"We should get our comrades to understand that the twofold basic task of the leading bodies of the Communist Party is to know conditions and to master policy; the former means knowing the world and the latter changing the world." -Mao Zedong, 1941, Reform our Study
The Historical Context of Gramsci’s Political Work Prior to the Prison Notebooks Section III of Towards the War of Position: … Continue reading The Historical Context of Gramsci’s Political Work Prior to the Prison Notebooks
[From Italy, a joint statement by Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC), Association for Proletarian … Continue reading Italy: NO to persecuting and outlawing communists!
Article from La Voce del (nuovo) Partito comunista italiano, n. 18
mercoledì 19 luglio 2006.
R.I. Editorial Note:
Another article in our series on revolutionary military strategy in imperialist countries. This article from the (new) Communist Party of Italy reviews past experiences of armed struggle in the imperialist countries in light of their theory of Protracted Revolutionary People’s War for imperialist countries. The translation, like many from this organization, are not perfect, but the ideas are comprehensible. -R.I. -13 March 2011
[An excerpt from the Manifesto Program of the (new) Italian Communist Party. It lays out their strategy, which they call Revolutionary Protracted People’s War. Despite the very similar terminology, it is quite different from the PPW strategy as laid out by RCP Canada. See also the (n)ICP article “The necessity of distinguishing between the universal and particular laws of the protracted popular revolutionary war“.]
3.3. Our strategy: the revolutionary protracted people’s warOur strategy, the way for making Italy a new socialist country, is the revolutionary protracted people’s war. This is the conclusion of the balance of the experience of the communist movement, of the struggle of the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie, in particular during the first wave of the proletarian revolution. By its nature the struggle of the working class against the imperialist bourgeoisie for establishing socialism is a revolutionary protracted people’s war. The communist party has to recognize this reality, understand it through the end and utilize this consciousness for directing the revolution. At the conclusion of the balance of the experience of the struggles the communist movement carried out against imperialist bourgeoisie in the last 130 years we have to repeat, paraphrasing what Mao said in 1940 regarding the proletarian revolution in China: “For more than hundred years we used to do the revolution without having a clear and right conception of it. We acted blindly: this is the reason of our defeat”. (127)
[Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC) is associated with the (new) Italian Communist Party. While upholding what they call Revolutionary Protracted People’s War, their strategy is very different from the Protracted People’s War strategy articulated by the RCP Canada or other pro-PPW Parties in imperialist countries.]
Recently we wrote a letter to Alastair Reith, a comrade from New Zealand, in which we talked about the participation of our Party in the bourgeois political struggle, and particularly in the elections, quoting a thesis of the Second Congress of CARC Party (October 2009). Our explanation, anyway, was defective. Here we complete it indicating which is the most important aspect that, here in Italy and in this phase makes the participation in the bourgeois political struggle and particularly in the elections a revolutionary mean.
As the matter regards an issue debated in the international communist movement, we spread this communication widely.
As regards our line to break into the bourgeois political struggle, our position is very different from any other M-L or M-L-M party that agrees in participating in the elections and generally in the bourgeois political struggle, but does not carry out the Revolutionary Protracted People’s War (RPPW) for establishing socialism
Revolutionary Initiative is reposting this piece from the (new) Communist Party of Italy [(n)PCI] for the significant questions and debates it raises concerning the reconstitution of genuine communist parties in the imperialist countries. The translation is not perfect, but none of its essentials points are lost in translation.
The (n)PCI has made some rather original contributions, if not creative developments, of MLM in the area of: (1) conceptualizing the nature of the state in the imperialist countries, which they refer to as the Preventive Counter-Revolutionary Regime; and (2) their understanding of Protracted People’s War, namely, its universal significance and its particularities as a strategy for revolution in the imperialist countries, which they refer to as Protracted Revolutionary People’s War..
This posting does not express an endorsement of the lines in this document, but rather an intention to more deeply explore the question of revolutionary strategy in the imperialist countries at a time when revolutionary communists are regrouping in the imperialist countries. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada / Parti Communiste RĂ©volutionnaire (Canada) also upholds PPW as a strategy (click here and here for their documents on this debate) for the imperialist countries, but we believe that it is a rather distinct conception from the one upheld by the (n)PCI.
In unity and struggle, Revolutionary Initiative
Four main issues to be debated in the International Communist Movement
15 March 2010
(new) Communist Party of Italy
This document deals with:
1. The issues we think important for carrying out the struggle for getting a higher unity in the International Communist Movement,
2. Our positions about those issues,
3. The documents in common languages (English, French, Spanish) where our position are explained in a thorough way.
Issues about which to carry out the discussion
The issues about which we think it is necessary to carry out the discussion in the ICM are four:
1. The evaluation of the communist movement (first wave of proletarian revolution and first socialist countries, crisis of the communist movement and modern revisionism, new birth of the communist movement on the basis of Marxism Leninism Maoism);
2. The theory of the (first and second) general crisis of capitalism in imperialist epoch and the connected developing revolutionary situation;
3. The regime of preventive counter-revolution established by the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries;
4. The strategy of the protracted revolutionary people’s war. Continue reading “Four main issues to be debated in the International Communist Movement”
(new) Communist Party of Italy – Central Committee
Article by Nicola P. member of the editorial staff of the magazine La Voce del (nuovo)PCI for N° 36 (February 2010) of International Newsletter, organ of ICMLPO (International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations)
It is very important, indeed it is essential that we correctly understand the nature of the current crisis. In the 11th of the Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Marx says: “The philosophers have only given different interpretations of the world. But the question is to transform it. ” On the other side, in the Communist Party’s Manifesto (1848) Marx says that the Communists are distinguished from other proletarians because they have a more advanced understanding of conditions, forms and results of the struggle between classes and on this basis they keep pushing it forward. The interpretation of the world is not the goal of us Communists. Our goal is the transformation of the world. But people need to represent to themselves, to have an idea of what they do. The socialist revolution is not something instinctive. Lenin strongly taught (What Has To Be Done?) that the theory that guides the communist movement does not arise at all spontaneously from experience. It has to be elaborated by the Communists who, for this purpose, have to use the most sophisticated tools of knowledge that humanity has. The Communists took it to the working class that, for the position it occupies in capitalist society, is especially predisposed to assimilate and to take it as a guide for its actions. The practical communist movement can grow beyond a basic level only if it is guided by a revolutionary theory. Our action to transform the world, other things being equal, is all the more effective the more just and advanced is our understanding of the world. Only with a fairly good understanding of the nature of the crisis which we are involved in, we can make the socialist revolution, and the second wave of the proletarian revolution will bring humanity to finally overcome capitalism, to build socialism all over the world on the way towards Communism.
Continue reading “The Interpretation of the Nature of Current Crisis Decides Communist Parties’ Activity”
(new) Communist Party of Italy – Central Committee
Article from La Voce n. 35, July 2010
In the Statute approved by the 1st Congress of the (new) Italian Communist Party (paragraph 6) it is written that:
“The main organizational principles of the Party are the democratic centralism and the two lines struggle. The two principles are complementary: they are the two opposite terms of a dialectical unity. In some circumstances the first of the two terms is the principal. In some other circumstances the second of the two terms is principal.
(…)
The principle of the two lines struggles teaches us that in the Communist Party two trends are always existing, one pushing onwards and the other restraining. They are the joint effect of the class contradiction (of bourgeoisie’s influence and of the struggle against it), of the contradiction between the true and the false and of the contradiction between the new and the old. In some periods the two trends are complementary and both contribute to party’s development. In other periods they become antagonistic and incompatible. The left trend has to transform the right one. If the right trend proves to be unyielding, the left one has to expel it.”
This rule of our Statute arouses many kinds of objections, both in the Italian and in the International Communist Movement. It is in the nature of things that this takes place. The two lines struggle is a principle not universally accepted and applied in the communist movement.
Firstly, we have to apply (to learn to apply) the rule of our Statute inside us. We have to learn to use the two lines struggle in our Party’s life. We shall better and better understand the principle of the two lines struggle, we shall understand it in a more and more practical way the more we shall apply it.
Secondly, we have to make understand this principle in a just way, in the Party and among the comrades, in Italy and abroad, in the International Communist Movement (ICM).
Thirdly, we have to defend it against the objections and distortions, against the misunderstandings and the denigrations.
The two lines struggle is an indispensable organizational principle. Continue reading “Two Lines Struggle in the Communist Party”
