WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, Il Cantiere n. 17 - The left and the war* - Carmine Valente (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Once again, when states cross arms, the left instead of finding the reasons to

build a unified response of workers at an international level, sides with this or
that contender, effectively fueling the reasons for war. ---- The war in Ukraine,
as well as other conflicts that have taken place in the past decades, lays bare
the responsibilities of the left unable to look beyond the interests of its
national bourgeoisie and the imperialist blocs of reference. It is therefore
necessary to take stock and reflect on the positions that the left has taken on
the problem of war, and more generally on the original dream of liberation from
exploitation, work and its economic and social alienation, in order to transform
it into a conscious activity of social cooperation .

This, because we are aware that the construction of a new left, class and
libertarian, cannot help but turn to the past to incorporate and update the good
things "the old beards" have theorized, and the good things that have been
achieved by many generations of militants: at the same time, however, it is
essential to develop a critique of the historical experiences of the left in its
various souls, at the same time as a theory and an intervention practice capable
of reading and interpreting the process of development and of the crisis of
capitalism, a crisis which it is one of the most powerful contributing factors to
trigger war. And it's' precisely the war or rather the relationship that the left
has had towards it which in our opinion shows all the limits and insufficiencies
of elaboration that have marked the left during this century. Limits,
insufficiencies and responsibilities that have taken on the trait of tragedy when
the war has not only been suffered but ideologically and actively propagated and
supported; social democracy, including its variant of national communism, was
primarily responsible.

WORKERS' MOVEMENT AND PACIFISM

The reflection that we want to stimulate starts from here, or rather from not
sharing statements that refer to an alleged pacifism of the workers' movement. In
reality, the left in its various articulations, including the most radical
positions, has not been able to develop a clear position over the course of this
century that would prevent the workers' movement and its political and trade
union organizations from being overwhelmed by chauvinism and nationalism: The
element that has been missing and which could have prevented the workers'
movement, if only in terms of ideological involvement, from becoming one of the
arms of support for militarism is autonomy, i.e. the ability to develop a point
of view starting from the interests classy. And it's just the absence of a class
elaboration based on the substantial unity of interests of the workers and the
subaltern classes beyond the division of nations which negatively marks the
tragic and exciting pages of the 1900s. From this point of view, retracing the
genetic changes of the left which have contributed to linking the fate of workers
to the development of national capital or to linking the affirmation of communism
to the defense of the Soviet state is not a useless exercise in historical
research. Autonomy means above all recognizing the masses' ability to give
themselves tools of organization, tools for elaboration and tools for directing
the movement. In reality, especially at the dawn of the century, while the left
exalts the role of the masses and the proletariat, it simultaneously emphasizes
the role of the leaders and the elites, behaviors that marked revolutionary
syndicalism influenced by the myth of Sorelian passions, but which in other ways
run through the whole development of the communist movement of Leninist
observance. It is thus that in 1912 the Sorelian syndicalists switch to
nationalism prodigal of greater activist emotions. The ideological support for
Italian expansionism towards Africa comes from a flat determinist interpretation
of the historical process, i.e. it is affirmed that the Italian occupation would
have favored the overcoming of a feudal pre-capitalist situation,

HISTORICAL DETERMINISM AND HISTORICAL DESTINY

This position takes us directly into the heart of the problems that degraded the
second international, i.e. we are in the presence of an idea of the historical
process and progress rigidly channeled under the gauntlet of historical
materialism reduced to historical destiny on which the economic forces act while
the workers and their own organizations remain helpless spectators. It is the
constant expectation of better times. An approach that is also not extraneous to
components that refer in various ways to Leninism and more generally involves the
most intransigent factions which, by making the end of capitalism and social
transformation assume the only element for solving problems, transform political
action into expectation messianic, branding the defense of immediate interests
and a practice of conquests and protections within the capitalist context,
therefore a necessarily gradualist practice, as useless if not enemies of a
transformation process. In those years, the pacifist aspirations of the labor
movement were a ritual affirmation in the various congresses that melted like
snow in the sun at the first blast of a rifle.

The First World War finds the independent socialist Viviani at the helm of the
state in France, and the international organization of the working class is
reduced to a decorative brotherhood that is noisy only in congressional hurrahs.
Any form of internationalist solidarity jumps and the various social democratic
parties line up alongside their respective nations and their respective national
bourgeoisies. I use the term internationalist solidarity instead of mere
internationalism because the unity of workers' interests beyond all the divisions
that operate nation, religion and gender is not immediately and objectively
identifiable. Hence the need to include the concept of solidarity, i.e. a
strongly subjective category, precisely because the current different situation
of the working masses in the world can not automatically be traced back to an
equal unsatisfied need for protection and a homogeneous level of interests to
affirm. This situation means that both strategically and numerically important
sectors of the world of work in the developed capitalist countries represent one
of the pillars of consensus and social cohesion on which capital and power rest.
Capital still has enormous margins to tie large swathes of workers to itself for
which the simple economic struggle appears in all its insufficiency, hence the
need to combine the struggle for one's rights with the denunciation of the
capitalist system as a machine that produces suffering for most, support a
struggle for a society in which these rights do not decline in a context of
social degradation and in which life is increasingly marked by the need to defend
oneself, and in a global context in which labor rights are guaranteed to sectors
of workers increasingly narrower. Let's go back to scrolling through the course
of history that we had left at the dawn of the world war. The German Social
Democrats followed shortly by the French Socialists vote in favor of war credits.
Those who generously oppose the war will have to deal with ostracism and
repression. In the overall confusion, even anarchism, although it fluctuated less
than the others thanks to the tenacity of militants such as Malatesta, Fabbri and
Galleani, had its own war supporters. In Italy eclectic militants very close to
the vitalistic activism of the Sorelians in terms of intervention methods, such
as Maria Rygier, who in the future will also give frameworks to fascism, as in
the case of Oberdan Gigli, and outside of Italy characters of the caliber of
Kropotkin, one of the most important theorists of anarchism, who signed a
manifesto in favor of the war against the central empires, identifying in these
the source of an authoritarianism in any case to be beaten. Kropotkin will later
have the opportunity to make self-criticism for this position. who signed a
manifesto in favor of the war against the central powers, identifying in these
the source of an authoritarianism that still had to be beaten. Kropotkin will
later have the opportunity to make self-criticism for this position. who signed a
manifesto in favor of the war against the central powers, identifying in these
the source of an authoritarianism that still had to be beaten. Kropotkin will
later have the opportunity to make self-criticism for this position.

Excluding the elements of a driving nature that determined the militaristic
choice of many comrades which in any case served to cleanse many adventurers, the
character that most marks the choice in favor of war is the intertwining of
determinism and autonomy. These two terms, these two characteristics of the
workers' movement are inversely related to each other. Where determinism
predominates, autonomy precipitates. Where autonomy is not only an affirmation of
principle written in the statutes, but a practical one, determinism is reduced
and historical materialism reappears. This means that the historical process is
not the combination of static forces but the interweaving of dynamic forces
within which there is one in particular, the organized proletariat, which is not
inert material. Its role is like that of leaven in bread, in any case, the dough
rises both if we add a small quantity and if the quantity is greater: it's just a
problem of timing. But if we don't put the yeast we can wait as long as we want,
the dough remains as we kneaded it. Metaphor aside, the workers, the masses, have
a role if this role is exercised and favored and if this is done, history is no
longer a simple expectation of already predestined events, but the result of the
interweaving of real dynamic forces that historically determine themselves .

MARXISM AND THE WAR

The disarray of the labor movement in the face of war is not the result of errors
in the application and articulation of an alleged ideological guide and a clear
theory on the problem of war. Marxism had not given a clear solution to this
problem: the Marxists' judgment was invalidated both by the value they attributed
to the national realities embarked on the path of independence and democratic
revolution, and by the recognition of the dialectical necessity of war in the
development of society capitalist. Emblematic are the affirmations of Antonio
Labriola in favor of Italian expansion in Libya under the specious pretext that
the liberation of certain areas and certain forces of the pre-capitalist economy
and their insertion in the historical cycle of capitalism represented a
dialectical progress. Once the war was triggered, every international contact
between the socialist parties was interrupted, only with 1915 in Zimmerwald did
the international conference of the factions of the socialist parties that oppose
the war, and which represents a first clear stance against it, take place; the
following year a new conference in Kienthal reaffirmed the reasons for peace.
These conferences, as well as the clean and clear propaganda of USI by now freed
from the elements that supported the war, and later the anti-militarist riots in
Turin, in 1917, with the corollary of sentences of socialists, anarchists and
deserters, allowed the workers' movement , and above all to the organizations
that had more clearly fought against the bellicose adventure, once the war was
over, to have strong growth despite1' ignoble crushing of 1914. These are the
years of the first assault on heaven. The revolution triumphs in Russia, or so it
seems, throughout Europe, even under the powerful example of the Soviets councils
are born almost everywhere. In Germany, in Hungary, in Austria there is the
proclamation of true republics based on the councils, in Italy the factory
councils promote the occupations of the factories. Yet within a few years all of
Europe falls under the cloak of fascist dictatorships. If social democracy
falters and then stabs all attempts at socialist realization, Bolshevism which
had aroused so many hopes closes in on itself and sets out on a decline where now
it is the state that must be saved and no longer the revolution. The Soviet Union
and the Communist International no longer measure their initiative on the basis
of the development of the international labor movement but solely on the
consolidation of socialism in a single country and on the development of a Soviet
foreign policy aimed at re-establishing relations with the large capitalist
countries and exercising imperialist control on workers states. To some extent,
the left that agitated in the first decades of the century was very different
from the one that faced the conflict of 1945 and even more from the one that
reconstituted itself after the fall of the fascist regimes and after the end of
the war. The socialist parties are completely dismembered except in France and
their action, although the ideological change will take place only after the war,
is now oriented towards class collaboration. The Second World War was essentially
characterized above all by the absence of the voice of the labor movement. At
this juncture there is Spain: here history seems to flow against the tide, and
while authoritarian regimes are asserting themselves throughout Europe, but not
only, the flag of revolution is being raised in the Iberian peninsula.

WAR AND REVOLUTION IN SPAIN

In Spain, anarchism, albeit with limits and errors, has managed to demonstrate
that Libertarian Communism is not just the dream of some romantic revolutionary,
but a tool in the hands of the masses to build their own future in a
non-hierarchical and authoritarian society and in where the product of labor
becomes social wealth and not individual appropriation. We wanted the failure of
this generous attempt to be linked to the fact that the struggle against fascism
and the defense of the republic was privileged, that is, the plan of war was
accepted instead of privileging the revolutionary process and its expansion into
the whole territory of Spain and in the colonies themselves. But what emerges
beyond the chronicle of the civil war is that Spain is isolated, the
international workers' movement is unable to support the revolutionary effort of
the Spaniards and the international brigades themselves are the sign of the
defeat of internationalism, that is, we are in a situation in which the militants
of the left who feel the urgency to play a role in the conflict class forces are
forced to choose the terrain of war by enlisting in the international brigades
since any possibility of class struggle is precluded within their own countries.
On a European and world level, the workers' movement is defeated, divided,
ideologically confused between class collaborationism and Soviet fideism, and
internationalism which should be based on the ability to beat capital starting
from one's own country is forced to become Garibaldi's impetus.

THE SECOND AFTER WAR

The aftermath of the war is strongly conditioned by the heavy climate of the cold
war. The division between West and East does not pass between capitalism and
communism, the real division, which overwhelms the organizations of the workers'
movement, is that which sees on one side the so-called democratic countries that
stand up for freedom and on the other the Soviet state which by making himself an
authentic interpreter of accomplished communism, he prevents the development of
any capacity for self-criticism on the process of making socialism in the
countries of the East. Manichaeism predominates on the left in the analysis of
the behavior of the masses. Thus it happens that important signs of workers'
revolt are accused of counter-revolutionary lies and accused of being fomented
and financed by Western countries.

So it happens for Berlin in '53, so it will be for the councils of Budapest in '56.

The living conditions of the working masses, union rights in factories and
workplaces are no longer the parameters by which the class interests of the
workers are measured. What matters is the rate of loyalty to Moscow, everything
that moves against the Politburo of the Kremlin, even if it occurs under the
pressure of the protection of material interests strongly compromised, is against
communism. In this climate, the left is shattered, the Manichean positions of
strict Soviet observance are countered by fideistic exaltation of Western
freedoms that often border on a real work of informing.

THE PUSH OF THE 60S

The 50s, 60s but also in part the 70s are affected by this contradiction that
invests the workers' movement, although the control and influence of the Soviet
Union is gradually weakening after Stalin's death, among the workers and among
the masses in general, the perspective of communism remains linked to the
experiences of "real socialism", i.e. state capitalism and Soviet imperialism. In
recent years, the process of colonial liberation was developing with respect to
which the workers' movement was unable to develop a clear key to interpretation,
and what prevailed was a Third World leap in an anti-American key which prevented
us from analyzing the development and role of national bourgeoisies in these
countries, within the framework of imperialist competition. The same cycle of
struggles in the years between the 1960s and 1970s was greatly affected by these
contradictions because many of the union and political militants of those years
had grown up immersed in the opposition between the blocs. The political and
trade union apparatus of the historical organizations does not understand the
change in the class structure, the new subjects catapulted into the world of work
are free from the political residues of the past and defend their interests
firmly and without mediation and tactics.

Once again it is not the class interests of these workers that move the parties.

On the other hand, the new generations, largely students, who have made a great
contribution to the development of radical thought and practice, have approached
the workers' movement by merging management and workers, making the workers
themselves become counterparts just as such. The most significant element is the
strong egalitarian drive. Egalitarianism that intertwines the level of rights
(workers' statute, factory assembly, law on maternity protection, divorce, new
family law, equality law, health care reform, law 180 on mental asylums) with the
wage level (automatic bonuses, increases equal for all, single point of contingency).

It is this libertarian character that develops outside the box in which the
political game took place, accompanied by the vastness and depth of the movement,
which worried and frightened masters and power far beyond the effective capacity
for change that that movement could express.

The epilogue of recent years is that which sees the banner of the left in the
hands of liberals intent on supporting the assault on the last "reserves" of job
protection and fulfilling the role of new crusaders by registering war among the
instruments of peace and humanitarian intervention. The left of the new
millennium will have to break with this legacy by inscribing the affirmation of
utopia in its banners.

*This article is largely indebted to the text of the GAAP "Fifty years of
struggle of the world working class - 1900 - 1950" which can be consulted on the
site www.comunismolibertario.it
http://www.comunismolibertario.it/piccola%20Enciclopedia.pd

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/blog/2023/05/03/il-cantiere-di-febbraio-2023-2/
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