Party and Class
(«Proletarian»; Nr. 2; September
2006)
This article by
Amadeo Bordiga was published in the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of
Italy. It was directed against two dialectically linked and symmetrical mistakes
existing in the international communist movement: semi-legalitary passivity and
frantic activism. In the first case, the party’s rigorous programmatic and
organizational demarcation was sacrified to the aspiration - which by itself is
of course perfectly legitimate - of enlarging and extending the party’s
influence in the masses. The numerical increase of the political organ
became to be considered in itself the criterion for judging the efficiency
and the correctness of its political orientation. In the second case,
the shift of the party’s action, combined with manoeuvres or rapprochement with
the rotten wings of the working class movement on the parliamentary and union
level, to the offensive at any cost - led to an offensive action that
was unprepared and consequently disorganizing, and that was not proportional to
the real balance of power.
This text denies
the legend of the «Communist Italian Left» being allegedly closed into
sectarianism and indifference towards the vital problem of conquering an
increasing influence on that class the party is called upon to lead during the
revolution and during the revolutionary preparation.
*
* *
The «Theses on the
Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution» approved by the
Second Congress of the Communist International are genuinely and deeply rooted
in the Marxist doctrine. These theses take the definition of the relations
between party and class as a starting point and establish that the class party
can include in its ranks only a part of the class itself, never the whole nor
even perhaps the majority of it. This obvious truth would have been better
emphasized if it had been pointed out that one cannot even speak of a class
unless a minority of this class tending to organize itself into a political
party has come into existence. What in fact is a social class according to our
critical method ? Can we possibly recognize it by the means of a purely
objective external acknowledgment of the common economic and social conditions
of a great number of individuals, and of their analogous positions in
relationship to the productive process ? That would not be enough. Our method
does not amount to a mere description of the social structure as it exists at a
given moment, nor does it merely draw an abstract line dividing all the
individuals composing society into two groups, as is done in the scholastic
classifications of the naturalists. The Marxist critique sees human society in
its movement, in its development in time; it utilizes a fundamentally
historical and dialectical criterion, that is to say, it studies the connection
of events in their reciprocal interaction. Instead of taking a snapshot of
society at a given moment (like the old metaphysical method) and then studying
it in order to distinguish the different categories into which the individuals
composing it must be classified, the dialectical method sees history as a film
unrolling its successive scenes; the class must be looked for and distinguished
in the striking features of this movement. In using the first method we would
be the target of a thousand objections from pure statisticians and demographers
(shortsighted people if there ever were) who would reexamine our divisions and
remark that there are not two classes, nor even three or four, but that there
can be ten, a hundred or even a thousand classes separated by successive
gradations and indefinable transition zones. With the second method, though, we
make use of quite different criteria in order to distinguish that protagonist
of historical tragedy, the class, and in order to define its characteristics,
its actions and its objectives, which become concretized into obviously uniform
features among a multitude of changing facts; meanwhile the poor photographer
of statistics only records these as a cold series of lifeless data. Therefore,
in order to state that a class exists and acts at a given moment in history, it
will not be enough to know, for instance, how many merchants there were in
Paris under Louis XIV, or the number of English landlords in the Eighteenth
Century, or the number of workers in the Belgian manufacturing industry at the
beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Instead, we will have to submit an entire
historical period to our logical investigations; we will have to make out a
social, and therefore political, movement which searches for its way through
the ups and downs, the errors and successes, all the while obviously adhering
to the set of interests of a strata of people who have been placed in a
particular situation by the mode of production and by its developments. It is
this method of analysis that Frederick Engels used in one of his first
classical essays, where he drew the explanation of a series of political
movements from the history of the English working class, and thus demonstrated
the existence of a class struggle. This dialectical concept of the class allows
us to overcome the statistician’s pale objections. He does not have the right
any longer to view the opposed classes as being clearly divided on the scene of
history as are the different choral groups on a theatre scene. He cannot refute
our conclusions by arguing that in the contact zone there are undefinable
strata through which an osmosis of individuals takes place, because this fact
does not alter the historical physiognomy of the classes facing one another.
• • •
Therefore the
concept of class must not suggest to us a static image, but instead a dynamic
one. When we detect a social tendency, or a movement oriented towards a given
end, then we can recognize the existence of a class in the true sense of the
word. But then the class party exists in a material if not yet in a formal way.
A party lives when there is the existence of a doctrine and a method of action.
A party is a school of political thought and consequently an organization of
struggle. The first characteristic is a fact of consciousness, the second is a
fact of will, or more precisely of a striving towards a final end. Without
those two characteristics, we do not yet have the definition of a class. As we
have already said, he who coldly records facts may find affinities in the
living conditions of more or less large strata, but no mark is engraved in
history’s development. It is only within the class party that we can find these
two characteristics condensed and concretized. The class forms itself as
certain conditions and relationships brought about by the consolidation of new
systems of production are developed - for instance the establishment of big
factories hiring and training a large labor force; in the same way, the
interests of such a collectivity gradually begin to materialize into a more
precise consciousness, which begins to take shape in small groups of this
collectivity. When the mass is thrust into action, only these first groups can
foresee a final end, and it is they who support and lead the rest. When
referring to the modern proletarian class, we must conceive of this process not
in relationship to a trade category but to the class as a whole. It can then be
realized how a more precise consciousness of the identity of interests
gradually makes its appearance; this consciousness, however, results from such
a complexity of experiences and ideas, that it can be found only in limited
groups composed of elements selected from every category. Indeed only an
advanced minority can have the clear vision of a collective action which is
directed towards general ends that concern the whole class and which has at its
core the project of changing the whole social regime. Those groups, those
minorities, are nothing other than the party. When its formation (which of
course never proceeds without arrests, crises and internal conflicts) has
reached a certain stage, then we may say that we have a class in action.
Although the party includes only a part of the class, only it can give
the class its unity of action and movement, for it amalgamates those elements,
beyond the limits of categories and localities, which are sensitive to
the class and represent it. This casts a light on the meaning of this
basic fact : the party is only a part of the class. He who considers a static
and abstract image of society, and sees the class as a zone with a small
nucleus, the party, within it, might easily be led to the following conclusion:
since the whole section of the class remaining outside the party is almost
always the majority, it might have a greater weight and a greater right.
However if it is only remembered that the individuals in that great remaining
mass have neither class consciousness nor class will yet and live for their own
selfish ends, or for their trade, their village, their nation, then it will be
realized that in order to secure the action of the class as a whole in the
historical movement, it is necessary to have an organ which inspires, unites
and heads it – in short which officers it; it will then be realized that the
party actually is the nucleus without which there would be no reason to
consider the whole remaining mass as a mobilization of forces. The class
presupposes the party, because to exist and to act in history it must possess a
critical doctrine of history and an aim to attain in it.
• • •
In the only true
revolutionary conception, the direction of class action is delegated to the
party. Doctrinal analysis, together with a Dumber of historical experiences,
allow us to easily reduce to petty bourgeois and antirevolutionary ideologies,
any tendency to deny the necessity and the predominance of the party’s
function.
If this denial is
based on a democratic point of view, it must be subjected to the same criticism
that Marxism uses to disprove the favorite theorems of bourgeois liberalism. It
is sufficient to recall that, if the consciousness of human beings is the
result, not the cause of the characteristics of the surroundings in which they
are compelled to live and act, then never as a rule will the exploited, the
starved and the underfed be able to convince themselves of the necessity of
overthrowing the well-fed satiated exploiter laden with every resource and
capacity. This can only be the exception. Bourgeois electoral democracy seeks
the consultation of the masses, for it knows that the response of the majority
will always be favorable to the privileged class and will readily delegate to
that class the right to govern and to perpetuate exploitation. It is not the
addition or subtraction of the small minority of bourgeois voters that will
alter the relationship. The bourgeoisie governs with the majority, not only of
all the citizens, but also of the workers taken alone. Therefore if the party
called on the whole proletarian mass to judge the actions and initiatives of
which the party alone has the responsibility, it would tie itself to a verdict
that would almost certainly be favorable to the bourgeoisie. That verdict would
always be less enlightened, less advanced, less revolutionary, and above all
less dictated by a consciousness of the really collective interest of the
workers and of the final result of the revolutionary struggle, than the advice
coming from the ranks of the organized party alone. The concept of the
proletariat’s right to command its own class action is only on
abstraction devoid of any Marxist sense. It conceals a desire to lead the
revolutionary party to enlarge itself by including less mature strata, since as
this progressively occurs, the resulting decisions get nearer and nearer to the
bourgeois and conservative conceptions. If we looked for evidence not only
through theoretical enquiry, but also in the experiences history has given us,
our harvest would be abundant. Let us remember that it is a typical bourgeois
cliché to oppose the good «common sense» of the masses to the «evil» of a
«minority of agitators», and to pretend to be most favorably disposed towards
the exploiters interests. The right-wing currents of the workers movement, the
social-democratic school, whose reactionary tenets have been clearly shown by
history, constantly oppose the masses to the party and pretend to be able to
find the will of the class by consulting on a scale wider than the limited
bounds of the party. When they cannot extend the party beyond all limits of
doctrine and discipline in action, they try to establish that its main organs
must not be those appointed by a limited number of militant members, but must
be those which have been appointed for parliamentary duties by a larger body -
actually, parliamentary groups always belong to the extreme right wing of the
parties from which they come.
The degeneration of
the social-democratic parties of the Second International and the fact that
they apparently became less revolutionary than the unorganized masses, are due
to the fact that they gradually lost their specific party character precisely
through workerist and « laborist » practices. That is, they no longer acted as
the vanguard preceding the class but as its mechanical expression in an
electoral and corporative system, where equal importance and influence is given
to the strata that are the least conscious and the most dependent on
egotistical claims of the proletarian class itself. As a reaction to this
epidemic, even before the war, there developed a tendency, particularly in
Italy, advocating internal party discipline, rejecting new recruits who were
not yet welded to our revolutionary doctrine, opposing the autonomy of
parliamentary groups and local organs, and recommending that the party should
be purged of its false elements. This method has proved to be the real antidote
for reformism, and forms the basis of the doctrine and practice of the Third
International, which puts primary importance on the role of the party – that is
a centralized, disciplined party with a clear orientation on the problems of
principles and tactics. The same Third International judged that the «collapse
of the social democratic parties of the Second International was by no means
the collapse of proletarian parties in general» but, if we may say so, the
failure of organisms that had forgotten they were parties because they had
stopped being parties.
• • •
There is also a
different category of objection to the communist concept of the party’s role.
These objections are linked to another form of critical and tactical reaction
to the reformist degeneracy : they belong to the syndicalist school, which sees
the class in the economic trade unions and pretends that these are the organs
capable of leading the class in revolution. Following the classical period of
the French, Italian and American syndicalism, these apparently left-wing
objections found new formulations in tendencies which are on the margins of the
Third International. These too can be easily reduced to semi-bourgeois
ideologies by a critique of their principles as well as by acknowledging the
historical results they led to.
These
tendencies would like to recognize the class within an organization of its own
– certainly a characteristic and a most important one – that is, the craft or
trade unions which arise before the political party, gather much larger masses
and therefore better correspond to the whole of the working class. From an
abstract point of view, however, the choice of such a criterion reveals an
unconscious respect for that selfsame democratic lie which the bourgeoisie
relies on to secure its power by the means of inviting the majority of the
people to choose their government. In other theoretical viewpoints, such a
method meets with bourgeois conceptions when it entrusts the trade unions with
the organization of the new society and demands the autonomy and
decentralization of the productive functions, just as reactionary economists
do. But our present purpose is not to draw out a complete critical analysis of
the syndicalist doctrines. It is sufficient to remark, considering the result
of historical experience, that the extreme right wing members of the
proletarian movement have always advocated the same point of view, that is, the
representation of the working class by trade unions; indeed they know that by doing
so, they soften and diminish the movement’s character, for the simple reasons
that we have already mentioned. Today the bourgeoisie itself shows a sympathy
and an inclination, which are by no means illogical, towards the unionization
of the working class ; indeed the more intelligent sections of the bourgeoisie
would readily accept a reform of the state and representative apparatus in
order to give a larger place to the « apolitical » unions and even to their
claims to exercise control over the system of production. The bourgeoisie feels
that, as long as the proletariat’s action can be limited to the immediate
economic demands that are raised trade by trade, it helps to safeguard the
status-quo and to avoid the formation of the perilous «political» consciousness
– that is, the only consciousness which is revolutionary for it aims at the
enemy’s vulnerable point, the possession of power.
Past and
present syndicalists, however, have always been conscious of the fact that most
trade unions are controlled by right wing elements and that the dictatorship of
the petty bourgeois leaders over the masses is based on the union bureaucracy
even more than on the electoral mechanism of the social-democratic
pseudo-parties. Therefore the syndicalists, along with very numerous elements
who were merely acting by reaction to the reformist practice, devoted
themselves to the study of new forms of union organization and created new
unions independent from the traditional ones. Such an expedient was
theoretically wrong for it did not go beyond the fundamental criterion of the
economic organization : that is, the automatic admission of all those who are
placed in given conditions by the part they play in production, without
demanding special political convictions or special pledges of actions which may
require even the sacrifice of their lives. Moreover, in looking for the «
producer » it could not go beyond the limits of the « trade », whereas the
class party, by considering the « proletarian » in the vast range of his
conditions and activities, is alone able to awaken the revolutionary spirit of
the class. Therefore, that remedy which was wrong theoretically also proved
inefficient in actuality. In spite of everything, such recipes are constantly
being sought for even today. A totally wrong interpretation of Marxist
determinism and a limited conception of the part played by facts of consciousness
and will in the formation, under the original influence of economic
factors, of the revolutionary forces, lead a great number of people to look for
a «mechanical» system of organization that would almost automatically organize
the masses according to each individual’s part in production; according to
these illusions, such a device by itself would be enough to make the mass ready
to move towards revolution with the maximum revolutionary efficiency.
Thus the illusory
solution reappears, which consists of thinking that the everyday satisfaction
of economical needs can be reconciled with the final result of the overthrow of
the social system by relying on an organizational form to solve the old
antithesis between limited and gradual conquests and the maximum revolutionary
program. But – as was rightly said in one of the resolutions of the majority of
the German Communist Party at a time when these questions (which later provoked
the secession of the KAPD) were particularly acute in Germany – revolution
is not a question of the form of organization.
Revolution requires
an organization of active and positive forces united by a doctrine and a final
aim. Important strata and innumerable individuals will remain outside this
organization even though they materially belong to the class in whose interest
the revolution will triumph. But the class lives, struggles, progresses and
wins thanks to the action of the forces it has engendered from its womb in the
pains of history. The class originates from an immediate homogeneity of
economic conditions which appear to us as the primary motive force of the
tendency to destroy and go beyond the present mode of production. But in order
to assume this great task, the class must have its own thought, its own
critical method, its own will bent on the precise ends defined by research and
criticism, and its own organization of struggle channelling and utilizing with
the utmost efficiency its collective efforts and sacrifices. All this
constitutes the Party.
( «Rassegna
Comunista» no 2, April 15, 1921. Issued in english in «Communist Program» N° 2,
March 1976 )
International Communist Party
www.pcint.org