The following translations are of two articles from L’Ouvrier Communiste no. 12, the journal of the ‘Communist Workers’ groups. Led ideologically by Michelangelo Pappalardi, who resigned from the PCd’I in 1923 after discussing with the KAP of Germany. This current embodies the experience of a segment of the Italian Communist Left that splintered off from the “mother tendency” to adopt positions close to the German (KAPist) Left, and later a syncretism of German-Dutch Left ideas and anarchism.
When these articles were published, the group had become increasingly skeptical of organizations and categorized the Russian Revolution as having been a bourgeois revolution carried out by the proletariat. While we believe that, although the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a dictatorship of the party, there is a need for an international working class organization to intervene and participate in the life of the councils. Additionally, we consider the February and October Revolutions to have been part of the same proletarian (not bourgeois) process, which immediately started degenerating until a clear period of counterrevolution set in during the early 1920s.
League of Internationalist Communists
5 March 2024
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Permanent Revolution, and Revolutionary War
What will the proletariat have to do to break its chains, to definitively conquer its freedom, to transform capitalist society, founded on the profit of a minority, i.e. the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus, into a communist society, a society in which production will be able to develop freely to satisfy the needs of the entire working community? Certainly, it will have to destroy and sweep away, the parasitic state apparatus that represents an immense bureaucratic, police and military octopus, which holds society and all its activities tightly in its tentacles. This process is necessary because we know that today’s state is a formidable weapon in the hands of powerfully concentrated capitalism, a weapon of domination, corruption, repression and sometimes terror. Once the working class has destroyed this colossal apparatus, certainly after a fierce, violent struggle, problems of the utmost gravity will arise. How will the proletariat be able to carry on its struggle against bourgeois remnants, against the individualist infection that will remain alive for some time in certain petty-bourgeois social strata, whether in town or country? And finally, what will the working class be able to do if it finds itself isolated in a single country to lead the revolution? These problems are of tremendous importance, because unless they are resolved, it will be impossible for the proletariat to win the day once and for all, and they are therefore the subject of passionate polemics in the proletarian camp. Given the way in which the bourgeois state and its parasitic tendencies are developing today, the theory of universal democracy, which sees the state as an increasingly vast manifestation of collective consciousness, an increasingly authentic expression of the majority’s thinking, appears inconceivable. Universal suffrage, which represents in the hands of capitalist magnates a soft soil in which they can inscribe their will by means of moral and material corruption, the weapon of publicity that takes on the task of shaping public opinion, is certainly not such a brilliant demonstration of the correctness of this theory. The gradual transition from state to non-state, i.e., its gradual absorption into social organization, is resoundingly contradicted by reality. On the contrary, the opposite is true: the absorption of all economic and social activities by this apparatus, and the consequent crushing of all collective energies, of all new initiatives, by this enormous apparatus of parasites which, producing nothing, collaborate with capital in limiting productive development. All legal forms of association end up being absorbed by this apparatus: trade unions, cooperatives and the rest are annexed to the state as a result of the formation of a bureaucratic structure above them. Bureaucracy, then, is a typical feature of today’s bourgeois state; it is, we might say, its very essence. So, we can’t speak today of free associations in development, as Kropotkin spoke of them in his day; we can’t speak of communities that, on peaceful ground, develop their activities, gradually influencing the social context. Legal activity always ends up as activity in favor of the bourgeois state and capitalism. All theories of peaceful revolution fail, and fascism, the classic reaction of the contemporary era, clearly proves that, when the influence of the state weakens, when its foundations seem to be undermined, capitalism takes care, with extra-legal formations, to reinforce it and even increase its prerogatives. The gigantic development of the state is general, and there is no exception, not even in a single country. The traditional democracy of America and England, for which Marx seemed to have some sympathy, has been transformed, as Lenin’s analysis in The State and Revolution proves, into a bureaucratic state that has totally absorbed trade-unionism into its apparatus.
Classically, it has been proven that the state—the monarchical state, the republican state, the democratic state, the social-democratic state, the Bolshevik state—has an inexorable tendency to develop. An incursion into the terrain of history would demonstrate the truth of this assertion. Bakunin’s assertions in this regard are highly perceptive. It seems that, when he speaks of the replacement of the modern state by another state, a revolutionary state or a workers’ state, he is foreshadowing, with a profound and prophetic eye, the formation of a new state. On the other hand, it seems to us that a careful examination of Marxist theory should lead us to consider the proletarian dictatorship not as a state, but as a form of organization that is no longer the state. It’s true that this expression is still used by Marx himself, but it’s also true that he sees this state as the class, as the proletariat, in its unity. And of course, his concept no longer refers to the classical, bureaucratic state, etc., but to a special organization of the class that participates as a whole in social and economic activities. This Marxist formulation clearly exposes the lie of those scholastic theorists who, starting from the premise that the state is the product of class conflict, consequently speak of a bourgeois state and a proletarian state, bringing the two forms together in their interpretation, and regarding them as almost identical. Trotsky arrived at precisely this pedantic and erroneous interpretation of Marxism or, more accurately, of Marx’s method. Many anarchist workers dislike what they call the authoritarian side of Marxist doctrine precisely because social-democratic scholasticism has given it a pedantic and false interpretation. Lenin himself authentically embodies this scholasticism, since it leads him to see the proletarian dictatorship as a bureaucratic apparatus which, like the old bourgeois apparatus, will have repressive functions.
However, the social-democratic and Bolshevik scholastics fail to realize the substantial difference between the proletarian dictatorship and the state in general. The proletarian dictatorship is not an organization of repression, it is a form of liberation, it does not fight to repress the energies, the collective material and spiritual initiatives of the workers, it is, composed of workers, a means to develop these energies and to lead these initiatives to total emancipation from all individualistic prejudices. The class brings with it a precious element, namely the ethic of labor, a profound and qualitative change. The proletarian class as a unit, and not as an individual or a minority, has, as a matter of course, no interest in exploitation.
As a unit, as a majority in principle and as a totality later on, it works to transform the production process and consequently the social aggregate, creating a society of associated producers of social, material and intellectual wealth. This profound difference between the two classes implies an equally profound difference between the bourgeois state and the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin incompletely highlights a certain difference between these two forms, but only in theory, because in practice, his state apparatus is no different from the bourgeois state apparatus. In Bolshevik Russia, the declining state becomes the growing state. It’s true that, in the final analysis, the Russian Revolution can be defined as a bourgeois revolution carried out by the proletariat, and that, consequently, the form of the state in Russia could only take on a bourgeois character, but it’s also fair to state that the term “state”, which Marx still adopted, even if it was for the state reduced to its simplest expression, or for the organized class as a class, can no longer be accepted today after the tremendous development of the proletariat, after the experience of class struggle.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, or proletarian democracy, cannot and must not be a state. Indeed, it cannot have the bureaucratic, police or military character of the bourgeois state. The term dictatorship, which so frightens anarchist workers, acquires its meaning and value only insofar as it implies the use of violence against the parasitic layers, against attempts to return to capitalism, and terror also against bourgeois forces. It cannot take on a bureaucratic character insofar as it will be the councils and only the councils, which must not detach themselves from their living base: the factory, the workplace, which will have to exercise their function of directing production and society. The councils, which the workers must, and can, constantly control, whose members must be continually renewed, whose delegates to the superior levels of the councils must never be the same, so that they do not abandon their living base: the factory, and so that they do not detach themselves from their roots, i.e., from their source of strength and activity, cannot be bureaucratic forms. Any activity involving the crossing of these limits will have to be of a provisional nature, if necessary. The councils, and only the councils, together with the mass of workers, in permanent, living contact with this mass in the factories, will apply not orderly measures, but revolutionary measures against the class enemy and traitors. The police have nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat: the latter has no need of them, and will carry out its revolution, its permanent revolution, without the collaboration of this useless and dangerous organ. Indeed, this permanent revolution is precisely a continuous struggle against the bourgeoisie, which is still alive even after the first defeat, against the state, which is still alive after its crushing, as a tradition. The permanent revolution falsified by Trotsky is the continuous ascent of the proletariat to sublime heights, the continuous absorption of society into the ethic of labor. It is an ascent without real stages, a forward march in which the new society is created. Above all, it is a struggle, a violent struggle and a struggle of the mind: but then, will we need weapons, a standing army? Weapons, yes, and all weapons; but a standing army, no; weapons for all proletarians, everywhere in factories, or in nearby depots. It will be the proletariat in arms. Indeed, if the working class has made its revolution in Italy, it will not be able to limit this development within the borders of the bourgeois homeland. By the very fact that the revolution is present, the borders no longer exist, the homeland is dead, and since proletarians have no homeland, the proletarian revolution has no homeland. Not only is there no such thing as a proletarian homeland, but the current revolution is a permanent civil war at home and abroad, or, more accurately, a struggle against the international bourgeoisie.
For a genuine proletarian revolution, compromise is no way out. The capitalists of other bourgeois homelands, under whose heel our brothers everywhere will grow impatient, will want to crush us, not as Italy, of course, but as the revolutionary proletariat. As Thiers and Bismarck did with the Paris Commune of 1871. Will we compromise? We, the proletarians in arms, the army that includes all the workers, part of whom will create the means of struggle and part of whom will employ them, will we accept that the bourgeois return, in any form, to the ground we have wrested from them, will we renounce the freedom we have begun to create? No, a thousand times no! And before the capitalist enemy launches the offensive, we, calling on the proletarians of every country, without waiting for the adversary to regain his breath, will wage civil war on the international front, revolutionary war against the international bourgeoisie. In Italy in 1920, many people hesitated to start a revolution because they believed that upon it that they would not be able to defend themselves. It was from those who went on to form the Communist Party that an attempt was made, through the pen of Sanna, who today imposes a cautious and respectful silence for the regime, to prove, in the polemic with the followers of Serrati, the possibility of Italy’s defense in the event of revolution. But nobody considered that the proletarian revolution had to be offensive to defend itself; nobody considered that the revolution of the councils, by its very nature, is a permanent revolution, that it is a civil war against capitalism at home and abroad, that it is a revolutionary war. All were afraid of frightening the proletariat into making too many sacrifices, of confronting it with the irrevocable reality of struggle without quarter; struggle or death. This lack of confidence in the heroism of the proletarian class was characteristic of orthodox Marxists at the time of the struggle. The Milan Congress of September 1920 provided clear proof of this. And yet, Marxism, or rather Marx’s thinking, is clear-cut—Danton’s phrase is his watchword for revolutionary action: audacity, nothing but audacity. But orthodox Marxists have never truly believed in the possibility of a proletarian upsurge; they have always hoped, and still hope, in a social-democratic or Bolshevik way, to implement their policy of compromise by taking advantage of movements, revolutions, over which they always attempt to wrest control at the right moment.
We are not afraid, and will not be afraid, to speak this truth, and we also believe that the proletarian masses, in their struggle against the bourgeoisie and its allies, will consciously and heroically fulfill their historic mission.
And in the next revolution, they will not take the path of the “NEP”, but that of the revolutionary offensive, of civil war against the international bourgeoisie. And for the saboteurs of revolutionary action, for the allies of capital everywhere, the proletariat will reserve lead, just as it will do for the bourgeoisie itself.
L’Ouvrier Communiste N°12 – October 1930
Against All, For One Goal – The Dictatorship of the Councils
No country shows like Italy that the so-called objective factors – the severe economic crisis, the unprecedented fall in the standard of living of the working class, the political reaction – are not enough to mechanically trigger the insurrectionary storm. That these objective facts exist, that there is this crisis, no one denies. The Concentration [1], recognizing the seriousness of the crisis, attributes its cause to fascism (as does the deposed Bolshevik Cilla, who wrote a book entitled: Economic Effects of Fascism [2] while still a member of the Moscow coterie), but they recognize the crisis all the same. At the end of their analysis, however, they were all forced to admit that the crisis had its origins in the weakness of Italian capitalism on the international market. Moreover, this weakness is not new, and if it is worsening, it is due to the fact that the struggle for commercial outlets is becoming increasingly fierce. In order to stay in the race, Italian capitalism, faced with the aggressiveness of the working class, has switched from the democratic method, the dictatorship of corruption, to the dictatorship of terror. Wages are kept very low, and there is a tendency to lower them even further. As we can see, if there is a permanent crisis in Italy, if it is taking on a particular aspect, it is due to the increasingly bitter struggle between the imperialist brigands for international markets, which on the other hand are shrinking more and more. This merciless struggle is not only provoking this maturation of objective factors in Italy, but elsewhere too. The chronic crisis of capitalism is worsening and spreading: there is no way out for capitalism in general to benefit from a new phase of development, and no way out for Italian capitalism. It’s as clear as daylight that the Anti-Fascist Concentration is lying when it dangles a program for a Republican Constituent Assembly, which would return to democratic forms, to the dictatorship of corruption. It goes without saying that the proletariat would have no interest in returning to the democracy promised by the members of the Concentration. In this respect, we believe that the only difference between the dictatorship of corruption and the dictatorship of terror, between bourgeois democracy and fascism, is that the dictatorship of terror has one less weapon, that of the economic and moral bribery of certain layers of the working class. The workers have no interest in returning to this corrupt democracy, since the interests of the proletariat are not only those of the stomach, but also those of the brain, such that the proletarian revolution in Western Europe is not simply a revolt of the hungry, but the turning point leading to the development of a great collective consciousness of the working class. But if the true interests of the revolution also require the working class to revolt against the corrupting prejudice of bourgeois democracy, there is still one real fact, namely that the objective facts deny, and exclude, the possibility of a democratic return, or of a perfecting of the bourgeois revolution in Italy. It is thus demonstrated that the members of the Concentration are lying; that even if the Concentration, by means of a bourgeois maneuver, came to power, it could only adopt the same methods as fascism against the working class. Low wages and machine-gun fire.
Obstacles to the development of revolutionary struggle
The objective factors are thus ripe, and the outlook is therefore clear: the bourgeoisie will not emerge from the crisis, in Italy and elsewhere, and is therefore destined to die. Since economic forces are driving the working class to revolt and revolution, the death of capitalism is inevitable. Concentration can frighten no one, and the land will very quickly be rid of this coterie of ousted tyrants. The Bolsheviks will take power and lead the proletariat to liberation. For this, a great party is needed, cry the Bolsheviks, and with them the people of ‘Prometeo’ (provided, of course, that they are at its head). Naturally, say these politicians, “if it weren’t for us, if we didn’t lead, if we didn’t form the new proletarian state, the workers would be the victims of Concentration. If we are present, everything will be safe: revolution, communism and everything else. If we are absent, it will be a disaster.” A party, of course, as we understand it, is indispensable, because it and it alone represents the objective facts, i.e., the cerebral factors, the thought of the revolution. What Lenin said, Bordiga also says: the class, its unity, are concepts that reality, and historical development, render relative; what is absolute, what expresses the unity of the class, is the party, our party. The party, this mystical essence, this concentrate extracted (we don’t know by what miracle) from the fluid reality of the class, escapes the laws of evolution, the laws of dialectics; it transcends reality, it is a super-reality. The great party of iron discipline, the party of ideology, which introduces this ideology from outside into the proletarian camp, will make the revolution possible, and the crushing of fascism and Concentration.
But this way of reasoning, which entrusts the monopoly of proletarian consciousness to a group of individuals, and presents us with a model of proletarian consciousness that is already ready-made, explains nothing. There were parties of this type in Germany and Italy in 1923 and 1924, but there was no revolution. The objective and subjective elements, as presented by the Bolsheviks, were there, and yet there was no revolution. Consequently, the Bolsheviks’ theory is not only insufficient, it’s wrong. Their ideology, which saturates the working class from the outside, their strategy and tactics are useless. What, then, is this element that prevents the revolution from getting under way, and which presents itself as a grave danger even when insurrection is a fact of life?
The origins of obstacles
Half a century of tradition weighs on the Italian proletariat, a tradition of economic struggle, of the simple struggle for bread. The illusion of democracy is still a grave danger. Bourgeois democracy, with its formidable bureaucratic development, with the absorption of trade union forms of struggle into its legal apparatus, still represents for the proletariat of the major capitalist countries an illusion that acquires in its consciousness the value of a concrete reality. Yet democracy in no way represents a real advantage for the working class. The reformists have never ceased to praise this form of state, which tends to merge with society, this state which represents a form of compromise useful to all classes, and the Bolsheviks, depending on the period, of course, support the advantages of democracy for the development of their propaganda. But this much-vaunted democracy, this form that some say must be clearly distinguished from fascism, represents precisely the swamp in which the developing spirit of the working class is drowning. The labor aristocracies are drowning in this swamp, and the workers of the metropolises are watching them drown, painfully, with envy. Rationalization, or to be more precise, the new method of exploiting labor power, did the rest. Workers don’t consider upon, workers don’t read revolutionary literature, their brains fall prey to the terrible corruption of democracy.
We experienced this period of democracy in a particular way in Italy. Bourgeois democracy has not been able to extend its tentacles to large sections of the working class, because the economic power of Italian capitalism has always been limited on the terrain of international competition, because it has been impossible to create a very large workers’ aristocracy, and also because Crispi’s dreams of a great colonial empire were shipwrecked at Abba-Garina. Nevertheless, reformism developed quite strongly in Milan especially, where the skilled worker acquired a relatively privileged position, and it emerged in demagogic form at the head of the economic movement. In this way, bureaucratic corruption also invaded the consciousness of the avant-garde workers. The compromise mentality has also developed within the Italian working class. In this country, it is clear that, while the economic movement represents a revolutionary element in its phase of struggle; in its phase of compromise, of negotiation with the bosses, it represents a counter-revolutionary element. This compromise, which in the union form of organization takes on a permanent character, sows in the working classes the illusion of a continuous improvement of their lot within capitalist society. This particular psychological fixation of reformist prejudice acquired a value of resistance, of preservation, in the face of the unbridled impulses of the economic factors that led the proletariat to the struggles of 1919 and the following years; and it was this that enabled the temporary abandonment of expropriated factories, and, in the following two years of civil war, the victory of fascism, i.e., of bourgeois reaction. Painful experiences therefore accumulated in the minds of Italian workers. Certainly, in the intimate psychology of the proletariat, the weight of the democratic tradition has been severely shaken. But we mustn’t be over-optimistic either. The reformist mentality of the majority of Italian workers is perhaps reproduced in the guise of nostalgia for the 1919 and pre-war periods, which, though bad, still present themselves in their minds as something better than the present period. The Concentration’s strength lies precisely in this traditional element, in this psychological fixation with reformism, which prevents or retards the development of workers’ consciousness. The fight against the anti-fascist Concentration, which represents a danger that, as we can see, is very serious, is necessary. But for this to happen, verbal polemics are not enough. The preparation and implementation of polemics of the facts is also necessary.
The Bolshevik danger
What are the Bolsheviks and their Prometeo competitors up to? They polemicize against Concentration, but in what sense? In the sense of destroying, of collaborating in the destruction of the residues of the reformist mentality of the working class in Italy? Not at all: all of them, including the new Trotskyist opposition, are considering upon the revival of long-outdated forms of trade union organization and economic struggle. And they’re constantly harping on the fate of the now-defunct General Confederation of Labor, which they’d like to revive, and expertly waving around a minimum program calling for higher wages and freedom of organization. So what are all these bureaucrats actually doing in the course of their duties, or indeed outside of them? With their slogans, they naturally play into the hands of the Concentration. Indeed, Concentration members take the opportunity to say to the workers: “What do we want? Freedom of organization, higher wages. So why do the Bolsheviks insult us if their program is the same as ours? If we’re traitors, so are they.” And they too, the Bolsheviks, are traitors to the working class. Both are equal. Both lie to the working class. The Bolsheviks say: “We can’t always tell the working class the whole truth, which is why we need a minimum program, because the proletarians can’t always understand our maximum program.” Of course, this is just a pretext, as this so-called strategy is useless insofar as the situation is such that, at this historic moment, it is more necessary than ever to tell the workers the whole truth. If they want to free themselves from bourgeois oppression, if they want to win the struggle against a battle-hardened capitalism, they need a spirit of fighting, of heroism, which surpasses the traditional reform mentality. But in this case, Bolsheviks of all stripes are not only playing into Concentration’s hands, they’re at it themselves. If the working mass finally wakes up to make its own revolution as a class, if it understands that it must take the management of production and the running of society into its own hands, there will be no room for a Bolshevik dictatorship, for the dictatorship of a party. But if Bolsheviks of all stripes aspire to this political supremacy, this caste dictatorship, how can they collaborate in the formation of proletarian consciousness? They have always regarded, and still regard, the working class as a mass of maneuvering power which, if properly wielded, should lead them to power. And so, when they raise the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they are still lying. They declare, as Lenin did, that the bourgeois state must be brought down, that it must be completely destroyed, but, as Lenin himself did, they are prepared to set up, in place of the destroyed state, another state which, although it takes the name of proletarian state, is by no means a dying state, is by no means a class dictatorship acting against the bourgeois elements, against the capitalist residues of society. Russia is a living example of this assertion on our part. There, under the mask of a so-called proletarian dictatorship, a state of bourgeois nature is consolidating itself by imposing a completely capitalist discipline and working methods on the working class, and by preventing this class from having a spontaneous, autonomous ideological development. The Bolsheviks have no interest in abolishing compulsory forms of association, in destroying the trade unions: in fact, in the programs of the Communist International, they have also called for their conquest. But even if they were forced to liquidate the unions, their General Confederations of Labor would have no different function from the latter. Compulsory association, the integration of unions into the state apparatus, would be a fact of life under the Bolshevik regime. As in Russia, of course.
And so, alongside the danger from Concentration, there is a Bolshevik danger, against which we must fight relentlessly. This danger is all the more important because the tradition of the Russian Revolution, of the Russian proletarian state, has a great influence on the minds of Italian workers. Ignorant of Russian reality, many of them confuse this reality with their revolutionary aspirations, with their idea of a workers’ dictatorship. They believe that the Bolsheviks will be able to lead them to power: we must bear in mind that these same workers also obey the habit they have acquired in parliamentary and trade-union politics of entrusting their affairs to privileged men, officials and chiefs. This habit, which has prevented the autonomous development of class energies, is a great help to the Bolsheviks in their maneuvering. And the suggestion still lingers in the minds of the working masses: “you need a leader to bring down fascism!”
This is how these so-called communists, some exaggerating the myth of Lenin, others the myth of Trotsky or Bordiga, manage to keep the working masses waiting for the Messiah who, incidentally, doesn’t seem to want to appear. This myth of the leader is widespread in radical working-class circles. Simple militants, and even theoreticians, wish for his arrival. And so, in reality, the workers’ minds fall asleep, lulled into the dream that someone will act: and when, in the moment of despair, violent action becomes a necessity, a collective means, when the masses have shaken off the yoke, the leader will leap onto the scene with his troupe of disciples to say: “Here I am, at your disposal, and ready to guide you!” And in that case, there’s a danger that the proletariat will still allow itself to be convinced, even for a transitory experiment, by the residues of prejudice still haunting its mind. This is why Bolshevism is also a danger. But it has to be said at this point that this Bolshevik danger cannot simply take on official or semi-official Muscovite forms; it can also have a different aspect, it can also be anarchist; it can find its concrete manifestation in any political group. And this is why the proletarian revolution in Italy, as in other countries, can only be a permanent revolution, it can only be a continuous crescendo of proletarian heroism and consciousness, and not simply a movement that concludes with the advent of a party, but a more complex movement in which the intellectual forces of the working class blossom, developing in the direction of mighty endeavours. If we make a simple historical comparison, we’ll see that the idea we have of the proletarian revolution, of this immense river of energies which, growing vividly and cleanly, will widen more and more, is not inflated, nor is it at all romantic. If we look back a little, we’ll see what bourgeois revolutions have been capable of: for example, the great revolution of ’89. There, small minorities asserted their dominance in the arena of history. And yet the masses were capable of unheard-of heroism for an ideal that was not their own, but which they believed to be theirs. If we look at the Paris Commune, we’ll see that, in the dawn of the proletarian revolution, the masses stirred into incredible heroism. If we consider now the entry into this arena of history of the immense industrial masses, if we reflect upon how the brains of millions and millions of proletarians upset the play of age-old prejudices, of new and old prejudices, we will realize how this great revolution is possible, how its prospects are hardly overstated.
And the jabs of proletarian violence will not be misdirected if they are aimed at those who would stop the tumultuous course of this sublime crescendo of life and revolt.
Conclusion
But what are you radical communists going to do? Won’t you do as the others have done? What do we know about tomorrow? What we do know is that tomorrow is revolution. What’s more, we’re not asking the working class for anything: seats in parliament or union posts. We say to the proletariat: make your dictatorship your own, you alone will form your councils, protect yourself from all partisan hegemony in your councils, the ones you formed in 1919 and 1920 all over the place, in the workplace; seek and find the strength to break bourgeois domination within your councils; find and seek the solution to transform commodity production into production for need, capitalist production into communist production. With the strength of your arms and your brains, you will destroy the bourgeois organization of production and society, and create the new organization, the new economic and social forms, the new ideological forces. With the strength of your arms and the development of your intellectual powers, you will leap from the world of slavery into that of freedom.
But what about us? All we want is to struggle and win with you.
For factory councils! For proletarian revolution!
L’Ouvrier Communiste N°12 – October 1930
Notes
[1] This refers to the Concentration d’Action antifasciste, an organization which, since its founding congress in Nérac in April 1927, has brought together the PSIL, the PSI, the Republican Party, the CGL and the Italian League for Human Rights.
[2] NdE: N. Cilla, “Effetti economici del fascismo”, Biblioteca del Comitato sindacale del P.C.d’I., Milano, 1925.
League of Internationalist Communists 