Comrades, we find ourselves in a world where capitalism’s relentless advance plunges humanity into deepening crisis, exploitation, and the looming specter of global war. The working class must embrace its historic role in this unfolding drama. Today, we will share the deep and rich scientific foundations of the nearly 200 year history of the communist left tradition and our Party, our theory and the methods of action necessary to transform the struggles of workers into a decisive force for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. With the leadership of the International Communist Party, we can chart a course toward ending the capitalist epoch, and ushering in a new era of human liberation: the era of communism.

OUR TRADITION

The Emergence of Marxism and the Communist Party

For us the emergence of Marxism does not indicate the invention of an ideology by a single genius, but the birth of a scientific doctrine whose purpose is to guide the working class, the class of those who do not own the means of production and have to sell their labor power to survive.

As we wrote in 1952: «We use the expression “Marxism” not in the sense of a doctrine discovered or introduced by the person Karl Marx, but in reference to the doctrine which arose with the modern industrial proletariat and which “accompanies” it throughout the course of a social revolution – and although the term “Marxism” has been speculated upon and massively exploited by a series of anti-revolutionary movements, we nevertheless retain it» (Contributions to the Organic Historical Representation of the Marxist Revolutionary Theory).

The efforts of the proletariat to organize predates the emergence of Marxism. «The programme of the first workers’ organisations, which were generally secret after the model of the Carbonari, was to push the principles enunciated by the bourgeois revolution, of Equality, Justice and Brotherhood, to the extreme. But soon a marked rift would arise between these theories and the new theory which would guide the anti-capitalist proletarian movement. The Communist League, by adopting the principle that there could be no revolutionary social movement without an autonomous revolutionary theory, represented the first example of a classist party, and it was in fact for the Communist League that Marx and Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto» (Communism, the Historical Negation of Democracy, 2012).

The essential role and function of the party is elaborated in The Communist Manifesto:
     «The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:
     «(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationalities.
     «(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
     «The Communists,therfore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
     «The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat» (1848).

Founded in 1847, the Communist League operated in Western Europe, above all Germany until 1852 when it was repressed by the German police. Many of its members, including Marx and Engels, became exiles, however, and continued their militant activity. In 1864, the International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International was founded. Unlike the Communist League, the whole First International as an organization did not immediately corresponded to the party form, which was rather expressed by a tendency, called the Internationalists and led by Marx and Engels, whose views eventually came to dominate and determine the International.

This is reflected in the organizational documents adopted at the Hague Congress of the International in 1872, where it is said:
     «In its struggle against the collective power of the possessing classes the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself as a distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the possessing classes.
     «This constitution of the proletariat into a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate goal: the abolition of classes.
     «The coalition of the forces of the working class, already achieved by the economic struggle, must also serve, in the hands of this class, as a lever in its struggle against the political power of its exploiters.
     «As the lords of the land and of capital always make use of their political privileges to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies and to enslave labour, the conquest of political power becomes the duty of the proletariat» (Resolution on the Rules, 1872)

It goes without saying that within the First International, a mass organization including many unions and with a membership expressed in the millions, were other political tendencies, representing the outlooks and interests of classes other than the proletariat. The tendency which proved most dangerous was the petty-bourgeois ideology of anarchism led by Bakunin, who formed a conspiratorial secret faction within the International and another secret faction within his own secret faction. In the climate of defeat following the repression of the Paris Commune of 1871, even transferring its headquarters to the New World didn’t save the International, which outlived the split with the anarchists only by four years, being dissolved in 1876. The Marxist current, however, born in battle, both against the bourgeoisie and the various kinds of anti-proletarian ideologies within the working class movement, persisted.

«The history of the Marxist left, of radical Marxism, or more precisely, of Marxism, consists of a series of battles against each of the revisionist “waves” which have attacked various aspects of its doctrine and method, setting out from the organic monolithic formation which roughly corresponds with the 1848 Manifesto. Elsewhere we have covered the history of these struggles inside the three historic Internationals: fought against utopians, workerists, libertarians, reformist and gradualist social-democrats, syndicalists of the left and right, social-patriots, and today against national-communists and populist-communists. This struggle, in all its phases spanning four generations, is the heritage not of a few big names, but of a well-defined, compact school, and in the historical sense, of a well-defined party» (Contributions..., 1952).

From the Second to the Third International

By the time the Second International was founded in 1889, the European proletarian political movement had already organized in parties, called social democratic or socialist, within which already multiple tendencies existed. We have described this process as follows:

«Engels directed the International’s formative process and was opposed to any reconstitution that failed to take into account the historical balance sheet drawn from the experience of the 1st International, where Marx had to fight, using both doctrinal critique and engaging in a difficult organizational struggle, against Bakunin, and his tenacious supporters in France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy (...) The fundamental characteristic of the 2nd International is that it was inspired by revolutionary Marxist principles, but in the tactical field it made still possible, for the individual national federated sections and the currents that formed within them, to express different tactical programs, which the congresses would define from time to time according to the balance of forces between the reformist and the revolutionary Marxist fractions.
     «Authentic Marxists, first Engels, and then Lenin along with the entire international left, fought against all the various revisionists and opportunists and tried to impose a revolutionary program.
     «The old programme of social democracy, understood as its view of party action, which in a historical sense was set within an allegedly “peaceful" phase of capitalist development, included among the natural tasks of social democracy that of calling for “democratic reforms” as a way of advancing the proletarian cause. The Marxists in the 2nd International also recognized that in some of the political and social demands there were elements which were historically progressive, namely those with a tendency to complete the bourgeois revolutions and which were therefore indispensable to the proletarian revolutionary process.
     «But the Communist Left understood this path would never be able to avoid the violent conquest of political power (...)
     «After the 4th of August [1914], socialists on both fronts preached solidarity with the national State at war, revamping the concept of patriotism which had been definitively obliterated for the proletariat by the Manifesto. Only a few groups of socialists would save themselves from the catastrophe of social-chauvinism (aggressive or fanatical patriotism).
     «Lenin and the Bolsheviks and with them the German group Die Internazionale and the Italian Left continued to defend the tradition of revolutionary Marxism by reasserting the imperialist character of the war, confirming their once and for all condemnation of any kind of inviolable union or national alliance and by defending the defeatist struggle inside the proletarian party against all of the States and armies at war. And their watchword of transforming the imperialist war into civil war is a powerful reaffirmation of the principles of revolutionary internationalism» (Anti-Militarism in the Second International, 1984).

And as we wrote elsewhere:
     «The First World War, the betrayal of social democracy organized in the Second International, and the revolutionary wave which spread through Europe and the entire world between 1916 and 1923 were the factors that prompted the birth of the great Communist Party, the Communist International; an organization which represented the final historical result of the world proletarian experience. The moment had finally arrived for the practical realization of the watchword outlined by the Paris Commune and clarified by Marx: dictatorship of the proletariat – the one and only way to smash the yoke of bourgeois society on humanity as a whole.
     «From 1914 onwards, particularly after the March 1919 congress in Moscow, it became clear that the Bolsheviks were expressing a marvellous synthesis of all the experiences and theoretical baggage of the workers’ movement from the 1848 Manifesto onwards. This was due both to their theoretical clarity, and to their position at the head of the Russian revolutionary movement, which would accomplish, concretely and physically, the dictatorship of the proletariat under the form of the Soviets» (The Italian Left on the Line of Lenin, 1984).

As Lenin himself elaborated:

«The First International (1864-72) laid the foundation of an international organization of the workers for the preparation of a revolutionary attack on capital. The Second International (1889-1914) was an international organization of the proletarian movement whose growth proceeded in breadth, at the cost of a temporary drop in the revolutionary level, a temporary strengthening of opportunism, which in the end led to the disgraceful collapse of this International.
     «The Third International emerged in 1918, when the long years of struggle against opportunism and social chauvinism, especially during the war, led to the formation of communist parties in several countries. Officially, the Third International was founded in its First Congress, in March 1919, in Moscow. And the most characteristic feature of this International, its mission of fulfilling, of implementing the precepts of Marxism, and of achieving the age-old ideals of socialism, and the working-class movement – this most characteristic feature of the Third International has manifested itself immediately in the fact that the new, third, "International Working Men’s Association" has already begun to develop, to a certain extent, into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
     «The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism. The Second International marked a period in which the soil was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the movement in a number of countries.
     «The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat. The international union of parties, leading the most revolutionary movement in the whole world, the movement of the proletariat to overthrow the yoke of capital, now has an unprecedented solidity: many Soviet republics embodying, on the international scale, the dictatorship of the proletariat, his victory over capitalism. The universal historical significance of the Third International, the Communist International, is that of having begun to put into practice Marx’s greatest slogan, the slogan that takes stock of the evolution of socialism and the workers’ movement. For a century, the slogan has been expressed as follows: dictatorship of the proletariat» (Lenin, The Third International and its Place in History, 1919)

From the Communist Left to the International Communist Party

For the Bolsheviks as well as all the other comrades of the Communist International, the problem of liberation of socialism could only be posed in the economically backward Russia where the proletarian takeover of political power occurred during a bourgeois revolution; its conclusion would only be possible through its expansion to all parts of the world, above all the industrially well-developed regions of Western Europe. This situation would soon lead to the degeneration of the revolution in Russia.

“As we will never cease repeating, the key to a Socialist solution lay outside of Russia.
     «In the Russia of the twenties, the double character of the revolution couldn’t be kept up indefinitely, for the economic development that required the bourgeois revolution to be completed could only undermine and eventually overwhelm the purely political victory of the Socialist revolution.
     «In fact, within the interior of Russia, all that proceeded from national economic necessity, everything which expressed Russian social interests, constituted a moral danger for Communism, and every conceivable internal social strategy for Russia concealed, depending on the state of the International Revolution, the same fatal risk for the Russian proletariat.
     «Thanks to the destruction of feudal landed property, the bourgeois peasantry acquired a considerable economic and social influence. They bought up the land of the poor peasants and then rented it out. They illegally employed wage labour and went as far as monopolising wheat and starving out the cities. In the administration, where tens of thousands of militant Communists have metamorphosed into functionaries, there develops a bureaucratic machinery whose motto is "administration for administration’s sake" and "the State for the State’s sake". In a country where famine rages, to have work or accommodation becomes a privilege. Finally, after 1923, defending a genuine Communist opinion became an act of heroism (...)
     «In 1923, Lenin suffered a third attack of arterio-sclerosis which was to cause his death in January 1924; but not before he had been able to denounce, in what can be considered to be his political testimony, "the powerful forces which are deviating the Soviet State form its course". He had also broken with Stalin who embodied, he said, "an apparatus that is thoroughly alien to us, and represents a hotchpotch of bourgeois and tsarist reversions". 1923 is also the year in which the first plot against Trotsky was hatched during Lenin’s illness, due partly, it is worth mentioning, to the blindness of the "old Bolsheviks" manipulated by Stalin. Against the organiser of the Red Army are now propagated the first political falsifications which will go on to become the slanderous pack of foul and ludicrous accusations which the riffraff of the other Stalinist parties, despite all their denials – including those of their ex-venerated Khruschev – still continue to use today as their historical reference points. Lenin’s best comrades in arms would only understand two years later, that the real enemy of the revolution was the "foreign body" in the Bolshevik party, which history destined, in the course of the next ten years, to be its own executioner» (Why Russia Isn’t Socialist, 1970). 

Despite its noble intentions of achieving a high level of centralism in its organization, different tendencies emerged within the parties of the Communist International: on the one hand were various kinds of Rights, sometimes nationalistic, sometimes democratic and generally in favor of some kind of class collaborationism; on the other hand were the internationalist Lefts whose leaders tended to be among the founders of the parties and continued to defend the principles of the Marxist doctrine. The clearest and strongest of these Lefts in Europe was the Left of the Communist Party of Italy. There were others too, less clear in terms of doctrine though made of comrades, such as the heterogeneous Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party, the KPD Left and the Archeomarxists in Greece. There were Lefts in Communist Parties outside Europe too, such as the Communist Parties of Iran, Turkey, South Africa, China, Korea, the Caucasus and Central Asia etc. All these currents resisted the wave of revisionism that was sweeping the Communist International under the leadership of the Stalinist “center”, in fact the most right wing and unprincipled of all the tendencies that emerged in the movement.

The communist left of Italy signalled this struggle as follows:
     «The Third International is dominated, like the whole life of the international proletariat, by the existence of a party of government… The International as the supreme governing body of the struggles of the world proletariat failed its purpose in November 1927, when it officially altered its programs. Today, in spite of the outward centralization, the International presents itself as an aggregate of communist parties, some of which operate in a very serious environment where the revolutionary struggle is imposed on the proletariat (...)
     «Although as an organization of revolutionary struggle the International has failed, the parties that compose it are still the organizations where the proletariat must struggle in order to make itself the leader of the revolution» (The Crisis of the International, 1928)

The international Lefts, overall politically heterogeneous, never managed to put forward a united alternative to the Stalinist Comintern. To do so required a patient work of drawing the lessons of the immense experiences of the past ten years. Most of the international Lefts were lured by Trotsky’s impatient call to immediately establish an international organization. Others faced severe repression and were unable to continue their activities after a point. Under these circumstances, the International Bureau of Left Factions, or the International Communist Left, led by the Left fraction in Italy and bringing together small groups of communists in Belgium, France, the United States and Mexico eventually came together. In the period leading up to the second imperialist slaughter, the International Communist Left firmly stood on the revolutionary principles of the Marxists who opposed WW1, while so many others, even of the anti-Stalinist variety, failed to do so.

Among the many addresses of the International Communist Left to the European proletariat of the time, we read the following lines:
     «Workers of Europe!
     «You are surrounded by a world of enemies. All parties, all programmes, have failed the test posed by the war; all play on your suffering, all unite to save capitalist society from collapse.
     «The whole band of riffraff in the service of high finance, from Hitler to Churchill, from Laval to Petain, from Stalin to Roosevelt, from Mussolini to Bonomi, is in collaboration with the bourgeois state to preach order, work, discipline, fatherland – in the perpetuation of your enslavement.
     «Despite the betrayal of the leaders of the Russian state, the formulas, the theses, the predictions of Marx and of Lenin find, in the very perfidy of the present situation, their striking confirmation.
     «Never has the class division between exploited and exploiters been so clear, so profound. Never has the necessity to put an end to a regime of misery and blood been so compelling.
     «With the killing at the front, with the massacres from the air, with five years of restrictions, famine makes its appearance.
     «The war spreads over the whole continent; capitalism does not know how to, cannot, end this war.
     «It is not by helping one or the other group of the two forms of capitalist domination that you will shorten the fight. This time it is the Italian proletariat which has blazed the trail of struggle, of revolt against the war.
     «As with Lenin in 1917, there is no alternative, no other path to follow outside of the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. As long as capitalist rule survives, there will be neither bread, nor peace, nor freedom for the proletariat.
     «Communist workers!
     «There are many parties, too many parties. But all of them, even the Trotskyist groups, have fallen into the counter-revolution. One single party is missing: the proletarian class political party.
     «The Communist Left alone has stayed with the proletariat, loyal to the programme of Marxism, loyal to the communist revolution. It is only with this programme that it will be possible to give back to the proletariat its organisations, the weapons necessary to its struggle, to victory. These weapons are the new communist party, the new international.
     «Against all opportunism, against all compromise on the terrain of class struggle, the Fraction calls on you to aid the proletariat in extricating itself from the vice of capitalism. Against the united forces of capitalism, the invincible force of the proletarian class must be built» (Manifesto of the Communist Left, 1944).

Significant workers’ struggles that accompanied the fall of Mussolini in Italy lead to the formation of the Internationalist Communist Party in 1943 by the left faction in Italy. After a split in 1952 the International Communist Party was born on the following grounds: «The International Communist Party reclaims the fundamental doctrinal principles of Marxism in their entirety: dialectical materialism as systematic conception of the world and of human history; the fundamental economic doctrines contained in Marx’s Capital as the method of interpreting capitalist economy; and the programmatic formulations of the Communist Manifesto as historical and political plan for the emancipation of the World working class. We also reclaim the entire system of principles and methods arising from the victory of the Russian Revolution, namely: the theoretical and practical work of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party during the crucial years of taking power and the civil war, and the classic theses of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International. These represent the confirmation, restoration, and subsequent development of the aforesaid principles, which today are brought into even more prominent relief by the lessons of the tragic revisionist wave which originated around 1926-27 under the appellation "socialism in one country"» (What Distinguishes Our Party, 1969

 



OUR THEORY

Past and Future Communism

As early as 1844, Marx defines communism as follows: «Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution» (Manuscripts, 1844)

Communism is the solution to the riddle of human history and more particularly the history of civilization not only because communism is in its future but also because communism is in its past.

As Engels wrote in, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State in 1884:
     «At all earlier stages of society production was essentially collective, just as consumption proceeded by direct distribution of the products within larger or smaller communistic communities (...)
     «In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production. Not until the coming of modern large-scale industry was the road to social production opened to her again – and then only to the proletarian wife. But it was opened in such a manner that, if she carries out her duties in the private service of her family, she remains excluded from public production and unable to earn; and if she wants to take part in public production and earn independently, she cannot carry out family duties. And the wife’s position in the factory is the position of women in all branches of business, right up to medicine and the law. The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules».

Consequently, we have written that:
     «All Marxists consider the following theses to be given: private property is not eternal; it was unknown to the era of primitive communism and we are moving towards the era of social communism; the family and above all the monogamous family is not eternal, it appeared late in human history, and it will have to disappear at a higher level of development; the State is not eternal, but rather appeared at a very advanced stage of “civilisation” and it will disappear along with class-divided society, that is to say, with classes themselves» (Factors of Race and Nation, 1953).

In today’s world, between the hundreds of thousands of years of primitive communism of the past of our species, and the communist horizon of the future, stands the communist militant:
     «The violent sparks flashing between the rheophores of our dialectics have taught us that a revolutionary a militant a communist and a comrade is one who has managed to forget, to renounce, to wrench from his heart and his mind the classification under which he has been inscribed in the registry of this putrefying society; one who can see and immerse himself in the entire millenary trajectory linking the ancestral tribal man, struggling with wild beasts, to the member of the future community, fraternal in the joyous harmony of the social man» (Considerations, 1965).

The Historic and Formal Party

Marx explains the concept of the historic party as follows:
     «The ‘League’, like the Société des Saisons in Paris and a hundred other societies, was simply an episode in the history of a party that is everywhere springing up naturally out of the soil of modern society (...) I have tried to dispel the misunderstanding arising out of the impression that by ‘party’ I meant a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense» (Marx, Letter to Freiligrath, 1860).

This concept, vital for understanding the evolution of the communist movement, has been elaborated by our party in some detail:
     «Historical party and formal party. This distinction is in Marx and Engels and they had the right to deduce from it that, being with their work on the line of the historical party, they disdained to be members of any formal party. But no one of today’s militants can infer from it he has the right to a choice: that is of being in the clear with the «historical party», and to care nothing about the formal party. Thus it is, owing to the sound intelligence of that proposition of Marx and Engels, which has a dialectical and historical sense – and not because they were supermen of a very special type of race.
     «Marx says: party in its historical meaning, in the historical sense, and formal, or ephemeral, party. In the first concept lies the continuity, and from it we derived our characteristic thesis of the invariance of doctrine since its formulation made by Marx; not as invention of a genius, but as discovery of a result of human evolution. But the two concepts are not metaphysically opposite, and it would be silly to express them by the poor doctrine: I turn my back on the formal party, as I go towards the historical one.
     «When we infer from the invariant doctrine that the revolutionary victory of the working class can be achieved only by the class party and its dictatorship, and then go on to affirm, supported by Marx’s writings, that the pre revolutionary and communist party proletariat may be a class as far as bourgeois science is concerned, but isn’t by Marx or ourselves, then the conclusion to be deduced is that for victory to be achieved it will be necessary to have a party worthy of being described both as the historical and as the formal party, i.e., a party which has resolved within active historical reality the apparent contradiction – cause of so many problems in the past – between the historical party, and therefore as regards content (historical, invariant programme), and the contingent party, concerning its form, which acts as the force and physical praxis of a decisive part of the proletariat in struggle» (Considerations..., 1965)

«When, on the basis of Marx’s words we maintain that without a revolutionary and communist party, the proletariat may be a class for bourgeois science, but it is not for us and Marx himself; then the conclusion to be deduced is that, in order to achieve victory, it will be necessary to have a party, worthy at the same time of both characteristics, those of historical party (as regards its content) and formal party (as regards its form, which acts as physical force and praxis of a decisive part of the fighting proletariat); this means that the apparent contradiction must be resolved in the reality of action and history. Every effort should therefore be devoted to achieving such a result and not to the ridiculous struggles between groups that claim to possess the only and exclusive notion of the correct methods and correct positions. That is why it is no longer possible to be in perfect order with regard to the historical party while not giving a damn about the formal party: because our historical task today is not one of elaborating revolutionary theory, which we possess in full, but rather converting that theory into the flesh and blood of the contingent and formal party. Only through such activity is it possible to realize the fundamental condition that will enable the party to take advantage of the objective opportunities that history offers, so that the party emerges from the clash as the victor, and not as the vanquished» (The Party’s Preparation for the Revolution Lies in it’s Organic Nature, 1985)

«Undoubtedly in the course of party evolution the path followed by the formal parties, which is characterised by continuous U-turns, ups and downs and ruinous precipices may clash with the ascending path of the historical party. Left Marxists direct their efforts towards realigning the broken curve of the contingent parties with the continuous and harmonious curve of the historical party (...)
     «The Communist Left has always considered that the way its long battle against the depressing contingent alternation of the proletariat’s formal parties has been conducted is by affirming positions that are linked together continuously and harmoniously in the luminous wake of the historical party, which continues unbroken over the years and centuries, running from the first statements of the nascent proletarian doctrine to the society of the future; a society we know very well, insofar as we have thoroughly differentiated the tissue and ganglia of the present hateful society, which the revolution must sweep away» (Theses of Naples, 1965)

In our text The Communist Party in the Tradition of the Left, 1974 we put forward that
     «There have been times, due to various pressures and influences, when this historical inheritance – comprising theory, principles and final goals but also historical experience, derived from the relentless march of the revolution – has been abandoned. Every time this has happened the formal party, that is, the fighting organisation of a given epoch and given proletarian generation has inevitably abandoned the correct path and found itself, eventually, on the side of the class enemy. For us, then, the party exists, and grows, and marches towards victory only insofar as it is capable of remaining faithful to its base in the historical party. If this base is even so much as scratched then you have all those betrayals and desertions of which the history of the formal party is so full.
     «Now the fact of the revolutionary organisation remaining faithful to the cardinal principles of the historical party from which it emanates isn’t guaranteed by factors of the cultural or didactic variety, according to which, once you’d learnt a couple of theses by heart, you’d have satisfied all the historical party’s requirements or some-such rubbish. The party’s historical heritage, even on a day-to-day basis and with regard to strictly limited actions, has to shape and permeate the entire activity of the formal party. And this continuous transfusion of historical experience into the current activity of the party is first of all something done collectively by the organisation, not on an individual basis by particularly enlightened or brainy people.
     «What must become an absolutely essential part of our heritage is the notion of the existence of this strict connexion between the militant organisation’s action, between what they say and do today, and its theories, principles, and past historical experience; and that it is the latter (theory, principles, etc.), and not individual or even collective opinions which will always be the final arbiter as regards all party questions. Who gives the orders in the party? We have always maintained that the historical party, to which we owe unswerving obedience and loyalty, effectively gives the orders. And through what microphone does the historical party transmit its orders? It could be one man, or a million men; it could be the leadership of the organisation, or even the rank-and-file recalling the leadership to observance of that data without which the very organisation ceases to exist.
     «In the party (...) no-one commands and everyone is commanded; no-one commands, because it is not in one individual’s head that the solution of the problem is sought; and everyone is commanded, because even the best of Centres mustn’t give orders that depart from the continuous line of the historical party.
     «Dictatorship of the principles, traditions and aims of communism over everybody, from rank-and-file to Centre; legitimate expectation of the Centre to be obeyed without opposition as long as its orders respond to this line – a line which must be evident in everything the party does; expectation of the rank-and-file not to be consulted about every order it is given, but to carry them out only if they follow the impersonal line of the historical party which everyone accepts. In the party there are therefore leaders and hierarchies; it is a case of technical instruments that the party cannot do without, because every action it takes must be unitary and centralised, and must aspire to maximum efficiency and discipline. But the course of action is not decided by party organs on the basis of flashes of genius issuing from particular brains; they in their turn have to submit to decisions taken, above all, by history; decisions which have become the collective and impersonal inheritance of the organ ‘party’».

Bourgeois Revolutions and Proletarian Revolutions

The communist movement was born in a world where bourgeois revolutions had not taken place for the overwhelming part. Hence, the question of what the proletariat must do during bourgeois revolutions was a major issue to resolve from the start. The perspective of Marxism has been further elaborated and applied since then, but it hasn’t changed. Marx says:
     «To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party (the rival bourgeois democratic party), whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old‑style citizens’ militia directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the State authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers (territorial political organizations, out and out soviets). Where the workers are employed by the State, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary (...)

«Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution» (Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, 1850).

The tactic of permanent revolution, which we alternatively call the tactic of the double revolution in the most simple terms, was never meant to be eternal. After the fall of the Paris Commune, Marx announced that this tactic was no more applicable for Western Europe where the struggle had to be, from then on, for a purely proletarian revolution:
     «That, after the most tremendous war of modern times, the conquering and the conquered hosts should fraternize for the common massacre of the proletariat – this unparalleled event does indicate, not, as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society up heaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war; and this is now proved to be a mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national governments are one as against the proletariat!
     «After Whit-Sunday, 1871, there can be neither peace nor truce possible between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce. The iron hand of a mercenary soldiery may keep for a time both classes tied down in common oppression. But the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the victor in the end – the appropriating few, or the immense working majority. And the French working class is only the advanced guard of the modern proletariat» (Civil War in France, 1871)

For Europe, this situation was only intensified with the emergence of imperialism and the first imperialist world war. However after the war and the revolution in Russia, the Communist International found itself confronting the vast backwards lands of Asia and Africa, and formulated the application of the tactic of double revolution in this context expressed in the Theses of the Second Congress.

The International Communist Party has observed the last wave of anti-colonial revolutions in Asia and Africa with the same framework: «The anti-colonial revolution has given life to some major states on earth (important because of the extent of their territory, population and resources under the ground) and to lots of small states. The former will have to struggle for a long time to escape from the tentacles of imperialism, but at the same time they will cultivate their own forms of imperialism, putting heavy industry to the fore (which inevitably, will have to develop within a monopolistic framework) and nurturing finance capital. The latter, by contrast, will try in vain to camouflage the fact that, despite their winning political independence, they remain fundamentally colonies similar in this respect to the republics of Central and South America. At any rate, war is the only remedy to the contradictions brought about by the inequality of global capitalist development. Or revolution» (The Colonial Question: An Initial Balance Sheet, 1957)

Today, it has been a considerable while since the era of bourgeois revolutions has been over in all parts of the world. In other words, what Marx wrote in 1872 for Western Europe now applies to the whole world. No longer can there be a truce between the working class and the bourgeoisie. As for the national questions that remain unresolved in various parts of the world, their solution only lies at this point in the proletarian overthrow of the present order of society. In the meanwhile, the duty of communists is to oppose all forms of national and racial oppression and to call for the workers of the oppressed nations and races to sabotage the ruling class of their own nationality or race.



PARTY ACTION

As we face escalating global conflicts — from the brutal war in Ukraine to the ongoing suffering in Gaza, and the devastation in Syria — we must understand these wars not as isolated incidents or failures of policy but are a direct product of the capitalist system itself. They are not accidents, but the inevitable consequences of capitalism’s fundamental contradictions.

The Economic Roots of Imperialist War

At the heart of imperialist war lies the inherent logic of capitalism. Once capitalism has expanded to a world scale, war is not a mere possibility but an absolute necessity. The global market, saturated and increasingly competitive, drives national capitalisms into conflict over resources, markets, and spheres of influence. This is the core of what the Party describes as "wars of encroachment" — wars that are an inescapable outcome of the competitive, monopolistic nature of capitalism.

Even if capitalist governments do not actively desire war, they are compelled by the laws of capital. In its imperialist stage, capitalism cannot function without war, as it is the only way to resolve its internal contradictions, particularly the declining rate of profit. Capitalism requires war to restructure markets, maintain dominance, and ensure its continued existence. The Party rejects the idea that war can be prevented by diplomatic negotiations, idealistic peace movements, or vague reforms. As we have always asserted: only the revolutionary power of the proletariat can halt the cycle of war by dismantling the capitalist system itself.

The Revolution and the Transformation of War

Our position is unequivocal: war under capitalism can only end through revolution. As long as capitalism exists, war will persist. The only way to break the cycle is through a supranational class struggle — a revolution that transforms imperialist war into civil war, a war led by the proletariat against its own bourgeois government.

This is not merely a theoretical statement; it is a practical necessity. If the working class does not seize the moment of war to begin revolution, it risks allowing the capitalist system to “revitalize” itself. War, in the capitalist world, serves to rebuild and reassert the power of the ruling class, offering them the opportunity to restructure after economic destruction. If revolution does not begin at the outset of war, it will merely strengthen the imperialist system, delaying the ultimate overthrow of capitalism.

The Role of the Proletariat

In times of imperialist war, the proletariat must not rally behind bourgeois governments or support the capitalist status quo. We reject "defensism", the idea that the working class should defend "national interests" or the so-called "democratic" or "national independence" values that capitalist governments claim to protect. These ideals are merely ideological tools used by the capitalist class to maintain its power and control. The proletariat has nothing to gain from defending these illusions.

Moreover, the Party rejects any form of "intermediatism", which seeks to reform or improve capitalism. There will be no gradual transition to socialism through “better conditions” or “reforms” within the capitalist framework. Our task is not to "improve" capitalism but to dismantle it entirely. The proletariat must refuse to support any military faction that does not represent the working class. We must reject alliances with bourgeois forces and instead turn all wars into a struggle against the bourgeois state itself.

Turning Imperialist War into Civil War

The history of revolutionary struggles — from the Paris Commune to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and even the Spanish Civil War — teaches us an essential lesson: revolutionary victories are won by marching away from the frontlines of imperialist war and turning the weapons from the enemy at the front line back against the ruling class. In times of war, whether during World War I, World War II, or any future conflict, our task is clear: proletarian sabotage and resistance against all capitalist states

The only legitimate form of resistance is to transform imperialist war into class struggle, into civil war against the internal enemy: the bourgeois state. The working class must use the conditions of war to advance its revolutionary struggle, not to defend one capitalist power against another.

The Necessity of Revolutionary Discipline

Revolution requires discipline and organization. The Party must act as the vanguard of the working class, leading and guiding the masses toward the ultimate goal of overthrowing the capitalist State and establishing the proletarian dictatorship. Revolutionary war, even in its most radical form, must be coordinated and controlled by the vanguard party.

Revolutionary struggle is not merely about economic strikes or political protests; it must be a fusion of economic and political struggles. As demonstrated by the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the mass strikes of workers must be linked to a broader political insurrection. The Party must ensure that all forms of struggle — whether strikes, uprisings, or military actions — converge toward one goal: the destruction of the capitalist system.

The Role of Trade Unions and Class Struggle

As Marx and Engels emphasized, trade unions are schools of struggle for the working class. The immediate struggle for better wages, conditions, and benefits is important, but it must always converge to the larger revolutionary goal of overthrowing the capitalist system.

As we affirmed at the Florence meeting in December 1951 «The Party does not hide the fact that when things start moving again this will not only be felt by its own autonomous development, but by the starting up again of mass organisations. Although it could never be free of all enemy influence and has often acted as the vehicle of deep deviations; although it is not specifically a revolutionary instrument, the union cannot remain indifferent to the party who never gives up a willingness to work there, which distinguishes it clearly from all other political groups who claim to be of the ”opposition“. The Party acknowledges that today, its work in the unions can be done but sporadically; it does not renounce however to enter into the economic organisations, and even to gain leadership as soon as the numerical relationship between its members and sympathisers on the one hand, the union members or a given branch on the other is suitable, so long as the union in question does not exclude all possibility of autonomous class action».

We must establish communist cells and groups within these organizations and use them to build solidarity among workers across industries, crafts and national borders.
     «Revolutionary communists do not place party prejudices on those bodies that operate in the field of class struggle for the defense of class economic conditions because they see in them the embryo of a proletarian economic network and urge them to unite on an ever larger scale, to gain in organization and efficiency (...)
     «It is in no one’s power alone to create favorable conditions for the return to proletarian class organization, but this return can be accelerated, delayed or even prevented depending on whether or not the movement of struggle extends to the entire working-class, mobilizing and framing it on the basis of the workers’ immediate material interests. The severe state of the class’ prostration to the domination of the capitalists is not overcome “with the head”, nor even by the Party; just as the dictatorship of opportunism over the labor movement is not overcome “with the head”. The overcoming of these tremendous obstacles is contingent on the resumption of the workers’ struggle and by the experience which, in the course of that struggle, the workers will come to understand the reactionary and treasonous character of the official leadership of their economic bodies and of the workers’ movement itself. Therefore, it is futile to expect that the “consciousness” of a few wage earners, organizing themselves into groups elected by History, will overcome the present power relations between the classes. The tide will change in favor of the working class, under the growing pressure of the struggling proletarian masses, organized for their contingent needs, and under the direction of which the class political party will have been able to conquer power» (“To reconstruct the class organization”, 1975.

«Concerning trade unions, the Party expresses positions that are principled in nature and concern the need for the presence of broad organizations of an economic nature open to all wage earners. Through its internally organized fraction, the Party attempts to gain decisive influence in them and, in the revolutionary stage, their very leadership. In this way, the link between the Party and the class (transmission belt) is created, through which its own function of leading the revolutionary movement is carried out. The conquest of such influence over the intermediate proletarian organizations is achieved through the demonstration that its line is the most coherent and consequent in the defense of the conditions of the working class, in the face of the line and direction expressed by the other political movements organized within them (reformists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.), against which a political struggle is waged. This will have to appear clearly to all proletarians when the facts are tested» (“Deadlines of the party’s union activity”, 1992).

We see today that many of the official trade unions have become absorbed into the capitalist system. They act more as mediators between the workers and the capitalists than as instruments for the defense of the workers. Many unions are more concerned with preserving the power of their own bureaucracy than with advancing the interests of the working class, and are guided by counterrevolutionary leadership. To the extent that such unions have been integrated into the state, we call them regime unions. The most effective struggles in recent years have come from grassroots rank and file movements, either within the official unions from workers who have acted outside of the control of the established union leadership or in combative and base unions formed by workers fed up with official union policies, taking direct action and organizing along class lines. In our view, the escalation of the class struggle will lead to an intensification of this trend and the establishment of class unions.

The United Trade Union Front from Below

This brings us to the concept of the United Trade Union Front from Below, a key strategy for the organization of the working class. The Communist Party’s role is to unite workers in these organizations and push them towards the ultimate goal of revolution. This requires rejecting the opportunism of reformists who seek to make deals with the bourgeoisie. The united trade union front from below is completely different than the united political front from above. A united political front is a diplomatic collaboration and alliance of the party with reformists and other anti-proletarian political currents active in the workers’ movement, a strategy we categorically reject.

«The International originally supported the admission of unions to the Communist International, then it formed a Red International Labor Union. It was held that, since the unions were the best point of contact with the masses, each communist party should struggle for trade-union unity and therefore not create its own unions through scissions from unions led by the yellows, nevertheless on the International level the Bureau of the Amsterdam International was to be considered and treated not as an organization of the proletarian masses, but as a counter-revolutionary political organ of the League of Nations (...) The utility of a united front tactic on a world basis isn’t however ruled out, even with union organizations that belong to the Amsterdam International. The left wing of the Italian party has always supported and struggled for proletarian unity in the trade-unions, and this serves to distinguish it from the profoundly syndicalist and voluntarist pseudo-lefts which were fought by Lenin».

In the Lyon Theses of 1926, the left wing of the Communist Party of Italy wrote: «The united front tactic shouldn’t be interpreted as a political coalition with other so-called workers’ parties, but as a utilisation of immediate demands in particular situations to increase the communist party’s influence over the masses without compromising its autonomous position. The basis for the United Front must therefore be sought in the proletarian organisations which workers join because of their social position and independently of their political faith or affiliation to an organised party. The reason is two-fold: firstly, communists aren’t prevented from criticising other parties, or gradually recruiting new members who used to be dependant on these other parties into the ranks of the communist party, and secondly, it ensures that the masses will understand the party when it eventually calls on them to mobilise behind its programme and under its exclusive leadership. Experience has shown us countless times that the only way of ensuring a revolutionary application of the united front lies in rejecting political coalitions, whether permanent or temporary, along with committees which include representatives of different political parties as means of directing the struggle; also there should be no negotiations, proposals for common action and open letters to other parties from the communist party».

The United Trade Union Front from Below is not only a strategy to improve conditions within the existing capitalist system but also to prepare the working class for the revolutionary struggle to overthrow it. This front must transcend divisions of race, sex and gender, nationality, and industry, and must be independent of bourgeois or petty bourgeois political forces. The working class can only succeed if it is united in its struggle, and the Communist Party must lead this unity. As we wrote in the 1951, «The party recognises without any reserve that not only the situation which precedes insurrectional struggle but also all phases of substantial growth of Party influence amongst the masses cannot arise without the expansion between the Party and the working class of a series of organisations with short term economic objectives and with a large number of participants».

Economic Struggles as Preparation for Revolutionary Action

In order to lead the workers to revolution, we must also ensure that the economic struggles they face do not isolate them or make them believe that permanent better conditions within capitalism are possible. The task before us is to remind workers that “no economic victory is lasting and doesn’t serve the general interests of the class if it doesn’t result in growing solidarity amongst the exploited.

This revolutionary unity is forged through the understanding that no individual victory, no matter how large, can bring true liberation unless it is part of a larger movement to destroy capitalism. That means rejecting the notion of apoliticism within unions and building the workers’ movement into a force for revolutionary change.

The Need for Revolutionary War

Once the working class has transcended its economic struggle into the political struggle for power and has seized power, the struggle does not end. The defense of the proletarian dictatorship and the expansion of the revolution into other capitalist states will require international revolutionary war. This war, however, will not be an imperialist conquest but a defense of the revolution against capitalist counter-revolution. The Red Army — once established — must be prepared to confront both external capitalist forces and any internal elements seeking to restore the old order.

War, in this context, is not an end in itself but a necessary means to defend the gains of the revolution and advance the cause of communism. The only way to end war — and the suffering it causes — is through the complete overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of communism.

The Necessity of the Communist Party and the Road to Revolution

Comrades, the capitalist system is in a deepening crisis. Economic instability, imperialist wars, and environmental degradation are all signs of a decaying system. Yet, within this crisis lies an unprecedented opportunity for revolutionary change. The wars raging across the globe, the suffering of the working class, and the deepening economic crises are not isolated phenomena; they are the inevitable consequences of capitalism’s inherent contradictions.

We are not mere dreamers or utopians. We understand that the revolutionary task before us is immense and requires far more than sporadic acts of resistance. It requires organization, discipline, and leadership. It requires a revolutionary party, the International Communist Party, capable of guiding the working class to power and overthrowing the capitalist system. Without the International Communist Party, the proletariat cannot succeed in its mission. It is the Party that provides the theory, tactics, and action needed to transform crisis into revolutionary opportunity.

The International Communist Party is not just an abstract idea or a political sect; it is the historical instrument through which the working class can realize its emancipation. It is indispensable in both preparing for and executing the revolutionary struggle. Without it, the working class will be left adrift, unable to seize the moment and dismantle the capitalist state. We must build this Party, strengthen it, and ensure it is deeply rooted in the struggles and aspirations of the working class.

We must prepare for the moment where we will be able to transform imperialist war into civil war, uniting workers across borders, industries, and nations in the struggle for communism. The task is clear: to build the United Trade Union Front from Below, reject illusions of reform, and prepare for the final confrontation with the capitalist system. This road will not be easy, but it is the only road that leads to true peace and liberation from exploitation.

The struggle for communism is the struggle to end war, to dismantle capitalism, and to build a world where human needs — not profit — guide society. The day will come when the working class rises to challenge the power of the bourgeoisie. When that day arrives, the only force capable of leading the proletariat to victory will be the International Communist Party. We must continue to build it now, so that when the time comes, it will be ready to guide us beyond capitalism, to the creation of a truly communist world.

Workers of the world, unite! The future belongs to the revolution.

Conclusion

The capitalist world order is racing toward catastrophe, driven by unending cycles of exploitation, war, and environmental devastation. Yet, history has shown us that the working class, united in its class unions and led by a disciplined and revolutionary Communist Party rooted in the class struggle, that has withstood the trials of counterrevolutionary offensive for nearly 200 years, holds the power to overturn this system and forge a new future. The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains and a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!