MARX
AMONG THE PROLETARIANS, THE WOMEN, THE YOUTH
a speech by the PCm Italia at the celebration of the 200th
held in Palermo
Comrades,
In
the 200th
anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, we honor and hail his name
by studying and above all fighting, being part of that proletarian
army for which Marx has worked all the lifetime, and by making
universal and permanent his message of liberation of the oppressed
classes.
In
addition to this great 200th,
the 50th
anniversary of the 1968 recurs this year. The '68 represented for the
bourgeoisie what Marx describes in the Manifesto as the "spectre
is haunting Europe ...". The '68 embodied the revolutionary
message of the communists, and the communists in different countries,
many young and new communists, made it strong and terrible, showed
that it was right to rebel, that even in the imperialist citadels of
the wealth and richness - apparent as we know - the ideas of revolt
had never died, and indeed they had to be taken up. The influence of
Marx and the Marxists at that time, who since then took the name of
Maoists, was one of the keys of that rebellion, the instrument that
theoretically embodied the slogan "It is right to rebel".
Anyone
who has read something about his life, his books, letters, the
memoirs about Marx knows very well that he was a communist very
little inclined to make chatter, not inclined to be revered and
celebrated. He reacted with some annoyance to the flatterers, he knew
that many who called themselves Marxists or revolutionaries did it
for themselves, i. e. they exalted Marx to exalt themselves - which
is really the most despicable to deny Marx. We must reject this way
of being
"Marxists".
"Marxists".
This
bicentennial is a rediscovery of Marx also by the bourgeoisie, but
not only. For example, some of you have watched the movie "The
young Karl Marx". A movie to watch, because it manages to make
vivid the image of what Marx was, of the life that he really did. In
general, Marx did not want anyone talk about his life. It is known
that he was angry when his wife, Jenny, was forced to tell the
comrades, to those who owed him money for his writings, the difficult
conditions of health, of misery that Marx lived and he got angry just
to be forced to work in those conditions.
Marx
had an infinity of diseases. Escaping from one country to another for
expulsions, his health deteriorated. His living conditions were hard
in all the countries he went to, where he had to fight daily with
poverty.
But
Marx has never considered these conditions to be an obstacle. Of
course, compared to the programs of study and work he had, a life was
not enough. In his plans he had to write at least twice as many works
as he wrote.
Marx
was interested in everything, even, just before his death, about
animals, plants and more, because it was indispensable for him to
give on everything a scientific explanation corresponding to the
social history of humanity. He was very fastidious in doing thing
properly. If he wanted to read a book by a Russian author, he had to
study Russian language because he thought he had to read and
understand as well as possible. This led him to speak many languages.
Just as, for example, before writing about the relationship between
ecology and production, Marx felt he had to study all the books
published on the subject. "I swallow books and then spit them
out," he said, "this is an indispensable work if I really
want to write about something". Here is the absolute scientific
rigor with which Marx built all his theoretical work.
When
it is said that Marx was a revolutionary, the first revolutionary
attitude he got was toward his work, the study as a work to be done
to the end, which had to be placed before anything, even his life,
his health problems. He put everything else in second place. Jenny
acounts that he often forgot to eat.
Marx
had very clear that the revolution must have the tools to be
realized, which it was not an "idea", the one that many
before Marx and after Marx have had. To Revolutionize a world that is
not good and a more ancient idea than Marx, we can say that it is
born with the first division into classes of society. But for Marx
the revolution needs a scientific theory, an ideology, an ability to
analyze political facts, to bring them back to the root causes, and
in the analysis of these causes to find the road. Despite being a
scientist, Marx is like a frantic militant, every movement that
develops in the working class gets his interest, he can not wait to
go there. He lives in tune with the struggles developed in those
years in Germany, in Europe, in England and takes position on them.
He is not a prophet, he is a militant. For example, regarding the
Paris Commune, until a few days before the revolution, Marx takes
very critical view of French comrades, for their theories and what
they are doing. But, when that strange mixture produces the Commune
of Paris, when flesh-and-blood workers take the power in Paris and in
a few days they take over all the levers of the handling of society,
writing overnight the laws they had always aspired; when the Commune
becomes a mortal danger for the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes in
the whole world, such that they will put in motion the troops that
will cancel the Commune and transform Paris it into a gigantic
cemetery, with thousands and thousands of dead workers; when Paris
had been in the hands of the working class for just over two months;
then Marx begins to study what really happened, he begins to look
inside what the workers have done during those extraordinary days,
and he captures all the meaning of confirmation of the things he
thought but also a contribution on how the proletarian power could
actually be realized. And he starts working on a summing-up of the
Commune.
Today
after so many years, it is said that socialism has failed, that it is
an utopia, that it is impossible. Today it is said that the
revolutions that have taken place have degenerated and this is a
denial of Marx. Marx, instead, starts from that defeat to say that
10, 100, 1000 Communes will cross the entire future epoch of
humanity, until this assault on the heaven will win.
And,
based on this message, the communists after Marx, taking into their
hands the theory of Marx, made the October Revolution, the Chinese
Revolution, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The
revolutions always retrace their steps. Communism will be global or
will not be, therefore it is only a general victory of the
proletariat all over the world that will make the revolution an
irreversible fact. Until then, the revolutions are part of a war, now
bloody, now peaceful, in which the bourgeois classes try to maintain
power, to regain it and the exploited classes look for the way to
overthrow them, to take power, to keep it, to take it back when it is
overthrown. Somehow this has always been clear to Marx. In this
sense, Marx's historical confirmations seem to be prophecies, but
behind these prophecies there is Marx's scientific work, an
unprecedented scientific work and, to a certain extent, he did not
even have had successors at the same heigth.
It
is a work that combines theory and praxis and every day, while
developing the scientific laws and the analysis of society, it lives
the life of the proletarians.
It
is the fusion between Marx and the working class that is the keystone
of Marxism. Marxism can never be a "religion" because it is
fused with the reality of the class struggle. It advances when the
struggle of the working class advances, it withdraws when the
struggle of the working class withdraws. This does not depend on
gods, prophets or geniuses, but on the connection between science and
class struggle.
Marx
says: "It is not my merit to have discovered the existence of
the classes in modern society and their mutual struggle ... what I
did anew is: to prove that the existence of the classes is linked
purely to certain historical phases of the development of production,
that the struggle of the classes necessarily leads to the
dictatorship of the proletariat, that this dictatorship itself
constitutes only the passage to the abolition of all classes and to a
society without classes".
The
class struggle has produced the evolution from the slave society to
feudal society, later to bourgeois society, but every time the result
of this overthrowing is the domination of a new class over another.
It is the rule of the majority class of society, the working class,
which puts an end to classes; this is what I said, concluded Marx.
Marx
has very clear that his work has worth if is taken up by the working
class. He does not look for no further verification. Marx laughs at
the intellectuals who slander him and say clamorous falsehoods, and
he enjoys so much to scoff and unmask them. His only point of
reference is the working class. He has very clear that nothing of
what he writes, of what he analyzes, can have a real outcome without
the role of the working class.
He
"discovers" the working class through the work Engels had
done writing "The situation of the working class in England",
a beautiful book, a sort of labor investigation of that time under
British capitalism, the most developed capitalism of the time. A book
that in the description of the working condition of the time, seems
to describe so much of today's working condition. Whoever reads it
says: it would take a book like this today, because the condition of
the working class is analyzed in detail and shown without sparing
anything.
Through
Engels' work, Marx understands that this is the problem, the working
class, that all his work up to then would have made sense if he had
found the class that could embody it. Because a society can not be
erased by another idea of society but by a new class already existing
within the old society and that already has in its hands the
resources to create a new society.
From
here, the Manifesto of the Communist Party will come first, then the
Capital and all the rest.
But,
once more, Marx is practical in his things. Where is the working
class? Where is it right now? And through the information it
accumulates it sees that the workers had already begun to struggle in
several countries, they have formed an international organization
called the League of the Just (or Justice), which was an organization
half of "prophets of universal love" and half of daily
fighters against exploitation. Marx decides that he must be there and
the Manifesto is written at the request of this organization.
Marx
had been ruthless in the criticism of certain prominent members of
the League. This had hit the workers who then asked him: tell us how
to do. So Marx, along with Engels, writes the Manifesto, that is
adopted by the League of the Just, that in the meantime Engels had
turned into Communist League, arguing: who are the just ones? What
does just mean? There are workers and masters, exploited and
exploiters, there are the capitalists and those who are called
communists, and therefore either you are the capitalist league of or
the communist league.
The
transformation of the League of the Just into the Communist League,
the release of the Manifesto of the Communist Party is the date of
birth of our entire historical movement.
As
soon as Marx starts working on this, as soon as he crosses the path
of working class, he becomes its political chief, that is, the most
advanced expression that the class had generated from its ability of
political struggle, political program, and thought.
Writing
the Manifesto, Marx returns to the workers what the class must be,
not what it actually is.
This
is perhaps the most serious problem we Communists have today, for a
very simple reason: the workers' generations that follow one another
in history are born with a historical heritage, that are the
struggles they have made, the struggles that there have been for many
years, as a working class for at least two hundred years. This
historical heritage produced by the class is as if it were within a
"potential DNA" of today's working class, but it is
precisely a “potential DNA”. Exactly like the person who is born,
who has within herself a DNA of all the best of the genes evolved in
his family, and in turn his family comes from many others, and so on.
And
the workers themselves, when they become not only fighters but also
“passers” of their heritage, are called communists, they are
called Workers' Party, that has nothing to do with the form of
workers' parties we are used to see and in recent years we found
exclusively through the degeneration of politics. Workers' Party
means partisan workers, workers who represent their class and play
their role. Without a workers' party, i.e. without a party that
transmits the historical heritage of the workers, the workers are all
"ignorant".
So,
it is no wonder that the workers are ignorant. Marx never thought
they were geniuses. In one of Marx's works, "The misery of
philosophy", in which he criticizes Proudhon - who called
himself worker, told of himself as a worker, thought of a worker’s
society where all workers put themselves into a cooperative and
exchange between themselves eggs with potatoes and so on - Marx, in
analyzing his theory, explicitly says: the workers are not gods! They
can play their historical role only as a class, and therefore the
assessment, the knowledge which any individual member of the working
class, or all together, have, does not matter, the workers exist when
they fight and organize themselves as a class. It is in the struggle,
in the class struggle, the genesis of the working class. The working
class always exists, but it exists as a class only through the class
struggle. It is what it does in the class struggle that matters, not
what the individual worker thinks. So, out of the struggle, what the
workers think does not matter at all, it is when the working class
struggles that it shows its best characters, then it becomes a
collective, the workers help each other, they are not afraid of the
police ...
Marx's
work is aimed to this, to ensure that the working class struggles.
And then? To do what?
Lenin
says: Marx and Engels educated the working class to know itself, to
become aware of itself, and they replaced chimeras with science. This
is the point. Marx leads a great process of self-awareness of the
class. He does not impose anything but tells the class how to
understand its life, the reasons why its lives in those conditions,
the why of things, what lies behind the appearance of society. Behind
this appearance lies a substance, and Marx returns this substance to
the workers so that the workers understand it.
A
worker who understands who he is, that he produces everything but
makes a life of suffering, that everything in the world, big and
small things, luxury objects or kitchen knives are produced by a
class that does not have nothing for itself, then the worker becomes
a material force, theory takes hold of the working class and becomes
a material force.
The
theory of the working class is a material force, it is not a study to
become some kind of intellectual and to be able to explain crises. Of
course, we explain the crises but we do so to fight those who say
that the crisis depends on that financier who has played everything
on the stock exchange. The theory of crisis, into the hands of the
working class, is the theory of anger, because in the crisis the rich
become richer and the poor become poorer, the "theory" of
the crisis is the "rebellion".
Marx
works for this. He explains the use value and exchange value because
it is needed to understand how they are ripping off you , that when
you go to work every day you produce at the same time, says Marx,
wealth and misery: their wealth and your misery!
Marx
allows us to have irreducible tools that no one can disassemble, no
professor who says "yes, but you must take into account
compatibility, Europe, welfare-State and so on” ... Marx cleans all
this mud and give the workers weapon of criticism.
But,
at this point, Marx says: good! you finally understood, but, with the
same sincerity, I tell you that you do not need only the criticism,
if you do not turn the weapon of criticism into criticism of weapons,
you will not be able to give an answer to your anger, to your
rebellion, you will not change the things, neither the immediate
situation or the future one.
So,
when Engels says that Marx was a revolutionary he does not mean he
was a militant activist just like the others. He was much more. Marx
uses the whole set of weapons of philosophy, science, economy,
physics to arm a class and make it capable to emancipate itself,
because the emancipation of the working class or is realized by the
working class itself or there is nobody that gives it. The communists
are such when they understand this truth.
But
the communists are sometimes bad people, one of them is good, ten go
bad, because they follow a process completely opposite to that of
Marx. Marx studied and returned science. The false communist takes
from the workers and believes to be the subject. "Power to
People" is: people struggle but I am the political chief. This
is the false communist.
All
the scientific work of Marx is aimed to demolish the false
communists, already in its time. In the Manifesto of the Communist
Party there is a chapter dedicated to socialists and communists, to
criticize them, to show that all those ideas, first, have nothing to
do with him and even less have to do with the working class,
secondly, that the working class must take in its hands the struggle,
not hand it over to politicians, or hand it over to "reds"
or "greens".
The
working class party is its vanguard detachment.
Of
course, the vanguard of the working class is always a fusion of those
workers who through struggle and organization have understood
something, and intellectuals who have betrayed their class.
Society
continuously generates intellectuals who betray their class. The '68
has broadly showed it. Many students chose the revolution,
participated and felt the wind of the East, the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, came into contact with comrades who were already
communists. The collective movements and individual randomness
created a generation of intellectuals, revolutionary students ready
to follow the path of Marx, that is the path of Lenin, Mao. But the
key is that these revolutionary students later met the working class,
put themselves at its service, not only to bring leaflets at the
factories, but to really help the workers to grow, to understand that
they had to do a lot more than what they were doing. And they did it.
That is why in Italy there was the "hot autumn", there were
wonderful years, in which the workers came into the schools to
explain the class struggle to the students; then in all the fields it
was seen that it was possible to do things never done before, that it
was possible to transform the universities from places of baronies
and abstract notions into places where society, Marxism, revolutions
were studied, thoughts previously considered as "dogmas"
were put into discussions, for example what is psychiatry, what is
medicine, etc.
In
this sense, many potential Marxist theorists can be generated by the
class-divided society and its imperialistic-parasitic stage. But or
at some point you meet the working class and are able to build that
real movement that helps the working class to become Marxist, and
then your work is useful, or your work is useless, and indeed is
harmful, because in the class struggle there is no chance of being at
half service. All those who put themselves at half service between
working class and bourgeoisie, after a while go with the bourgeoisie.
For
us, the taking up the giant work of Marx is first of all to
understand where we come from, what we are, who we must serve..
This
is the problem that even Marx found. After he was able to impose in
the League of the Just and later in the First International that
there is only one science of the working class, which is the one he
had elaborated, and that all the rest are fables, he himself
dissolved the First International because, he wondered, what purpose
does it serve? We must go among the proletarians. Now, if this
science does not go into the hands of the workers, we are always at
the same point. Here the role of Engels will be decisive.
Because
Engels is gigantic in his work of spreading Marxism. After Marx's
death, Engels took the task of spreading Marxism. And it did it
really well. After Marx's death and the dissolution of the First
International we witness the birth of Marxist parties all over the
world.
The
second International shows how Marxism had become a worldwide
phenomenon. The reference to Marx's theories had become universal for
all those who call themselves communists and all those who take side
with the working class. Engels' role in spreading Marx's thought is
extraordinary. Even Marx knew very well that individual thought is
not enough, if you do not have those who publish books, organize
distribution, those who around all this build contacts, links.
Because communism and Marxism are material force only if they are
handed into the hands of suitable subjects to make them material
force.
In
this battle the struggle always starts from zero, because not all
those who refer to Marxism, for this fact itself, are good and all
those who do not refer to Marxism are bad. Their position is not a
thing once and for all. It is also natural that everyone adapt
Marxism to own social class, the way of thinking that somehow already
has. This way it is evident that within what is called Marxism a
whole series of ideas are inserted that are not Marxist, that are not
communist and therefore, in order to advance the science of Marxism,
it is necessary to clean it up, as Marx did.
For
his whole life, Marx makes a clean sweep, first in Germany with the
Hegelian left, then in the League of the Just, then in the
International. This man was always angry with everyone. Every time,
after every speech, he said: "Stop! What are you saying? Is the
property a robbery? It is not enough! The property has been
transformed: from the property of the slaves, to the feudal property,
and so on "...
How
can we think that without Marxism we can have an alternative view of
the world, that without the social class that produces everything and
by freeing itself will free the whole of humanity, can we have an
alternative society?
The
alternative society is not the happy island, an atoll in the Maldives
where we all can go and live. It is the transformation of the cities
in which we live, the transformation of Italy. These transformations
are possible only with the weapon of Marxism. We understand them only
if we use Marxism as a real weapon, like a pickax, then we can change
this society.
The
200 years since Marx's birth tell us that this science, theory,
politics, practice of Marx are the strategic indication we need.
The
only issue we need to be aware of is that we must become the carriers
of these transformation and strategic weapons. But we are not such
vectors, not enough. The communists are often part of the problem,
rather than part of the solution. This is our issue, an issue fully
of our own.
The
new workers generation must rediscover Marx. The rediscovery by the
bourgeoisie helps us in this task. But our problem is the rediscovery
of Marx by the working class. This can not be done by the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has created its gravediggers but is well
equipped to prevent them from acting, is willing to pay any price of
barbarism or massacres to prevent that happening.
Thus,
the rediscovery of Max by the communists is our problem. A
rediscovery that becomes the rediscovery of Marx by the working
class, by a generation of working class that is not born fully formed
and despite having it in the DNA of its economic and social condition
does not have in the brain the key of the "artificial
intelligence" that is Marxism. "Artificial intelligence"
is a word that Marx would have used because in another text Marx
explains how the exploitation of slaves is "natural", but
the exploitation of the workers is "artificial". In the
sense that it is illegitimate and unjust, it is counter-nature
compared to the needs of society, which should make labor the vehicle
of development, wealth, to reduce the burden of labor.
And
it is still Marx who has explained to us where this is hidden that is
a curse. In the writings of Marx's youthful phase, those will lead to
the finished product called The Communist Manifesto and the rest of
his work, Marx writes: since everything is transformed into
commodities, thereby we have the devaluation of the world of men. The
worker finds himself alienated four times.
He
is alienated from the product: the product of the worker becomes an
oppressive extraneous power, such as to create the cretinism of the
craft, the degradation of the worker. The cretinism of the craft is
what makes him believe that once he produces a product, his worth is
that of the product.
He
is alienated from the purpose: work is imposed, the worker is
subordinate to it, the worker is realized only in reproducing himself
- but this, if resembles to something, is the condition of the
beasts.
He
is alienated from nature: work transforms nature but the worker is
not master of it and therefore does not enter into a conscious
relationship with the transformation of nature - and this is the
basis for which labor in the hands of the capitalist destroys nature.
Nature it appears to him external and its transformation as something
that does not concern him, except as exploited and victim of the its
devastation. The dehumanized worker does not measure his function
towards nature.
He
is alienated from society: another man, a stranger to the worker, is
the master of his work, the worker is forced to see in the other for
whom he works an enemy. The worker, reduced to labor force in a
production for its own sake does not produce for the actual social
needs of the masses and therefore the production itself is not what
he need, because it does not own the work it does.
This
fourfold alienation reveals the secret of why the whole society holds
itself on the working class. It holds istelf on the combination
between the alienation of the working class and its false conscience.
And the intertwining between false conscience and exploitation of
work transforms the work into a curse, into an aspiration for those
who do not have a job and a curse for those who have, because it
chains them, instead of freed work, the work becomes chains. And we
have the absurd that half of the population can not wait to be
chained to work, otherwise they die of hunger,and the other is so
chained by that work that can not live, and in the imperialist stage
of putrefaction of capitalism not only one can not live by work, but
it becomes a factor of death.
In
this context, how do we advance without the use of Marx, without
personally participating in a process of not acculturation, but
self-consciousness of the workers? And Marx has taught us that it is
not an individual consciousness, not psychoanalytic sessions to which
the worker has to submit, it also is class struggle, a participation
in the class struggle. Without participating in the class struggle,
workers can not grow in consciousness. By participating in the class
struggle, workers should not be taken as individuals but as a
collective subject of the class struggle and only in this form they
perform the historical function that Marx attributes them and puts in
definitive terms in the last sentence of the Manifesto: “The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world
to win!”
When
Marx wrote this he knew that it is the keystone of his work. From the
labor-pains of this society in agony a new society is born, able to
overcoming the social death, the death of a system of production that
fails to change things not only for the working class as a whole but
for every single member of this class, and not only of this class but
of all those classes apart the handful of people who have everything
in their hands.
Thus,
it is important that we do not see this 200th
anniversary as just a celebration. If today we can not take Marx back
to us, rediscover him and make the class to discover him, we have
nothing to celebrate. Our celebrations, even when are made with
smiling faces and red flags, risk to be just "funeral"
ceremonies.
We
must be able to say that time is now!
We
must feel all these 200 years on our shoulders, with their richness
but also as an opportunity to really make that qualitative leap we
communists, we workers, we proletarians, we world, need. Otherwise,
where we are going? On the horizon there is a third world war, the
barbarity of environmental devastation, the degradation of politics.
Therefore,
we must take back Marx, because we must help the working class to
rediscover him and make him the instrument of its own conscience.
When we are able to achieve serious results on this, not a single
worker who is a comrade but a class sector we win, factory by
factory, workplace by workplace, then Marx's message will be a blunt
weapon.
If
we can take these steps, we will have invincible weapons. There are
conditions to turn our rhetorical phrases into actual reality. A
reality for which it is worth to live. Because a life as
revolutionary, a life as communists, a life as struggling proletarian
is not and must not be only sacrifice and repression, it must have
the satisfaction, the pride of feeling part of a movement that is
really changing society.
Well,
if we realize that we are doing this, that we have to do this, that
this is possible, then really Max lives!
PCm
– Italy
5th
of May, 2018
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