far only time in one of the present imperialist countries. His 140th
anniversary is a great opportunity to take stock of the progress the
communist movement has made and to weigh it up, in order to better frame the
work we are doing now, in the terminal phase of the second general crisis of
capitalism and verify, in the light of our history, our world view and our
line to establish socialism in Italy, which is one of the imperialist
countries.
The communist movement in the modern sense, the communist movement we are
speaking of and we are part and protagonists of, began in western Europe in
the first half of the nineteenth century, about 200 years ago.(1) Its first
manifestations on major scale were the Chartist Movement (1838-1850) in
Great Britain and the worker movement of the nineteenth century in France.
The revolt of Lyon in 1831 and especially the uprising of Paris in June of
1848, which was crushed by French republican bourgeoisie with executions and
deportations decimating the worker population of Paris, were the expressions
of this worker movement with major historical role.
The communist movement was officially founded with the publication of the
Manifesto of the Communist Party written by Marx and Engels on behalf of the
Communists' League in February of 1848, in the eve of European bourgeois
revolution.
Since then there has been a long time when compared to the life of a human
being and evaluated with the aspirations of the protagonists of the
communist movement. This is however a brief period when measured on the
scale of the transformations that the human kind has gone through in its
multimillennial evolution.
This is enough to establish that those intellectuals who talk about the
"death of Communism" misrepresent reality. They do it because of not
confessed purposes related to the particular interests of the classes of
which they are spokespersons. They deduce the "death of Communism" simply
from the fact that the communist movement has not yet made the social
transformation that is its objective and that the founders of Marxism have
clearly indicated in its broad outlines, basing themselves on the
understanding of the laws that have governed the multimillennial evolution
of the species and of the preconditions of the future placed by the
bourgeois society that was the more advanced result of that evolution.
Between 1989 and 1991, the first European socialist countries and among them
the Soviet Union, arrived at the bottom of the decline that began in the
50s. They decomposed and returned to a large extent in the world imperialist
system. Then, in the U.S.A., the country center of the world imperialist
system, the ideologue Fukuyama gave the world the cry of triumph of the
imperialist bourgeoisie: "The history is over." He wanted to announce and
proclaim the final victory of the bourgeoisie and the advent of his
unchallenged millennial reign, after the great fear aroused by the first
wave of proletarian revolution that in the early part of the twentieth
century formed the first socialist countries in some major countries (mainly
Russia and China) on the edge of the world imperialist system, created the
communist parties all over the world and destroyed the old colonial system.
It was not the first time that the apologists of capitalism did such
resounding proclamation since the first half of the nineteenth century, when
the communist movement began to contend with capitalism for the power. When
they are on their way out, the ruling classes pluck up courage and try to
demoralize the classes that challenge its power, proclaiming the reasons for
their supremacy consecrated by tradition but close to its end. They try to
prove that the system of social relations which provides for their rule is
the only in accord with human nature. In order to do it each dying class
defines human nature in the image and likeness of the typical individual of
the social system it defends and negates the values of the class against
which it defends itself. So the feudal nobility and the clergy did against
the bourgeoisie of Europe until the end of the nineteenth century. At that
time, when the Pope Leo XIII was reigning on Catholic Church, just the Paris
Commune, despite its defeat, terrorized the clergy and the bourgeoisie of
Europe. That terror moved the clergy of the Christian countries and the
bourgeoisie to join their forces in a common struggle against the communist
movement. Still today a multicolored array of professors of human nature and
apologists of capitalism that goes from Pope Ratzinger repentant communists
like the Italian Costanzo Preve, repeats the same theory, but now referred
to the capitalist system.(2)
The communist movement in the modern sense of the term
What is the communist movement in the modern sense of the term? It is the
movement of the working class created by capitalism, the oppressed class of
the modern era that mobilizes and organizes itself and struggles to
emancipate itself from the bourgeoisie. Communism is the system of social
relations of the society that arises from the conditions created by
capitalism. The working class has not created the communist world view but,
for many reasons, among all the oppressed classes is the most ready and
willing to assimilate it on a large-scale, that identifies itself in it,
that is able to make it its own and take it as a guide in the struggle it
carries out against the bourgeoisie.(3)
This excludes the direct continuity and even more the analogy between the
Communism we are fighting for and the various forms of communities that have
been aspects and forms of the various pre-capitalist social systems, stages
of the multimillennial evolution of the human species. In fact, the modern
communism was born on the basis of the following conditions:
1. elimination of the relations of personal dependence (of the individual
from the community where it was born, form slave owners, landowners,
priests, etc..) characteristic of the societies that preceded the bourgeois
society,
2. the affirmation of individuals as protagonists of the social life of the
human species, produced by the mercantile economy generalized by capitalism,
3. stable and definitive victory of the human species in the fight to get
out of the rest of nature what necessary for its own survival and progress
(the domination of man over nature).
These in brief are the key conditions on which the future communist society
was born, all three created by bourgeois society. The common ownership of
means of production and their management by the association of workers,
shaped so that the free development of each individual is the condition for
the free development of all, are the fundamental traits of the communist
society that will replace the capitalist society, its division into classes
and its class antagonisms.(4) Because of these characteristics, the
communist society is not born spontaneously (that is, as a result of the men
who act in conformity to the dominant - that is bourgeois - world view and
in the ambit and with the institutions of bourgeois society). It cannot be
achieved without some level of consciousness and organization of the working
class and of the popular masses, without a certain progress in the
elaboration of the communist world view and of its assimilation by the
masses. These two factors are not formed spontaneously in the same bourgeois
society and must therefore be built with a specific work carried out in the
very bosom of bourgeois society, as factors necessary to overcome it.
It follows that the communist movement is divided into two parts: the
conscious and organized communist movement that promotes the transformation
and the rest of the working class and the popular masses who performs the
transformation under the direction of the first, although by its nature this
transformation can only be done on the necessary basis of the experience of
the working class and of the masses themselves. The oppressed class is
divided into two parts (one directing and one directed), but so related that
they create the conditions to overcome the new division in the new society
without a State.(5) The nature of communist society determines to a certain
extent also the way of his being done, very distinct from the way in which
bourgeois society has been done: a truth which was discovered by Engels in
the late nineteenth century, in taking stock of the communist movement of
the nineteenth century (Introduction to "The class struggles in France from
1848 to 1850 "- 1895).
The socialist revolution and the peoples oppressed by the world imperialist
system
The understanding of the progress made by the communist movement is
complicated by the fact that, in the wake of the communist movement of
European workers, also those peoples who have not done democratic revolution
on their own account, but were still colonized and subjugated by the
European bourgeoisie, mobilized themselves. In this way they entered the
evolution of the human species that the bourgeoisie has set in motion. In
its turn, the European bourgeoisie has become "the Christian West" because
European countries were joined by the colonies populated by Europeans,
particularly the U.S., which as a result of two World Wars roused by the
European capitalist powers have become the center of the world imperialist
system. Humanity unified itself in its process of evolution not because all
peoples have done a path similar to that of the European peoples. It unified
itself because the European bourgeoisie involved the other countries putting
them to the fire and the sword of its colonial system. By the power of its
trades that dissolved the old relations of production, the European
bourgeoisie upset the system of social relations in which each one of them
was arrived on the basis of its own historical development. Around the turn
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, driven by its first general
crisis for absolute overproduction of capital, it has forced and dragged all
the peoples into the vortex of the world imperialist system that has divided
the world into a small number of imperialist powers opposed to the oppressed
countries where most of humanity lived.
It was a form of unification of the world that the founders of the communist
world view had not taken into account: they had not considered the
possibility that the socialist revolution in Europe could delay even though
the objective conditions were already ripe (a certain degree of development
of the forces production and a certain level of concentration and
proletarianization of the population under the orders of the bourgeoisie).
That is to say, they did not considered that, just because of the delay of
the necessary revolutionary change, capitalism changed entering its
imperialist phase. But just the fact that, despite this, the clash now
involving all humanity is the clash between capitalism and communism is the
grand experimental confirmation of the communist world view as a science of
the evolution of the human species.
Today the human species is unified by a common destiny and mobilized in a
single movement all over the world. The communist world view illustrates the
meaning and nature of the common movement, the contradictions that determine
it and the line of march in which the human species must be developed to
provide a solution to the contradictions that move it.
Consequently, the social influence the leftist bourgeoisie exerted in these
years is deeply harmful. Leftist bourgeoisie means all the groups and
individuals who oppose the present course of things, but in their criticism
of this, in their proposals and their intentions, they do not see beyond the
horizon of bourgeois society and its system of social relations: so, by
their nature all these groups and individuals reject the communist world
view. However, today their influence is great in the imperialist countries,
given the weakness of the conscious and organized communist movement, which
has not yet revived after the exhaustion of the first wave of proletarian
revolution. That is why the Communist Party must make a great effort for
educating its members and candidates on the communist world. Anyway, this is
an imperative condition for its consolidation and strengthening. Only
through the study and assimilation of the communist world view, the
Communists make themselves able to lead the working class and the masses
beyond the struggles for claims, to the construction of communist society.
The role of the revolution of peoples oppressed by the world imperialist
system
The forms and timing of the transformation of bourgeois society in the
communist society were deeply marked by the involvement in this process also
of the countries where the capitalist mode of production had not yet become
the dominant mode of production. In 1881 the first Russian Communists asked
to Karl Marx, the acknowledged founder of the communist world view, whether
the rural community in Russia, the form still remaining at the end of the
nineteenth century of the original common possession of the land, in his
opinion could be transformed directly into communist form of possession of
the land without going through the same process of dissolution, which had
constituted the historical development of Western Europe. Marx had studied
deeply the history of the development of European societies and the nature
of Russian society of his time. Considering the state which the evolution of
Russian society and its economic and cultural relations with capitalist
countries were arrived to, he said that, if the announced democratic
revolution in Russia had served as a trigger to the socialist revolution in
Western Europe, so that the two should combine and complete each other, in
this case it should had been plausible that the common rural property still
existing in Russia could serve as a starting point for development of
Russian society towards Communism (Preface to the Russian edition of 1882 of
the Manifesto of the Communist Party). The role that Russia and the Soviet
Union actually played in the first part of the twentieth century during the
first wave of world proletarian revolution is illuminated by this view of
Marx, even if the revolutions in the two parts of the world had combined,
but without completing each other because the communist movement has not
established of socialism in any imperialist countries.
The Paris Commune has been so far the only case of conquest of power by the
working class in a capitalist country. The communist movement has achieved
its greatest success in countries with a peripheral role in the world
imperialist system ("weak link of the imperialist world system") or that
were part of the oppressed and dependent countries: mainly Russia with its
vast Tsarist Empire, and China. During the first wave of proletarian
revolution in the first part of last century, the Soviet Union and the
People's Republic of China have in different ways and at different times in
the world played the role of red bases of the proletarian revolution. But
the communist movement has failed to establish socialism in any of the
imperialist countries. This had also a prejudicial effect on the development
of the first socialist country that today in different times, sizes and
forms are come back within the world imperialist system, completely but
still in a contradictory way as for Russia (6) and to some extent for China
(7).
Why has the communist movement not established socialism in any imperialist
country?
The failure in establishing socialism in the imperialist countries has given
rise not only to the apologies of capitalism developed and propagated by the
bourgeoisie and the clergy, but also to the reflection of the Communists.
Why has the conscious and organized communist movement failed to establish
socialism in any of the imperialist countries during the first wave of
proletarian revolution?
The first wave of proletarian revolution was first developed as an antidote
to the general crisis of capitalism for absolute overproduction of capital.
It was not the result of the direction of the conscious and organized
communist movement in the class struggle that was going on in most developed
bourgeois societies. It was the result of the efforts by the conscious and
organized communist movement in the upheaval and world wars generated over
more than thirty years (1914-1945) by the imperialist bourgeoisie to deal
with that crisis.
Facing the fact that Communists had not established socialism in any
imperialist country, some have drawn the conclusion that they had not done
it simply because it was not possible to establish it (in accordance with
the view that it is possible only what actually happens). The objective
conditions of the establishment of socialism were really accrued in the
present imperialist countries at the end of the nineteenth century but,
according to them, thanks to the exploitation of the oppressed countries,
the imperialist bourgeoisie corrupted the working class and the popular
masses of imperialist countries in various ways and therefore reduced their
ability to fight so much that made impossible the establishment of
socialism.
This explanation has been very successful because it was an explanation
seemingly simple though absurd of the experience (the conception that it is
possible only what is, does not explain the movement). Besides, it was quite
beneficial for those who bring the bourgeois influence within the working
class and the popular masses of the people, those who are against the
revolution. Such explanation complied with their mentality and their
personality: so, it had the support of the right wing of the communist
movement, and more or less directly by the bourgeoisie itself. It was also
consistent with the economicistic and determinist interpretation of Marxism:
according to this interpretation the socialist revolution is not generated
by the conscious and organized communist movement, but breaks out by force
of the contradictions of bourgeois society. Although the role of conscious
and organized is not completely denied, it is relegated to a secondary role.
This economicistic, deterministic and spontaneistic interpretation of
Marxism is unsuccessful and just because of this is an aspect of the
influence of the bourgeoisie and the clergy within the communist movement:
they are interested in the failure of its efforts. We Communists say that
are the human beings who make their own history, although they certainly did
not do so arbitrarily, but based on assumptions that are found as products
of the history behind their back, acting in the circumstances in which they
find themselves and in accordance with the laws of the transformation they
must do. Their freedom is greater the more they know the nature of the world
they must transform and the own laws suitable for the work they have to do
(in brief: freedom is the consciousness of necessity): so as it happens in
every other human activity, in every profession and trade. Marxism, the
communist world view, is the science of the transformation of bourgeois
society in the communist society and the theory that guides the conscious
and organized communist movement in its action that transforms the world.
Why have the Communists in the imperialist countries not elaborated the
communist world view up to the task that had to carry out?
Nevertheless, the communist world view is, like all sciences, work of the
human beings. The Communists must not only apply it. Even before, they need
to prepare it and develop it up to the work that have to do: to build a
skyscraper needs a building science more developed than that needed to build
a little house. That is why we say that to be a Marxist does not mean to
make the exegesis of the works of Marx and of other leaders of the communist
movement ("what Marx really said", etc..). Marxists are those who draw from
the experience the science of the struggle of the working class that
emancipates itself from the bourgeoisie by building the communist society.
The conscious and organized communist movement has not established socialism
in any imperialist country, not even during the first wave of proletarian
revolution, when because of the first general crisis of capitalism, the
bourgeoisie itself upset its systems in each country and its system of
international relations and threw the whole world in even two world wars
lasted a total of more than thirty years (1914-1945). This was mainly due to
the fact that Communists did not elaborate the communist world view up to
the task they had to carry out. Bourgeoisie and clergy's interests conspired
with the natural ignorance (that is to say congruent with the nature of the
oppressed classes) in which the ruling classes keep the oppressed classes
("you are not paid to think", "here politics cannot be carried out," etc..
etc..) and with the dogmatism and laziness of many communists even honestly
devoted to the cause of revolution who, however, reduced Marxism to the
exegesis of texts and to a religious faith in the dogmas, while in practical
action, even though heroic, they were following their nose, according to
common sense (that is, within the limits of protests and claiming
struggles). The great influence of the Soviet Union on the communist
movement in the imperialist countries and the aspiration "to do as in
Russia," have helped in this way the theoretical inertia of the communist
movement in the imperialist countries and its own shirking its duties.
What are the main topics on which we base our response?
There are two lines of argument.
1. The thesis of the corruption of the working class in the imperialist
countries contrasts with the facts
The first is that the explanation that rightist and lazy (dogmatic) people
give contrasts with the facts. They use some aspects of reality in a such
one-sided way so that to produce a complete distortion of reality.
Is it true that during the first wave of proletarian revolution, the
bourgeoisie and the clergy have corrupted the workers and popular masses in
the imperialist countries with the superprofits they got from criminal
exploitation of oppressed peoples?
Criminal exploitation of oppressed peoples was and is an undoubted fact of
the world imperialist system: only the first wave of proletarian revolution
has to some extent, for some time, in some countries lessened the criminal
exploitation of oppressed peoples. Even today, while the bourgeoisie bustles
about proclaiming the "economic boom" of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, South Africa) and of other "emerging markets", what really happens in
these countries, leaving out the large differences between them, is a fierce
class differentiation. In each of these countries a handful of new rich
formed. They ensure the cruel enslavement of the masses and the exploitation
of country's natural resources for the benefit of the imperialist
bourgeoisie, to slow down the new general crisis of the world imperialist
system. At the same time the conditions of the mass of the population are
worsening in each of these countries and even old forms and conditions of
life of an important part of the population are destroyed (primitive
accumulation of capital, expulsion of the population from the country,
urbanization and migration).
Anyway, let's consider the history of the popular masses and of the working
class in the imperialist countries along the 140 years since the bourgeoisie
of the French Republic in the spring of 1871 suppressed the Paris Commune,
killing about 23,000 insurgents and deporting about 40,000 (and it was the
second time during the nineteenth century that the bourgeoisie decimated the
population of the proletariat of Paris).
Between the end of the Paris Commune and the outbreak of First World War
(1914), forty three years passed. The conditions of the vast majority of the
masses in the imperialist countries were such that nobody, not even the
right wing of the socialist parties (so then the parties of the conscious
and organized communist movement were called) dared to say that the workers
could and should be consider themselves satisfied. On the contrary, the
right wing was promising that in time conditions would get better. A part of
these rightists, even contradicting themselves, went even so far to urge the
peoples of the colonies to be patient because they would be freed by the
establishment of socialism in Europe (these were roughly the theses of the
Second International, up to the Manifesto of the International Socialist
Congress in Basel - 25th November, 1912).
In August 1914 there began thirty one years of world wars and the Nazi and
Fascist dictatorships, which reduced Europe to a heap of rubble and killed
and maimed tens of millions of people in Europe alone.
The war ended in 1945. From then to now we have had in Europe sixty six
years without large-scale wars at home. The first thirty years (1945-1975:
the "thirty glorious years") were devoted to the reconstruction and
development higher than before the war and with a real improvement in living
and work conditions of the mass of the population of European countries (the
famous conquests wrung from the bourgeoisie in the period of "human face
capitalism"). This was the only period in which the facts might support the
right wing's argument that the socialist revolution in Europe has not been
done because the bourgeoisie had lessened the contradictions of class and
had corrupted (bought) the working class and the popular masses with
concessions on a large scale.
In the mid-70s the bourgeoisie in all European countries (and other
imperialist countries, including the U.S.) has started to eliminate the
conquests of civilization and prosperity that the masses wrung in the past
thirty years. The history of the last thirty six years is contemporary
history. For nearly thirty years, the imperialist bourgeoisie was able to
make gradual the deterioration of popular masses' living conditions in the
imperialist countries with a series of measures hinged upon the Antithetical
Forms of Social Unity(8), upon the financialization of the economy, an
increase of global integration on economic, upon a monetary and financial
level that took advantage of the global supremacy of the U.S. imperialist
bourgeoisie, upon the integration of the first socialist countries in the
imperialist world system, but most of all taking advantage of the corruption
and dissolution of the old communist parties and of mass organizations
(trade unions, etc..) connected to them. The conscious and organized
communist movement has returned to the lowest levels of 150 years ago, on
the negative side with the lessons of the defeat and on the positive side
with the legacy of good ideas, feelings and experience of the first wave of
the proletarian revolution. Taking now into account all the imperialist
countries, we see in each one of them what we see in our country: in no
country there is an authoritative direction (for prestige and for links with
the mass of workers) that has learned the lessons of the first wave of
proletarian revolution, and on this basis is promoting the socialist
revolution. And without a proper direction the socialist revolution cannot
be carried out.
I think that nobody can deny a scenario so outlined. Based on such a
scenario, which support has the thesis that during the first wave of
proletarian revolution, let's say up to 50s of last century, in the
imperialist countries the socialist revolution has not been done because of
the concessions that the bourgeoisie would have done to the masses? Two
world wars and Nazi and fascist dictatorships are the "concessions" that the
bourgeoisie has at that time done to the working class and to the popular
masses of the European countries!
2. What the communist parties of the imperialist countries had not
understood about conditions, forms and results of the class struggle
The second set of arguments is that today, a posteriori, Communists' limits
are clear. We are talking of the limits of the left wing of the communist
movement, that is the part most devoted to the cause and most heroically
dedicated to it, in the understanding of world history and of the laws of
its transformation. We summarize briefly the main ones: their description is
given in detail in other documents of the Party(9).
2.1. The form of the socialist revolution. The socialist revolution, by its
nature is not a revolt of the popular masses that outbreaks and during which
the communists, who better than others represent the interests of the
masses, seize the power and implement the transformation that are in the
interests of the overwhelming majority of population. Also the left wing of
the communist movement more or less clearly conceived the form of socialist
revolution in this way. This is a fact. The discovery announced by Engels in
1895(10) was not taken into account and even less developed in the decades
that followed, until in the international communist movement about 30 years
ago, mainly thanks to the impulse of the Communist Party of Peru, it was
stated that Maoism is the third higher stage of the communist world view:
one of the main contributions of Maoism is the protracted revolutionary
people's war as a universal form of the proletarian revolution (see for
details The Eighth Discriminating Factor in
http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/discr8/firstprt.html or the Manifesto Program
(new) Italian Communist Party in
http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/in080619.html). The revolution did not break
out, and this is another fact. Only a more advanced understanding of the
nature of the socialist revolution, which Engels had paved the way for,
could teach that by its nature the socialist revolution is a protracted war
in which the masses are mobilized on a larger and larger scale gradually led
by the Communist Party.
2.2. The class struggle in the Communist Party and the socialist countries.
The conception of the monolithic party misrepresents and coerce reality and
hinders the development of the party: the party grows and is strengthened by
the two lines struggle in the party. In socialism there is still a ruling
class and the bourgeoisie (the right wing of the ruling class, promoter of
capitalism) is composed mainly of leaders who promote and support solutions
borrowed from the bourgeois society for the problems of the development of
the socialist society. It is unavoidable that the bourgeoisie exercises its
influence in the party: it is so much possible to limit its influence as
better you understand and know it. On this, see Two lines struggle in the
Communist Party in
http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/twolines.html.
2.3. The nature of the economic crisis of capitalism in the imperialist
epoch. The cyclical crises fade in small-amplitude oscillations, which the
bourgeoisie manages through the Antithetical Form Of Social Unity (AFSU)
which has adopted. The general crises of absolute overproduction of capital
take over. They do not allow purely economic solutions, but they are
resolved by the disruption of the complex of the social relations of single
countries and of the international relations system through revolution or
world war.
2.4. The imperialist bourgeoisie fiercely resists the socialist revolution.
To this end, the imperialist bourgeoisie learns, to the extent permitted by
its nature of exploiting class, from the experience of class struggle, and
changes the political regime by which it manages its contradiction with the
working class and with the masses in the imperialist countries. The nature
of the political regime of the imperialist countries is a specific result of
class struggle in bourgeois society: the preventive counter revolution (see
Chapter 1.3.3 of the Manifesto Program.).
During the first wave of the proletarian revolution the conscious and
organized communist movement had not been able to understand any of these
four aspects of reality. They were anyway necessary for the communist
parties to give themselves a right strategy and to be able to choose the
right tactics for making a revolution.
The ignorance of this, not the corruption of the working class and the
popular masses, have so far prevented the establishment of socialism in the
imperialist countries.
Conclusion
The conclusion of this stock we take is that it is possible to make the
socialist revolution and establish socialism in the imperialist countries
both in Europe and in the U.S.A without waiting for the success of the new
democratic revolution in the oppressed countries of the world imperialist
system to deprive the imperialist bourgeoisie of the superprofits it derives
from their exploitation. With this conviction based on science, the new
Italian Communist Party, based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, faces the task of
establishing socialism in Italy so contributing to the second wave of
proletarian revolution which advances all around the world.
In actual fact, we believe that it is difficult for the new democratic
revolution to grow beyond a certain level in the oppressed countries if the
communist movement will not establish socialism at least in some of the
imperialist countries. This is not because the force that the world
imperialist system can mobilize against the revolution in the oppressed
countries is overwhelmingly on the military plan: the war that it has going
on in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya clearly show its limitations. This
is, on the contrary, because the problems met by the Russian, Chinese,
Vietnamese, Cuban, and others Communist Party clearly show how difficult it
is to successfully lead the transition to communism in the oppressed
countries, even after gaining power. Even from here it rises the call we
strongly address to the communist parties of the oppressed countries,
particularly to the most influential ones at the international level, to
"bring the war in imperialist enemy's home", helping the communist parties
of the imperialist countries to promote the new birth of the communist
movement more strongly and speedily.
Instead, we say to the Communists of the imperialist countries that in our
countries there are a lot of people who say they are Communists. They
sincerely believe to be and want to be Communists. The Communists who will
draw the right lessons from the experience of the first wave of proletarian
revolution, although at first will be few, joining their still weak forces
will able to mobilize the many existing Communists and together they will
become an irresistible force and the chaos of the new general crisis of
capitalism, entered its terminal phase, will overturn into its opposite: it
will be the fertile soil from which socialist countries new socialist
countries and the new phase of human history will arise.
Umberto C.
Notes
1. When on the eve of European bourgeois revolution of 1848 Marx and Engels
drew up the Manifesto of the Communist Party, they spent the chapter 3 to
establish clearly the distinctions between Communism as they were
understanding it and the various Communisms and Socialisms propagandized in
the current literature of the time. Today it is necessary we
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communists distinguish clearly the communist
movement we are dealing with, and of which we are members and protagonists,
from Communists and Socialists in fashion. Here we will not do, however, a
detailed examination of the latter. We just indicate two big families: the
socialism of the XXI century and the market socialism.
The propagandists of "socialism of the XXI Century" are using the prestige
of the anti-imperialist movement in Latin America headed by Hugo Chavez to
smuggle shapeless mixtures in which, in different doses in each case, there
are the following ingredients:
1. the not proclaimed denial of the experience of the first socialist
countries and of the heritage of the Communist International (founded in
1919 - formally disbanded in 1943 and dissolved in fact in the late 50s),
which is "only" set aside and ignored in the name of a "real socialism",
about which they are vague in the manner typical of most of the opportunists
and revisionists,
2. to waive the establishment of socialism and the confrontation with
the reactionary forces justified with an assessment of the relations of
force that magnifies the power of the world imperialist system ("the enemy
is too strong, you cannot do more than what Venezuela and Cuba are doing,
etc.. "),
3. the return to a supposed state of nature that each author invents,
adding characters of primitive people he chooses at his will separating them
as he likes from the characters he does not accept but that in fact pertain
to those peoples; the author emphasizes those peoples in the name of the
resistance that they, in the wake of the impulse that the first wave of
proletarian revolution has given to the progress of the classes and
oppressed peoples, have begun to oppose their destruction by the world
imperialist system. Here in Italy, a leading representative of such mixtures
is prof. Luciano Vasapollo, authority in the theoretical work of the Italian
organization Communists' Network.
The supporters of "market socialism" strengthen their position with the
economic and political success of the People's Republic of China and of the
Chinese Communist Party and the still incomplete integration of the PRC in
the world imperialist system. They tout a socialism that is reduced to the
public planned management of economic activity, neglecting the struggle
against the division into classes and against the complex of social
relations, ideas and feelings related to this division and the struggle for
the establishment of socialism worldwide. For these supporters of "market
socialism" is negligible that the PRC and the CCP with the reforms promoted
by Teng Hsiao-ping at the end of the 70s have left 1. in international
relations, every aspiration and attempt to play the role of the red base of
the world proletarian revolution and, 2. inside, the struggle to affirm the
direction of the working class on the basis of public ownership of means of
production. In Italy, exponents of this trend are within the Party of
Communist Refoundation, in the Party of Italian Communists, and elsewhere
2. In this context, the argument about human nature is spread again. Such
argument is an old training ground for metaphysical philosophers and for
priests. Basically all the metaphysical philosophers in one way or another
claim that the human species and all other species were created by god in
the mists of time. According to them, each species has its own character,
fixed and unchanging over time. The species would not transform themselves.
The metaphysical views are contradicted by the discovery and study of the
evolution of species. The existing species arose from other species. In
particular, the human species has undergone major changes over the
millennia, both physically (that is to say, of characteristics observable
and measurable by the instruments and processes of physics, chemistry,
biology and similar sciences) but also in terms of spiritual abilities and
activities of its exponents, of their organization and social activity and
of their organization and their relations with the rest of nature. The
practical value of the disputes of metaphysical philosophers on human nature
is essentially in the support they bring to the argument that Communism is
impossible to achieve because is a system of social relations incompatible
with human nature, which in its turn is something created once and for all
by god and revealed and governed by its priests. We Communists on the
contrary think about human species studying its manifestations and
historical works and reconstructing path and characteristics by this study.
It makes sense to speak of human nature if it is understood as a combination
of characters and abilities that changes over time and is historically
determined.
3. The relationship between the communist world view and the struggle of the
working class for its emancipation from the bourgeoisie has been studied and
described by Lenin in What Has To Be Done?, 1902. In this work Lenin also
denounces the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie which is the origin
of the trends occurring in the communist movement to neglect the communist
world view and to conceive the struggle of the working class on the basis of
the bourgeois conception of the world, reducing it to struggles for claims
and protests. These trends are still one of the two major obstacles to the
new birth of the communist movement: it is the economism of which even
groups that declare themselves Maoists, as Proletari Comunisti [Communist
Proletarians, or Maoist Party of Italy] make a display.
4. In 1852, in a letter dated 5th March to his comrade Joseph Weydemeyer,
Marx summed up his work by saying that what new he had done compared to the
previous science of human society developed by bourgeois intellectuals, was
"to show
1. . that the existence of classes is purely linked to certain
historical phases of development of production;
2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of
the proletariat;
3. that this dictatorship itself is nothing else than the transition
to the extinction of all classes and to a classless society."
5. In this regard, see The Political Order Of Socialist Countries
http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/in090812.html
6. In fact, the Russian Federation still does not fully recognize the
supremacy that the U.S. has gained in the world imperialist system: this
makes it an unusual member of the world imperialist system, in which,
however, it occupies an important place on the economic and political level.
Let's compare the difference between the position of Russia and that of
Germany: a great imperialist country, the largest trading power, etc. but
where, not by chance, substantial U.S. forces, settled more than 60 years
ago, still are stationing. What we say about Germany is also true about
Japan. The Russian Federation and other former socialist countries are still
in the third of three phases through which the first socialist countries
listed in the Manifesto Program of the (n) PCI (see Chap. 1.7.3.).
7. In China the state, local governments and cooperatives' property still
today is more than 80% of the productive forces, however these are measured.
These productive forces are controlled by political authorities as part of a
plan and "the quantity makes quality", although there is an area of
approximately 20% of the productive forces that are privately owned by
Chinese or foreign capitalists. The People's Republic of China after all is
still today in the second of three phases through which the first socialist
countries listed in the Manifesto of the program (n) PCI (Chap. 1.7.3.).
8. The Antithetical Forms of Social Unity, were described by Marx in the
Grundrisse. See Manifesto Program of the (new) Italian Communist Party,
chapter 1.3.4 in http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/in080619.html.
9. I refer in particular to The Four Main Issues To Be Debated In The
International Communist Movement, ( see
http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/f-issues.html) and Let The Communists Of The
Imperialist Countries Unite Their Forces For The Rebirth Of The Communist
Movement (see http://www.nuovopci.it/eile/en/lethecom.html).
10. "The communist movement has not yet embraced the notion that the
revolution does not breaks out, but has to be built as Engels already stated
in 1895 in the Introduction to Class Struggles in France from 1848 to 1850.
Both in the time of Second International and in the time of the Communist
International most of the parties waiting for the revolution to break out
developed activities supporting claiming struggles or propaganda of
socialism. From this there arose the two wrong tendencies that still persist
as the major elements that put a check on the new birth of the communist
movement, that is economism and dogmatism.
We share the conception expressed by Frederick Engels, who stated that
socialist revolution cannot consist of a popular uprising that breaks out
because a combination of circumstances, during which the most advanced party
seizes the power. (.) the socialist revolution is a protracted revolutionary
people's war led by the communist Party one campaign after another, during
which the communist party strengthens and consolidates, collects and forms
the revolutionary forces organizing the advanced elements of the working
class and of the other classes of the popular masses, as well as in its own
ranks, in mass organizations which clump around the party (revolutionary
front), and builds, extends and strengthens step by step a new direction on
broad popular masses, a new power which is opposed to that of the
bourgeoisie and hugs him in a growing vise until it supplants it, as a rule
through a civil war roused by the bourgeoisie when it is with its back on
the wall, grabs the whole country and establishes socialism." (The Four Main
Issues To Be Debated In The International Communist Movement, see Note 9).
