Manuela Maj | CARC Party (Italy)
The struggle of today’s communists
A little more than one hundred years after the October Revolution, the foundation of the Communist International (CI) and the proclamation of the USSR, the second general crisis of capitalism brought the world to a war situation and revolution similar to that of the first half of the last century, escalated by the fact that it is combined with the environmental crisis that has reached a level jeopardizing the survival of the human species and the planet.
The second general crisis has resulted in the Third World War (WWIII): the genocide that Zionists are perpetrating in Palestine and the war they are extending to the Middle East, the US-NATO hybrid war waged against the Russian Federation through the pro-Nazi Kiev regime, the manoeuvres in the Pacific against the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the military operations in Africa and Asia, the dirty war against countries like Cuba, Venezuela and against those states (Iran, Syria, etc.) that do not open their borders to the trafficking of the imperialist groups.
The WWIII is underway and even if it takes place in different forms from the two previous world wars it mainly has the form of a hybrid war. The current war reflects, even in its forms, the collective character that thanks to the development of capitalism, economic activity has now taken in all countries and the role that the popular masses have taken on in political activity. The WWIII is in competition and alternative to the development of the proletarian revolution (socialist and new democratic) promoted by parties, organizations and representatives of the conscious and organized communist movement.
On the eve of the First World War, Lenin provided that either the socialist revolution prevented the war or the communists would transform the war into revolution: this was the case. Today for the communists things are so that or with the establishment of socialism in an imperialist country, even only with the establishment of the People’s Bloc Government for which the Caravan of the (new)ICP, of which the CARC Party is part, is struggling, we make a decisive leap forward to the socialist revolution in imperialist countries―the fire that will free the world from the imperialist system and in this way we stop the extension of the Third World War―or the downward spiral in which the rule of the imperialist bourgeoisie drags the masses of most of the world will just keep getting worse.
Although it has always managed to transform the war into a general leap forward on a world scale the communist movement, however, did not succeed, neither following the WWI nor the WWII, to establish socialism in an imperialist country, except for the Russian Empire, the weakest ring of the imperialist chain. Here is the main reason for the exhaustion of the first world wave of the proletarian revolution (1917-1976). This was the main limit of the action of the communists during the first revolutionary wave: this is the limit we must overcome today.
Socialist revolution in the imperialist countries and new democratic revolution in the countries oppressed by groups and imperialist powers
About this matter in the Italian and international communist movement actually two lines collide.
On the one hand, those who argue that the socialist revolution in imperialist countries is more difficult because, thanks to the over-profits deriving from the exploitation of the oppressed countries, the imperialist bourgeoisie corrupts in various ways the working class and the popular masses of the imperialist countries thus reducing their ability to struggle. From this argument they draw the following conclusions:
– that in the imperialist countries the socialist revolution is impossible or in any case they regulate themselves as if it were impossible and rely on multipolarity (that is, in the fact that the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation by making a common front with each other and with other “rogue states” will induce US imperialists and their complicit to refrain from their attacks) and in the revolution in the oppressed countries;
– that [the socialist revolution in imperialist countries] is possible but only as a result of an “international revolution” (that is, a revolution which wins simultaneously at least in the most important countries), which essentially means arguing that the victory of the socialist revolution is impossible as everyone finds that the class struggle advances in ways and with very different times from country to country, that the real socialist revolution is anything but a synchronized movement between different countries. The argument supported by Stalin is still worth today, which by its nature the socialist revolution normally wins country by country.
On the other hand, those who argue that the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries is certainly a more difficult undertaking than the revolution in the oppressed countries, but it is the decisive issue of the future history of humanity: the issue that will end the imperialist era and will put all the world marching towards communism.
This argument was already expounded by Lenin in the Theses for a Report of the Tactics of the R.C.P. at the Third Congress of the Communist International in July 1921: “We seized the power in Russia not because we were convinced that we could put ourselves at the head of the world socialist revolution, but because we found ourselves in a position to be able to take it and we were sure that seizing power in Russia would help the communists of the most advanced countries to take it, so they would have put themselves at the head of the world socialist revolution. So we seize it and kept it at any cost, to advance the world socialist revolution”. It is the argument that Stalin upholds and develops in Problems of Leninism in January 1926, in the midst of the struggle within the CPSU (Bolsheviks) against the line headed by the “new opposition” whose major representatives were Trotzky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. According to them, given that the communist movement had not been able to establish socialism in the imperialist countries, namely in Europe, it was impossible to build socialism in the USSR: the latter had to reintegrate into the world imperialist system. Stalin opposed the line of the hegemony of the working class which, headed by the communist party, mobilizes and leads all the popular masses―then in the USSR particularly the peasants who constituted a large part of the population―to build socialism.
Stalin explains that it was possible to build socialism in Russia even if the socialist revolution in Europe had not yet won and would not have won in the short term, that the USSR had to be the red base of the world revolution and that only the victory of the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries would guarantee that the victory in Russia would be irreversible. On the contrary, Stalin also clearly pointed out (see The International Character of the October Revolution―1927) that, if the imperialist bourgeoisie took over the USSR, an era of black and unbridled reaction would have happened in the imperialist countries.
Therefore, Stalin distinguished between the victory of the socialist revolution (establishment of socialism) and certainty that the restoration of capitalism is impossible, that the exploiters would not have taken over (final victory of socialism) and stated that, until the socialist revolution has not won in the main countries of the world, there was no guarantee against the restoration of capitalism. Also for this reason the Soviet Union was to be the background, the source of inspiration and support for the revolutionary movement in the imperialist and oppressed countries (a line that modern Soviet revisionists, from Khrushchev onwards, denied since 1956). The performance of the events after the WWII confirmed Stalin’s forecast.
Why is the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries so decisive? In backward countries, the creation of modern productive forces is an unavoidable task of the socialist revolution but in order to fulfil it, once the new democratic revolution is made, the bourgeoisie could and can propose itself in the single countries as an alternative to the working class.
In the imperialist countries there are already modern productive forces. Here the main task of the socialist revolution is to seize power and promote the increasing participation of popular masses in the management of their social life (political, cultural, sporting, recreational, etc. activities: those activities from which the ruling classes have always excluded the oppressed ones) to the point of no longer needing the state, up to the extinction of the state and the end of the division into social classes. The bourgeoisie by its nature cannot propose itself as an alternative to the working class in fulfilling this task: therefore the decisive clash between the working class and the bourgeoisie takes place in the imperialist countries.
Why is the socialist revolution in imperialist countries more difficult? Because the communists must break with the long electoralist (participation in electoral struggles as a way to seize power), economistic (attributing to economic-practical struggles the role of way to seize power) and militarist (attributing to military activity the main and decisive role in every stage of the socialist revolution) tradition and, against dogmatism, they [the communists] outline and implement an action plan that is proper to the particular and concrete circumstances.
The line of popular fronts and the relationship between anti-imperialist struggle, anti-fascist struggle and struggle for the establishment of socialism in the current stage
After the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933) and the connected Fascist offensive throughout Europe, the CI passed from the united front line (which limited itself to the working class) to the popular anti-fascist Front line (extended to all classes, political forces and personalities opposed to Fascism) and the popular Front’s government. This line, developed and implemented during 1934 and approved by the 7th and last Congress of the CI (July-August 1935), is expounded in the report The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism presented by Dimitrov (Secretary General of the CI from 1935 until its dissolution in 1943). It clearly illustrates what the communists had to do to advance towards the establishment of socialism through 1. the mobilization of the popular masses against the reactionary and anti-popular measures of the bourgeoisie, 2. the mobilization of the popular masses to prevent the most reactionary and criminal faction of the bourgeoisie established Fascism, by leveraging precisely on the discontent and the rebellion of the popular masses themselves, 3. the fight against the beginning of the world war in which the imperialist bourgeoisie was again involving the whole world.
Dimitrov’s report outlines to the communists of each country the task of fighting wholeheartedly against the effects of the anti-popular measures of the bourgeoisie―an indispensable means of preventing Fascism and world war―and the task of preventing the coalition of imperialist powers against the USSR. The Popular Front had to be in each country the tool to create these two tasks.
What were the results of the application of this line? The USSR led by the CPSU headed by Stalin took advantage of the contradictions within the imperialist bourgeoisie and prevented that the coalition of imperialist powers was consolidated around Nazi Germany. The work of the CI and the USSR could not avoid world war, but brought France, Great Britain and even the USA to take sides against the Fascist axis composed by Germany, Italy and Japan. The French, British and US imperialist groups, as long as Nazi Germany marched towards the aggression of the Soviet Union, had allowed Nazi Germany to rearm itself, to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia and to extend its influence throughout Eastern Europe including Poland and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries and even in Spain. But in September 1939, when Germany instead of attacking the Soviet Union shares the Fascist Poland with USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, August 13 1939), France and Great Britain only could declare war on Germany. Thus they began a new inter-imperialist war and when in June 1941 Germany launched the aggression to the USSR, the imperialist powers could no longer join it but they join forces with the USSR, even though [Great Britain and USA] fluttered until the end the possibility of a reversal of the alliances.
The USSR took over the Nazi-fascist aggression and promoted throughout Europe a wide armed mobilization of popular masses against Nazi-fascism (Resistance). The Red Army freed Germany from the Nazi army, in the countries of Eastern Europe People’s Republics were formed, headed by the forces that had guided the resistance to Nazi-fascist occupation, the anti-imperialist revolution of national liberation spread to Asia and Africa until the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and to take such roots in Vietnam that neither France nor the US managed to eradicate. The prestige of the USSR and socialism became great all over the world. But in none of the imperialist countries the communist party established socialism and in Latin American and the Caribbean countries the revolutionary movements seize the power only in Cuba and in a less solid extent in Nicaragua. Thanks to the role played in single countries and all over the world by the conscious and organized communist movement, the popular masses of the colonial countries wrenched political independence and, in the imperialist countries, they wrenched great gains of civilization and well-being that only since the 70s the bourgeoisie has begun gradually to eat into.
What made all the communist parties of the imperialist countries powerless to establish socialism? Already Lenin in 1922 (Notes of a Publicist) pointed out that transforming “the old type of European parliamentary party―which in fact is reformist and only slightly tinted with revolutionary colours―into a new type of party, into a genuinely revolutionary, genuinely communist party” would be “a possible but extremely arduous one”. The CI tried to reach this purpose but neither “Bolshevization” (launched in the 5th Congress―1924) nor the Popular Front line made the necessary leap to the CPs of the imperialist countries, although rich in heroic fighters. What was missing in these parties was the ability, even of the most committed representatives to the cause of the socialist revolution, to translate the general line developed internationally into strategy and tactics aiming to the establishment of socialism in their own country. The limit was not national, given that none of the CPs of the imperialist countries made the necessary leap. Maoism provides the key to understanding it.
Mao Zedong, an advocate of the Popular Front line that applied in the victorious leadership of the revolution in China, already in 1938 made it clear that the Communist Party of China (CPC) would not follow the policy “All through the front” declared by the French Communist Party regarding the implementation of the Popular Font line and also followed by Spanish, Italian and other countries CPs. Mao declares and explains that the CPC had to participate loyally and wholeheartedly in the anti-Japanese united front with the Kuomintang and all the forces that were mobilizing in the resistance to Japanese occupation, but that the CPC had to maintain its freedom of initiative to do also what the others Front organizations did not and give an example to those who wanted to contribute with more strength and to a level higher than the common struggle against Japanese occupation.
The bankruptcy implementation of the Popular Front line by the CPs of the imperialist countries is not due to the betrayal of some leaders, but to the limits not exceeded even by the best leaders of these parties in the understanding of the conditions of the class struggle and the form of the revolution socialist in the imperialist countries. What are these limits? The main ones are three and precisely deal with the trend of economic activities, the nature of political systems, the form of the socialist revolution:
1. nature of the economic crisis of imperialist societies (cyclical crisis or crisis due to absolute overproduction of capital, therefore crises that, even born from the economy, become general and have no solutions on economic ground like cyclical crises, but flows into political sphere: war is the solution of the last instance to which the imperialist bourgeoisie resorts to cope with the crisis;
2. nature of political regimes of imperialist countries (“bourgeois democracy” or regime of preventive counter-revolution: CI recognized and cope with terror regimes established by bourgeoisie, but it didn’t understand that regimes of “democratic” countries became regimes of preventive counter-revolution);
3. form of socialist revolution in the imperialist countries (a revolution that breaks out or popular revolutionary war: it was granted among CI’s parties that the working class would seize the power violently, but forms where gathering, training and accumulation of revolutionary forces would occur and the idea of a gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to communism still smolder in the CPs of the imperialist countries and all this saw the light of the day after the 1956 turning point).
Using the lessons of the past to advance the socialist revolution today. The new general crisis of capitalism that began in the 70s of the last century entered 2008 in its stark and terminal stage. In each of the imperialist countries and internationally the political systems of the imperialist bourgeoisie are in crisis. Popular masses are tortured in all fields by the economic, social, environmental and health crisis. Their resistance to the effects of the crisis not yet directed by the communist movement is expressed in struggles, fronts and claiming groups, electoral or mixed. The Caravan of the (new)ICP is based on this resistance, supports these struggles. But in these ones we mainly aim to promote the formation of workers and popular organizations and we guide them to coordinate themselves and to oppose the measures of the bourgeois authorities until making impossible to the bourgeoisie to rule the country and force it to swallow the establishment of a government (we call it a People’s Bloc Government), formed by people who enjoy the trust of workers and popular organizations.
In some respects, a similar government will be similar to Popular Front governments formed in the 1930s in Spain and France and the governments that arose in Italy and France from the victory of the resistance against Nazi-fascism. Also the line of clandestinity of (new)ICP and the link between two linked communist parties (the underground (n)ICP and the public CARC Party) that the Caravan of the (new)ICP implements is linked to the conception of the form of the socialist revolution and to the summation that we draw from the experience of the communist movement.
With the line of the People’s Bloc Government, the Caravan of the (new)ICP aims 1. to the rebirth of the communist movement and 2. to the gathering of the working class and, in its wake, other classes of the popular masses, around the communist party. We do not aim to create an alternative to socialism nor an intermediate social system between capitalism and socialism: the establishment of the People’s Bloc Government is a stage of the popular revolutionary war against the imperialist bourgeoisie that will end with the establishment of socialism. We pursue the two objectives of this stage starting from the conditions in which we find ourselves, that is: 1. the communist party has still very little followers and low influence between the working class and 2. the sincere but non-communist opponents (the bourgeois left) of the Grand Coalition has more followers and influence than the communists among the most popular masses. With the People’s Bloc Government line we aim to create a situation in which the sincere but non-communist opponents of the Grand Coalition rule the country on behalf of the organized popular masses, against the Grand Coalition and in general against the institutions of the International Community of US imperialists, Zionists and Europeans (NATO, EU, etc.).
The People’s Bloc Government line learns a lesson from the limits with which the Popular Front line was applied by CPs in imperialist countries, in the sense that it answers to three problems that they left unsolved:
– how to move from struggles and protests to a socialist government;
– how to use for revolutionary purposes the situations in which the ruling class, due to the escalation of the crisis and popular mobilization, is unable to keep the continuity of its political system (of the government, of the guidance of the public administration, etc.) and is forced to give up, adopting the government solution that is possible for the bourgeoisie;
– what purpose we have to set regarding the bourgeois state and the functions it performs in imperialist countries (that is how we concretely apply the slogan “the bourgeois state must be overthrown, it does not change”).
Claims, complaints and protests are indispensable and useful to raise the resistance and struggles of the popular masses, but we must guide them towards a goal of power, i.e. towards the establishment of their own government and creating the conditions to be able to take advantage of them and coming to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In certain moments it is possible to the communist party to enter the palace of power: you have to enter, rely on the organized forces of the popular masses and their mobilization to throw out saboteurs and die-hard and gain further positions of power in order to put the ruling class with its back to the wall: either he gives everything up or, rather than giving everything up, it resorts to the civil war and its foreign allies.
This is the conclusion to be drawn from participation to Popular Front governments and, in Italy, to the National Liberation Committee’s governments during the first wave of the proletarian revolution. As for Italy, in 1944-1947 the ICP and the progressive parties belonging to the National Liberation Committee rightly entered the government. The error lays in the fact that they did not benefit from it to gain further positions of power, to purge the state structure, to change the currency, to take the reconstruction of the economic system in their hand, etc. It’s not a matter that they couldn’t do it: they didn’t even propose it. Instead, they adapted to the measures that the bourgeoisie pushed the government to take. This is why at the end of the day the participation in the government helped the ruling class to overcome its difficult moment and, once the situation was taken up, it threw out the communist parties from the government or they adapted and transformed.
At the same time, the communist line to seize power and “to overthrow the bourgeois state” must take into account the functions currently carried out by the state. The state, in Italy and in other imperialist countries, is not the state of the pre-imperialist stage (the one Marx and Engels dealt with) or Russia of 1917 (the one Lenin dealt with).
In imperialist countries it performs much wider functions: it is the owner of a public economy sector, it manages vast services (education, health, waste disposal, networks, transport, etc.), chairs the management of the monetary, banking system and most of the economic system, has a public administration (which in Italy is made up of 5.1 million employees and more in the total of 25 million workers).
The best representatives, groups and organizations of the conscious and organized communist movement of our country aspire to a “strong and with clear ideas” communist party. The experience showed that a communist party becomes strong all the more it has the right and clear ideas. So the fundamental thing is that it has right and clear ideas.
The interests of the popular masses contrast more and more with what the bourgeoisie tries to make them do, with the ideas that it tries to promote among them, with the feelings it tries to arouse in them. We the communists must bring the masses to have a conduct accordingly with their own interests and gradually promote ideas and feelings corresponding to their own interests. The socialist revolution is not spontaneous. It is up to us the communists to learn to progress it. The rebirth of the communist movement, in particular of the communist movement of the imperialist countries, is the decisive factor: it is the factor that determines the times of the transformation that will end the disaster in which the imperialist bourgeoisie is sinking humanity. Or by promoting the proletarian revolution we put an end to the war or taking advantage of the development of the war we accelerate the proletarian revolution.