Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.13

 

 

“LE PROLÉTAIRE”/”IL COMUNISTA”: SPEARHEAD OF OPPORTUNIST DEGENERATION

 

 

Scheme of work

The immediate motivation of this work is a 1989 article republished by "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" at the end of 2023 on the Palestinian national question and another article published by their epigone in Spanish, "El Proletario", which criticizes an internationalist stance published and distributed by our Party in October 2023.

Since this is the umpteenth occasion in which the Spanish epigone of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" attempts to falsify our positions and origins, the development of this work will lead us to a broader field, which will be structured as follows: we will begin by characterizing "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" and make evident their history, we will continue with the characterization of their specific opportunism on the national question and we will end by going through the critique they make of our Party positions to show how their positions were and are those of the revisionist new course.

 

The degeneration of "il programma comunista"

On page 11 of the first issue of "El Comunista" (nueva edición[1]), May 1983, with which we resumed the publication of the Party magazine in Spanish, we published some modest but sufficient notes with the title “La degeneración de programma comunista y nuestra batalla” [2] that summarize the historical causes of that degeneration, the main external manifestations of the process and the decision to break with the formal discipline of an organization that no longer represented the historical thread of the Party. These notes were not a "local" elaboration of the Spanish section but had been published by the comrades of the Schio section in February 1983 as part of the international effort to maintain the continuity of the Party outside the degenerated formal organization.

We had been expelled first substantially – as had been expelled the positions of the Left in general by the so-called new course – and, because of this, we decided to break the formal discipline that for Marxists means nothing if it is not linked to the continuity of the line and to the unity of doctrine-program-tactics; which did not prevent the direction from pretending our formal "expulsion" in a disciplinary act in a vacuum.

The subsequent confirmation that the direction of this formal organization no longer represented the historical thread of the Party was not long in coming. That direction against whose degeneration we had fought our battle successively exploded into fragments a few months later: in October 1982 (when El-Oumami, Proletarier and the Parisian center of the Party, the same one that a few months before acted disciplinarily against us, broke away on an ever more activist basis); in June 1983 when the openly democratic "internal debate" is given free rein and a part of the editors steps aside; in January 1984 when the latter part (which had been displaced in practice well before June 1983) recovered the publication through the court and the other part began to publish "Combat"; in 1985 when "il Comunista" detaches from "Combat" and merges with "le Prolétaire".

It is important to note that our No. 1 of May 1983 was issued prior to the quarrel for the control of "il programma comunista" starting in June 1983 between the different variants of the new course that had not openly declared themselves liquidationist of the formal wrapping of the Party and describes them all.

It is with this last fragment detached from the hyperactivism of "Combat" and recombined with "le Prolétaire" that we have to deal today. Let's start by synthetically recalling who we are talking about, for those who don't know.

  

 "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" and the new course

There have always been repeated efforts from "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" to dissimulate their origins and to rewrite their role in the degeneration of the Party during the 70's which intensified until the breaking into fragments of the already degenerated center in 1982-83, trying to blur with their "assessments" the trace of its real role in that degenerative crisis. This is why it is important to speak clearly about its genesis and real origins, even if we must limit ourselves here to a few indications.

The current editors of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" come, with complete continuity, from that movementist, activist, revisionist and nationalist mud of the new course with which they flooded the International Communist Party of activism, interclassism and democratism, expelling and isolating those who opposed this revisionist line, until they finally exploded themselves successively into fragments in late 1982 and subsequent years.  

Against this new course several sections in France and Italy and the bulk of the Spanish section reacted. The latter resumed the publication of the review "El Comunista", since May 1983, with the indicative “nueva edición" to distinguish it clearly from the preceding period in which correct articles were intermingled with important deviations whose publication was imposed from Milan or Paris.

In the next issue of the review we will publish some additional notes on this degenerative process and our battle (which was not the only one) against it to illustrate its development, how the direction was modifying the line, methods and positions of the Party, against the resistance opposed by the old militancy in defense of the continuity of the communist program, until they managed to break it; that is, what physiognomy the new course had.

 

The itinerary of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista"

In France, one can easily observe by looking at the issues of "le Prolétaire" of the years 1983 and 1984 (and those immediately before and after), how, after the abandonment of the Paris Center (taking away archives and funds, trying to liquidate the Party to the ground, something that we will also deal with in its place), the group that took over the publication of "le Prolétaire" continued completely immersed in the movementist morass in which the ex-Parisian Center left them orphaned in 1982. It is not one of the groups that fought against the new course or that were opposed to the drift of the Parisian or Milanese Centers, but a group in solidarity with that drift of the Center to which it kept on giving continuity, even managing to worsen it as we will see later, with the shout of "Palestine will win" and "Down with the Zionist State of Israel" (le Prolétaire, No. 374, September 1983, p. 7).

In Italy, the group that currently publishes "il Comunista" was part of the Italian Center during the years prior to 1983 and is co-responsible for the drift of the new course in the whole previous period. It is, moreover and in particular, that which allowed the legal publication of the most nauseating issues of "il Programma Comunista" (starting in July 1983) and who then created "Combat", on the one hand, and, on the other, the first series of "il Comunista". So that the reader can follow the trace, despite the time that has passed since then, it can be checked that the name of the current "Redattore-capo" and holder of the account for money orders of "il Comunista" (R.d.P.) appears as "Direttore responsabile" of "il Programma Comunista" from No. 13/1981 (after the announcement of the expulsion of the Ivrea section) together with the one who had been and then continued to be "Redattore-capo" of that review (B.M., now deceased). It can be observed that in issue No. 8/1983 the latter disappears and only the current "Redattore-capo" of "il Comunista" remains in the role of "Direttore responsabile" of "il Programma Comunista". This situation lasts for issues No. 9 and No. 10 of 1983, published under the responsibility of the current "Redattore-capo" of "il Comunista" including issue No. 11 of 1984, where it is finally announced that the review will be published from that moment on under the name of "Combat".

It is known that the group that currently controls the review "il Programma Comunista" managed to recover it through the bourgeois courts, a profound political error that has since served as a perfect expiatory talisman for the current group of "il Comunista" to hide behind this cover its responsibility in the entire previous process, in the period from July 1983 to January 1984 and in the subsequent legalization of "Combat".

Indeed, the reader will promptly find again the current "Redattore-capo" of "il Comunista" as "Direttore-responsabile" and responsible for the account for money orders of the new publication of the movementist hyperactivism called "Combat" whose subtitle was "newspaper for the international communist party", no longer an organ of the international communist party. The contact address of "Combat" and of "il Comunista", detached in 1985 from "Combat", are the same. The account for money orders is also kept, always under the name of R.d.P. The organizational continuity is complete: same physical contact address, same account for money, same responsible director. The attentive reader will also find the name of the current "Direttore responsabile" of "il Comunista" in analogous functions in the first series of "il Comunista", which is also not presented as a Party organ.

So far, we have been able to follow the line "il programma comunista" => "il programma comunista" (explicit democratic centralism) => "Combat" => "il Comunista", in their legal responsible. Let’s now see this same line in their political positions.

In "il Comunista", No. 175 (and in El Proletario No. 28, but not in "le Prolétaire") an article entitled "40 years since the reconstitution of the class Party" was published, a deceitful article if ever there was one, where they try to remove the responsibility of their actions and place the new course as of June 1983 when they had been practicing it for years from the direction and also participated in it even after June 1983. But the trace can be followed and UNMASK those who try to backtrack on their steps to erase it.

In that article, although they actually vindicate their actions within what according to themselves is "what was left of the Party in Italy (Combat)" (il Comunista, No. 175, El Proletario No. 28), they excuse themselves by saying that in reality they did not share the positions of the publications they legalized: "In fact, the comrades who were formally the "commercial owners" and "responsible editors" of the party press [they are talking about themselves, ed.] did not always necessarily share the party's positions. This applies to the issues of Il programma comunista from July 7, 1983 to January 11, 1984, as well as the later "Combat" from February to December 1984 (review whose direction we never shared)." (il Comunista, No. 175, El Proletario No. 28) [3].  They legalized the review Combat, which is not even presented as a review of the Party but for the Party (consistently with their liquidationist position), they were holders of the account where the contributions were received, they still consider Combat as "what was left of the Party"... but they explain to the world that they never shared it!

We believe that "il Comunista" (exCombat) is either mocking its readers or truly believes that they will swallow anything. But, even if they did manage to convince anyone, how could one qualify someone who agrees to be the key player in the publication of one of the worst series of distortions and falsifications of the Sinistra and of Marxism?

Moreover, "il Comunista" may not remember that in its No. 1 of 1985 (with the indication "Anno III/Nuova serie" to denote its continuity with the first series) they affirmed in their article entitled "Perchè il comunista" (Why "il Comunista"?): "After the common struggle against the movementist liquidationism and the persistent waitism ["attendista" in Italian, derived from "attendere", to be waiting, ed.] (as documented in the "programma comunista" from October '82 to June '83, then partly continued in the same review and later in "combat"), and the common attempt to react to the crisis by accepting the challenge thrown by the events outside and inside the organization, the "Italian" section was split."  [4].

We warn the reader not to take for granted the facts described by "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat) in this or other of their quotations that we will have to mention. What has been said does not diminish the value that their own manifestations may have, in order to define themselves.

In 1985 they defined as a common struggle and attempt the period from October 1982 to June 1983 of "il Programma Comunista", continued later in the same review and in Combat, leaving that organization only after one year had passed. In 2023 they say that they never shared the direction of those publications, legalized by themselves. Or worse, "they did not necessarily always share", an ambiguous and twisted formulation that allows altering, modulating and adjusting selectively and according to convenience the past when necessary.

In the same issue No. 1 of 1985 (Anno III/Nuova serie) they published an article entitled "A che cosa ci richiamiamo" (What we reclaim ourselves to) in which, after quoting the classic content of "What distinguishes our Party" that heads the Party publications since 1952 (and which, incidentally, they modified in theirs since 2005 with another wording), they added the following: "The line – we add with more energy and in reference to the crisis that has recently shaken the party – that goes from the struggle to ENTER INTO CONTACT WITH THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS and the class and contribute to the rebirth of a class current independent of collaborationism to the battle against anti-party liquidationism whether waitist, academic or movementist and contingentist". (il Comunista, No.1 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, p. 3). [5]

To better understand the significance of this statement added "with more energy", we have to follow the trace to go back a little in time. In "il Comunista", No. 2 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, p. 21, we can read the following statement concerning their determination to assess the crisis of the Party: "This work began already in October '82, with the preparation of the general meeting of Milan, whose immediate results can be read in No. 20 of October 29, 1982, of "programma comunista”, and in the following issues." ("il Comunista", No. 2 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, p. 21) [6].

Well then, let's read that issue of "il programma comunista" and more specifically "Le questioni poste dalla crisi nel nostro partito nel rapporto del centro italiano alla riunione di Milano del 17 ottobre 1982" (The questions posed by the crisis of our party in the report of the Italian center to the Milan meeting of October 17, 1982), indicated by "il Comunista" as a reference of the beginning of its political work.

At that time, the Algerian section, the German section, part of the French section including its Center had just formally left the Party, considering that the Left had an original flaw that prevented the Party from participating in the "social movements" in which they wanted to participate and, in fact, were participating.

In that article/report, the current editors of "il Comunista" (exCombat), along with others, wrote: "How has this crisis developed, that sees comrades who depart from the same exigency, the intervention in social contradictions under the guidance of a tactical line linked to our political and tactical principles, opposed to each other?" (il programma comunista, No. 20/1982, p. 2). [7]

It is truly symptomatic the way in which "il Comunista", sorry, we mean the Milanese Center of the time, asks this question, even to the point of candor. Those who were abandoning the Party and trying to formally liquidate it in the process were their comrades, they agreed with them, they had been liquidating the line of the Party from within for years and plunging it into the swamp of interclassism, but they wanted to go faster and they were hindered by the wrapping, they did not want to wait.

The answer given by the Center to its own question is: "No doubt, this was due to a delay in the resolution of this problem, which was manifested in a differentiated way on an international scale." (il programma comunista, No. 20/1982, p. 2). [8]

We thought then and we still think today together with so many comrades within the Party who opposed the new course that the solution of our tactical action was solved in the Theses and in the rest of the fundamental texts of the Party. But these tactical limits were too "narrow" for the new course:

"Indeed, our activity of intervention in the struggles, for years, has been limited to the level of trade union demands. This is quite true. But this field, the problems it posed, its obvious narrowness, made us recognize the need to broaden our vision, made us discover all the other "practical" fields, and these fields – the women's question, housing, anti-militarism, repression and whatever other manifestation of social contradictions – gave us new weapons and greater security to approach the trade union demands struggle proper." (il programma comunista, No. 20/1982, p. 5) [9].

We are witnessing the new course, a revisionist line with respect to the previous positions of the Left and with respect to the previous action of the Party, which admits having "broaden its vision" and "discovered" new "practical" fields and "new weapons" but which considers that the revision must be done more slowly and above all in a more camouflaged way, without renouncing the formal wrapping of the Party.

They conclude: "For this reason, while understanding the "exigencies" of anyone who speaks to us about "social movement", while sharing the assessment that we are facing a decisive moment in our history, we draw the opposite conclusion to the liquidationist one: from our past history, from our mistakes, in addition to the doctrinal baggage that we have never seen as a recipe book, we draw the food to move forward with determination". (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, p. 5)[10].

Thus, reiterating their identity in terms of participation in "social movements", moved by a "haste" product of an incorrect assessment of the historical situation that led to sacrifice everything to overcome the "delay", the new course claims freedom from doctrinal baggage (this is what the phrase "doctrine is not a recipe book" means in their mouth) and when they speak about mistakes they do not mean the intervention in interclassist movements but not having done it earlier...

Even more expressive is the internal document preceding the article, the minutes of the meeting of 17.10.1982 issued by the degenerated Center at the time, in which one can read “"1) Define the sense of the rupture. Not between a backward and an advanced part, but between comr. which are aware of a series of exigencies (from the program to the p. of rev. action). The basic divergence between them: in order to do so, to break or to continue. UCI [Ufficio Centrale Italiano, the Italian center, ed.] divided, but responsibility of the undersigned and of E. [current "Redattore capo" of "il Comunista" (exCombat), then part of the degenerated center, ed.] to go ahead, even if as "administrators of the bankruptcy".

2) Distinction between the positions of El Oumami and those of the other comr. El Oumami makes a series of criticisms which seem justified to us and throws us a challenge which we have decided to accept. The problem of the international organization: lack of a real program of political action". (Minutes of the meeting of 17.10.1982) [11].

Going back to No. 20, where the content of these minutes was transferred to the article/report, the formal liquidationists are given a voice by reproducing at length the speech given at the meeting by their representative. If the question we have seen above is even naive, the answer of the one leaving is as crude as significant: "I don't accept the direction's mea culpa speech" (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, p. 5) [12].

The liquidationists who formally left the Party in October 1982 and those who remained in its direction shared the "discovery" of the "exigencies" of the "social movement" and of its "new weapons", they only disagreed on whether to liquidate the Party's formal wrapping or to keep it.

But within the Party there was also a strong opposition – above all in the sections of the Party with more working class presence, although not only and in no case from a workerist point of view – against this change of course that had been operated by internally liquidating in the previous years the tradition of the Left, although the rhythm of the liquidation left the most hasty among the revisionists of the new course unsatisfied.

From an opposite perspective, the sections in the South of France, Turin and Ivrea had been anti-organically expelled in the spring of the previous year, 1981, because of their opposition to the new course.  In defense of the continuity of the positions of the Left, the bulk of the Spanish section had broken with the degenerate centers of Paris and Milan in January of that year, in 1982. It would not be long before the Schio, Benevento-Ariano and Torre Annunziata sections also left the formal organization, considering that it had degenerated into activism, as "il programma comunista" No. 1/1983 would announce. We will return elsewhere to the vicissitudes and difficulties of the task of keeping up the international activity by the sections and militants who had opposed the new course, of the different paths taken by some of these sections, and of the organizational continuity that we kept and keep with a part of these comrades.

In "il Comunista" No. 33, 1992, the inheritors of the new course themselves narrate the previous resistance offered by the ensemble of Party militants from multiple sections who opposed the revision of the Party's approaches, of the theoretical, programmatic and tactical line of the Communist Left, that is, who opposed the new course represented then – along with others – by the current editors of "il Comunista" (exCombat).   

"For this part of the comrades, every decision taken outside of what and how had "already been done" before, every interest in questions in the field of political and theoretical criticism that had not been addressed and resolved with firm theses and points before (by the current party or by the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s), took on the appearance of a danger or even an attempt to deviate the party and invalidate its theoretical and political capacity.

Against such a view – which gradually became characterized as an all-out defense of what, not so much the communist left as a political current, but of the Italian left in particular and especially of the person Amadeo Bordiga, had said written done, without actually understanding the profound lessons of the class battles waged by the communist left – an internal political struggle developed, led in particular by the Center through the effort to reframe the problems of today and the differences of the historical situation without losing the thread of those class battles.

This circular of March 1976, like others before and after it, is part of this internal political struggle. (...) From this point of view, this circular marks a point in favor, if one may so express it, in the struggle both against the party conservatism unfortunately well rooted in the organization, and against that theoretical arrogance mixed with a verbal wishful thinking but practical immobility characteristic of the anti-dialectics attached to a mystical vision of the party, of the class struggle, of the proletariat and its movement, of revolution, of communism". (Premessa a la circolare of 1976, published in "il Comunista", No. 33, 1992, p. 9) [13].

We would like to recall at this point that we do not accept the characterization that "il Comunista" makes of the facts or of the participants, but we bring out their description insofar as what they say in it describes themselves.

In this sense the reader will note that "il Comunista" (exCombat) admits, in a clear way, that they carried out an internal political struggle to "reframe the problems of today" (?) against the old militants within the Party, that in this struggle against the "conservatism" (!) and the "theoretical arrogance" (!) of the Party, they introduced within the Party a series of tactical approaches that were extraneous to the approaches of the texts of the Party but they encountered a strong resistance that took the form of a fierce defense of the unity of doctrine, program and tactics that distinguishes the Italian Communist Left.

This is one of the many admissions of yesterday's new course that today publishes "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista", admission of the revisionism that the updaters and enhancers tried to impose through the internal political struggle against the sections of the Party that defended the continuity of the approaches of the Party and of the Left.

After this kind of admission, it is really surprising that they continue to present themselves as keepers of the Party and that in "il Comunista" No. 178 (August, 2023, p. 1) they have the impudence to affirm, in a tone close to being pathetic and exploiting the overused name of a well-known comrade, to ask for economic contributions: "We are a very small organization, closely linked to the experience of the Communist Left of Italy and the work of theoretical restoration of Marxism that the comrades of the Left who have not thrown in the towel and who have not sold out to Stalinism have resumed, under the direction given by Amadeo Bordiga, both theoretical and political and organizational activity by reknitting the thread of time of the proletarian and revolutionary communist movement" [14].

"Le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" should add, we are in fact the ones who wanted to destroy that experience and fought with internal political struggle against those who defended it within the Party.

 

Aside: what the Party "had said"

Against the revisionism of the new course of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (ex-Combat) and its internal political struggle against "party conservatism", we reproduce a series of fundamental quotations which form part of the core of the theoretical restoration carried out by the Party:

"Now, since it is imposed on us ultimately to be clear, simple and concise, like those polemicists supplied in series to the "cadres", let us be so.

Let us take the side of the DOGMATISTS, of the TALMUDISTS, and also of the SCHOLASTICS and even of the PEDANTS; let us take up the defense of a Marxism that never creates anything new and constitutes a CONSTELLATION OF PRECISE UNBREAKABLE THESIS, and let us resolutely refuse unguibus et rostro, to hand it over as prey to those who want to enrich it, CLAIMING IT AS RIGID AND POOR AS IT HAS BEEN BORN (…)" (Dialogue with the Dead, 1956).

"Death of individualism

It is not possible for the proletarian class party to govern itself in the good revolutionary direction if the confrontation of the agitation material with the STABLE and NON-MUTATING BASES of the theory is not total.

The questions of contingent action and future program are but two dialectical sides of the same problem, as so many interventions by Marx until his death, and by Engels and Lenin (April Theses, October Central Committee!) have shown.

Those men neither improvised nor revealed, but wielded the compass of our action, from which it is all too easy to deviate.

It clearly shows the danger, and our questions are happily addressed when going against the wrong general directions. Formulas and terms may be falsified by traitors and by the deficient, but THEIR USE IS ALWAYS A COMPASS WHEN IT IS CONTINUOUS AND CONCORDANT." (The Revolutionary Program of Communist Society Eliminates All Forms of Property of Land, of Production Facilities and of the Products of Labor, 1958).

"Consequently, the problem of the party's praxis is not that of knowing the future, which would be too little, nor that of wanting the future, which would be too much, but that of ‘PRESERVING [15]the line of the future of its own class.’

It is clear that, if the movement does not know how to study it, to learn it and to know it, it will not even be in a position to PRESERVE it. It is no less clear that if the movement does not know how to distinguish between the will of the constituted and enemy classes and its own, the game is lost, and the line is lost. The communist movement is not a question of pure doctrine; it is not a question of pure will: however, the lack of doctrine paralyzes it, the lack of will paralyzes it. And lack means absorption of alien doctrines, of alien wills." (Prometeo, Property and Capital, Chapter XVII, Utopia, Science, Action, 1952).

"The disinfection to which we devote ninety percent of our poor work will only be completed in a long future and will continue long after us: it is that which fights the epidemic of all places and all times (everywhere and always dangerous) of revisers, updaters, contemplators and innovators.

It is useless and harmful to specify or personalize, and to search in the distance or in the vicinity for the launcher of the bacteriological bombs; it is a matter of individualizing the virus and applying the antibiotic, which we stubbornly distinguish in the continuity of the line, in the fidelity to the principles, in preferring nine hundred and ninety-nine times over a thousand the CATECHIST REMASTICATION to the adventure of the new scientific discovery that requires eagle wings, and to which every mosquito feels called by destiny.

So let the angry flyers, whom we bring back frigidly and little by little to the modest altitude to which we are allowed to soar, be concerned, we who are forbidden all heroism and all romance, who stick to irony instead of lyricism and are forced from time to time to turn back the fieriest: Do not play the Phaethons!

Therefore, while too many have the hysteria of sublime calculation, we catalog them at the level of the abacus, and verify whether they know how to count on the tips of their fingers." (The Marxism of the stammerers, Battaglia Comunista, No. 8-1952).

"The main objective of our discussions – in which it is indispensable to CONTINUALLY REPEAT certain claims of the fundamental "theorems", and better if it is WITH THE SAME WORDS AND PHRASES – is the critique of the DELUSION ABOUT "UNFORESEEN" FORMS and deformities of the most modern capitalism that would force to revise the bases of "prospective" and therefore of the Marxist method.

Such a false position is easily put in relation to the ignorance, or rather to never having known, the essential lines of our doctrine, of its cardinal principles". (Soul of the Steam Horse, il Programma Comunista No. 5,1953).

"At the base of the relationship between militant and party there is a commitment; we have of that commitment a conception that, to get rid of the unpleasant contractual term, we can simply define as dialectic. The relationship is double, it constitutes a double flow in opposite directions, from the center to the base and from the base to the center; if the action directed from the center responds to the good functionality of this dialectic relationship, then the healthy reactions of the base will respond to it.

The problem, therefore, of the famous discipline consists in placing on the base militants a system of limits that is the intelligent reflection of the LIMITS placed on the action of the leaders. We have therefore always maintained that they MUST NOT HAVE THE FACULTY at important turning points in the political conjuncture TO DISCOVER, INVENT AND UNLEASH PURPORTED NEW PRINCIPLES, NEW FORMULAS, NEW NORMS FOR THE ACTION OF THE PARTY. It is in the history of these SURPRISE BLOWS that the shameful history of the betrayals of OPPORTUNISM is summarized.” (Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle, 1947).

"6. Not being, then, conceivable abrupt returns of the masses to a functional organization of revolutionary attack, the best result that the coming time can give is the RE-PROPOSITION of the true proletarian and communist objectives and demands, and the reaffirmation of the lesson that any tactical improvisation that changes from situation to situation pretending to exploit unexpected data from them is DEFEATISM.

7. The stupid currentism-activism that adapts gestures and movements to the immediate data of today, true party existentialism, must be replaced by the reconstruction of the solid bridge that links the past to the future and whose broad lines the party dictates to itself once and for all, PROHIBITING gregarious but ABOVE ALL LEADERS from the tendentious search and DISCOVERY OF 'NEW PATHS'.". (Theory and Action, Forlì Meeting, December 1952).

These and no other are the unwavering positions of the "Italian" Communist Left and of the Party.

The new course of "il Comunista" (exCombat), vindicated by them so many years later, is the antithesis and the most complete betrayal to this approach of the Left. For the direction of the new course, the LIMITS of the doctrine-program-tactic unity were uncomfortable because they did not let them "discover" nor use "new weapons" nor "broaden their vision", nor "reframe the problems of today" and, for this reason, they unleashed new rules of action to the Party to which they wanted to bend it and they undertook an "internal political struggle" against the sections and militants who resolutely defended these limits, the continuity of what “had been said and done" until then, the preservation of the class line, of Marxism, of the Left and of the Party.

 

Back to the new course of "il Comunista"

Going back to the "re-foundational" issue of "il Comunista" (No. 1, 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie) one can read an article entitled "il nostro percorso politico" (our political path) in which it is stated "3) continuity of the work of intervention in the various sectors in which the party was active (trade union field, anti-militarism, anti-repression, defense of the conditions of life and work and struggle of the proletariat, etc.)" [16] (il Comunista, No.1 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, page 2).

If one then reads in the same issue the article "Problemi e prospettive per l'antimilitarismo" (Problems and perspectives for antimilitarism) one can observe the complete continuity of the previous positions of the new course published in "il programa comunista", "il Comunista" (first series) and "Combat", regarding the "committees for peace" born from the installation of a US missile base in Comiso (Italy). In this article "il Comunista" (exCombat), after calling to "give the maximum continuity to the antimilitarist organizations and committees independent of collaborationism", to "reweave the stable horizontal (sic) contacts" to "go out to the streets shouting one's firm and intransigent NO to the war preparation", they affirm "In this perspective the communists act from now at the side of all the forces that place themselves, even partially, on this course" (il Comunista, No.1 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, p. 3).

The antithesis of this movementist approach to the Marxist positions contained in "The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution" (Lenin) and the lessons against the United Political Front drawn by our current in the struggle against the degeneration of the International could not be more strident. On the other hand, the identity of approach of No. 1 of "il Comunista" with No. 1 of "Combat" on the same subject could not be more evident.

In issue No.3 of "il Comunista" (exCombat) it can be read: "We publish here two texts concerning an activity that the promoter group of the Social Center of Croce di Musile (in the sandonatese) initiated on the problem of harmfulness and accidents at work. This group of young people has been active since the beginning of 1984 and has been particularly active in obtaining a Social Center, a space to be used for various activities and initiatives related to the problems of young people (sic), both as regards work and life in general (sic)." (il Comunista, No. 3 of 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, page 7) [17]. The editors of "il Comunista" (exCombat) continue "They are undoubtedly a living testimony (...) of a way of reacting both to isolation and to silence, a fruitful path for the very future of the proletarian struggle” [18]. And then they publish the intervention and a leaflet defending "the right to life, to a decent life" signed by the "Committee against exploitation and unemployment" of Basso Piave and, in brackets, "excommittee for the yes", that is, a committee created to vote in a democratic referendum.

At the same time, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (ex-Combat), in June 1985, published in its French publication an article entitled "Immigration: the right to vote" in which they affirm: "The right to vote is a political right recognized to French workers and should be a right of all foreign workers. Not only the right to vote, but also the right to be elected, without restriction as to the type of election (local or national). Outside this position of principle, there is only mockery or masquerade." ("le Prolétaire", No. 383)[19]. In September 1986 they published a completely movementist article entitled "Nuclear: a front of struggle concerning the proletarians" from which years later they retracted with the well-known excuse that they never agreed with their own publication. In November 1986 "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat) published in "le Prolétaire" (No. 389) an article entitled "Basques: enough of repression" in solidarity with expelled Basque patriotic militants, calling to transform this denunciation into an anti-capitalist movement (sic).

All in all, we could fill pages with more examples, but we must conclude this section in order to move on to the national question.

Since then, following a typically opportunist method, the group "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" has been modulating its original positions, shedding their skin, metamorphosing, backtracking and showing more restrained in its movementist and interclassist positions in general, appearing more proletarian.

Even so, the movementist and interclassist approach is always looming, whether with the "yellow vests" that "must serve as an example for future workers' struggles (sic)" ("le Prolétaire" No. 531, 2019)[20] or with the call for "Proletarian solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal and all the victims of US state terrorism” [21] ("le Prolétaire", No. 541, August 2021) or as in the cheap tabloid article "Giulia, murdered for not wanting to be a man's property" in which another mimetic echo of the bourgeois ideology that is feminism is reproduced "the fact is that, to date, the number of women murdered by their partners or in the family or simply for being women is 102.... and the year has not yet ended..."[22] ("il Comunista", No. 179, November 2023). And of course, on their web page they keep the whole string of articles with their positions of before (which are of now and always), ready to jump up and down, left and right, or to both sides at the same time, depending on the wind blowing.

One of the worst characteristics of opportunism is to say one thing and the opposite, in the same article, in the same review or in different issues, at different times, and this is how "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" has acted and acts.

During all their path and no matter how many efforts they make to hide their traces and blur their past, they represented the new course, they were on the side of the liquidators of the line of the Left, even if they were breaking in each of the stages with those more hasty liquidators who wanted to take off their mask for good and even renounce the name of the Party (in 1982 and in 1984), without ceasing to share at any time with them their essence: the new course.

In the deceitful article in which "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" presents themself as the "reconstitution of the class party", they state that: "In France/Switzerland, a small group had been formed with comrades from Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon and Lausanne who continued publishing Le Prolétaire (...) contacts with the former center of Milan were maintained until June 1983, but the attempts of international reorganization were very weak and confused" [23]. But this does not fit with reality. On page 14 of "le Prolétaire" No. 375 of October 1983, the press of the "party" is listed, including "il programma comunista" and on page 5 of "le Prolétaire" No. 376 of January 1984, the table of contents of "il programma comunista" No. 10 is reproduced as its own, with the significant first point "the heading will change: our battle continues" (in reference to the fact that the following issue will appear as "Combat").  It is then, in May 1984 and not before, that the Italian language review is no longer referenced, given the impossibility of claiming "Combat" as a Party review since it did not even present itself as such. But, in addition, in No. 2/1984 of "Combat", page 8, there is a clear reference to "le Prolétaire" as press of the same organization. The Greek review "Kommounistiko programma" and the Venezuelan review "Espartaco" also appear as such. In "le Prolétaire" No. 378 of July 1984 (p. 16) a leaflet of the same Venezuelan review "Espartaco" linked to "Combat" is published and on p. 10 of the same issue "Kommounistiko programma" is claimed. In fact, when "le Prolétaire" and "il Comunista" (exCombat) announced their formal fusion they also did so with "Kommounistiko programma", in "il Comunista" No. 1/1985 (p. 18), although two issues later in "il Comunista" No. 3-4/1985 (p. 46) they had to say that the Greek group had "rethought" it and did not consider themselves a party organ. In No. 1/1985 of "il Comunista" (p. 22) "Espartaco" appears as its own press, which still has the combatist heading of "for the International Communist Party"... We will speak elsewhere of the evolution of these Venezuelan militants and of their rupture with "Combat" and with "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat), but what is not true is that the relationship between "le Prolétaire" and the degenerated center was interrupted in June 1983 and resumed in 1985 with "il Comunista" (exCombat) but rather that the reciprocal reference subsisted in the period of outright democratic centralism in "il Programma comunista" and later on in "Combat".

What was "reconstituted" in 1985 with the aggregate "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" was not the class Party but the spearhead of its degeneration, disguised as the opposite. We know other examples, the most notorious of which is Stalinism.

 

The national question according to "Le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat)

In 1989, in one of its maneuvers of correction/diffusion of the past, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" published a text entitled "Some firm points on the 'Palestinian question'". This text is the one they have republished at the end of 2023 in "le Prolétaire" (No. 550), "il Comunista" (No. 179) and "El Proletario" (No. 31).

That article attempts to reverse some of the positions of the new course then defended by them and published in an article of November 1982 entitled "The national struggle of the Palestinian masses within the framework of the social movement in the Middle East" (published in the same number 20 of 1982 of "il programma comunista" whose content is claimed by "il Comunista" in its No. 2 of 1985). But, in their rectification, the key point of their betrayal of Marxism is kept as we shall see. In his introduction to his 1989 article, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" stated:

"According to Marxism, the correct orientation, especially for areas where the bourgeois revolution is no longer on the agenda (and therefore there can no longer be double revolutions) but where the national question has not been resolved, is to insert the national question and the national struggle into the revolutionary class struggle" ^[24] (“le Prolétaire”, No.401, 1989, p. 8).

Note that "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (ex-Combat) is not referring to the national question when the bourgeois-democratic revolution is still on the agenda but, expressly, to when the bourgeois revolution and the advent of capitalism is a fact. In the same 1989 issue in which "le Prolétaire" declared to "rectify" its position on Palestinian nationalism, but kept its fundamental error, it also affirmed, referring to the Yugoslav proletariat:

"It would be a gross mistake to point out to the proletarians in such situations the only perspective of struggle on a purely proletarian ground, casting into oblivion these questions of national order, raised by the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie in their sole interest as ruling classes, but of which the proletarians are victims in one way or another." ^[25] (“le Prolétaire”, No. 401, 1989, p. 7).

On the contrary, it is exclusively on a "purely proletarian ground" that proletarians of all languages in all parts of the world must support each other and reject any division, discrimination or relative privilege between them, opposing the nationalist maneuvers of the bourgeoisies that want to frame them in their respective nationalisms.

How hard the Yugoslav proletariat paid between 1990 and 1999 having followed the advice not to place itself "on a purely proletarian ground", which was the same advice that suited the newly reunified European and German imperialism.

In almost all the states of Europe there are national minorities for which nationalist questions are raised, and if we move to Africa we will see an endless number of ethnic groups cut off by borders or framed together with others within the same borders, etc. It is evident that the application of the anti-Marxist tactic advocated by "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" condemns to the eternal permanence of the "national struggle" (it is possible that "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" thinks that this is different from "nationalism", who knows) as an insuperable burden of the proletarian struggle.

 

The position of Marxism on the national question in Party texts

On the other hand, the position of Marxism and the Left is another one, which we can summarily recall below:

• "The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
• “What does this categorical requirement of Marxism imply in its application to the question under discussion? First of all, it implies that a clear distinction must be drawn between the two periods of capitalism, which differ radically from each other as far as the national movement is concerned. On the one hand, there is the period of the collapse of feudalism and absolutism, the period of the formation of the bourgeois-democratic society and state, when the national movements for the first time become mass movements and in one way or another draw all classes of the population into politics through the press, participation in representative institutions, etc. On the other hand, there is the period of fully formed capitalist states with a long-established constitutional regime and a highly developed antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a period that may be called the eve of capitalism’s downfall.” (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin, 1914).
• The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationality (…) It makes no difference to the hired worker whether he is exploited chiefly by the Great-Russian bourgeoisie rather than the non-Russian bourgeoisie, or by the Polish bourgeoisie rather than the Jewish bourgeoisie, etc. The wage worker who has come to understand his class interests is equally indifferent to the state privileges of the Great-Russian capitalists and to the promises of the Polish or Ukrainian capitalists to set up an earthly paradise when they obtain state privileges.” (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin, 1914).
• "IMPERIALIST ERA AND IRREDENTIST RESIDUES".
  The survival, after the great period of the wars of independence and of national systematization having a revolutionary bourgeois character, of a great number of cases in which minor nationalities are subjected to States of another nationality in Europe itself, is no obstacle for the proletarian International to reject all justification of wars between States on grounds of irredentism and to unmask the imperialist aim of every bourgeois war, inviting the workers to sabotage that war on all fronts. The inability to carry out this line has determined the destruction of the revolutionary energies under the waves of opportunism of two wars, and will determine it in a future war if the masses do not abandon in time the opportunist leadership (social-democratic or Kominformist), with the result that, in all cases, capitalism will survive its violent bloody crises." (Factors of Race and Nation in Marxist Theory, 1953).
• "The Marxist position is that a proletarian party cannot in any case support a forced political annexation; but it does not consist in making a chapter of the party program the ex-novo systematization of all homogeneous peoples in a new geopolitical order of the States, reached and maintained by consensus and without violence. This is considered by Marxists a utopia irreconcilable with capitalist class society, even more than any other, while in a socialist society the problem is posed on other bases, including de-escalation and the extinction of all state violence." (Economic and Social Structure of Russia 1913- 1957).
• "Marxists had never ignored the terms of "national questions". The relations of organization deriving from the concomitance of race and language take their place among the forms of production. The tendency to identify with national units the limits of the territorial organization of the state have played an extremely important role in the formation of capitalism, and all the stages of the growth of this enemy which it is impossible to kill in its childhood, interest the revolution to the highest degree.
  But Marxists, just as they established that the various national and irredentist heroes had the real revolutionary task of achieving the victory of the enterprising bourgeoisie (comprising only the poetic superstructure of its enterprises), diagnosed also that in the imperialist phase of the spread of capitalism, the principle of nationality was always kept in the limelight in order to agitate it for bourgeois class purposes, and above all, in order to create confusion in the vigorous autonomy of the workers' movement, trampling it shamelessly whenever it was in the interest of the bourgeois economic colonization to subjugate a province on the border, a living space, or an unfortunate colored people overseas.
  The national prejudice was to serve, therefore, as a barrier against the proletarian class initiatives, but it did not put any obstacle to the imperialist pillage.
  From a given limit date, which can be fixed at the latest in 1870, all subordination of the proletarian battle to the satisfaction of previous national, ethnic or irredentist objectives, all constitution of blocs between workers and bourgeois of the same language aiming at national liberation, all formation of "national socialist" parties, such as there were in Poland and Bohemia, became, therefore, pure defeatism. (...) With the development of capitalism, the state blocs crystallize around specific national centers, which were in formation as unitary states since pre-bourgeois times. But this process is not in its general lines a process of division, but of agglomeration.
  The petty bourgeois ideology according to which it was necessary to wait for the liberation of each "oppressed" nationality and the solution of all the problems of ethnicities that existed on the margins of the great States, before launching class claims in Europe, is therefore profoundly counterrevolutionary. All these "oppressed" in the language, in the university, in the bourgeois careers and, above all, in the electoral careers, those in which swindling is king, would have eternally forbidden the workers to become aware of the exploitation of the bosses and of social oppression.
  Of course, the multiplicity of languages is undoubtedly a material and technical fact, but it is above all the bourgeoisie and their cohorts of scribblers to whom it greatly irritates; the modern internationalists that we are and the workers bent under the slave companies of capital will not hesitate to recall that the first strike was that of the tower of Babel. The language barrier will fall with the other infamies of the modern capitalist Babel. What the bourgeois philistine finds above all barbarous is that not everyone understands at the first word the orders of the boss." (The Proletariat and Trieste, 1950)
• "All these lessons would be useful to the class movement of the workers if they would lead it to assimilate the guidelines of its autonomous action, to establish that the ruling classes always speak of freedom, independence and national right for purposes of social oppression, and that its invitation to collaborate must always be rejected, on both sides and in both languages (...) The proletarian policy in Trieste cannot be other than the internationalist fraternity between workers of Italian or Slavic language, the rejection of any racial or patriotic grimace (...).
  After the disappearance of Austria, the Triestine workers did not allow themselves to be caught in the trap of a national opposition. The Communist Party of Livorno took over in Trieste the political section, the newspaper and the Chamber of Labor. Italian and Slav comrades worked there in perfect agreement. The same articles, translated by the good Srebrnic, appeared in both Italian and Slovenian editions. The generous working class of Trieste, like the agricultural workers in the countryside, was vibrating with enthusiasm for Lenin's revolution, and for identical reasons. The maneuvers of the Sforza and the Kardely must provoke the same disgust in the workers and peasants of Trieste. If there has been division and if the workers have caused the blood of their brothers to flow for reasons of national hatred and because of the infamous political game and venal policy of the bourgeois states, of the governments of second-rate states that speak of nation only to put it up for auction; this must be an indelible shame for the traitors of communism. It is in these fringes of encounter between peoples, in these bilingual zones, that proletarian internationalism must give proof of its courage, rejecting the flags of all homelands in favor of the red flag, the only flag of the social revolution." (The Proletariat and Trieste, 1950).
• "In the heart of the 20th century there can only be for Trieste an international future, which cannot be usefully found in political and mercantile compromises by bourgeois forces, but only in the European communist revolution, of which the workers of Trieste and its territory must once again be one of the assault sections. (...)
  Every communist revolutionary salutes the Triestine proletariat through the harsh succession of phases in which the representatives of the worst capitalisms and of the fiercest militarist nationalisms have obscenely installed themselves and have celebrated their orgies of cruelty, corruption and exploitation.
  Extended over the restricted area by so many bent claws and so many apparatuses of crude pimp colonialism, it will not find a national way out anywhere, in whatever language it may be invoked.
  The solution can only be international: but just as it cannot come from the frictions and conflicts between states, neither will it come from their democratic fornications, nor from the sordid unity of European servitude.
  It is not a national flag that we hope for on the tower of San Giusto, but the advent of the European proletarian dictatorship which, among a proletariat born of such painful experiences, cannot fail to find, when the time has finally come, the most determined fighters." (Factors of race and nation in the Marxist Theory, 1953)

 

The entanglement of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista"

We will see a few extracts from the points of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" of 1989 to compare them with the Marxist theory and the fundamental texts of the Party. But, first, let us read the premise for the republication of the text in Italian in 2023, in which "il Comunista" is increasingly explicit: "And there is no doubt that the proletarians of the oppressed country see the proletarians of the oppressor country as accomplices of the foreign bourgeoisie which oppresses them. To show that this complicity does not exist, the proletarians of the oppressor country must fight against their own bourgeoisie by demanding that the oppressed population, including their proletarians, have the freedom of 'self-determination'." [26] (“il Comunista”, No.179, 2023, p. 3).

Continuing with the points of 1989 (republished in 2023) which amended those of 1982, we have the following:

"In the sense that only the proletarian dictatorship will be able to assure the Palestinians, if they still desire it, the right to organize themselves into an independent state. Which does not exclude, but rather implies that the Party will strive to propagate and support the opposite perspective, that is, that of the free union of the proletarians of different nationalities also in the Middle East in as large a proletarian state as possible." ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.5; "il Comunista", No. 179, p. 3, "le Prolétaire" No. 550, p. 5).

"(...) the Israeli Jewish proletarians will have to base themselves on the double terrain of the struggle against the discrimination of the Arab and Palestinian proletarians at work and in social life (and therefore against the confessionalism of the Jewish State) and the defense of the right of all Palestinians to form their own independent State on the land of Palestine." ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.6; "il Comunista", No. 179, p.3, “le Prolétaire" No. 550, p. 6).

According to "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista", the Israeli Jewish proletariat must support the creation of an independent State (!) of all (!) Palestinians on the land of Palestine (without specifying its extension, presumably including the territory occupied by the present State of Israel). Always according to "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista", the Party would have to propagate the opposite perspective, but, yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat (led by the Party, presumably, dealing with supposed Marxist continuators of the Left) will guarantee the opposite of the opposite, that is to say, it will assure "to the Palestinians (sic), if they still wish it, the right to organize themselves in an independent State".

This gibberish, in full capitalism, is the gibberish of the opportunists who speak out of both sides of their mouth, pretending to have left behind the positions of Palestinian Arab nationalism that they still hold.

The betrayal of the Marxist and Left positions, the bestiality affirmed by the text that "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" allegedly amended with the 1989 points (points re-published in 2023) consisted indeed in giving life to support for the bourgeois demand for state systematization ("self-determination") outside the historical context of the bourgeois democratic, anti-feudal or anti-colonial revolution. This betrayal of Marxism is precisely what "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" did not desist from in 1989 and still holds today. In short, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" is still splashing in the same nationalist and popular mud as then and as always.

The above is well complemented by speaking of "the sparks of class consciousness that the struggle of the Palestinian people has provoked and continues to provoke", qualifying as "«natural» class brothers of the Palestinian proletariat" "the Arab proletarians of the whole region" in a poorly concealed Arab nationalism, and, while admitting that the leap to capitalism is already a fact, it slips in for when it may be necessary "(...) the persistence of feudal, theocratic and tribal remnants that have never been completely eradicated". ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.6; "il Comunista", No. 179, p.3, “le Prolétaire” No. 550, p. 6).

 

The epigone in Spanish of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" clarifies their real position

There are things that "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" prefer not to publish in Italian and French... they are only published more discreetly in Spanish through its epigone in that language, "el Proletario". This is the case of the article entitled "El Comunista nueva edición nos habla de Palestina" [El Comunista nueva edición tells us about Palestine] which, in the Spanish edition, accompanies the previous one. It directs its criticism to a stance (whose extension is a double-sided A4) published and distributed by our Party on October 22, 2023, after the Hamas attack and when the Israeli Army offensive on the Gaza strip began. Our leaflet can be found on pages 2 and 3 of the present issue of our review.

The Spanish epigone of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" is a bit clumsier than its French or Italic version, as we shall see, and makes clearer what their real position is:

"It is essential to take into account the historical strength of the plebeian masses of the region, uprooted from their lands by the Israeli occupation and subjected to the control and continuous repression by the neighboring Arab nations, and a young proletariat that has been gathering in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan as well as in Gaza and the West Bank. The problem of the war between Israel and Palestine (or between Israel and Lebanon, or between Israel and any of the Arab actors involved in the regional conflicts) has had, for long decades, the background of the Palestinian national-REVOLUTIONARY struggle. (...) The liquidation AT LEAST TEMPORARY of this national-REVOLUTIONARY struggle and the fact that the Palestinian national independence AT THE PRESENT TIME is something practically unrealizable UNLESS an abrupt change in the imperialist guidelines of the region impose it within their struggle for the sharing of power, does not allow in any case to obviate neither the history already happened nor the very strong conditioning factors that this has left and that go through the present situation." ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.10).

We have capitalized and bolded the text to highlight the fact that the Spanish epigone of “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” considers that the Palestinian struggle has been for decades a national-revolutionary one. In "il Comunista" No. 180 (Italian version of the same organization) of the same month of February 2024, we read: "The answer on the Palestinian side, as we know, has never taken the road of the national-democratic revolution, as in Algeria, for example" ("il Comunista" No. 180, February 2024, p. 9). So what are we left with? For long decades has there been a Palestinian national-revolutionary struggle or has it never taken the path of national-democratic revolution? Or any of the in-between points and variants that you can read depending on which issue of their review you pick up or even which page of the same review? Is there a more opportunistic way to say the same and the opposite in every place and in every moment?

 

New course and Palestinian national question

What "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" pretends to present as the Party's longstanding position is nothing more than a change of route made by the Party's new course, initiated in the mid-1970s, to turn it into a nationalist position.

This change of route was incontinently amplified between 1978 and 1982, with the publication of El-Oumami characterized by the national-democratic claims in Algeria and Palestinian and pan-Arabist nationalism, which in a short but very destructive cycle exposed the complete loss of proletarian political north of the new course and detonated the explosion of the degenerate direction of the party, which broke into pieces, taking down also in the process the formal body of the international organism.

An example of this degenerate change of course is the article in "Le Prolétaire", No. 363 of 1982 entitled "Remarques sur notre propagande concernant l'OLP dans la situation présente" (Remarks on our propaganda concerning the PLO in the present situation): "To develop an effective communist propaganda in the tragic events of today, it is essential not to start from the criticism of the PLO, but from the necessity of an instinctive solidarity with the resistance of the fighters and the masses exposed in Lebanon. (...) we must define the correct and effective attitude towards the PLO.

We must be careful not to give this criticism a general or abstract programmatic character, that is, divorced from the real demands of the struggle felt by the workers. Finally, we must avoid giving to the critique, even the most accurate from the point of view of programmatic canons, a disproportionate place in relation to the primary and most urgent tasks, at least initially, of formulating the needs of the struggle, the demands, the methods of response and struggle, and even of awakening new needs from the events.

It is to the extent that this work is well done and when there exists a genuine camaraderie in the struggle that political criticism is best accepted" ("Le Prolétaire", No. 363 of 1982, p. 2)[27].

On the same page of the same review, in the article "LIBAN-PALESTINE: Axes d'un soutien militant" (Lebanon-Palestine: Axes of a militant support), one can read the worst combination of Political United Front, "anti-imperialism", spontaneism, followerism and nationalism; this type of committees were the "new weapons" finally "discovered" by the new course taken by the Party direction to overcome the "narrowness" of the intervention of the communists in the economic struggle of the working class:

"Although we presided over the creation of this committee, it is not an emanation of our party. In fact, militants of other organizations participate together with a small group of militants of our party and of workers without a party, united by a discipline in relation to a common basis of struggle, and who must succeed in overcoming the normal hesitations of the beginning to establish a consistent and inspiring line of action.

The principles enunciated, in particular in a leaflet calling for a meeting attended by 80 people on Saturday 19, are those of "international anti-imperialist workers solidarity" against the "common enemy", imperialism, "against the State of Israel" and "the Arab bourgeoisies". These principles do not fall from the sky. They are the result of the need for struggle felt today, in particular, by a not negligible section of immigrant proletarians.

That is why we defend them in this committee of International Lebanon-Palestine Solidarity, but also in the other committees where our militants can intervene, in Paris and in the provinces." ("Le Prolétaire", No. 363 of 1982, p. 2)[28].

But the credit cannot go entirely to the Parisian Center which left the Party in 1982. The greatest honor of nationalist putrefaction goes without dispute to its continuators, the current editors of "le Prolétaire", capable of publishing in September 1983 (Le Proletarie, No. 374, 1983, p. 7) an article entitled "Front Polisario dix ans de lutte contre l'ordre impérialiste regional" (Polisario Front ten years of struggle against the regional imperialist order) or the article which ends with the slogans "A BAS L'ÉTAT SIONISTE D'ISRAËL! PALESTINE VAINCRA!" (Down with the Zionist State of Israel!, Palestine will win!), and three issues later, in May 1984, the article entitled "Un objectif central: La destruction de l'État d'Israël" (A central goal: the destruction of the State of Israel). That "le Prolétaire" is the organization with which "il Comunista" (exCombat) merged a few months later.

It must be said that nowadays, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" do not so explicitly defend these slogans: they have shed their skin. The old comrades in Italy had a saying: "Un marxista, una parola. Un opportunista, un vocabolario" (translated means: a Marxist, a word. An opportunist, a dictionary). For "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" a dictionary is needed that also considers the year in which they are writing and is capable of being in several different years simultaneously, as we have seen.

 

The position of the Party about Palestine

To observe how the variety of positions of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" are in contradiction with what was previously affirmed by the Party in its organs, in addition to the solid theoretical basis we have reproduced above, we can observe what the organs and groups of the Party said about Palestine before the gradual infiltration and subsequent takeover by the new course.

This is how the Party expressed its position at "le Prolétaire" (No. 89, 1970), before the new course, in the article "La Palestine, point de mire de la contre-révolution mondiale" (Palestine, point of view of the world counter-revolution):

"We have never believed in "national solutions" in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Palestine, in all those disinherited places where fight rebels who have neither the organization nor the theoretical armament of the proletariat, exploited who are not even grouped in the compact form of the one true revolutionary class. We have never encouraged the least illusion about these deceitful "roads" proposed by Moscow and, more generally, by opportunism of all countries and of all times. But the sacrifice of these vainly instigated masses is a wound that will remain open until tomorrow's world revolution. More soberly, but certainly with more fierce conviction than the Western enthusiasts of these struggles condemned in advance, we shout: down with the false slogans of "national liberation", out of the ranks of the workers the traitors who propagate them: yesterday in the service of the old imperialisms, today in the service of all the new ones. For the international class struggle, for the reconstruction of our party, for the world dictatorship of the proletariat and against all the "intermediate stages", the "transitions" that end in rivers of blood!” [29].

In relation to Palestine, one can read in "le Prolétaire", No. 45 (1967), before the new course, the leaflet circulated in Algeria by the militants of the International Communist Party with a clear internationalist approach, of fraternization at the front:

 

  "ARAB PROLETARIANS,

Preceded by propaganda for the "right" of the State of Israel to exist and by a pan-Arab religious campaign, the war in the Middle East prepared by imperialist capitalism and Arab nationalism has become a reality.

In this bloody hour, the International Communist Party calls on you to show your hostility to the war and to the dominant classes that have engineered it. At the same time, we call on the exploited Israelis that they, as well as you, take up the struggle against their exploiters, the henchmen of capitalist imperialism.

Proletarians, we remind you that you have no country because today the workers are exploited everywhere in the world. Your country has no borders, because your country is the whole world.

In this war you have nothing to gain. On the contrary, the dominant classes use you to carry out their dirty work, their criminal plans.

We are at the side of the Palestinian working masses that the Arab bourgeoisies have concentrated in miserable slums and that today form a mass of maneuver ready to be betrayed as soon as things go badly for them.

We are with the Israeli workers whom imperialist capitalism makes believe that they are surrounded by hostile Arab masses.

We are with the Arab workers who have already suffered the harshness and rapacity of their capitalists under the flag of national socialism.

To you, Palestinian, Israeli and Arab proletarians, we say: fraternize, throw down your weapons or, better still, turn them against your exploiters.

And to you, proletarians of Europe and the whole world, we shout:

Support our struggle, unmask imperialism's plans of aggression. Rise also against capitalism.

Long live the class struggle of the workers against the war of the bourgeoisie.

Long live the struggle for social revolution.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY

GROUP IN ALGERIA

Algiers, June 5, 1967"

  

The internationalist position in Israel and Palestine

Contrary to what the inheritors of the new course – revisionist of the positions of the Left and the Party – affirm, the internationalist position for the Palestinian and Israeli proletariat is the one defended by the Party before the new course.

The Arab and Jewish proletariat, together with that of the rest of the nationalities that have emigrated to work in the zone, must refuse to confront each other, organizing themselves jointly both on the plane of the immediate struggle and on that of the Party organization, rejecting any division or discrimination on the basis of language or origin, rejecting any identification with the bourgeoisie itself, refusing to be financed or to align themselves with any imperialist power, cultivating in that environment the immediate struggle against the bourgeoisie itself and the conditions for the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of all the capitalist states of the zone without distinction, integrating that struggle in the struggle for the international communist revolution through the overthrow of the bourgeois states and the dictatorship of the proletariat towards a society without classes, nor private property, nor mercantile regime nor wage labor.

We can already hear the Spanish epigone of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" replying to this: "all this would be solved if magically the proletariat were to rise up, not in one country, but in the whole world, "as one man". But is that, simply put, the perspective assumed by revolutionary Marxists?"  ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.10) [30].

For those who are surprised that an organization that claims to be revolutionary and Marxist is complaining because we have said that "There will be a solution to the situation in Palestine when the Arab and Israeli working class will rise up as one man to overthrow their respective bourgeoisies that today play them off against each other" (our leaflet of October 22th, 2023), we clarify that it is their somewhat demagogic way of saying that it is "very difficult". It is true that we also said in that stance that "this task cannot be undertaken by the Palestinian proletariat or the Israeli proletariat alone, nor by the proletariat of any State in isolation: "the emancipation of the workers is neither a local nor a national task but a social and international task." (Statutes of the Communist International, II Congress, 1920)" and that, therefore, anyone can understand that it is not immediately achievable but that it has to be our goal and that in order to be achieved it has to be the result of an international sum of forces. But this only makes the epigone in Spanish of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" a little bit more annoyed, mainly because it runs out of excuses and... because it must reveal that its objection has another background.

If earlier they made it clear to everyone that the "natural" class brother of the Palestinian proletariat is not the international proletariat but only the Arab proletariat (excluding also those of Jewish origin and those coming from so many regions such as Thailand, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Malawi or Kenya who are exploited in the Israeli state), now the Israeli proletariat is characterized as follows: "In the case of Palestine, for example, the link that connects the Israeli proletariat with its bourgeoisie, is nourished precisely by the profit this proletariat derives from supporting the colonization of Palestinian lands and the oppression of the Arab masses and proletarians both inside and outside the State of Israel." ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.10) [31].

The current “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” sees only one part of the vicious circle, the one that interests them. In reality, for them the Israeli proletariat is guilty and will only be redeemed when the Israeli state disappears and in place of it there will be a Palestinian state.

According to “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” to defend the consistent internationalist motto in Palestine and Israel is to attempt something "magical". Always according to "le Prolétaire”/"il Comunista", it is much better to continue to feed the claim of a Palestinian nation-state, to administer nationalist drugs to the Palestinian proletariat (while claiming not to be doing so), to continue to consider the Israeli proletariat as an eternal unit with its bourgeoisie. In other words, to continue to reproduce the present situation.

On the contrary, before the gradual infiltration and subsequent open revisionist drift of the new course, the Party review "le Prolétaire" affirmed in its No. 109, of 1971, in an article entitled "Israël: Des fissures dans le bloc des classes" (Israel: fissures within the bloc of classes):

"Just as the Arab regimes make the State of Israel the scapegoat for the frustrations of the miserable populations they make bear the heavy burden of being subjected to the imperialisms in power, the ruling class of the young Israeli State has always brandished the specter of the Arab invader as an escape valve for the rancor of a proletariat which, since its birth, has been subjected to the implacable discipline of modern capitalism.

On both sides of the Sinai, appeals for vengeance and defense of the Homeland served the guardians of the established order to placate the fury of the exploited.” ("le Prolétaire," No. 109, 1971, p. 2).

This is the vicious circle that must be broken and it will not be broken by the fallacious claim of a nation state that establishes for some or for others the totality of the territory.

We want to see the Israeli state overthrown, but not by a national war which will inevitably lead to a bloc between the classes, but by a communist revolution which will break this sacred union and see the Israeli proletariat overthrow its ‘own’ bourgeoisie with the support of the international proletariat. We want to see each and every one of the Arab states existing or to exist overthrown, not by the effect of an imperialist war between them or with other powers but as a product of the class struggle of the proletariat of these states and internationally. And we want the same for the rest of the States of the world. In fact, we are convinced that they will not escape this destiny.

 

Revolutionary defeatism

There is another part of the leaflet that alters the vital signs of the epigone in Spanish of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" and does not let them sleep, the one that goes like this:

“Without renouncing at any moment to transform the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war during its development or to unleash it afterwards, it will be possible to respond to the outbreak of the imperialist war itself by declaring the revolutionary general strike only if previously an extensive network of solidarity and fighting has been developed on the labor union level, outside the tentacles of the State, in which the International Communist Party has achieved a decisive influence.” (our leaflet of October 22th, 2023).

Just because it will not magically happen that the proletariat of any country will rise up as one man against the war, it is necessary to prepare the conditions for this to happen. If this does not happen, we have to work to try to transform the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war. If we do not succeed, we have to work to try to unleash the revolutionary assault following the war. In none of the three scenarios does the possibility of realization of this tactic depend exclusively on the will of the Party, a series of objective conditions are required. In each of the three scenarios, the possibility of realization of this tactic also depends on the intervention of the Party and the preparation that has been made in the previous period. We believe it is simple to understand.

But the epigone in Spanish of “le Prolétaire”/”il Comunista” explodes (the part they have replaced by [...], on our leaflet says "outside the tentacles of the State"):

"According to this affirmation, the task of the Communist Party is to declare the «revolutionary general strike», that great anarchist and syndicalist myth with which these currents have historically scotched the necessity of the revolutionary political struggle, for which «an extensive network of solidarity and fighting has been developed on the labor union level [...] in which the International Communist Party has gained a decisive influence» must be developed beforehand.

It is difficult to unite in a single sentence more affirmations alien to Marxism. The revolutionary general strike is not the end for which the party fights, it is not even the method of action through which it will be carried out, when the time comes, the mobilization in an imperialist war. And the task of the Party cannot be, far from it, subordinated to this objective. (...)

El Comunista represents, essentially, a syndicalist deviation from Marxism. It represented it when, in 1980, its members broke away from the trunk of the Party, when they denied the need for a party structured beyond the terrain of immediate intervention in the proletarian struggles, and they represent it today, when they base the struggle against the imperialist war in the existence of that «network of solidarity and fighting» which should be influenced by the Party." ("El Proletario", No. 31) [32].

We will have to take it step by step. Starting at the end, it is not in 1980 but in January 1982 and we did not generically "broke away from the trunk of the Party", but rather we refused to participate in the liquidation of the political line of the Left and we broke with the degenerated center of a formal organization to keep ourselves in line with the historical Party, without renouncing to keep and give continuity to the formal Party as our theses and fundamental texts indicate. For this reason, we continued since May 1983 with the publication of "El Comunista" (nueva edición) as an organ of the International Communist Party and we kept being organized at international level with other comrades who had opposed the new course, from which has resulted – a process not exempt of vicissitudes to which we will return elsewhere – an organizational continuity until today that still keeps comrades organized in Spain, Italy, Venezuela and Chile. And in no way did we deny then nor have we ever denied the need for a structured Party, something that only a liar can say.

Anyway, it is shocking how easily “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” (exCombat) forget their own history in making these statements. "They broke away from the trunk of the Party...". Sounds definitive and unappealable, doesn't it?

The reality is that it is "il Comunista" who not only formally left the Party (or rather what was left of its formal wrapping, whose previous internal destruction had been on their account) in 1984, but also legalized and published "Combat" which was not even considered a Party review, publishing also "il Comunista" (first series) which was not considered a Party periodical either. If they refresh their memory, they will remember having also temporarily left in 1974 with the departure of the Trotskyist current after the unsuccessful attempt to displace B.M. by F. with the support of several "notables" of the Party. Regardless of the trickster games they try to play a posteriori, not only did they leave a specific formal organization, but they renounced their existence as a Party review and the very existence of the formal Party, even if they later "rethought" it.

"Le Prolétaire" for its part continued "afloat", in the way a cork floats in the sea, continuing the deepening of the revisionist positions of the new course of the Parisian center which had left them orphaned of direction. The change of "le Prolétaire" from relating to "il programma Comunista" to relating to "il Comunista" (ex-Combat) is not politically justified beyond the fact that they had felt "abandoned to their fate" (il Comunista, No. 175). It was to this drifting raft that "il Comunista" clung in order to recover its denomination as Party review in 1985.

But let us return to the motto of our leaflet concerning the preparation of the possibility of responding to the imperialist war with the revolutionary general strike. The first thing to note is that, in his childish fantasy, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" believes that we will be able to insurrectionally oppose the war while the whole working class continues to work as if nothing had happened...

Besides, the strike is not the exclusive property of anarchism, neither the general strike, nor the revolutionary general strike. What is characteristic of some currents of anarchism is to consider that with an expropriating general strike – carried out moreover without Party leadership – the social questions will be resolved and the dictatorship of the proletariat will not be necessary.

But that, faced with the outbreak of war, the Communist Party (if it is in a position to do so) should not call for a general strike and, moreover, a revolutionary one in the sense of a direct clash against the bourgeois State to overthrow it, is an aberration that only the new course of “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” can verbalize.

Another matter is whether we are in a position to carry out this tactic today, whether we have the forces to do it and what we have to do to have them. We do not reveal any secret to the bourgeoisie if we serenely affirm that we are not in conditions today to apply this tactic. This does not mean that we will renounce defending the necessity of the tactic of revolutionary defeatism, for which we have to prepare ourselves and whose conditions we have the responsibility to help prepare. Well, what do the Party texts say that is necessary to be able to carry out this tactic?

"5. In the several phases of the bourgeois trajectory (revolutionary, reformist, counter-revolutionary), the dynamics of labor union action underwent profound changes (interdiction, tolerance, submission); but this does not alter the fact that it is organically indispensable to have among the mass of proletarians and the minority within the party an additional layer of organizations that are politically neutral in principle, but constitutionally accessible only to the workers, and that organizations of this type must re-emerge in the phase in which the revolution is approaching." (Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine, 1951).

"8. - Over and above the contingent problem of the participation – or non-participation – of the revolutionary communist party in certain types of labor unions in a given country, the elements of the question summarized up to this point lead to the conclusion that in any perspective of any general revolutionary movement these fundamental factors cannot be absent: 1) a large and numerous proletariat of pure wage earners, 2) a large movement of associations with economic content embracing an imposing part of the proletariat; 3) a strong class party, revolutionary, in which a minority of the workers militate, but to which the development of the struggle has allowed to validly and extensively counterpose its influence in the labor movement to that of the bourgeois class and power." (Theory and Action in Marxist Doctrine, Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951). 

"7.- The party never adopts the method of forming partial economic organizations comprising only workers who accept the principles and leadership of the communist party.  But the party acknowledges without reservation that not only the situation preceding the insurrectionary fight, but also any phase of strong increase of the party's influence among the masses, cannot develop without the extension between the party and the class of a layer of organizations with immediate economic objectives and with high numerical participation, within which there is a network emanating from the party (nuclei, groups and communist labor union faction). It is the task of the party, in unfavorable periods and periods of passivity of the proletarian class, to foresee the forms and encourage the appearance of organizations with economic objectives for the immediate struggle, which may even assume totally new aspects in the future, after the well-known types of corporation, industrial union, factory council, etc. The party always encourages those forms of organization which facilitate contact and common action among the workers of various localities and of different professions, rejecting closed forms. (...)

11.- The party does not hide that in the resumption phases it will not be strengthened autonomously, if a form of mass labor-union economic associationism does not arise. (...)" (Characteristic Thesis, 1951).

These two texts formed the basis of adhesion to the Party in 1951-52, in coherence with the preceding line of the Communist Left. These two texts are the theoretical basis of the Party on which our affirmation is based: "only if previously an extensive network of solidarity and fighting has been developed on the labor union level, outside the tentacles of the State, in which the International Communist Party has achieved a decisive influence".

We totally reiterate what is written in the leaflet and not only do we not consider it to be a "syndicalist" deviation but rather we categorically affirm that it is the permanent position of the Italian Communist Left and of the International Communist Party.

We also affirm that it is the position that the new course (of which “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” was part and heir) tried to destroy inside the Party to replace it with its "broadening of vision" and the "discovery" of the "new weapons" consisting in the intervention in open interclassist organizations and the "contact with the social movements", which is what "political struggle" means in their mouth.

 

Encourage the labor union network not integrated in the State and fight against parliamentarism.

The Spanish epigone of “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” does not understand the following paragraph of our leaflet either:

"This will not happen if we have not fought the organizational and ideological influence exerted by the bourgeoisie through state-integrated unionism and through parliamentarism, if we have not pulled up the weeds – inch by inch if necessary – in order to sow and take root. Therefore, it is a responsibility for anyone who understands the necessity of revolutionary defeatism (not only as a rhetorical figure) to work to prepare the material premises so that this motto can be put into action." (our leaflet of October 22th, 2023).

"El Proletario" wonders: "That is to say, that revolutionary defeatism starts from the struggle against trade unionism integrated into the State and parliamentarism." ("El Proletario", No. 31)[33].

The above quotations should be enough to tie up connections, but the same texts develop in greater detail the control that is carried out through the imprisonment of the trade union network integrated in the State, as follows:

"Even where, after the Second War, according to current political formulation, capitalist totalitarianism seems to have been replaced by democratic liberalism, the labor union dynamic continued uninterruptedly to unfold in the full sense of state control and insertion into official administrative bodies. Fascism, the dialectical realizer of the old reformist instances, carried out that of the legal recognition of the union so that it could be the holder of collective agreements with the bosses until the effective imprisonment of all union network in the articulations of bourgeois class power.

This is a fundamental result to the defense and preservation of the capitalist regime precisely because the influence and utilization of union associationist network is an INDISPENSABLE STAGE for any revolutionary movement directed by the Communist Party.” (Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951).

They can also try to understand the relationship between the existence of a network of solidarity and immediate fight in which the party can extend its influence and the possibility of a revolutionary struggle by reading Marx:

"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 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.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).

“(...) is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. (…) . By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.” (Value, Price and Profit, 1865, K. Marx).

As for parliamentarism, although we could extend the argument much further, this quotation from the Theses of the Party is enough to show its controlling role:

"6.- Abandoning pedantic "distinctions", we can ask ourselves what objective situation society is in today. Certainly the answer is that it is the worst possible and that a large part of the proletariat, rather than being crushed by the bourgeoisie, is controlled by parties that work in the service of the bourgeoisie and prevent the proletariat itself from any revolutionary class movement, so that it cannot be foreseen how long may pass until in this dead and amorphous situation what we have called at other times the "polarization" or "ionization" of social molecules occurs again, preceding the explosion of the great class antagonism.". (Considerations on the organic activity of the party when the situation is historically unfavorable, 1965).

In any case, we have not only not claimed that the immediate proletarian struggle has to be limited to the "labor" plane, but we have developed this immediate struggle within the context of the struggle for housing in the reconversions of the working class shantytowns in the cities of the Spanish state, in the movements of the unemployed or against the cuts in supplies, the shortages and hoardings as well as the various attacks against the living conditions of the working class in Venezuela. The Party has intervened and continues to intervene with positions on all questions affecting the working class and the development of the capitalist world. What the Party has always rejected and will continue to reject is the interclassist development of this struggle, the united political fronts with other groups, in interclassist organs and committees such as those that the new course of yesterday and today wants to push us into:

"4.- The communist party develops an intense internal work of study and criticism, intimately linked to the demands of action and historical experience; actively engaging in organizing this work on an international basis. Outwardly it develops, in every circumstance and with all possible means, the work of propaganda of the conclusions of its own critical experience and of opposition to the adversary schools and parties. Above all, the party develops its activity of propaganda and of attraction among the proletarian masses, especially in the circumstances in which these are set in motion to react against the conditions that capitalism has created for them, and within the organizations that the proletarians form to protect their immediate interests.

5.- The communists penetrate, then, in the proletarian cooperatives, in the labor unions, in the factory councils, constituting in them groups of communist workers; trying to conquer there the majority and the leading positions, to obtain that the mass of proletarians framed in such associations subordinate their own action to the highest political and revolutionary aims of the struggle for communism.

6.- The communist party, on the contrary, stays out of all institutions and associations in which proletarians and bourgeois participate with the same title or, even worse, whose direction and patronage belongs to the bourgeois (friendly societies, charitable societies, schools of culture, popular universities, Masonic associations, etc.) and tries to keep the proletarians away from them, fighting their action and their influence.". (Theses of the Abstentionist Communist Faction, 1920).

But that we do not limit to the labor framework the immediate proletarian struggle and our intervention in it, does not mean that we can forget the influence and capacity of attraction that the interclassist organizations have, which make of every other immediate field that affects the proletariat and other classes their specific field of interclassist influence. This is why some love to make these immediate fields the preferential and primary field, ruminating about the narrowness of labor union action, "broadening their vision" towards the "discovery" of "practical fields" and "new weapons". Because these other fields must necessarily develop today on the interclassist plane, in the absence of a class pole represented by a Communist Party that has developed an influence in a network of fight with immediate economic objectives outside the control of the bourgeois State.

We communists will be able to powerfully intervene and lead a proletarian demand in all its fields, which rejects and excludes in an effective way the influence of the already existing interclassist networks, if we have previously rooted solidly and with force in a field in which the conflict is put between wage-earning class and bourgeoisie in the labor union plane.

 For this reason, the Theses of the Party make a primordial and primary question of the intervention in the labor union fight to develop the network of labor union fight outside the control of the bourgeois State and to conquer an influence in it on the part of the Party, also considering it a sine qua non condition for the revolutionary resumption. And for this reason, we consider that the imprisonment of the trade union network in the State is a “fundamental result to the defense and preservation of the capitalist regime precisely because the influence and utilization of union associationist network is an INDISPENSABLE STAGE for any revolutionary movement directed by the Communist Party.” (Revolutionary Party and Economic Action, 1951).

Therefore, the call for the reorganization of the class labor union outside the tentacles of the bourgeois state is CENTRAL and IRRENUNCIABLE. That said, we have used with full consciousness before the formula "extensive network of solidarity and fight on the labor union level" to avoid the stereotyped automatism that years of trade union integration of the big apparatuses evokes in some and because the form or the name that this network adopts is not the primordial thing as long as the content is the one established by the Theses of the Party.

Let's rivet the nail once again: "the party acknowledges without reservation that not only the situation preceding the insurrectionary fight, but also any phase of strong increase of the party's influence among the masses, cannot develop without the extension between the party and the class of a stratum of organizations with immediate economic objectives and with high numerical participation, within which there is a network emanating from the party (nuclei, groups and communist labor union faction). It is the task of the party, in unfavorable periods and periods of passivity of the proletarian class, to foresee the forms and encourage the appearance of organizations with economic objectives for the immediate struggle." (Characteristic Theses, 1951).

Those who, presenting themselves as continuators of the Party, in the face of this categorical statement of the fundamental texts and in the face of the evident atrophy and suffocating control that the working class suffers in the field of labor struggle, continue mumbling "...syndicalist deviation..." every time they hear a call to carry out a serious and systematic work in this direction, is an inveterate demagogue and a pathological follower of the new course.

 

Two tasks of the Party, maybe the "only" ones?

In our stance (a double-sided DIN A4 leaflet), we also said:

“A fundamental task is to reintroduce in the ranks of the working class integral Marxism, Marxism without any adulterations, revisions or updates, without idle debates or dubitative speculations that only dent its revolutionary edge: «without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement» (Lenin, What is to be done?, 1902). Marxism is for the proletariat an instrument of work and a combat weapon: «at the peak of the battle, neither the instrument nor the weapon is abandoned to "repair" them, but one wins in times of peace and war by wielding good tools and weapons from the beginning»". (The Historical “invariance” of Marxism, 1952).

Another fundamental task is to break the straitjacket of integrated trade unionism, to organize the class labor union.”

This is where the epigone of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" concludes: "Two tasks, therefore, for El Comunista. One, the «theoretical» one, which consists in reintroducing among the proletariat «integral Marxism». Another, the «practical» one, to build the trade union." ("El Proletario", No. 31). And here is also where we must make an intermission.

As Bukharin used to do with the Left, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" weave a fictitious shirt which they pin on us, and then they shout, bellow and shriek against this shirt built by themselves and try to attach to us the customary label of "syndicalists and generically theorists".

The purpose of this sheet was 1) to provide a brief analysis of the changes imposed by the development of the productive forces in the area and in the capitalist world that shape the necessary processes in the intersection of which the current sequence of events is triggered, necessary processes that move in a different context compared to 1967 and even to 2009; 2) to raise an internationalist communist position; 3) to raise a line of action of the communists in the world as a first step to be able to have a capacity of influence not negligible in the events of the capitalist world. This leaflet did not aim to establish the set of activities of the Party between the present moment and the dictatorship of the proletariat, not even to exhaust the set of activities of the Party at the present moment.

It must be said that it is even funny to read the epigone of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" in his criticisms because, after ranting on about how we supposedly reduce the activity of the Party to only two tasks, while omitting so many other things, they are incapable of clearly enunciating even one of these things so fundamental of their grandiloquent "political struggle" that we do not take into account.

 

The activity of the Party

The fundamental points of Party activity, as recalled at each general meeting and as repeatedly published in the Party press, are set forth in the Lyon Theses of 1926, let us recall them once again:

"The activity of the party cannot and should not be limited only to the preservation of the purity of the theoretical principles and the purity of the organizational complex, or only to the achievement at all costs of immediate successes and numerical popularity. It must always and in all situations involve the following three points:

a) the defense and precision, in relation to the new groups of facts that present themselves, of the fundamental programmatic postulates, that is, of the theoretical consciousness of the working class movement;

b) the assurance of the continuity of the organizational complex of the party and its efficiency, and its defense against the infections of foreign influences opposed to the revolutionary interest of the proletariat;

c) the active participation in all the struggles of the working class, even in those raised by partial and limited interests, to encourage their development, but constantly bringing to them the factor of the link with the final revolutionary objectives and presenting the conquests of the class struggle as ways of access to the indispensable future struggles, denouncing the danger of accommodating with partial achievements, considered as points of arrival, and of sacrificing to them the conditions of the class activity and combativeness of the proletariat, such as the autonomy and independence of its ideology and of its organizations, in the first rank of which is the party.

The supreme objective of this complex activity of the Party is to PREPARE the subjective conditions for the preparation of the proletariat in order to put it in a position to take advantage of the objective revolutionary possibilities that history will present, as soon as they arise, so that it will emerge victorious from the struggle, and not defeated."

The Party perseveres in the continuation of this activity as a unitary mechanism, distributing tasks and functions among its members according to their possibilities and aptitudes, considering all its adherents as instruments or operators of a collective conscience and will, for the implementation of a tactic tied to the doctrine and the program that is developed within well determined limits known by the group of militants, cultivating a true centralization and unity in its action and organization. In the execution of this activity, frequent meetings are held in each territorial section and also general and regional meetings, of international character, which are of study and organization; the communication between the different groups of comrades is guaranteed for a greater collective use of all the contributions; the clarification and correct approach of the events and of the intervention of the Party in them is carried out through the collective study of the fundamental texts; the study of the course of capitalism is carried out on the basis of the Marxist theory demonstrating the validity of its scientific approach in the facts of economic development; the Party magazine is prepared, translated and published in various languages; the intervention of the militants in the struggles of the working class is carried out, drawing the lessons from them, outside the electoral circus and parliamentary gossip.

 

What does reintroduce integral Marxism within the working class mean?

Let us return to the reasonings of the epigone in Spanish of “le Prolétaire”/”il Comunista”. Now we have to hear them cry out against the "intellectual type indoctrination («introducing the theory» in their words) of the proletarian class." (El Proletario, No. 31)[34]

There are militants outside our organization who are today on spontaneist positions, who perhaps tomorrow will even be very good comrades if the historical development confirms our position and allows them to overcome their present reticence, who are sincerely convinced that it is a mistake to speak of "introducing theory". But that “le Prolétaire”/“il Comunista” or anyone who claims to be a continuator of the International Communist Party should have any qualms about the phrase "A fundamental task is to reintroduce in the ranks of the working class integral Marxism" (our leaflet of October 22th, 2023) is absurdly ridiculous and a very good example of the demagogy they are ready to deploy.

Could it be possible that they have not read the quotation on which Lenin bases his point in the What is to be done, a quotation also reproduced, among others, in "The Squawk of Praxis" (1953)?

"(...) it is from the brains of some members of this sector that modern socialism has arisen, and it has been they who have transmitted it to the more intellectually developed proletarians, who, in their turn, introduce it into the class struggle of the proletariat, wherever the conditions allow it. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced from outside (von aussen Hineingetragenes) into the class struggle of the proletariat, and not something that has arisen spontaneously (urwüchsig) within it. Accordingly, already the old Heinfeld program said, quite rightly, that it is the task of social democracy to imbue into the proletariat the consciousness (literally: to fill the proletariat with it) of its situation and its mission" (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1902).

Besides, "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" hears talk of reintroducing theory and thinks of "intellectual indoctrination". They do not conceive any other way because they do not know any other way. But this is their problem, not ours.

Then, we have to listen rhetorical questions like the following: "Only Marxist doctrine (how will it be introduced into the class? how will it spread? Who knows...) and trade unions are necessary" (El Proletario, No. 31) [35]. We are not sure if "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" wanted to convince the public that they have a reading comprehension problem or they wanted to show everyone that they have no limits in their demagogy.

As we said in the position statement that concerns us: “Both tasks must be carried out simultaneously, one nourishing the other, organizing the immediate struggle by weaving the network of the class union outside State integration and introducing Marxism into the experiences of these struggles, making a part of the workers who have undertaken these struggles rise to the level of revolutionary theory, becoming communist militants.” (our leaflet of October 22, 2023).

The "two tasks" that disturb the epigone in Spanish of "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat) can be read in chapter III of the Rome Theses of 1922, whose title is "III - Relations between the Communist Party and the proletarian class".

"12.- The work of propaganda of its ideology and proselytism for its militia that the party continually carries out is thus inseparable from the reality of proletarian action and movement (...).

13.- (…) By participating on the front lines in the actions of the economic organs they are part of, these groups [of the Party] attract to themselves and thus to the ranks of the political party those elements who in the development of action become ready for this. (…) Thus, a whole work takes place which is of conquest and organization, which is not limited to propaganda and proselytism and internal election campaigns in the proletarian assemblies, but especially delves into the heat of struggle and action, assisting the workers in drawing from it the most useful experiences.” (Theses on the tactics of the Communist Party, from Rome, 1922).

For this combined task the Party organ is required. Their militants carry out the study (individual and collective), the preparation of the analysis on the development of the economy and the imperialist clashes, the tools of political propaganda, the publication of the review and of the stances on different events. At the same time that it contributes to form a non-state-integrated labor union network fighting the weeds of integrated unionism, at the same time that it coordinates and leads the struggle of militant groups of the working class in a real ground, it organizes political, historical and programmatic presentations as well as collective readings of texts of Marxism among contacts and sympathizers who are living the struggle against the bosses' class, the defense of integral Marxism is carried in the assemblies and picket lines, the role of the various organs of the bourgeois state (educational system, courts, integrated trade unionism, police, inspection, etc.) is denounced, which is more quickly grasped with the help of the examples experienced live, the analyses of the course of imperialism, of the economy and its reflections in the clashes between powers are spread, the positions of other so-called workers' or openly interclassist currents are contested and refuted, etc.

But we already know that all this does not seem to "le Prolétaire"/"il Comunista" (exCombat) as "political" as continuing to feed Palestinian nationalism and to wade through all the puddles of past and future interclassism to "reframe the problems of today" and "discover" the practical "new weapons".

In any case, we stick to the fundamental positions of the Party, among which is this one, sculpted forever against the predecessors of the new course:

"Do you seriously believe that (while the whole enormous machine of bourgeois propaganda is busy from morning to night not so much, mind you, refuting the revolutionary thesis as proving that socialist claims can be arrived at by marching against Marx and against Lenin, and when not only political parties but even constituted governments swear to rule, i.e. to oppress the masses, in the name of communism) the strenuous work of critical restoration of Marxist revolutionary theory is only theoretical work? Who would dare to say that it is not also political work, an active struggle against the class enemy? Only those possessed by the demon of activist action can think so. The movement, albeit poor in numbers, which works in the press, in meetings, in factory discussions, to free revolutionary theory from unheard-of adulterations, from opportunistic contaminations, thereby accomplishes revolutionary work, works for the Proletarian Revolution." (Activism, 1952, Battaglia Comunista).

 

[1] New edition

[2] The degeneration of programma comunista and our battle

[3] ”Infatti, i compagni che risultavano formalmente «proprietari commerciali» e «direttori responsabili» del giornale di partito non necessariamente condividevano sempre le posizioni del partito. Questo vale per i numeri del «programma comunista» dal 7, luglio 1983, all’11, gennaio 1984, come per il successivo «combat» dal febbraio al dicembre 1984 (testata il cui indirizzo non è mai stato da noi condiviso).” (il Comunista, No. 175, pag. 10)

[4]  “Dopo la comune lotta contro il liquidazionismo movimentista e un persistente attendismo (come documentato nel “programa comunista” dall’ottobre 82 al giugno 83, continuata poi parcialmente nello stesso giornale e successivamente in “combat”), e il comune tentativo di reagire allá crisi accettando la sfida lanciata dagli avvenimenti esterni e interni all’organizzazione, la sezione “italiana” si spacca” (il Comunista, Anno III/Nuova serie, No.1 of 1985)

[5] “La linea – aggiungiamo con maggiore energia e in riferimento alla crisi che ha ultimamente sconquassato il partito – che va dalla lotta per ENTRARE IN CONTATTO COI MOVIMIENTI SOCIALI e con la classe e per contribuire alla rinascita di una corrente classista indipendente dal collaborazionismo alla battaglia contro il liquidazionismo antipartito di stampa attendista, accademico o movimentista e contingentista che sia” (il Comunista, Anno III/Nuova serie, No.1 de 1985)

[6] ”Questo lavoro iniziò già nell’ottobre de 82, con la preparazione della riunione generale di Milano, i cui risultati immediati si possono leggere nel n. 20 del 29 ottobre 82 di ‘programma comunista’, e nei numeri successivi.” (il Comunista, No.2 de 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, pag. 21)

[7] ”Come si è sviluppata questa crisi che vede contrapposti compagni che partono dalla stessa esigenza, l'intervento nelle contraddizioni sociali sotto la guida di una linea tattica collegata ai nostri principi politici e tattici?” (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, pag. 2)

[8] “Indubbiamente ciò è avvenuto in forza di un ritardo nel risolvere questo problema, che si è manifestato in modo differenziato alla scala internazionale” (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, pag. 2)

[9] ”In effetti, la nostra attività di intervento nelle lotte, per anni, è stata limitata al livello rivendicativo sindacale. E' verissimo. Ma questo terreno, i problemi che ha posto, l'evidente sua ristrettezza, ci ha fatto riconoscere la necessità di allargare la nostra visuale, ci ha fatto scoprire tutti gli altri terreni «pratici», e questi terreni – questione femminile, casa, antimilitarismo, repressione e ogni altra manifestazione delle contraddizioni sociali - ci hanno dato nuove armi e maggior sicurezza nell'affrontare la stessa lotta rivendicativa sindacale.” (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, pag. 5)

[10] ”Per questa ragione, pur comprendendo le «esigenze» di chiunque ci parli del «movimento sociale», pur condividendo il giudizio di essere di fronte ad un momento decisivo della nostra storia, ne traiamo la conclusione opposta a quella liquidatrice: dalla nostra storia passata, dai nostri errori, oltre che dal bagaglio dottrinale che non abbiamo mai visto come un ricettario, traiamo l'alimento per andare decisamente avanti.” (il programma comunista, No.20/1982, pag. 5)

[11] “1) Definire senso della spaccatura. Non fra parte arretrata e avanzata, ma fra comp. che sono consapevoli di una serie di esigenza (dal programma al p. d’azione riv.). Le divergenze di fondo fra loro: per farlo rompere o continuare. Uci divisa, ma responsabilità del sottoscritto e di E. di andare avanti, sia pure come “curatori fallimentari”.

2) Distinzione fra le posizioni di El Oumami e degli altri comp. El Oumami fa una serie di critiche che a noi appaiono giustificate e ci ha lanciato una sfida cha abbiamo deciso di accettare. Il problema dell’organizzazione int.le: mancanza di un vero programma d’azione politico.” (Traccia della riunione del 17.10.1982)

[12] ”Io non accetto il discorso della direzione che fa il mea culpa.” (il programma comunista, No. 20/1982, pag. 5)

[13] “Allo stesso modo, una forte resistenza con le parole e coi fatti veniva offerta da questi compagni ad ogni tentativo di intervento fuori dalle fabbriche - sulle questioni della casa, femminile, della repressione, ecc. - e di intervento nelle stesse fabbriche e sul terreno propriamente sindacale che non si facesse ridurre ad una stretta dipendenza dai tempi e dai modi dettati dalle strutture sindacali ufficiali.

Per questa parte di compagni ogni decisione presa al di fuori di quanto e di come era « già stato fatto » in precedenza, ogni interesse per problematiche che investivano il terreno della critica politica e teorica non affrontate e risolte con tesi e punti fermi in precedenza (dal partito attuale o dal partito comunista d'Italia negli anni Venti), assumeva l'aspetto del pericolo o addirittura del tentativo di portare il partito fuori dalla sua rotta e di inficiarne la capacità teorica e politica.

Contro una visione di tal genere - che andò via via caratterizzandosi come difesa ad oltranza di quanto, non tanto la sinistra comunista come corrente politica, ma di quella italiana in particolare e soprattutto della persona Amadeo Bordiga, aveva detto scritto fatto, senza comprendere in realtà la lezione profonde delle battaglie di classe condotte dalla sinistra comunista - si sviluppò una lotta politica interna condotta in particolare dal Centro attraverso lo sforzo di reinquadrare i problemi dell'oggi e le differenze di situazione storica senza perdere il filo conduttore di quelle battaglie di classe.

Questa circolare del marzo 1976, alla pari di altre precedenti e di successive, fa parte di questa lotta politica interna. (…)

Da questo punto di vista, questa circolare segna un punto a favore, se così ci si può esprimere, alla lotta sia contro il conservatorismo di partito ben radicato purtroppo nell'organizzazione, sia contro quell'arroganza teorica mescolata ad un velleitarismo verbale ma pratico immobilismo caratteristici degli antidialettici legati ad una visione mistica del partito, della lotta di classe, del proletariato e del suo movimento, della rivoluzione, del comunismo.”” (Premessa alla circolare de 1976, pubblicato en “il Comunista”, No. 33, 1992, pag. 9)

[14] “Noi siamo un’organizzazione molto piccola, collegata strettamente all’esperienza della Sinistra comunista d’Italia e al lavoro di restaurazione teorica del marxismo che i compagni della Sinistra che non hanno gettato la spugna e che non si sono venduti allo stalinismo hanno ripreso, sotto l’indirizzo dato da Amadeo Bordiga, l’attività sia teorica che politica e organizzativa riannodando il filo del tempo del movimento proletario e comunista rivoluzionario.” (il Comunista, No. 178, agosto, 2023, pag. 1)

[15] “Conservare la linea del futuro della propria classe”, in Italian, ed.

¹⁶ “3) continuità del lavoro di intervento nei diversi settori in cui il partito agiva (terreno sindacale, antimilitarismo, antirepressione, difesa condizioni di vita lavoro e lotta del proletariato, ecc.)” (il Comunista, Anno III/Nuova serie, No. 1 de 1985)

[17] ”Pubblichiamo qui di seguito due testi inerenti ad un’attività che il gruppo promotore per il Centro Sociale di Croce di Musile (nel sandonatese) ha iniziato sul problema della nocività e sugli infortuni sul lavoro. Questo gruppo di giovani è attivo dall’inizio del 1984 e si è mosso in special modo per ottenere un Centro Sociale, spazio da utilizzare per varie attività e iniziative collegate coi problemi dei giovani, sia verso il lavoro che verso la vita in generale.” (il Comunista, No. 3 de 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, pag. 7)

[18] “Sono senza dubbio una testimonianza (…) vivente di un modo di reagire sia all’isolamento che al silenzio, un modo fecondo per lo stesso futuro della lotta proletaria” (il Comunista, No. 3 de 1985, Anno III/Nuova serie, pag. 7)

[19] ”Le droit de vote est un droit politique reconnu aux travailleurs français et qui doit être le droit de tout travailleurs étrangers. Non seulement le droit de vote, mais le droit d'être élu, ceci sans restriction par rapport aux types d'élections (locale ou nationale). Hors de cette positions de principe il n'y a que maquignonnage ou mascarade.”  (le Prolétaire, No. 383, 1985, page 1)

[20] ”doivent servir d’exemple pour les futures luttes ouvrières” (le Prolétaire, No.531)

[21] ”Solidarité prolétarienne avec Mumia Abu-Jamal et toutes les victimes du terrorisme de l’Etat américain” (le Prolétaire, No. 541, August 2021)

[22]”resta il fatto che, ad oggi, le donne uccise dai loro partner o in famiglia o semplicemente perché donne sono 102... e non è finito l’anno... ” (il Comunista, No. 179, novembre 2023)

[23] ”In Francia/Svizzera un piccolo gruppo si era formato con compagni di Parigi, Strasburgo, Lione, Losanna continuando a pubblicare le Prolétaire. (…) rimasero in piedi, fino al giugno 1983, dei contatti con il vecchio centro situato a Milano, ma i tentativi di riorganizzazione a livello internazionale furono molto deboli e confusi.” (“il Comunista", No. 175)

[24]“Selon le marxisme, l’orientation correcte surtout pour les aires où la révolution bourgeoise n’est plus à l’ordre du jour (ou donc il ne peut plus y avoir de révolutions doubles) mais où la question nationale n’a pas été résolue est d’insérer celle-ci et la lutte nationale dans la lutte de classe révolutionnaire.” (le Prolétaire, No. 401, 1989, page 8)

[25]“Ce serait une grossière erreur d'indiquer aux prolétaires dans de telles situation la seule perspective de luttes sur un terrain purement prolétarien, en jetant aux oubliettes ces questions d'ordre national, soulevées par la bourgeoisie et la petite-bourgeoisie dans leurs seuls intérêts de classes dominantes, mais dont sont victimes d'une façon ou d'une autre les prolétaires.” (le Prolétaire, No. 401, 1989, page 7)

[26]”E non c’è dubbio che i proletari del paese oppresso vedano i proletari del paese oppressore come complici della borghesia straniera che li opprime. Per dimostrare che questa complicità non c’è, i proletari del paese oppressore devono battersi contro la propria borghesia rivendicando che la popolazione oppressa, compresi i suoi proletari, abbia la libertà di “autodeterminarsi”.” (il Comunista, No. 179, 2023, pag. 3)

[27] “Pour mettre sur pied une propagande communiste efficace dans les tragiques événements d'aujourd'hui, il est indispensable de partir non de la critique de I'OLP, mais du besoin de solidarité Instinctive avec la résistance des combattants et des masses exploitées au Liban. (…) il faut définir l'attitude juste et efficace vis-à-vis de I'OLP.

On doit se garder de donner à cette critique un caractère programmatique général ou abstrait, c'est-à-dire délié des exigences réelles de la lutte ressentie par les travailleurs. On doit enfin éviter de donner à la critique, même la plus juste du point de vue des canons programmatiques, une place disproportionnée par rapport aux tâches premières, et plus urgentes, au moins dans un premier temps, de formulation des besoins de lutte, des revendications, des méthodes de riposte et de lutte et même d'éveil à de nouveaux besoins en s'appuyant sur les événements.

C'est dans la mesure où ce travail est bien mené et où il forge une véritable camaraderie de lutte que la critique politique est mieux acceptée“ (Le Prolétaire, No. 363 de 1982, page 2)

[28] “Si nous avons présidé à la naissance de ce comité, il n'est pas pour autant une émanation de notre parti. Y participent d'ailleurs des militants d'autres organisations à côté d'un petit groupe de militants de notre parti et de travailleurs sans parti, liés entre eux par une discipline par rapport à une base de lutte commune, et qui doivent parvenir à surmonter les hésitations normales au départ pour mettre sur pied maintenant une ligne d'action cohérente et entraînante.

Les principes avancés, notamment dans un tract d'appel à une réunion qui a rassemblé 80 personnes le samedi 19, sont ceux de la «solidarité internationale antiimpérialiste des travailleurs» contre l'«ennemi commun", l'impérialisme, «contre l'Etat d'Israël, et «les bourgeoisies arabes». Ces principes ne tombent pas du ciel. Ils résultent des besoins de lutte aujourd'hui effectivement ressentis notamment par une frange non négligeable de prolétaires immigrés.

C'est la raison pour laquelle nous les défendons dans ce comité de Solidarité Internationale Liban-Palestine, mais aussi dans les autres comités où peuvent intervenir nos militants, à Paris comme en province.“ (le Prolétaire, No. 363, 1982, page 2)

[29] “Nous, jamais nous n’avons cru à des “solutions nationales” au Vietnam, à Cuba, en Palestine, en tous ces lieux déshérités où se battent des révoltés qui n’ont ni l’organisation ni l’armement théorique du prolétariat, des exploités qui ne sont même pas groupés sous la forme compacte de la seule et vraie classe révolutionnaire. Jamais nous n’avons encouragé la moindre illusion sur ces “voies” trompeuses proposées par Moscou et, d’une façon plus générale, par l’opportunisme de tous les pays et de tous les temps. Mais le sacrifice de ces masses insurgées en vain est une plaie qui restera béante jusqu’à la révolution mondiale de demain. Plus sobrement, mais certainement avec plus de conviction farouche que les enthousiastes occidentaux de ces luttes condamnées d’avance, nous crions : à bas les faux mots d’ordre de “Libération nationale”, hors des rangs ouvriers les traîtres qui les propagent : hier au service des vieux impérialisme, aujourd’hui au service de tous les nouveaux. Pour la lutte de classe internationale, pour la reconstruction de son parti, pour la dictature mondiale du prolétariat et contre toutes les “étapes intermédiaires”, les “transitions” qui se soldent en fleuves de sang ! “ (le Prolétaire, No. 85, 1970)

[30] “todo ello se solucionaría si mágicamente el proletariado se levantase, no en un país, sino en todo el mundo, «como un solo hombre». Pero eso, dicho sin más, ¿es la perspectiva que asumen los marxistas revolucionarios?” (“El Proletario”, No. 31, pág.10)

[31] “En el caso de Palestina, por ejemplo, el vínculo que relaciona al proletariado israelí con su burguesía, se alimenta precisamente del beneficio que este proletariado obtiene de apoyar la colonización de las tierras palestinas y la opresión de las masas y los proletarios árabes tanto dentro como fuera del Estado de Israel.” ("El Proletario", No. 31, p.10)

[32] “De acuerdo con esta afirmación, la tarea del Partido Comunista es declarar la «huelga general revolucionaria», ese gran mito anarquista y sindicalista con el que estas corrientes han escamoteado históricamente la necesidad de la lucha política revolucionaria, para lo cual previamente debe desarrollarse una «extensa red de solidaridad y lucha en el plano sindical […] en la cual haya ganado una influencia decisiva el Partido Comunista Internacional».

Difícil reunir en una sola frase más afirmaciones ajenas al marxismo. La huelga general revolucionaria no es el fin por el que lucha el partido, no es ni siquiera el método de acción a través del cual se llevará a cabo, llegado el momento, la movilización en una guerra imperialista. Y la tarea del Partido no puede estar, ni mucho menos, supeditada a este objetivo. (…)

El Comunista representa, esencialmente, una desviación sindicalista del marxismo. Lo representaba cuando, en 1980, sus miembros se desgajaron del tronco del Partido, cuando negaban la necesidad de un partido estructurado más allá del terreno de intervención inmediata en las luchas proletarias, y lo representan hoy, cuando cifran la lucha contra la guerra imperialista en la existencia de esa «red de solidaridad y lucha» que debería estar influenciada por el Partido.” (El Proletario, No. 31).

[33] “Es decir, que el derrotismo revolucionario parte de la lucha contra el sindicalismo integrado en el Estado y el parlamentarismo.” (El Proletario, No. 31)

[34] “adoctrinamiento de tipo intelectual («introducir la teoría» en sus palabras) de la clase proletaria.” (El Proletario, No. 31)

[35] “Únicamente son necesarias la doctrina marxista (¿cómo se introducirá en la clase? ¿cómo se extenderá? Quién sabe…) y sindicatos” (El Proletario, No. 31)

 

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