With regard to trade unions, the party expresses positions of principle concerning the need for broad economic organisations open to all wage earners.

Through its internally organised fraction, the Party attempts to gain a decisive influence in them and, in the revolutionary phase, their very leadership. In this way, the link between the Party and the class (transmission belt) is created, through which the leading function of the revolutionary movement, which is proper to it, is carried out.

The conquest of this influence over the intermediate proletarian organisations is achieved through the demonstration that its line is the most coherent and consequent in the defence of the conditions of the working class, in the face of the line and direction expressed by the other political movements also organised within them (reformists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.) against whom a political struggle is waged. This will have to appear very evident to all proletarians in the test of facts.

We are speaking of organisations of a purely economic character, the trade unions, whose irreplaceable function the Party, uninvolved in the continual ravings of others, has always emphasised. Of various intermediate bodies, of a political character, such as councils or soviets, the need is foreseeable in the phase approaching the conquest of power.

So far what concerns principles. Another question is the evaluation of the current trade unions, our attitude towards them, the tactics the Party adopts in different circumstances.

In this, the Party’s action is linked to the interpretation of facts and to the study of different situations, which is not immune to approximation and requires progressive clarification and rectification.

First of all, we must consider the differences from country to country regarding the history of the formation of proletarian organisations, their organisational characteristics, their way of proceeding, and the politics that inspired them in the face of the battles waged and defeats suffered by the proletariat. For example, Anglo-Saxon ‘unionist’ trade unionism has quite different characteristics from the industrial unionism in Italy and France.

The Party’s evaluations and tactics towards the current trade unions will therefore probably not be identical in all countries and circumstances.

The Party’s indication to no longer organise in the CGIL and for the reconstruction of the class union ‘outside and against the regime union’, is not a general principle of action of the Party, but the result of an evaluation of the situation that had matured in Italy and that in any case remains susceptible to being better specified if not corrected in relation to the unfolding of events.

First of all, a distinction is necessary.

Rightly Lenin whips the extremists who proceed to form ‘revolutionary’ trade unions, abandoning the masses organised in the trade unions to the influence of the counter-revolutionary social-democratic leaders, agents of the bourgeoisie. Communists must work even in the most reactionary trade unions, with the prospect of taking over their leadership under favourable circumstances, ousting the old leaders, and overturning the policy that guides them.

But it is necessary to distinguish between ‘reactionary trade unions’ and ‘regime trade unions’. The former are workers’ unions led by ‘opportunists and social-chauvinists, [who] are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police’, as Lenin put it. Such leaders engage in actions to sabotage workers’ struggles and above all intervene to divert them from their course in a classist and revolutionary direction. Such unions nevertheless retain their workers’ character, are useful and utilised for the class struggle, and the organisation within them of communist workers and the agitation of their watchwords is possible. They are susceptible to being won over, under favourable circumstances, to class action and and to Party leadership.

Such was the characteristic of the CGL in Italy before fascism. Having destroyed this organisation by the fascist gangs and the state police, the bourgeoisie left no vacuum: it formed the ‘fascist’ trade union, a regime trade union, an emanation of the state. This is a forced union, whose structure emanates from above and is inaccessible to any penetration of the class directive. Its inalienable principles are social collaboration, according to the principles of fascist corporatism, and therefore, already by statute, communists are prevented from entering it. Despite the fact that in some cases it shows itself to be in defence of workers’ demands, this organisation is no longer a true trade union and the Party indicates not to organise within it.

The CGIL (the added ‘I’ stands for ‘Italian’), rebuilt after the Second World War, was declared by the Party to be the ‘heir of fascist syndicalism’ and ‘sewn on the Mussolini model’. It too was in fact a direct emanation of the regime and asserted itself by stifling attempts at workers’ organisation in the red class sense.

However, there were necessities tied to the democratic imbroglio and anti-fascist mystification that made this union formally pick up the tradition of the former CGL, with which the majority of workers identified with. The Italian working masses considered the CGIL their combative red union. This allowed the Party to organise internally, agitating the principles of the anti-capitalist class struggle, pointing out to the workers the need for the union’s ‘return’ to class politics and even attempting to conquer grassroots structures such as the Chambers of Labour, territorial bodies, or the Internal Commissions, factory bodies.

Already by then, however, a second eventuality was on the horizon: the ex novo reconstruction of the Class Union. It was then impossible to foresee which of the two eventualities would historically prevail.

In the subsequent course, from the post-war period to the present day, we have seen in the CGIL the gradual abandonment of any reference, even formal, not only to politics, but above all to the way of organising and structuring itself as a class union.

There was the unification with CISL and UIL, trade unions of splinter origin and emanation from the bosses, and the introduction of the proxy to the bosses for the collection of union dues, which the Party indicated its rejection of, as our militants were already partly outside the confederal union apparatus, many of us being prevented from joining.

The economic crisis of the mid-1970s accelerated this process. Together with the launched ‘policy of sacrifices’, the organisation of the CGIL became increasingly narrow and impenetrable to any class influence, so much so that more and more struggles in opposition to the collaborationist policy were forced to rely on the organisation of workers outside the confederal union, which instead used all means to sabotage these struggles. The CGIL became increasingly closed and inaccessible, right down to the grassroots and factory organisations. Today not even the demands platforms and agreements agreed with the bosses are submitted to workers’ assemblies for approval. All decisions take place in a sphere that workers cannot access.

The confederal union, which today has even gone so far as to ratify the anti-strike laws, has become a separate organisation opposed to the working masses, a body of officials paid to push through any attack brought by capital and block every worker reaction. Its apparatus cannot be accessed by the workers except for that tiny fraction of them who, normally to gain personal advantages, sell out, espousing that policy.

Under these conditions, it is impracticable, and illusory for the class, for communists to work within these organisations with the aim of ousting the ‘sold-out and corrupt’ leaderships and win them back to class politics. For a long time there no longer exist spaces within the union in which the Party can conduct its battle. All entrances are barred to us, even if we had our membership card in our pocket and even if we gathered the support of many workers.

We certainly participate with our positions in the demonstrations, strikes and the few workers’ assemblies that the union still holds, but this does not mean ‘working within the union’.

On the other hand, it could be seen since the late 1970s that any attempt by the workers to move in the opposite direction to the collaborationist policy was manifested through organisations outside and opposed to the confederal union. The COBAS express this tendency. While the internal oppositions within the CGIL revealed themselves as attempts to cover up and betray discontent.

Lenin speaks of ‘reactionary trade unions’, i.e. organisations belonging to the working class even if run by corrupt and sold-out leaders. In these the work of communists is possible, indispensable, aimed at disavowing the action of the leadership and winning them back, in favourable situations, to class politics and Party leadership. Today in Italy we are instead faced with ‘regime’ unions, which if they are not yet declared ‘state’ unions as in the fascist regime, are however now intimately integrated into the institutional apparatus of capitalist power and no longer belong to the working class. They are closed and impenetrable structures, like any other institution of the regime, in which we find ‘registered’ but unorganised workers. Tools unusable by the class.

Hence the realisation of the impossibility of working within to make it influential to class politics and hence our formulation of the need for the ex novo reconstitution of the class union, outside and against the regime union.

It is true that, despite widespread discontent, the majority of workers continue to follow the non-directives of these unions and do not yet express the need to abandon them in order to reconstitute the class union. But the party has the task of anticipating this need.

It is also to be expected that, faced with strong pressure from the workers, these unions would find themselves in the necessity of not disavowing and of formally placing themselves at the head of broad movements of struggle, when it is not possible to hold them back or isolate and repress the most combative part. The regime union in these cases could play its role by assuming leadership of the movement and making some of its demands its own, but only in order to try to control it, to circumscribe it, to divert it and to have it be defeated. The alternative of abandoning it to itself could lead to the most frightening consequences for the regime. This happened, for example, in the case of the magnificent strike against redundancies, continued to the bitter end for a month by the Fiat workers in 1980 and finally stabbed in the back by the CGIL.

The Party’s task on these occasions would still be to point out the need for the organisation to be autonomous from the regime union for the conduct of the struggle and as the fundamental result that must flow from it.

We repeat that these considerations relate to the situation in Italy, where the Party has so far had more opportunities to measure itself in trade union activity, while we consider the study of the situation in other countries, where we are present but with small forces, to be insufficiently thorough. This study is decisive for the definition of our formulations on trade union tactics. It will have to retrace the history of trade union organisations to date, defining the forms and ways in which they are structured, how they are organised in the factories and at higher levels, the link with the parties, the politics that inspire them and the degree to which they are integrated into the state apparatus. It is necessary to know the tendencies that are expressed internally and the action of eventual oppositions to the policy of the ruling groups, the actual possibility that organisations at the grassroots can make themselves susceptible to class action.

* * *

Another point we are interested in clarifying concerns the definition of what is meant by ‘class union’. This is in the face of those who would like to reduce the problem to a pure question of organisational forms. Many argue that it would be necessary to start again from ‘grassroots democracy’ since it was the abandonment of democratic consultation of the workers that was the reason for the degeneration of the union. They likewise deplore the substitution of a body of well-paid officials removed from factory work for voluntary worker activists.

It is true that the regime union, bearer of an anti-worker policy, is structured so as not to be subordinate, but on the contrary to systematically impose its will on the class. But even in the class union, ‘grassroots democracy’ will be a fetish and will have to be subordinated to the need for the timely and unified action of the entire movement, as well as to the defence of the class line and class action against the corporatist and reactionary thrusts that will inevitably manifest themselves even within the base itself.

It is true that the regime union can only be based on an apparatus of well-paid and corrupt officials, but even the class union, although based on voluntary activity, will need, in a vast and centralised organisation, full-time and therefore salaried leaders.

Another point. It is not our task, nor anyone else’s, to go and discover new forms of organisation, thinking that therein lies the key to solving the problem of the reconstitution of the class union. It is possible that the class will express, in a phase of resurgence, forms of organisation different from the traditional ones, which is not granted to us to foresee today. It is therefore not the COBAS that are the object of our interest insofar as they manifest original forms of workers’ organisation, but insofar as they express the tendency toward reorganisation against collaborationist politics.

What we anticipate is the necessity for a return to class politics and class action by purely economic organisations of wage-earners only, structured in a centralised way to ensure the unity of action of the movement, based on factory organisations, but also necessarily external, territorial in character.

We will return to these latter points in a forthcoming article.