In the aftermath of the Italian general elections on 25th of September 2022, the Communist International website, in an article dated 14th of October entitled "Imperialism in Crisis: The Growing Torrent of Repudiation and the Crisis in Parliamentarism. 2022 Italian General Political Elections", deals with a political analysis of the elections in Italy, in our opinion this article is questionable mainly for two reasons.
The first is the idealistic and dogmatic basis which the analysis of these comrades relyes on, the second descends from the first, i.e. the absence of correct indications for the working class and the Italian people’s masses useful to make them to advance in the struggle against the new Meloni’s government and the Italian imperialist bourgeoisie.
At the beginning, the quantitative data of the last general elections in Italy are properly read:
With this crisis in parliamentarism, the state becomes weaker in its foundations, and will have to rely more and more on its armed and repressive forces, and thus it becomes clearer to the people that the armed forces are the backbone of the state, and that every state sustains, defends and develops itself by the use of violence, in the face of which the people need revolutionary violence.
Nevertheless, the article takes up a dogmatic approach starting from the use of the PCP quotation, which is far from today's concrete situation in Italy:
… the historical main tendency is the fusion of the People’s War led by the Party, with that great torrent represented by the millions of non registered, non voting and those blank or null vote casters; this is the torrent, which the Party is helping to structure as part of the sea of masses which necessarily will sweep away the old order of exploitation and oppression.
The conditions of imperialist Italy on 2023, in which the class struggle had entered a phase of temporary ebb, after the tide on 2008-2012, following the breaking out of economic crisis, is not comparable to those of Peru on 1990, when an extraordinary people's war process was in progress at the stage strategic stalemate.
The PCP quote is evoked here as a mantra without a concrete application in the real phase and concrete conditions, of Italy after the 2022 elections.
Today in Italy there are some outbreaks of resistance in some factories and sections of the proletariat, above all the immigrant workers of logistics, in some sections of the students movement, anti-war movement, local movements - No Tav, No Tap - movements against repression (in defense of Alfredo Cospito, etc.).
The social-democratic, petty-bourgeois democratic opposition in parliament is also weak, even compared to the standards of "sincere democrats" in a bourgeois democracy albeit in the current stage of decomposition of imperialism.
This objectively unfavorable situation contains in a nutshell the opportunity to be overthrown and turned into a positive development. For this reason, our Party operates everyday among the most exploited and advanced sections of the working class and proletariat, especially in the engineering and steel factories of the North as well as in the South of the country; in the sections of immigrant workers, precarious workers, unemployed, especially in the South. The road is long and tortuous, very different from the triumphalistic descriptions given by The Communist International, according to which the high level of abstentionism would nearly be the eve of the People's War and the Socialist Revolution.
The people’s war culminating in the insurrection for the seizure of political power by the proletariat is our program, in a phase in which our party is in a stage of reconstruction according to this goal and of construction the other two indispensable tools: the United Front and the Fighting Force.
If we apply the Maoist categories of the people’s war stages on our political phase, we Italian Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, as well as other our comrades in other countries, would assess to find ourselves in a political phase of "strategic defensive".
Furthermore, our Party thinks that the world proletarian revolution also is in the same stage at a global level (see also our article published by Two Lines Struggle) and not in that of "strategic offensive" as the comrades erroneously claim.
The fact that IC idealistically thinks that we are all in a phase of "strategic offensive" has the negative consequence of idealizing the class conflict in every country, in this case in Italy, idealizing the current strength of the proletariat.
The comrades write:
The principal aspect is the quality, in the impotency and contention of the bourgeois governments in their role, in the crises, in the deepest and broadest masses, the class, refusing to live as before, in rebelling, in rejecting or repudiating the electoral farce and the bourgeois state.
Therefore, the indication that the comrades of Communist International give to the working class, the proletarians and the people’s masses in Italy is "abstentionism" plus "people’s war", in generic and abstract terms, putting the tactics of abstention at the elections nearly at the heights of the People's War strategy. Exalting electoral abstention without putting this tactics into the broader strategy of the Party and of the Proletarian and Socialist Revolution means to elevate electoral abstentioniss from tactical to strategic. Abstentionism is a thermometer of discontent and the distance of the masses from governments, the State, it is a protest which takes a passive form.
If it is right to indicate the strategic perspective of the People's War, this indication becomes disarmed while it is not accompanied by indication of the objectives to be achieved in the current political phase and with which tactics, serving of the general strategy.
On the contrary, our Party went deeply through the last political elections with a long article published on 25 September 2022, the same day of the elections, in which, in addition to the concrete analysis of the concrete situation, it points out which political line and therefore which tactics and strategy we must pursue in our country in the aftermath of these elections which handed over power to a political coalition led by Fratelli d’Italia (a fascist party) and in which the Lega (a party with neo-Nazi influences) ranked second.
In this analysis we affirm that the answer cannot be mere principled or strategic abstentionism.
It was enough for comrades to extrapolate and quote a short extract of that and paste it into their article to indirectly state that our Party deviates from the MLM and is falling into revisionism.
Once again a shell game (see previous articles published by the same site and criticized by us...). But let's go in order...
We stated that:
[...] is inevitable for anyone who cares the interests of the proletarians and popular masses, but also those of democracy, the defense of rights, a non-dictatorial society, and any other instance that the movements have brought about, including the important point of environmentalism. All these forces have only one necessary and obligatory path, that of the struggle. Not only this, but the objectives of this struggle must oppose in an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and consistently democratic way the plans of the new government. This struggle cannot have the usual forms with which it took place – or failed, since the level of social conflict in our country has been low - but must take the impacting form of social conflict, of antagonism not only in objectives but also in values and in perspective.
So what is the real and concrete way to start the preparations for people's war in our country when the class struggle is still in a stage that we define as "coming out of the long winter for a new 'hot autumn’", and while we are still in the strategic defensive?
For example, particularly on the construction of the United Front ongoing in our country, we state:
Against the united front of the masters, whatever it is the government, we need the united class front, with the working class and the proletarian masses as protagonists and acting, who through their anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle, in the forms that their forces and their level of organization allow to exercise, can be today the only real alternative to the outcome of elections and the forces that competed for polls.
And, further on:
It is on the rebellion against the reactionary march of the new government that we must focus. [...] May we think that this new parliament can oppose it? We wish that in this black parliament there will be opposition voices, but we have to focus on the extra-parliamentary opposition. When we say "extra-parliamentary opposition" we mean not only of the opposition of protests and struggles, but of everything outside parliament, in society, in the mass media, in arts, cinema, music, among journalists, lawyers, scientists, doctors, technicians, etc.. A vast front of people who cannot accept being regimented under a reactionary ideology such as the one professed and in part applied by the new centre-right coalition which is probably on the verge of taking over the government.
Finally, as regards the construction of the instrument of the fighting force:
We need a new proletarian Resistance, suitable for our times, which as always requires party, united front, political and social mass struggles, but also partisan struggle, because the alternative to fascism is not the bourgeois democracy but the alternative of Revolution. Our fathers, our history taught us this, and this history is the one that will have to renew.
Coming back to the issue of abstention, the reality is more complex but this complexity is always difficult and incomprehensible to mechanists and extremists, in fact on the electoral boycott our party clearly states:
The September 25 elections represent an important step for the bourgeoisie, the ruling classes and their allies, the masters and the Italian and world imperialist system; but also for the proletarians and people’s masses who will face a situation that is partly in continuity and partly new. The government that will emerge from the elections is first of all like all other, in continuity with the Draghi’s government but also it will march to strengthen itself and got full powers at the service of the masters and imperialism. Thus we reject any idea of "useful vote", because all the parties that can actually bring deputies to the new parliament are within the vision of the ruling class of our country which seeks the best way to fulfill the general interests which in a capitalist system consists of the interests of the ruling class. As well as we hate to get rid of any illusion of "alternative vote", both because whoever will really be able to get parliamentarians into this parliament is not an alternative, and because the “alternative” lists serve more than anything else to offer to the proletarians and the masses popular the illusion of another way to deal with the situation. [...] Our No to this electoral campaign is nourished by this, our invitation not to give any kind of support to this electoral campaign and to no one of the coalitions competing in the deceitful game to form the new "business committee" of the bourgeoisie.
First of all, it is a loud and clear indication to the masses not to vote, but in order not to confuse the masses and delude them that simply abstaining is enough to express dissent and change reality, perhaps by making "people's war" magically spring from nowhere, we state right after:
So abstention is not the matter. We are neither for abstention by principle nor even for “tactical abstention”. Today opposing these governments with the weapon of struggle is not a tactics but a central element of a strategy of political and social struggle against the system, the governments, the State in our country, which paves the way for the truly alternative way, the path of the proletarian revolution.
On the contrary, we think that today's abstentionism is tinged not only with indifference, disinterest and passivity of the masses but also with weird ideas coming from anarchist or other self-referential groups also in the far left.
Abstention is not the answer. It is an objective need within the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions of these elections, but what we need is participation, organization, to pass from a passive to an active stand, both generally and particularly, even individually, if we look at the status of consciousness and practice of the proletarians and the large masses in the reality of our countryi.1
The most exploited are passive, the factories are still generally passive, certainly with hot spots in their ranks that must be supported and fed, but to this passivity there is only one alternative which is action, not mere electoral abstention.
Based on our concrete analysis of the concrete situation in Italy on September 2022, the indicating abstention, as our Party did to the sections of workers and masses it leads is above all precisely "an objective necessity", it cannot get strategic value for us marxist-leninist-maoist communists and particularly in the current phase not even tactical value as per the above.
Over the years, our Party has adopted the tactic of active electoral abstention: that is to take part in the electoral campaign by organizing a "counter-campaign" made up of actions against the elections themselves, contesting candidates, etc. In the current situation in which, in a process tending towards modern fascism, a fascist party (Fratelli d’Italia) leads the government coalition whose second party (Salvini's League) is marked by fascist and neo-Nazi ideological influences, we affirm that the party, while it is structured, while it contributes to the formation of the united front and the fighting force, with these three instruments, cannot indicate merely the electoral abstention but, once the conditions have been created, the party must make the organized masses, led by the three instruments, break out in the electoral campaign, at the aim of transforming the active electoral abstention that we have already practiced in the past, into a moment of confrontation between the revolutionary masses and the reactionary masses who support these fascist parties.
On the one hand this will help to strengthen the three instruments and on the other hand it will be part of the tactics of the struggle to seize political power starting from the stage of strategic defensive within the people's war strategy.
Furthermore, while the comrades of The Communist International think that by reading the program of Fratelli d'Italia they can understand whether it is a fascist party or not, the first months of government seem to prove what we already stated on 25 September:
No one can sincerely question the fascist nature of Meloni, her probable ministers, the outrage of the laying hands by the reactionary right, represented by Meloni, Salvini, Berlusconi not only on the government but on the state apparatus, the economy, the mass media.
[...] And it is clear that with this absolute majority we are under a dictatorship or a pre-dictatorship that will use the parliament and the laws of the State to transform the Constitution into a modern fascist one, taking a further step in a very long process, which we have always defined as a tendency towards modern fascism, and which now appears on the horizon in much more concrete shapes than in the past.
Underestimating the fascist nature of the new governing coalition and the role it could play in the further reactionary transformation of the state would be short-sighted.
[...] We have no doubt that this new government, with blitz or slow and gradual forms, will target women. Therefore, the women's movement, their requests will not be considered by government policies and any right, any aspiration to freedom and emancipation is bound to collide with this government, and become radical and front row opposition.
Then how can we fail to think that this government, which promises to be worse than Draghi’s one, will openly adopt the reasons for the war of US imperialism, and this means taking an active part in the process triggered by the imperialist invasion of Ukraine towards a new world war, which is a nuclear conflict.
How can we fail to think that the traditional ideological, political, "under the skin" ties with the military authorities, the generals, everything is military and police in this country, can become a disguised military dictatorship in the hands of a centre-right government, with consequent militarization of the territories, emergency laws, police whitch hunt, not only on the communists, the revolutionaries, labeled as "terrorists", but also on all the forces that will oppose them.
How can we fail to think that war and fascism are an indissoluble couple, war leads to fascism, fascism brings war.
[...]
But this is a challenge and an opportunity that must be seized with courage and determination, putting our face and firsthand, to encourage participation, to put forward figures who are symbolically representative of the masses, to whom the masses can turn with confidence and of whom can follow the indications needed to struggle.
Our No to this electoral campaign, our call not to give any kind of support to this electoral campaign and the main coalitions competing in the deceitful game to form the new "business committee" of the bourgeoisie, is nourished by this.
Fascism will not pass, the dictatorship of the masters will not pass!
We need a new proletarian Resistance, suitable for our times, which as always requires party, united front, political and social mass struggles, but also partisan struggle, because the alternative to fascism is not the bourgeois democracy but the alternative of Revolution. Our fathers, our history taught us this, and this history is the one that will have to renew.
Indeed, in these first 10 months of government we have witnessed an occupation of key positions in the state, starting from the Rai (State broadcasting company), by members of Fratelli d’Italia who soon began changing the "rules of the game " for example by introducing the obligation for the radio-TV public media "to promote the birth rate and motherhood". We have seen the Defense Minister Crosetto, who is at the same time an arms manufacturer, take an active part in war plans. In a new-colonial and new-fascist view, this government is addressed to Africa and in particular to the Mare Nostrum area and the ex-colonies (Libya and Ethiopia) as well as to the failed colonies such as Tunisia.
In conclusion, the "criticism" of the comrades of The Communist International is once again a simple instrumental attack, because of the arguments and form in which it is done, rather than a constructive criticism at the service of the Italian and world proletariat.
iThe underlined lines are the only quoted from our article in the paper of The Communist International.
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