The next issue of the international theoretical journal Programme Communiste will feature a wonderful article, unfortunately too long to fit in our newspaper, entitled ‘“Left-Wing Communism” is nothing but the other side of reformist opportunism’, inspired by Cohn-Bendit’s miserable little book, ‘Gauchisme, remède à la maladie sénile du communisme’ (which our publishing industry has immediately translated in order to cash in), reaffirms the classic Marxist positions in the face of all forms of Proudhonism, anarchism, workerism, immediatism, and democratism – in short, in the face of all the opportunist ‘disorders’ that plague us today. In its first part, it reiterates that what all these variants, old and new, of the same distorted vision of the process of proletarian emancipation tend towards is ‘a preventive struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat, both from the point of view of orientation and organisation; to the destruction of mercantile relations, they oppose self-management and exchange between autonomous enterprises; to violent revolution, they oppose the self-defence of factories; to class coercion, they oppose freedom and democracy; and, of course, to the organisation of the proletariat into a class, and therefore into a party, they oppose the renowned “spontaneity”’. We omit the chapter dedicated to this crucial point from the last part of the article, referring readers to the complete text as an authentic viaticum for the communist militant, which does not claim to innovate anything, but faithfully re-proposes the classic Marxist schema of the cycle of bourgeois society, the general features of the classless society, and the obligatory path that the proletariat must follow to achieve this historic goal.

The bourgeoisie ‘instinctively knows’ that its social form has nothing to fear so long as it finds itself confronted only by individuals; that the real danger is the constitution of the proletariat as a class, and that this constitution into a class is accomplished in the party and through the party. At all times, the bourgeoisie has concentrated its struggle against the proletariat in the struggle against the party. It has various methods at its disposal for this purpose. Sometimes it uses open physical repression and, in periods of acute struggle, it sometimes succeeds in physically crushing the party; sometimes it manages to conquer it from within, to empty it of its revolutionary substance, in order to make it the best instrument of its domination. Such was the sad fate of the Second and Third Internationals, while, after the defeats of 1848 and 1870, Marx and Engels managed to put the revolutionary organisation ‘to sleep’, thus preventing it from falling into the hands of the enemy. (After the triumph of the counter-revolution in the years 1926-30, our current refused to participate in the ‘creation’ of the Fourth International, declaring that an organisation that claimed to influence the masses in the midst of a counter-revolutionary period was doomed to fall into opportunism and participate in the liquidation of revolutionary positions: experience has confirmed our predictions).

But the class struggle does not stop, and after every defeat, after every triumph of the counter-revolution, the proletariat is, sooner or later, driven to resume the struggle, and thus to reconstitute the party. Then, alongside repression and the false struggle between the State and the pseudo-parties, the ‘contestation’ of the party appears. To claim that defeats and betrayals stem from the very nature of the party, to deny the necessity of the party, is but one aspect of the bourgeoisie’s struggle against the organisation of the proletariat into a revolutionary class. This tendency is particularly evident when the betrayal of a formerly revolutionary organisation begins to become apparent, when the vanguard elements break away from it and seek to rediscover the revolutionary path. In our long struggle to save and reaffirm revolutionary doctrine, the question of the party has been the central question, and in reality it encompasses all the others. Here we will speak of it only briefly, referring to the numerous texts published by our movement on this subject. (Party and Class – Party and Class Action – Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party – The Democratic Principle – etc.).

At the root of the rejection of the party, we find, of course, bourgeois ideology; it is in the name of ‘equality’, ‘freedom’, and ‘autonomy’ that thousands of Cohn-Bendits reject the party. In this way, they show that for them the foundation of society and social history is the individual (supposedly free, equal, and autonomous), after which they can talk about the ‘working class’ or the ‘proletariat’; these words have a completely different meaning on their lips than the one Marxism gives them.

For us, a class is not a ‘sum’ of individuals, and class consciousness is not the ‘average’ of the ‘opinions’ of its members. Similarly, a class is not simply an ‘economic category’ and cannot be defined by means of a static statistical study of society; such a study would only highlight economic categories with indefinable boundaries, and it is precisely the aim pursued by every ‘sociology’ that seeks to erase class boundaries.

For us, a class is a social force that can only be defined as a collective unit through its action in historical dynamics: ‘The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing’, said Marx. It exists as a class only if it acts as a class, striving to achieve its own class goals.

What, then, is class consciousness? It is precisely the consciousness of these class goals, which are not freely invented but determined by history, and of the class means that enable them to be achieved. Now, to demand ‘workers’ democracy’ against the party is to demand that this consciousness be uniformly distributed among all ‘members’ of the class, on pain of losing all value. Here we find once again the bourgeois idealism that knows only individual consciousness and ignores the real conditions of consciousness formation. If this conception is taken to its logical conclusion, and the C-Bs (unlike the Trotskyists) are consistent enough to do so, one ends up saying that it matters little what one does, as long as one does it ‘freely’; that actions matter little, only ‘intentions’ count!

We oppose this existentialism with Engels’ materialist position, according to which ‘many workers will make the revolution without having a clear and complete consciousness of what they are doing’. And what does it matter if, as individuals, they do not see the full significance of what they are doing? It is as a class, that they will revolutionise production relations and social relations, thus radically changing the conditions that determine the consciousness of ‘Man’. If humanity had waited to act until everyone had ‘consciousness’ of what they were doing, we would still be perched on banana trees!

How, then, did the class consciousness that interests us here, that of the proletariat, come about? At its root, we find, of course, economic conditions, the place occupied by proletarians in capitalist production, and the immediate struggles against exploitation and poverty. These struggles do not ‘descend’ from a consciousness of the causes of exploitation (where would that come from?), they are not directed against the relations of capitalist production themselves, but only against their consequences. But through these reactions of immediate defence, through the partial struggles against the effects of capitalism, through their defeats and temporary victories, vanguard elements are driven to broaden their horizons, to overcome local and immediate conditions, to deepen their understanding of social relations, and finally to attain both a complete vision of history and its laws and an understanding of capitalism and the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat.

To demand that this general consciousness be ‘general’ in the sense that all share it is to ask for the impossible: the very conditions of exploitation prevent this. Inevitably, as long as capitalism lasts, integral class consciousness can only be achieved by a minority, the party. Equally absurd, moreover, would be to demand that all party militants have the same degree of consciousness. That would be to fall back into individualism: the party acts as an indivisible unit, and it is only in this capacity that it can claim to possess class consciousness.

But this minority, the party, is not something external to the class; it is produced by the class, and it is thanks to it that the class exists as a class: both a school of political thought and a fighting organisation, only the party allows the proletariat to act as a class, only it can integrate all the partial and spontaneous struggles into the historical struggle for communism. To those who prattle on about ‘spontaneity’, we reply: the true historical spontaneity of the proletariat is the party!

Now, once the class struggle has produced this historical consciousness of the proletariat, it appears in every partial struggle as coming ‘from outside’. Lenin has repeatedly emphasised this point against the partisans of ‘immediate spontaneity’, writing with great indignation at them: ‘Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers’. And how could people who have no idea what ‘class political consciousness’ is understand it? For them, every worker should, starting from his immediate economic consciousness, traverse ‘autonomously’ along the road that leads... there where they are, that is, in full bourgeois ideology.

Not understanding anything about Marxism, they believe they can oppose Marx to Lenin: ‘All Leninist ideology is founded on the postulate of the incapacity of the working class, its inability to make revolution, its inability to manage production in post-revolutionary society... In reality, this runs counter to the Inaugural Address of the First International: “The emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves” (p. 234, French edition of Cohn-Bendit’s booklet)’.

Poor philistines! They will never understand that, for Marx as for Lenin, workers are incapable of fulfilling their historical task on their own unless they organise themselves into a class, and therefore into a party! They will never understand that proletarians can fight, win, and destroy capitalism only THROUGH THE PARTY! That the party is the force of the class, that the party is the consciousness and organisation that the proletariat gives itself to lead ITS OWN struggle!

Perhaps it is not entirely fair to say that these philistines will never understand; this may be true for them as individuals intoxicated and brutalised by bourgeois ideology. But the classes for which they are the spokespersons ‘understand’ the Marxist position perfectly well; if they fight so fiercely against the party, it is because they too ‘know’ that it represents the only chance for the proletariat to strike capitalism at its roots! Obviously, they would be crazy to admit it. So, as usual, they stir up ‘the workers’ against the ‘leaders’.

To hell with leaders, it is shouted, and especially those who aren’t workers!

Already in the First International, the French Proudhonists demanded that only ‘labourers’ be admitted to the General Council, in an attempt to get rid of Marx! And C-B and Co. are ready to commit suicide, as long as we perish with them; after whining that the CGT prevented them from speaking to the workers, they coldly write: ‘We must encourage the workers to express themselves, and suppress or limit the speaking time of speakers outside the factory and the working class’ (p. 199)!

This is called speaking... like the reformist piecards of the CGT! And when the workers, mired in bourgeois ideology, follow the Social Democrats or the CP, don’t they rush to defend or rebuild the fatherland, and ‘express themselves’ by silencing anyone who denounces the Sacred Union? Always the same silly idea: if things go wrong, it is because the opinion of the people is not taken into account, it is because ‘true democracy’ is not respected! The idea that workers are revolutionary in and of themselves, and that, if they were allowed to ‘express themselves’...! This is how Little Johnny imagines the class struggle. Poor darling! To our explanation of history, he and his cronies oppose the petty-bourgeois aphorism: The masses are essentially good, all leadership is essentially evil!

And here we are again at the same question: What is a truly revolutionary movement? For us, for Marx, for Lenin and, despite their errors, also for Trotsky and Luxemburg (to whom the C-Bs dare to appeal, as is customary, for the famous 1905-7 polemic with Lenin), it is defined first and foremost by its content, its doctrine, and its historical programme. But precisely for this reason, it can only be centralised and anti-democratic!

Let us do justice to the C-Bs: by their petty-bourgeois class instinct, they see the fundamental anti-democratism of Marxist doctrine better than many of today’s pseudo-Marxists. Amid the worst salad, they write: ‘In reality, if the necessity of the party is affirmed, if this necessity is based on the fact that the party holds the socialist programme, if the autonomy of the organisations forged by the workers is characterised according to the criterion of their agreement with the party programme, the latter is naturally destined to exercise, before and after the revolution, power, all the real power of the exploited classes. Democracy is therefore not perverted due to poor organisational rules, but because of the very existence of the party. Democracy cannot be realised within it, because it is not itself a democratic organisation, that is, an organisation representative of the classes to which it refers’ (264).

And they are absolutely right: the party is not ‘representative’ in the sense in which they understand it! It does not represent nor express the local and immediate consciousness of the workers; today, everywhere, it is the CP that still democratically represents and expresses what the workers, crushed by bourgeois ideology, ‘think’, just as the Social Democrats represented and expressed it in 1914, or as Peron represented and expressed it a few years ago in Argentina!

The party represents and expresses the historical consciousness of the proletariat as a class, the revolutionary programme objectively imposed by history! And that is precisely why it is by nature anti-democratic; that is precisely why it cannot submit itself to the democratic approval of the masses, because, by ‘asking their opinion’ of increasingly broad layers, one can be sure from the outset that the answers received will be increasingly imbued with bourgeois conceptions. It is also for this reason, indeed, that there can be no democracy within the party: nothing is more foolish than to claim that the historical programme is the one approved by 51% of the members; nothing is more dangerous than to recognise the ‘rights’ of a minority heterogeneous to the party!

The party can only be unitary, founded on the dictatorship of principles and on the strictest centralism ⁽¹⁾. This centralism cannot be reduced to a ‘form of organisation’ (no organisational formalism can guarantee the revolutionary nature of an organisation); it is the revolutionary content that the properly centralised organisation gives itself, thus overcoming the false dilemma: formal authority or democracy.

Similarly, the relationship between the party and the masses cannot be reduced to a formal leader-led schema. The party leads the proletariat, yes, but in a way that has nothing in common with a driver steering a car. It would be more accurate to say that the proletariat leads itself through the party. And this is not a play on words: the party can only lead the working masses when they follow it, when they recognise in it their leader. A revolutionary situation (and neither 1936 nor 1968 in France were such) is precisely a situation in which large proletarian masses, driven by the bitterness of social conflicts, tear themselves from the influence of the bourgeoisie and its agents, go beyond local and immediate objectives, and align their struggle with the historical programme of the proletariat represented by the party. In practical terms, this means that, recognising in the party the expression of ITS class aspirations, the proletariat organises itself as a class around the party; that the influence of the party permeates the organs of struggle created by the workers – economic organs (trade unions, factory committees) or political (soviets or others) – to guide and at the same time coordinate the proletarian struggles.

Our Marxist conception of the leading role of the party has nothing to do with a division into ‘active leaders’ and ‘passive executors’. On the contrary, it implies the permanent active participation of the proletariat. Who more than Lenin appealed to the initiative of the masses? But, knowing that revolution is not ‘the freedom to live according to my desires’ nor ‘the idea that wage-earners, if they want to defend themselves, will be able to take their destiny into their own hands, on the scale of society, and that THIS (emphasis added) is socialism’ (pp. 264-5); knowing that the proletarian revolution is the radical transformation of social relations, it does not rely on individual or local ‘creative initiative’ to invent autonomous objectives, but demands a unitary revolutionary programme and the unitary organisation of the proletariat around this programme. And this is the party!

Of course, we are still far from a revolutionary situation. But our doctrine thus points the way to it. C-Bs all over the world admit the existence of ‘active minorities’; but, unable to explain their existence, they assign them an equally inexplicable role: ‘The action of active minorities can have no other objective than to support, provoke, or illuminate the struggles against the system’ (p. 264). And, to refute a phrase that slipped out or was misinterpreted during an interview, Daniel Cohn-Bendit exclaims: ‘The role of “leftists” is not to lead the movement, but to provoke it!’

Evidently! Here we are again, in full idealism: unaware that class struggle is an objective reality of which he is merely a by-product, Little Johnny imagines that he is the one pushing the masses to action. In reality, no one voluntarily ‘provokes’ the struggles of the masses, neither of the proletariat, nor of other classes. The Trotskyists have verified (despite themselves and without understanding it) this fundamental assertion of Marxism, they who have exhausted themselves for years in ‘pushing the masses to action’, launching for this purpose increasingly opportunistic slogans.

Half a century ago, we said: Neither parties nor the revolution are created: parties and revolutions are directed in the light of revolutionary doctrine and historical experience. The task of the party is not to ‘provoke’ or ‘support’ struggles, but to reintroduce into the spontaneous, partial, and immediate struggles the communist programme and organisation. After 40 years of revolution, following the falsification and desecration of communism at the hands of those who claimed to represent it, aided by those who claimed to ‘renew’ it, this is not a task that can be carried out in eight days. It is only by confronting communist positions with the harsh experience of their spontaneous struggles that the proletarians will free themselves from the opportunist leaden cloak, sweeping away at the same time all pseudo-revolutionary suggestions!