If and when the Russians’ so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine concludes, it will become evident to those who are not content to view reality through the deforming lens of mainstream ideology, that whatever “peace” (armistice? ceasefire? what else?) may come, will merely represent a longer or shorter pause before another chapter opens up in the headlong rush towards a third, inter-imperialist bloodbath.
There’s no going back.
This is certainly not written in the stars or in the psychology of one individual or another, called onto the stage of history to play the part of the ruler of the moment, but in the material reality of the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production.
The warning signs can be read in the build-up of tension in the Indo-Pacific area, in the increasingly close relations between Russia and China, in the political and military aggression of US capitalism, in the ridiculous “European unity” which reveals its insubstantial nature, as the tortuous and still fluid formation of opposing blocks starts to take shape.
In reality, once the same data of the so-called “science of economics” has been submitted to the lucid minds of our criticism of political economics, it is clear that the capitalist mode of production has never freed itself of its most recent crisis (the one that exploded in 2008-9). That crisis, in turn, was the final outcome, in chronological terms, of the sequence of crises that began in the mid nineteen-seventies, when the cycle of accumulation following the Second World War finally came to an end. The structural crisis of over-production of goods and capital in which we have been immersed since then is at the root of the need for an intensification of the normal conflictual relations between bourgeois States.
The two years of pandemic, with the desperate madness brought into play everywhere by a ruling class ready to transform the umpteenth tragedy, of which it itself was the cause, into a further source of profit, social (as well as health) experiments and patriotic-style rhetoric, have made it possible to turn away peoples’ eyes for a while from the spectre that is now revealing the whole of its macabre face.
As demonstrated by the same laws that govern the way Capital works, at this point the bourgeoisie is a class merely of use for monopolizing the wealth that is produced, through the dictatorship it exercises by means of national States.
And, like all the ruling classes that express now terminal forms of production, it defends and will continue to defend its rule as ferociously as it can: more “special military operations”, more “peace missions”, more wars and warlike skirmishes with the related massacre of proletarian and proletarianised populations, more mass destruction, more obscene ideological crusades, more repression of any dissent, right up to the unleashing of all against all.
And right now, a further “emergency” is already being prepared: a food crisis!
As communists, we have learned that only mobilisation of the proletariat can stop an imperialist war or transform it into a real class war.
This is true: but it cannot limit itself to remaining a rhetorical slogan or the expectation of instinctive action.
This mobilisation, this revolutionary defeatism we work towards, on a stage that instead echoes with empty rhetoric, with arrogant boasting, with self-referential impracticability, is a path that is anything but easy and simple: above all it is a practical objective that must be prepared well in advance, in the ranks of our class, the international proletariat.
And this is the point.
In these past three blood-soaked months, once again the main absentee seems to be this: the proletariat.
Of course many will flinch at this statement and cry scandal. But this is not a statement that intends to cast guilt on our class, nor do we mean to fuel disillusion and resignation: what we say instead is that we cannot and must not create illusions.
Our class is still crushed beneath the immense weight of decades of deadly counter-revolution which, under democracy, Stalinism and post-Stalinism, and Nazi-fascism, has meant the theoretical, practical and organizational dismantling of the enormous work carried out since 1848.
There is no quick recovery from a similar disaster, which trapped our class in the miserable condition of a “class in itself”, confining its battles to the narrow limits of economic claims tolerated by, and compatible with, the interests of all national capitalisms.
This has clearly been seen also, and above all, over the past three months.
Apart from a few, scattered and unfortunately un-influential episodes of “anti-militarism” (summed up in the isolated and quickly forgotten refusals to load arms onto ships, or in the picketlines that managed to block goods at the keypoints of logistics for some hours), there has not been, either in Italy or elsewhere, any real class opposition to the war capable of extending beyond a bleating and priestly pacifism – a pacifism which, as we well know, can quickly change hats and, on a wave of moral indignation, open up the way to the most firmly convinced military intervention, “in defence of our Country under attack”.
This condition of passivity and consternation, of purely rhetorical and humanitarian anti-militarism has proved not to produce any encouraging outcome in the recent demos “against the war” in Italy and elsewhere: late in coming, marked by the usual, pointless squabbles between groups, with little participation and above all a lack of the militant spirit that should be expected of demos against imperialist warfare.
Colourful marches, overflowing with fine sentiments, and then everyone back to their own homes.
An even sadder – and significant – fact; neither from Russia nor from Ukraine has there been any sign of even the feeblest defeatist action against the war adventure of their “own” States, against this bourgeois, imperialist war (the only voice of dissent to be heard came from a small, battlesome “workers’ group” in Siberia).
We know: we are once again going to attract the hostility and the snubs of those who, in order to placate their conscience, believe that there is nothing more to be done and above all that nothing more should be done or risked. Yet, if (and because) we must fight against the war brought about by the imperialist States, we have to prepare for the class war, starting out from the condition in which our class finds itself today all over the world.
This is work that can only be done by organized proletarian militants gathered around the communist party: difficult, tiring, never-ending, in contact with the rank and file of our class, amongst those who don’t even realize they are a class.
The powder kegs are there, all around the world: from Africa to Asia or to Latin America, they have often exploded, only to be quickly channelled into the nest of democratic, petit-bourgeois claims, after a huge sacrifice of proletarian blood, but without the causes being eliminated. And they can blow up again from one moment to the next. For this reason it cannot be expected that a revolutionary direction will descend from heaven, as so many would like it to.
Despite proletarian defeats, the communist party is the only possible political expression of our class. And the task of its militants is to reawaken the physical sense of social antagonism, rekindle class hatred, encourage total opposition to the bourgeois State (to all bourgeois States), reawaken diffidence towards all its institutions, deny national interests and the national economy, unmask the lies of the reformist parties and their utopian and conservative programmes.
To be effective (i.e. to allow our class to take class warfare to its extreme consequences: to become the ruling class), a direction needs action by those who have managed, in time and for some time, to fight, forming into a party, to prepare not the revolution (revolutions are not made), but the class for the revolution (revolutions are directed).
Our party will continue its battles for the defence of the communist programme, for the preparation of the proletariat for the revolutionary process, so that it can take this process right to the end and finally constitute the ruling class: with the difficult practice of revolutionary politics (operational unit of organization, tactics, programme, principles, theory) in contact with and in the ranks of the class of which we are the expression, for better or for worse. Despite the trumpeting of self-proclaimed “antagonist”, “internationalist”, “ anticapitalist” groups or factions.
31/5/2022