In the article ‘Party and Trade Unions’, which appeared in the latest issue of Spartaco, it was necessary to refute – with texts, history, and tradition in hand – the self-serving slander of opportunism against the Communist Left for being indifferent to the economic problems, struggles for demands, and economic defence, of the proletariat. The same sources – i.e. texts, history, and tradition – demonstrate the exact opposite, namely that opportunism of all times, especially the far more virulent form of today, accuses the Communist Left of indifferentism in order to cover up its own ‘indifference’, if not outright hatred, for the communist revolution.

Our small party, the embryo of the great world communist party that will undoubtedly weave its web among the proletarian masses of the whole world, in continuing the revolutionary communist work of the Left, has drawn from it not only all the theoretical teachings of Marxism, but also those of struggle and combat, without which a party does not exist, or exists only partially.

‘For this reason, it must be strongly emphasised that the party, although greatly reduced in numbers and lacking in material resources, will not give up fighting, by any means necessary, against capitalism and opportunism’. This is beyond question.

The subject of careful examination and particular attention, therefore, is the manner in which this action should be carried out, where and when the opportunity for it arises. It is certain that if some sections are already able to carry out these tasks today, it is not because of their intrinsic merits, but above all because of the slow and contradictory maturation within the working class of the terrible consequences of the long ravaging of opportunism in its ranks, which pushes the masses to evaluate the policy of betrayal of their ‘leaders’ and the increasingly open and intolerable capitalist dictatorship.

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One point that has sometimes seemed obscure and controversial needs to be clarified: the question of the Internal Commissions. In other writings, published in both Il Programma Comunista and Spartaco, an assessment was made of the openly counter-revolutionary functions of the ICs, which arose during the war to induce wage-earners not deployed on the front lines to collaborate with company management in intensifying production efforts, setting aside not only every class political issue but also every economic and labour demand. The ICs thus became promoters of the slogan: everything for victory!

This function of ‘collaboration with company management’, enshrined in the statutes of the ICs, prevents these workers’ representative bodies from carrying out even the slightest class activity, already severely weakened by the corporate nature of the ICs, which further entangles their inherent corporatist tendencies.

The party is not opposed to representative bodies of the working class, regardless of the political current that directs them; but it decides to carry out its revolutionary action in those which, at least, even if only in their intentions (statutory aims), acknowledge the independence and autonomy of the interests of the working class from those of the capitalist class. The ICs may be the focus of attention, and even objectives to be achieved by the party, when the balance of forces is such that these representative bodies are assigned a role of open and uncompromising struggle in defence of proletarians.

For these reasons, the party does not, today, present lists of candidates in elections for the ICs, but intends to use meetings, assemblies, and workers’ rallies to spread its programmatic and militant positions, to carry out its ruthless critique of the opportunism that rages among the workers’ ranks. It is not, therefore, a question of principle that arises, but only, one might say, a tactical question.

A different attitude, however, must be taken towards the Trade Union. The party considers the CGIL to be the only organisation in Italy which, in addition to organising the majority of workers – including the vast majority of industrial and agricultural wage-earners – still retains today, and despite its disastrous political leadership, a semblance of class consciousness. In other words, the CGIL possesses those basic conditions that allow the revolutionary communist party to carry out its work of political penetration and organisation of the unionised masses. The other confederations, especially the CISL and UIL, prejudicially deny that they are ‘class unions’ and take pleasure in differentiating themselves from the CGIL on this point, against which, since the day of their establishment, originating from the split of 1947, they have waged an anti-communist crusade to force it to cast aside even the last remnants of ‘class’ that remain.

This does not mean that the CGIL should be considered the ‘ideal’ confederation nor that, in the dynamics of the revolutionary process, it will tomorrow also meet the necessary conditions for the preparation of the revolution, or even maintain its present appearances. It cannot be ruled out that the CGIL may abandon even these statutory class characteristics in deference to a trade union reunification which would have, in the intentions of its promoters, the function of curbing the radicalisation of the proletarians. In that case, but only in that case, the establishment of a class union could become necessary, in the ways and forms that the real conditions of the struggle will give expression to.

Our participation in unions, leagues, and craft federations affiliated with the CGIL cannot be a matter of personal judgment by individual activists, but is a duty of wage-earning proletarians and communists.

By joining their union organisations, militants link their revolutionary action to that of workers who are not members of the party (i.e. the whole or almost the whole of the class) and, conversely, the class comes into direct contact with its political party, from which it learns, through the programme, the revolutionary directives for immediate action in the multifaceted and vast field of economic demands and defence. The party thus enters into a first fruitful and necessary contact with the class, within the framework of its basic organisation, that is, with that part of the proletariat that at least possesses the instinctive consciousness of being the sole productive stratum of society. It must not be forgotten, in fact, that a non-negligible proportion of workers even today does not feel the primary need to unionise.

The party within the trade union and among the workers conducts its action in a seemingly contradictory manner. On one hand, it orders its militants to organise themselves into communist groups, i.e. bodies directed by and dependent on the party itself, tasked by it with carrying out political propaganda work within economic organisations, in the workplace, among the organised and unorganised masses, with the immediate aim of arousing sympathy and support for the actions promoted or proposed by the party in the field of industrial disputes; sympathy and support for the party’s immediate action, liable to rise to the party’s overall programme as workers’ struggles intensify, spread, radicalise, and unify. The communist groups thus constitute the link between the party and the members of the working class, between the historical and permanent interests of the class and its immediate and transitory interests.

This network tends to expand or contract in relation to the development of class contradictions. In this way, the spread and strengthening of this network will make it possible to assess the maturation of conditions favourable to revolution. Furthermore, sympathy for and adherence to the party’s revolutionary politics must arise not from ambiguous practices or from a special union zeal of militants, but from unmistakable programmatic clarity, from an inexorable struggle against the counter-revolutionary policy of the union centres and against the bureaucratic apparatus of the unions; from a constant mobilisation of communists against the political parties of opportunism that dominate within the unions themselves, in the proletarian organisations, and throughout the entire class. On the other hand, revolutionary militants refrain from any action that tends to divide the union organisation, whose rules governing agitation, struggles, and strikes they obediently follow, in which communists serve as an example of proletarian militancy.

There is no contradiction in this. Indeed, the fundamental aim that the party sets for itself is not to take advantage of favourable conditions, such as the growing disgust of workers at the ignoble proofs of betrayal by their leaders, the possible reduction in membership, etc., in order to create its own trade union, but rather to be the unifying element of the class in all struggles until the organisational unification of all trade unions into a single centre. This is demonstrated by the fact that trade union unity has always been threatened either by the interests of the various political cliques, fighting among themselves to get their hands on the union organisation – perhaps by negotiating ‘zones of influence’ modelled on the capitalist division of markets – or by the opportunism of false workers’ parties, united in their attempt to expel revolutionary communist proletarians from the trade unions under the most contrived pretexts. In both cases, the unification of workers’ organisations is a substantial objective only for the class party, for our party, and not for the others who, while appealing to the proletariat, postulate trade union unity or not for the sole purpose of counter-revolutionary struggle.

‘The action, therefore, of militants and “communist groups” in the specific field of trade union and protest struggles consists in opposing the official leadership of the trade union centres with the party’s programme, which considers struggles partial and immediate, as training exercises for the class army, and interprets their effectiveness only in the global and complex intertwining of events that raise the level of awareness of the masses to the indispensable revolutionary consciousness. For this precise reason, the party participates “in all of the struggles of the working class, including those arising from partial and limited interests, in order to encourage their development, but constantly highlighting their connection with the final revolutionary objectives and presenting the conquests of the class struggle as a bridge of passage to the indispensable struggles to come, by denouncing the danger of settling for partial achievements as if they were ends in themselves, to be bartered in exchange for the conditions of proletarian class activity and combativity, such as the autonomy and independence of its ideology and of its own organizations, the party being first and foremost among these” (Lyon Theses)’.

What we write does not claim either to exhaust the issue or to be immediately practicable throughout our organisation. Our party structure is very young, even though it has an ancient tradition behind it, and only today is it beginning, in some of its grassroots organisations, to gain useful and valuable experience in the field of industrial action and trade unions. This experience is indispensable, and the party does not intend to shy away from it, knowing, from the teachings of older generations of revolutionary communist fighters, that through it, both militants and organisation are tempered, strengthened, and qualified to face historical conditions saturated with revolutionary energy, in which only that party that has forged itself in the fire of workers’ struggles, acquired all possible elements of the art of revolution, and never ceased to fight with the working class, whether defending or attacking, can play a decisive role. All this is not easy; it requires collective effort, passion, and willpower pushed to the extreme – as if the final battle, the final struggle for the victory of communism, were always at hand.