The Need to Prepare Revolution

In an article published exactly one year ago in this newspaper (“The Global Boom in real Estate”, no. 5, September-October 2006) we wrote:

“In the phase of its historical crisis, the fate that condemns Capital to grow, on pain of stagnation and death, leads it to attempt paths of exploitation outside the production process, which is where plus-value is extracted.  The law that inevitably imposes declining profit margins forces the enormous mass of capital freely circulating throughout the world to look for every opportunity to make the most of itself in the form of interest, using a variety of financial investments that have at this stage become extremely varied, ‘creative’ and profitable, by purchasing portions of the earth’s crust to be exploited in diverse ways.  But since interest is subject to the same declining tendency as profit margins, speculation creates fake capital, destined to vanish in sudden and catastrophic returns to reality.  The periodic speculative phases thus reveal the vain attempt of Capital to deny its historical destiny and the crashes are followed by new speculative phases, new ‘bubbles’ that prepare for new crashes. With the exception of the emerging powers, whose huge development is destined, because of its very nature, to exhaust itself rapidly and bring about just as many enormous conflicts, world Capital experiences no other “growth” except this, fake or produced by the drugs of artificial stimuli to produce and consume.”

And after a careful analysis of the boom in real estate, of its premises and characteristics, we concluded:

“Suffice it here to point out that new and increasingly powerful crisis factors are gathering, that future crises promise to be wider and wider in range, with effects on increasingly large sectors of the population, even in the cities of imperialism. One by one, the  attempts to make the most out of excess capital by creating bubbles of speculation exhaust themselves and enormous amounts of fake capital disappear into thin air, while there is excess production of goods in the form of an ocean of unsold buildings, and ancillary production also crashes, carrying with it employment. For proletarians, the illusions of easy money and general well-being disappear.  The real dreamers are not those who, like us, insist on holding fast to revolutionary communism, but those who continue to believe in capitalism which, once it has completed its historical mission, is a mere dispenser of illusions and can guarantee nothing but growing misery.”

The turbulence over the summer, emerging from the US real estate market (and in particular from the sectors of sub-prime mortgages) and spreading rapidly to all the world’s stock exchanges, confirms what we wrote the previous year.  We return to this question in another article published in this issue, whilst for the moment, we wish, instead, to concentrate on other aspects.

Firstly, the events of the summer reveal on the one hand the profound instability of the capitalist mode of production and, on the other, the close connections between all its sectors, which derive from the nature of Capital itself, as a social force.  The effects will not be immediately visible, because nothing is purely mechanical in economic trends and their reflection on society. However, they will be deep-reaching and such as to set off inevitable chain reactions.  The very attitude of  the ‘observers’ and ‘experts’, typical categories of imperialist parasites, powerless to foresee the future and incapable of evaluating things, is marked either by insincere reassurances (“The system is stable.  The economy’s working. Don’t worry.  The shake-ups are good for us.”) or by ill-concealed nerves.  This means that the situation is not exactly rosy, that 100 billion dollars down the drain (with all the consequences that can be imagined on the GNP, employment, etc.) are not peanuts, and that calls to observe “austerity” will become more and more pressing, that the stick will be raining increasingly violent blows on the backs of the proletariat.

Secondly, the increasingly evident  and more radical turbulence in the capitalist mode of production, whilst being a source of renewed enthusiasm for revolutionaries, at the same time obliges them to be ever firmer and more determined in stating the need to prepare revolution – which can only meanworking to extend and establish the revolutionary party.  We are not, in fact, amongst those who cry “Wolf!” every five minutes.  We know quite well that it will still take a long time for a truly deep and significant crisis to evolve in the mode of capitalist production, and thus for its development (neither mechanical nor automatic) into a revolutionary crisis - despite the turbulence, the sudden shake-ups and the immediate accelerations.  For this very reason the party must keep watch and do its work thoroughly:  within and outside its own circle, including – where possible – the tasks of organizing and directing proletarian struggles, to contribute towards extending them in the direction of a true proletarian battle front.  Clearly the final objective of the party (though this, too, is the music of the future, despite all the impatient and facile souls) will be to channel this reborn proletarian battle front against the bastions of the state, which defends the capitalist mode of production, to invade and destroy them and thus win power.However, this is neither a short, nor straight, nor easy path and the only way to travel down it without having to go into immediate reverse or seriously lose a sense of direction, is to insist unyieldingly and with determination on the need, today – as tomorrow and always – to prepare for revolution.

This means laying claim, both through words and through deeds, to continuity in organization, on a theoretical as well as a practical level, holding fast to the thread linking us to our tradition of struggle, the only one that has managed to react and survive the deepest and most devastating wave of counter-revolution ever to strike the communist and workers’ movement, from the ‘20s onwards.  In other words the party must succeed in being present at the historical appointment with the revolutionary crisis, complete with its theoretical tools, its political reckoning,a militant organization that is intact and coherent, so that the struggling proletariat may recognize in it the synthesis and expression of its own historical mission, above and beyond the ups and downs and the stinging defeats.    It must defend the organization from any sort of theoretical, political or practical interference that might come from the outside, not out of an intellectual mania for purity but because of the awareness that this revolutionary tool, without which the revolutionary crisis can never take a positive direction, must be kept in perfect order, with all its parts working smoothly.  It must prepare for the supreme struggle, guaranteeing the theoretical, political and practical preparation of all its militants and taking particular care of the necessary generational change at an international level. It must face the problem of penetrating the international proletariat - both in times of stalemate, such as the phase that has been dragging on so tragically for almost eighty years now, and in that of the return to class awareness, which the economic crisis cannot help causing – with methods of struggle and the historical objectives of communism, combating any form of opportunism, of which the spontaneous or infantile-extremist variety is perhaps the most dangerous, precisely because it inevitably ends up by becoming anti-party.

Our “Basic theses”, remind us that:

“6.  The party today carries out the task of scientifically recording social phenomena, in order to confirm the basic theses of Marxism.  It analyses, compares and comments on recent and contemporary events.  It rejects the elaboration of doctrine, which tends to found new theories or demonstrate the inadequacy of the doctrine in explaining phenomena.

“All this work on the demolition (Lenin:  What to do?) of opportunism and deviationism stands today at the basis of the party’s activity, which by these means, too, follows the revolutionary tradition and experiences during times of revolutionary reflux and the flourishing of opportunist theories, which saw their violent and inflexible opponents in Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Italian Left.

“7.  By means of this correct revolutionary evaluation of present-day tasks, even though its numbers may not be large and it may not be closely connected to the proletarian masses, and although it remains a jealous guardian of the theoretical commitment as its most important job, the party refuses categorically to be considered a gathering of thinkers or mere academics in search of new truths or who have lost their hold on yesterday’s truth, considering it insufficient.

“Historically, no movement can triumph without theoretical continuity, which is the experience of past struggles.  It follows that the party forbids individual freedom of analysis and the concoction of new schemes or explanations of the contemporary social world:  it forbids individual freedom of analysis, of criticism and of a future perspective, even by the best prepared intellectual amongst its members, and defends the soundness of a theory that is not the consequence of blind faith but the content of proletarian class science, built up by the stuff of centuries, not by the thought of human beings but by the force of material facts, reflected in the historical consciousness of a revolutionary class and taking concrete shape in its party. Material events have done no more than confirm the doctrine of revolutionary Marxism.

“8.  Despite the restricted numbers of its members, due to clearly counter-revolutionary conditions, the party unceasingly seeks proselytes and carries out propaganda for its principles in all forms, both written and by word of mouth, even though there are few participants at its meetings and its press has a limited circulation.  The party considers the press its main work in the present phase, as this is one of the most effective means allowed by the present situation to indicate the line of action to the masses and for an organic and more widespread circulation of the revolutionary movement’s principles.

“9. Events themselves and not the will or decision of human beings thus also determine the sector of the masses that is penetrated, limiting it to a small corner of activity in general.  Nonetheless, the party loses no opportunity to work its way into every crack, every gap, knowing full well that there will be no recovery until this sector has been enormously widened and has become dominant.”[1]

This implies the need to prepare revolution.  It means working on extending, strengthening and putting down firm international roots for the party and therefore, at the same time, contributing to the return of the proletarian struggle to the world stage – a return which it must be possible for the party itself to form and direct, on pain of dispersion and further reflux.

To the opportunists and wordmongers, to those who are over-impatient, this will seem very little. Instead, not only is it a great deal, it is essential and the premise for any revolutionary prospects.  It is true that we communists are like sloths.  We continue along our path towards the revolution, slowly but inexorably.  We let others turn somersaults in the branches.