From the Central Committee of the (new) Italian Communist Party,
The interview
Sixth anniversary of the foundation of the (new)Italian Communist Party
Establishing socialism is the only way out from the ongoing crisis.
Communists can complete the work interrupted in the last century
On 3rd October 2010 six years are passed since the (new) Italian Communist Party was founded. We take the opportunity of the anniversary for asking comrade Ulisse, General Secretary of the (n)PCI, some questions about the course humanity will follow in next years.
Q. In order to end the ongoing crisis we need to establish socialism. Anyway, during the first wave of proletarian revolution, in the first half of the past century, Communists did not establish socialism in any imperialist country. Why do you think you will succeed in doing it today?
A. – The Communists, our predecessors, were not able to establish socialism in any imperialist country, nor in USA , nor in Germany , nor in Italy nor in any other country of Western Europe , fundamentally because of three connected and converging reasons. They were shortcomings in understanding conditions, forms and results of the class struggle that prevented Communists from leading class struggle to victory. We identified them and deduced the consequences of them: we elaborated a more advanced conception of the world: Marxism – Leninism – Maoism. That is why we shall be able to advance till victory.
Which are the three reasons and which lessons we drew from them?
1. In every imperialist country, thanks to the drive of October Revolution, (1917) and of the Communist International (founded in 1919), there were created communist parties founded upon Marxism – Leninism. They led the struggle against the bourgeoisie at a higher level than that reached by the parties of the Second International (1889-1914). But they laid anchored to a wrong conception of the world about how socialist revolution would take place. They had a wrong strategy. They thought that bourgeois society sooner or later would explode. Communist parties were getting ready for establishing socialism. So socialist revolution would have taken place. Waiting for the event, the communist parties denounced on a wide scale the misdeeds of capitalism and propagandized communism and socialism as first phase of communism; they promoted claiming struggles (trade unionist or some other kind of struggles) of the popular masses and particularly of workers against masters and their authorities; they created mass organizations concerning claim and culture, gathered around the communist party who was their Staff; where the regime allowed to do it, where there were not fascist regimes, they participated in the political struggle that the bourgeois parties were leading one against the other. They thought that sooner or later, due to the events and the situations determined by the ruling class itself and the preparatory action of the Communists, some people’s rebellion would break out on a wide scale, and during it the communist party would be able to size the power thanks to the work it carried out, establishing socialism and so starting the transition from capitalism to communism.
It was about the strategy prevailing already in the Second International. In vain Engels in 1895 gave the alarm and showed that, differently than what happened for the bourgeois revolutions against the absolute monarchies and the feudal systems, by its nature socialist revolution had to be built by the communist movement already within the bourgeois society. The establishment of socialism could take place only as a result of a new kind of war that the working class and the rest of the popular masses had to wage already within the bourgeois society. Communists had to mobilize and organize the popular masses to carry out this war until the creation of a relation of strength able to eliminate completely bourgeoisie’s power and to establish working class’ power, base and beginning of socialism.
The experience of the first wave of socialist revolution, the successes of the communist movement but even more clearly the defeats suffered by the communist movement despite the heroic struggles carried out (let’s only think to Spanish War (1936-1939) and to the Resistance in Italy and France in the Forties), completely confirmed Engels’ conception. Maoism elaborated Engels’ thesis in a completed way and called this new kind of war protracted revolutionary people’s war. This is the strategy of the socialist revolution, effective for every country, the universal strategy the Communists have to develop in every country, particularly on the base of its own particular conditions.
The (n)PCI follows this strategy, and is making the socialist revolution in Italy
The wrong conception of the form of socialist revolution is therefore the first of the three reasons. The lack of a right strategy was worsened by the other reasons.
2. The second reason was the wrong conception the communist parties had of the crisis in the imperialist era of capitalism. At the beginning of 20th century Lenin explained the nature of imperialist era and the new features the capitalist system had taken. Anyway, no communist party of the imperialist countries deduced the consequences as regards the nature of the general crisis of capitalism. They laid anchored to the illustration and explanation Marx gave of the decennial cyclical crises the capitalist system went through in the first part of the 19th century, they kept on using Marx’s teaching in a dogmatic way. Still today, in the storm of the second general crisis of capitalism, many communist parties and groups, even groups calling themselves Maoist, facing the ongoing crisis are repeating what Marx told about the cyclical crises of the 19th century: they keep on repeating we are going through a cyclical crisis like those. So they say, even if Engels already in 1886 clearly indicated that the latest of those crises broke out in 1867.
In the imperialist era the cyclical oscillations in economic affairs are become more frequent, but they are in different phases in some countries and some others and are mitigated: somehow are compensated by a country to another and State intervention in economy creates many antidotes to the ups and downs (social security cushions, public expenditure, etc.). Economy always goes on by ups and downs less accentuated, but there are come in the field general crises for absolute overproduction of capital.
These crises are due to the fact that capitalists do not use the entire capital they are accumulating in the production of goods, because doing so they would extort from workers a mass of surplus value lower than that they could extort using only a part of it. In the cyclical crises the fall of the affairs creates by itself the condition for a recovery of the affairs: so the ruling class of every country needs only to face, by security social cushions and by other public interventions, the most negative and serious effects of the crisis on the popular masses and on the public order. On the contrary, the general crises can only be solved on the political plan, upsetting the orders of single countries and on the international level, establishing new political systems: so or revolutions or wars or a combination of the two. That is why all the measures and plans to remedy to these crises remaining on the economical plan are bound to fail. They are only patches for taking a little long time, while illness is worsening.
By their nature the general crises are protracted and the protracted people’s war is the strategy apt to these crises. The communist parties of the imperialist countries were not aware of the nature of this kind of crisis, typical of the imperialist era. This took them to inadequate political lines. We are well aware of the ongoing general crisis. We deduced and are deducing of it the political consequence, in our line of political struggle.
This was the second of the three reasons, which made even more difficult the success of the communist parties.
3. The third reason was the wrong and backward conception of the political regimes the most advanced imperialist countries established and that the bourgeoisie extended to all the imperialist countries in the period after the Second World War. Facing the menace of the communist movement, starting from USA in the beginning of the 20th century the bourgeoisie gradually put into action a system of economical, political, cultural and military measures to prevent the development of the communist movement, to prevent it from developing beyond an elementary level: we Communists call them regimes of counter preventive revolution (they are described in our Manifesto Program (Chapter 1.3.3.). It is not possible to build the socialist revolution without taking into account these regimes. Not understanding the nature of the new regimes worsened the effects of the two reasons above indicated.
We drew lessons from the failures of the first wave and so we advance towards victory with trust. The renaissance of the communist movement is going on all over the world, not only in our country. It takes place on the basis of getting aware of the reasons of the failures and of the elaboration of the necessary conception of the world and of the line that follow from it, overcoming the dogmatism that kept the communist parties anchored to conceptions and lines not adequate to the conditions, forms and results of class struggle.
This conception allowed us to lay down, facing the precipitation of the general crisis, facing its terminal phase begun in 2007, the line of the constitution of the People’s Bloc Government: taking in account the level of the renaissance of the communist movement in our country, it is a realistic instrument to confront the most serious effects of the crisis and to strengthen the renaissance of the communist movement in order to arrive at the establishment of socialism, the only final solution to the ongoing crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment