The short text rejects the claim, today infused into the body and soul of the so-called Italian Communist Party, that before moving to communism, a ‘transitional’ social democratic government is inevitable and necessary, a government of an essentially democratic regime, tinged with legalistic socialism. Sixty years ahead of the material facts, our text clarifies, with sublime clairvoyance, that the bourgeoisie will be able to dominate the proletariat much better through a ‘workers’ party’ than through an openly bourgeois party.
 

After the unfolding of the Russian, German, and other countries’ revolutions, which have shown that the conquest of power by the proletariat and the period of the proletarian dictatorship are preceded by a historical phase in which the government passes into the hands of the social democratic parties, or a coalition of these with bourgeois parties, the question has often been raised as to whether a similar phase will also occur in Western countries as a prelude to the proletarian revolution. According to some, even in Italy we will have to go through this period in order to move beyond it, and therefore, from a revolutionary point of view, it would also be a good tactic to provoke the famous social democratic experiment in order to accelerate this necessary historical development towards its final conclusions. On the contrary, according to the statements of others, of our communist comrades, this period, in our case, does not correspond at all to a necessity of history and the revolutionary movement must strive directly for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat through direct struggle against the present bourgeois regime.

Of course, this second opinion is the one that best resolves the question in a communist sense, but it seems to us that a more accurate assessment of the issue, of the characteristics and functions of the social democratic movement is needed in order to provide a comprehensive answer from a critical point of view and to draw the tactical conclusions from it that concern us.

A bourgeois democratic regime, with a programme of radical socialist reformism, presents itself as a real interlude between the existing orders and the proletarian ones, where the advent of the properly so-called capitalist bourgeois class to power has not yet had its complete historical explication, and where there still exist backward political and social forms corresponding to epochs generally surpassed by present society. Even under these conditions, there has never been any doubt from the Marxist point of view that communists, while understanding and theoretically acknowledging that the establishment of a parliamentary regime is a step towards the better explication of the proletarian struggle, must oppose and fight, like the old ruling class and its parties, as well as the new one that is replacing it, refusing to conclude truces with it and striving to overthrow its power in the shortest possible time, indeed not allowing the short convulsive period to pass in which no state power yet exists in a firmly established form and a new transfer of power is easier. Despite what the dabblers in Marxism may say, this was the thinking of Marx and the communists in the face of the situation in Germany and in the other countries in 1848, and this is the great lesson of the Russian Revolution.

But in this sense, one must not, nor can one certainly speak of a historical function of social democracy in the countries of Western Europe, where the characteristically bourgeois democratic regime has existed for a long time, indeed has exhausted its historical life and is rushing towards its decline. No other revolutionary transfer of power can be conceived other than from the ruling bourgeoisie to the proletariat, just as no other form of proletarian power can be conceived than the dictatorship of the councils.

Making this obvious observation does not mean excluding that social democracy does not exercise and is not about to perform a whole function even in the countries we are talking about. Social democratic parties argue that the period of democracy has not yet been exhausted, that the proletariat can still benefit from democratic political forms for its class aims. It being, however, clear that these forms are in force and that the proletariat, especially in the current conditions inherited from the war, derives no possible advantage from them, the social democrats are led to envisage and propose democratic forms of government that are, in their view, more perfect and complete, arguing that the present system acts against the proletariat only because it is not truly, fully democratic. Hence all the plans for new systems based on a republic, the extension of suffrage, the abolition of the upper chambers, the extension of the functions and powers of Parliaments, and so on.

The experience of recent revolutions, no less than Marxist critique, shows us that all this political baggage is nothing more than a mask for a movement that appears to be the only possible programme and method of government available to the bourgeois class under the current critical conditions; that all governments formed on such bases not only fail to constitute the bridge or transition to the real conquest of power by the proletarian masses, but represent the final and most perfect obstacle that the existing regime raises against the threat of its overthrow; that even the democratic theoretical content of this movement gives way – logically confirming the historical death of democracy proclaimed by our communist doctrine – to a practice of dictatorship and terror, but against the proletariat and communism.

Thus, social democracy has a function of its own, in the sense that there will probably be, in Western countries, a period when social democratic parties will be in government, either on their own or in collaboration with bourgeois parties. But this interlude, if the proletariat lacks the strength to prevent it, will not be a positive condition, a necessary condition for the advent of revolutionary forms and institutions, nor will it be a useful preparation for this, but will constitute a desperate bourgeois attempt to diminish and divert the proletariat’s offensive strength, and to beat it mercilessly under the white reaction if it has enough energy left to dare to revolt against the legitimate, humanitarian, civil government of social democracy.

Therefore, no transitional period of any kind between the present bourgeois dictatorship and the proletarian dictatorship is foreseeable, but what is foreseeable, and must be foreseen by communists, is a final and insidious form of bourgeois dictatorship, which, under the guise of some formal institutional change, will justify delegating the leadership of the entire current state apparatus of capitalist defence to the complicit action of the social democrats. From a tactical point of view, communists, having made this prediction, do not resign themselves to it, precisely because they deny its character as a useful and universal historical necessity, but, strengthened by international experience, they aim to unmask in advance the insidious game of the democratic function and to launch without hesitation an all-out attack on social democracy, even before it has loudly revealed its reactionary function in practice; attempting to prepare the proletarian strength and consciousness to strangle this monstrous product of the counter-revolution in its infancy, without ruling out that the final attack will be launched against a pseudo-socialist government, the last manager of bourgeois power.

As for the oblique tactical proposals of supposed communists who have gone over to the other side, favouring the rise to power of our local social democrats, not only do they show a complete misunderstanding of tactical problems according to the Marxist method, but they also conceal a worse danger. It is necessary to detach the proletariat and its support from the men and the party destined for the social-democratic counter-revolutionary function through a preventive and sharp separation of responsibilities. Naturally, this will discourage those men and those groups, will make them delay accepting the bourgeois invitation to take power, and it will be good if they take this step only under extreme conditions, when even such a manoeuvre will no longer be able to heal the process of decomposition of the bourgeois state apparatus of government. We know that the final battle will almost certainly be fought against a government of ex-socialists, but it is not our task to facilitate their accession to power, but rather to prepare the proletariat to greet them from the outset with a declaration of war instead of as a sign that a truce is opening in the class struggle, that an experiment in peaceful resolution of the problems of the revolution is beginning. This can be done only on condition of having denounced before the masses the social democratic movement, its methods, its aims – so that it would be a colossal mistake to appear as consenting to the attempt to put them to the test.

This is why we say that revolutionary tactics must be based on international experiences and not merely national ones, that the suffering of the proletarians of Hungary, Finland, and other countries must suffice to spare through the tireless work of the parties of the Communist International, the proletariat of the West from having to learn with their own eyes, of learning at the cost of their own blood, what the role of social democracy in history means. This will fatally follow its own path, but communists must set themselves the task of blocking it as soon as possible, and before it arrives to plant the dagger of betrayal into the back of the proletariat.