From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works"), recently published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista.
IV
The Prague crisis showed that the balances established at Yalta no longer had any economic basis. Just as the reflections of the early 1950s and the texts read in Argentina had suggested, the decades of post-war development had once again transformed Germany into an economic power, and the USSR was forced into a bloody defensive action.
The tactic in the educational crisis, the battle over the prospects of trade unionism in wage struggles, and the crisis of imbalance
This tumultuous development was one of the causes of the French crisis, which culminated in the student demonstrations in Paris in May 1968. In Italy, the decades of the economic miracle were the basis of a crisis of imbalance. The State, political parties, and ideologies could not keep up with the pace of economic change, namely the greatly increased importance of big capital and the big bourgeoisie’s demands for an industrial State to accompany Italy’s entry into the European market. The educational system was also part of this imbalance, a fact reflected by the waves of student unrest in the heated climate produced by the May 1968 movement. The Leninist tactic in the educational crisis
was the intervention in this situation of spontaneous mass movements, that offered a new opportunity for the party to entrench itself, while the experience of the ten lost years with Azione Comunista protected the party from any movementist
inclination.
My idea was simple, derived from a more difficult and exacting diagnosis of complex international politics; an idea so simple that some young people were able to grasp it and apply it successfully: the student movement would end up falling prey to opportunism. It was possible to recover part of it to train the cadres needed to organise the most conscious workers who, after 40 years of counter-revolution, were unable to do so on their own. Some of our proletarian militants, stuck in primitive propaganda, did not understand this simple idea. Those who did understand it developed the Party together with new energies
.
These theses on the tactic in the educational crisis were also based on the international analysis of the cycle of capitalist development; they supplemented this analysis with a study, aided by post-war experience and historical knowledge, of how this accelerated change was shaking up social psychologies.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a strong development of capitalism that spread worldwide. In fact, our 1957 Theses saw the spread of capitalism as a characteristic feature of the counter-revolutionary phase. The pace of growth was twice that of the previous century. This was an unprecedented development that would produce new superstructural phenomena. For years, I had thought that the consequence of this trend would be an increase in proletarianisation. This did happen, but it was accompanied by an unexpected phenomenon. To be more precise, it was unexpected for Italy, given that, having studied the United States and the Japanese Zengakuren, I had ascertained that this was the case for more mature metropolises.
Italy was one of the most dynamic markets in the world. In one generation, it marched at the speed of two previous generations. This means that during his working life, a man underwent exceptional social upheavals whose scope he could not grasp and to which he did not even have time to adapt psychologically. The exceptionally rapid increase in productive forces and income led to mass schooling. All the faults of the fathers were passed on to their children, aggravated by the speed of their manifestation. In other words, all the mistakes that the fathers had taken twenty years to make, the children made in one. This prompted the fathers to use up the rest of the nonsense they had inside them in one year, thus also demonstrating their inability to understand their children’s nonsense. The consequence was that in one year, fathers and sons expressed all the nonsense they had in store. It was a concentrated review of all the national flaws, a trade fair of the full spectrum of Italian political pathology in its various historical stratifications and in all its variations.
I watched this spectacle, at first in disbelief. It seemed like an inexplicable hallucination. It reminded me of September 8th, but back then it was the global storm that blew the roof off the fragile Italian structure. Was it possible that in these times of plenty, with a world situation marked by the détente in international relations, fathers and sons were getting worked up over nothing? Was it possible that they were generalising the challenges and counter-challenges of Genoa, 1960?
It was possible. Slowly, I realised this truth and understood many things that I had been unable to explain to myself while reading: why Cavour had manipulated Garibaldi like a puppet, why Italy had never won a battle, why the actor Mussolini could tell such big lies, why Italy was Catholic and why it was also partly Stalinist. It could be one thing and its opposite because the contradiction was in people’s logic, but not in the reality of things.
Carefully observing this reality as it unfolded before my eyes, I explored the problem of the correspondence between economic movements and the movements of the political and cultural superstructure. The marked lack of correspondence that existed in Italy was causing a crisis. I called this crisis a ‘crisis of imbalance’. I could also have called it a ‘crisis of non-correspondence’.
I re-read the Marx-Engels Letters and picked up on many things that had escaped me on my first reading years earlier. In a couple of winter months, I understood the satisfaction Lenin must have felt when he ‘consulted’ Marx and Engels. What may seem, on a superficial reading, to be the residual prejudices of a bygone era, and as such are dismissed with patronising and idiotic complacency, are in fact profound and realistic judgements that only maturity and political practice can allow us to assess in their full significance.
Often, when judging a situation or even a single fact, we fear that we will repeat one or more prejudices, as is inevitable. But excessive caution leads to distortion: by trying to avoid prejudices, we rationalise a reality that does not exist. Many times, I have considered some of my impressions, derived from my practical sense, to be invalid because I feared they were influenced by prejudice. I promised myself that I would investigate them further before considering them valid.
Rereading the Letters, I realised I had been mistaken. What I was unsure whether to call prejudices were not, in fact, prejudices. Marx and Engels dwell on the ‘national character’ with a wealth of detail: observations that are highly topical. It is their profound knowledge of the economic, political, and cultural history of large and small countries that allows for such a scientific description of ‘national character’. Without this knowledge, it is easy to repeat ideological prejudices about certain populations, even when we believe we are not doing so. The real problem is to analyse the ‘national character’ scientifically, not to declare that it does not exist. The fact that psychology does not determine social life does not mean that psychology is an irrelevant aspect of the analysis of social life. The same can be used for the ‘moral factor’ in military matters, a factor that is nothing other than ‘social psychology’, as Plekhanov calls it, of the particular social activity of a military nature.
Reflecting on Marx and Engels’ judgements, in addition to confirming things I had thought about in a disorderly and random manner, allowed me to evaluate in greater detail situations that I had previously assessed with generalisations and, inevitably, with limiting absolutes. I would most likely have arrived at these assessments anyway, but without the scientific knowledge derived from consulting the classics and, above all, without the awareness of having to frame the assessment, for example of ‘national character’, within the correct theoretical framework. I would have remained at the level of pure and simple empiricism.
I was therefore able to deal with the practical manifestations of the mass movements that came to the fore in those years and in the following ones, and with which I now had close contact. A situation like that of the anti-fascist struggle and the immediate post-war period was repeating itself for me, i.e., the period before political choices forced me into the restricted world of minorities. Except now my role had changed, and I would find myself leading and influencing thousands of people. Having broader and, at the same time, more precise ideas with which to assess the ‘national character’ of those movements and those people, became useful and, ultimately, indispensable.
I quickly managed to trace this ‘character’ and derive an assessment that has essentially proven to be valid over time. Of course, I formulated these judgements, derived from an analysis of countless aspects and from accumulated experience, in the form of absolutes, out of political necessity. It was necessary for them to become powerful ideas if we wanted to select people who would work in a direction distinct from the maximalist spontaneity of those movements, which were determined by the contradictions of the imperialistic maturity of Italian society.
Time proved me right. The new political generation perpetuated the worst aspects of Italy’s ‘national character’. It couldn’t have been any other way. There is no reason why it should be any different. Only enormous upheavals that necessarily confront a new political generation with dramatic choices – particularly individual life choices that come at a significant cost – can constitute a break with the previous course. In this case, the new political generation can produce a political turning point, a theoretical turning point, a different political personnel that exalts certain traits and depresses others.
There were no upheavals of such magnitude and, consequently, there could be no historical rupture. To paraphrase Marx, we can say that the tragedy of a world war that gave birth to a political generation was repeated as farce in the effects of the social development that gave birth to the next generation. The farce reached extremes: anti-Americanism with maximum Americanisation, anti-consumerism with maximum consumption, intellectualisation with maximum ignorance, anti-capitalism with maximum parasitism, etc.
The old political generation was shamelessly mirrored in the young generation. I had the opportunity to witness both tragedy and farce unfold. In the case of tragedy, I suffered before quickly overcoming it; in the case of farce, all I could do was laugh. I no longer needed time to realise this. A glance was enough. I had always hoped for a new generation that would bring the theoretical and political ferment necessary for the rebirth of Marxism. Only by raising the theoretical and political level of its struggles can militant Marxism rapidly advance, put itself to the test, and perfect itself.
1969 was the year of the autunno caldo (hot autumn
), a period of widespread workers’ strikes. The starting point of the analysis was again the accelerated development of the Italian economic miracle and its consequences for class relations. For a quarter of a century, rapid economic growth had created a vast proletariat, partially concentrated in the industrial triangle of Milan, Turin, and Genoa; in 1969 a turning point had been reached: trade unions subservient to parliamentary parties and their interclassism struggled to represent the wage demands of a young working class. There was a possibility that the combination of contract negotiations and the wave of spontaneous struggles that had started in some large factories in the North would give rise to a unified trade union organisation which was no longer subordinate to the interclassist logic of parliamentary politics. Such a model would resemble the trade unions in the UK or the large German unions in organic relation to social democratic reformism. This dynamic was intertwined with the crisis of imbalance and the political demands of the key groups of Italian imperialism; a reformist line of big capital could have found its mass base in a vast labour aristocracy and a trade-unionist labour union.
As with the crisis in education, the prospects of trade unionism
also became an opportunity for the application of the Leninist tactic; the push for higher wages and the reduced influence of parliamentarianism could leave room for an entrenchment of Leninist positions in large factories. The trade-unionist season of workers’ struggles ended prematurely, but it nevertheless allowed for the recruitment of some detachments of young workers, who joined the hundreds of students won over in the universities; from those two battles in the schools and factories emerged the second generation of Lotta Comunista. Here too, the analysis of capitalist development in its social and political consequences was the premise for the struggle.
For many years, I believed that the prevailing line in the metropolis was reformist, even though it struggled to find full political expression and ran up against obstacles that hindered it. For some time, in my articles, I had also been considering the importance of the international factor in sustaining this prevailing line. In a series of articles at the end of 1968, reconstructing the imperialist export of capital to developing areas, I had emphasised the role of Italian imperialism with its most dynamic economic groups. However, it was necessary to explain why the prevailing trend of Italian capitalism was unable to create an adequate superstructure. This is the question that has occupied me for years and continues to occupy me. In conducting an extensive study of the military question, its theorists, and its history, I have seen the importance of what, in this specific field, is called the ‘moral factor’ and how, precisely as regards this factor, the in-depth investigation of the overall question becomes inadequate or, in any case, bereft of generally accepted conclusions. While it is easy to find agreement between the various schools of thought on some aspects of military matters, it is almost impossible to do so on the ‘moral factor’. If the evaluation of weapons, strategies, and battles narrows the scope of interpretation, when it comes to evaluating people, the scope widens enormously. It could not be otherwise, because at this point, different sensibilities, experiences, historical knowledge, worldviews, outlooks on life, and views of humanity come into play. Science inevitably leaves the tried and tested path of verifiability to venture into the wood of subjectivity. With equal weapons and objective strength, therefore, two armies have different commands and troops. It is this diversity of the ‘moral factor’ that ultimately determines power relations and the outcome of their confrontation. The history of these armies, these commands, these troops, acquires enormous weight in the event of their clash.
This is also true in politics, which then projects itself, by other means, into military matters. At the beginning of 1969, in an editorial on ‘Fascismo e democrazia’ (‘Fascism and democracy’) in which I reiterated that these were two forms of bourgeois dictatorship, I considered the top twenty Italian companies in the Mediobanca ranking, which together had a turnover of over 6,000 billion lire. Four of these (FIAT, Pirelli, IRI, and ENI, with a total turnover of 3,400 billion lire) openly expressed the reformist-democratic line, which was the predominant line in Italian capitalism. In May-June, on the eve of the “hot autumn”, I argued in the article ‘Internazionalizzazione della lotta operaia’ (‘Internationalisation of the workers’ struggle’), that the average productivity in Italy was low compared to that of competing metropolises and that the class struggle in Italy was linked to the process of integration of the Italian economy into the world market and the growing ‘internationalisation of capital’. In July-August, in the editorial ‘La linea generale del capitalismo italiano’ (‘The general line of Italian capitalism’), I rejected the thesis that the crisis of the Italian State was a revolutionary crisis. I cited the opinions linked to FIAT and ENI circles, according to which there was a ‘political gap’, in addition to the technological one, in that the parties no longer represented real society. Industrial capital had an interest in trade unions filling the political gap and representing real society. There was therefore no revolutionary crisis of the State, but rather the need for the system to equip itself with an imperialist State capable of withstanding competition in the world market, adapting to the internationalisation of capital, and helping to bring about the necessary increase in overall productivity. The relationship between the economic structure and the political superstructure in Italy had ‘characteristics of imbalance’. This imbalance was the real crisis in Italy.
For four months, there was no new issue of the newspaper. In February-March 1970, the title of the editorial was now ‘La crisi di squilibrio del capitalismo italiano’ (‘The crisis of imbalance in Italian capitalism’). The crisis was not a revolutionary crisis, but a ‘crisis of imbalance’, i.e., a ‘crisis of dysfunction’ or ‘operational crisis’. It is not enough to simply state that the economy determines politics. It is necessary to analyse how and through what process trade-unionist contractual struggles can be the specific form of adaptation, in the concrete Italian situation, of the superstructural movement to the structural movement
.
The restructuring crisis
The wave of wage struggles was ultimately too weak and too shallow; the reformist line had to settle for a more backward path based on a compromise between large private and State-owned industrial groups, with petty bourgeoisie and new strata of bureaucratic employees as their mass base. The result was a fiscal compromise based on debt that would perpetuate Italy’s weaknesses for years to come.
In 1973, the oil shock triggered a global restructuring crisis. Unlike that of the 1930s, this was not a general crisis because the development of new markets, especially in Asia, gave the old powers room to resolve the contradictions which had arisen with the end of the accelerated post-war development cycle. Once again, the strategic framework of the “1957 Theses” on imperialist development was confirmed.
In 1970, the contract negotiations were concluded. The movement would continue for a couple of years, but by 1972, the wave could be considered over. At the conference held at the Fiera del Mare in 1972, I could say that an ebb would begin. In the meantime, walking with Lorenzo Parodi along the pier lapped by a calm sea and warmed by a tepid September sun, we had to recognise that the trade-unionist line had not emerged. We knew the men who should have expressed it and remained sceptical about them. No new leaders had emerged. As a purely academic exercise, we suggested that perhaps Di Vittorio could have seized the opportunity. As things stood, though, inevitably the interclassist parties, above all the PCI, would regain the upper hand and absorb the results of three years of spontaneous struggles. But this also meant that, instead of being overcome, the crisis of imbalance would worsen, since the parliamentary parties were responsible for the ‘non-correspondence’ between politics and the changing requirements of the Italian capitalist economy.
As far as I was concerned, this meant that the question posed theoretically still had to be resolved in practice with a detailed analysis of the Italian reality. An enormous and uninspiring task awaited me; even if it was thankless, it had to be done.
At the end of 1973, with the Yom Kippur War, there was a sharp increase in the price of raw materials and oil. About 1% of world GDP shifted in favour of rents, causing a crisis in the balance of payments. Bordiga had predicted there would be a general crisis of capitalism in 1975. It could have been the most resounding confirmation of Marxist science, the triumph of Marxist theory. But I could not even hope that it would be, because I had been analysing the global course of imperialism for too long to hope that it would be, and to hope, moreover, that the twenty-year period indicated in our 1957 Theses had expired.
I analysed the crisis unfolding in the major metropolises and in 1975 came to the conclusion that it was a ‘restructuring crisis’. By restructuring itself, imperialism still had the possibility of exploiting the spread of capitalism throughout the world for years to come
.
Battles of Genoa, Milan, and Turin
The battles of Genoa, Milan, and Turin – the first two at the turn of the 1960s and the third in the early 1980s – can largely be considered political battles of the restructuring crisis.
The battle of Genoa began in October 1966, when, in one of the first battles of European restructuring, the State-owned shipbuilding and mechanical industries were restructured and concentrated in Italcantieri and Ansaldo Meccanico Nucleare, respectively. Commenting on the strikes that autumn, Cervetto wrote Genova punta avanzata della strategia rivoluzionaria
(Genoa, spearhead of the revolutionary strategy
). In the capital of State capitalism and in the stronghold of the PCI, which was closely linked to it, the possibility of accomplishing the unprecedented task of establishing a party based on the Bolshevik model in the metropolis of imperialist maturity would be put to the test. If the Leninists could take root in Genoa, the centre of maximum power of capital and opportunism, they could do so anywhere in Italy.