The Immediate Program of the Revolution
1:With the resurgence of the movement which occurred on a world scale after the First World War and which was expressed in Italy by the founding of the PCI, it became clear that the most pressing question was the seizure of political power, which the proletariat could not accomplish by legal means but through violence, that the best opportunity for reaching that end was the military defeat of one's own country, and that the political form after victory was to be the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in turn is the first precondition for the following task of socio-economic overthrow.
2: The “Communist Manifesto” clearly pointed out the different measures are to be grasped as gradually possible and” despotic”-because the road to complete communism is very long-in dependence upon the level of development of the productive forces in the country in which the proletariat first attains victory and in accordance with how quickly this victory spreads to other countries. It designates the measures which in 1848 were the order of the day for the advanced countries and it emphasizes that they are not to be treated as complete socialism but as steps which are to be identified as preliminary, immediate and essentially “contradictory”.
3: Later in some countries many of the measures at that
time considered to be those of the proletarian dictatorship were implemented by
the bourgeoisie itself: I.e free public education, a national bank etc.
This was one of the aspects which deceived those who did not follow a fixed
theory, but believed it required perpetual further development as a result of
historical change.
That the bourgeoisie itself took these specific measures does not mean that the
exact laws and predictions on the transition from the capitalist to the
socialist mode of production have to be changed in their entire economic,
political and social configuration; It only means that the first
post-revolutionary, the lower and final higher stages of socialism (or total
communism) are still antecedent periods, which is to say that the economics of
transition will be somewhat easier.
4: The distinguishing mark of classical opportunism was to make believe that the bourgeois democratic state could accomplish all these measures from first to last if only the proletariat brought enough pressure to bear, and that it was even possible to accomplish this in a legal manner. However these various “corrections”-insofar as they were compatible with the capitalist mode of production-were in that case in the interest of the survival of capitalism and their implementation served to postpone its collapse, while those which were not compatible were naturally not applied.
5: With its formula of an always more widely developed
popular democracy within the context of the parliamentary constitution
contemporary opportunism has taken up a different and more evil duty.
Not only does it make the proletariat think that a state standing over classes
and parties is capable of carrying out some of its own fundamental tasks (which
is to say it diffuses defeatism with regards to dictatorship-like social
democracy before it), it deploys the masses it organizes in struggles for
“democratic and progressive” social arrangements in diametrical opposition
to those which proletarian power has set as its goal since 1848 and the
“Manifesto”.
6: Nothing better illustrates the full magnitude of this retrogression then a listing of the measures to take after the seizure of power in a country of the capitalist West. After a century these “corrections” are different from those enumerated in the “Manifesto”, however their characteristics are the same.
7: A listing of these demands looks like this:
A:“De-investment of capital” means of production are assigned a smaller
proportion in relation to consumer goods.
B: “Increase of production costs” -so that as long as wages, money and the
market still exist-more remuneration is exchanged for less labor time.
C: “Drastic reduction of labor time”- by at least half as unemployment and
socially useless and damaging activities will shortly become things of the past.
D: A reduction in the mass of what is produced through an “under-production
plan” which is to say the concentration of production on what is necessary as
well as an “authoritarian regulation of consumption” by which the promotion
of useless, damaging and luxury consumption goods is combated and activities
which propagate a reactionary mentality are violently prohibited.
E: Rapid “dissolution of the boundaries of the enterprise” whereby decisions
on production are not assigned to the workforce, but the new consumption plan
determines what is to be produced.
F “Rapid abolition of social services” whereby the charity hand-outs
characteristic of commodity production are replaced by a social (initial
minimum) provision for those incapable of work.
G: “Construction freeze” on the rings of housing and workplaces around major
and small cities in order to spread the population more and more equally
throughout the land area of the country. With a ban on unnecessary
transportation, limitation of traffic and speed of transportation
H: “A decisive struggle against professional specialization” and the social
division of labor though the removal of any possibility of making a career or
obtaining a title.
I: Immediate politically determined measures to put the schools, the press, all
means of communication and information, as well as the entire spectrum of
culture and entertainment under the control of the communist state.
8: It is not surprising that the Stalinists and those akin
to them, together with their parties in the West today demand precisely the
reverse-not only in terms of the “institutional” and also political-legal
objectives, but even in terms of the “structural” which is to say
socio-economic objectives.
The cause of this is their coordination with the party which presides over the
Russian state and its fraternal countries, where the task of social
transformation remains that of transition from pre-capitalist forms to
capitalism: With all the corresponding ideological, political, social, and
economic demands and pretensions in their baggage aiming towards a bourgeois
zenith-they turn away with horror only from a medieval nadir.
Their Western cronies remain nauseating renegades insofar as the feudal danger
(which is still material and real in insurgent areas of Asia) is non-existent
and false with regards to the bloated super-capitalism across the Atlantic and
for the proletarians who stagnate under its civilized, liberal and nationalist
knout it is a lie.
Source | Sul filo del tempo, May 1953 | |
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Author | Amadeo Bordiga | |
n+1 Archives | Original | Ref. DB 00000 |
Level of Control | With original |