Although we still find ourselves in a profoundly counterrevolutionary phase, we work, in the tradition of the communists who preceded us, toward the preparation of the future general rebirth of the working-class revolutionary movement, enriched by all the achievements of past experience.

It is in the awareness of this necessary common goal that the will and passion of the party’s militants for communism and the urgency to escape the hell of bourgeois society are projected into a unified, productive, and rational activity aimed at advancing the project of human life, the program of communism.

Within its hierarchy of disciplined and organic work, where “no one commands and everyone is commanded,” the various organs of the party move as a group in battle formation, attacked on all sides by a relentless and omnipresent enemy. Within the common trench, the militants, in contact with the social struggle of the working class, “breathe the air” of communism, behave as communists, and already live in communism. They defend the party’s harmonious working atmosphere, which fosters the full development of all militants—including on a personal, intellectual, and practical level—according to the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” across all sectors of political activity, so that, in principle, every comrade is qualified for all the party’s tasks.

Today’s formal party tends to align itself with the historical party of the past. History has seen the formal parties of communism rise and fall. Only that party which has fully and correctly absorbed the lessons of the historical party will be able to lead the rising proletarian masses in the supreme act of revolution.

The living formal party, engaged in the daily social struggle, continually adds new elements of experience to the historical party’s legacy.

Fraternal consideration among comrades

The formal party is not the sum of its members; the party precedes its members; members come and go, but the party remains, an impersonal prefiguration of the future society. The consciousness of communism exists only within the collective of the party—the party in the broadest sense—and is reflected only partially in the minds of individuals.

This impersonality requires internal relations guided by fraternal regard among comrades, entrusting the resolution of all issues to an impersonal scientific method, in the awareness that it is the organic whole of the party that can distinguish the correct path from deviations.

The party, in fact, united by a common goal and guided by a fully formulated program, carved by history into a single solid block, which contains within it the solution to all fundamental tactical and programmatic questions, rejects the method of internal political struggle. Just as, having rejected the filthy bourgeois ideology of democracy, it also excludes within itself the recourse to the primitive electoral method in the search for truth.

In this too, the party foreshadows the rational and fraternal organization of the future communist world—a world without conflict, the true human community—which can arise only through the historical overcoming of all class divisions.

The Three Fundamental Tasks of the Party

As stated in 1926 in the Lyon Theses, revolutionary preparation requires the party to maintain continuity across three areas: the defense of theory, the defense of the party’s health, and its commitment to the defensive struggles of the workers.

Respect for the strict tactical limits imposed by the lessons of the historical party and the correct assessment of concrete economic and historical conditions, as well as the real balance of social forces, guide forecasts for the future and the methods of external activity.

The defense of theory and the concept of the maximum program takes concrete form in study, in its continuous presentation to the party and in the periodical press, to distinguish them from those of enemy and falsely similar currents.

Preserving the unity and effectiveness of the party organization and passing it on across generations of militants requires a bulwark against contamination and foreign influences emanating from the prevailing bourgeois world. But it is only through the methods of its organic and fraternal work that the party can consistently and without self-contradiction defend itself against any elements or groups that find themselves at odds with the historical program, the continuity of its tactics, and the impersonal forms of communist militancy.

Finally, direct physical participation in the defensive struggles of the workers is essential in order to encourage their development and increase the party’s influence over the organized proletariat, constantly emphasizing the connection between immediate partial struggles and the final revolutionary objective.

However small the party may be and however unfavorable the current conditions for the return of the proletarian offensive may be, the party always claims all forms of activity characteristic of favorable periods. It utilizes the various and diverse tools, and the individuals drawn to the party by their need for communism—endowed with different skills and abilities—and directs them toward its unified and disciplined activity.

The comrade-speaker has read here significant quotations from Wilhelm Liebknecht (“Studieren, Propagandieren, Organisieren”), Eleanor Marx, and Lenin.

The Defense of Doctrine

Theory and action are dialectically inseparable fields. Theory, before being codified in texts and theses, emerged in the mid-19th century as a historical-social product, the dynamic result of the clash between real forces of considerable size and scope. Drawing also on those cases where the final outcome is a defeat of the revolutionary forces, a continuous infusion of historical experience is carried out collectively by the party, through its activity within the class and collective study.

While the formal party affirms the totality of its historical tasks in the pursuit of its central objective of the revolutionary preparation of the proletariat, in both favorable and unfavorable times, given the current situation in which revolutionary energy is at an all-time low, the party’s primary practical task remains the examination of the historical course of the struggle in its entirety and the defense of the theory of Marxist communism in light of contemporary facts. It is a mistake to define this task as a literary or intellectual activity, since it is a continuous critical effort necessary to prepare the subjective foundations for a decisive class struggle when the conditions arise.

At present, given our small numbers, our relatively weak ties to the workers’ movement, and the low level of the defensive struggle, our most important weapon remains that of criticism.

Born from the womb of history, an expression of a social movement embodied by the proletariat, communist criticism constitutes the most powerful weapon of the oppressed class. Without it, even the most resolute proletariat is doomed to defeat. It is not an academic exercise for scholars, but rather the collective brain of the Party that synthesizes all the data of human progress in order to make the best use of proletarian energies in its work of exterminating and destroying the existing order.

Our Anti-Culturalism

As Marx writes in Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “Criticism is not a passion of the intellect; it is the intellect of passion. It is not an anatomical scalpel; it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, whom it does not wish to refute, but to annihilate. In fact, in the essence of those conditions, it is already refuted.” The defense of the program is not a theoretical luxury for communists, but a practical necessity of the class struggle. It is with the weapons of criticism that we diagnose the death of this infamous order, in the certainty that we can carry out its historical sentence with the sharpest criticism of all weapons.

“In 1912, a congress of young socialists in Bologna gave rise to an important battle between the culturalists and the anti-culturalists (...) The anti-culturalists protested vigorously, arguing that (...) the acquisition of theoretical consciousness—which the left has nonetheless firmly defended as the common heritage of the party and the youth movement—must not be used as a condition to paralyze all those who are driven to struggle simply by the impulse of socialist sentiments and the enthusiasm that social conditions provoke in the natural course of events (...) Correct Marxist practice holds that the consciousness of both the individual and the masses follows action; and that action follows the drive of economic interest. Only within the class party do consciousness and, under certain circumstances, the decision to act precede class conflict; but this possibility is organically inseparable from the molecular interaction of the initial physical and economic impulses” (“History of the Communist Left”).

The Party is not formed on the basis of individual consciousness: it is neither required nor possible for every militant to become conscious of, let alone master, class doctrine in a cultural sense, nor is it entirely possible even for individual Party leaders. Consciousness consists solely in the organic unity of the Party.

We reject the conception of the party as a collection of enlightened sages. It is the impersonal organ of the party that is wise. The Party is a material force whose wise and conscious action determines the great developments of history, but only when it encounters the gigantic thrust coming from the lower ranks of the class—from the ignorant and the unconscious—as a natural and physical phenomenon. Engels: “It will be the non-socialists who will make the socialist revolution”; Lenin: “We will make the revolution with the hands of others.” Marxist socialism overturns, in theory and in politics, the democratic and popular misconception. It shows that the subjects of history are the classes. The class of the proletariat in upheaval possesses within itself the driving forces of the revolution. But the aspirations and ideology of the workers are determined from the outside, by the philosophy of the class that holds the monopoly of the means of production, and thus of culture. The Party’s doctrine is the historical synthesis of those latent forces, and it alone can restore to the proletariat full self-awareness and the courage not to seek the means of its ascent outside itself, in the petty bourgeoisie.