In early 2011, Antonio Gramsci Jr., the grandson of a founder of the Italian Communist Party, gave a concert of Renaissance music in Rome on the last day of an impressive exhibition, “Avanti popolo: Il PCI nella storia d’Italia,” commemorating the history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), founded in 1921.

Twenty years ago, in 1991, the Italian CP was disbanded after seventy years of struggle. ¹ At that time it was the largest “communist” party in Western Europe, and the second largest party in the Italian parliament, winning approximately 30% of the votes. CHALLENGE articles often state that communist revolution, not reform, is the only road to working-class victory over capitalism. Looking at the history of the Italian CP helps us to see why.

Shortly after its founding, the Party and workers of Italy faced a dangerous enemy, as Mussolini’s Fascists marched on Rome in 1922. The king appointed Mussolini to be his prime minister and soon after Gramsci and other founders were in prison. Gramsci never left prison, where he died in1937, leaving behind his famous Prison Notebooks. Nonetheless, during World War II, communists and other anti-fascist forces fought bravely. After the liberation of Italy Mussolini was captured as he tried to escape and his body, along with 14 other fascist leaders, was hung upside down from lampposts in Milan’s central square.

Despite this apparent victory, Palmiro Togliatti, the new leader of the Italian Communist Party, returned from the USSR to find a country occupied by the British and American armies and devastated by Allied bombings, civil war and severe food shortages. At this critical juncture, Togliatti and the Italian communists made a grave mistake by accepting the logic of the Popular Front, an alliance of anti-fascist forces, including communists, anarchists, socialists and the liberal bourgeoisie. They began supporting “democratic” reform measures and abandoned the philosophy of armed struggle to bring about communism.

The Italian CP became the largest “communist” party in Western Europe and the second largest party in Italy. Ironically, the larger the party became, the less communist it became. In practice, Italian Communists practiced reformism in the parliament but hypocritically preached revolution at party rallies. ²

By 1964 democratic centralism was abandoned and reformist factions flourished. In 1972, Enrico Berlinguer, the new leader, announced the party’s “historic compromise” of collaborating with the Socialists and center-left Catholics; revolution would no longer even be preached while reform was practiced. The Italian CP was now openly a reform party.

The 1991 party congress was the end. The Italian CP was dissolved and the name “The Democratic Party of the Left” was adopted, which today has become the “Democratic Party,” and mimics the U.S. model.

Valuable lessons can be drawn from the history of the Italian Communist Party. We cannot dismiss those who founded the party and were jailed for their commitment to communism, such as Antonio Gramsci. Neither can we ignore the communist partisans who fought fascism and died during World War II. We must also acknowledge how party members participated in strikes, protests and other struggles hoping to defeat capitalism.

But our Italian predecessors have shown us very clearly that holding elected office demands maintenance of the capitalist state, not revolt against it. Therefore, the most important lesson that can be learned from the mistakes of the Italian CP is that revolution cannot co-exist with electoral politics. Long ago, Karl Marx had warned workers that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” ³ Instead, he said, the entire state (political parties and practices, the courts, the cops, etc.) must be smashed.

As the final notes of Antonio Gramsci Jr.’s concert died away, the crowded hall burst into applause. Many of those present, old and young, still hope for a better future, one that will never come from reform, but only from communist revolution. The Italian CP was not an end, but a beginning, because we have learned from its mistakes. Antonio Gramsci Jr. took a copy of CHALLENGE and sends his “red greetings to his American comrades,” words to strengthen us in our struggles, wherever we are in the world.J

(Endnotes)

1 Images and Italian texts are available at <http://ilpcinellastoriaditalia.it/index.html>.

2 < http://partitocomunistaitaliano.blogspot.com/>

3            Karl Marx: The Civil War in France http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

The U.S. is in decline relative to China, the primary emerging imperialist rival. The U.S. ruling class is faced with massive unemployment, a continuing financial mess, a thinly spread and poorly functioning military, and an inability to enforce discipline within their own class. At the same, China displays an increasingly aggressive imperialism, challenging U.S. hegemony. Bosses are rarely hesitant to sacrifice the lives of workers in order to claim their piece of the capitalist pie, and so, as China’s rulers demand a reordering of the world with them on top, imperialist war could lie in the future. Workers of the world have nothing to win from backing one group of capitalists over the other. Transforming this potential future imperialist war into communist revolution is the long-term outlook of PLP.

Industry is the centerpiece of capitalist economy. Industrial workers produce real value, and unlike the financial manipulations that are increasingly at the center of the U.S. economy, China’s industrial might has skyrocketed. The economic crisis has certainly hit China and just as in the U.S., the Chinese bosses are making the working class pay. The net income of 400 million people has stagnated in the last decade and poverty levels have increased. But in the absence of a REAL communist party (unlike the profit-driven fake Chinese Communist Party) aimed at destroying capitalism, the bosses will salvage their system, and it appears that China might be on top of the pile when the dust clears.

Chinese Dominance Grows In Key Industries

Chinese oil companies have exerted their influence across the globe. The China National Petroleum Corporation has contracts in 29 countries around the world, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Burma.

Or consider steel. There is a dispute about how much steel China produced in 2010. The official figure — likely an underestimate — is 627 million tons, 44% of the world output and 50% more than Europe, the U.S., Japan and Russia COMBINED. Even if the lower official numbers are correct, the growth in China’s steel output from 2007 to 2010 exceeded the total U.S. steel output in 2010: China’s output in those three years grew by 131 million tons, whereas U.S. output in 2010 was 81 million tons.

In the auto industry the situation is similar. In 2010, the U.S. produced 7.8 million cars while China made 18.3 million, double the number in 2008 and nine times the number it produced in 2000. Again, the growth in auto production outstrips U.S. production. From 2000 to 2010 China’s auto industry output grew by 16.2 million cars. The U.S. produced 7.8 million cars in 2010. However, a goodly portion of the profits from China’s production goes to international auto companies like Ford, GM, and Nissan.

Battle Over Profits

In other basic industries, China’s share of world output is around 40%. For instance, China makes 44% of the world’s cement. Their dominance is even more complete in many other products. By some estimates, 90% of the world’s shoes are made in China. All told, over the last ten years, the Chinese share of world manufacturing has risen to 19.7% from 7%. Meanwhile, the U.S. share went down from 27% to 19%. The U.S. has lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs in the last ten years.

The picture is not complete, however, without understanding what happens to the profit that this manufacturing generates. Companies that simply manufacture their products in China but export the profit are not contributing to the rise of the Chinese ruling class.  In some cases, the profits leave China. For example nearly all of Apple Computer’s products are assembled in China. Most of the profit, however, leaves the country. Apple makes eight times more in profit than it spends in China.

However, in industry after industry — including the ones cited above — China has gone from low-cost assembler to controlling the entire process: raw materials, basic manufacturing, assembly and sales.  And not only are these manufactured goods controlled by Chinese companies, a large percentage are directly controlled by the government, through state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

About 80% of the bank loans in China go to SOEs, which get discounted rates compared to privately owned companies. There are 150 central and 120,000 local SOEs, which account for the vast majority of manufacturing in the country. The 150 central SOEs generate more than two-thirds of China’s GDP and more than half of the country’s wealth. This profit can be funneled directly into build-up of industry, infrastructure and military.

Compare this to the U.S., where Warren Buffet, the ringleader of the liberal ruling class, has to beg and plead to the Tea Party-influenced government to raise taxes on the rich so that the U.S. can face its imperialist rivals in the future. The increase in taxes that Buffet is calling for is one aspect of the move towards fascism. Fascism is not just a ferocious attack on workers, using increased racism, nationalism and sexism to discipline the working class during crises. Another aspect of fascism is the attempt to forcefully impose discipline on the ruling class.

Industrial Battles Eventually Turn Into Military Battles

What Buffet and Obama are planning for, to some degree, is a potential future where the U.S. and China drag the working class into the hell of imperialist war. And they are worried that this future could be turning in the favor of the Chinese bosses. The Chinese Navy is already much larger than the U.S. forces in the Pacific. If current trends continue, within the next decade the Chinese Navy will be larger than the U.S. Navy in every category except aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. They will likely have more attack submarines, destroyers, frigates, troop landing craft and smaller missile-carrying ships. The U.S. equipment is often more sophisticated, but it appears that the Chinese military has been quick to update to the latest technology. One thing is clear: the Chinese bosses think that they are catching up with the U.S. military and will soon pass it. 

A century ago, the Russian communist Vladimir Lenin showed that modern capitalism has entered the era of imperialism and therefore war, as the imperialists fight over how to re-divide the world.

U.S. Wars Encircle the Globe 

Ever since World War II, the main source of imperialist war has been the United States: Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The reason was not because the United States rulers are uniquely evil, but because of the nature of imperialism. For the first 40 years, U.S. bosses were desperately trying to stop the advance of communist ideas. After the implosion of the Soviet Union, they wielded their singular imperialist power to make others fall in line. Now, the world is changing as China’s bosses’ aggressive push for power challenges the U.S. position.

Both U.S. and Chinese bosses will be feverishly attempting to build political support among “their” workers for a potential world war. Already, there is a growing amount of anti-Chinese rhetoric coming from the U.S. bosses and their lackies in the industrial unions. The international working class has nothing to gain and absolutely everything to lose from aligning with one set of bosses over another. They are all bloodsuckers, willing to sacrifice the lives of workers on the altar of profit and imperialist war. Our class needs no bosses! Workers have no country!J

NEW YORK CITY, October 26 — Occupied Wall Street (OWS) has spread to more than 20 U.S. cities, from Philadelphia and Dallas to Seattle and Los Angeles. It adds a significant marker to the growing list of places where the working class is fighting back against the horrors of capitalism. In an era commonly defined by the lack of militant class struggle, recent events in the U.S., Greece, Egypt, Spain, England, Syria, Israel/Palestine and Pakistan are to be celebrated.

But as we celebrate we should be clear: The ideas behind these struggles are overwhelmingly reformist. Most of the participants are fighting to maintain capitalism in one form or another, with disastrous results for the workers in these places. (See page 7 for an update on the situation in Egypt and how the promise of the uprising there has turned into a nightmare for workers.) Without communist ideas in the lead, the battles, won or lost, will pave the road back to capitalist oppression.

The ruling class continues to provide opportunities for us to bring communist ideas to the forefront. In New York, the ruling class pulled back the mask of “democracy” yesterday when more than 700 OWS protestors were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. After having been lured onto the bridge by the cops, the protestors were surrounded with netting and taken away on city buses, over the protests of union drivers.

More than two weeks in, OWS has survived nearly a thousand arrests. It has captured the imagination of both workers and students. Watching more than a hundred transit workers march into Zuccotti Park near Wall Street was inspiring. The action exposed the systemic inequality of capitalism.

Still, we must keep two things in mind. First, within the antagonistic struggle against capitalism, the communist alternative will stand out and provide a space for us to build the Party and the communist world we envision. Second, we need to immerse ourselves with the masses and inject communist and revolutionary ideas inside reform struggles. PL’ers everywhere should seize this moment.

Police Action Backfires

The NYPD has been trapping and arresting hundreds at a time in order to identify as many dissenters as they can. The KKKops meant to intimidate the protestors, but the police action may have backfired. Most of the youth seem even angrier and more committed to build their movement. Today, protesters were back at Zuccotti Park in full force.

There are many good things about the ongoing OWS struggle. It includes a growing number of young people, workers (employed and unemployed) and students. For many, this is their first taste of fighting back. They show some understanding of why the ruling class needs racism, sexism and wars for oil. Many of these protesters will be faced with a future draft and a decision either to fight in these wars or to resist them. Some are discussing the role of imperialism. The most prevalent chant is “We are the 99%,” making clear the opposition between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of us.

But there are a number of critical weaknesses that reflect OWS’s lack of communist leadership. The movement lacks black and Latino participation. Amid the push for “fairness,” many fail to understand that capitalism cannot possibly be fair. Inequality is essential to the bosses’ system.

Racism Fundamental to Capitalism

The rule of the capitalist class rests firmly on a foundation of racism. All around the world, the bosses make super-profits from the exploitation of sections of the working class, usually defined by race, ethnicity or religion. In the U.S. this primarily means black and Latino workers. The bosses also rely on racism to divide workers and weaken class struggle. Although the OWS movement claims to be a revolution, it has yet to enlist the most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class. Party members have been raising these and other communist ideas at the OWS protests.

There is a long way to go. A recently released statement from the protest organizers says nothing about capitalism or imperialism. The document urges workers to exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. This is not a political strategy to end the suffering of the worldís working class.

PLP’ers and friends must inject communist ideas into OWS and explain how the police serve the rulers under capitalism. We must show the absolute need to fight to destroy the profit system and to produce for workers’ needs, instead. In the heat of struggle, these ideas will move us one day closer to revolution.

THE WORKING CLASS HAS A WORLD TO WIN!

As they celebrated last week’s drone strike that killed al Qaeda big shot Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, Obama & Co. continued to lie about the dangers workers face from this escalating campaign. U.S. bosses claim that “surgical” drone strikes, using unpiloted aircraft, avoid civilians. They say that drones offer a low-cost, politically low-risk means of prosecuting their “war on terror” without engaging U.S. troops. Finally, White House hypocrites preach that they apply the strictest “moral” and “legal” standards in deploying the drones.

But history tells us that wars cannot be won by remote control. The drones represent an early stage of a bloody, high-risk strategy that could soon have “allied” U.S. and Pakistani armies shooting at each other. They cannot possibly replace the ground troops the U.S. bosses will need in their war to control the areas with huge reserves of oil and natural gas and the pipelines that transport them. (It’s for this reason that the U.S. “withdrawal” from Iraq moves at a snail’s pace; there are 30 U.S. bases that need to be secured there.)

Moreover, the drones won’t help the hundreds of thousands of workers in Pakistan on strike against poverty pay, unpaid wages and brutal working conditions (see CHALLENGE, 10/5). They won’t benefit those who suffer from the capitalists’ austerity policies across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. And they certainly won’t relieve the racist unemployment, home foreclosures and worsening healthcare faced by tens of millions of U.S. workers. The trillions spent on war only exacerbate these problems for workers everywhere.

In fact, the Pentagon uses drones both to pinpoint high-level targets and to spread terror through indiscriminate slaughter. John Brennan, Obama’s top advisor on terrorism, finds his boss’s robot assassins faultless: “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency [and] precision…that we’ve been able to develop” (Los Angeles Times, 6/29/11).

Brennan lied. Two years earlier, after Obama latched onto the drones as a regional cure-all for U.S. imperialism, insider Daniel Byman (a Brookings fellow and former analyst for the CIA and Congress) exposed their probable rate of civilian murders, warning of a backlash:

U.S. drone activity in Pakistan has killed dozens of lower-ranking and at least 10 mid- and high-ranking leaders from al Qaeda and the Taliban. Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks [as of two years ago]. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died....U.S. strikes that take a civilian toll are a further blow to its legitimacy — and to U.S. efforts to build goodwill there (Foreign Policy, 7/14/09).

Of the untold hundreds of innocents killed so far by drones, nearly half are children, according to a recent study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Contrary to plan, these attacks actually help to build jihadist groups by turning slain leaders into martyrs and bereaved relatives of civilians into sworn U.S. enemies.

The Next 9/11 — and the Rockefeller Wing’s Planned Counterattack

If and when drone-fired hatred fuels a terror attack in the U.S., its rulers are cynically seeking to use it to expand the Afghanistan war into Pakistan. In August, their leading foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), issued “Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 13: A Pakistan-Based Terrorist Attack on the U.S. Homeland.” Acknowledging the “generous support” of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, it read in part:

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the most likely Pakistani outfit to attempt a unilateral strike against the United States or to cooperate with al-Qaeda. The TTP has threatened attacks against the U.S. homeland, considers itself at war with Pakistan, has been a regular target for U.S. drones, and already attempted one attack against the United States when it trained and deployed Faizal Shahzad to trigger a car bomb in Times Square in 2010....An operation involving conventional explosives is most likely. The casualty count likely would be among the largest determining factors in terms of how Washington responds, and it is difficult as well as unrealistic to affix a precise number. This contingency presumes an attack claiming at least fifty people and as many as five hundred, assessing possible responses along this range.

On September 22, departing Joint Chiefs of Staff boss Mike Mullen significantly upped the likelihood of U.S. action against Pakistan by telling Congress that the terrorist Haqqani Network “has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.”

Four days later, speaking on National Public Radio, CFR mouthpiece Daniel Markey interpreted Mullen’s remarks as a green light for the Pentagon death machine:

You could see conventional forces in Afghanistan moved up to the Pakistan border to support cross-border attacks that would probably start out small but could expand. And you could see a variety of other combined efforts that could even include a more extensive bombing campaign that went beyond the use of drones.

Capitalists’ Laws Serve Their Own Class; Communist Revolution Needed for Pro-Worker Rules

The farcical but widely accepted concept of capitalist “justice under law” aids the war-maker Obama, who has enlisted his alma mater: Harvard Law School (HLS). Just before Awlaki’s demise by drone, John Brennan advised an HLS forum (AP, 9/16/11), “We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves….”

Just after the al-Awlaki killing, HLS Professor Jack Goldsmith reminded New York Times readers (9/30/11), “In a lawsuit brought last year that sought to prevent the government from targeting Mr. Awlaki, a federal judge ruled that in wartime the Constitution left it to the president and Congress, not the courts, to decide military targeting issues.”

In other words, laws are what the bosses say they are. In any time or place, the ruling class, in its own interests, determines what is “legal” and what is not. Slavery enjoyed the U.S. Constitution’s legal blessing for 78 years. The U.S. bosses’ legal scholars today find drone attacks and full-scale, undeclared, unilateral invasions perfectly legitimate.

The working class worldwide suffers from U.S. imperialism’s march to wider wars.  Our class’s answer remains to intensify class struggle against these murderous rulers and their poisonous profit system. We can see this happening in Pakistan’s mass strikes, and in workers’ mass protests in Greece, France, and Italy. We see renewed struggle beginning to emerge in the U.S., with the fight-backs by West Coast longshoremen, New York City hospital workers and anti-Wall Street demonstrators in cities across the country.

The needed and essential ingredient in these struggles is to divert them from the dead-end impossibility of reforming capitalism and into schools for communist-led revolution. We must win workers and youth to see that only a worker-run society that destroys the bosses and their profit system can put an end to their atrocities. The greater good of the working class will then be the ultimate law.