Conclusion

Conclusion

 

Some sceptical souls may find it strange that we should publish these pages today, in a world plagued by war, ecological disaster, mounting chaos and irrationality, and where no force in society seems to be rising up to fight for a radically different society. While the workers in several countries have taken up the struggle against the attacks on their living conditions, the idea of struggling as a class against the bourgeoisie – a class which has its own history of political combat and clarification - is not yet well understood. In the present climate, the concepts of “world revolution” or “communism” have gone out of fashion, and supposedly remain of interest only to a few dusty academics or retarded romantics. Why, in such a world, devote any time to a tiny group of Italian émigrés, completely isolated and without any impact on social life? Surely we would do better to produce a “serious” study of a “mass” party – Togliatti’s PCI between 1926 and 1940 for example?

But we are not interested in producing learned and “scholarly” works, which hide behind the mask of a “neutral” historical “science”. History for us is not “neutral”: it is made by social classes, which give it their own orientation. Men make their own history, as Marx said last century. The fate of humanity depends on the action or inaction of revolutionary classes, whether it moves towards new progress, or terrible decadence and decline. World capitalism’s entry, in 1914, into its phase of definitive decline, with its train of world wars, permanent crises, and generalised social disintegration, is a decisive moment in history. At stake today is nothing less than the fate of humanity itself: socialism or barbarism. Either a world revolution, which will sweep away the cause of all the local and worldwide conflicts that mankind suffers today, or the continued survival of world capitalism, which will drag humanity down into a bottomless abyss of war, famine, and destruction, even to the point of destroying humanity itself and the planet on which we live.

This terrible historic dilemma was condensed by the IIIrd International, and by the Italian Left after it, into the phrase: “war or revolution”. It took all the weight of a crushing counter-revolution, sweeping away everything in its path in the name of “socialism in one country” and “anti-fascism” to bury in oblivion even the memory of the revolutionary wave which shook the world between 1917 and 1923. During these years, the proletariat made the capitalist class tremble, from Russia to Germany, from Italy to Hungary. Then, the world revolution was not a “utopia” but a burning and immediate question.

The defeat of the revolution in Germany, where the Social Democratic Party drowned the workers’ insurrection in blood, and the crushing defeat of the Russian workers by Stalinist state capitalism, left the way clear for the most merciless and thorough counterrevolution in history. Capitalism’s myths triumphed all down the line. The myth of “socialism in one country”, the “construction of socialism” and the “socialist fatherland”.

The myth of the defence of democracy, and “anti-fascism”. The myth of the “patriotic” war against fascism. The myth of the Resistance. The myth of the national liberation struggle, “progressive” nationalism, and “anti-imperialism”. Since 1989, the myth of “communism” in the East has been buried under the ruins of the collapsing Russian economy, only to be replaced by still more shameless lies: that the utterly bankrupt and decomposed state capitalism of the Russian economy is the true heir to the workers’ revolution of 1917; and the falsification of the Trotskyists, who having served faithfully all these years as Stalinism’s acolytes, now claim to have been its first, indeed its only critics within the working class.

Each new triumph of the counter-revolution was presented as a new victory for the “revolution” and “socialism”. The 50 million dead in World War II were the “price” of “democracy’s” victory over fascism. The hysterical cries of “Viva la muerte” from the two imperialist camps submerged the faint appeals of the few groups of revolutionary workers, who called for the fraternisation of workers all over the world, and not their mutual slaughter.

In this period - the most tragic, and the most demoralising of the whole history of the revolutionary workers’ movement - the Italian Communist Left appeared. Profoundly tied to the whole revolutionary movement of the 1920s, both in Italy and internationally, it was never a “sect”: although after 1926 it remained numerically weak, it always kept its links with the proletariat both through its militants and above all through its internationalist positions. Far from putting its own “interests” as an organisation to the fore - which is characteristic of a sect - it aimed at the unity of all existing revolutionary forces that had broken with Stalinism. More than anything, it fought for the triumph of the world revolution, not its own existence as a group. Nor was it “sectarian” in defending the positions of the only class capable of offering an alternative to growing barbarism, to war, and to the general crisis of world capital: the proletariat. Those who talk with contempt of the “sectarian” nature of the Communist Left, whether German or Italian, are the same who, yesterday and today, have chosen their camp: alongside the so-called “socialist camp” of Stalinism and the official “workers’ parties”. These were certainly more numerous than the tiny communist groups. They were, and still are, “with the masses”: but always with the aim of leading the masses away from their revolutionary goal.

In the 1930s, the Italian Communist Left had to take the difficult decision to isolate itself from the working class “masses” which had been won over ideologically to the counterrevolution, so as not to betray. This “purism” was in fact an unconditional fidelity to the workers’ cause, even if the workers themselves had temporarily turned away from the revolution. Far from giving in to the immediatism and activism which swept so many revolutionary groups into the void, it fought “against the current” with all its strength. It was working, not for immediate success, but for the long term to preserve from the wreckage all the theoretical gains of the 1920s revolutionary wave.

Such a resistance may surprise those who understand nothing about the proletariat and the revolution. They will undoubtedly see it as nothing more than a few workers’ nostalgic attachment to the heady days of revolutionary events in Italy between 1917 and 1920. It is true that the revolutionary events of the period galvanised all these young revolutionaries who later were to found the Italian Fraction. This was their true theoretical school. Certainly, the counter-revolution might wear down the best, even to the point of betrayal, but the power of a proletarian movement is such that even after it is crushed, the furrow it has ploughed in the spirit remains. And it is stunning to realise, in studying the history of both Italian and Dutch Lefts, that most of their militants remained revolutionaries into old age.

Even in the midst of the counter-revolution, the proletariat’s class consciousness does not disappear completely. Revolutionary minorities, no matter how weak, always appear to make a balance-sheet of the past, and to prepare the conditions for the victory to come. This constant effort by revolutionary minorities to enrich and develop revolutionary theory, to subject the positions of the past to the critical acid test, is not something meaningless, or abstract. It is the proof that the proletariat continues to live even in defeat. Contrary to what Vercesi said during the war, the proletariat does not disappear. It is an exploited class, and its resistance to exploitation continues, even though it may be temporarily diverted from its revolutionary goal. It retains its revolutionary potential, however far off its realisation.

Is this belief in the future revolution nothing but a revived mysticism? The events of 1968 in France, 1969 in Italy, the events of 1980 in Poland, but also the unprecedented struggles waged during the 1980s throughout the world, are there to show that the proletarian revolution is not a “myth” from the past, of interest only to nostalgias of revolutionary imagery. The resurgence of a proletariat which all the distinguished sociologists and historians thought had been buried and reduced to the state of an inoffensive icon is there to show that the “purist” positions of the Communist Left were not and are not merely a “utopia” of a few unrepentant dreamers. The international proletariat today is no myth, but a living reality.

No, the history of the Communist Left is not “neutral”. It cannot be reduced to an inoffensive historical “science”, looking down on the social battlefield. In today’s world of terminally diseased and rotting capitalism, the alternative posed 50 years ago by the Communist Left is more valid than ever: “Communist Revolution, or the destruction of humanity” is the choice before us.

By rejecting all the myths developed by the greatest counter-revolution in history, by remaining faithful to internationalism, by criticising mercilessly the weaknesses of the Communist International which led to its betrayal, the Italian Communist Left has fulfilled its task. Despite its degeneration after 1945 to the point of complete fossilisation, the theoretical lessons contained in Prometeo, Bilan, Communisme, and Octobre, are still alive. If this brief history of their struggle allows all those who have thrown in their lot with the revolutionary working class, to bridge the gap between their past and their present, it will have fulfilled its task also.