One of the greatest dangers that groups of proletarians determined to move against the current trade union policy encounter is that of wanting to transcend the terrain of economic struggles and demands in order to give themselves over to the political analysis of the world and of society. This danger is all the greater the more the class political Party is restricted in its personnel and influence and cannot present itself to the proletarians as a clear and automatic point of attraction.

Fifty years ago, the worker who, in the heat of the struggle and of economic organisation, came to the conclusion that even the economic problems of his class could not be resolved except on the level of the political struggle, of the struggle for power, had a clear path before him: remaining a militant in the class union, he would join one of the large organisations that appeared to him to be the political guide of the class. Today, the great political organisations of the workers (the PCI in the lead) appear openly opposed not only to the general emancipation of the class, but also to the defence of its minimal needs, so the worker determined to defend his living conditions does not find in them a point of reference.

Yet he realises that the problem to be solved is precisely a political problem, indeed that he, by posing the unconditional defence of his economic conditions, is already posing a political problem. The urge, therefore, to theoretically define a political perspective is very strong and explains why many groups of sincere proletarians end up on the shores of extra-parliamentary groupism. This urge to give themselves a ‘political physiognomy’ naturally suffocates these groups, preventing them from making the connection with other workers of the same category, adherents of a different political or ideological orientation, a connection that would only be possible on the level of material action in defence of the conditions of all proletarians. It turns them into many ‘small parties’, each jealous of its own analyses and ideas, each isolated from the bulk of its fellow workers.

Not only that, but the political vision that arises in these groups can only be deformed and imperfect: thus they become ‘semi-unions’ and ‘mini-parties’, bodies powerless to conduct trade union action and equally powerless to conduct political action.

On the other hand, our position tending to make these bodies move on purely trade unionist grounds and to reaffirm their necessary ‘political neutrality’ is defined as ‘syndicalism’. Let us therefore take a closer look at the reality of things.

The Marxists’ problem has always been put in these terms: workers can only unite together on the level of physical struggles for the defence of their economic conditions. While this defence unites all proletarians on the basis of material need, they still remain divided ideologically, and will remain so for a long time even after the revolutionary victory and the dictatorship (Thesis of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International). Therefore, the political party presents itself as a distinct and special element in the revolutionary process. It does not coincide, nor can it, with the trade union, i.e. the organs in which the workers unite for the everyday struggle. In preparation of the revolutionary attack, the Party comes to influence the economic workers’ movement with its own line and its own specific organs, not to ideological unification. With its own line of action, that is, by proposing within the general movement of all workers those objectives and methods of struggle that lie on the path of revolution, that extend and strengthen the struggle itself by pushing it to the maximum of violence and power.

But the goals that the Party sets must be practical goals of action, goals and methods that appear to the workers in the struggle as necessary to the struggle itself, to its better performance, to its success, and that, at the same time, do not contradict the transition from defensive to offensive and revolutionary struggle.

At the same time, the Party works for the strengthening of class political consciousness and political organisation in the only possible way: by enlisting, through its propaganda and autonomous action, into the ranks of the Party those elements who in the economic struggle itself have had the experience and have recognised the necessity of moving from the defensive to the offensive.

There is no other political consciousness than that of the Party and there is no other way for the worker to acquire political consciousness than that of joining the Party. As the ranks of the political Party grow, the links between Party organisation and trade union bodies multiply. Consequently, the latter become increasingly capable of acquiring not the Party’s ideology and political perspective, but the practical line of action that the Party proposes, which is something else. The Party line is acquired by workers’ bodies not as an acceptance of ideas, but as the practical plan necessary for the conduct of workers’ struggles for their goals.

Lenin fought economism in this sense.

Today, the terms of the relationship between the Party and the economic, trade union organisations of the proletariat are distorted: it is the effect of the counter-revolution and it is inevitable that this should be so; but it is also inevitable that they will once again position themselves as they did half a century ago. Now the class Party has only one function, the very special function of representing the political consciousness of the class in a complete and total manner, which is only possible by basing it on a theory (revolutionary Marxism) that allows for the interpretation of all aspects, connections, and correlations of society and for basing on this consciousness the selection of methods of class action, whose organised force serves to direct the class towards those methods and objectives that lie on the line of proletarian emancipation. It cannot therefore coincide with either the totality or the majority of proletarians in motion: it is made up of that minority of proletarians who arrive at the recognition of the necessity of this global consciousness of the class struggle.

Proletarian economic organisations have a different and very distinct function: they must organise all proletarians willing to move for the defence of their immediate interests, and driven to move by this practical necessity regardless of the consciousness each one possesses of the causes, the process, the aims of the struggle. Their function is realised not when they possess a sufficient consciousness of the terms of the struggle (a consciousness that only the Party can introduce into them), but when they materially succeed in deploying the greatest possible number of proletarians in battle. And they can only do this on the basis of the presupposition that unites all proletarians, a material presupposition: the recognition that the boss strikes against the material conditions of existence and that it is necessary to respond to these blows, because the working class must live. One does not go on strike in a factory of a thousand workers demanding that they agree on a general assessment of the crisis, the function of capitalism, the state or opportunism: one does it by demanding that they all agree that to the boss’s offensive, verifiable by all in immediate terms, must correspond an adequate action of defence by the workers, necessary to their standard of living, to prevent the intensification of work rhythms or the despotism of the factory.

A workers’ body must therefore start from and remain faithful in its action to the point of view of every worker by intensifying its action on the practical terrain of demands and forbidding itself any tendency toward the elaboration of a general theoretical vision, which is the patrimony only of the class political Party.

The political consciousness of the class cannot be worked out by just any group of workers in struggle, not even by all workers in struggle against the bosses. It is Lenin who speaks: at most, the struggle between workers and bosses can produce trade union consciousness which is not, in itself, revolutionary. The political consciousness of the class has been elaborated over the course of a century and a half of struggles of the world proletariat assessed in the light of a single and invariant doctrine, that of revolutionary Marxism, and it has produced a whole, a monolithic block of positions that alone represent the exact consciousness of the relations between the classes. There exists no other consciousness than this one, there exists no other Party than this one.

The inevitable attempts of proletarian groups taking to the field for the defence of their conditions to give themselves a ‘political perspective’ can only lead to a twofold negative result: that of limiting their possibilities of practical action and of organising the proletarian masses on the one hand, and that of debasing and deforming political consciousness on the other.

In fact they are caught between two fires: either they restrict their membership to only those proletarians who accept the global and integral vision of revolutionary Marxism, accompanied by the experience of a century of class struggles and that of half a century of counter-revolution, which is to say, they either adhere to the political Party which exists in this totality of positions, or they are forced, in order to maintain contact with the largest number of proletarians, to dilute and water down this coherent vision until it becomes something acceptable to the ideas of a large number of workers today, i.e. something reformist, opportunist, populist because such are the predominant ideas among the mass of workers today.

This tendency, as we’ve said, is by no means new: it has manifested itself in the proletariat whenever, in history, a certain resurgence of class struggle has not been matched by an adequate presence of the Communist Party and its capacity to attract the energies that the struggle was unleashing. The economism attacked by Lenin had these same characteristics, although it was born on a basis of the Russian proletariat’s struggles that were much more profound: the proletariat that was striving to draw from its everyday struggles a ‘political consciousness’ and which, even then, with the enthusiastic help of petty students and third-rate intellectuals, managed quite well to give birth to the strangest deformations.

Anarcho-syndicalism, Sorel and other ‘theorists’ helping, also tried to make ‘political consciousness’ be given birth by the workers themselves organised in trade unions. The ordinovism of Gramsci etc. wanted to see, in the arising of the Factory Councils in Turin in 1919-20, a new form ‘through which the working class gains consciousness’. German Kapedeism (KAPD) founded the ‘revolutionary Unions’ of workers, which were not trade unions because they based their membership on the acceptance of certain principles and methods of action and were not the Party because they did not adhere to the totality of political positions expressed in the 3rd International. Underlying this latter phenomenon too was the usual anti-Marxist thesis: the workers through their own struggles organise themselves and become aware of the need to overthrow capitalism. We stand with Kautsky, with Lenin and with the ranks of Marxists who have proven this to be false.

Today, the situation is much worse than in the above examples: the proletariat is only moving in scattered groups far away from each other. The influence of the studentry and of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia pushes the workers’ groups to ‘not limit themselves to trade union action’ but to ‘give themselves a political perspective’ and therefore all the more pestiferous.

On the other hand, the instinct of the most combative workers warns them that ‘the question is political’ but they do not find the class Party in front of them, easily recognisable and identifiable, so the danger of the anarcho-syndicalist deformation of the resurgent proletarian movement becomes inevitable.

Its task is precisely that which the fools of the moment like to call ‘syndicalism’: that is, the Party indicates to the workers’ groups on the move the need for their action to be directed towards establishing all possible links with the bulk of the workers, acting not on the terrain of ideas, analyses, political perspectives, but on that of the defence of material necessities, of the elementary needs of each worker. The Party indicates that precisely today and in the present situation, the millions of workers are ideologically influenced by the thousand variants of opportunism, by even bourgeois ideologies, by fears and complexes that in 1921-22 seemed overcome even for the last proletarian and that today, on the contrary, are again rooted in the minds of even the most combative.

While this is the ideal situation of the proletarians, their material situation, however, pushes them to the level of practical struggle for economic demands. It is in the course of this material struggle that the proletarians will break down the most absurd ideas that now hold them captive and will once again reach the ‘ideal’ class level of fifty years ago, while the most deliberate elements of the class will join the Party and expand its ranks by individually acceding to the only political perspective of the working class: the revolutionary Marxist one of always.