We have no intention of commenting on the recent buffoonery of the Italian elections. From the USA to the United Kingdom, from France to Russia, from Germany to Spain and so on, the parliamentary whorehouse is increasingly becoming one shameless cackle of voices. And the communist position acquires more and more importance: the bourgeois parliament is “no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists” (Lenin) and the political systems emerging from the second world massacre have inherited the substance of fascism, transferring it into the deceptive forms of a democracy that has been devoid of any progressive content for over a century and a half; proletarians can expect nothing from institutions (state, regional, municipal) based on “free elections”, because it is not there that the destiny of what affects us lies, but where Capital, as an impersonal economic and social force, makes its weight felt and dictates law. The only path to pursue is therefore that of revolutionary preparation for overthrowing this obsolete and now murderous mode of production, starting from its institutions: and this means – in a nutshell – starting from the open and intransigent fight to defend our living and working conditions, refusing any democratic-reformist illusion and constantly committed to reinforcing and putting down international roots for the revolutionary party. In this perspective, we shall limit ourselves to making two observations.
Point number one. What dominates the capitalist world and is reflected (we insist: reflected) in the electoral clamour is the uncertainty of how to untangle a world economic crisis which, as we document in the work of our party, apart from any episodic and loudly acclaimed “slight recoveries”, continues its unstoppable march, devouring jobs, illusory “guarantees”, imaginary “rights”, real lives and existences, giving rise to horrifying conflicts and massacres in all corners of the globe (are we forgetting the Middle East, where war has been raging for decades?), fuelling the most obscene outbursts of racism and increasing brutality in interpersonal relations. The ruling bourgeois class is desperately trying to play its few, vain cards in order to deal with a crisis that stems from the very DNA of Capital: crises of overproduction of goods and capitals, from which Capital can only escape by means of a new world conflict. But in this regard, it is profoundly divided internally: suffice it to think of the strong polemics that are agitating the world of US economics and politics (protectionism yes/protectionism no) or in Britain (Brexit yes, Brexit no), the contorted path towards the formation of the German government, the continuous and contradictory international diplomatic choreographies, the positioning and repositioning in the Far East, the populism and revanchism throughout Dis-united Europe. All this and more is the expression of this uncertainty, of these conflicts and contrasts between national capitals fighting to carve out or defend a slice of the cake, as well as between different factions inside them, of this increasingly evident incapability of the ruling bourgeois class to come to terms with the inevitable centrifugal forces produced by the crisis of its own mode of production.
Point two. This uncertainty and these divisions in the bourgeois camp (both national and international) must not deceive or delude the proletariat, however. Whilst internally divided, the ruling class is solid and compact when facing its historical enemy: the proletariat. On its own side it has the power of the state with all its repressive elements (military and legislative, legal and illegal), the dominion of the mass media (including, and above all, those that present themselves as “democratic”!), the induced collective amnesia regarding anything that has to do with the class war, the social and cultural inertia fuelled and shaped over time, which means that the status quo and “law and order” are divinities to be bowed down to always and without hesitation, and a century-long experience of command, culminating in ferocious repression every time the proletariat sets off along its own path refusing the promises of social peace (we still remember our companions of the commune massacred in their tens of thousands in 1871, or our Spartacist companions eliminated by the Freikorps with the active complicity of the German social democrats in 1918-19!). In recent times, both under the pretext of a skilfully presented and fuelled terrorism, and when dealing with large or small episodes of resistance by a proletariat that shows it is undefeated, even though dispersed and abandoned to its own devices, the various national bourgeoisies have agreed, compact and coordinated, both to dig up and dust down the repressive measures of their more or less recent past (in Italy the infamous and never abrogated Codice Rocco, in force since 1931: as we’re talking about fascist-democratic continuity…) and to introduce variations and extensions leading towards increasing reinforcement of state defences – what we have called (amidst the scandalized squeals of “sincere democrats”) “dictatorial democracy”. Thus, the ruling class makes use of a wide and growing range of repressive tools: police charges on pickets, attacks by gangs of blacklegs, traps set for delegates, the ever harsher and more explicit interventions by magistrates, the manipulative use of the mass media, the cunning formation of fascist and Nazi factions with an openly anti-proletarian function…this is an international reality.
In France the banlieues are under military control; in the United States the operational racism of the “forces of law and order” has brought about a plague of assassinations of young, black proletarians (who, it seems, have already been forgotten): In Egypt and Tunisia strikes are repressed with unprecedented violence; in Great Britain, as in China, entire metropolitan neighbourhoods are forcefully “emptied” of their proletarian inhabitants to avoid dangerous class concentrations; in Italy, the constant and courageous battles by workers in the logistics sector have been the object of a brutal series of actions by the “forces of law and order” and state institutions– battles that see proletarians from all backgrounds, of different religions, male and female, ranged together, demonstrating that only the class war can free every worker of ideological prejudices and fling the practice of proletarian internationalism in the face of Capital… The list could go on and – as if the growing poverty everywhere were not enough – demonstrates that the economic crisis advances inexorably and nurtures the ruling class’s worst nightmares. And so proletarians must not be under any illusion. But neither must they allow themselves to be intimidated: on the contrary, they must once again become and be aware they are a powerful, forward-moving force that no-one can stop. Certainly, they have a powerful enemy before them but they also have two great resources. One of these is their numbers: everywhere in the world, under the pressure of the economic crisis, the proletarian army is swelling and spreading, creating enormous, potential strength, united internationally in terms of hard facts and objective conditions, before convictions and behaviour. The other resource is that of the organization, first and foremost of social resistance and economic claims and then of social and political struggle: organization that is still lacking today, after the thousand and one theoretical and practical devastations caused by ninety years of counter-revolution, but whose urgent need is felt every time proletarians take to the streets in protest, abandoned as they are by openly anti-proletarian parties and institutional trade unions. The first sort of organization, by extending over the territory and dealing with all the issues relating to living and working conditions, makes it possible to oppose a real front, not a pretence, made up of words alone, able to contrast and repel the now daily attacks; the second sort is the political battle, which organizes proletarians into a critical and antagonistic subject, active and militant and prepares them for the revolutionary dismembering of the bourgeois dictatorship and from then onwards guides them in the practice of power, to eliminate all traces of this hateful society divided into classes, opening up the path for a new society where the free development of each individual will be a condition for the free development of all people. Proletarians must become aware again of these two great resources.
This is why it is urgent for the revolutionary party to gain strength and become internationally rooted: the necessary political reference point for escaping from the long, bloody death throes of a mode of production that is historically out-dated. This is what we have been working at for decades.
International Communist Party