economy, the environment, superfluous. countries recession was not a threat in relations between individuals and This is not all. It must be clear that the but a reality and it was not only in social and everyday life. Faced “emergency measures” introduced us communists who were saying with such events, produced by the over the past few weeks will leave so but the bourgeois economists society of capital and profit itself, this their mark even after the “end of themselves, and they were saying it same society then proves incapable the emergency”. In a class-divided with open and tell-tale concern1. of managing them, of guaranteeing society, the ruling class learns from The capitalist mode of production health and security to populations its experiences and will never turn is not holding together. It can only who pay the price, first and foremost back. Precisely as it shifts from a survive by exasperating its own the proletarian population, already liberal régime to a fascist one when contradictions and preparing a exploited and massacred in so many it becomes necessary to stop the new bloodbath, a new world war: ways: in all countries, obvious and proletarian “assault on heaven” and the only final solution it knows for eloquent is the case of national health then again, when convenient, shifts exiting (if it exits!) such a crisis and services at tipping point because of to a formally democratic one, which resuming a new, infernal cycle of violent cuts to what are unproductive has actually inherited the substance accumulation at an even higher level expenses for capital, already in deep of the fascist experience, so will it and with an even greater incidence trouble. Lastly, it is evident that the move from pre-emergency, to post- of destruction. The pandemic has way “emergency” measures are, and emergency, bringing with it all the come as the recession was already will continue to be, applied responds ideology and practice of emergency: ongoing in countries like Italy, to precise class interests: production surveillance, suspicion, the stinking France and Germany, and dealt a and profit above all! petty patriotism and revolting terrible blow to a world economy We have already written about all nationalistic appeal, the appeal to that was already staggering and this, in the previous article. Here, unity and the mobilization of “all fragile and whose extension and we are more interested in stressing good citizens”, military control of interconnections mean that a and attacking the violent anti- the territory and the repression of slowdown, a halt, is reverberating proletarian measures that are (and dissent… And it will do so with the more or less immediately, all over above all will be) introduced, under active, propositional and enthusiastic the globe. When the pandemic is the guise of “emergency measures in contribution of both the right- and over, all that will be left are ruins, the interests of everyone”. But “the “left-wing” parties, and those anti- as after a war: never has military interests of everyone” in a society proletarian guard dogs that are the language become the daily bread of divided into classes, based on the régime’s trade unions, scared that politicians, economists, scientists laws of profit and competition, DO “anger may spread”. and journalists to the extent it has NOT EXIST! Suffice it to think of The cycle of structural economic on this occasion! And so we must the miserable resistance and criminal crises that began in the mid 1970s, rebuild! And anti-proletarian manoeuvres by which bosses and closing the expansive post-war politics will echo (but, of course, governments have wriggled away cycle, has continued to affect the with even more ferocious intensity) and continue to do so when faced international proletariat for all of follow ➝ by the determined claims of workers the subsequent decades, above and who have spontaneously come out beyond the illusory, momentary 1. See the articles “Note sugli effetti pratici on strike more or less everywhere in and laughable little “recoveries”. e visibili della crisi economica in atto” the world demanding that factories The “formulae” adopted by and “Il virus della crisi”, on our website and workplaces be closed, in order capitalism over these past decades www.internationalcommunistparty.org.

3 the internationalist n. 7 that “rebuilding the nation” of the accompany this relentless process. the proletariat and sustaining the European 1950s and 1960s. With All this will hit anyone who fails national economy carried out over the precise difference that at that to give in to the new emergency of all these decades by the régime’s time the economy was recovering recovery: proletarians increasingly in trade unions. And this is to be done after the destruction of the war years: chains, the avant-garde of struggles, by assuming all the practical and here, instead, there is an economy communists. The bulletproofing organizational responsibilities of that has been gasping for breath for of democracy (its substantially true fighting organisms, without years now. dictatorial nature, beneath the wasting precious proletarian energy Many firms will thus have to close deceptive mask of democracy) will in useless, theoretical-political and/or “restructure” drastically: proceed by giant steps after the pseudo-debates or – worse still – in consequently unemployment will decisive ones taken in these few days the destructive delusion of a “union- soar and with it work will become and weeks, these months and years which-is-also-a-political-party” or more and more precarious in all and decades: steps that, according of a “true class union” drawn up at sectors of production – quite far to the logic and practice of capital, a desk – umpteenth revival of the from the gig economy, that so much cannot acknowledge any slowdowns foul in-between-groups typical of the has been embroidered by press and or turnarounds2. ‘70s. The progress of the economic politics in recent times! Everywhere Faced with all this what becomes crisis itself, the contradictions it the pace of work will be increased, increasingly urgent is the real need for opens up, the consequent social because “we have to catch up, in the revival of territorial grass-roots drifts, could inexorably push workers everyone’s interests”, and, with this, organizations of proletarian struggle in all imperialist states back onto this control too will increase, because and defense, that take responsibility battlefield, forcing them to equip “efficiency and productivity must for all aspects of life and work in the themselves once again with stable come first” in post-emergency society of capital: living and working defense structures, which in turn times. The “factory régime” conditions in the broadest sense of will constitute one of the grounds on (in a broad sense: i.e. the rate of the terms, from the pace of work and which the battle is fought between exploitation) cannot help but grow health hazards in factories and in communists and the variegated in what has already been defined building yards, on the streets, in the front of the reformist and bourgeois as a “war economy”: sacrifices fields, to the burning, and ever-open enemy3. “for everyone”, in the sights of “housing issue”, from rises in wages But this is obviously not enough. the “forces of law and order” and to the claim for a full wage paid by Over the span of a couple of centuries the unforgiving eye of the drones. the State and/or entrepreneurs for now, experiences of economic-social Repression, extended control, bans anyone who is already out of work or struggle have in fact demonstrated on assemblies, marches, strikes, has lost a job, from opposition to the the limits of their action where they pickets and dissent will spread and increase in bills to that to increases are managed in the solitude of the become everyday reality for millions in the cost of public transport... workers’ spontaneity: alone, without and millions of workers. With them, These should be organisms that take the intervention of the communist manipulation and nationalistic responsibility for everything, without party, not only will proletarians rallying will grow: the “We are at discriminations or hierarchies based never manage to attain to political war!” that resounds daily now will on age, gender, origin, religion, action (i.e. acting as a class for take on new connotations – ultra- social or political belonging and itself, with their own historical patriotic, ultra-chauvinistic, ultra- which, because of their extension and political objectives), but even populist. Moreover the competition and rootedness in the class (not only remaining in this context (i.e. as a of “all against all” will thus be in one sector or another), are truly class in itself, or as a mere labour fuelled, right up to the “war amongst able to contrast the work of dividing force for the capitalist system), they the poor”, for the crust of dry bread will easily fall prey to reformism, capital will be gracious enough which sacrifices them one after the to leave the starving masses. And other on the altar of capital, to the thus, in the daily routine of induced 2. In this regard we refer to just one of general detriment of their overall reactions, of individual and social our texts, amongst many: “Force, vio- condition. relations, preparations for the new lence, dictatorship in class struggle” The need for the revival of these world conflict will intensify. The (1946), https://www.internationalcom- grassroots organisms is thus unraveling of “historical alliances”, munistparty.org/index.php/en/. accompanied by the other urgent the inane nonentity of structures 3. See our pamphlets Partito di classe and dramatic need: the need for the e questione sindacale e Per la difesa like the phantasmic, ectoplasmic intransigente delle condizioni di vita reinforcement and establishment Europe, the re-drafting of borders e di lavoro dei proletari. Forme di or- of international roots for the that bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ganizzazione, metodi e obiettivi di lotta, revolutionary party. It is in the very rhetoric has presented as stable or both of which can be consulted on our facts of capitalism’s development, so else as now outdated, will merely website. follow ➝

4 the internationalist n. 7 tragically revealed in these moments dawn of the most ferocious wave of longer of any use – there remains just of emergency, that this need makes counter-revolution, handing down the dictatorship of the ruling ideology itself felt: the need for a pole, or an to future generations the balance and bourgeois state repression. The organizational point of reference, sheet of past struggles, triumphs party cannot be improvised, because able to pull it out of the quicksand and defeats in its “Lyon Theses” – the only guarantee of its being able both of rotten bourgeois “politics” the necessary bridge towards the to guide the class towards seizing and the social system it represents, future4. The party is not “built”, just power and managing the dictatorship as well as petit-bourgeois reformism as socialism is not “built”: all that of the proletariat as the necessary imbued with utopia, illusion, can be done is to enter a tradition bridge towards a classless society smokescreens and hypocrisy. that is fully present in the history lies precisely in the formation of But to “feel” the urgency of this of the communist movement, and militant cadres, in its participation in need is not enough. Too many carry on its battle, obstinately and proletarian struggles with a function believe that the (relative) absence of inconveniently against the current that aims to be critical, directive and a revolutionary party on the present – and that tradition is our tradition. organizational and in the constant political scene can be obviated But, we all know: “These are mere and profound analysis of economic by “building it”, as if from a box trifles! The crisis is pressing, we and social factors (not out of an of Lego: periodically gathering must hurry: let’s build the party intellectual whim or for personal around a table with other groups and without bothering about what has show or gain). The party cannot be formations, elaborating “platforms” already been! ‘Scurdammoce ‘o improvised, because the class will and “congress papers” on which to passato’”, “Let’s forget the past”, as be able to recognize it and recognize “converge”, coordinating with one the Neapolitan folk song says. its guidance (and thus recognize mini-party or the other in a new And if the party cannot “be built”, itself as a historical element and no version of the political-unionist neither can it be improvised, nor can longer just as an oppressed class), “inter-groups” of time ago, creating its (dialectic) connection to the class only if the party has been alongside phantom (popular?) fronts or bureaux and its struggles be improvised. the class in its fights, in its burning or liaison offices or “tendencies”, It cannot be improvised because defeats or partial victories, only reanimating old names or inventing party means first and foremost the if it has been able to draw lessons new ones, believing and having it theoretical and practical continuity from those fights, those defeats and believed that the party can arise from of an organization, and if work on those victories – only if the class has and within the struggles, directly this continuity ceases, if it is not been able to identify in its militants from grassroots organisms on which defended tooth and claw, if it is not those best suited to act as guides, a… political-educational function is secured for future generations (and in the situation of the moment and conferred. Briefly, a do-it-yourself not as a “study group”, a “handful in a future perspective. Tomorrow party, to which everyone contributes of windbag intellectuals”, or of it will be too late: and historical what they can: all of this, with a self-styled “free-thinkers”), that experience, with its tragedies linked complete disdain for homogeneity in continuity is broken, wanes and is no to the absence or delayed presence theory, principles and program and of a revolutionary party has taught us above all totally indifferent to the this all too keenly and dramatically. 4. The “Lyon theses” were presented merciless balance sheet of the past by the Left at the III Congress of the To work, then, faced as we are with century’s history of the working- Communist Party of Italy – Section of a post-emergency that promises to class and communist movement – the the Third International, in opposition become a constant emergency – one true basis from which to depart to the Gramsci-Togliatti ones. They right up to its peak: the new world for even starting to pose the problem can be read on our website: https:// conflict that is being prepared! of the party, as our comrades of the www.internationalcommunistparty.org/ Communist Left did in 1926, at the images/pdf/ip/IP-14-2009.pdf. 6/4/2020

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

5 the internationalist n. 7

USA: Racism, Class Struggle and the Need for the Revolutionary Party

We do not know if, when this article appears, the big, hoboes or the transients with no end in sight, or with U.S. election circus will still be on, and whether the the seasonal workers or the homeless – are approaching puppet of Capital will still be the same or whether another the conditions in which the Afro-American, Mexican- will be pulled out of the demo-electoral magician’s hat. It American, Puerto Rican and Asian proletarians have matters little. The real questions remain on the table in a been living and (not) working for some time; and ethnic country in deep crisis, like the whole universe of Capital background (which all too often has played a central role but with an intensity and visibility in proportion to its in the divide et impera practised by bourgeois power) is specific (economic, social, political, military) weight as tending to disappear under the blows of daily oppression the strongest imperialism. Once the umpteenth electoral and of a crisis that the politicians may, as everywhere, intoxication is over, it is useful to return to some of deny in words (or attribute to the enemy-candidate of the these real questions, since they actually regard the world moment) but which savages and corrodes, tears apart and proletariat and not only that of the USA. disorientates day after day. *** Does a “black issue” really exist? It is undeniable that the Afro-American proletariat suffers the worst living and (non) working conditions: statistics In the limelight over the past few months, well before, and once again prove this1. But it is sufficient to re-read the far more emblematically than the endless squalor of the history of the class conflict on American soil to realize election campaign, have been the repeated, widespread flare- that these conditions have gradually come to characterize ups of protest following the series of cold-blooded murders all the immigrant proletarian communities (and what can of Afro-Americans (but not only) by uniformed cops. Let the American proletariat be if not, largely, immigrant us just say that this constant, bloody repression of the most or forcefully “imported” from outside?!), something exploited sectors of the U.S. proletariat has accompanied that has been going on since the beginnings of the rapid the history of the United States throughout the whole of and tumultuous development of the capitalist mode of the 19th and 20th centuries and has become even harsher production in the country. Over the span of two centuries in the first twenty years of the 21st: independently of who now, economic, political, social, ideological and military is occupying the White House – yet another demonstration oppression has affected German, Irish, Scottish, East- that it is not a matter of “goodies” and “baddies” European, Asian, Italian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, Latin- alternating at the Presidency or in the Government, but American and Afro-American proletarians… all of them of dynamics within the management of bourgeois power flung into the hell cauldron of ruthless exploitation that and, in particular, of the developments of the structural allowed the United States to emerge at the dawn of the economic crisis in which we have been immersed since the 1900s as the strongest and most powerful imperialism mid-1970s. The really significant aspect has been the entity and to maintain this position for the whole of the century of the, at least initially, spontaneous response: not local, and beyond. In these widespread anti-proletarian politics, not pacific, not obsequious to suffocating and paralyzing racism, as the crassest expression of the mainstream democratic rituals and not limited to the Afro-American ideology, certainly did play a central role, fuelled also community only. by the century-long history of slavery and post-slavery Demonstrators of all colours have met on the streets follow ➝ and in the squares giving practical proof – above and beyond any socio-statistical evaluation – of the entity 1. Let us limit ourselves to a few (official) figures. In the of the country’s ripening social crisis, which is affecting second quarter of 2020, the average weekly wage of a full- different elements transversally along lines that, to those time employee was $805 for blacks and $786 for Hispanics, as against the $1,017 for whites (for a black worker, 74.3% of who have eyes to see, prove to be class divides. The the wage of a white worker; for a Hispanic worker, 75.4%; for unending economic-social inequality characterizing a black woman worker, 83.9% of the wage of a white woman U.S. society (inequality we have demonstrated more worker; for a female Hispanic worker, 77.2%) (figures from than once over the years) is pursuing a growing sector the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S.A. Department of of the “half classes”, the free-falling petit-bourgeoisie, Labor, press release of 17 July 2020). As to the unemployment and in particular young people. The conditions of figures, again in the second quarter of 2020, the ratewas the so-called “poor whites” – whether they live in the 17.4% for Afro-American workers, 16.9% for Hispanics, 13.3% for Asians and 10.8% for whites (from: Economic depressed areas of the Appalachian mountains or in the Policy Institute, August 2020, https://www.epi.org/indicators/ “problem” neighbourhoods of what were once the pillars state-unemployment-race-ethnicity/). Added to this, living of industry (automobile, steel, etc.), in other, equally conditions and health assistance etc. should also be taken into “difficult” suburban areas or adrift on the road with the account. But these figures already speak quite clearly.

6 the internationalist n. 7

– just as the same racism that permeated English society and repression, marginalization and open racism, and did for the whole of the 1800s and beyond, working so the elimination of leaders with big differences but effectively to separate the British and Irish proletariat or nonetheless emblematic, such as Malcolm X and Martin those immigrating from the colonies. Luther King, as well as disappointment for prospects of At the same time, the struggles that emerged from this peace, reform and democracy, could materially not fail to condition over the same period often reached peaks explode and violently shake the pillars of U.S. capitalist approaching civil war, with strikes lasting month upon society. And so, two years after the Watts riots, in month, clashes, often armed, with uniformed and un- Detroit and Newark (amongst the most important lymph uniformed police, and the direct involvement of very nodes of industry) and elsewhere, more riots broke out, young proletarians, men and women, with episodes of which we greeted with the same enthusiasm, particularly great importance taking place even in the midst of the because they were accompanied by repeated episodes second world war: such as the 1943 Harlem uprising, in of open solidarity (reported with serious concern by the the black ghetto par excellence of New York. bourgeois press) from non-black proletarians (see the Moreover, during the 1960s, the aggravation of social other two articles which we reissue below). contradictions (which had been growing ever since the It is quite clear to those who take a revolutionary end of the second inter-imperialist bloodbath) was more perspective, that there is no “black issue” in the United than once at the origin of violent outbreaks – what the States (or anywhere else!): instead there is a social and media define ghetto riots. And they added to the (also class issue. Not an ethnic issue or one of nationality, social) backlash caused by decades of war in south- then, even though it appears to take that form, thanks east Asia: it should not be forgotten that in order to mainly to a fundamental contribution from mainstream pursue this war, the U.S. military machine could count ideology in all its forms and manifestations, which acts on an obligatory military service that mainly affected skilfully by means of politics and the media, as well the weakest and most “disadvantaged” sectors of the as the most sophisticated tools of military repression. population (Afro-American and Puerto Rican in primis); Like all the “ethnic” or “national” communities that neither should we forget the numerous examples of make up bourgeois society in the United States, in old insubordination, resistance and authentic boycotting Europe and the rest of the American continent, Asia or of the war effort that took place at the time, both in the Africa, class fault lines run through the Afro-American theatres of war themselves and on U.S. soil. We must community: within it there exist a high bourgeoisie, a not forget that these were the years when so-called Black middle- and petite-bourgeoisie, a proletariat and a sub- Power emerged and the Black Panther Party established proletariat; and we have no news of any black person itself on the scene in many U.S. cities, a first generous but being shot in the back seven times while getting into his/ politically fragile and highly contradictory attempt to give her limousine or entering TV studios or dining out with organized form to the discontent in the ghettos. But the political buddies… ferment went well beyond the black ghettos and this, too, Since those events and our articles, fifty years have gone is important to state: the latino proletarians – particularly by punctuated by constant uprisings during the course the Mexican-Americans or chicanos – were in the front of which pacifist, reformist, “progressive” illusions have line of the powerful strike action, in which clear class been wrecked against the reality of class rule: yet only instances mixed with persistent nationalist tendencies2. to be reborn again, time after time, increasingly empty *** of content and overflowing, instead, with embarrassing In an article of ours dating from 1965 (which we reissue rhetoric, thanks to the work of political opportunism in below), we applauded one of the most significant all its forms, the unfailing slave of a bourgeois power rebellions by the black proletarian population of the that knows no boundaries, either geographical or of United States: in mid-August that year, in the ghetto colour, but which acts indifferently against all the of Watts in Los Angeles, there was an outbreak of riots world’s proletarians. It is in this light that the events of against police brutality and arrogance and intolerable these last few months must be evaluated and, above all, living conditions, which lasted almost a week with the the positions that have emerged from them. intervention of the National Guard and a final count of 34 *** deaths, over a thousand wounded and 3400 arrests. The In some ways and with due distinctions, the path taken anger that had accumulated over decades of exploitation by the spontaneous wave of rebellion set off by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020 2. See: “The ‘Black Panther’ Movement”, The Internationalist, by a handful of uniformed cops may recall the one that n.4, Summer 2017 (originally published in il programma followed the so-called “Arab springs” in the years after comunista, n.5/1971); “Il proletariato chicano: Un potenziale 2010: a powerful movement of rebellion against living rivoluzionario da difendere”, il programma comunista, nos.1, and working conditions, stemming from the Tunisian 2, 3/1978. proletariat, rapidly inflamed the southern shores of the 3. See, if nothing else, “Democrazia e Stato borghese sono Mediterranean Sea, only to be intercepted, channelled and due nemici perenni del proletariato”, il programma comunista n.4/2011, and “A proposito dei recenti avvenimenti nel mondo castrated by the more or less organized intervention and arabo”, il programma comunista, n.6/2012. follow ➝

7 the internationalist n. 7 blurred objectives of “half classes” that had also been in 4. Economic justice for all and a reconstruction of the difficulty for some time and intended to make their voice economy to ensure our communities have collective heard – but still in the safe haven of “society as it is”, i.e. ownership, not merely access.(Economic justice) without posing in the least the problem of seizing power 5. Community control of the laws, institutions and and changing to a superior mode of production3. Like the policies that most impact us. (Community control) authentic parasites they are, historically and politically, 6. Independent black political power and black self- the “half classes” exploited the original drive of a determination in all areas of society. (Political power)5. popular uprising to advance their own ultra-democratic and ultra–reformist claims, gradually extinguishing the Here again, what clearly strikes the eye is its ultra- flame of class struggle: and here the lack, worldwide, of reformist nature (a profoundly demagogic reformism: organized revolutionary guidance (the class party, the what power is supposed to grant all this? what puts communist party) meant that petit-bourgeois ideology an end to the “war against black people”? what brings and practice had a free hand, suffocating that movement about “economic justice”, defunds and invests and offers (momentarily, it is to be hoped!) . compensation for damage suffered, etc. etc.?!), together In the recent U.S. rebellions, the petit-bourgeois and with a “separatist” vision (independent black political demo-reformist role of downsizing a potential class power and self-determination), in the end creating ghettos. movement has been played by organizations like the A real dead-end, merely ensuring new massacres for the much-applauded Black Lives Matter (BLM). We militant avant-garde that allows itself to be drawn into it. are well aware that we sail against the current and *** risk unpopularity in saying this: but things must be Of course, BLM and MBL are not the only groups to clearly stated. When an overall battle is suggested have emerged on the scene during the marches and for “Freedom, Liberation, and Justice”, when there is demonstrations that have spread and continue to spread clamour for “defunding the police” or even “abolishing through the country, from Minneapolis to Portland, from the police” (!), when “our contribution to this society” New York to Lafayette and Louisville, together with (!) is acclaimed, all that is being done is to advance the dozens and dozens of other cities. But it is not easy to umpteenth, demagogic, reformist programme and avoid get a sense of orientation in this galaxy, about which we tackling the real issues full on: where do racism, social do not always have precise and reliable information. inequality, growing poverty and constant oppression Nonetheless, we do know that, alongside organizations originate? what is the capitalist mode of production that are blandly reformist and in response to action and how does it work? what is the State, what functions by armed white supremacist militia, minority groups does it perform and how is it organized politically and of black militants have emerged in favour of the open militarily? and so on…4. And so the proletariat (black or possession of arms, as regulated by the U.S. Constitution any other “colour”) is merely offered a prettily-wrapped (Second Amendment). This is the case of the Not Fucking packet of illusions from the century-old baggage of petit- Around Coalition (NFAC), which seems to have links to bourgeois ideologies: “rights”, “justice”, “freedom”, the New Black Panther Party (that for some time now “happiness”, “well-being”, “independence of your own has been excommunicated by the “old” militants of the community” – all, obviously, to be claimed within the original Black Panther Party) and from which both BLM limits of this society, this mode of production. Which is and MBL seem to have distanced themselves. At present a bit like asking a python not to swallow its prey. we do not possess any more reliable information than that The same is true for the Movement for Black Lives available online6. But what we are interested in stressing (MBL), a coalition of different groups (including BLM here, as confirmation of the profound contradictions itself), whose platform is based on the following “basic” in the variegated movement that has developed since points: George Floyd’s death, is that in the NFAC’s programme 1. End the war on black people. a claim appears that is worth going into briefly, before 2. Reparations for past and continuing harms. taking it up again in the future. It is not so much a claim (Reparations) to “return to Africa” (or any other country willing to… 3. Divestment from the institutions that criminalize, concede a piece of territory on which to allow “black cage and harm black people; and investment in the exiles” to set up their own nation!), the old fixation of the education, health and safety of black people. (Invest- black nationalist movement created by Marcus Gavey Divest) in the early decades of the 1900s, but rather a claim to create a “separate black nation” within the United States, in this case located in Texas!... 4. See: www.blacklivesmatter.com. Initially this may be disconcerting. The fact remains that 5. See “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black this claim has its own, eloquent history. Preceded by Power, Freedom and Justice,” (Aug. 2016), in “Movement for Black Lives”, Wikipedia. Really, what else several proposals of the same nature between the 1800s can be expected from organizations well supported by the … and 1900s, it was adopted and advanced, after the VIth Ford Foundation?! Congress (1928) of a Communist International that was 6. “Not Fucking Around Coalition”, Wikipedia. follow ➝

8 the internationalist n. 7 by then an expression of Stalinist triumph, by the U.S. himself, certainly one of the most advanced points of Communist Party, fully aligned with Moscow: the right reference for the black movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s, to “self determination” was thus applied in an utterly concluded by upholding the need for a “separate” black extemporary fashion, typical of Stalinism, by means of a revolutionary organization to which the direction of a distorted appeal to the classical “Theses on the national and future “black American revolution” would be entrusted, colonial question” of the Communist International’s IInd refusing the support of white proletarians, because Congress (1920), identifying in the so-called “Black Belt” expecting the “fight for black power” to include white of the southern States, the “colony” where a “Separate and workers, would mean expecting “the revolution to Independent Black Nation” was to be created!7. welcome the enemy into its own camp”8… It should be added that, whilst the original claim of 1928 There is no doubt about it. Racist ideology has penetrated was at least made in a militant perspective, however into the depths of U.S. society and continues to poison deviant its objectives may have been, in the case of the whole strata of the working-class aristocracy and the “poor NFAC it is reduced to a… request. Beyond all the tragically whites”. It must be fought. But how? It is partly the same, folkloristic aspects of this revived claim, the “national objective, dynamics of the class war that offer a suitable issue” thus continues to exert its negative influence on terrain for this dismantling work of open criticism. But it the struggles of proletarians of all colours and continues is right here, on this terrain, that the active presence of the to re-emerge even in its most banal and confused forms. revolutionary party, the only one able to lead this battle, is It should also be remembered that even militants like needed. We shall return once more to these vital issues, Malcolm X (who nonetheless in the last months of his life which – we repeat – are not specific to the United States, before his assassination in 1965 was gradually distancing but regard the proletarian movement in all countries. For himself from it) fell victim to this nationalist, separatist the moment, what must be stressed is that our perspective ideology; and in the late ‘60s important attempts to give is opposed to any separatist view: on the contrary, we voice and bring organization to the avant-garde workers’ work for the rebirth of grassroots organisms open to all movements in the industrial fortresses of the North proletarians, independently of their nationality, language, (Detroit in primis) with the constitution of organisms ethnic background, age, gender or (non) working status, like the League of Revolutionary Black Workers or the who take on the fight for the defence of the living and Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, suffered from working conditions of proletarians, men and women alike; the same attitude: one of separation and opposition, in and the establishment internationally of the revolutionary the workplace, between black proletarians and white party, characterized by unity of principles, theory, proletarians. They thus became trapped in a dual mistake, programme, tactics and organization and composed of tragic because it constituted a division, by arguing and militants who have succeeded in “forgetting, disowning, putting into practice the idea that the union body (which ridding their minds and their hearts of the classification must be open, without discriminants or discrimination), to which the registry office of this decaying society has should be composed a) of black-only elements and b) of assigned them”9, thus united by joint political work and a elements who had already gained a revolutionary political common will to fight for communism. awareness. Dealing with the struggles of the Mexican-Americans Taking as his starting point a correct analysis of the black (chicanos), in 1978 we wrote: “This is why one of the proletariat as the most exploited and persecuted sector USA’s fundamental tasks today is to tear the workers of U.S. proletarians, the militant worker James Boggs of the various groups away from the temptations of reciprocal blacklegging, which are favoured by the various ‘nationalistic’ policies. And it is just as essential 7. Obligatory reading is the classical text by Theodore Draper, to fight the latter, saving the workers from a feeble American Communism and Soviet Russia (Cap. 15: “The democratic policy disguised as revolution and perhaps Negro Question”), Vintage Books, 1960, 1986, which contains ample references to sources of the U.S. Communist Party and socialism; save them from the petit-bourgeois attempt the International. to separate the chicano proletariat (as the black one) 8. This concept of Boggs’ is expressed in several of his from the rest of the working class, with the result of writings. Also see his Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook. depriving the American working class of contributions A James Boggs Reader, Wayne State University Press 2011. by new and vital energies and isolating them from the 9. From “Considerazioni sull’organica attività del Partito rest of their class”10. This, indeed, is the work of the quando la situazione generale è storicamente sfavorevole”, revolutionary party, which is “anti-racist” because it is il programma comunista, n.2/1965 (ora in In difesa della anti-capitalist. continuità del programma comunista, Edizioni il programma So is there a “black issue” in the United States? NO. comunista, Milano 1989, p.167). A recent English translation There is a social, class condition, distorted and deviated (not by our Party) of this text can be found in The Science and by widespread racism, institutional and not, but also by Passion of Communism. Selected Writings of Amadeo Bordiga (1912-1965), ed. by Pietro Basso, Brill Edition, Leiden-Boston democratic-reformist anti-racism, and this is the tragic 2020, pp.482-488. condition that cries out for revolutionary theory and 10. “Il proletariato chicano: Un potenziale rivoluzionario da the establishment of the class party. In the second part difendere (III)”, cit., n.3/1978. follow ➝

9 the internationalist n. 7 of the 1967 article, we wrote: “Bitter though it is, this by the great light and terrible shadows of the events in observation must be made: not in practical action but in Newark and Detroit”11. the political direction and its translation into doctrine and More than a century has gone by since those events and a programme, not even at the heart of the heroic black those words of ours. And while the world of capitalist proletariat have we heard – but it is our fault, the fault production flails around more and more wildly, caught of us militants from the proud countries of advanced up in its crisis, slaughtering proletarian men and women, capitalism – the only slogan that can fling open the gates destroying land and water and air and bringing the day of of the future: proletarians of the world, of all ‘races’, a new world massacre closer, this need is becoming more of all countries, unite to overthrow the capitalist régime and more urgent. and establish your dictatorship! Not ‘black power’ but October 2020 ‘proletarian power’! And so, once again, the need for Marxist revolutionary theory and the class party, its 11. “Necessità della teoria rivoluzionaria e del partito marxista bearer and vehicle of battle, in America – and to say in America”, il programma comunista, n.16, settembre-ottobre America is to say world – is posed with dramatic urgency 1967.

After Minneapolis. Let the revolt of the american proletarians be an example to proletarians in all metropolises

The brutality of the Minneapolis cop is not an isolated the poor devils) must be a lesson and remind proletarians example of a fanatical, psychopathic pig running all over the world that the knot to be untied is that of power: amok… It is a “spontaneous” expression of the main rebelling or burning police stations is not sufficient and “institutional” function of the contemporary bourgeois and it is not enough to seize goods from the stores or money imperialist State: surveillance, punishment, repression, from the banks and the pawnshops. control of any “suspicious” behavior, at first individual Today American proletarians are obliged to respond with (the violation or even mere intention to violate private force to police abuse and do well to retaliate blow by blow property in its mean form of possessing goods to be sold), to the attacks, just as they do well to respond blow by blow but potentially and in perspective, collective and social (the to the “white supremacist” scoundrels, demonstrating by overthrowing of forms of production that will abolish the the practice of mutual defence that the proletariat is a private appropriation of wealth produced by the collective single class: whoever touches one of us touches us all. work of wage workers all over the world). This is a well- Nevertheless, a further step is needed: it is essential to known fact to the workers who struggle every day for their realize that cops and fascists are merely the tools of the wage, for their living and working conditions, against and real enemy, the bourgeois and imperialist State – also outside the rules established by bourgeois “law”, just as and in particular the enemy when it sets itself up as a it is well-known to the proletarian and proletarianized “democratic” mediator, the peaceful and generous supplier masses in areas where war breaks out and rages, where of aid. imperialist exploitation steals and destroys mercilessly. Rebellion is sacrosanct, self-defence is necessary: but they We communists fully support the proletarians, sub- are not enough. From the working-class neighbourhoods proletarians and all those who can no longer stand the there has to be a return of the awareness and certainty that violence of the bourgeois State and are now demonstrating it is necessary not only to fight against power but to seize their anger and indignation towards the symbols of police power: to demolish bourgeois power and replace it with oppression in working-class neighbourhoods; and we the power of wage workers alone. It is not enough to seize are certainly not surprised or indignant if, in the general by force the commodities produced by the expropriation confusion, shops, stores and pawnshops are taken by storm of our work: we must destroy the system that steals our as very material symbols of the dictatorship of money and work and existence and re-organize every aspect of social commodities over human life. life by means of the communist revolution. The rebellion We know quite well that these revolts are only a symptom is a forced explosion. But the revolution is a necessity that of the revolutionary potential of our class and, at the requires organization, a programme, clear ideas and the same time, that, despite their duration and intensity, they practice of collective work: in simple terms, the revolution are destined to be suffocated and reabsorbed through our needs a party to direct it. blood sacrifices. The struggling proletariat, the rebellious proletariat, must But these revolts (which the mass media, the organs and organize with and in the communist party. expression of the bourgeoisie, insist on downsizing as “protests against racism and inequality”, thus condemning 30/5/2020 any form that goes beyond the complaining and whining of (a leaflet distributed on various occasions) 10 the internationalist n. 7

Three Texts from the Sixties

Black anger makes the crumbling pillars of bourgeois and democratic “civilization” tremble (1965)

Before international conformity as l’Unità hastened to point out, workforce, or at least keep it from buried the “regrettable” incident refuses and condemns the violence – increasing. During and after that under a thick blanket of silence, but informed by the harsh practical war, the process accelerated rapidly once the racket of the “black lesson of social life, the black people and became generalized. rebellion” in California was over, of California, without any theoretical This was a step that was historically when the “enlightened” bourgeoisie knowledge and without needing to necessary to overcome the limits of was anxiously trying to uncover the express it at length in language but a highly backward economy; and “mysterious” causes of the hitch in declaring it with their arms and their Marxism acclaimed it, though not the “peaceful and regular” operation action, have shouted the pure and because unaware that, when freed of the democratic mechanism down simple truth for the whole world from the South, black labour would there, some observers on either side to hear, and that is that civil and find a mechanism of exploitation of the Atlantic consoled themselves political equality is nothing as long ready and waiting in the North, some by recalling that, after all, violent as economic inequality rules and that aspects of which were even more collective outbreaks by “coloureds” this cannot be escaped through laws, ferocious. Free the “good nigger” are nothing new in America and decrees, sermons and preaching, but would be, in the words of the Capital, that, for example, one just as serious by using force to overturn the bases to take his hide to market and have – but without consequences - had of a class society. And this is the it tanned: free from the chains of happened in Detroit in 1943. brutal rip in the fabric of legal fiction southern slavery but also from the But for those who have followed and democratic hypocrisy, which protective shield of an economy the facts not with cold objectivity has disconcerted and could not fail and a society founded on personal but with passion and hope, there has to disconcert the bourgeoisie; and and human relations, rather than been something profoundly new in this is what has filled us Marxists impersonal and inhuman ones; free – this red-hot episode of anger, which with enthusiasm and could not fail i.e alone, i.e. naked, i.e. helpless. comes not only vaguely from the to do so; this is what must give And in fact, the slave who escaped people but from the proletariat. It is the weary proletarians food for to the North realized he was no less something that makes us cry out: The thought, falsely coddled as they are inferior than before; because he black rebellion has been suppressed: in the metropolises of a capitalism was paid less; because he had no long live the black rebellion! The historically born with a white skin. professional qualifications; because new element – in the history of the When North America, having he was isolated in new ghettos as fights for emancipation of salaried already set out along the tracks of a soldier in the industrial reserve and underpaid black workers, not full capitalism, launched a crusade army and as a potential threat to the of course in the history of the class for the emancipation of the slaves connective tissue of the régime of struggle in general – is the almost in the South, it did not do so for private property and appropriation; inevitable coincidence of the humanitarian reasons or out of because he was segregated and pompous and rhetorical presidential respect for the eternal principles of discriminated against as the one who declaration of political and civil ’89, but because it was necessary must feel not a person but a beast of rights, and the outbreak of an to split up the lineages of a pre- labour and as such sell himself to anonymous, collective, subversive, capitalist patriarchal economy and the first offer, asking no more and “uncivil” fury by the beneficiaries “free” its labour force so that it could no better. of the “magnanimous” gesture; of offer itself as a huge resource for the Today, a century after this presumed the umpteenth attempt to win over greedy monster of Capital. Already “emancipation”, he finds himself the martyred slave with a miserable before the war of secession, the granted “full” civil rights at the same carrot costing nothing, and the North was encouraging the escape of time as his average income proves instinctive, immediate refusal of the slaves from the southern plantations, alarmingly lower than that of his slave to have himself blindfolded all too attracted by the dream of white fellow citizen, his salary is half and bend his back again. a labour force that would place that of his lighter-skinned brother, Rough and uneducated – not by their itself on the market at the lowest his companion’s pay is one third leaders, the great majority of whom of prices and which, as well as this of the salary of a “non-coloured” are more Gandhian than Gandhi; not direct advantage, would ensure that companion; at the same time as the by US-style “communism” which, of containing the already salaried follow ➝

11 the internationalist n. 7 golden business metropolises shut “Premeditated rebellion and machine guns, truncheons, tanks him into ghettos full of horrifying disrespect for the law, the rights of and siege? poverty, disease and vice, hiding fellow citizens and the maintenance And what is this, if not the him there behind invisible walls of law and order!” exclaimed the experience of the oppressed classes of prejudice, customs and police cardinal of Holy Mother Church under any sky, whatever the colour regulations; at the same time as McIntyre, as though the new slave- of their skin and of whatever “racial” the unemployment that bourgeois without-shackles had any reason to origin? The black rebel, whether hypocrisy calls “technology” respect a law that keeps his back and pure proletarian or sub-proletarian, (meaning this is “inevitable”, the his knee bent, or had ever known who shouted in Los Angeles, “Our price that must be paid for progress, – himself the “fellow citizen” of war is here, not in Vietnam,” was of which present society is not the whites – that he possessed any formulating a concept no different guilty) culls most of its victims from “rights” or had ever been able to to that of those who “stormed the amongst the ranks of his brothers of see anything but disorder elevated heavens” in the Paris Commune the same race, because these are the to the status of a principle, in this and Petrograd, the destroyers of ranks of the simple labourer and of society based on the three-point the myths of order, the national the sub-proletarians assigned to the slogan of freedom, equality and interest, the wars of civilization and foulest and most exhausting jobs; brotherly love. the proclaimers of a civilization that at the same time as, whilst equal to “Rights are not won by violence,” was finally supposed to be human. his white fellow soldier in the eyes shouted Johnson. A lie. Black The bourgeoisie should not console of death, he is rendered profoundly people remember, even if only itself by thinking: “a far-off episode unequal before the policeman, because they have heard about it, that doesn’t affect us – here the the judge, the taxman, the factory that a long war was the price white matter of race is not an issue.” The owner, the Union man and the people paid for the rights they issue of race is a social matter, in owner of the hovel he lives in. It is had been denied by the English an increasingly clearer form today. also true – and absurd to the bigots metropolis; they know that a longer The unemployed or under-employed – that the blaze of this rebellion war brought both white and black in our lacerated South should no has spread in California where the people, temporarily united, a flimsy longer have to resort to the outlet of average black salary is higher than “emancipation” that still today emigration; they should no longer in the East; but it is right there in the remains inconsistent and remote; have to rush to let themselves territory of the capitalist boom and they see and hear every day how be flayed alive across the sacred of false proletarian “well-being”, chauvinist rhetoric celebrates the borders (or let themselves be killed that the inequality of treatment extermination of the red-skinned in tragedies that are not caused by between people with different- people contrasting the march of fatalities, the sudden whims of the coloured skins is strongest; it is right the founding fathers towards new atmosphere or perhaps by the evil there that the ghetto, already closed lands and “rights”, and the crude eye, but by Capital’s thirst for profit along the Atlantic coast, is hastily brutality of the pioneers of the West and anxiety to save on the cost of being secured before the arrogant “redeemed” by the cult of the Bible materials, accommodation, means ostentation of luxury, lavishness and Alcohol; what was this, if not of transport, safety equipment, in and the dolce vita of the ruling class violence? Obscurely, they have order to ensure a higher margin – which is white! It is against the realized that there is no deadlock in of unpaid labour and perhaps hypocrisy of an egalitarianism put American history, as in all countries, profit from the reconstruction that down on paper in Jesuit fashion that has not been broken by force; follows the inevitable, anything but denied in practice by a society that there is no right that is not the but unpredictable and always riddled by deep class rifts, that black result of a clash, often a bloody one hypocritically lamented disasters); anger has exploded so potently, not and always violent, between the allow the slums of our manufacturing unlike the explosion of anger by the forces of the past and those of the cities and moral capitals (!!) to white proletarians attracted to the future. What have a hundred years overflow, more than they already new industrial centres of advanced of waiting for the magnanimous are, with unemployed outcasts capitalism and piled up there, concessions of the white people without food or reserves, and you crowded into the slums, confined in brought, apart from the little that will have an “Italic” racism, already the cardboard shacks of this most an occasional outbreak of anger has visible now in the lamentations of Christian bourgeois society, and been able to wrench, even using fear the North over the “barbarians” and “free” within them to sell its labour, alone, from the mean and cowardly “uncivil” southern terroni (mud- so as…so as not to die of hunger; hand of the boss? And what was the eaters). as the sacred fury of the exploited reply of Governor Brown, defender It is the social structure in which and – and as though this were not of the rights the white people felt we are condemned to live today enough, derided - underclasses will were threatened by the “revolt”, if that brings to life these infamies; it always explode! not the democratic violence of the follow ➝

12 the internationalist n. 7 will disappear under the ruins of it. and reform, are warned of and and defeated but the messenger of This is what the forgetful, dozing in reminded of by the “black rebellion” victory! the illusory sleep of well-being and of California – not remote, not exotic, (il programma comunista, drugged by the opium of democracy but present amongst us; immature n.10, 1965)

Glory to the black proletarian rebellion (1967)

However the heroic rebellion the American south: it is a blaze of The black proletarians CAN NO of America’s black proletarians anger from proletarians crowded into LONGER have patience, even if they is destined to unfold […], it marks the biggest, modern industrial city in wanted to: a hundred years of reform a watershed in the history of the north (Detroit in fact – ed.), the have failed to give them an iota of exploited “coloured” people, which, pride of the American automobile what – and it was already very little whilst filling revolutionaries with industry. – a real war, the civil war between enthusiasm, must act as a vigorous It is no longer an isolated episode: North and South managed to secure wake-up call, a healthy lash of the this is a wildfire spreading not only precisely one century previously, not whip, to all those slaves of capital, from one city to another but, far more by means of speeches or petitions but first and foremost white ones, in importantly, from black proletarians by speaking the language of weapons. countries all over the world. to white proletarians who stand Those victories, so important at the Amidst the cries of indignation alongside them. It is a page in the time, have demonstrated over a long from right-thinking people – not class war, proud as it is violent, bold period of suffering how inadequate least the “progressive” members of as it is implacable. It is the warning they were, at the same time proving the bourgeoisie, who were happy to sign of what is to come on the day that democracy is a mere chimera applaud the innocuous and pacific when proletarians, independently of for the exploited: they cannot be “marches” for peace or for “civil the colour of their skin, rise up not carried any further – cancelled out by rights” and who are now screaming with prayer but with force, to break greater victories – unless a new and about the “unlawfulness” and their chains in the golden citadels of different turn is taken, of class (and “horrors” of an open rebellion that “capitalist progress”. the proletarian class’s), civil war. tends to overstep every boundary – The bourgeoisie immediately cried This is the language the black , it speaks a language that, despite scandal, against the horror of the proletarians are speaking to their themselves, the same dismayed looting, the fires, the shooting. But rulers. But they are also speaking it organs of the exploited class are is this the scandal or is it not, instead, to their proletarian “non-coloured” obliged to take note of and pass on, the martyrdom to which black wage brothers, so that they remember there This is no longer the silent and more earners taking refuge in the civilized is only one enemy and that freedom or less imploring request for formal north have been subjected for a from it can only come by breaking the “rights”, for juridic “equality”: this is century now, condemning them to yoke that weighs on the shoulders of an explosion of anger from those who wages that are lower by half than all the exploited; so that they recover have learned from long experience, those of white workers and leaving the awareness that black proletarians that laws and rights are the tools of them to the mercy of recurrent will not be truly free until, joining with the class that rules and exploits, not unemployment? Is this the horror, them, the proletarians of every other the weapons of the exploited class; or is it the ghetto in which holy, race gain their freedom, too, tearing that “equality” is a mockery faced white, Christian society imprisons its the tools of his dictatorial power from with the reality of economic and “freed” slaves in the great industrial the greedy hands of a boss who is the social inequality, unemployment, metropolises? And is the rebellion of same for them all and is protected starvation wages, the frantic pace of the black proletarians “irresponsible” today by the paratrooopers unleashed work that all workers are subject to violence, whilst the violence of to arrest, wound and kill, in the name but first and foremost black workers; the white bosses who have them of property and Capital, those who that faced with all this, prayers and in a stranglehold is supposed bear the terrible guilt of not wanting petitions count for nothing, just as to be “legitimate”? For us, this to die of hunger! they failed to count when faced with anonymous violence is as sacred as Today all the lay and ecclesiastical the whips of the slave-drivers in the that of the Roman slaves, the French defenders of law and order are times when people with dark skins Sansculottes, or the Russian workers ranked against the rebellious black were not “free” to sell their labour to and mugiks. proletarians. It’s only natural: the any boss. Let the Luther-King- or Bob- former have something – a lot – to This is no longer the occasional Kennedy-style “progressive” thinkers lose; the latter have only their chains student outburst in a “patriarchal” cry that this is how the fruits of the and “backward” university town in patient work of reform are destroyed. follow ➝

13 the internationalist n. 7 to lose. It is therefore to them that the against the mutual enemy of all the every country and every race), unite!” support of revolutionary communists exploited, to the undying battle cry (il programma comunista, in all countries goes, proud to fight of: “Proletarians of the world (from n.14, 1967)

The need for revolutionary theory and the class party in America (1967) (excerpt)

[…] not only in the United States but in neighbourhoods but in these same the world, and both the drive and areas immigrants of diverse origins The social character direction of their uprising are the and very different races crowd of the “black revolt” same as the blaze of rage from the together, obliged to sell their labour Mexican or chicano daily-workers to the insatiable capitalist monster. The great theoretical significance in the fertile valleys of California in Capitalism originates from a of the glorious days of Newark and recent years (and periodically every territorial base that is more or less Detroit consists first and foremost year) or the manual workers from a homogeneous in terms of language in the fact that they are a splendid variety of backgrounds – white ones, and customs – the “national” labour confirmation of Marxist forecasts too – in the corporative prisons of market – but in its overriding regarding the inevitability of the the east, by which the bloody history expansion, it cannot do without a catastrophe against which bourgeois of American capitalism has been source of low-cost labour and if the ideologists and a whole range of punctuated both in far-off and recent “pockets” of internal depression are opportunists claim that capitalism times. In other articles we speak of insufficient,outside national borders: can protect itself, thanks to “special” the scarce but undeniable messages anywhere in the international resources. At one fell swoop, the of solidarity from the white workers reserve army desperately offering it “black rebellion” (let us use this to their black-skinned brothers: (the world power) its labour. Here term for the moment) swept away these alone demonstrate the class they are, the super-exploited, who – in a blaze of fire and steel – the roots (and only for the label, race suffer, as such, independently of fables endorsed by petit-bourgeois roots) of the great earthquake that their “nationality” or their skin intellectuals, as to the invincible has struck the golden citadels of His (even though their collocation as march towards well-being and the Majesty the Yankee Capital. Black “foreigners” or “coloureds” acts as peaceful elimination of political and labour is certainly the worst paid a convenient excuse for sacrificing social contrasts. Instead, it brought but this is true to a similar degree them or exploiting them even more) back into the limelight the Marxist for the Puerto Rican labourers and who, for this very reason, are argument, that the loudly acclaimed absorbed by industries in the East, destined by reason of an apparent capitalist prosperity has feet of clay, the wage-earning Mexican or paradox, to become the avant-garde and – far more importantly – giving chicano farmworkers hired on a in the class struggles of their adopted further confirmation to the old Marxist seasonal basis in the agricultural country. Engels saw in the Irish – axiom just right there where the industries of the West or for the crowded into what today’s hypocrisy suggestions of reformist and pacific old-time Americans who struggle would call “racial ghettos” and propaganda are most widespread, and to get by, for example in the were instead simply monstrous the possibility of material and moral depressed areas of the Appalachian working class neighbourhoods – the corruption greater; right there where mountains. Black proletarians, spearhead, the element of greatest there is most “prosperity”. Right mostly with no qualifications, are unrest in the instinctive movement there, proletarians have reminded most exposed to unemployment of proletarian rebellion in England: their brothers throughout the world (in Harlem 9% of black people are the most resplendent episodes of that “they have nothing to lose but unemployed as against the 4% of violent uprising in the United States their chains”. the national average; amongst young have foreign names and surnames; Because this is the other important people under the age of twenty the in both cases the actors in the social aspect of the “events” of Newark percentage rises to around 25% - drama embodied the pure proletariat, and Detroit (not the only ones, as [1967 data – ed.]. But so are the those without reserves who in fact could, and can still, be seen, but Puerto Ricans and, to a certain extent “have nothing to lose except their for now the most striking), it is a all the young “whites” excluded chains”, the authentic wage-earner question of proletarians, wage- by mechanization from the many who feels on his skin the lies of the earners rebelling on the scene of chances of employment in industry. one of the biggest industrial hubs, The blacks certainly live in dreadful follow ➝ 14 the internationalist n. 7

“new frontiers”, the frontiers that production mechanism. in other, wider-ranging forms of capitalism crosses to source labour This is no “academic” problem, support, especially when the local where it costs the least. It would be but one of those real needs for armed forces received massive the same to talk of “racial conflict” battle that drove our great Masters reinforcements from the paratroopers with respect to… the martyrs of to draw lessons from the most urgently called into action by the Chicago in the far-off, yet so nearby shining examples of proletarian White House or when lines of 1886, or the formidable wobblies struggle – lessons that they passed tanks machine-gunned the streets; (I.W.W.) of more recent years, on to successive generations, not whether the “partial” paralysis of mostly German, Irish, Italian and only in terms of their light but also General Motors, Ford and Chrysler Spanish immigrants! and foremost of their shadows. was due to “forced” absences or to Lastly, even wishing to consider Shortcomings and mistakes are the voluntary absence of the whole only black people – as “citizens” inevitable in a battle in which of the labour force; whether unified and not as “proletarians” – and shut one of the basic ingredients is strike action and unified action their wave of rebellion up in a bottle, its spontaneous nature; and the committees arose and, in this case, with a cork bearing the words “racial spontaneous nature of the American how long they survived and what issue”, what would that wave of uprising can only be mistaken by their slogans were. This silence rebellion demonstrate (third point), those who give credit to the lies of (since it really is silence and not due if not that even on the general terrain the Central Intelligence Agency to our own lack of information) is no of the famous “rights” and famous about the decisive part played in it accident: all opportunism in every “integration”, the dynamics of social by the usual “agitators” or, worse, country took care to relegate the forces have physically placed the by common criminals, pillagers American rebellion to the category of victims of the worst “injustices” up and… pyromaniacs; thus only by “particular” problems and situations against problems that invest general those who have chosen to play the and shut it into a political ghetto of relations, neither local nor particular, part of lackeys to the establishment. isolation from the outside world, first between society – the whole of As to the historical limits, in order and foremost the “outside” world society – and the state – the entire to understand them, they must be of other countries and the different edifice of oppression and defence of seen against the background of the ‘coloured’ proletariat. This silence the ruling class – showing them that whole of the workers’ movement, (all the more significant since the the issue is political and to do with American and worldwide. same bourgeois sources blame the brute force, admitting nothing but the The light and shadow of events in halt in production for three quarters alternative between violence suffered Newark and Detroit cannot be judged of the monetary damage caused by and violence exercised? Does this by considering them as random the struggle and speak of one billion mean that the Detroit “negroes” were episodes in any country at random. dollars going up in smoke in just a explicitly aware of it? No. And so? On the contrary, they must be seen few days, the same sum the Italian Conscience follows and does not in the global significance they have, government was loaned by the precede action and this is the real occurring at the very heart of the USA for “national reconstruction”) and material effect of forces, of a world’s pillar of imperialism, the is the other face of what we might rip going on in the apparently strong USA, at the centre of its bloodthirsty call “active” silence by the United material of an intrinsically precarious system, the automobile industry, and States’ white “workers” associations society. The government can appoint in the immense value they could and those outside the States: the all the “commissions of enquiry” that assume, indeed may already have silence of an organized political it likes): history has placed the issue assumed, for this very reason, for the force that should pose the matter, on on a quite different terrain. worldwide revival of the proletariat. a general scale and as a principled This is where their present limits cornerstone, as a unique battle, The historical limits come into the limelight. not divided by lines of colour, and, of the uprising We have already mentioned the on a higher plane, recognizing the declarations of solidarity – not value of the instinctive solidarity of Our enthusiasm on the one side, merely formal – for the “coloured” ordinary proletarians. Not one voice our solidarity on the other, would proletarians from the “non-coloured” was raised in the camp of the ‘non nonetheless remain inferior to our ones. They are undeniable, all coloureds’ (and it could only have task as a party, if we closed our the more so since they come from been the voice of a class party) to eyes to the historical limits – as well bourgeois quarters. There is no cry: This battle belongs to all of us, as to the deficiencies, errors and news, however, as to how, where, our enemy is the same, there is a risks of involution occurring under when this solidarity was expressed: single will to attack it with the same the dual attack of bourgeois state we do not know, for instance, if it violence that you, our black-skinned repression and opportunist poison – was only manifest in the gesture brothers, have exercised with bared of an uprising emerging powerfully of the “snipers” taking up rifles faces, just as our fathers did so many from the bowels of the bourgeois and shooting from the rooftops, or follow ➝

15 the internationalist n. 7 times over a century of history! If, not from today – the class party, the have entitled our article: “The need then, there has been instinctive Marxist doctrine and program are for revolutionary theory and the class solidarity from the white proletariat, missing: their active vehicle at the party in America”. Which is the whatever form it assumed, what heart of world imperialism, where same as saying throughout the world. has been lacking is a corresponding they are destined to act as the hinge [...] political force. But such a political in world communist strategy. This is (il programma comunista, force could not be there, where – the tragic dilemma. This is why we nn.15 e 16, 1967)

He/she is a comrade, communist and revolutionary militant, who has been able to forget, to renegade, to tear away from mind and heart the classification in which he/she was enrolled by the Register of this putrescent society; who sees and mingles himself/herself in the whole of the millenary space that binds the ancestral, tribal man, fighter against wild beasts, to the member of the future community, fraternal in the joyous harmony of social mankind.

16 the internationalist n. 7

Virus and class struggle

As we have emphasized more than once, the virus more interesting, continues the Nobel Prize-winner, is spread through an organism already sick and in that the virus was apparently produced in the laboratory serious trouble. There were many warning signs of the as an HIV vaccine… Thus the vaccine invoked by the production and financial system collapsing and it was just mainstream as the only final solution to the epidemic a matter of time before the dramatic social consequences was supposed to act against a virus/vaccine. This is pure of the latest global crack made themselves felt. If the science fiction and we have no elements of support for big 2008/09 crisis was stemmed with difficulty without this thesis, authoritative though it is, nor for refusing it, re-launching the mechanism of accumulation, the latest either. Nonetheless we can take it as a metaphor to try one on the horizon could have been lethal. Debts too and make sense of what happened afterwards and is still high, average profit rate too low, underlying social going on. inequalities too great to imagine much leeway for any As far as we know, the function of a vaccine is to activate pacific management of the new scenario within the limits an organism’s immune system and encourage the of the system’s more or less democratic order. production of specific antibodies against a determined It would be interesting to have access to the answers big disease. This, it appears, is the principle. Well, if we data provided to the questions posed by study centres consider the effects of the coronavirus on capital’s social serving big capital in order to discover the system’s and production organism, on the capital-organism, we chances of survival. Given the preconditions, we imagine can see its effectiveness in artificially sparking off a they have caused a slight tremor at the very least. The series of antibodies at the political, social and economic system needs to act in advance. Whether what came level. Capital’s immune system incorporated certain afterwards was pure chance or somehow provoked is of potential resources that needed to be activated to contrast little importance. By embracing the latter theory there the effects of the serious pathogens that were circulating. is the risk of over-estimating capital’s ability to manage If the predicted disease had come about spontaneously, and control its own contradictions, though it is true this potential would perhaps have been activated too that today the Moloch has acquired such concentrated late to effectively contrast the pathogenic factors in the power and such technological tools and scientific and system and thus save it. military apparatus, that reality may extend well beyond Now unprepared to face up to the chronic diseases our imagination. Not knowing, we can say nothing but and more and more frequent emergencies by means neither shall we fall into the trap of excluding “science of democratic rituals, politics has for some time been fiction” hypotheses a priori simply for fear of being developing authoritarian deviations, lying in wait labelled… conspiracy theorists. Today anything that everywhere and already manifest in some Eastern deviates from the voice of the mainstream is attacked, European régimes. The coronavirus goes beyond this: isolated, discredited and counted as fake news or without overthrowing the democratic institutional censored, yet by browsing the web interesting things can balance, it puts it in a position to act according to an also be spotted1. emergency régime, suspending “sacred bourgeois Without confirming any of the many ideas (some weird, freedoms” from one day to the next, by a series of decrees. others far less so) circulating about this virus, we shall The effect is paralyzing. Fear pervades the deepest assume, simply as a hypothesis, the reading given by nooks and crannies of society, managing to penetrate the Nobel Prize-winner Luc Montagnier, which earned into the most intimate dimensions by flaunting the threat him a deluge of attacks in the media, demoting him from of “the triumph of death”. The scenario shown daily at luminary to a bumbling old idiot2. Not even Nobels are all hours confirmed and amplified the sense of tragedy: accorded respect when the sensitive nerves of capital dying patients, military trucks laden with coffins, mass are touched! Be that as it may, the great virologist graves. The screenplay regarded a local situation but maintained he had proof that the virus had escaped – he presented it as potentially generalized. The message had says by chance, others see the hand of America behind its effect: “Death will triumph if you, the citizen, do not it – from a secret laboratory in Wuhan, not far from the collaborate by supporting the common cause – to defeat famous wet market of infectious bats. But what is even the invisible enemy – by your silence and immobility.” In this reading, the responsibility for the possible 1. Michael Roberts’ website dealt with the matter of Covid-19 catastrophe is not to be attributed to an anti-human social from April onwards. It offers useful analyses and data (https:// system, which places the needs of the species in bottom thenextrecession.wordpress.com/). place and business at the top (and is thus incapable of 2. The following is a link to an interview with Montagnier of 20 April 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZPYEBo3_Qk. follow ➝ 17 the internationalist n. 7 responding to the emergency without improvising, but produce antibodies to contrast the onset of capital’s main highly successful at exploiting new opportunities for pathology: class struggle. earning money). Oh no, the responsibility is made to But the virus/vaccine has also been highly effective fall on the shoulders of the individual, bound to obey, so in activating a crucial shift in the social organization as not to seem a plague-spreader – antisocial. The mask of work. In the long months of the emergency, home- covering the face symbolically represents the imposition working has become widespread, which, in the softened of silence, the silence of criticism, when totalitarian and optimistic view of capitalist sociologists, becomes communication admits only those who repeat or amplify smart working, quick and intelligent work. the message of the mainstream: “Danger threatens. Stay And it is, if considered from the point of view of capital, at home!”3 The fate of those who dare to practise critical since – unlike teleworking – it takes place amidst a thinking is an overall media attack filled with indignation complete absence of rules5. This allows capital to save on and reproof, if not worse4. Servility is rife and, what production costs, which are transferred to the employee’s is worse, nurtured by sincere faith in the truth of the home, in terms of both equipment and service costs. And mainstream message. even if these costs were computed in the final pay packet, Faced with a common enemy that cancels out any other they would certainly be lower than the costs of managing emergency and monopolizes attention, all differences work on company premises, whilst from the “salary”, seem to disappear, above all those of class. Any embryo the employer can save on meal tickets and the cost of of antagonism, of organized struggle is annulled, any transport to get to work. The reduction of production form of physical closeness is an illegal gathering. Before costs and layout on salaries is not the only advantage an audience of silent and isolated individuals it is the for capital. In establishing work tasks, capital has the State that speaks through its experts/scientists. There is opportunity to increase the workload, confident of the not just the fear of the virus but also that of advancing physical isolation in which the salaried work terminal poverty and the verses of the old Venetian patriots’ ode finds itself. In his/her new condition the proletarian of 1849 are again topical: “Il morbo infuria, il pan ci might even consider him/herself to be at an advantage manca, sul ponte sventola bandiera bianca” (“The but in reality, anguish accumulates inside him/her: to get disease rages, bread is lacking, on the bridge the white to work, there is no need to go outside; work is right there flag flies”). There is the overall surrender of society to in the four walls of home, amidst family and everyday the State: but the State is a class State and those who household objects. Work penetrates deeply into his/ bend their heads to its authority in the emergency are the her inner life, invading it. The communist objective to proletarians and the half classes destined to bleed. The combine work and life, making work a free, vital and others – the few – are busy reaping the benefits of the creative aspect of existence, is obtained by capital by general impoverishment even before the virus disappears reducing the whole of existence to salaried or pseudo- and there is a return to profitable capitalist normality. freelance work, whichever it is. This is how, with the Fear of the virus prepares the fear of hunger. Cultivated decisive contribution of the virus/vaccine, the shift within the four walls of home, it becomes an individual of office work in its various forms moves to a harsher feeling that cannot be shared except within the close level of subordination, of dependence on the machine, circle of private relations. Fear weakens, compromises of control and tracing of the operations delegated to the the immune system, exposes us to contagion, demoralizes salaried worker. The shift is analogous to that analysed by and creates an environment unsuited to solidarity and Marx with the reduction of the worker to an appendix of battle. The only solidarity allowed is that of the nation’s the machine which, from the point of view of producing health. The prime effect of the virus/vaccine is to value is equivalent to the move from absolute to relative plusvalue. As in mechanised factories the worker’s labour completely loses its autonomy in the production 3. In the following link there is an example of one of the process, in the same way the smart employee is reduced many interviews by Italian “philosopher” Diego Fusaro, with a conspiracy-theory slant to them – not too much can be to becoming a mere terminal of the IT machine and expected of a modern National-Bolshevik! – but sometimes the constant updating of software increases individual successful, as in this case (https://www.radioradio.it/2020/04/ productivity. To some extent this also takes place on la-dittatura-delle-mascherine-ennesima-prova-diego-fusaro/). company premises but there the physical presence and 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSUOwF8ATSI. The relations of the worker with his/her peers guarantees a link is to the video of the last long interview with Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa, decidedly not a “Marxist” journalist certain degree of humanity and constitutes an obstacle but just as decidedly non-aligned, and on top form. Two days to the full realization of capitalist dominion, which finds after the interview he died in his sleep, and there are those who its preferred referent in the individual. Applied to the have wondered if it was a “natural” death... working condition, solitude and isolation lead to the 5. On the difference between teleworking and smart working, fragmentation of work, which is the perfect sub-soil for https://umanitanova.org/?p=12104. In the following link, the testimony of a smart worker at the time of the coronavirus: affirming an ideal model of the human being reduced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kp_Bq1CzrA. follow ➝ 18 the internationalist n. 7 by capital to a producer-consumer. Capital can freely studios with the obsessively repeated mantra of social unleash itself against the individual: if in the secret of distancing as the only way to contain the disease. Apart the polling booth he/she is politically reduced to a dupe, from this crude imposition, all of this exalted science as a consumer the only defence of a limited availability made a high-powered measure available to the population: of income can easily be overcome by running up debts. wash your hands. Some time later – after profound Having exhausted his/her dual function as producer- research and reflection to overcome initial doubts – the consumer, the preferred outcome would be for him/her obligation to wear masks was added. The people offer to kick the bucket (indeed, Covid-10 proved particularly thanks and bow down before this great science. Not a aggressive in rest-homes). word about ways of reinforcing the immune system, The second effect of the virus/vaccine is therefore to which certainly do not include staying at home. So much push forward subordination at work and confine it to a so that at one point the experts launched an alarm about private space. Having activated the antibody that attacks the spread of the virus… inside the four walls of home! the possibility of cultivating human relations, the only Just as damaging to the immune system is the climate of relation that must survive is that of commerce, whilst terror and emergency and the forced immobility. The all the rest tends to become reduced to mere virtual contradictions and inadequacies of this measly approach connection. became dramatically obvious in the hospitals and rest- There remains the third, and perhaps most powerful, homes, where the virus had a feast. We cannot dwell here specific antibody that the virus is to activate: control over on these aspects, which we shall be better able to judge the biological existence of the human being. Here there if and when the wave of emergency is over. What is of is a massive attack underway. During the emergency interest is where the whole grotesque show is heading period, the representatives of health “science” assumed for. Amongst the highest institutional figures, the self- a leading role. They were the ones to dictate the proclaimed “people’s lawyer” (Italian Prime Minister emergency guidelines to governments, to establish what Conte) declared that the health crisis would not be was allowed and what was not. Once again, politics solved until “the vaccine” was present and the President handed the task of government over to the “experts”. We of the Italian region Lazio - who is also secretary of the were used to being subjected to the dictates of professors Democratic Party - echoed him, envisaging an obligatory of economy, called upon in the recent past to solve the anti-flu vaccine in the region. These people bowed their State’s debt crises with indiscriminate cuts to welfare. heads to the polite request from Big Pharma to entrust A significant percentage of the deaths due – directly or the fate of public health to their business vocation and indirectly – to Covid-19 are due to policies proposed by decreed that any solutions (such as the use of immune the “technicians” authorized to put into practice what plasma, successfully experimented with by Dr. De politics did not have the courage to. Just as the economic Donno, or introducing ozone into patients’ blood), no experts dealt mortal blows to the welfare system, in the matter how very effective they had proved in the field, as new crisis health experts decreed the need to do away well as being far cheaper than experimentation on drugs, with individual (and social) freedom and are dictating should be relegated to old wives’ remedies. the guidelines of future policy, which through health It is not our intention here to dwell on the effectiveness measures is tending to upturn the present relations of vaccines and their riskiness, which is also the object between the State and the citizen. The facts clearly of a scientific debate completely obscured by the mass demonstrate once more the complete subordination of media. Wildly over-generalizing, in the television chat politics to capital. If the economic experts were chosen shows scientific theories that put forward any sort of from the highest échelons of international finance, the doubt about vaccines are systematically labelled no-vax health experts are mostly projections of the WHO, a and lumped together with crazy and irresponsible new- bureaucratic set-up in the hands of the big pharmaceutical age superstitions. On this subject, let us leave the debate companies. to those doctors and researchers who have not yielded to In support of this power block, all the servility of the the logic of the health emergency as an occasion to profit information system entered into action, filling the TV from the health of human beings and demote them to the status of prisoners. There are some, and some have the courage to reveal the crimes of the health industry (better 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YgEd-Kq24U is call it “the sickness industry”), which in this situation the link to a video defined “conspiracy theory” but rather have demonstrated what enormous lobbying pressure convincing, by an American scientist, Judy Micovits, who they exert on politics and institutions worldwide6. The ended up in jail for having revealed the findings of her fact is that this concentration of economic power with its research in military laboratories. Also worth viewing is the interview with Dr. Shiva on the deep state and the role of strong links to the centres of political and institutional figures like Fauci, the virologist head of the anti-Covid staff power seems to be expressing its own strategies of the Trump administration (https://www.youtube.com/ to guarantee itself more generalized and pervasive watch?v=RsoG7pZifTw ). follow ➝ 19 the internationalist n. 7 powers of intervention in society. The intention to the highest positions – those who encourage the absolute make vaccination obligatory and even to guarantee that need to vaccinate – are not themselves vaccinated? Are the individual/patient can be traced, so that complete we certain that the “philanthropist” Bill Gates, champion health control can constantly be maintained over him/ of vaccines, has himself and his children vaccinated and, her, establishing pharmaceutical needs, monitoring like him, all the world’s supermen, who claim to control body temperature and, through this monitoring of his/ the existence of billions of human beings? Vaccines are her physical reactions, even his or her emotional state, not something for their lordships: they are commodities marks the shift from the right to be healthy to the destined for the multitude, for the huge market where the obligation to be healthy7. Health is transformed into a health-commodity is dealt in, stuff for the proletarians. social duty of the individual and whoever steps out of The third antibody activated by the virus/vaccine is thus line is transformed into a public enemy to be isolated to create the dependence of individuals on the system and censored. Permanent health assistance and the of provision of the health commodity, accompanied by permanent provision of health commodities is imposed tracing and permanent control. One more step in the upon everyone by the health police. In this new context direction of strengthening the totalitarian system of the individual must no longer be considered healthy until managing society. he/she can give proof of the contrary: he/she must be ill, Lastly, the virus has induced further acceleration in the in need of care in any case. process of concentrating capital and polarizing society. In the same way we lose the principle upheld in the Large-scale distribution by means of e-commerce distant past by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, that the has obtained gigantic advantages from the closure human being is free at birth: today human beings are of other businesses, many of which are destined for born caged in a powerful system of conditioning and bankruptcy. Great benefits have also been reaped by control that directs their existence in the forms and ways forms of distribution using sophisticated apps and a functional to capital. Here, too, we observe the same highly exploited and under-paid staff of riders. More process of fragmentation seen in the smart organization in general, the shock of the pandemic is destroying of production and “remote” interpersonal relations. small and medium-sized enterprises unable to survive From being a social issue, to be dealt with in terms of prolonged closure. Those who can save themselves, welfare, the management of health policy is becoming a in all sectors, will be the bigger enterprises with more commercial relationship between the producer company capital and easier access to credit, which will be able to and the end consumer, mediated by the overall control buy up the market share freed by the destruction of a host system. In this relationship, the company creates the of small competitors. The class structure of society will need for health, just as any sort of production tends to emerge profoundly changed: wide sectors of the middle- create imagined needs that go well beyond those that are class and petty bourgeoisie are destined to plunge into necessary and essential for the species. Creating illness the condition of the proletariat, whilst at the opposite is the precondition for perpetuating care. Managing and end there will be a further increase in the weight of big controlling sick individuals is easier than managing and companies operating online, e-commerce and the big controlling healthy ones. groups integrated in the financial system. Immunization of the species by means of vaccines is We come to the conclusion that the virus didn’t bring the precondition for creating a wide range of illnesses the disease: it just aggravated it; and this disease is – some terrible, others banal but often chronic – called capitalism. On its century-long historical path, statistically evident in those vaccinated and which the bourgeoisie advanced causes that are progressively are listed in microscopic print in the leaflets of the turning into their exact opposite: it affirmed the right to pharmaceutical companies. Is it a coincidence that the private property, and is destroying this by concentration lowest percentage of vaccinations is recorded amongst and monopolies; it upheld the freedom to work, and is health carers, who are most exposed to infection and denying this by imposing conditions that are coming best informed on the components of the vaccines? Is it a increasingly closer to slavery; it exalted sacred individual coincidence that almost all the members of the WHO in freedom, and is denying this by confining freedom of movement to the home; it celebrated the prerogatives of the individual as the driving force of society, and 7. On these issues raised by the anti-Covid measures the is confining it in a cage of ever-harsher and objective philosopher Giorgio Agamben has intervened on several occasions. He, too, has not been spared by the conformist conditioning; it exalted the rights of a free society uproar. There follow some examples: against the authority of the State, and has built the most https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-una-domanda (14 powerful, oppressive and all-pervasive State history April) has ever experienced; it proclaimed itself a factor of https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-nuove-riflessioni historical progress in all fields, and now the world is (22 April) https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-biosicurezza (15 threatened by an environmental and climate crisis that May) follow ➝ 20 the internationalist n. 7 risks driving humanity back into direst barbarity. All this the management of life-essential production (agriculture with the support of a science conforming to the insterests and livestock) and directly on the biological existence of of capital, which has given open proof of its servility in the human being. The Moloch tends to mold men and this health crisis. women, nurturing them and looking after them in ways Just to avoid any misunderstanding, we shall certainly that adapt them to its needs. not be the ones to set ourselves up as the defenders of All this reveals itself as a show of omnipotence: yet individual prerogative, private property and democracy, these are still only the trials of a sorcerer’s apprentice even less so of the “right to work”, which to us is a that expose the system to strong reactions of rejection. synonym for right to exploitation. But we do observe This is too complex and inter-connected a society to that in its historical evolution, whilst it destroys the be manipulated as desired by the will of power groups, preconditions for its own existence by reducing the however strong, organized and equipped with super- quantity of human labour needed for production to technology. The reality of capital is anything but perfect a minimum, capital makes rubbish of the principles it – it is chaotic: the information network is filled with arose out of and which are its very basis. By proceeding cracks that cannot always be plastered over with the in this way it has fully matured the conditions for its own label of fake news, the social crisis drives people towards overthrow and has opened the way to a future society mass gatherings and the violation of the security State. that will restore fullness to the human being, returning Even more than complexity, it is opposed by the very to it its social dimension and freeing it from the need to life needs of the human species in its relationship with possess and the institutions that legitimate this, freeing nature. This coronavirus episode with its accompanying it from work that is necessity and suffering. But at the features is certainly revealing one aspect of the evolution same time, whilst the traits of the new society become of capitalism in its terminal phase. The economic issue clearer and clearer inside the decrepit shell of the old is always central but capital has already lost the battle on one, capital is equipping itself for the extreme effort to this terrain. As it is incompatible with human needs, the survive by activating all the resources and energy it can system tends to adapt human needs to the necessities of exert control over. The potency of counter-revolution the system itself. The task it has set itself now is to manage indicates the potency of the revolution. the permanent crisis by using the formidable tools it has The metaphor of the virus/vaccine provides us with available, with no regard for anything or anyone. But it elements for considering the hypothesis that today capital has a formidable enemy before it – a proletariat emerging cannot limit itself to facing emergencies when they crop from the economic disaster with hugely swollen ranks. up, but must force these processes, creating emergencies The task of proletarians, which presents itself urgently so as to deal with them under the most favourable and dramatically, is to get organized in order to defend conditions and extracting from them opportunities for its the minimum conditions for a dignified and non-servile survival. Its strength lies not only in the control of financial existence. On this battleground they can resume the capital flows, but also in the domination of technology: path, interrupted a century ago, towards the society of the information technology and data management (also future, a human species society, finally. Perhaps the last essential in the management of financial flow), able to stretch of road began at the end of May: in Minneapolis. collect the data, make use of it and distribute it according to its own needs, and biotechnology, which intervenes in 15/6/2020

“It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.” (Marx, The Holy Family)

21 the internationalist n. 7

The Long, Long Night of the Living Dead

Thirty years ago, the fall of the bones forged (and made expert) over of “real socialism”, of “soviet “Berlin Wall” – the symbol for at least three centuries of dominion. communism” (whether it be Russian, those who have never understood Everywhere, politicians at all levels Chinese, Albanian, Cuban!). We a single thing about capitalism and (and of all donkey dialects) are have demonstrated, by using the facts communism – once again launched, striving, thrashing around, in search of economic reality, of economic in the crudest and most vulgar of recipes “for exiting the crisis” and and social structure, that capitalism of manners, the anti-communist deep, deep down, they can feel that and not socialism was being created polemics that had never ceased to there are none: theirs is a long, long there, because where there are money, bray (and we use the verb with the night of the living dead. salaries, goods, there is capitalism utmost respect for the noble and The anniversary of the fall of the and entrepreneurial organization; friendly animal): “This is the practical “Berlin Wall” is a juicy occasion for that state management of the demonstration of what communism those politicians and their well-paid means of production (more or less is!” The same polemics re-emerge hangers-on (philosophers, historians, extended, with large and significant today with idiotic obstinacy, not economists, journalists, maîtres à imbalances between the various so much because of the thirtieth penser of all descriptions and all sectors) was no demonstration either anniversary of that event, but because shades of filth) to show off their total, of the dictatorship of the proletariat everything in the world of Capital is arrogant ignorance, attributing to (obtuse minstrels! it is something desperately screaming the need to communism what has, instead, been quite different), or – even less so – put an end to a mode of production a characteristic of capitalism: not for of the attainment of socialism or that at this stage has become purely three decades but for centuries. even communism (obtuse minstrels! destructive. The series of uprisings it isn’t the same thing!); and that that marked the last few months of We didn’t have to wait for 1989 to that collapse, the dissolving of the 2019 (Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Bolivia, demonstrate, loud and clear, that “East Block régimes” was entirely etc.), the massacres, persecutions, there, in the so-called “East Block contained in the structural crisis of infinite violence, awful migration countries” and elsewhere, there was world capitalism, which re-opened and authentic pogroms of entire not even a shadow of socialism – let from the mid 1970s onwards [1]. Go populations, the exponential rise in alone communism! We have been on taking comfort in your ignorance the collective and individual pain of doing this ever since that far-off 1926, and your arrogance. Screech on from living, the crude, cynical arrogance when we clashed with those who every microphone, every page of of power in all countries, and again, maintained – against all evidence every newspaper, every internet site, underneath all this joy, driving it and but with weapons to hand – that they every parliamentary bench. Display making it all inevitable, the crisis wished to “create socialism in a single it at every worldly or sporting or of Capital, the series of recessions, country” and, with this argument social occasion. You are, in any the reeling national economies (and using any means to silence case, condemned to the scrapheap of openly fighting one another, the their opponents), threw out Marx, History! impossibility for Capital to resist Engels, Lenin (not to name names): the trend for the average profit rate that is, dialectical materialism. We The living dead stink: and it’s to fall (which is in fact, dear, obtuse have no skeletons in the cupboard: a terrible stench that rises from minstrels of the “best of all possible since then – since that far-off 1926 capitalism’s slaughter. It is up worlds”, unavoidable and undeniable – we have fought and continue to, to the world proletariat (which in practice) – all this shows that using theory and practice, against the is continuing to grow and suffer endless, destructive and pitiless death obscene mystification (which today increasingly) to launch the attack on throes are taking place. The ruling everyone places on the bloody altar this world immersed in mud, blood classes can feel this in their bones – of capitalism’s human sacrifices) and the disgusting mess of three centuries of bourgeois dominion. It is up to us communists to organize and direct them in that attack. So 1. Just one reference, amongst the dozens and dozens of analyses we have carried out, data in hand, over the decades: “La Russia s’apre alla crisi mondiale”, Quaderni that the winter of our discontent may del Programma Comunista, n.2, 1977 (republished today in Perché la Russia non era become the glorious summer of our socialista, Edizioni Il programma comunista, 2019). Yes, you hoarse and tuneless victory! minstrels, you are not mistaken: 1977! November 2019

22 the internationalist n. 7

The winds of war blowing across the entire middle east proclaim the need to prepare for revolution

From Libya to Iran, through Syria and Iraq, the winds left up to the whill o’ the whisps of one – however generous of war are blowing with increasing violence. While the – “intifada” or the other. slaughter of civilians continues in Syria and Yemen (though Faced with these episodes and the certainty that they will the latter, it appears, is less newsworthy at the moment) and multiply over time to come, at the centre of this preparation in Libya increasing chaos reigns due to a war at least partly for revolution must stand the only position that allows the fought by proxy with the military and diplomatic involvement international proletariat to avoid being dragged once again of the main imperialist players, the recent episodes on Iraqi into an imperialist war, as unfortunately happened in the and Iranian soil (the tactical killing of General Soleimani by past, with the tremendous slaughter of the Second World the USA, the military reaction from Teheran, the “incident” War and the bloody post-war period, in which we are still of the Ukrainian aircraft shot down “by mistake”) are all immersed today. This position can ONLY be the following: signals of aggravation in the clashes between imperialisms, • The world proletariat HAS NO friends amongst the independently of foreseeable future turns of events or those imperialist brigands and HAS NO national or patriotic already going on, or of any temporary relaxation of tension, duties to perform or the constant work of diplomacy going on behind the • Its objective is to take sides NOT on one side rather than the scenes. other, in a conflict between imperialisms, but AGAINST As is – or should be – well known, Capital does not like the its own bourgeoisie and ALONGSIDE the proletariat of state of war but is forced into it, and for the following main other countries reasons: war acts as a counter trend to the fall of the average • This implies resuming with determination the path of profit rate and is one of the means that national Capital struggle and class organization, responding blow for blow resorts to, in order to stem it or at least slow it down (Marx, to any aggression, and subjecting bourgeois militarism and Capital, Book Three); war can act as a powerful element petit-bourgeois pacifism to firm criticism, as an essential of patriotic mobilization, rallying classes around the “higher precondition for activating determined revolutionary interests of the Nation” and, above all, chasing the proletariat defeatism, sabotaging all war efforts by the ruling class into the blind alley of nationalism. in question. The latter point should be carefully borne in mind. The All this will only be possible on one condition (we repeat this continuing tendency to turn the war and its effects into a firmly, aware of the dramatic consequences of a historical show strongly affected the huge wave of commiseration delay which occurs for many reasons and which we have that followed the killing of the general in Iran: yet few returned to on several occasions)1 and that is, that its OWN remembered the equally widespread public demonstrations, party, the international communist party, strengthen and put with their dead and wounded, that had been filling the streets down strong roots worldwide, as the only NECESSARY of Iraq and Iran for months and at the heart of which were and point of reference for the militant avant-gardes that the crimes continue to be the constant worsening in living and working and disasters of capitalism cannot help producing, driving conditions of vast masses of proletarians, proletarianized half them onto the battlefield of open class warfare. Only in this classes and those on the way to proletarianization. We have way will it be possible, in a necessarily violent clash with always welcomed these demonstrations, pointing to them as the old and rotten world of capitalist production, represented a further signal of the way that irreparable contradictions are and defended by the State with the parties and movements maturing in the capitalist mode of production; but at the same that embody and support it, to set out towards the necessary time, just as clearly, we have pointed out their limits: the way SEIZING OF POWER and the establishment of the they are progressively subordinated to democratic and petit- DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT directed by its bourgeois objectives, the dramatic dispersion of potentially party, as a bridge towards a classless society, COMMUNISM. classist energy in the smoke of ideological, reformist and If we fail to acknowledge this condition and do not work anti-proletarian constructs. We have repeated that, far from towards it, continuing instead to believe in the “movement” aligning with them or seeing in them something that they as an end in itself, in the automaticy of economic crisis- are not and cannot be (a wholly imaginary revolutionary social crisis-revolutionary crisis, in the mechanical and recovery), the more and more frequent explosions of these metaphysical appearance of a revolutionary party emerging contradictions have demonstrated the urgent need for a from union battles, in the expectations for a Messiah-like serious preparation of the proletarian revolution, not to be party which, like a deus-ex-macchina, appears out of nothing “when time is ripe for the revolution”, then the umpteenth, 1. For example, “Profondità della crisi generale e ritardo storico bloody disaster will strike the whole world. And it will be della rivoluzione proletaria”, Il programma comunista, n.3/2019. the HUMAN SPECIES that will once again pay the price. The article will be soon translated into English as well. January 2020 23 the internationalist n. 7

The Bourgeois State is a Tool of Oppression and Repression

The operation of falsifying and development, is allocated the task be reconciled. And, conversely, the dismantling communist theory, of controlling and containing the existence of the State proves that the an operation that is part and parcel antagonisms that inevitably issue class antagonisms are irreconcilable. of the bourgeois counter-revolution from this same division, in favour […] On the one hand, the bourgeois, in all its guises (democratic, Nazi- of the class in power and against the and particularly the petty-bourgeois, fascist, Stalinist) and with all classes subjugated to that power. ideologists, compelled under the its means (ideological, political, In what is one of our key texts, weight of indisputable historical facts military), over the span of almost Friedrich Engels writes: to admit that the State only exists a century has resulted in the very “The state is therefore by no means where there are class antagonisms sense of the foundations of Marxism a power imposed on society from and a class struggle, ‘correct’ Marx being lost, especially amongst the without; just as little is it ‘the reality in such a way as to make it appear younger generations. The same of the moral idea’, ‘the image and the that the State is an organ for the concept of class, for instance, has reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. reconciliation of classes. According suffered, being in turn denied or Rather, it is a product of society at to Marx, the State could neither have replaced with squalid inventions a particular stage of development; arisen nor maintained itself had it such as – the latest but certainly it is the admission that this society been possible to reconcile classes. not the last –“multitudes”; or the has involved itself in insoluble From what the petty-bourgeois and concept of party, which particularly self-contradiction and is cleft into philistine professors and publicists in the last few decades, has been irreconcilable antagonisms which say - with quite frequent and watered down into vague fantasies, it is powerless to exorcise. But in benevolent references to Marx - it such as “movement”, “platform”, order that these antagonisms, classes appears that the State does reconcile “fluid organism”, “tendency”, with conflicting economic interests, classes. According to Marx, the “pact” and so on, with increasing shall not consume themselves and State is an organ of class dominion, triviality; or even the very concept society in fruitless struggle, a power, an organ for the oppression of one of communism which, apart from apparently standing above society, class by another; it is the creation the ignorant and ridiculous delirium has become necessary to moderate of ‘order’, which legalizes and about its “end”, has in turn become, the conflict and keep it within the perpetuates this oppression by in mainstream jargon, a bloodless bounds of “order”; and this power, moderating the conflict between “redistribution of wealth”, a arisen out of society, but placing classes. In the opinion of the petty- mystique of “social justice”, vain itself above it and increasingly bourgeois politicians, however, order “degrowth”… and so on. alienating itself from it, is the state” means the reconciliation of classes, But the greatest of these falsifications (italics ours)1. and not the oppression of one class and dismantlings certainly regards In the other key text on the subject, by another; to alleviate the conflict the concept of State, from which Lenin, also following Engels and means reconciling classes and not any historical cognition has been Marx, confirms: depriving the oppressed classes erased: i.e. of an organism born “This expresses with perfect clarity the of definite means and methods of out of development itself, both basic idea of Marxism with regard to struggle to overthrow the oppressors” economic and social, from human the historical role and the meaning of (in italics in the text)2. groups succeeding one another over the State. The State is a product and a And for the moment, let us stop here. time and closely correlated with the manifestation of the irreconcilability The two passages are sufficient to appearance of a society divided into of class antagonisms. The State humiliate all the petit-bourgeois and classes. Thus an organism to which, arises where, when and insofar as philistine “professors and publicists” at some point in historical and social class antagonism objectively cannot of today and yesterday (a today that is even more crowded with them than yesterday was!). 1. F. Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Chapter IX. And so, the organ of oppression Barbarism and Civilization. of one class by the other. This is 2. V. Lenin, The State and Revolution - Chapter 1. Class Society and the State. what the State is, independently 3. Independently of the form: the most evident and tragic example comes from the of the form this domination, this Italian Republic, with the mystification of “The finest Constitution in the world”, oppression, may gradually assume which, claiming to have outdone both the Statuto Albertino and the fascist règime 3 (and being on the contrary, the perfect continuity of the bourgeois order), proclaims over time in history . Not by chance, it wishes to ensure a sort of … “earthly paradise”. follow ➝

24 the internationalist n. 7 in re-establishing, against all partes”, that administers collective and the quarrelsome mystifications deformation, the Marxist concept of justice honestly and to which every of bourgeois science at all levels, State, Lenin would further explain “citizen” knows s/he can turn with contributing to create a widespread that: “Imperialism - the era of bank the certainty of being listened to feeling of uncertainty and fear) the capital, the era of gigantic capitalist and helped: a “kind-father State”, ideological-practical management of monopolies, of the development strict but fair (or, according to the “scientific information” and health of monopoly capitalism into state- scenario, a “kind-mother State” measures, reserving for itself solely monopoly capitalism - has clearly that dispenses warm nourishment!). those aspects regarding control, the shown an unprecedented growth Briefly, an enormous Moral Body. defence of “law and order”, open or in its bureaucratic and military Thus the State really has become, in latent repression : the best example apparatus in connection with the blurred vision of the philistines, is the infamous Decree on Security the intensification of repressive “the reality of the moral idea”, “the (or “Decreto Salvini”, issued by measures against the proletariat both image and the reality of reason”, just Italian government), which has in the monarchical and in the freest, as Hegel depicted it! been modified – but only slightly – republican countries.”4. Not only. He But there is more to be said. Precisely precisely in the last few weeks in would also emphasize that: “Another as a consequence of bourgeois the part dealing with immigration, reason why the omnipotence society’s evolution in an imperialist so as to offer a little sweetener to of ‘wealth’ is more certain in a direction – an evolution that has been the dreamers, whilst leaving intact democratic republic is that it does established for over a century now and subject to further restrictions not depend on defects in the political and gradually “perfected” with all its the parts half-hidden by demagogic machinery or on the faulty political implications and economic, political rhetoric, which regard the crimes of shell of capitalism. A democratic and social consequences – and of the blocking roads, occupying houses, republic is the best possible political progressive decay at all levels of that pickets, etc. and which, for the more shell for capitalism, and, therefore, bourgeois society whose policeman militant foreign workers, mean loss once capital has gained possession of and official it is, the State has thrown of their residency permits and thus this very best shell […] it establishes off many of its masks, basically forced repatriation – i.e. the most its power so securely, so firmly, that maintaining and reinforcing its role directly anti-proletarian measures no change of persons, institutions or as economic-financial entrepreneur for the explicit defence of private parties in the bourgeois democratic (the collective capitalist that defends property. republic can shake it”5 (Lenin’s the national interests of national Before proletarians can shake italics). capitals) and its role as a tool of class off these mystifications, carried Once again, as quoted by Lenin, oppression (the super-cop who deals forward moreover by those false Engels then went on to recall: “The with the proletariat). pseudo-revolutionary friends who institution of a public power” and It has discarded useless and launch demagogic slogans such showing that: “This public force cumbersome drapes: just to give as, “make the bosses pay for the exists in every State and does not two examples, it has abandoned crisis by establishing capital tax consist simply in armed men [for the education (the much celebrated on the wealthy” (and so with a sake of clarity, the army, the ‘forces “transmission of knowledge”!) and State that turns from being the of law and order’ - ed.], but also health (“care of the citizen”, from enemy into being a “defender of the real appendices, prisons and penal the child to the senior citizen, from oppressed”!), they will have to walk institutions of all kinds”6. This, to the cradle to the tomb) to their own a difficult and rocky path, consisting sum up, is the function of the State- devices – sectors that are highly of advances and retreats, clashes policeman, which joins that of the unproductive. This has become as and revolts, blood and repression. State-entrepreneur, the capitalist clear as daylight over the past few But the objective remains the one State collective – the two faces of months dominated by the pandemic: pointed out by Lenin, who takes the class State. everywhere in the world the State up the clear words spoken from Instead, the overriding vision – has delegated to “technicians” (who Marx and Engels: “This course perception – today is that of a “State- in turn have done no more than of events compels the revolution arbiter”, of a State that is “super express the impotence, the arrogance ‘to concentrate all its forces of destruction’ against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of 4. Lenin, The State and Revolution - Chapter 2. The Experience of 1848-51. improving the state machine, but of 5. Idem. Again Lenin comments: “ “A standing army and police are the chief in- smashing and destroying it”7. struments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?” The State and Revolution They will be able to do so on - Chapter 1. Class Society and the State. This “can it be otherwise?” should be firmly condition they have the communist engraved in our minds, now that mainstream Philistinism goes so far as to demand, party at their head. as in the United States, the… ”abolition of the police”! 6. Lenin, The State and Revolution - Chapter 1. Class Society and the State. 7. Lenin, The State and Revolution - Chapter 2. The Experience of 1848-51 November 2020

25 the internationalist n. 7

Don’t let us forget what May Day is!

For us May Day has never been a mere memory, a national economy”. They will stop us holding gatherings, yearly ritual or a “holiday”. On the contrary, it has meetings, marches, demos, accusing us if we do so of always been a battle call that sums up the history and “spreading disease”, if not of “seditious assembly” or experience of the world proletariat, projecting it towards “rioting”. They will accuse us of boycotting the “national the future: a future that has to be won by fighting tooth effort” and they will set police in riot gear on us, with and nail, because it is not going to fall into our hands like tanks, helicopters and drones, magistrates and judges, all a ripe pear. the legal and illegal power of the State. We reply that Today, 2020, May Day is even less of a “holiday”. Events the “national economy”, the “economy of Capital” is not connected to the Covid-10 pandemic have revealed our business – in fact we fight against it because it is at yet again the savagery of a class society, the society the root of all the tragedies that are killing us, from the of Capital. In hundreds and hundreds of thousands of present pandemic to the continuous devastation of the workplaces all over the world, which have remained environment, from the unceasing slaughter of migrants open despite lacking even the most elementary means of to the periodical, huge destruction of precious human protection, whilst all the rest closed down “in everyone’s collective energy and to the bloody conflicts that prelude interests”, workers have been treated like butcher’s meat. a new, monstrous world war… This is their dictatorial The facts show that this mode of production, upheld by democracy or democratic dictatorship, inherited directly the laws of profit, competition and exploitation, is not from previous anti-proletarian régimes! merely incapable of solving the contradictions that it, itself, produces: the use that has been made everywhere And so we shall have to organize ourselves better and of the pandemic and the emergency, of illness and better to face all this. Grass-roots territorial organizations medicine, over the past few weeks clearly proclaims it for struggle and defence of the proletariat must reappear, isn’t true that “we are all in the same boat”. taking responsibility for all aspects of the proletariat’s life Let’s repeat it once again: the virus isn’t the cause of the and work (or lack of work), without distinction of age, crisis. The executives of Capital are using the virus to gender, origins, socio-economic status, not getting lost in accelerate the introduction of anti-proletarian measures devastating corporative jealousy or harmful ideological that the economic crisis, already widespread well before bickering: their widespread and active presence, their the outbreak of the pandemic, makes necessary in order ability to respond to the attacks of Capital from outside to defend clear capitalist interests. Let us take advantage, and against the dispersive action of the mainstream trade then, of this umpteenth proletarian mourning (because unions will provide necessary and useful training for the this is what is involved: widespread class murder) to try shift from defence to attack. But in order to do this, and and open up “a year” of battle not only over wages. Let us to avoid this shift becoming a new and painful defeat, it prepare to boycott all measures for “social” and national will be necessary to strengthen and put down worldwide solidarity that are being and will be introduced: precisely roots for the revolutionary party – the necessary organ of because we are in an “emergency situation”, wherever the proletarian class to put an end to this infamous mode possible let us respond to the re-opening of workplaces of production, now merely destructive and murderous, with complete disregard for the health of proletarians, by and take the path of revolution, the seizing of power, “staying at home”, taking sick leave, staying away from the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat work using the tactic of absenteeism, going on strike – towards a society that is finally classless, towards in order to force closure. Not in the form of individual communism. or sectorial choices and initiatives but as an organized This is what May Day is. response to the blackmail by entrepreneurs and the state! They will want to force us back to work to “rebuild the (a leaflet distributed in various languages)

Either the proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing! (K. Marx)

26 the internationalist n. 7

What distinguishes our Party

Each issue of our periodicals car- conditions for this path were created ples of revolutionary communism ries the following words on the by the capitalist mode of production and it is kept unchanged above the cover: itself, this path does not fall from vicissitudes of the class struggle in the sky and it can be travelled to the as much as it is embodied in a party «What distinguishes our Party is the end only by struggling. It is only the which unreservedly makes it its own, political continuity which goes from Marxist doctrine which knows its in an organisation which defends it, Marx to Lenin, to the foundation of necessary phases, its indispensable fights for it, and translates it into ac- the Communist International and the means, as well as its ultimate aims. tion. This is why Marx wrote in the Communist Party of Italy (Livorno, This is why Lenin, paraphrasing a Manifesto of the Communist Party 1921); the struggle of the Commu- famous text of Marx, said that he is that «Communists fight for the at- nist Left against the degeneration not a Marxist who does not extend tainment of the immediate aims, for of the International, the struggle the recognition of the class struggle the enforcement of the momentary against the theora of «socialism in up to the recognition of the dictator- interests of the working class; but in one country» and the Stalinist coun- ship of the proletariat as a necessary the movement of the present, they ter-revolution; the rejection of the product of that struggle and as an ob- also represent and take care of the Popular Fronts and the Resistance ligatory stage on the path «towards future of that movement». blocs; the difficult task of restoring the abolition of all classes and a Since the proletariat «has no coun- the revolutionary doctrine and or- classless society». try» and as a class pursues aims ganisation in close interrelationship which go beyond all the limitations To recognise the class struggle and with the working class, against per- of trade, locality, factory, shop, etc., the conflict of interests between cap- sonal and electoral politics.» that which distinguishes Commu- ital and labour is merely to acknowl- nists, Marx adds, is: edge a bare fact - the situation of the The purpose of these few words is proletariat in bourgeois society. To «1. In the national struggles of the to give a brief and general indica- limit oneself to this however is to proletarians of the different coun- tion of what characterises our Party. exclude what historical determin- tries, they point out and bring to the Although it was not intended to be ism itself compels the proletariat to front the common interests of the en- a detailed explanation, a distinctive become in order to free itself from tire proletariat, independently of all feature of our movement is imme- capitalist exploitation: the weapon nationality. 2. In the various stages diately made clear to the reader: for for violently destroying the bour- of development which the strug- us, contrary to the whole myriad of geois state power which protects gle of the working class against the «modernisers» of Marxism, there and defends the capitalist relations bourgeoisie has to pass through, they exists a continuous, unchanged, of production, and the weapon for always and everywhere represent unalterable line which defines the establishing its own dictatorship, the the interests of the movement as a Communist Party. This is so precise- «political phase of transition» (ac- whole.» ly because the line of the Communist cording to Marx) in the process of Party rises above the ups and downs, These are the fundamental charac- the «revolutionary transformation of the setbacks and advances, the rare teristics which distinguish Commu- capitalist society into communist so- but glorious victories and the numer- nists. These prohibit the name Com- ciety». It would mean to accept the ous and catastrophic defeats of the munist from being applied to those state of subjection which is the con- working class on the difficult path of who deny the international character dition of the proletariat in bourgeois its struggle for emancipation. It is in of the aim towards which the prole- society even when it struggles for fact only thanks to the uninterrupted tarian movement is directed and the the defence of its immediate inter- permanence of this line that the pro- international character of the strug- ests against the yoke of capital. And letariat exists as a class; indeed this gle for attaining this aim; who deny in so doing, it would mean denying line does not reflect the temporary that this aim and this struggle coin- the proletariat the historical task of and often contradictory position of cide with the interests of the move- emancipating humanity while eman- the proletariat at this or that stage ment in its totality and of its future; cipating itself – which only indeed of its path, in space and time, but who deny the necessity of the violent makes it into a class, the class which the direction that it must necessar- revolution and of the dictatorship of will “give birth to a new society”. ily take, starting from its situation of the proletariat as the obligatory path exploited class, to become the ruling This line which unites the past and towards socialism; and who deny class and then achieve, throughout the present of the working class with that the party, armed with the sci- the world, the abolition of all classes its future is nothing other than the ence of Marxism, is indispensable as and communism. While the material theory, the program, and the princi- an organ of this gigantic struggle. No follow ➝ 27 the internationalist n. 7 link in this chain can be broken with- the working class and in its inter- Communist International is aware out the whole chain breaking and ests; and to destroy «parliamentary that for the purpose of the speedy without the proletariat falling into a cretinism» which had infiltrated into achievement of victory, the inter- resigned acceptance of its position the ranks of the proletariat from the national association of the workers as an exploited class for eternity. surrounding social strata. This was which is struggling for the abolition Lenin’s battle within Russia against of capitalism and the establishment This is the doctrine which was born populism, economism, legalism and of Communism must possess a firm as one whole more than a century Menshevism. On the international and centralised organization. The and a half ago and which was codi- level this was his battle first against Communist International must, in fied by Marx and Engels in writings Bernstein’s social-democratic revi- fact and in deed, be a single com- to which there is nothing to add or to sionism and later against the capitu- munist party of the entire world. The «update». This is the doctrine which lation before the imperialist war, a parties working in the various coun- was restored in its entirety by Lenin struggle not only for the refusal of tries are but its separate sections. against social-democratic treason, war credits, and for the refusal of the The organisational machinery of the against all capitulation before the social truce during the war, but also Communist International must guar- present of the proletarian movement for revolutionary defeatism and the antee the workers of each country and all renunciation of its future, transformation of the imperialist war the opportunity of getting the utmost against all subordination of its aims into a civil war. This was the battle help from the organised proletariat and the totality of its interests to al- that was waged to destroy all hesi- of other countries at any given mo- legedly immediate and national aims tations, all the «wait and see» and ment». and interests, and finally against all legalist inertia’s, and all procrastina- abandonment of the principles of the This is the line of political continuity tion caused by the respect of the rules revolutionary conquest of power and which goes from Marx to Lenin and of democratic play; it was the battle its exercise by means of dictatorship the foundation of the Communist In- that was waged to conquer power in favour of allegedly surer and less ternational. There can be no place in a dictatorial way in the brilliant difficult ways of legalist, democratic, in its ranks for those who reject the blaze of October 1917, thus laying and parliamentary gradualism. dictatorship of the proletariat as the at the same time the foundations of only path to socialism, and for those • • • the finally reconstructed Communist who advocate national ways for the International. Communists struggled not only to emancipation of the working class. «It is the aim of the Communist In- keep this line intact against all the ternational to fight by all available It is on this line that the Commu- material, political, and ideological means, including armed struggle, for nist Party of Italy was founded in pressures of bourgeois society, but the overthrow of the international January 1921, with the following also to carve always more clearly its bourgeoisie and for the creation of program embodying the theoretical, essential features through the terri- an international Soviet Republic as programmatic, and tactical heritage ble but nevertheless instructive con- a transitional stage to the complete of communism: firmations of history, with the aim abolition of the state». of organising the combative van- 1. An ever growing contradiction guard of the working-class around This was solemnly proclaimed by between the productive forces this red line, retying it where it had the Communists of all countries who and the relations of production broken, and marching against the had assembled in Moscow in July is developing in present capital- fortresses of the capitalist states. 1920, thus taking up again and reas- ist society, bringing along with it This battle was led simultaneously serting the line of «political continu- the conflict of interests and class on the level of doctrine, program, ity which goes from Marx to Lenin». struggle between the proletariat politics, tactics, and organisation: and the ruling bourgeoisie. «The Communist International con- Communists are not the apostles of siders the dictatorship of the prole- 2. The present relations of produc- a new “Credo” or ascetics awaiting tariat as the only means for the lib- tion are protected and defended by a Messiah but the militants of a gi- eration of humanity from the horrors the bourgeois state power founded gantic social war. of capitalism. [...] The imperialist on the representative system of This was the battle waged by Marx war linked the fate of the workers democracy, which constitutes the and Engels in the First Internation- of each country with the fate of the organ for the defence of the inter- al to destroy Proudhonism, which workers of every other country. The ests of the capitalist class. refused the immediate struggle, imperialist war emphasises once 3. The proletariat can neither break strikes, and the economic organisa- more what is pointed out in the stat- nor change the system of capi- tion of the proletariat; to destroy Ba- ute of the First International: that the talist production relations from kuninism, which refused the party emancipation of labour is neither a which its exploitation stems with- and the dictatorship that the party local, nor a national task, but one of out overthrowing bourgeois pow- centrally exercises in the name of an international character. [...] The er by violence. follow ➝ 28 the internationalist n. 7

4. The indispensable organ of the equipping the proletariat with an the Marxist doctrine, re-established revolutionary struggle of the pro- armed organisation for repelling on its foundations by the party of letariat is the political class party. all internal or external attacks. Lenin, and firmly rooted in interna- tional discipline and in its rigorous 5. The Communist Party, by unit- 11. It is only the proletarian State centralisation. Their strategy just as ing in its ranks the most advanced which will be able to systemati- the very reason for their existence and the most conscious part of cally intervene in the relations of was drawn from the recognition of the proletariat, unites the efforts the social economy, carrying out the fact that the reformist parties of the labouring masses, leading the whole series of measures (those which Lenin called the «bour- them from the struggle for group which will assure the replace- geois worker’s parties») and social interests and temporary results to ment of the capitalist system by democracy in all its varieties were the struggle for the revolutionary the collective management of from now on bound to play an irre- emancipation of the proletariat. production and distribution. versibly counterrevolutionary role in 6. The party has the task of propa- 12. This transformation of the econ- the social dynamic – as was shown gating the revolutionary theory omy and consequently of all the by the aims they had set for them- among the masses, of organising activities of social life will have selves in breaking with the basic the material means of action, and the effect, once the division of principles of Marxism, and by their of leading the proletariat through society into classes is eliminated, more or less direct integration in the the development of the struggle. of also eliminating little by lit- bourgeois state. tle the necessity for the political 7. The World War was caused by the State, whose apparatus will pro- The tragedy of the world proletariat incurable internal contradictions gressively be reduced to that of a in the first post-war period was that in the capitalist regime which rational administration of human the gigantic effort of the Bolsheviks gave birth to modern imperialism. activities. to control and dominate the bour- It opened a crisis in the throes of geois and petty-bourgeois forces which capitalist society is fall- • • • springing from the Russian eco- ing to pieces, and where the class Bolshevik power in Russia was the nomic and social substratum and to struggle can only lead to an armed bulwark and advanced detachment extend the revolutionary flame to the conflict between the labouring of the world proletarian revolu- whole world, was not met in the cru- masses and the power of the vari- tion. It rested however on a terribly cial areas of fully capitalist Europe ous bourgeois states. backward and in an overwhelming by the process of an organic and 8. After the overthrow of bourgeois proportion, pre-capitalist economic rigorous formation of Communist power, the proletariat can organ- base. Communist strategy consisted parties. The democratic, parliamen- ise itself as a ruling class only by therefore in working to forge in the tary and legalist traditions had been destroying the old bourgeois state different countries the indispensable weighing too heavily on the Western apparatus and instituting its own instrument of the proletarian revolu- workers’ movements, and the leader- dictatorship, that is to say by bas- tion, the class party, and to gather ship of the Communist International ing the representative state organs around it the crucial vanguard of a (whom our current, however, would only on the class of producers and proletariat which, in the entire world have been the last to hold respon- depriving the bourgeoisie of all but especially in Western Europe sible for a historical course which political rights. and the advanced capitalist areas in had its origin in the rotten bourgeois world of the West) did not always 9. The form of political representa- general, came out of the war car- nage and post-war chaos driven by clearly understand that the harsh- tion in the proletarian state is the ness with which Lenin and his party system of councils of labourers a magnificent will to struggle and an indomitable spirit of self-sacrifice. had struggled against opportunism (workers and peasants) already for twenty years and the determina- prevailing in the Russian revolu- Communists knew that only the vic- tory of the revolution in the devel- tion with which they had conquered tion, which marks the beginning power (excluding from it not only of the world revolution and the oped countries, and in the first place in Germany, would allow Bolshevik the openly bourgeois parties but also first stable realisation of the dicta- the workers’ parties of a conciliatory torship of the proletariat. Russia to economically advance to- wards socialism, keeping political type) must become even more strict 10. The necessary defence of the pro- power firmly in its hands, without and unrelenting in the West where letarian State against all counter- sharing it, and progressing rapidly the bourgeois revolution had already revolutionary attempts can only in the arduous passage from a pre- been an accomplished fact for hail a be ensured by depriving the bour- bourgeois economy, especially in the century and more. Whereas the situ- geoisie and the parties which are countryside, up to the extreme limit ation was such that is was urgent to enemies of the proletarian dicta- of state capitalism. proceed with a rigorous selection of torship of all means of agitation membership from the old socialist and political propaganda, and by These parties had to be armed with parties, the prevailing attitude in- follow ➝ 29 the internationalist n. 7 stead was by far too lax: it was con- revolutionary parties and move- linism which was on its way to make sidered - a generous idea, but one ments in the colonies, a phenom- itself master of the Soviet state and which proved to be mistaken - that enon which paved the way for the Lenin’s International. the debris from the past would be catastrophic re-edition in China of • • • burned up in the blaze ignited in the Menshevik story of the «revolu- Brazenly camouflaged between St. Petersburg and Moscow. In or- ztion by stages». der for the working class to defend 1928 and 1932 under a veneer of It was also because of this gradual itself efficiently against bourgeois «leftism», Stalinism meant the polit- slackening of the fabric of organi- counterrevolution, which now ap- ical and organisational disarmament sation and tactics that the Interna- peared also under the fascist ban- of the proletariat faced with the Nazi tional, instead of controlling and di- ner, and if possible to pass on to and fascist offensive. It meant the recting the process of purifying the the counterattack, it would have disarmament of proletariat – faced Communist parties born of tradition- been an urgent necessity to develop with democracy and under the pre- al socialism, was in the end condi- a well defined tactic, uniting the text of the struggle against fascism tioned by the Western parties which proletarians around the revolution- – at the time of the Popular Fronts were Communist in name only. The ary Marxist party in the defence of in France and especially in Spain, results were disastrous from two their conditions of life and work where Stalinism extinguished the points of view: the world revolution, within bourgeois society, which rekindled flames of the class strug- which had been expected shortly, would have been able to tear them gle in the name of the defence of the was delayed, and at the same time away not only from the influence of Republican regime and by means of the bourgeois social forces which reformism, but also from the illu- a governmental coalition with the were putting pressure on the Bol- sion that those who had abandoned bourgeois and opportunist parties. shevik dictatorship both from within the line «which goes from Marx to It meant the proletariat’s support of Russia and above all from without, Lenin and to the Communist Inter- the second world massacre under the strengthened themselves to the point national» could be won back to the flag of liberty and country, and for of sweeping away the party which cause of the proletarian revolution. the entry of the «communist» par- had been the magnificent instrument On the contrary, poorly defined slo- ties into fronts which were no longer of the leadership of the October Rev- gans were launched which, against «popular fronts» but national unity olution and of the Civil War. Stalin- the intentions of the Bolsheviks and fronts of the Resistance. It meant the ism was the expression of this rever- in spite of them, left the door open participation of these parties in the sal of the relations of forces between to this illusion, and so much the governments of reconstruction af- the classes on a world scale. It had more so when these slogans were ter the war, and eventually for their to massacre the Old Guard in order adopted by the old repeated offend- quite logical renunciation - even for- to advance without hindrance on the ers of reformism or even of social- mally - of the dictatorship of the pro- path of capitalist accumulation. Even chauvinism who were flocking letariat and internationalism, and for before that, it had to camouflage its around the flag of the International. their open candidacy as saviours of counter-revolutionary role behind Such was the case with the slogan the crisis-ridden national economy the flag of «socialism in one coun- of the «united front» which, be- and of the dying democratic institu- try», that theory which is the origin cause it was insufficiently defined, tions. of the «national, peaceful and demo- left the door open for varying and cratic» ways to socialism. A candi- This is why the line which links even contradictory interpretations. date to succeed social democracy in Marx and Engels to Lenin, to the It was the same with the «workers’ its task, Stalinism eventually called foundation of the Communist Inter- government», which was some- on the proletarians of all countries to national, and to the struggle of the times presented as a «synonym of massacre each other on the fronts of Left against the degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat» the second imperialist war. the International and then against and sometimes as a different way, Stalinist counter-revolution, is in- indeed as a parliamentary way, to This is why for us the line that goes separable for us from the historical power. And thus it went up to the from Marx to Lenin, to the founda- struggle against the popular fronts, «Bolshevization» which adulterat- tion of the Third International and war fronts, national fronts, and all ed the nature of the Communist par- its first brilliant years. finds its con- their offshoots up to and including ties and ran the risk of turning them tinuation in the struggle of the Italian the most recent manifestations of an into some kind of Labour Parties, Left against the first manifestations opportunism whose virulence has no erasing little by little the boundary of an opportunist danger within the equal, not even in the bloody days of line - so clear in the beginning - be- Comintern (only a danger at first, the old German social democracy. It tween the Communist parties on the later a cruel reality determined by is inseparable from the denunciation one hand and on the other the peas- objective factors) and in the strug- of the essentially fascist course, be ant parties and movements in the gle, led in 1926 parallel with that of it under the cloak of democracy, of capitalist countries and the national the Russian Opposition, against Sta- capitalist imperialism with Wash- follow ➝ 30 the internationalist n. 7 ington as its centre, as well as of the means. It is accomplished on the governments» composed of par- false socialism reigning in Moscow other hand through the incessant ties which supposedly, even if they or Peking, a socialism based on propaganda of the final aim of the have passed lock, stock and barrel to commodity production, wage labour, proletarian movement, in relation the counter-revolution, could be re- and all the other bourgeois econom- to which the struggle for immedi- generated thanks to the push of the ic characteristics. ate demands is a school of war – but ebullient masses and to the skilful- • • • only a school – provided this strug- ness of communist manoeuvring, gle is led in a consistent way, never just as the «degenerated workers’ To take up again the red line of the forgetting or hiding its limitations; states» like the USSR, China, Cuba doctrine, the program, the princi- through organising around the party and others could be won back to the ples, the tactics, and the methods of strata of proletarians who instinc- cause of revolutionary proletariat. If, organisation of revolutionary com- tively commit themselves to the in workerist spontaneism, one sees munism requires that we return to open class struggle, and organising an age-old adversary of marxism, the world outlook of the Communist into the party the proletarian minor- in the Trotskyist illusion (an adjec- International in its founding years, ity which has become aware of the tive which Trotsky, in spite of his er- completed on the level of organisa- indispensable ways and means of rors, would today be the first to be tion and tactics by the balance sheet final victory; through the strength- ashamed of) the tactical errors of the which the history of the last century ening of the immediate organisa- decadent International reappear, ter- has given us and which confirms tions born of economic and union ribly exaggerated and, on such bas- the obstinate struggle of the Left. struggles which react against the es, those deviations of principle in This balance sheet has been drawn betrayal of the union leadership and regard to the sound doctrine which by our Party, especially after 1952, which are potentially capable of alone can explain why some people in a series of theses included in our developing in a political direction; take nationalisation’s in industry and text Defence of the Continuity of the and finally through the struggle in economic planning in themselves for Communist Program. the heart of the existing unions with socialism. the perspective (which can neither There is no possible meeting-point The proletariat today more than ever be excluded nor be held for certain) between democracy and commu- needs clarity on the aims, the path, of winning them back not only to a nism. There is no way for the eman- and the means of its emancipation. class tradition, but also to a Com- cipation of the proletariat other It is to this work of clarification that munist orientation, in situations than that which, outside the official we dedicate ourselves, without ar- - which are today far away - of in- democratic or fascist bourgeois in- rogance but without hesitation, con- tense social tension. stitutions and against them, already scious that we are marching «in a There is no place on this path for prepares in the present for the pro- compact group along a precipitous the spontaneist illusion, always un- letarian revolution. This prepara- and difficult path» but faithful to fortunately reappearing, of a revo- tion excludes, even as a means of the lesson of Lenin and determined lution and of a dictatorship of the agitation, resorting to elections and, to fight «not only against the marsh, proletariat not prepared for and led worse yet, parliamentary politics. It but also against those who are turn- by the Party. Neither is there a place is accomplished on the one hand by ing towards the marsh». constantly taking part in the imme- for the Trotskyist illusion of a fatal diate struggles of the working class crisis of capitalism which would This is the difficult task of «restor- to defend its conditions of life and only need the clash provoked by an ing the revolutionary doctrine and work; and by enlarging, reinforc- organised vanguard to be brought organisation in close interrelation- ing, and developing these struggles down, after having passed through ship with the working class, against on class bases and through class the intermediary stage of «workers’ personal and electoral politics».

Read our international press: il programma comunista kommunistisches programm cahiers internationalistes

31 the internationalist n. 7

What Is Communism?

“Certainly after the experience of the countries in the state aegis, a state-coerced primitive accumulation lay East, today it’s difficult to talk about communism,” the basis for the subsequent formation of a large-scale notes our somewhat disconsolate skeptic. capitalist development. To Lenin and us communists, We understand that. To speak of “communism” today is all this was very clear: after the revolution of 1917, like turning inside out something that had been the object the politically victorious proletariat had to undertake of intense Stalinist propaganda, of abuse by opportunistic the gigantic historical task of raising the country out of social-democratic misrepresentation and bourgeois economic backwardness to set the basis for communism. misconception, all three the work of decades. It means This necessarily entailed a fully developed capitalist lifting the mask off “socialism in one country,” the total economy: growth of large industry, a sufficient network lie of “really existing socialism.” We must restate basic of railroads, large-scale cooperative agriculture, concepts. electrification, and so on, while awaiting the outburst of Communism did not die with the USSR or elsewhere, if the victorious revolution in the economically developed only for the simple reason that economically it was never West (Germany in primis). Those were the conditions for born. Communism stands for the abolition of wage labor, a victorious communism on an international basis. commodities, money, profit, economic competition, But revolution never came in the West because the parties social classes, and finally of the state itself. In the USSR there - and from a certain point in time, the very Third and its derivatives, there existed: wage labor-workers International itself - proved unable to align themselves received wages; money-as a means of exchange; on a verily revolutionary front, and the October profit-industries and cooperatives tried to close with a Revolution crushed between the absence of Western positive balance sheet; economic competition-there was support and the necessary re-emergence of economic an internal market and a gradual opening to the world capitalism in Russia turned in on itself. The Stalinist market; distinct social classes; and a well-established counterrevolution, appropriate expression of the young state. Russian capitalism, destroyed the compelling initial If before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the ensuing strategic vision, liquidated Lenin’s party both physically dramatic consequences our skeptic had looked with and theoretically, proclaimed as “socialism” what was Marxist eyes at the two “opposite worlds” of capitalism and no more than the “capitalist accumulation” referred non-capitalism, she/he would have noted a fundamental to above, and theorized the possibility of “socialism similarity between the workings and outcomes of two in one country.” Such was the enormous and tragic systems depicted in propaganda as opposites. In both, the deception which cost the blood of millions of victims, urban concentration continued unabated (there comes and up to their necks in this deception one could find to mind in particular the megalopolis of the so-called (still finds!) convinced Stalinists, democrats, and fascists “Third World,” economically and politically connected who extended Stalinism their benediction by calling it to the advanced capitalist West) and the misuse of the communism. surrounding countryside, the wasteful overproduction of missiles and armaments at the expense of the social “Then, what happened from 1989 to today?” It happened needs of the majority, the competition for work amongst that the form of capitalism that reigned in the USSR and workers and the alienation and despotism of the factory its satellites reached the point in its development when regime, the periodic domestic crises, the gargantuan it could not continue in its old form. State ownership needs of the state and the wars of plunder and imperialist had become an obstacle, particularly under the impetus control abroad, the galloping trend to the concentration of the crisis that developed in the ‘70s and reached into of wealth in the hands of a few as opposed to the misery the USSR by the end of that decade. It was necessary to of the majority, the immeasurable growth of the power give vent to the new forces and energies developed in of the state and the concentration of decision making the “hot house” atmosphere of state protection and free in the hands of a political, corporate, and military elite it up to autonomous development outside centralized exclusively responsive to the needs and voices of the restraints and shackles. Hence the break with the earlier ruling class. Any communism there? Let us not be fools! phases-a “break” common to all bourgeois nations What was then the USSR? For us Internationalist at some point in their history: from centralized state Communists, the answer was always very clear. Under controls to the so-called free market, only to return again Stalin and his successors what passed for communism to state “dirigisme” or reliance when the socio-economic was in large measure a centrally controlled state situation deteriorates. To recall this process in action one capitalism, although in some sectors, largely agricultural, need only think of the Keynesian policies of the New there remained forms of small production, even of a pre- Deal and the state controls behind European fascism. capitalist kind. Thus in the USSR there occurred what happens in every budding bourgeois regime: under follow ➝ 32 the internationalist n. 7

Well, then, what do we really intend by communism? history of class formations has no underling class that Marx did not discover the characteristics of a communist it might exploit in turn. Liberating itself, this class, the society. Even before his time communism stood for the step-creature of capital, liberates all of humanity. It is “the communion of goods,” the placing of all social endowed with the power to assure the birth, painful and riches in common and the rational administration in a traumatic as it may be, of the new society. society that did not know the market,wage labor, capital To arrive there, the struggle of the modern working class and social classes. In addition, a whole era of the human conducted under the guide of the communist party in experience had unfolded under a form of “primitive possession of a doctrine and a worldwide strategy must communism,” a stage conditioned and circumscribed by push itself to the total conquest of political power. The a very low level of development of productive means: proletariat must impose its own class dictatorship for as work in common on land held in common and the long as is necessary to crush with terror any opposition by consumption in common of the products of this work the dispossessed classes, while concentrating in its own such as happened at the beginning of human prehistory hands control of production and exchange and thereby before the appearance of classes, the division of labor, breaking the old productive relations and abolishing the and private property. inertia and attitudes of centuries. Marxism freed communism from the limitations of Naturally, the communist transformation of society will utopianism and presented it as an outcome unrelated to occur only after the international power of the working the realm of wishes or dreams-the schemes of a Fourier, class will have consolidated itself through a decisive Saint Simon or Robert Owen-but as a necessary stage, victory in the great imperialist fortresses, the actual a conquest leading to the actual achievement of real centers of the world economy and the true gendarmes society. Capitalism drives the division of labor to the nth of the planet. And equally true, time will be needed for a degree and separates the worker from any ownership of new human generation to arise from the wreckage of the the means of production (machines and equipment) and old society now born in the conditions of communism. from the means of subsistence (food, housing). Having This is the goal of the movement that calls itself entered this productive process without reserves-think of communism, and it does not base itself on notions of the enormous numbers of pauperized Africans, Asians “one of many opinions,” or a “cultural project,” or an and Latin Americans in the areas which are being drawn “ethical intent.” What is involved is not some philistine into the capitalist vortex-the worker must pass into the banality having to do with “more social justice,” or a market to buy his means of subsistence. He must now “better quality of life, or a “more equitable distribution sell his labor power to the capitalist who has amassed the of wealth”-all rhetorical expressions that leave matters means of production, and who may appear in the form of where they are since they do not touch the fundamental an individual, an anonymous society, or the state. With nature of capitalism. What is involved is the historical the finished products of labor in his possession, the owner transition from one productive system to another, as is entitled to keep the lion’s share of the wealth created happened in the step from slavery to feudalism and by those workers, riches that are legally dispossessed from feudalism to capitalism. With this additive: with from the workers’ ownership. Moreover, the workers can the abolition of class division, communism will allow feed their families only to the degree that their labor is humanity to escape at last from the pre-history of useful to capital, and here one might recall the authentic exploitation, oppression, and destruction. social sores that accompany the process: under-age labor, exploited immigrant labor, and prostitution. In the society that will emerge from this transformation-a This social rapport can sink the masses into an ever transformation that, we repeat, is radical, total, and greater misery. But by greatly increasing the productivity not a yellowing photocopy of what came before-any of labor and tying all the sectors of production into a vast form of dictatorship, any form of state power, will concentration raised to a worldwide scale, the means be of no value, since the economic basis underlying were created -but only the means- to satisfy human needs differentiation of social classes will be gone. But while through the central and international administration of the revolutionary crisis, the seizure of power, and the the riches produced. One does not have to “construct” proletarian dictatorship are clear-cut, dramatic events, socialism as if it were a Lego toy, but to correspond the the socio-economic changes will of necessity take (today private) mode of appropriation of wealth to the more time, if one is to deal with the a whole number of social (collective, communal) character of its production. particular situations, e.g., the disparity in the stages of Most important above all, while utopians sought to economic developments. Hence in lower communism, introduce communism by preaching its goodness in largely referred to as socialism, social constraints will tales of wonderment and appealing to the better side remain in place and are best illustrated by the rule: of governments or enlightened entrepreneurs, Marxism “To each according to his/her work.” The false “really demonstrated that capitalism itself produces its own existing socialism” of the past pretended to have gravediggers. It creates the modern proletariat, a class achieved this goal by relying on...wage labor that was that capital tends to concentrate, unify, and compel to in actuality an exchange of goods (commodities) for struggle, if it is to survive. It is the only class that in the follow ➝

33 the internationalist n. 7 goods (commodities). Lower communism (socialism) unemployed will be crushed. Under communism, foresees the introduction of a work chit, a script that all will participate in social labor to the degree of the entitles one to articles of consumption in proportion to ability of each, which presupposes a different labor one’s contribution, with a deduction to provide for the force indexed by age, with the exclusion of children general social needs of society. The script is not money and the disabled. Thanks to the application of the most and, unlike money, cannot circulate and cannot be saved modern techniques lifted and liberated from the control or accumulated. of monopoly and private property, society will be in a position to eliminate all perilous and useless activities Only with the achievement of production in abundance from the manufacture of armaments to the training of will social constraints disappear and society enter into a police and the use of double accounting, thus radically full communism, illustrated by the precept: “From each shortening the hours of work to the baseline of need. according to his/her capacity, to each according to need.” Given the state of technology, perhaps a two-hour day No longer subject to the blind economic laws attendant would suffice on a worldwide scale. on the anarchy of the market humanity will have done not only with economic crises, genocidal wars, ethnic To the degree that the proletarian dictatorship emphasizes and national wars; emancipated from the oppression these measures at the center of its program, there will of producing for profit, competing for resources and be the elimination of an antithesis between school and markets, and producing for the sake of production, production, and an end will be put to the chatter that humanity will be able to organize production worldwide passes today for the non plus ultra of culture. Domestic in a conscious manner following a rational plan that will work from cleaning to infant training and raising regulate the rapports now turned harmonious amongst will be socialized, thus freeing women forever from a production, consumption and population, where today millenarian slavery and a social inferiority of which they there is rampant disequilibrium due to the distended have been victims. growth of capitalism. These revolutionary changes of the conditions of work Mankind will have time to dedicate itself effectively to and life will do much to remove the antagonism between solving the problem of agriculture and food production, the sexes and between the generations, so contentious and again look to areas that have been scanted by a point under capitalism. At the same time, they will capitalism for the simple reason that the margins of completely transform the rapport between collective life profit are limited. To succeed, the “advanced countries” and “privacy,” (the latter existing today only to be ever whose industries and know-how were constructed out abused or to degenerate into a solitudinous and miserable of the blood and sweat of generations on all continents loneliness). Even the relationship between play and will undoubtedly lend themselves to a gratuitous work and the very conditions of the environment would modernization of the agriculture of the “less developed,” undergo massive change. Generations born free from the something unthinkable under capitalism. This will help yoke of capitalism would be able to devote themselves mightily in closing the abyss opened by imperialism to other important matters having at hand the means between races and nationalities and will favor the free to deal with them. The drastic reduction of work time formation of an international union, the crucible from especially would not only free mankind from the labor which there will emerge a united humanity. and the maladies resulting from the frenetic quest for profits, for all the producers would be free now to No longer menaced by the external and unfriendly power plunge into intellectual areas; the natural sciences, the of capital, now master of its own destiny, the communist complex aspects of social life, literature and the arts-all society will be able on the one hand to master and apply would reacquire that collective dimension characteristic to human use the formidable new forces found in nature of those activities at the beginning of the prehistory (not turn them into a menace to human survival, as has of man. At last, the material conditions will have capitalism with the splitting and fusion of the atom), and been set to overcome finally the divarcation between on the other put to rest fear, obscurantism, and religiosity. physical and intellectual labor, earlier so essential to Rationalizing production will put to an end the the formation of social classes. No longer will men and contemporary ravaging of nature and the division women be condemned to brutish and repetitive labor: on between city and country through a gradual and more the contrary, they would be freed from reliance on an equitable distribution of economic activity across the exclusive “specialization,” “craft,” “career,” or vocation entire terrestrial surface, that will also begin to end, so highly lauded in bourgeois thought. Each of society’s thanks to these two changes, the menace of pollution. members will face the need for some undertaking in An end will be put to the waste and rape of natural the most diverse areas of social activity, obligatory but resources: humanity will no longer be in harness to labor necessary. for profit, but for the satisfaction of human need. With With the disappearance of the division of labor, the the end of capital and the wage system, and therefore the administration of things, already reduced and simplified end of man’s exploitation of man, not only the dramatic alternative of submitting to brutish labor or of growing follow ➝

34 the internationalist n. 7 by the disappearance of capitalism’s market and level and the recurrent crises that accompany it-that exchange values, can be divided amongst all members is responsible for this tragic phenomena? That truly of society. Administrative machinery, the foundation of is utopian, and of the most painful sort, because it the modern state, will have lost significance. In such a is not innocuous: it deceives millions and in so doing society, in the absence of the struggle of all against all, contributes to the strengthening of the system that gave individualism will have vanished. Gone will be the basis rise to the ills listed above. for the opposition of the individual to society or society against the individual. In a society of the human species, “Very well, but this ‘communism’ of which you speak participation in the collective effort will emerge as the exists nowhere, as you yourself note!” Sad is the mode of underlying basis of vital need, and the free development thinking that believes possible only that which exists and of each “the condition for the free development of all.” refuses to fight for what is not yet, though it is possible and even necessary. It’s a bit as if the Wright brothers had Whole generations have fought for this future, with not set themselves to create a flying machine given that... millions of anonymous proletarians having given no such machine had ever existed earlier. What is to be their blood in a struggle that has spread already to all born does not exist yet; that’s elementary. Even bourgeois continents. This is communism! society did not exist when the first revolutionary burghers set out to oppose the feudal system. So what? As with “No, it is utopia!” exclaims our irritated disbeliever. the one above, such an observation is tantamount to Stop! Utopia is an ideal society imagined without taking implying total passivity, the deadening of one’s mental into account the material conditions from which it might faculties: it is the result from a way of thinking that at arise, and without tracing the path of development that all times insists “this is the best of all possible worlds.” these very conditions suggest. It’s trying for the moon with a pedaled airship. Historically speaking, every And then, as we have said, it is a false observation. problem may be raised in a real manner only when the There existed a “primitve communism” that given its possibilities and conditions for a solution exist. The low productive forces had to give way to a society based possibility and the objective conditions for communism on class-based production. There was the experience of already exist within capitalist societies themselves: the Paris Commune of 1871, that showed how it was the high level-even too high!-of production, the possible to reorganize social life and what errors to avoid globalization of the economic system, and the presence in so doing. There was the experience of the first years on a world level of a class without reserves. One must after the October Revolution that indicated the long road work to create the subjective condition for the change: to be taken and, again, the errors to avoid in terms of the party that will guide the revolutionary process. But international strategy. be the conditions objective or subjective, they are already obvious to communists, and we do not mean something “Yes, OK, still you have behind you one hundred and inexplicable or an article of faith! fifty years of failure!” And so? To establish itself as a world order and defeat feudalism, the bourgeoisie On the other hand, are our views utopian when we indicate took five hundred years: from the first stirring ofthe the objective and the means to reach them: formation of Italian communes in the late Middle Ages to the French the revolutionary party, its implantation amongst the Revolution of 1789, and even longer in some regions of masses on a worldwide scale, the continued growth of the planet. Five hundred years of glorious battles and economic and social contradictions, the reawakening bloody defeats, long periods of uncertainty and proud of the class struggle, the outbreak of the revolution advances, and finally total victory. Anyone finding this led by the party, the seizure of power, the installment view objectionable would do best to abandon the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the forcible that all affairs must be concluded in the fretful haste so intervention in the economy to introduce a radically typical of bourgeois conduct associated with the closing different economic order? Or aren’t truly utopian those of a deal, remembering that communists work for the who leave unchanged the present system of capital, future of human kind. There is written in one of our the market, profits, merchandise, competition, and texts from 1965: “S/He is a militant revolutionary and bewitch themselves with talk of “sustainable economic communist who has been able to forget, denounce and development” or “equitable and responsible business”; tear out of his/her mind and heart the status assigned who appeal to the conscience of “men of good will” to by this putrefying society, and sees and confounds end the ever more frequent and bloody wars, donate balm him/herself with the entire millanerian span that ties to ease the suffering created by the incessant dramas of the ancestral tribal predecessor in the struggle against want and illness in the far reaches of the planet, and the wilderness to the member of the future fraternal propose the incremental development of underdeveloped community, glorious in its social harmony.” (From: countries to eliminate the tragic sore of emigration, when “Considerations on the Organic Activity of the Party it is precisely the sweeping introduction of capitalism to in a Period when the General Situation is Historically those countries-the demands it makes on an international Unfavorable”, 1965)

35 the internationalist n. 7

Day by day the need for communism grows dramatically

The events of the past six months all planes – cultural, ideological, Defence is only possible if it is have once again laid bare the political and, above all, miltary. And orientated towards attack and the destructive and self-destructive so this isn’t a matter of conspiracy attack will not succeed unless it has nature of the capitalist mode of but of practice in the use of force and an objective that is non-contingent, production, with its ruthless, anti-proletarian violence. not limited or circumscribed by the unadaptable laws. Series upon current reality. series of crises, different in form but At this point, the post-pandemic substantially identical, demonstrate crisis comes along. With the And so, with a self-evidence that that its long death throes cannot help effects it has had at all levels, the can only prove mysterious or producing increasing poverty, bloody emergency has merely exasperated obscure to the blind and stubborn, wars, environmental devastation, and pushed forward the crisis that last-ditch defenders of the current health crises, desperation, anguish, was already underway before it mode of production as the « best existential pain and basic difficulty broke out : using the labour force as of all possible worlds », day by in merely surviving, all over the beasts to the slaughter, increasingly day, in daily events themselves, the planet. acute precarity, wave after wave of dramatic need will grow to change layoffs, legal and illegal violence to a different and superior mode of More than once we have shown by bosses and by the State against production: a classless society, to that the economic crisis of 2008- struggling workers, the cunning use communism. 9 was never solved, dragging on of the « war amongst paupers »… for a decade between peaks and The cherry on the cake could have We are well aware that in saying this troughs and preparing us for even been none other than the emergency we encounter the rubber and steel more tremendous crashes. This is legislation with all its represssive wall of the ruling ideology, which the very crisis (pre-pandemic, so measures, maintained and indeed fills people’s heads with the litany of to say), whose evolution, already made increasingly pervasive thanks the « death of communism ». This a cause of concern to all bourgeois precisely to the experience of the litany just makes us communists observers because of its evident pandemic. But we have already smile, because it is a demonstration social and political implications, written and spoken sufficiently of the impotence and ignorance of was the ground on which the about this in the immediate past, as mainstream ideology. Communism pandemic crisis took root – daughter in recent and far-off times. isn’t dead for the simple reason of a mode of production incapable that, as an established mode of of solving its own « side effects », In the months to come, it is possible production, it has never existed : this, even scientifically and in terms of that a situation this critical may too, we have proved over decades of health care. result in sudden, more or less struggle, in thousands and thousands circumscribed outbreaks that may of pages, in countless factual and By means of its ruling tools finally mutate into a true social crisis material examples. (parliaments, governments, the with dimensions that are not merely forces of law and order, mass media), domestic. It will then be necessary In the face of what is already being Capital has immediately grasped the for the militant proletarians filling prepared, all over the world, for opportunity to introduce a series of the streets and the squares to keep the proletarian class (blood and measures which, under the pretence well away from the dead-end of tears), faced with the increasingly of « containing the virus », are exasperation in itself, rebellion catastrophic course of the capitalist directed towards « containing and without prospects, disorganized economic crisis, which can only lead repressing » the social anger that anger incapable of withstanding State to a new world war and more inter- the economic crisis could bring violence. They must therefore equip imperialist slaughter, it is necessary with it. In doing this, the ruling themselves with stable and solid to insist on the need for communism classes in all countries can count on militant grassroots organizations for and the political and revolutionary centuries of experience in wielding defending their living and working process for achieving it, for a power over the proletariat : i.e. of conditions. They must prepare for a classless society that snatches all using any « anomalous » situation higher level of political battle. aspects of community life from the to make their repressive apparatus more efficient and all-pervasive on This, of course, is not enough. follow ➝

36 the internationalist n. 7

rule of the law of profit, money, without the arrogance of those who through all the waves of counter- competition and production for think they’re inventing shortcuts revolution (and the latest, in which production’s sake. on a path that is materialistically we are still immersed, has been determined. The principles, the and continues to be the longest and This is why we must fight, and this theory, the programme, the tactics, most devastating), in order to hand is what we must work on, urgently the organizaton have all existed them on – a keen weapon and not but clear-sightedly and above all as a single whole for almost two the occasion for useless intellectual without the haste of those who centuries : through the organization debate – to the future generations of want at all costs to see « the results of our party and its participation in militant communists. of their work » to satisfy their the struggles of the proletariat, we urge to be the centre of attention ; have defended them tooth and claw, 13/09/2020

LENIN ON INTERNATIONALISM

If a German under Wilhelm or a Frenchman under character of the war (whether it is reactionary or Clemenceau says, “It is my right and duty as a socialist revolutionary) does not depend on who the attacker to defend my country if it is invaded by an enemy”, he was, or in whose country the ‘enemy’ is stationed; argues not like a socialist, not like an internationalist, it depends on what class is waging the war, and on not like a revolutionary proletarian, but like a petty- what politics this war is a continuation of. If the war bourgeois nationalist. Because this argument ignores is a reactionary, imperialist war, that is, if it isbe- the revolutionary class struggle of the workers against ing waged by two world groups of the imperialist, capital, it ignores the appraisal of the war as a whole rapacious, predatory, reactionary bourgeoisie, then from the point of view of the world bourgeoisie and every bourgeoisie (even of the smallest country) be- the world proletariat, that is, it ignores internation- comes a participant in the plunder, and my duty as a alism, and all that remains is miserable and narrow- representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to minded nationalism. My country is being wronged, prepare for the world proletarian revolution as the that is all I care about—that is what this argument only escape from the horrors of a world slaughter. I amounts to, and that is where its petty-bourgeois, na- must argue, not from the point of view of ‘my’ coun- tionalist narrow-mindedness lies. […] The Frenchman, try (for that is the argument of a wretched, stupid, German or Italian who says: “Socialism is opposed petty-bourgeois nationalist who does not realise that to violence against nations, therefore I defend my- he is only a plaything in the hands of the imperialist self when my country is invaded”, betrays socialism bourgeoisie), but from the point of view of my share and internationalism, because such a man sees only in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the ac- his own “country”, he puts “his own” ... bourgeoisie celeration of the world proletarian revolution.” above everything else and does not give a thought to the international connections which make the war an That is what internationalism means, and that is the imperialist war and his bourgeoisie a link in the chain duty of the internationalist, the revolutionary work- of imperialist plunder. […] er, the genuine socialist.

The socialist, the revolutionary proletarian, the Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution internalionalist, argues differently. He says: “The and the Renegade Kautsky (1918)

37 the internationalist n. 7

The following article already appeared on these pages, but we thought it appropriate to reissue it because of its topicality! Why we are not “bordigists”

“I am not a Marxist!”- Karl Marx

As materialists, we know that language is a super- We are not denying the exceptional contribution made structure, standing in a dialectic relationship to the at specific moments in history by individuals: Marx, En- mode of production that determines and expresses it. We gels, Lenin, Bordiga… However, we refuse to charac- also know that, in a class-based society, the dominant terize this contribution as a personal one, almost as if ideology is the ideology of the ruling class and language materialism were a construction made of Lego to which is immersed in it, giving voice to its basic characteristics, everyone can add his or her own “original” piece. This divisions and balances of power, and thus contributing in is why we refuse the expression “Marxism-Leninism” its turn to influencing society as a whole. In our present (precisely because of its awful revisionist implications): times (with a capitalism that has reached its supreme, Lenin himself might well have exclaimed like Marx, imperialist phase), individualism, which has always “I am not a Marxist-Leninist!”, because the expression been an aspect of bourgeois ideology directly linked to reeks of bourgeois individualism, trampling underfoot the mode of production and consumption, increasingly the very heart of the materialist concept of history, over- pervades language and through it the whole universe of turning and misrecognizing the function of personality in social relations. history, attributing to individual x the role of elaborator of concepts that “integrate” what was “conceived” origi- And so we use the term “Marxist” regularly, whilst nally by individual y – precisely, more pieces of Lego knowing that it is really an improper use (as Marx’s for a construction in progress, to which individuals can famous declaration, quoted above, firmly states) and make their own, eclectic contribution. It is no coinci- that the term “dialectic materialism” or “communism” dence that “Marxism-Leninism” (not to speak of “Marx- would be better. So much for that: usage, conventions ism-Leninism-Maotsetungthought”!) would become a and practicality have the upper hand and there is noth- political-linguistic expression of the advancing and sub- ing wrong with this, on condition that… On condition sequently victorious counter-revolution, a phenomenon that the sense of the exclamation is well understood: as materialistically rooted in the history of the class war it lies entirely in the refusal (by Marx and all consistent and not the fruit of individual actions: that counter-revo- communists) to consider the great work done by him lution that would overthrow the international communist (and by Engels and many other, more or less anony- movement from the mid-Nineteen-Twenties onwards mous militants who, then and later, worked for the and which, precisely because of the linguistic condition- communist revolution) as the fruit of genial thought by ing mentioned above, we are obliged to call “Stalinism” an individual mind, as an “interpretation of the world” for the sake of brevity and in the absence of any other, by the umpteenth philosopher. “Philosophers have hith- brief definition (to define it, our comrades in the ‘Thirties erto only interpreted the world in various ways; the and ‘Forties used the expression “Centrism”; but today point is to change it” (XI Thesis on Feuerbach) is not that would be incomprehensible). just a slogan: it means that with materialist science’s appearance on the scene of history we are no longer Even more so do we refuse the label “Bordigists”, for a witnessing “philosophical systems” which may quite series of valid reasons. Far from failing to acknowledge rightly assume the name of one thinker or founder of a the enormous contribution made by Amadeo Bordiga for school of thought or another (Platonism, Aristotelism, his whole life, we know (and confirm this against all his Tomism, Kantism, Hegelism, etc.), just because they bourgeois “biographers”) that this was Party work and are “personal interpretations of the world”; we are ac- not the individual mental product of an “isolated think- tually witnessing a science, discovered and elaborated er”: it was the transmission, founded on a rock-solid the- thanks to a combination of far broader and more com- oretical basis, of a whole body of historical experience, plex historical and social factors than just the single from militant to militant – and by a militant who had noddle (doubtless of impressive proportions) of the always declared the impersonal nature of the doctrine person who materially takes it up, unravels it, explains it and publishes it. follow ➝

38 the internationalist n. 7 and practice, obeying it even when flattery might have not as an abstract theory to whose budding gems we bow led him in a different direction – an anonymous militant, down in a pretence of daily veneration, but as a sharp who had been trained in an impersonal doctrine, for a and shining weapon, whose grip, or aim, we must never cause that reaches far further than individuals and gen- let go of - a weapon that must be saved, so that it is not erations. Bordiga and the collective work for the revo- lost in a whirlpool of defeat, by sacrificing everything, lutionary Party are inseparable. Moreover, the huge job first and foremost the ignoble self, just as, in order to of theoretical restoration was made possible not only use it when the battle is raging, weakness, misery, vanity, thanks to its being the expression of collective work by stupid pride, the mean little ‘accounts book’ of the indi- the Party, which, if we want to take this viewpoint, saw vidual must be destroyed, to save its healthy or even pre- Bordiga as its spearhead, but also thanks to the politi- cious potential in the interests of the ‘class-Party’.” (“On cal and organizational continuity achieved by comrades the death of Amadeo Bordiga. An exemplary militancy at who, during the ‘30s, were active abroad, as well as the service of the revolution”, Il programma comunista, clandestine in Italy - which, over the next few decades, no. 14/1970). ensured the combination of forces (not all theoretically Bordiga did not add or modify a single comma in the homogeneous) from which our Party emerged, by selec- body of doctrine that emerged in the mid-1800s when tion, in 1952. Thus, once again, a collective, anonymous, conditions were mature for it because the bourgeois mode impersonal experience: that of shared work by militants of production had given and said of itself all it had to, ex- united for a historical objective, oriented towards the re- perimentally verified (both theoretically and in practice) birth of the revolutionary Party. in the following one and a half centuries through a few, shining victories and many bloody defeats: in the very But this is not all. We are not “Bordigists” because Bor- midst of the counter-revolution he managed to remain diga’s work (of restoring and re-proposing “Marxist” in place and gather around himself new generations of theory in its entirety, after the monstrous devastations militants – the Party. suffered in the counter-revolution, and of working for the reaffirmation of the revolutionary Party) can in no sense And so we leave to others the petty idolatry of the “indi- be considered an extra, a “new contribution”, a “new in- vidual” and pay no attention to the pretentious irony (or terpretation”, a “special variety” of Marxism (or, as the at times the arrogant ignorance, the vindictive contempt, well-paid intellectuals addicted to their own egos say, of the disgusting slander) towards “Amadeo Bordiga” and “Marxisms”: precisely!). Bordiga was a most efficient the “Bordigists”. Aware of belonging to a generation of tool, “…the splendid ‘machine’,” we wrote in our press militants that has faced and will continue to face differ- in the article commemorating him at the time of his death ent problems and duties, we pursue the same work in in 1970, “through which ran […] the current of Marx- different conditions: amidst errors, inadequacy and un- ism’s high potential.” And we continued, “…and we say certainty, but always anonymously, impersonally and ‘Marxism’ as we, of the Left, have always understood it, collectively. Communist militants – that is all.

Visit our website: www.internationalcommunistparty.org

Write to: [email protected]

For queries regarding our positions, write to: Istituto Programma Comunista Edizioni Il Programma Comunista; Casella postale 272 - Poste Cordusio 20101, Milano (Italy)

39 the internationalist n. 7

The internationalist n. 4 - Summer 2017 • The World of Capital Increasingly Adrift • The Rot Is Growing in the United Kingdom • In and Around Turkey • US Proletarians • “Once-Upon-A-Time” America. But Is It Really So? • No to the Military Adventures of “Our” Bourgeosie! • The “Black Panther” Movement • Residues and Cankers of the So-Called “National Issues” • Class War • Long Live the French Workers’ Struggle! • The Enemy Is At Home. But “Our Home” Is the World • Territorial Organisms for the Proletarian Struggle • Agaist All Imperialist Wars • Why We Are Not “Bordigists”

The internationalist n. 5 - Winter 2018/2019 • Abandon the voting booths! Either prepare for elections, or prepare for revolution! • 1917-2017. Toward the Future • Great Britain. Once again and endlessly “The Housing Question” • From Germany. The Hamburg G20 Summit: a mega-show of democratic illusions • The Beleaguered Path of the African Proletariat • Tunisia a new blaze ofrebellion! • Humanitarian Intervention as an Imperialist Political Act • Iran. A blaze of class war • Open Party and Closed Party • The Ghost ofthe European Unity • Proletarians pay with their lives for the survival of a mode of production which is by now only lethal • Back to Basics. Party and Class (1921)

The internationalist n. 6 - Winter 2019/2020 • Proletarians pay with their lives the survival of a mode of production that amounts to murder • Migrants: The Stink of Bourgeois Politics • The “Migrants’ Caravan” Before the US Democratic Wall • “A historical movement going on under our very eyes” • Save the planet... But how? • 1919-2019. In memory of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht • One Hundred years ago, the Foundation of the Third International • Eight Theses Regarding Russia (1953) • Not to forget. A Page by Engels • Class Memory. Peterloo 1819 • First May 2019. Drive back the attack by capital! Organize the response of the proletariat! • The “gilets jaunes”: a people’s revolt short of breath, a long wave of people’s illusion • Out now: issue no. 2 of Kommunistisches Programm • Turkey: In the depths of the social, economic and political abyss • Venezuela: Between democratic-bourgeois and military adventurers

40