Notes by the Way: This Millionaire Business (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Millionaire Business

Mr. Bernard Harris, of the Sunday Express, is worried because under Labour Government (he calls it “Socialism”) “you have no chance to-day of starting a business in Britain which will make you a millionaire before you die.” (Sunday Express, April 11th, 1948.) It seems that the harvest of millionaires has been falling for generations so that to-day “there are only 244 millionaires in Britain. They are the people with incomes of £50,000 a year or more.”

Mr. Harris does not go so far as to say that there will be no new millionaires, but he fears they won’t be hard-working lads like their fathers, but will become millionaires the easy way, “by inheritance or out-and-out speculation.”

“The self-made millionaire, in the sense of the man who has created a vast business from small beginnings, is a fast disappearing species. And he is the only valuable kind.”

He quotes an unnamed jam millionaire who was asked 50 years ago “to give 12 rules for making a million,” and replied, “Repeat ‘hard work’ 12 times.”

So the good millionaires make their money by hard work, and the other millionaires are not good ones. This leads to some curious conclusions. Lord Derby, who died in February last, left property valued at £1,937,838 (Evening Standard, April 8th, 1948), but though he inherited his estates and therefore does not fall into Mr. Harris’s group of valuable millionaires, we do not recall that the Sunday Express ever condemned him as an example of a no-good rich man. Nor did Lord Derby think it of himself. When he was Tory Postmaster-General in 1905 it was the postmen whom he thought were no good. He had nasty things to say about some of them who were trying to work up electoral opposition to him and other M.P.s because, after a Committee appointed by the Government had recommended increases of pay, the Government would not carry out the whole of the recommendations. Lord Derby called the postmen blackmailers and bloodsuckers though later he withdrew the “bloodsuckers” when he found what a storm of criticism it produced The postmen, most of them earning probably between 25s. and 30s. a week, were certainly hard-working— their employer saw to that—but it never got them anywhere.

Mr. Harris also tells us that “there were the Wills, of tobacco fame. Eleven members of that family have died since 1909 leaving a total of £38,000,000 between them.”

In November last Sir William Churchman, a director of the Imperial Tobacco Co. and partner in Churchman’s, died worth £1,102,719. (Evening Standard, 7/2/48).

These ladies and gentlemen got their wealth out of business, in the way Mr. Harris approves but if hard work is the explanation one wonders why the hard-working cigarette makers never get into the millionaire group like their employers.

The truth is, of course, that all great fortunes, whether inherited or acquired during the owner’s lifetime, came out of the unpaid labour of the working class.

* * *

The Garibaldi Communists

When Communists fight elections it is on the principle that no dishonesty is barred provided it gets votes. In Italy, according to a correspondent of the Sunday Express (11/4/48), they are appealing to patriotic sentiment.

“The Red Flag is nowhere to be seen; no hammer and sickle signs disfigure the walls. With a lack of scruple that takes the breath away they proclaim Garibaldi their hero. His head appears on most of their posters.”

However, it seems that Garibaldi’s 81-year-old daughter is still alive and she objects to Communists “hiding behind her father’s picture.”

“Her father,” she said, “never approved of Communism.” “It was founded by a German (Marx) who always hated Garibaldi.” (Daily Mail, 12/4/48.)

* * *

“Freedom of the Press” in Russia

In Russia no political party is legal except the Communist Party and no publication is permitted that opposes the Communist Party. At the United Nations Conference at Geneva on 29th March, 1948, an American delegate, Mr. Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, was challenged to produce proof of his statement that in Russia the press is controlled by the Government. According to a Reuter and Associated Press report Manchester Guardian, 30/3/48) he did so by reading out the Statute which in 1931 gave control of publications to a State organisation known as “Gavlit.”

“It authorised the Gavlit administration to forbid the publication of any works containing ‘agitation and propaganda against the Soviet authority and the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ It entrusted Gavlit with ‘preliminary and subsequent control over published literature both from the political-ideological and from the military and economic viewpoints,’ and authorised confiscation of disapproved publications and the prosecution of persons ‘violating the demands of Gavlit, its organs and authorised representatives’.” (Manchester Guardian 30/3/48.)

The News Chronicle's own correspondent at Geneva reported that although the Russian delegate addressed the Conference after the above had been quoted “he made no reference to Mr. Martin’s quotation.” (News Chronicle, 30/3/48.)

* * *

Japan’s the Friend, not China

Honor Tracy, correspondent in Japan of the Observer, reports that American policy has taken a new turn. “Under this policy Japanese economy is to be restored as quickly as possible, with liberal American help, in the hope of creating better conditions, not only in Japan herself but in the Far East as a whole. Japan is thus to become ‘the workshop of Asia’ as she has always claimed is her proper function.” (Observer, 11/4/48.)

The Report continues :

“Travellers returning to Tokyo from China report . . . indignation that the proposed grants and loans to Japan during the present year should be so much greater than what is being offered to China. The American view, on the other hand, is that China is now disintegrating so fast as to make outside help ineffective.”

It looks as if the “brave Eastern allies” in next war may be the Japs, while China qualifies for the position of a horrid dictatorship.

* * *

Lancashire’s Exports

Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, speaking in London on 9th April, 1948, referred to the struggle to find markets abroad for textiles. “Although the problem of production of textiles this year’ is going to be the biggest problem this country has ever faced, the problem of selling them is going to be even greater, particularly in face of the enormous import restrictions in three-quarters of the trading world. We have put strong diplomatic pressure on every country which is imposing restrictions against us and we have in our various trade negotiations made it a cardinal point to try to open the market wherever possible …” (Manchester Guardian, 10/4/48.)

One of Lancashire’s competitors is Japan and another is U.S.A. Mr. Ewing, Chairman of the Bradford Dyers’ Association, according to a Manchester Guardian report of a speech, “was worried about Japanese competition. Exports of Japanese cotton textiles increased rapidly during 1947 and were equal to three-quarters of Lancashire’s trade. The United States was also developing export trade. Mr. Ewing therefore stressed the need for quality and inventiveness.” (Manchester Guardian, 12/4/48.)

In the meantime, while Japan fights to sell more textiles outside Japan, U.S.A. to sell more textiles outside U.S.A., and Britain to sell more outside Britain, the President of the Board of Trade tells us that “if textile, production does not buck up the clothing ration may have to be reduced.” (Daily Mail, 13/4/48.)

* * *

Is the Church an Essential Industry?

A News Chronicle reporter tells readers that “latest figures show that only 4,000 vicars and rectors have a net income of between £400 and £500 a year. Five thousand earn less than £400—and some hundreds have even less than £300. (News Chronicle, 10/4/48.) He says that parents today will not enter their sons for the Church because of the low pay and “a drive has begun to establish a £500 minimum for vicars and £260 for assistant curates.”

This is all very well but is the Church so other worldly that it hasn’t heard about “wage-freezing” and the policy of allowing increases only in essential industries or where there is increased production?

* * *

Social Reform is not Socialism

While the Daily Express (8/4/48) tells us that things are worse here than in America because “in Britain we have Socialism,” the Daily Mail will have none of it. Criticising a speech in which Mr. Attlee claimed we have had our Socialist social revolution the Mail wrote (24/1/48) :

“For such claptrap read ordinary ‘social reform.’ Bigger names stand upon that role than those of Attlee and Bevin. We cite Disraeli, Chamberlain, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Baldwin.”

We can leave them to fight out the issue which party achieved more reforms of capitalism. As Socialists we heartily endorse the statement that it is claptrap to describe social reform as Socialism.

* * *

The “Daily Worker” is disappointed with Indian Capitalism

Socialists never supported the Indian Nationalist movement, knowing well that the propertied interests which financed and controlled it were only concerned with making India safe for Indian capitalism. Not so the Communists. They urged Indian workers to support Nehru and the Congress Party. Now the Daily Worker professes to be astonished because Nehru’s government treats the Indian workers in the same way that they were treated under British rule.

“What is happening in India? The British trade unionist may well rub his eyes in astonishment. Trade union leaders are being arrested and repressive action is being taken against the Communist Party . . .

“Such happenings were frequent under British rule, but India is now said to be free . . . The plain fact is that little has changed in India except that it is now ruled directly by the Indian capitalists, landlords and princes by grace of the British Imperialists.” (Daily Worker, 9/4/48.)

There is nothing to cause astonishment in the discovery that Indian capitalism is like any other hut how comes it that the Daily Worker should ever have supposed that it would he different?

Edgar Hardcastle

Communist cakes and ale (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Roman Catholic Church has always been well versed in the art of attracting unbelievers, and of keeping hold of them once they have entered the fold. For centuries it has used elaborate ceremonials, processions, and festivals to keep the faithful bemused and impressed.

In no other country has it rung so many changes on these methods of impressing the multitude than in Italy, nor, probably, with greater success. The pomp and pageants associated with Rome are regarded with awe and reverence all over the Catholic world. True, it began to experience some hectic competition before the war from Mussolini and his Blackshirts, but that was a passing phase and those days have gone. Since 1945, it has had the field all to itself—at least until a few weeks ago.

Now, however, another rival has appeared on the scene, and, from all accounts, a very formidable one, too. Not, as might have been expected, a new eruption of Fascists having a second attempt at achieving power and using the old and well-tried technique of pomp and circumstance to do it. No, this time it's none other than the Communist Party, ready as ever to try anything once—if it will help the Communist Party. The object on this occasion was to try to increase the sales of its daily paper, Unita, and at the same time to raise £200,000 for the party’s funds.

And, if they themselves are to be believed, they certainly went in for it in a big way? In fact, so convinced was one of their leaders, Luigi Longo, that there had never been such festive festivals as those organised by the Communist Party, that he worked himself up into a really challenging mood.

“Let our adversaries try to organise anything even remotely resembling our festivals in number and penetration. Not even the Church, now that its high functionaries have made religion a subject of hatred and division rather than of union and love, can succeed in collecting as many people as we do for its functions."—(Manchester Guardian, Sept. 26th, 1949.)

Then, really warming to his theme,

“To you, friends, who will come to Florence after hours of journeying I say we shall meet at dawn in the Plaza Santa Croce, where the unending procession will form up with the entire Central Committee of the Communist Party leading it. Then we shall march through Florence in our tens of thousands, and every Italian worker will be present in spirit with us.

. . . At the Cascine hundreds of stands with all the best products of our 150 other festivals, will be lined up. Chianti wine will flow in torrents, hundredweights of tripe will be on sale . . . The alley is full of news-vendors; each purchaser gets five copies of the ‘Unita' and joins the news-vendor in shouting his sales. . . .”

“. . . Further on there are the five villages, the the women's village, the young Communists' village where late tonight until early dawn there will be dancing, the gourmets village where 2,000 people can eat at once served by groups of comrades, with macaroni for all, roast chicken in such numbers that one might think the race of fowl had been exterminated, and rivers of the best Chianti . . . then the Italo-Soviet Association village with native Russian costumes, and then the Press village, with all the Communist papers exhibited and a nation-wide exhibition of wall newspapers from Italy’s factories. . . . After Togliatti’s speech at 5.30 p.m. mere will be the traditional giant firework display. . . . It will be a great day, another glorious step forward in the history of our paper, of our party, and of the Italian people."

The Manchester Guardian contents itself with the cryptic and sarcastic comment: “No, the Church has certainly not yet arranged anything on this scale in Italy." For our own part we rather like the second paragraph, particularly the conjunction of Unita and tripe. We hope that the Italian workers, for the sake of both their mental and physical digestions, were able to distinguish between the two.

Stan Hampson

The Coming Triumph of Socialism (1936)

From the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is commonly said nowadays that the Socialist movement is in the doldrums, making no headway, and without prospect of doing so. And, indeed, this view has much to support it. What with apathy among many workers who formerly sympathised with the Labour movements—which they thought to be Socialist—and very active hostility among others who now give allegiance to the Fascist Governments, the outlook may be thought to be black indeed. Can it be said in face of these facts that the Socialist movement has any future, except to fight a forlorn defensive action against the encroaching dictatorships?

Yet on closer examination, a very positive and important cause for confidence is found to exist, even if it appears in a curious disguise, that of a misrepresentation of Socialism. For while everywhere the defenders of capitalism proclaim the death of Socialism, they are all compelled in one way or another to pay it lip-service, because of the workers' constantly increasing discontent with capitalism. Never before, not even during and after the War,

were there so many millions of workers actively dissatisfied with the consequences of the existing system of society. Never before was discontent so deep and bitter. The effect of this on politics has been that there are no longer any politicians or parties which can hope to remain popular if they declare themselves unashamedly in favour of capitalism. Look where you will, in Europe, in the Dominions, in the United States of America, all of the capitalist parties have had to disguise themselves so that they can escape the unpopularity which attaches to the name capitalism. Roosevelt has to represent himself as an opponent of the banks and big business, has to seek allies among the Trade Unions and Labour groups, and has to put forward a programme containing reforms which the workers believe to be Socialist. The British ruling class long ago had to cover themselves with a camouflage of Labour leaders (the MacDonald group) and will no doubt be seeking before long to secure other Labour leaders to continue serving this purpose now that MacDonald’s star has waned. In France capitalism had to seek new life under cover of a “ Popular Front," led by a so-called Socialist Party. In Germany Hitler has to call his movement “ National Socialist," and promises that Germany shall become Socialist throughout. Sir Oswald Mosley now has to add these two words to the name of his own organisation, because without them he cannot hope to attract essential working-class support.

Most instructive of all are the shrewd manoeuvres of Mussolini. This ex-Syndicalist, terrorist, defender of the assassination of kings, has never forgotten the need to keep a working-class backing, and. to toy with pseudo-Socialist phrases.

At present he is engaged in explaining away the poverty and unemployment that exist in Italy, and is worried because large numbers of Italian workers believe that life in Russia is preferable to life in Fascist Italy. What does Mussolini do in these circumstances? Externally he tells the world that he supports Hitler’s crusade against Russian Communism; internally, he tells the Italian workers not to be attracted by Russia, because Russia is not Communist, but capitalist. In a Speech reported in the Times (November 2nd, 1936) Mussolini said that the Russian system

is to-day but State super-capitalism carried to its most ferocious expression.

They are, then, all in the same difficulty. They are all seeking to defend capitalism and to resist the only possible alternative, Socialism, but none of them dares to say so. In order to defend capitalism they are all obliged to depict it as a form of Socialism. In order to work up hostility to rival powers they all have to stress the fact that the rival stands for capitalism.

Here lies the sure proof of the coming triumph of Socialism. Men’s minds are looking away from capitalism and towards what they believe constitutes Socialism. Much can happen to delay the worker’s understanding of genuine Socialism, but nothing can now stop it.

The kind of thing that delays the progress we desire does not come only from the Fascists, as a recent action of the Communists will show. A manifesto published by the Communist Party of Italy in an official organ of the Communist International actually proclaims the need for a United Front between Socialists, Communists and Fascists.

The manifesto was published in International Press Correspondence of August 22nd, 1936, and contains the following among other passages: —

Let us reach out our hands to each other, children of the Italian nation. Fascists and Communists, Catholics and Socialists, people of all opinions, and let us march side by side to enforce the right of existence of the citizens of a civilised country, as ours is. We have the same ambition—to make Italy strong, free and happy. Every trade union, every workers’ organisation, every association must become the centre of our new-found unity, of our will to destroy the power of the small group of capitalist parasites who are starving and oppressing us.

The concrete proposal in the Manifesto is that the various Fascist and anti-Fascist groups should unite on the basis of the 1919 Fascist programme, which contained a number of proposed reforms of capitalism. Doubtless the scheme is promoted by Moscow in an endeavour to weaken the Italian Government, and a similar scheme is now being advocated by the German Communists. But whatever the motive behind it, such a policy is opposed to the interest of the working class and of Socialism. Seeing that the defenders of capitalism can only succeed by pretending that they stand for the workers and for Socialism, the one thing needed above all others is a concentrated effort to show the workers that the claim is false, and that an unbridgeable gulf exists between Socialism on the one side, and all kinds of reforms of capitalism on the other. Instead of which the Communists, by their action, are causing the workers to believe that it is possible for Socialists and Fascists to combine and work together.

As against all confusion and betrayals, the Socialist Party stands for independence and for clear-cut Socialist principles.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Change in the Catholic Attitude to Russia? (1944)

From the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Times (September 16th, 1944) prints a report from a special correspondent in Rome on an expected Papal pronouncement dealing with the relationship of the Catholic Church with Russia. Here are two extracts from the correspondent’s article : —

“There is reason to believe that the Pope is preparing to make a fresh pronouncement on the subject of Communism. Such a step seems highly probable in view of the decisive role which Soviet Russia is assuming in world affairs.”

“At the present time the Catholic Church’s two stock guides on the attitude to be adopted towards Communism are Pius XI’s two famous encyclicals, Quadragesimo anno, issued in 1931, which denounces its atheistic basis, and Divini redemptoris (1937), which attacks its propagation of the class war.

“The reconciliation of the Soviet Government with the Orthodox Church deprives the former pronouncement of some of its point, while recent declarations of Communist leaders such as Togliatti, who was for years vice-secretary of the Comintern, that Communism envisages neither the destruction of the middle class nor of private property, are bound to leave some doubt in Catholic minds. The fact that a political group could be formed in Italy under the name of the Catholic Communists shows clearly how much new directives are needed.

“It is possible that the Pope may not go to the length of indicting a new encyclical in answer to these questions, but he may issue instructions in a simpler form, explaining how far collaboration is permissible between Roman Catholics and Communists in practical matters, and where it must cease.”

Saving graces (2020)

Book Review from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Science and Passion of Communism. Selected Writings of Amadeo Bordiga. Edited by Pietro Basso. Brill. 540 pages,

Amadeo Bordiga (1889-1970), the first leader of the Italian Communist Party who later became a prominent figure in the Left Communist opposition to Stalin, was a super-Leninist. Not only did he hold that under capitalism the working class was incapable of understanding socialism but that (for this reason) the working class should not be consulted by the vanguard party as to what to do; this party should seize power as a minority in an armed uprising and then rule on behalf of the workers. So why should he be of any interest to socialists?

After the Second World War Bordiga resumed activity (during the fascist period he had remained in Italy), which for him was mainly a question of developing a correct understanding of Marx. This led to his two saving graces – his analysis of the USSR as capitalist and his view that communist society had to be a society from which production for the market, working for wages, and using money (even as an accounting unit) had disappeared.

According to him, Russia had never ceased to have a capitalist economy. In this he followed up Lenin’s view of the ‘New Economic Policy’ that the Bolsheviks were forced to adopt in 1921 and which Lenin described as the development of capitalism under the auspices of the ‘proletarian state’ (i.e, a state controlled by a vanguard party claiming to have socialism as its aim). For Bordiga, at some point during the 1920s the ‘proletarian state’ ceased to exist but capitalism continued. He preferred to call Russia simply capitalist rather than state capitalist, on the grounds that production was in the hands of enterprises as separate accounting and capital accumulating units producing for the market. Even though he exaggerated the degree of autonomy of state enterprises, he was to be proved right to the extent that, with the collapse of Bolshevik rule in the 1990s, many of the oligarchs who emerged as open capitalists did come from the ranks of those who had managed state enterprises.

To illustrate Bordiga’s view of communism (which we call socialism) the editor has chosen an article written in 1958 entitled ‘The Revolutionary Programme of Communist Society Eliminates All Forms of Ownership of Land, the Instruments of Production and the Products of Labour’. In it Bordiga starts from a criticism Engels made of the agrarian programme adopted by the French Workers Party in 1894 which came out in favour of peasants owning the land they worked even those employing workers. Engels saw this as ‘opportunism’ in the sense of adopting a policy to attract votes that contradicted the socialist aim of common ownership by society of land. This aim, says Bordiga, rules out both peasant cooperatives and either municipal or state ownership of land.

He doesn’t object so much to the word ‘nationalisation’ (also used by Marx) as this implies that the land belongs to the people rather than to a political institution. He ends up rejecting the word ‘property’ – even as ‘common property’ – altogether as it still implies ownership by a restricted group, even if this group is the whole human population alive at a particular time. In communism the existing population would not have exclusive rights over the land to do with it as they pleased, as this would be to exclude future generations. What they will have is the use of the land which they will have to care for and hand down to future generations in the same or better state that they found it. Bordiga quotes Marx:

  ‘Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias’ (Capital, Volume 3, chapter 46).

The words in Latin are from Roman law (which Marx started to study in university) meaning literally ‘good heads of family’. Today, we would use a more familiar form of words such as ‘good stewards’.

This introduces what would now be called an ecological dimension to socialist society as envisaged by Marx. Bordiga, writing in the 1950s as a Marxist, took up this point and developed it in other writings, long before ecological movements got off the ground.

Bordiga goes on to apply this not just to natural resources but also to the instruments of labour made by humans and to the products of their work (hence the article’s title). None of these will be ‘owned’ but will simply be there to be used by good stewards. The concept of ‘property’ and ‘ownership’ is replaced by that of ‘stewardship’ though the word Bordiga uses is ‘usufruct’ (use without ownership).

Bordiga’s brand of Left Communism gave rise to various groups in the 1970s which inherited his (and Marx’s) view of communism as a worldwide society from which classes, private property, the coercive state, markets, money, wages and profits had disappeared. So he deserves some credit for keeping alive, as we have done, the original idea of socialism/communism.

Priced at over £50 this book is mainly for university libraries not the general public. Bordiga’s article is available, though in a different translation, in the Libcom online library.

Adam Buick

Of Wars Hunts & Elections (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was Bismarck who said: "Never are so many lies told as during wars, after the hunt and before elections". The greatest electoral liar in Italian history, Giovanni Giolitti, the Prime Minister (1900-14) who gave his name to a whole era of political crookery, would have been in his element in this year’s Italian election campaign. The methods of persuasion he used to acquire votes were, it is true, somewhat more forceful, infinitely less subtle than those used by contemporary politicians and political parties. Now the crude threats of violence and electors supervised as they voted have been replaced by electoral dinners for a thousand, professionally designed propaganda posters and politically inclined actors, pop singers and sports personalities[1]. But, if you are a politician, your end remains the same: to win a share in the administration of the capitalist system. And no matter how much wool you have to pull over your electorate’s eyes in the process.

Let’s pull the wool aside for a moment and look at the way the sheep, the Italian working class, have obediently followed behind their leaders’ perennial promises of reform, employment, prosperity and a full and happy life.

In a rundown of Italian parliamentary politics since the war, no fewer than nine parties emerge as serious contenders for a share in government. Percentage votes gained in General Elections are as follows:

Held in the shadow of the Cold War and the Soviet-inspired coup in Czechoslovakia, the elections of 1948 easily lent themselves to billing as a straight fight between Christ and anti-Christ, Western freedom and Eastern tyranny. The Christian Democrats found it useful to issue propaganda posters showing a voter filling in his ballot paper with the caption ‘God sees you, Stalin does not’, while Pope Pius XII’s appeal to the faithful to vote for those candidates "who guarantee the right of God and the soul" fell on anything but stony ground. For their part the left-wing front of PCI and PSI could only mutter feebly about the DC wanting to restore the hardships of Fascism.

Yet in spite of all this no party managed (or has managed since) to muster enough votes to run the show itself. What has resulted therefore is a series of coalition governments with Christian Democrat majorities propped up either by ‘centre’ parties (Republicans, Liberals, PSDI) or by the right wing (Monarchists and Neo-Fascists) or, more recently, by the left (PSI). The monotony with which these coalitions rise and fall is matched only by the recurrent lameness of the excuses proffered for their failure by the politicians involved.

The first government set up after 1948 constituted an intransigent “anti-Red” front, utterly hostile to all contact with the PCI and its allies. But times changed. The storm clouds of the Cold War began to pass, the era of Common Market capitalism dawned, the Italian economy strained at the leash to expand into its new European markets. So after a series of disastrous ‘centre’ and ‘centre-right’ governments, several years of negotiation saw the inauguration in 1962 of the ‘opening to the left’, a new line-up of centre and left-wing parties (DC, PRI, and PSI) considered more capable of meeting the new requirements of Italian capitalism. As many governments before it, it declared its first priorities to be economic growth and social reform.

In the event the economy expanded rapidly, but despite its excuses and protestations to the contrary the new governing clique proved no more capable than any other of delivering its promised paradise of reforms in housing, education, health, transport, employment and Southern development. The reason for this, according to the present leader of the PSI, Francesco De Martino, is that “a real Socialist economy has never been tried”. There can be no quarrel with this statement, except that De Martino’s ‘‘socialist economy” turns out to be not a moneyless system of production for use in which reforms, the palliatives and crack-paperings of capitalism, are rendered unnecessary, but some bizarre, dreamlike contortion of capitalism in which ‘‘the importance of the consumer must be recognised while at the same time preventing the speculations of the capitalists”. (Interview in Corriere della Sera, 3 May 1972).

The ‘opening to the left’ cast a ray of sunshine across the largest Communist party in Western Europe, out in the icy political cold for so long. Since the entry into government of the PSI, a ‘friendly’ party, and the subsequent establishment of contact with the disaffected left of the DC, the PCI has pulled out all the stops to destroy its image as a bolshevik, totalitarian party and to meet the left of the ruling coalition half way. It gained local control of certain areas in the 1970 regional elections and since then, sniffing the sweet smell of power, has popularly screamed for law and order just as loudly as the next party and quite openly stated its readiness to enter a government coalition with the PSI and willing elements of the Christian Democracy, a party officially described in the 1968 election campaign as an ‘‘objective class enemy, an instrument of bourgeois repression”. Like Communist parties everywhere it would dearly love its record to vanish from the face of the earth. How can it convince people that from being a puppet of Stalin’s foreign policy, it has turned into a respectable, non-violent, reforming capitalist party no longer tied to the apron strings of the CPSU? This year’s election campaign consisted largely of desperate protestations to the effect that Russian-style, one-party state capitalism is not its aim. [2]

It had a certain measure of success too, in as much as the PCI, as in all General Elections since the war, registered overall gains. But give or take a few votes the balance of political power among the parties remains very much the same. A number of general conclusions can be drawn from the results (see chart above).

Although as yet undecided amid the wheeling and dealing now taking place, a centre-left coalition seems about to be re-formed. Since during the election campaign, however, the PSI had committed itself to a "more advanced balance of forces” (a euphemism for a left-wing coalition to include the communists) it will very likely continue to provide a bridge between Communists and sympathetic Christian Democrats. Perhaps, given the internal disarray of the DC [3], a half-way meeting along it will not be too long delayed.

In the bleak economic situation (last year investments slumped by 10.3 per cent, industrial production by 2.7 per cent, and unemployment soared to over 1 million) and the climate of uncertainty and apprehension created by the terrorist activities of various right and left-wing extra-parliamentary groups, the new union of right-wing forces (the National Right-Wing Front) made the gains everyone expected. But the 56 seats it now holds can hardly be said to constitute the same danger to the parliamentary system as Mussolini’s Fascist Party did in 1921. The effect of the socialisation of industry policies advocated by the MSI, unsurprisingly reminiscent of the programme of the ill-fated Republic of Salo, would be to put a brake on capitalist development. Hence any attempt to bring the Neo-Fascists into the government would meet with the strongest opposition from Italy’s capitalist class. Besides, the largest party representing the interests of this class has declared against any form of union with the right.

A right-wing coup of the type mooted for so long by sensation-hungry journalists seems equally out of the question. Any political regime in charge of an advanced economy needs the active cooperation of its workers, the geese that lay the productive golden eggs. It seems improbable, therefore, that a working class which, despite an atmosphere of social and economic chaos, has just declared itself only 8 per cent in favour of Fascist-style totalitarianism will be panicked overnight into supporting the interests of a tiny minority.

Over 90 per cent of the Italian working class — and make no mistake about this — is just as thoroughly committed to capitalism as ever it was.[4] It has shown this by a massive vote of confidence in the various parties lined up along the capitalist political spectrum. Now for its trouble, until the time comes for it to be hoodwinked again, it will suffer another term of broken promises, insecurity, bad housing, unemployment, struggle to maintain living standards, and all the other features of misery associated with capitalism.

In the political struggle which has just taken place, the word which tripped most freely and most frequently from the lips of demagogues, right, left and centre, was democracy. The election results themselves were variously described as "a triumph for democracy”, ‘‘the maturity of Italian democracy”, “the democratic process vindicated”, etc. And, with a few reservations, these elections were indeed democratic. What is pseudo-democracy, however, is the use the results will be put to by the parties who touted for votes and power. They will need of course to be more watchful than governments in the one-party state capitalist countries like Russia, Cuba and China which have not yet reached the stage of free elections, but this will not remove the ruthless cynicism and total disregard for human, social priorities with which the administrators of capitalism operate. Not that they can do otherwise. They are merely obeying the laws of a system of production for profit which cannot, by its very nature, be run in the interests of the working majority.

None of this is to deny the value of the ballot-box. The right to vote, on the contrary, constitutes a potentially revolutionary instrument which the majority of workers, once they understand where their true interests lie, can use to take over the state, preparatory to the changeover from Capitalism to Socialism. In Italy, without a parliamentary party putting the case for Socialism, the only true democratic way for a worker to use his vote, is to write “Socialism” across his ballot paper. For only with the end of the wages and money system will it be possible to extend true democracy to all departments of life.

Howard Moss

Notes

[1] Concetto Lo Bello, a famous football referee and successful DC candidate in Sicily, came out with a novel solution to social problems: “A youth raised in the traditions of sport will never be a hooligan, a drug addict or at a loss for something to do. What we need are sports fields, gymnasiums and physical training instructors”. (Election speech reported in Corriere della Sera, 4 April, 1972).

[2] To emphasise their ‘Europeanism’, the PCI sent their present leader, Enrico Berlinguer, over to London last year to plead with Harold Wilson not to oppose Britain’s entry into the Common Market. In 1958 the Italian Communist Party had declared its implacable hostility to the Treaty of Rome.

[3] At least eight ‘currents’ can be traced in the DC. The recent passing of Italy’s divorce law aggravated the situation, for although the party’s official attitude reflected the fierce opposition of the Vatican, it by no means received carte blanche for this from all its deputies.

[4] Voting figures are high in Italy — 92.8% in 1968, 93.0% in 1972.

Letter from Italy (1965)

From the February 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political situation and economic conditions in Italy were not entirely new to me when I arrived in 1963. My first move was to contact the local branches of the various parties in Trieste. I had “unofficial” discussions with the Communist Party of Italy and the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (more of these later), and can say right that they are Socialist in name only.

My contact with workers here is limited, political meetings are of the mass type and individual argument is difficult. The only activity of value was among my fellow students in the University and I was fortunate in meeting one young fellow who became particularly interested in the Socialist case. We used to discuss heatedly in between lectures and in our free time, and he certainly kept me busy answering his objections one after the other. After a winter of argument, he was becoming very sympathetic, but my hopes of his help in forming a Socialist group in Trieste were not fulfilled, as I left there that summer and he was due to graduate anyway,

Travelling about Italy for a while gave me a good chance to get to know something of the Italian working class and its political movements, but before going further, it would be best to name the main parties: so here they are.

Christian Democratic Party: The party in power at the time of writing. Conservative, hand in glove with the Church. Gets about 32 percent of the votes.

Communist Party of Italy: The major opposition party. About one third of supporters are religious (this was admitted to me by the Trieste Secretary). After the war joined by many ex-Fascists, some of whom have become M.P.’s. Despite its professed hatred of Fascism, the party has much in common with Fascist ideas and methods, e.g. violence and dictatorship. Most of its supporters know little or nothing about Communism, or Socialism, and many of them vote C.P. more as a protest against present government policies than for any positive reason. Gets about 24 per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Democratic Party: A reformist party. Exalts the Scandinavian brand of “Socialism.” Recently joined the Christian Democrats in a coalition, fearing a Communist majority. Gets about eight per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party: Breakaway from the Communist Party in the fifties. Policy is like the weather—very changeable, sometimes supporting the communists and sometimes the Christian Democrats. Gets about six per cent of the votes.

Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity: Breakaway from the Socialist Democratic Party when the latter joined the government. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Liberal Party: Has similar policies to the Liberals in Britain, but also spends much of its time attacking the Communist Party and castigating the government for not dealing more severely with them. Gets about 10 per cent of the votes.

Italian Republican Party: Minor organisation, advocating a republic. Favours economic development, high protective tariffs, extensions of state power etc. Gets about 1.5 per cent of the votes.

Italian Social Movement: Composed of riff-raff and remnants of the old Fascist Party. Puts forward the sort of policy you hear from the Fascists in Britain and gets an alarmingly high proportion of the votes cast —about twelve per cent.

Italy is a political chaos. I am aware of about fifteen political parties, eight of which are represented in Parliament, and no less than seven claim to be Socialist. One of these, the Socialist Democratic Party (not to be confused with No. 3 above) is a splinter from the Italian Communist party and operates in the Trieste area, supporting the actions of the Yugoslav government. Needless to say, Socialism is the last thing any of them could be accused of supporting. They are a bunch of power-thirsty careerists, struggling to get control of Montecitorio (equivalent of Westminster) to run Italian capitalism.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, Italian capitalism has been going through an economic crisis in the past year or so. The government has been forced to nationalise the privately owned section of the electricity supply and this has been followed by an increase in the price of electricity. But this has not been the only price rise. The cost of living increases substantially each year and strikes for higher wages are very frequent At the time of writing, it is somewhat quieter but at one stage there were three or four strikes a day. And strikes in Italy are no genteel affairs.

The Italian working class are forced to struggle, but there is no evidence of any growth of socialist ideas amongst them. Anyway, more or less militancy is not a measure of Socialist knowledge and while wishing workers all power to their elbow in these fights, we should not let ourselves be dazzled by it, as Trotskyists and other political idiots are. We should not forget that even the most daring strikes are only really a struggle against the downward pressures exerted by capitalism. I was forcefully reminded of this point when reading Carlo Sforza in his L’Italia dal 1914-1944. He says that there were 1881 strikes registered in 1920 and 1045 in 1921. So after more than forty years it is the same old story; the struggle goes on. If nothing else, this is a telling point in favour of Socialism.

Remy Starc

"The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist parties of France and Italy are the biggest in Europe. The Italian party has 1.7 million members, and the French party half a million members. The Italian party holds 29 per cent. of the seats in Parliament and has 33 per cent. of the total vote (Guardian 16th February 1976). The present minority government, the Christian Democrats, depend on the Communists in order to rule, and it seems likely that the Communists will succeed to power. The position in France is said to be that the “Socialists and Communists will combine to form the next government”. Both Italian and French parties, we are told, have renounced the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and are now relying on democratic methods to obtain and hold political power.

It is not the first time that the Communist parties have turned a complete somersault with embarrassing changes of policy. In the Sunday Times 29th February 1976, Mr. Napolitono, the Italian leader, had this to say about NATO when asked how a Communist party could remain a partner in an anti-communist alliance: “Everything changes. The NATO alliance is not the same as in 1950. In those days we took the view that the NATO alliance was potentially aggressive. But now the danger of an aggressive initiative by NATO against the Warsaw pact has disappeared”. This type of blatant dishonesty characterizes the Communist parties everywhere. A lie becomes the truth when circumstances demand it. What however have not disappeared are the nuclear missiles, the Polaris submarines, and the hordes of armed men ready to disembowel each other over the ownership and control of the earth’s resources at the behest of these unprincipled opportunists and their Moscow parents.

At the moment, the Italian and French capitalist classes are finding increasing difficulty in administering the system. Social problems are mounting, together with the effects of the present world slump. Both countries have unemployment well over the million mark: Italy has 1.3 million unemployed. In these circumstances, the capitalists are prepared to allow the cause of the Communists to advance, having heard them give assurances that they will uphold the national interest at the expense of cutting the ideological ties with the Soviet Union. It is significant that both French and Italian leaders were absent from the Moscow International Congress of World Communist Parties. Perhaps they decided not to risk it.

Communisls & Democracy
Should the Communist parties in both countries take over the running of the governments they will declare themselves for what they really are — the servants of capital. As such they will be forced to come into conflict with the workers and oppose demands where those demands do not harmonize with the interests of the ruling class. This is inevitable, for no political party can serve two masters. They will also show their impotence in solving problems which a class society produces, where events are in control, and where their forked tongues cannot help them.

The new-found democracy they now assume has been produced as evidence of their enlightenment, when in fact it was thrust upon them. Never at a loss to display their talents for turning night into day, they now seem to be claiming credit for discovering democracy. Mr. George Marchais, secretary of the French party, claims to have “defined, clarified and enriched the strategy of the political party line. This line lays down the democratic way we propose to Frenchmen to lead them to socialism . . . we have also taken into account national characteristics and traditions to build socialism with the colours of France”. (Times, 28th February, 1976).

The history of the Communist parties throughout the world is an unrelieved story of dictatorial organizations, having at their head the absolute dictatorship of the Communist party in Russia. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the Communist party are two fundamentally different conditions. The former, which basically means conscious majority rule, has never existed in Russia. With the present exception of the Chinese party, whose international ideology has had to give way to the building-up of state capitalism and the defence of national interests, all Communist parties have to be regarded as Trojan horses of Soviet capitalism. The fear of the more ignorant politicians is that if the Communists ever get power in the West they will emulate Lenin and never let it go. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Lenin shut down the Constituent Assembly and abolished free elections, set up censorship, and abolished other democratic rights enjoyed by workers. Had free elections been allowed shortly after the hollow victory of the revolution there was a real danger that the Bolsheviks might have been voted out of power, and Lenin was not prepared to risk it.

The conditions in a modern capitalist country are very different from those obtaining in Russia are 1917. The parliamentary system of government based on a democratic franchise means that property questions can be settled by a democratic vote. Generally, the democratic system of election and an uncensored press, free trade unions, and the freedom of political parties to have their say, grows naturally out of the conditions of free trade. As Engels said, the bourgeois democratic republic is the natural state for capitalism.

Marx's Phrase
In May 1875 the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, led by Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, and the General Association of German Workers, founded by Lassalle, decided to unite under the name of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. The unity congress was held at Gotha. Prior to the conference, a programme outlining the aims of the new organization was sent to Marx for his criticism. In a letter to Bracke, a founder member of the Social Democratic Party, Marx criticized the Programme. It consisted of a number of vague, and in many cases ethical, propositions which could mean anything. The first proposal, “Labour is the source of all wealth and all cultures”, Marx showed was incorrect, as it ignored the part played by nature.

In criticizing the democratic section II “The Free basis of the State (government machine)” he said : “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one with the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”. (The letter was published by Engels in 1891, 15 years later). This is the historic statement which Lenin seized upon as justifying the dictatorship in Russia and the failure of the Bolsheviks to solve the problems of production without which Socialism is impossible. The transformation between capitalist and communist society became twisted to mean a transition between Socialism and Communism. Socialism being a “lower stage” and Communism a “higher stage”.

The elaborate falsification of Marx’s theory was connived because the Russian revolution was represented to the world as a Socialist revolution, but the Socialism was absent because the conditions for its establishment were absent. The historic revolutionary rôle of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was to build up a capitalist society in Russia, and they knew it, despite the fact that the Bolshevik party contained a number of Marxist thinkers. There was no other course open to them.

"The Transition Period"

Marx’s phrase about the transformation between capitalism and communism could not apply, because capitalism had not developed in Russia. Moreover, Marx was discussing the kind of action the workers ought to take after they had gained political power and Socialism had been established, and the State had become the agent of working-class emancipation instead of an instrument of oppression, and also what changes the form of the State would undergo in communist society. In Marx’s view there could only be a scientific answer to that, and it was what the conference ought to be discussing: not the “freeing of the State” but its transformation within the new conditions of production which communism would bring forth. Earlier in his criticism, dealing with the section on the “fair distribution of the proceeds of labour”, he said: “What we have to deal with here is a Communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmark of the old society from whose womb it emerges”.

(Critique of the Gotha Programme, p.16, Progress Publishers, Moscow.)

Marx cannot be cited as an advocate of dictatorship. A few years earlier, in his book The Civil War in France, dealing with the Paris Commune, he wrote: “The Commune was essentially a government of the working class: the result of the struggles of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form under which the freedom of labour could be attained being at length revealed”. Engels, in his introduction to the work, said: “Of late, the German philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the workers’ Dictatorship of the Proletariat: well and good gentlemen, do you want to know what this Dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune, that was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. (Civil War in France, p.19, Martin Lawrence, 1933.)

Those who know something of the brief history of the Commune will know that instead of the suspension of democracy, it was founded on its most thoroughgoing use. Dictatorship, in the final analysis, must come to mean a form of government by a single individual or of an organization over a great mass. Both these forms are impossible in a Socialist society. The Socialist movement is not a minority movement, it is a movement consciously pushing the interests of the majority. This marks it off from all previous movements which were movements of minorities in the interests of minorities. This mass movement can only be organized on a democratic basis. Everyone will and must know what fundamental issues are involved, and what is expected of them. Participation requires understanding.

It should be borne in mind that Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme was not meant for publication, and it was contained in letter form. Furthermore, it was addressed to Wilhelm Bracke and other founders of the Social Democratic Party to be sent to Bebel and Liebknecht, all of whom were men of long experience in the Socialist movement, and who were all familiar with Marx's ideas and writings. Their interpretation of what Marx meant would have been different from that of the ordinary layman. One thing is indisputable, and that is that the Communist party have no claim whatever to represent the work of Marx. They cannot abandon the Dictatorship of the Proletariat because they have never known the meaning of it, let alone accepted it.

Establishment of Socialism

We in the Socialist movement do not accept the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as a transitional period. We have no need to because class society will be abolished simultaneously with the establishment of common ownership. The State machine will be under the direct control of Society, and its repressive organs will be the first to be abolished. Other social and administrative functions, will be developed in accordance with prevailing social requirements. All forms of social re-organization will be under the democratic control of the community. No political transition will be required because political society ends with the abolition of social classes. The political transition takes place before the eventual victory of the proletariat. Capitalist ideology has given way to Socialist ideology — the revolution is complete.

One of the difficulties facing Marx was that the Gotha Programme was not a Socialist programme, nor were the parties to it Socialist parties. However, these were all Marx had to work on, and he had to do the best he could, in all the circumstances. Experience has shown that a well-intentioned leadership with Socialist ideas is not sufficient to change society. The SPGB has learnt this lesson from history.

Jim D'Arcy

Misreading fascism (2018)

Book Review from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Fighting Fascism’. By Clara Zetkin, (edited by Mike Taber and John Riddell. Haymarket, £10.99)

This booklet reproduces two main writings of Zetkin on fascism: her report and resolution presented at the Third Enlarged Plenum of the Communist International’s Executive Committee in June 1923, and her speech to the German Reichstag in 1932.

Clara Zetkin was an iconic left-wing German Marxist and close friend of Rosa Luxemburg who opted for the political line taken by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, becoming a champion of the Third International. She stayed on the side of the Third International although not without some regrets, even during the rise and ‘splendour’ of Stalinism.

In order to appreciate the historical and political relevance of Zetkin’s analysis, the reader should consider that this came less than one year after the report (Rapporto sul Fascismo) presented by the then leader of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) Amadeo Bordiga. His report at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International came a few days after Mussolini had come to power. The fascists’ Marcia su Roma had taken placed while the Italian delegates were away at that congress. This is not a negligible detail if we consider that eight days after Bordiga’s Report on Fascism the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party sent a letter to the Italian delegation, signed by Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek and Bukharin to impose the fusion between the PCd’I and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), from which the PCd’I had split only a little less than two years earlier. Bordiga was a tenacious opponent of the reunification imposed by the International in the name of the ‘united front’. This tactic and the interpretation and attitude toward fascism were very much interlinked. So in June 1923, while Bordiga was in jail, and the change of guard at the leadership of the Italian Party – its Bolshevisation – was coming about, an adjusted interpretation of fascism would strengthen and justify the new direction. This re-interpretation was in fact Zetkin’s report and resolution.

To be fair, Zetkin’s interpretation of fascism, and Italian fascism in particular, is in many respects truthful and in line with Bordiga’s report. However, her version is studded with assumptions and convictions that served the political plan of discrediting Bordiga’s ‘infantile’ position (e.g. of no compromises with social-democrats and Massimalists), and winning the new leadership under Antonio Gramsci over to the united front story. For Zetkin ‘Fascism arrives . . . as punishment because the proletariat has not carried and driven forward the revolution’ and that ‘Fascism [is] an expression of decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy . . . bourgeois state’s dissolution’. ‘The weaknesses of the Communist Party [of Italy] also played a role here . . . policy error in viewing fascism solely as a military phenomenon and overlooking its ideological and political side’.  According to Zetkin’s view, the violent struggle against fascism would allow the proletariat to ‘grow conscious, stronger, and more purposeful’. Thus, ‘To the masses! . . . but maintaining Communist Ideology . . .  Meet violence with violence’.

Fascism did not arrive as a punishment because the workers and their leaders shied away from revolution. As already pointed out by Bordiga in his report, fascism was adopted by the industrial and agrarian bourgeoisie to violently physically repress the workers who occupied factories and fields in the turmoil following WWI. Looking a bit closer, one can see that fascism was in fact generated by the bourgeoisie itself. Money for Mussolini’s journal and the creation of his pseudo-anti-parliamentary-pro-worker patriotic movement (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento) came mainly from the Italian bourgeoisie.

Nor was fascism an expression of capitalist economic disintegration. Italy was thrown into the First World War completely unprepared, by a secret pact involving the king, Vittorio Emanuele III, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sidney Sonnino and Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, representing the interest of industrial bourgeoisie hoping for easy spoils. By 1922 the country had already covered 79 billion lira of war costs without borrowing anything from other countries. 

When reading Bordiga’s report it is also clear that the Italian Party did not see fascism as a mere military phenomenon.

1919 was in fact a bad year for fascism still stuck with patriotic demagogy. At the end of the war the liberals had some difficulty in keeping control over the army generals. This was evident when the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, from whom Mussolini later stole completely his style and propaganda, managed to get several generals on his side to occupy the Italian-speaking city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), which according to the secret negotiations between Sonnino and the Entente was to go to Yugoslavia.

The old fox Giovanni Giolitti also thought he could use Mussolini’s fascists to get rid of the D’Annunzio movement, which was destabilising the army’s hierarchy, and to reduce the spread of working class organisations in particular in rural areas. He was looking for a political entity to go into coalition with. At the end of 1920, with government backing, the fascist ‘punitive expeditions’ started to terrorise the rural north of Italy. At the election of 1921 the fascists finally entered into parliament. They were not enough to serve Giolitti’s plans, who now had PSI and Popolari (Catholics) against him.

Thus, Mussolini’s fascists gained strength when the agrarian bourgeoisie, mainly of Emilia, Lombardy and Tuscany first, and the industrial bourgeoisie of big industrial cities such as Turin and Milan, saw in the fascists’ aversion towards working class organisations a viable anti-working-class weapon, even more effective than the Guardia Regia that up to then had violently repressed any insurrection. The advantage of using para-military fascist squadrons was that they could physically eliminate the leaders of the working class institutions, like the Mafia was doing in Sicily. The demobilisation of the army helped the fascists to recruit veterans who no longer fitted into society. Nevertheless, as we just mentioned, the fascist violence in the country as well as in the urban areas had always been tolerated if not facilitated by the police forces.

When Mussolini took power in 1922, against Giolitti’s calculations, the king did not enforce the state of siege ordered by the then Prime Minister, and permitted this. Hardly a coup d’etat when the Head of State gives his blessing.

Contrary to Zetkin’s, Zinoviev’s and other Third Internationalists’ expectations, Italy was not ready to conduct a successful working class revolution, ‘like in Russia’. This was acknowledged in Bordiga’s report. Instead of being an ‘expression of decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy’ fascism was an authoritarian adaptation of the political representation of capital’s interests.

The risk in adopting Zetkin’s view is to accept the false notion that fighting exclusively against fascism would automatically result in an emancipation of the working class. The danger today is that the ‘fight against fascism’ becomes a fight only against Trumpism, just because his bombastic ego may resemble Mussolini’s. Or that the victory against ISIS (a typical paramilitary ideological movement) is seen as a liberation of the working class in the Middle East from capitalism. The fight against fascism must not become a ‘moral question’. It is a class struggle question just as much as a fight against any other form of representation of capital’s interest is a class struggle question.

Cesco

Fascism and the State (1927)

Editorial from the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we urge the supreme importance of the working class capturing Parliament, with the administrative departments and local councils which it controls, we are often met with the argument that the Fascists came to power in defiance of the then constitutionally elected Italian Government. Even if this were true it would still not necessarily follow that the overthrow of capitalism could be achieved, or could best be achieved by methods which succeeded well enough in a quite opposite object, i.e., the strengthening of the capitalist state in the interests of a section of the ruling class.

But, as we have pointed out before, the Fascist seizure of power took place not in defiance of, but with the approval and active assistance of, the democratically elected Italian Government. But for that active assistance Mussolini and his followers would have been helpless. Then, as before and since, the possession of the State machinery proved to be the deciding factor.

Our view has received interesting confirmation from three sources—the Italian Communist, Bordiga; Professor Salvemini, a Liberal; and Modigliani, of the Italian Socialist Party.

Bordiga says (Labour Magazine, February and March, 1923):

  After the Nitti, Giolitti, and Bonomi Governments, we had the Facta Cabinet. This type of Government was intended to cover up the complete liberty of action of Fascism in its expansion over the whole country. During the strike in August, 1922, several conflicts took place between the workers and the Fascisti, who were openly aided by the Government. One can quote the example of Bari. During a whole week of fighting, the Fascisti in full force were unable to defeat the Bari workers, who had retired to the working-class quarters of the city, and defended themselves by armed force. The Fascisti were forced to retreat, leaving several of their number on the field. But what aid the Facta Government do? During the night they surrounded the old town with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of carabineers of the Royal Guard. In the harbour a torpedo boat trained its guns on the workers. Armoured cars and guns were brought up. The workers were taken by surprise during their sleep, the Proletarian leaders were arrested, and the Labour headquarters were occupied. This was the same throughout the country. Wherever Fascism had been beaten back by the workers the power of the State intervened; workers who resisted were shot down; workers who were guilty of nothing but self-defence were arrested and sentenced; while the magistrates systematically acquitted the Fascisti, who were generally known to have committed innumerable crimes. Thus the State was the main factor in the development of Fascism.

Professor Salvemini gives similar testimony (Manchester Guardian, October 19th, 1927):—

  Mussolini was assisted in the civil war (1921- 1922) by the money of the banks, the big industrialists and landowners. His Black-shirts were equipped with rifles, bombs, machine guns and motor lorries by the military authorities, and assured of impunity by the police and the magistracy; while their adversaries were disarmed and severely punished if they attempted resistance.

And lastly Modigliani tells us (Daily Herald, October 27th, 1927):—

  It was by their (the Italian Cabinet's) contrivance and with the help of military forces of the State that Mussolini and his gangs were able not only to administer Castor Oil, but to murder and burn for two years. And it is in that way that they finally reached the point of the march on Rome, in face of which the King openly and personally sided with the anti-Labour onslaught.

Was Antonio Gramsci a Socialist? (2017)

From the April 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month sees the 80th anniversary of the death of an icon of the left – Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian political activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime in 1926 and died while still a captive 10 years later from a combination of illnesses. He was an undoubtedly courageous figure who fought difficult family circumstances when young to educate himself and became a prolific writer and editor for the emerging left-wing press in Italy in the second and third decade of the 20th century. He wrote intensively of the need for both workers’ rights and workers’ revolution and actively involved himself in the political action he advocated. He was a leading member of the foremost left-wing movement, the Italian Socialist Party, until, after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, his disenchantment with what he saw as their over-timid approach led him to become, in 1921, one of the co-founders of the Italian Communist Party, which pledged allegiance to Lenin and the Bolshevik regime. Then, in 1922-23, he spent a significant period in Russia as delegate to the Communist International (‘Comintern’) and, on his return to Italy, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and served until his arrest and imprisonment. Sentenced to 20 years for subversion, he was however able to continue writing in prison, where access to books and the extensive knowledge of history and politics he had accumulated during his years of political activity led him to produce a mass of notes, observations and essays on an astonishingly broad spread of topics, later ordered into what were called the Prison Notebooks. It is largely on these and on the collection of letters he wrote from prison – mainly to family members – that his reputation as a social and political theorist lies.

Hegemony

Gramsci is said, in the Prison Notebooks, to have developed a new and original kind of Marxist sociology, which, over the last half century or so, has engendered a vast range of debate, interpretation and controversy by academics and others – the so-called ‘Gramsci industry’. One of the key matters debated has been his concept of ‘hegemony’ (‘egemonia’). This was the term Gramsci used to describe what he saw as the prerequisite for a successful revolution: the building of an ideological consensus throughout all the institutions of society spread by intellectuals who saw the need for revolution and used their ability to persuade and proselytise workers to carry through that revolution. Only when that process was sufficiently widespread, would successful revolutionary action be possible. So hegemony was what might be called the social penetration of revolutionary ideas.

This outlook is very different from the fervour with which in earlier years Gramsci had greeted the Russian revolution and advocated similar uprisings in other countries. By the second half of the 1920s, with Italy ruled by a Fascist dictatorship and opposition leaders exiled or imprisoned, Gramsci came to see revolution as a longer-term prospect which would depend on the conditions existing in individual countries.

And it is this ‘long-term’ idea of revolutionary change that has been interpreted in very many different ways according to the standpoint or political position of the individual commentator. One way it could be read would seem to tie in closely with the Socialist Party’s view that only through widespread political consciousness on the part of workers and majority consent for social revolution can a society based on the satisfaction of human needs rather than on the profit imperative be established. In this light Gramsci’s hegemony could be seen to have the profoundly democratic implications of insisting on a widespread and well-informed desire among the majority of workers for socialist revolution before such a revolution can come about. Indeed it is clear that Gramsci was not unaware of Marx’s ‘majoritarian’ view of socialism (or communism – they were interchangeable for Marx) as a stateless, leaderless world where the wages system is abolished and a system of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ operates. In an article written in 1920, for example, Gramsci refers to ‘communist society’ as ‘the International of nations without states’, and later from prison he writes about ‘the disappearance of the state, the absorption of political society into civil society’. However, though he referred to himself as using ‘the Marxist method’, such reflections on the nature of the society he wished to see established are few and far between and cannot reasonably be said to characterise the mainstream of his thought.

Leninist

When looked at closely in fact, Gramsci’s thought is overwhelmingly marked by what may be called the coercive element of his Leninist political background. So, while undoubtedly in his later writings he came to see the Soviet model as inapplicable to other Western societies, he nevertheless continued to conceive of revolution as the taking of power via the leadership of a minority group, even if in different circumstances from those experienced by Lenin in Russia. The most important pointer to this lies in Gramsci’s view of the state. Hardly ever does he view socialism other than as a form of state. The overwhelming thrust of his analysis and his recommendations for political action point not to doing away with states and the class divisions that go with them but to establishing new kinds of states. In 1919, enthused by the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, Gramsci wrote: ‘Society cannot live without a state: the state is the concrete act of will which guards against the will of the individual, faction, disorder and individual indiscipline ....communism is not against the state, in fact it is implacably opposed to the enemies of the state.’ Later too, in his prison writings, arguing now for a ‘long-term strategy’, he continued to declare the need for states and state organisation, for leaders and led, for governors and governed in the conduct of human affairs – underlined by his frequent use of three terms in particular: ‘direzione’ (leadership), ‘disciplina’ (discipline) and ‘coercizione’ (coercion).

So, despite what Gramsci himself recognised as changed times and circumstances compared with Russia in 1917, he continued to be profoundly influenced by Lenin’s view that ‘if socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years’ – in other words that genuine majority social consciousness was unachievable. And in line with this, when looked at closely his ‘hegemony’, far from eschewing the idea of a revolutionary vanguard, sees an intellectual leadership taking the masses with them. In other words the ‘consent’ that his hegemony, his long-term penetration of ideas, proposes is not the informed consent of a convinced socialist majority but an awakening of what, at one point he refers to as ‘popular passions’, a spontaneous spilling over of revolutionary enthusiasm which enables the leadership to take the masses with them and then govern in the way they think best.

Human nature

Underpinning this lack of confidence by Gramsci in the ability of a majority to self-organise is a factor little commented on but particularly significant – and that is his view of what may be called ‘human nature’. In writing explicitly about human nature, which Gramsci does on a number of occasions, he expresses agreement with Marx’s view that human nature is not something innate, fixed and unchanging, not something homogeneous for all people in all times but something that changes historically and is inseparable from ideas in society at a given time. This view of humanity is in fact described by Gramsci as ‘the great innovation of Marxism’ and he contrasts it favourably with other widely-held early 20th century views such as the Catholic dogma of original sin and the ‘idealist’ position that human nature was identical at all times and undeveloping. But despite Gramsci’s stated ‘theoretical’ view on this topic, scrutiny of his writings in places where ‘human nature’ is not raised explicitly but is rather present in an implicit way points his thought in a different, more pessimistic direction.

When he writes about education, for example, his pronouncements about the need for ‘coercion’ indicate little confidence in the ability of human beings to behave fundamentally differently or to adaptably change their ‘nature’ in a different social environment. In corresponding with his wife about the education of their children, in response to her view that, if children are left to interact with the environment and the environment is non-oppressive, they will develop co-operative forms of behaviour, he states ‘I think that man is a historical formation but one obtained through coercion’ and implies that without coercion undesirable behaviour will result. Then, in the Prison Notebooks, on a similar topic he writes: ‘Education is a struggle against the instincts which are tied to our elementary biological functions, it is a struggle against nature itself.’ What surfaces here as in other places, even if not stated explicitly, is a view of human nature not as the exclusive product of history but as characterised by some kind of inherent propensity towards anti-social forms of behaviour which needs to be coerced and tamed.

Viewed in this light, Gramsci’s vision of post-revolutionary society as a place where human beings will continue to need leadership and coercion should not be seen either as being in contradiction with his theory of ideological penetration (‘hegemony’) or as inconsistent with the views that emerge about human nature when his writings do not explicitly focus on that subject. So we should not be surprised that Gramsci’s vision for the future is not a society of free access and democratic control where people organise themselves freely and collectively as a majority but rather a change from one form of minority authority to another – a change from a system of the few manifestly governing in their own interests to the few claiming to govern in the interests of the majority.

The evidence of Gramsci’s writings therefore suggests that the revolution he envisages is not one in which democracy in the sense of each participating with equal understanding and equal authority prevails. Crucially, the leadership function is not abolished. The hegemonisers will essentially be in charge, since they will be the ones with the necessary understanding to run the society they have conceived. What this society might be like he does not go on to say in any detail. But it would clearly not be a socialist world of free access and democratic control that rejects authority from above together with its political expression, the state. For Gramsci any such considerations were at best peripheral to the thrust of his thought and his social vision. And though he did have a revolutionary project, it is not a socialist one in the terms that socialism is correctly understood.

Howard Moss