Originally published: Prometeo, no. 21/22, first quarter 1974.
English translation: in Bordiga Beyond the Myth, 2016, pp. 92-98.
Transcription/Markup: Micah Muer, 2019.
The nature and tasks of the revolutionary party is a problem covering a vast and turbulent area where the proletariat’s struggle as capitalism’s class enemy begins and unfolds.
But the fundamental interests of the proletariat are not always taken into account when addressing this problem and a positive contribution to the development of revolutionary theory has therefore not always been made.
In this analysis we aim to put together a factual, albeit limited, overview of the theoretical positions that we consider as the most characteristic of the Left spectrum, which is currently agitated by a plethora of self-styled “left” groups. These are hard to understand due to their improvised and superficial character. They sometimes make errors when, claiming to be objective, they approach the original sources of more qualified and responsible writers to use for their own ends.
It is not easy to bring order to the jumble of sometimes contradictory positions on the role of the party and the relationship between party and class, given the theoretical dysfunction that has affected most of the groups that claim to be of the revolutionary left, including the “Italian Left” considered as a whole.
Is the ideological and political theory (in which we believe and for which we fight) in crisis over the historical role of the revolutionary party, as conceived by the Bolsheviks at the time of Lenin and Trotsky?
Certainly not, but bear one thing in mind. Namely, that in the minds of many there has gradually been emerging a feeling of vague dissatisfaction and from there a certain impression of decline of the role of the party as a permanent working class body, as an indispensable factor for revolutionary action. This has happened for two reasons. The first is the end of the revolutionary wave and the counter-revolutionary transformation of Soviet Russia, which occurred without producing obvious class confrontation and violence but through an internal process of economic and social osmosis which is not easy to understand. The second being the banal identification of Leninism with Stalinism as if it was a historical continuation, in a different phase of the Bolshevik Party.
The “Italian Left” has to be credited with being the first to critically address the inherent problems regarding the party and their implications. We remain clear that the central point remains valid, and any deviations are the result of inaccurate statements on the one hand or due to the predominance of the subtle poison of a polemic inclined towards paradox, just to assert intellectual distinction, on the other. We will provide some specific references, by way of demonstration, going back more than fifty years of the specific history of the revolutionary party, in which the “Italian Left” was almost always an opposition current that had to overcome the enormous difficulties all revolutionary minorities encounter. The relationship between the party and class is dialectically linked, with both on the same level, i.e. placing special emphasis on neither the party nor on the class. We see the party as a part of the whole (the class). It is certainly the most aware, most prepared, most ideologically and politically willing, in short, the most advanced part of the class, which has the task of guiding and motivating the class itself. Speaking of the different phases that mark the historical process, Bordiga asks himself (in Lenin – On the Path of Revolution, 1924)[01]:
“What separates them? Between the State of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat there can only be the culmination of a revolutionary struggle in which the working class is guided by the communist political party, which achieves victory after demolishing the armed force of bourgeois power and establishes the new revolutionary power.”
Repeating this argument, the same year in the journal Prometeo (#4, 1924, Communism and the National Question): Bordiga wrote:
“In short, this interest is the interest of the proletarian revolution. That is, the interest of the proletariat considered as a world class endowed with unity and historical tasks, which tends to a revolutionary goal: the downfall of the bourgeois order. We can and must solve particular problems in terms of this overall goal.
The way to combine the individual solutions with this overall objective is realised in the fundamentals acquired by the Party, which are the mainstays of its programme and tactical methods. These fundamentals are not revealed immutable dogmas, but are themselves the results of the general and systematic examination of the situation of all human society in the current historical period in which we must take into account all the elements that emerge from our experience. We do not deny that this examination progresses continuously and the conclusions it reaches are progressively elaborated, but the truth is that we could not exist as a world Party if the historical experience through which the proletariat has already passed does not allow our criticism to build a programme and a set of rules of political behaviour. We could not exist without it, neither we as a Party nor the proletariat as a historical class with a doctrinal consciousness and a fighting organisation.”
It is in these terms, devoid of any trace of intellectualism though we cannot prove it, that the “Left”, through the hard work of building the Communist Party of Italy and its leadership became more perceptive and mature, and was able to express here through Bordiga the relationship which is not in any way formal, that should exist between the class party and the class itself.
In this regard, we reproduce here several formulations that seek to define the nature of the party and its tasks with regard to the class. They range from the Communist Manifesto (1848) to 1925 and, although they reflect different situations of class conflict, this does not diminish their value. First the extract from the Communist Manifesto:
Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts …
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle [understood as a struggle extending over the entire territory of the State before going on to the international level] between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, … the modern proletariat, … achieved in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. …
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.[02]
Extract from the thesis of the Second Congress of the Communist International on the tasks of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution:
“The Party is only distinguished from the great mass of workers by the fact that it considers the historical mission of the working class as a whole and strives, along the way, not to defend the interests of any one group or trade, but the whole of the working class.”
Adopted unanimously at the founding Congress of Livorno:
The indispensable organ for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is the class political party. The Communist Party, which brings together the most advanced and conscious part of the proletariat, unifies the efforts of the working masses, leading them from the struggles for particular interests and immediate gains to the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.“
These “Points of the Left”, although a schematic first draft, do not say anything different from the previous well known fundamental texts:
“The Party is the body which unifies the outbursts of individuals and groups provoked by the class struggle. As such, Party organisations should put themselves above particular categories, and synthesise the various elements emanating from disparate categories of proletarians, peasants and deserters from the bourgeois class, etc.”[03]
“1. – In its activity, the Communist Party, the political party of the working class, is a collective that works as a unified whole. The initial impulses that lead the elements and groups of this collective to organise for unified action are the immediate interests that economic conditions provoke within the working class. A key function of the Communist Party is the use of its accumulated energies to achieve objectives, which by being common to the entire working class, at the end of an entire series of struggles, go beyond, the interests of particular groups and the immediate demands that arise in the working class.
2. – The integration of all elementary impulses into unified action is manifested by two main factors: one of which is the critical consciousness from which the Party draws its programme, the other is the will that is expressed through the disciplined, centralised organisation within which the Party acts. It would be wrong to consider these two factors, consciousness and will, as powers that can be obtained or claimed by individuals, since they are only obtained by integrating the activity of many individuals within a unitary collective body.”
In this historical sketch the definition of the party and the party-class relationship is unambiguous, but in the ‘20’s it was expressed differently, i.e. in the brief interval from Livorno until the promulgation of the “Exceptional Laws”[04] which forced the party underground. These are the terms of a platform that was the unifying basis of the “Italian Left” and by which we have always been recognised. And it is on this supreme theoretical and political line that our party consolidated the pillars of the doctrine and political coherence of the revolutionary left.
If this is a theoretical constant that has characterised our current, we have to go back to a particularly significant article by Bordiga in which, it is true that he did not go so far as to question the essence of this theoretical constant, but he was able, by the way he expressed himself so absolutely, to give rise to erroneous, arbitrary and narrow interpretations of it, as in fact happened. We are talking here about the article Party and Class Action, in which we can already discern that contradictory theme that has accompanied the personality of Bordiga and has been so fruitful for the work of his usual followers, with whom Bordiga never had any luck. The article states:
“One can not speak of a class as a historical movement where there is no party that acts as the vanguard of this movement …
"The party is the indispensable organ of all class action; and therefore logically one cannot speak of true class action (i.e. beyond the limits of sectional interests or small immediate problems) where there is no party activity.
This way of expressing himself, somewhat vague and deliberately abstruse, gives rise to various interpretations, thus opening up a road along which others could travel at will under the illusion of completing his thinking. Whether the conclusion contradicted the premise itself mattered little, as was the case of the "dictatorship of the proletariat”. This inevitable historical outcome was converted, with a stroke of the pen, into the “dictatorship of the party”.
This caution of expression is understandable, considering that we were in the years immediately after Livorno, when the “Left” administered and led the party, in which Bordiga had the greatest influence and responsibility.
It was not until the 1951 theses, written by a Bordiga now detached from any discipline of revolutionary activity, to see how this tendency to weaken the links between party and class was accentuated, with greater emphasis on the party than on the class.
“As the party – he states – alone and autonomously directs the struggle of the exploited class to bring down capitalism, it will also be the one to autonomously lead the state of the revolutionary proletariat.”
Is this not a clear denial of the validity to the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a class dictatorship exercised by the party to make way for the theory of a “dictatorship of the party” that in reality cannot substitute itself for the class as the historical antagonist of capitalism?
The class is forged historically, not just by acquiring a clear revolutionary consciousness of its revolutionary aim, but also throughout the preceding stage where precisely because of the party’s critical work in trying to win over the working class, it gradually, slowly and painfully acquires its consciousness. Starting from mere corporatism and simple demand struggles, it becomes more united and mature in understanding its ideological, political and organisational role as a revolutionary class. We have to go back to a small allusion made in the course of a dispute about “organic centralism”, a formula that Bordiga considered the best interpretation of Lenin and the parties of the Third International’s “democratic centralism”, to understand this trend to authoritarian, ultimately extremely hierarchical relations, which lead to the worst Stalinism. In the Leninist conception, the dictatorship of the proletariat is equivalent to the presence and continuity of class content based on democratic relationships in the context of strict centralisation of the dictatorship itself, hence the dialectical relationship between democracy and dictatorship. The fall of the State and the class dictatorship will open a period of the widest and most complete exercise of proletarian democracy, through which socialist society will be expressed and materially constructed. This tendency to the total social involvement of the class, which is organised during the transitional stage in the very heart of the dictatorship, while foreshadowing the future as an active living factor, is part of the process of decline of the whole structure of authority, coercion and the exercise of power. This tendency is absent in a party dictatorship in which this dialectical relationship is, in fact, broken, to the extent that any decision is unilateral. Orders only come from above and revolutionary discipline is administered, even in the pre-revolutionary phase by, for example, Unique Commissars[05], all for the sake of following a visceral anti-democratic passion. This leads, for example, to judging in a blinkered and police-like way, as if obeying personal ambitions, any contribution to theoretical development that seeks to deepen the critical understanding of particular phenomena originating from imperialist domination, that reflect capitalism in its advanced state of decomposition, using Marxist methods of research. Let us re-read paragraph 7 of Part IV of the “Fundamental Theses” (1951) edited by Bordiga:
“No movement can historically succeed without theoretical continuity, based on the experience of past struggles. Thus the party prohibits personal freedom to develop new systems or explanations of the contemporary social world: it prohibits individual freedom of analysis, critique and perspective, including the most intellectually competent militant, and defends the soundness of a theory that is not a product of blind faith, but the content of the science of the proletarian class, built with secular material that is not the result of men’s thoughts, but of the strength of the material facts, which are reflected in the historical consciousness of a revolutionary class and crystallise in the Party.”[06]
Clearly, this leads us to discriminate between the chosen few whom divine providence enables to develop theory on the one hand, and the many individuals who unfortunately do not enjoy the favours of providence, and therefore are not free to try to critically clarify the course of events using Marxist method as a compass, on the other. We must closely examine the effects produced by this way of conceiving Marxism which hides under a layer of varnish its inability to follow the complex dynamics of the working class, with its ups and downs and sometimes contradictory vicissitudes, in the slow process of forming a consciousness of itself, and which lead it to break the ties that bind it to the most immediate interests of daily life.
[In the print version of Bordiga Beyond the Myth this text has endnotes whose in-text pointers are missing and out of order; this MIA text therefore has endnotes that have been corrected to the best of our abilities – MIA.]
[01] Title of the lecture that Bordiga gave in the Casa del Popolo, Rome, on 24 February 1924.
[02]. This English translation is taken from the Marxists Internet Archive and seems to differ quite substantially from the Italian used by Damen. For example, there is no mention of Trades Unions as “permanent organisations” in the Italian version. The bracketed inserted comment is by Damen.
[03]. Taken from the CWO pamphlet “Platform of the Committee of Intesa 1925” subtitled “The start of the Italian Left’s fight against Stalinism as Fascism increased its grip” pp. 18-19.
[04]. After the failure of the parliamentary opposition tactic of “the Aventine withdrawal”, the Fascist government decreed the abolition of opposition parties and unions between 1925-26, created a secret political police (OVRA) and a special tribunal for the Defence of the State, banned strikes and lock-outs and only recognised the Fascist unions.
[05]. Damen is here referring to the internal organisation of the International Communist Party (Il Programma Comunista) which Bordiga and Maffi formed after the split with the Internationalist Communist Party in 1952. Apparently these “Unique Commissars” ran the individual sections of that party, transmitting to them the decisions of the Executive Committee.
[06]. Like all quotes from Bordiga in this book, this is our own translation. The English translation of “The Fundamental Theses of the Party” by the Bordigists themselves can be found at http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/compro/liqa/liqamcebue.html but it is obviously by someone whose first language was not English.