WHAT IS THE '"POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION" OF COMRADE
TOGLIATTI'S "THEORY OF STRUCTURAL REFORM"?
Togliatti and some other comrades describe their "fundamental line" of "structural reform" as "common to the whole international communist movement";[2] they describe their thesis of structural reform as "a principle of the world strategy of the working class and communist movement in the present situation".[3]
It seems that Togliatti and other comrades not only want to thrust the "Italian
road" on the working class and working people of Italy but to impose it on
the people of the whole capitalist world. For they consider their proposed
Italian road to be "the road of advance to socialism" for the whole capitalist
world today, and apparently the one and only such road. Comrade Togliatti
and certain other Italian comrades have an extraordinarily high opinion of
themselves.
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In order to make the issue clear, it may be useful first to introduce the reader to the main contents of their proposed Italian road and structural reform.
1. Is the most fundamental thesis of Marxism-Leninism that the state apparatus of bourgeois dictatorship has to be smashed and a state apparatus of proletarian dictatorship established, still wholly valid? In their opinion, this is "a subject for discussion".[1] They say that "it is evident that we correct something of this position, taking into account the changes which have taken place and which are still in the process of being realized in the world".[1]
2. "Today, the question of doing what was done in Russia is not posed to the Italian workers."[2] Comrade Togliatti expressed this view in April 1944 and reaffirmed it as being "programmatic" in his report to the Tenth Congress of the C.P.I.
3. The Italian working class can "organize itself into the ruling class within the limits of the constitutional system".[3]
4. The Italian Constitution "assigns to the forces of labour a new and
pre-eminent position" and "permits and envisages structural modifications".[4]
"The struggle to give a new socialist content to Italian democracy has ample
room for development within our Constitution."[4]
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5. ". . . We can talk of the possibility of the thorough utilization of legal means and also of Parliament to carry out serious social transformations...."[1] "Full power should be given to Parliament, allowing it to carry out not only legislative tasks, but also the functions of direction of and control over the activities of the Executive...."[2] And they talk of the demand for "the effective extension of the powers of Parliament to the economic field".[3]
6. ". . . The building of a new democratic regime advancing towards socialism is closely connected with the formation of a new historical grouping, which, under the leadership of the working class, would fight to change the structure of society and which would be the bearer of an intellectual and moral as well as a political revolution."[2]
7. ". . . The destruction of the most backward and burdensome structures in Italian society and the beginning of their transformation in a democratic and socialist sense cannot and should not be postponed till the day when the working class and its allies win power...."[4]
8. The nationalized economy, i.e., state-monopoly capital, in Italy can stand
"in opposition to the monopolies",[5] can be "the expression of the popular
masses"'[5] and can become "a more effective instrument for
opposing
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monopolistic development".[1] It is possible "to break up and abolish the monopoly ownership of the major productive forces and transform it into collective ownership . . . through nationalization".[2]
9. State intervention in economic life can "fulfil the needs for a democratic development of the economy"[3] and can be turned into an "instrument of struggle against the power of big capital in order to hit, restrict and break up the rule of the big monopoly groups".[4]
10. Under capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship, "the concepts of planning and programming the economy, considered at one time a socialist prerogative",[4] can be accepted. The working class, by "taking part in formulating and executing the planning policy in full realization of its own ideals and autonomy, with the strength of its own unity",[5] can turn planning policy into "a means of satisfying the needs of men and of the national collective".[6]
In short, the Italian road and the structural reform of Togliatti and other
comrades amount to this--politically, while preserving the bourgeois
dictatorship, "progressively to change the internal balance and structure
of the state" and thus "impose the rise of new classes to its leadership"[5]
through the "legal" means of bourgeois democracy, constitution and parliament
(as to what is meant by "new classes", their exposition has always been
ambiguous); and economically, while
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preserving the capitalist system, gradually to "restrict" and "break up" monopoly capital through "nationalization", "programming" and "state intervention". In other words, it is possible to attain socialism in Italy through bourgeois dictatorship, without going through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Togliatti and other comrades consider their ideas to be "a positive contribution to the deepening and development of Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary doctrine of the working class".[1] Unfortunately there is nothing new in their ideas; they are very old and very stale; they are the bourgeois socialism which Marx and Engels so relentlessly refuted long ago.
The bourgeois socialism Marx and Engels criticized belonged to a period before
monopoly capitalism had emerged. If Togliatti and the other comrades have
made any "positive contribution", it is to the development, not of Marxism,
but of bourgeois socialism. They have developed pre-monopoly bourgeois socialism
into monopoly bourgeois socialism. But this is the very development which
the Tito clique proposed long ago, and Togliatti and the other comrades have
taken it over after their "study and profound understanding" of what the
Tito clique has done and is doing.
COMPARE THIS WITH LENINISM
Whether it is possible to pass over to and realize socialism before overthrowing
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of
the proletariat has always been the most fundamental question at issue between
Marxist-Leninists and every kind of opportunist and revisionist. In The
State and Revolution and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
Kautsky, two great works familiar to all Marxist-Leninists, Lenin
comprehensively and penetratingly elucidated this fundamental question, defended
and developed revolutionary Marxism and thoroughly exposed and repudiated
the distortions of Marxism by the opportunists and revisionists.
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As a matter of fact, "structural reform", the "change in the internal balance of the state" and other ideas held by Togliatti and the other comrades are all ideas of Kautsky's which Lenin criticized in The State and Revolution. Comrade Togliatti says, "The Chinese comrades want to scare us by reminding us of Kautsky, with whose views our policy has nothing in common."[1] Are we trying to scare Comrade Togliatti and the others? Has their policy nothing in common with Kautsky's views? As they did, we ask whether they will "permit us to remind them" to re-read carefully The State and Revolution and Lenin's other works.
Togliatti and the other comrades refuse to pay attention to the fundamental difference between proletarian socialist revolution and bourgeois revolution.
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Lenin said:
The difference between socialist revolution and bourgeois revolution lies precisely in the fact that the latter finds ready forms of capitalist relationships; while the Soviet power--the proletarian power--does not inherit such ready-made relationships. . . .[1]
All state power in class society is designed to safeguard a particular social and economic system, that is, particular relations of production. As Lenin put it, "Politics are the concentrated expression of economics."[2] Every social and economic system invariably has a corresponding political system which serves it and clears away the obstacles to its development.
Historically speaking, the slave-owners, the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie all had to establish themselves politically as the ruling class and take state power into their own hands in order to make their relations of production prevail over all others and to consolidate and develop these relations of production.
A fundamental point differentiating revolutions of exploiting classes from
proletarian revolution is that, before the seizure of state power by any
of the three great exploiting classes--the slave-owners, the landlords or
the bourgeoisie--the relations of production of slavery, feudalism or capitalism
already existed in society, and in certain cases had become fairly mature.
But before the proletariat seizes power, socialist relations of production
do not exist in society. The reason is obvious. A new form of private ownership
can come into being spontaneously on the basis of an old one, whereas socialist
public ownership of the means of production can
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never come into being spontaneously on the basis of capitalist private ownership.
Let us compare the ideas and programme of Togliatti and the other comrades with Leninism.
Contrary to Leninism, Togliatti and the other comrades maintain that socialist relations of production can gradually come into being without a socialist revolution and proletarian state power, and that the basic economic interests of the proletariat can be satisfied without a political revolution which replaces the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the starting-point of the "Italian road" and the "theory of structural reform" of Comrade Togliatti and the others.
Who are right? Marx, Engels and Lenin, or Togliatti and the other comrades? Which ones "lack a sense of reality"? The Marxist-Leninists, or Togliatti and the other comrades with their ideas and programme?
Let us look at the reality in Italy.
Italy is a country with a population of fifty million. According to available statistics, Italy now has, in a period of peace, several hundred thousand government officials, over four hundred thousand troops in the standing army, nearly eighty thousand gendarmes, about one hundred thousand policemen, over one thousand two hundred law courts of all levels, and nearly one thousand prisons; this does not include the secret machinery of suppression with its armed personnel. In addition, there are U.S. military bases and U.S. armed forces stationed in Italy.
In their Theses, Togliatti and the other comrades delight in talking about Italy's democracy, constitution, parliament and so forth, but they do not use the class point of view to analyse the army, the gendarmes, the police, the law courts, the prisons and the other instruments of violence in present-day Italy. Whom do these instruments of violence protect and whom do they suppress? Do they protect the proletariat and the other working people and suppress the monopoly capitalists, or vice versa? When talking about the state system, a Marxist-Leninist must answer this question and not evade it.
Let us see what these instruments of violence are used for in Italy. Here are a few illustrations.
In the three years from 1948 to 1950, the Italian government killed or injured more than three thousand people and arrested more than ninety thousand, in the course of suppressing the mass opposition of the people.
In July 1960, the Tambroni government killed eleven people, injured one thousand and arrested another thousand, while suppressing the anti-fascist movement of the Italian working people.
In 1962 after the so-called centre-left government of Fanfani was formed, there were a succession of incidents as the government suppressed strikes or mass demonstrations--in Ceccano in May, in Turin in July, in Bari in August, in Milan in October and in Rome in November. In the Rome incident alone, dozens of people were injured, and six hundred arrested.
These are just a few instances, but do they not suffice to expose Italian democracy for what it really is? In an Italy with a powerful state machine, both open and secret, for suppressing the people, is it possible not to describe Italian democracy as the democracy, i.e., the dictatorship, of the Italian monopoly capitalist class?
Is it possible for the working class and all the working people of Italy to participate in the formulation of the Italian government's domestic and foreign policy under the Italian democracy of which Togliatti and the other comrades boast? If you, Togliatti and the other comrades, think it possible, will you take responsibility for the numerous crimes of suppression of the people committed by the Italian government, for that government's agreement to let the United States build military bases in Italy, for its participation in NATO, etc.? Naturally, you will say that you cannot be held responsibIe for these reactionary domestic and foreign policies of the Italian government. But since you claim a share in policy-making, why are you unable to achieve the slightest change in these most fundamental policies of the Italian government?
To laud "democracy" in general terms, without making any distinction concerning the class character of democracy, is to sing the tune which the heroes of the Second International and the Right-wing social democratic leaders played to death. Is it not strange for the self-styled Marxist-Leninists of today to claim these worn-out tunes as their own new creations?
Perhaps Comrade Togliatti does want to differentiate himself a little from the social-democrats. He maintains that as far as "abstract argument" is concerned, one may acknowledge the class character of the state and the bourgeois character of the present Italian state, but that "putting it in concrete terms" is another matter. In terms of "concrete argument", he maintains that "starting from the present state structure . . . by realizing the profound reforms envisaged by the Constitution, it would be possible . . . to obtain such results as would change the present power grouping and create the conditions for another grouping, of which the labouring classes constitute a part and in which they would assume the function which is their due . . ." and thus to make Italy "advance towards socialism in democracy and peace".[1] When translated into language intelligible to ordinary people, these vague phrases of Comrade Togliatti's mean that the nature of the state machine of the Italian monopoly capitalists can be gradually changed without a people's revolution in Italy.
Comrade Togliatti's "concrete argument" is at loggerheads with his "abstract argument". In his "abstract argument" he comes a little closer to Marxism-Leninism, but when he gives the "concrete argument" he is far removed from Marxism-Leninism. Perhaps he thinks this is the only way to avoid being "dogmatic"!
When Togliatti and the other comrades are assessed in the light of their "concrete argument", the hairline between them and the social-democrats vanishes.
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Today, when certain people are doing their utmost to adulterate the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and revolution, and when the modern revisionists are usurping the name of Lenin in their frenzied attacks on Leninism, we would like to draw attention to the following two paragraphs from Lenin's speech at the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919:
The main thing that socialists fail to understand and that constitutes their short-sightedness in matters of theory, their subservience to bourgeois prejudices and their political betrayal of the proletariat is that in capitalist society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dreams of some third way are reactionary petty-bourgeois lamentations. That is borne out by more than a century of development of bourgeois democracy and the labour movement in all the advanced countries, and notably by the experience of the past five years. This is also borne out by the science of political economy, by the entire content of Marxism, which reveals the economic inevitability, wherever commodity economy prevails, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that can only be replaced by the class which the growth of capitalism develops, multiplies, welds together and strengthens, that is, the proletarian class.
Another theoretical and political error of the socialists is their failure to understand that ever since the rudiments of democracy first appeared in antiquity, its forms inevitably changed over the centuries as one ruling class replaced another. Democracy assumed different forms and was applied in different degrees in the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think that the most profound revolution in human history the first case in the world of power being transferred from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions that embody the new conditions for applying democracy, etc.[1]
Here we see that Lenin drew these clear-cut and definite conclusions on the basis of the whole of Marxist teaching, the whole experience of class struggle in capitalist society and the whole experience of the October Revolution. He held that within the old framework of bourgeois parliamentary democracy it was impossible for state power to be transferred from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, impossible to realize the most profound revolution in human history, the socialist revolution. Have not these specific truths which Lenin expounded in 1919 been repeatedly confirmed since by the experience of every country where the socialist revolution has taken place? Has not this experience confirmed again and again that the road of the October Revolution, which Lenin led, is the common road for the emancipation of mankind?
Have not the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and the Moscow Statement of 1960
reiterated that this is the common road to socialism for the working class
in all countries? Whether the working class uses peaceful or non-peaceful
means depends, of course, "on the resistance put up by the reactionary circles
to the will of the overwhelming majority of the people, on these circles
using force at one or another stage of the struggle for socialism".[2] But,
one way or the other, it is necessary to smash the old bourgeois state machine
and to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
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Instead of taking the experience of the revolutionary struggles of the
proletariat or the living reality of Italian society as their starting-point,
Togliatti and other comrades start from the present Italian Constitution
and maintain that Italy can achieve socialism within the framework of bourgeois
parliamentary democracy with-out smashing the old state machine. What they
call the "new democratic regime" is nothing but an "extension" of bourgeois
democracy. Small wonder that their "concrete argument" diverges so widely
from the specific truths of Marxism-Leninism.
A MOST MARVELLOUS CONSTITUTION
The Theses for the Tenth Congress of the C.P.I. declare that "the Italian road to socialism passes through the building of the new state as described in the Constitution (a state which is profoundly different from the present regime) and the accession of the new ruling classes to its leadership".
According to Togliatti and the other comrades, the Constitution of Italy is indeed a most marvellous one.
1. The Constitution of the Republic is "a unitary compact voluntarily binding on the great majority of the Italian people...."[1]
2. The Constitution of the Republic "envisages some fundamental reforms which . . . carry the marks of socialism".[2]
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3. The Constitution of the Republic "affirms the principle of the sovereignty of the people".[1]
4. The Constitution of the Republic "proclaims it [the state] to be 'founded on labour'",[2] and "assigns to the forces of labour a new and pre-eminent position".[1]
5. The Constitution of the Republic recognizes "the workers' right to enter into the direction of the state".[3]
6. The Constitution of the Republic "affirms the necessity of those economic and political changes which are essential for reconstructing our society and for moving it in the direction of socialism".[2]
7. The Constitution of the Republic has resolved "the problem of principle of the march towards socialism within the ambit of democratic legality".[2]
8. The Italian people "are able to oppose the class nature and class aims of the state while fully accepting and defending the constitutional compact".[4]
9. The Italian working class "can organize itself into the ruling class within the ambit of the constitutional system".[3]
10. "The respect for, the defence of, and the integral application of, the Constitution of the Republic form the pivot of the whole political programme of the Party."[3]
We do not, of course, deny that the present Italian Constitution contains some lofty phraseology. But how can a Marxist-Leninist take the high-sounding phrases in a bourgeois constitution for reality?
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There are 139 articles in the present Italian Constitution. But, in the final analysis, its class nature is most clearly represented by Article 42, which provides that "private ownership is recognized and guaranteed by law". In terms of Italian reality, this article protects the private property of the monopoly capitalists. By virtue of this provision, the Constitution satisfies the demands of the monopoly capitalists, for their private property is made sacred and inviolable. To try to cover up the real nature of the Italian Constitution and to talk about it in superlative terms is only to deceive oneself and others.
Togliatti and the other comrades say that the Italian Constitution "bears the marks of the presence of the working class", "affirms the principle of the sovereignty of the people" and "recognizes certain new rights for the workers".[1] When they talk about this principle and these new rights, why do they not compare the Italian Constitution with other bourgeois constitutions before drawing conclusions?
It should be noted that the provision concerning the sovereignty of the people is found in practically every bourgeois constitution since the time of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in the French bourgeois revolution of 1789, and is not peculiar to the Italian Constitution. "Sovereignty belongs to the people" was once a revolutionary slogan which the bourgeoisie pitted against the feudal monarchs' dictum of L'etat, c'est Moi. But since the establishment of bourgeois rule this article has become a mere phrase in bourgeois constitutions to conceal the nature of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
It should be noted, too, that the Italian Constitution is not the only one that provides for civil liberties and rights. Such provisions are found in the constitutions of nearly all the capitalist countries. But after stipulating certain civil liberties and rights, some constitutions go straight on to make other provisions to restrict or cancel them. As Marx said of the French Constitution of 1848, "Every one of its provisions contains its own antithesis--utterly nullifies itself."[1] There are other constitutions in which such articles are not followed by restrictive or nugatory provisions, but the bourgeois governments concerned readily achieve the same purpose by other means. The Italian Constitution falls into the former category; in other words, it is a nakedly bourgeois constitution and can in no way be described as "fundamentally socialist in inspiration".[2]
Lenin said, "Where laws are out of keeping with reality, the constitution
is false; where they conform with reality, the constitution is not false."[3]
The present Italian Constitution has both these aspects; it is both false
and not false. It is not false in such matters of substance as its open
protection of the interests of the bourgeoisie, and it is false in its
high-sounding phrases designed to deceive the people.
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At the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Italy held in January 1948, Comrade Togliatti said:
Our political and even constitutional future is uncertain, because one can foresee serious collisions between a progressive sector which will rely on one part of our constitutional charter, and a conservative and reactionary sector which will look for instruments of resistance in the other part. Therefore it would be committing a serious political error and deceiving the people if one confined oneself to saying: "Everything is now written in the Constitution. Let us apply what is sanctioned in it, and all the aspirations of the people will be realized." That is wrong. No constitution is ever used to save liberty if it is not defended by the consciousness of the citizens, by their power, and by their ability to crush every reactionary attempt. No constitutional norm will by itself assure us of democratic and social progress if the organized and conscious forces of the labouring masses are unable to lead the whole country along this road of progress and smash the resistance of reaction.
From these words spoken by Comrade Togliatti in 1948, it would seem that he then still retained certain Marxist-Leninist views, since he admitted that the political and constitutional future of Italy was uncertain and that the Italian Constitution was two-sided in character and could be used both by the conservative reactionary forces and the progressive forces. Comrade Togliatti then held that to place blind faith in the Italian Constitution was "a serious political error" and was "deceiving the people". In January 1955, Comrade Togliatti said in a speech, "It is clear that we have in our Constitution the lines of a programme, fundamentally socialist in inspiration, which is not only a political but also an economic and social programme."[1] So by that time Comrade Togliatti had already taken the Italian Constitution as one "fundamentally socialist in inspiration".
Thus, the Togliatti of 1955 came out in opposition to the Togliatti of 1948.
From then on Comrade Togliatti has gone into a precipitous decline, and has virtually deified the Italian Constitution.
In 1960 Comrade Togliatti said in his report to the Ninth Congress of the C.P.I.:
We move on the terrain of the Constitution, and as for all those who ask us what we would do if we were in power, we remind them of the Constitution. We have written in our Programmatic Declaration, and we repeat, that it is possible to carry out "in full constitutional legality the structural reforms necessary to undermine the power of the monopolist groups, to defend the interests of all workers against the economic and financial oligarchies, to exclude these oligarchs from power, and to enable the labouring classes to accede to power".
That is to say, Comrade Togliatti demanded that the working class and other
working people of Italy must act in full legality under the bourgeois
constitution and rely on it in order to "undermine the power of the monopolist
groups".
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At the Tenth Congress of the C.P.I. in 1962, Togliatti and some other comrades of the C.P.I. reasserted that they are "firm" on this point. They declared that "the Italian road to socialism passes through the building of the new state as described in the Constitution . . . and the rise of the new ruling classes to its leadership";[1] that this road means to "demand and impose the transformation of the state in the light of the Constitution, to conquer new positions of power within the state, to push forward the socialist transformation of society";[1] and that it means to form "a social and political bloc capable of carrying out the socialist transformation of Italy in constitutional legality".[1] They also proposed to "oppose the class nature and class aims of the state while fully accepting and defending the constitutional compact, developing ample and articulated action tending to push the state along the road of a progressive democracy capable of developing towards socialism".[2]
In brief, Togliatti and the other comrades intend to bring about socialism within the framework of the Italian bourgeois constitution, completely forgetting that though there are some attractively worded articles in the Italian Constitution, the monopoly capitalists can nullify the Constitution whenever they find it necessary and opportune, so long as they have control of the state machine and all the armed forces.
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Marxist-Leninists must expose the hypocrisy of bourgeois constitutions, but
at the same time they should utilize certain of their provisions as weapons
against the bourgeoisie. In ordinary circumstances, refusal to make use of
a bourgeois constitution and carry on legal struggle wherever possible is
a mistake, which Lenin called a "Left" infantile disorder. But to call upon
Communists and the people to place blind faith in a bourgeois constitution,
to say that a bourgeois constitution can bring socialism to the people, and
that respect for, and defence and integral application of, such a constitution
"form the pivot of the whole political programme of the Party"[1] is not
just an infantile disorder but, again in Lenin's words, mental subservience
to bourgeois prejudices.
CONTEMPORARY "PARLIAMENTARY CRETINISM"
Comrade Togliatti and certain other C.P.I. comrades admit that to realize socialism involves struggle, that socialism must be realized through struggle. But they confine the people's struggle to the scope permitted by the bourgeois constitution and assign the primary role to parliament.
In describing how the present Italian Constitution came into existence, Comrade Togliatti said, "This was due to the fact that in 1946 the Communists rejected the road of breaking legality by desperately attempting to seize power, and on the contrary chose the road of participation in the work of the Constituent Assembly."[2]
That is how Comrade Togliatti came to take the parliamentary road as the
one by which the working class and other working people of Italy would "advance
towards socialism".
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For years Togliatti and other comrades have stressed the same point: "Today the thesis of the possibility of a march towards socialism within the forms of democratic and even parliamentary legality has been formulated in a general way.... This proposition ... was ours in 1944-46."[1]
"It is possible to pass to socialism by taking the parliamentary road."[2]
Here we should like to discuss with Togliatti and the other comrades the question of whether the transition to socialism can be brought about through parliamentary forms.
The question must be made clear. We have always held that taking part in
parliamentary struggle is one of the methods of legal struggle which the
working class should utilize in certain conditions. To refuse to utilize
parliamentary struggle when it is necessary, but instead to play at or prattle
about revolution, is something that all Marxist-Leninists resolutely oppose.
On this question, we have always adhered to the whole of Lenin's theory as
expounded in his "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder. But
some people deliberately distort our views. They say that we deny the necessity
of all parliamentary struggle and that we deny that there are twists, and
turns in the development of the revolution. They ascribe to us the view that
some fine morning the people's revolutions will suddenly come in various
countries. Or they assert, as Comrade Togliatti does in his reply of January
10 this year to our article, that we want the Italian comrades to "confine
themselves to preaching and waiting for the great day of revolution". Of
late such distortion of the arguments of the other side in the
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discussion has virtually become the favourite trick of the self-styled Marxist-Leninists in dealing with the Chinese Communists.
It may be asked: What are our differences with Comrade Togliatti and the others on the proper attitude towards bourgeois parliaments?
First, we hold that all bourgeois parliaments, including the present Italian parliament, have a class nature and serve as ornaments for bourgeois dictatorship. As Lenin put it: "Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway and so forth--in these countries the real business of 'state' is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and the General Staffs."[1] ". . . the more highly [bourgeois] democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers."[2]
Secondly, we are for utilizing parliamentary struggle, but against spreading illusions, against "parliamentary cretinism". Again, as Lenin said, political parties of the working class "stand for utilising the parliamentary struggle, for participating in parliament; but they ruthlessly expose 'parliamentary cretinism', that is, the belief that the parliamentary struggle is the sole or under all circumstances the main form of the political struggle".[3]
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Thirdly, we are for utilizing the platform of the bourgeois parliament to expose the festering sores in bourgeois society and also to expose the fraud of the bourgeois parliament. For its own interests, the bourgeoisie under certain conditions admits representatives of the working-class party to its parliament; at the same time this is a method by which it tries to deceive, corrupt and even buy over certain representatives and leaders of the workers. Therefore, in waging the parliamentary struggle the political party of the working class must be highly vigilant and must at all times maintain its political independence.
On the three points just mentioned, Togliatti and the other comrades have completely cast away the Leninist stand. Regarding parliament as being above classes, they exaggerate the role of the bourgeois parliament for no valid reason and see it as the only road for achieving socialism in Italy.
Togliatti and other comrades have become thoroughly obsessed with the Italian parliament.
They hold that given an "honest electoral law" and provided that "in parliament a majority is formed, which is conformable to the will of the people",[1] it is possible to carry out "profound social reforms"[1] and "change the present relations of production, and consequently also the big property regime".[2]
Can things really happen that way?
No. Things can only happen like this: So long as the bureaucratic-military state machine of the bourgeoisie still exists, for the proletariat and its reliable allies to win a parliamentary majority under normal conditions and in accordance with bourgeois electoral law is some
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thing either impossible or in no way to be depended upon. After World War II, the Communist and Workers' Parties in many capitalist countries held seats in parliament, in some cases many seats. In every case, however, the bourgeoisie used various measures to prevent the Communists from gaining a parliamentary majority--nullifying elections, dissolving parliament, revising the electoral laws or the constitution, or outlawing the Communist Party. For quite a while after World War II, the Communist Party of France had the largest popular vote and parliamentary representation of any party in the country, but the French monopoly capitalists revised the electoral law and the constitution itself and deprived the French Communist Party of many of its seats.
Can the working class become the ruling class simply by relying on votes in elections? History records no case of an oppressed class becoming the ruling class through the vote. The bourgeoisie preaches a lot about parliamentary democracy and elections, but there was no country where the bourgeoisie replaced the feudal lords and became the ruling class simply by a vote. It is even less likely for the proletariat to become the ruling class through elections. As Lenin put it in his Greetings to Italian, French, and German Communists:
Only scoundrels or simpletons can think that the proletariat must win the majority in elections carried out under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, under the yoke of wage-slavery, and that only after this must it win power. This is the height of folly or hypocrisy; it is substituting voting, under the old system and with the old power, for class struggle and revolution.[1]
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History does tell us that when a workers' party abandons its proletarian revolutionary programme, degenerates into an appendage of the bourgeoisie, and converts itself into a political party that is a tool of the bourgeoisie, the latter may permit it to have a temporary parliamentary majority and to form a government. This was the case with the British Labour Party. It was also the case with the social-democratic parties of several countries after they had betrayed their original socialist revolutionary programmes. But this sort of thing can only maintain and consolidate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and cannot in the least alter the position of the proletariat as an oppressed and exploited class. The British Labour Party has been in power three times since 1924, but imperialist Britain is still imperialist Britain, and, as before, the British working class has no power. We would ask Comrade Togliatti whether he is thinking of following in the footsteps of the British Labour Party and of the social-democratic parties in other countries.
The Theses for the Tenth Congress of the C.P.I. declare that parliament must be given full powers to legislate and to direct and control the activities of the executive. We do not know who will give parliament the powers certain leaders of the Italian Communist Party desire for it. Are they to be given by the bourgeoisie or by Togliatti and the other comrades? In fact, the powers of a bourgeois parliament are given it by the bourgeoisie. Their extent is decided by the bourgeoisie according to its interests. No matter how much power the bourgeoisie allows parliament, the latter can never become the real organ of power of the bourgeois state. The real organ of power, by means of which the bourgeoisie rules over the people, is the bureaucratic and military apparatus of the bour geoisie, and not its parliament.
If Communists abandon the road of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship, pin all their hopes on winning a majority in the bourgeois parliament by a vote and wait to be given powers to lead the state, what difference is there between their road and Kautsky's parliamentary road? Kautsky said: "The aim of our political struggle remains, as hitherto, the conquest of state power by winning a majority in parliament and by converting parliament into the master of the government."[1] Lenin said in criticism of this Kautskian road, "This is nothing but the purest and the most vulgar opportunism."[2]
In March 1956, when talking about "utilization of legal means and also of parliament", Comrade Togliatti stated, "What we do today would have been neither possible nor correct thirty years ago, it would have been pure opportunism, as we described it at that time."[3]
What grounds are there for saying that what was neither possible nor correct
thirty years ago has become so today? What grounds are there for saying that
what was then pure opportunism has now suddenly become pure Marxism-Leninism?
Comrade Togliatti's words are in fact an admission that the road he and the
other comrades are travelling is the same as that taken by the opportunists
in the past.
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However, when it was pointed out that they were travelling this parliamentary road, Comrade Togliatti changed his tune, saying In June 1956: "I would like to correct those comrades who have said--as if it were undoubtedly a peaceful matter--that the Italian road of development towards socialism means the parliamentary road and nothing more. That is not true,"[1] He also said: "To reduce this struggle to electoral competitions for parliament and to wait for the acquisition of fifty-one per cent would be not only simple-minded but also illusory."[2] Comrade Togliatti argued that what they advocated was not only "a parliament which functions"[1] but also "a great popular movement".[1]
To demand a great popular movement is a good thing, and Marxist-Leninists should of course feel happy about it. It should be recognized that there is a mass movement of considerable scale in Italy today and that the Communist Party of Italy has in this respect made achievements. The pity is that Comrade Togliatti looks at the mass movement only within a parliamentary framework. He holds that the mass movement "can bring about the raising in our country of those urgent demands which could then be satisfied by a parliament, in which the popular forces have won sufficiently strong representation".[1]
The masses raise demands, then parliament satisfies them--such is Comrade Togliatti's formula for the mass movement.
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The basic tactical principle of Marxism-Leninism is as follows: In all mass
movements, and likewise in parliamentary struggle, it is necessary to maintain
the political independence of the proletariat, to draw a line of demarcation
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, to integrate the present interests
of the movement with its future interests, and to co-ordinate the current
movement with the entire process and the final goal of the working-class
struggle. To forget or violate this principle is to fall into the quagmire
of Bernsteinism and, in reality, to accept the notorious formula that "the
movement is everything, the aim is nothing". We should like to ask: What
difference is there between Comrade Togliatti's formula concerning the mass
movement and Bernstein's formula?
CAN STATE-MONOPOLY CAPITAL BECOME "A
MORE EFFECTIVE INSTRUMENT FOR OPPOSING
MONOPOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT"?
Replying to the editorial in our paper Renmin Ribao, Comrade Luigi Longo, one of the chief leaders of the Communist Party of Italy, wrote in an article on January 4, 1963:
Our Tenth Congress has also forcefully reaffirmed that a firm point in what we call the Italian road to socialism is the recognition that already today, in the existing international and domestic situation, even when the capitalist regime continues to exist, it is possible and necessary to arrive at the liquidation of the monopolies and of their economic and political power.
These comrades maintain that by adopting the measures they have worked out it is possible to change the capitalist relations of production now existing in Italy and to change the "big property regime" of the Italian monopoly capitalists.
The economic measures of "structural reform" which have been worked out by Togliatti and other comrades are, in their own words, the realization of "the demand for a definite degree of nationalization, the demand for programming, the demand for state intervention to guarantee democratic economic development, and so on";[1] and "the movement which tends to increase direct state intervention in economic life, through programming, the nationalization of whole sectors of production, etc."[2]
Probably Togliatti and the other comrades will go on to devise still more measures of this sort.
Of course, they have the right to think and say what they like, and no one has the right to interfere, nor do we want to. However, since they want others to think and speak as they do, we cannot but continue the discussion of the questions they have raised.
Let us take first the question of state intervention in economic life.
Has not the state intervened in economic life ever since it came into being,
no matter whether it was a state of slave-owners, of feudal lords or of the
bourgeoisie? When these classes are in the ascendant, state intervention
in economic life may take one form, and when they are on the decline, it
may take another form. State intervention in economic life may also take
different forms in different countries where the state power is the same
in its class nature. Leaving aside the question of how the state of slave-owners
or feudal-lords intervenes in economic life, we shall discuss only the
intervention of the bourgeois state in economic life.
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Whether a bourgeois state pursues a policy of grabbing colonies or of contending for world supremacy, a policy of free trade or of protective tariffs, every such policy constitutes state intervention in economic life, which bourgeois states have long practised in order to protect the interests of their bourgeoisie. Such intervention has played an important role in the development of capitalism. State intervention in economic life is, therefore, not something new that has recently made its appearance in Italy.
But perhaps what Togliatti and the other comrades refer to by "state intervention in economic life" is not these policies long practised by the bourgeoisie, but mainly the nationalization they are talking about.
Well then, let us talk about nationalization.
In reality, from slave society onward, different kinds of states have had different kinds of "nationalized sectors of the economy". The state of slave-owners had its nationalized sector of the economy, and so had the state of feudal lords. The bourgeois state has had its nationalized sector of the economy ever since it came into being. Therefore, the question to be clarified is the nature of the nationalization in each case, and what class carries it out.
A veteran Communist like Comrade Togliatti is certainly not ignorant of what Engels said in his "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific":
In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society--the state--will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication--the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.[1]
To this statement, Engels added the following very important rider:
I say "have to". For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state has become economically inevitable, only then--even if it is the state of today that effects this--is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for state ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the state the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a new source
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of income independent of parliamentary votes--this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor shops of the Army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the state of the brothels.[1]
Engels then went on to emphasize the nature of so-called state ownership in capitalist countries. He said:
But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers--proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the
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conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.[1]
Engels wrote all this in the period when monopoly capital was first emerging and capitalism had begun to move from free competition to monopoly. Have his arguments lost their validity now that monopoly capital has assumed a completely dominating position? Can it be said that nationalization in the capitalist countries has now changed and even done away with "the capitalist nature of the productive forces"? Can it be said that state-monopoly capitalism, formed through capitalist nationalization or in other ways, is no longer capitalism? Or perhaps this can be said of Italy, though not of other countries?
Here, then, we have to go into the question of state-monopoly capitalism, and in Italy in particular.
Concentration of capital results in monopoly. From World War I onward, world capitalism has not only taken a step further towards monopoly in general, but also taken a step further away from monopoly in general to state monopoly. After World War I, and particularly after the economic crisis broke out in the capitalist world in 1929, state-monopoly capitalism further developed in all the imperialist countries. During World War II, the monopoly capitalists in the imperialist countries on both sides utilized state-monopoly capital to the fullest possible extent in order to make high profits out of the war. And since the War, state-monopoly capital has actually become the more or less dominant force in economic life in some imperialist countries.
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Compared with the other principal imperialist countries, the foundations of capitalism in Italy are relatively weak. From an early date, therefore, Italy embarked upon state capitalism for the purpose of concentrating the forces of capital so as to grab the highest profits, compete with international monopoly capital, expand her markets and redivide the colonies. In 1914, the Consorzio per Sovvenzione su Valore Industria was established by the Italian government to provide the big banks and industrial firms with loans and subsidies. There was a further integration of the state organs with monopoly capitalist organizations during Mussolini's fascist regime. In particular, during the great crisis of 1929-33, the Italian government bought up at pre-crisis prices large blocks of shares of many failing banks and other enterprises, brought many banks and enterprises under state control, and organized the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, thus forming a gigantic state-monopoly capitalist organization. After World War II, Italian monopoly capital, including state-monopoly capital, which had been the foundation of the fascist regime, was left intact and developed at still greater speed. At present, the enterprises run by state-monopoly capital or jointly by state and private monopoly capital constitute about 30 per cent of Italy's economy.
What conclusions should Marxist-Leninists draw from the development of
state-monopoly capital? In Italy, can nationalized enterprise, i.e.,
state-monopoly capital, stand "in opposition to the monopolies",[1] can
it be "the expression of the popular masses",[1] and can it become "a
more
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effective instrument for opposing monopolistic development",[1] as stated by Togliatti and certain other comrades of the C.P.I.?
No Marxist-Leninist can possibly draw such conclusions.
State-monopoly capitalism is monopoly capitalism in which monopoly capital has merged with the political power of the state. Taking full advantage of state power, it accelerates the concentration and aggregation of capital intensifies the exploitation of the working people, the devouring of small and medium enterprises, and the annexation of some monopoly capitalist groups by others, and strengthens monopoly capital for international competition and expansion. Under the cover of "state intervention in economic life" and "opposition to monopoly", and using the name of the state to deceive, it cleverly transfers huge profits into the pockets of the monopoly groups by underhand methods.
The chief means by which state-monopoly capital serves the monopoly capitalists are as-follows:
1. It uses the funds of the state treasury, and the taxes paid by the people, to protect the capitalists against risk to their investments, thus guaranteeing large profits to the monopoly groups.
For example, on all the bonds issued to raise funds for the Istituto per
la Ricostruzione Industriale, the biggest state-monopoly organization of
Italy, the state both pays interest and guarantees the principal. The
bond-holders generally receive a high rate of interest, as high as 4.5 to
8 per cent per annum. In addition, they draw dividends when the enterprises
make a profit.
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2. Through legislation and the state budget a substantial proportion of the national income is redistributed in ways favourable to the monopoly capitalist organizations, ensuring that the various monopoly groups get huge profits.
For example, in 1955 about one-third of the total state budget was allocated by the Italian government for purchasing and ordering goods from private monopoly groups.
3. Through the alternative forms of purchase and sale, the state on certain occasions takes over those enterprises which are losing money or going bankrupt or whose nationalization will benefit particular monopoly groups, and on other occasions sells to the private monopoly groups those enterprises which are profitable.
For example, according to statistics compiled by the Italian economist Gino Longo, between 1920 and 1955, successive Italian governments paid a total of 1,647,000 million lire (in terms of 1953 prices) to purchase the shares of failing banks and enterprises, a sum equal to more than 50 per cent of the total nominal capital in 1955 of all the Italian joint-stock companies with a capital of 50 million lire or more. On the other hand, from its establishment to 1958, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale alone sold back to private monopoly organizations shares in profitable enterprises amounting to a total value of 491,000 million lire (in terms of 1953 prices), according to incomplete statistics.
4. By making use of state authority, state-monopoly capital intensifies the concentration and aggregation of capital, and accelerates the annexation of small and medium enterprises by monopoly capital.
For example, from 1948 to 1958, the total nominal capital of the ten biggest monopoly groups, which control the lifelines of the Italian economy, multiplied 15 times. The Fiat Company multiplied its nominal capital 25 times and the Italcemento 40 times. Although the ten biggest companies in Italy constituted only 0.04 per cent of the total number of joint-stock companies, they directly held or controlled 64 per cent of the total private share-holding capital in Italy. During the same period, the number of small and medium enterprises which went bankrupt constantly increased.
5. Internationally, state-monopoly capital battles fiercely for markets, utilizing the name of the state and its diplomatic measures, and thus serves Italian monopoly capital as a useful tool for extending its neo-colonialist penetration.
For example, in the period of 1956-61 alone, the Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi obtained the right to explore and exploit oil resources, to sell oil or to build pipe-lines and refineries in the United Arab Republic, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan, India, Yugoslavia, Austria, Switzerland, etc. In this way, it has secured for the Italian monopoly-capitalists a place in the world oil market.
The facts given above make it clear that state monopoly and private monopoly
are in fact two mutually supporting forms used by the monopoly capitalists
for the extraction of huge profits. The development of state-monopoly capital
aggravates the inherent contradictions of the imperialist system and can
never, as Togliatti and the other comrades assert, "limit and break up the
power of the leading big monopoly groups"[1] or change the contradictions
inherent in imperialism.
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In Italy there is a view current among certain people that contemporary Italian capitalism is different from the capitalism of fifty years ago and has entered a "new stage". They call contemporary Italian capitalism "neo-capitalism". They insist that under "neo-capitalism", or in the "new stage" of capitalism, such fundamental Marxist-Leninist principles as those concerning class struggle, socialist revolution, seizure of state power by the proletariat and proletarian dictatorship are no longer of any use. In their view, this "neo-capitalism" can apparently perform the function of resolving the fundamental contradictions of capitalism within the capitalist system itself, by such means as "programming", "technical progress", "full employment" and the "welfare state", and through "international alliance". It was the Catholic movement and the social reformists who first advocated and spread these theories in Italy. Actually, it was in these so-called theories that Togliatti and the other comrades found a new basis for their "theory of structural reform".
Togliatti and the other comrades maintain that "the concepts of planning and programming the economy, considered at one time a socialist prerogative, are more and more extensively discussed and accepted today".[1]
It is Comrade Togliatti's opinion (1) that there can be planned development of the national economy not only in socialist countries but also under capitalism, and (2) that the economic planning and programming characteristic of socialism can be accepted in capitalist Italy.
Marxist-Leninists have always held that the capitalist state finds it both
possible and necessary to adopt policies
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which in some way regulate the national economy in the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. This idea is contained in the passages quoted above from Engels. In the era of monopoly capital, this regulatory function of the capitalist state mainly serves the interests of the monopoly capitalists. Although such regulation may sometimes sacrifice the interests of certain monopoly groups, it never harms, but on the contrary represents, the over-all interests of the monopoly capitalists.
Here is Lenin's excellent exposition of this point. He said:
. . . the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can already be termed "state Socialism", or something of that sort, is most widespread. The trusts, of course, never produced, do not now produce, and cannot produce complete planning. But however much they do plan, however much the capitalist magnates calculate in advance the volume of production on a national and even on an international scale, and however much they systematically regulate it, we still remain under capitalism--capitalism in its new stage, it is true, but still, undoubtedly, capitalism.[1]
However, some comrades of the C.P.I. maintain that, by carrying out "planning"
in Italy under the rule of the monopoly capitalists, it is possible to solve
the major problems posed by Italian history, including "the problems of the
liberty and emancipation of the working class".[2] How is this miracle possible?
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Comrade Togliatti says, "State-monopoly capitalism, which is the modern aspect of the capitalist regime in almost all the big countries, is that stage--as Lenin has affirmed--beyond which, in order to go forward, there is no other way but socialism. But from this objective necessity it is necessary to make a conscious movement arise."[1]
There is the well-known statement by Lenin that "capitalism, . . . advanced
from capitalism to imperialism, from monopoly to state control. All this
has brought the socialist revolution nearer and has created the objective
conditions for it".[2] He also made similar statements elsewhere. Clearly,
Lenin meant that the development of state-monopoly capitalism serves only
to prove "the proximity. . . of the socialist revolution, and not at all
as an argument in favour of tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution
and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, an occupation in
which all the reformists are engaged".[3] In talking about "structural reform"
and "conscious movement", Comrade Togliatti is using ambiguous language exactly
as the reformists do to evade the question of socialist revolution posed
by Marxism-Leninism, and he is doing his best to make Italian capitalism
look more attractive.
REMEMBER WHAT THE GREAT LENIN TAUGHT
From the above series of questions it can be seen that the "theory of structural reform" advanced by Togliatti and the other comrades is an out-and-out total revision of Marxism-Leninism on the fundamental question of the state and revolution.
____________________________
Comrade Togliatti publicly hoisted the flag of total revision of Marxism-Leninism as early as 1956. In June of that year, at the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the C.P.I., he said:
First Marx and Engels and later on Lenin, when developing this theory [the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat--Hongqi ed.], said that the bourgeois state apparatus cannot be used for building a socialist society. This apparatus must be smashed and destroyed by the working class, and replaced by the apparatus of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state led by the working class itself. This was not the original position of Marx and Engels. It was the position they took after the experience of the Paris Commune and it was developed in particular by Lenin. Does this position remain completely valid today? This is a theme for discussion. In fact, when we affirm that a road of advance to socialism is possible not merely over democratic ground but also through utilizing parliamentary forms, it is evident that we correct something of this position, taking into account the changes which have taken place and which are still in the process of being realized in the world.
Here Comrade Togliatti was posing as a historian of Marxism while fundamentally distorting the history of Marxism.
Consider the following facts.
In the Communist Manifesto, which was written in 1847, Marx and Engels stated very clearly that "the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy".[1] Lenin said of this statement, "Here we have a formulation of one of the most remarkable and most important ideas of Marxism on the subject of the state, namely, the idea of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (as Marx and Engels began to call it after the Paris Commune)."[2]
Subsequently, after summing up the experience of the period 1848-51, Marx raised the question of smashing the old state machine. As Lenin said, here "the question is treated in a concrete manner, and the conclusion is extremely precise, definite, practical and palpable: all the revolutions which have occurred up to now perfected the state machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed." Lenin added, "This conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxian teaching on the state."[3]
Basing himself on the experience of 1848-51, Marx came to the conclusion
that, unlike previous revolutions, the proletarian revolution would not merely
transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one group of people to another.
Marx did not then give a specific answer to the question of what should replace
the smashed state machine. The reason, as Lenin remarked, was that in presenting
the question Marx did not base himself simply on logical reasoning but stayed
strictly on the firm ground of historical experience.[4] For this
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specific question, in 1852 there was nothing in previous experience which could be drawn on, but the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 put the question on the agenda. "The Commune is the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine; and it is the political form 'at last discovered', by which the smashed state machine can and must be replaced."[1] From this we see that there are two questions, the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, and what should replace it, and Marx answered first one and then the other, on the basis of the historical experience of different periods. Comrade Togliatti says that it was only after the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 that Marx and Engels held it was necessary for the proletariat to smash the bourgeois state machine. This is a distortion of the facts of history.
Like Kautsky, Comrade Togliatti believes in "the possibility of power being seized without destroying the state machine".[2] He holds that the bourgeois state machine can be preserved and the objectives of the proletariat can be achieved by using this ready-made state machine. It would be well if Comrade Togliatti noted how Lenin repeatedly repudiated Kautsky on this point. Lenin said,
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Kautsky either rejects the assumption of state power by the working class altogether, or he concedes that the working class may take over the old, bourgeois state machine; but he will by no means concede that it must break it up, smash it, and replace it by a new, proletarian machine. Whichever way Kautsky's arguments are "interpreted", or "explained", his rupture with Marxism and his desertion to the bourgeoisie are obvious.[1]
Since Comrade Togliatti boasts, that their programme is a "deepening and development of Marxism-Leninism", it must be noted that the so-called theory of structural reform was in fact first devised by Kautsky. In his pamphlet The Social Revolution, Kautsky said, "It goes without saying that we shall not achieve supremacy under the present conditions. Revolution itself presupposes a long and deep-going struggle, which, as, it proceeds, will change our present political and social structure." It is evident that Kautsky tried long ago to substitute the theory of structural reform for the theory of proletarian revolution and that Comrade Togliatti has simply inherited his mantle. Nevertheless, if we carefully examine their respective views, we shall find that Comrade Togliatti has jumped ahead of Kautsky--Kautsky admitted "we shall not achieve supremacy under the present conditions", whereas Comrade Togliatti maintains that we can achieve supremacy precisely "under the present conditions".
Togliatti and other comrades hold that what is needed for Italy to advance
to socialism is to establish a "new democratic regime" under the marvellous
Italian Constitution and at the same time to form a "new historical bloc",
or a "new bloc of social and political leading forces".[2] They maintain
it is this "new historical bloc" rather than the Italian proletariat that
is the
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"bearer of an intellectual and moral, as well as a political revolution"[1] in Italy. No one knows what this "new historical bloc" actually is or how it is to be formed. At times Togliatti and other comrades say that it is "under the leadership of the working class"[1] and at times that this "new historical bloc" is itself the "bloc of leading forces". Is such a bloc a class organization of the proletariat, or is it an alliance of classes? Is it under the leadership of the working class, or of the bourgeoisie, or of some other class? Heaven alone knows! In the final analysis, the purpose of their fanciful and elusive formulation is simply to get away from the basic Marxist-Leninist ideas of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship.
Comrade Togliatti's idea is: (1) there is no need to smash the bourgeois state machine, and (2) there is no need to set up a proletarian state machine. He thus repudiates the experience of the Paris Commune.
After Marx and Engels, Lenin repeatedly elucidated the experience of the
Paris Commune and always insisted that it held good universally for the
proletariat of all countries. Lenin did not separate the experience of the
Russian Revolution from that of the Paris Commune but regarded it as a
continuation and development of the experience of the Paris Commune. He saw
in the Soviets "the type of state which was being evolved by the Paris
Commune",[2] and held that "the Paris Commune took the first epochal step
along this path [the path of smashing
the old state machine]
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1 Cf. ibid.
2 Lenin, "Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution", Selected Works,
F.L.P.H., Moscow, 1951, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 38.
In repudiating the experience of the Paris Commune, Comrade Togliatti is of necessity directly counterposing his ideas to Marxism-Leninism and flatly repudiating the experience of the October Revolution and of the people's revolutions in various, countries since the October Revolution; thus he counterposes his so-called Italian road to the common road of the international proletariat.
Comrade Togliatti says, "The problem of doing what was done in Russia is not posed to the Italian workers."[2] Here we have the essence of the question.
The Elements for a Programmatic Declaration adopted by the Eighth Congress of the C.P.I. in 1956 stated, "In the first years after World War I, the revolutionary conquest of power by the methods that had led to victory in the Soviet Union revealed itself to be impossible." Here again we have the essence of the question.
Referring to the experience of the Chinese revolution, Comrade Togliatti
said that in the period of the Chinese people's struggle for state power,
the Chinese Communist Party applied a political line "which corresponded
not at all to the strategic and tactical line followed by the Bolsheviks
in the course of their revolution from March to October (1917)".[3] This
is a distortion of the history of the Chinese revolution. Since it has occurred
in the specific conditions of China, the Chinese revolution has had its own
characteristics. However, as Comrade Mao
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Tse-tung has repeatedly explained, the principle on which the political line of our Party has been formulated is the integration of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. The Chinese revolution, we have always held, is a continuation of the Great October Revolution, and it goes without saying that it is also a continuation of the cause of the Paris Commune. With regard to the most fundamental question concerning the theory of the state and revolution, that is, the question of smashing the old warlord-bureaucratic state machine and setting up the state machine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the basic experience of the Chinese revolution wholly corresponds to that of the October Revolution and the Paris Commune. As Comrade Mao Tse-tung said in 1949 in his famous essay On the People's Democratic Dictatorship, "Follow the path of the Russians--that was the conclusion."[1] To defend his revision of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, or his "modifications" as he and others put it, Comrade Togliatti says the experience of the Chinese revolution and the experience of the October Revolution are two different matters which do "not at all correspond" to each other. But how can this distortion possibly help the theory of structural reform of Togliatti and other comrades?
This theory is one of "peaceful transition" or, in their own words, of "advance
towards socialism in democracy and in peace".[2] Their whole theory and their
entire programme are replete with praise of "class peace" in capitalist society
and contain absolutely nothing about "advance towards socialism"; there is
only class "peace", and no social "transition" at all.
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Marxism-Leninism is the science of proletarian revolution, and it develops continuously in revolutionary practice, and individual principles or conclusions are bound to be replaced by new principles or conclusions suited to the new historical conditions. But this does not imply that the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism can be discarded or revised. The Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and revolution is absolutely not an individual principle or conclusion, but a fundamental principle derived from the Marxist-Leninist summing-up of the experience of the struggles of the international proletariat. To discard or revise this fundamental principle is to turn one's back completely on Marxism-Leninism.
Here we would humbly offer Comrade Togliatti some sincere advice. Do not be so arrogant as to declare that you will not do what was done in the Russian October Revolution. Be a little more modest, and remember what the great Lenin taught in 1920, ". . . on certain very essential questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to perform what Russia has performed."'
To support the principles of proletarian strategy put forward by Lenin and
corroborated by the victory of the Great October Revolution, or to oppose
them--here is the fundamental difference between the Leninists on the one
hand and the modern revisionists and their followers on the other.
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