The Next Century will be that of

the Communist Revolution of the Proletariat

Ubaldo Buttafava
First Secretary of the CC of the
Organization for the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy

The well-known definition of Lenin concerning social classes emphasizes, among other things, certain aspects: their position in the historically determined social system of production, their relation to the means of production, the method and amount of obtaining social goods. Is this definition still valid today? It is difficult to deny it, but as we know the modern ideologies of imperialism, outdoing their predecessors, have claimed that the working class no longer exists, or that its economic role is no longer determinant for development and for profit. Among these "theoreticians" are also several who call themselves "leftists" and even "communists."

The political objective of such sophistries is evident, even though it is impossible for these bourgeois and revisionist economists to deny the Marxist-Leninist thesis that "capital is nothing without wage labor, without value, without money, without prices."

The denial of the role and of the very existence of the proletariat, especially in the Western world, has an enormous implication, in all spheres of social activity. This "theory" has been developed to conceal exploitation, the class struggle, the necessity of revolution and of the dictatorship of the proletariat, this last being the indispensable condition to lead humanity from pre-history to the new communist civilization.

Nikita Khrushchev and his successors also denied and are still denying the determinant role of the working class, which is the pillar of their class-collaborationist, bourgeois, reformist and chauvinist policies.

In the West the nucleus of this reactionary theory is based on the concept that wage labor is no longer the source of value and surplus-value (rather the intellect is the dominant form of the labor power), in the era of the information-processing "revolution," profit is the result of the speed with which technical-scientific change is utilized in production, the revolution in the means of production has changed not only the form of labor, but also the economic content of the relation between capital and labor (according to which the labor time is no longer the measure of the value produced).

But the modern witchcraft in the service of the old world can not change reality with its alchemy: in the world today there exists the largest army that history has known, a billion proletarians.

World imperialism, which has established the capitalist mode of production over the whole planet, and the domination of this narrow monopolist financial oligarchy, has entered into a permanent and insoluble general crisis.

The statement of Stalin has become even more relevant: "Today one can speak of the existence of the objective conditions for the revolution in the whole system of world imperialist economy considered as a single whole in such a comprehensive system, and it is ripe for revolution," as is the slogan of Enver Hoxha: "the revolution is a question taken up for solution."

All the inherent features of imperialism that Lenin pointed out in his time have developed to the highest degree, according to the inevitable fixed laws: the so-called globalization and computerization of the economy are the ultimate expression of the rule of international monopoly finance capital.

The collapse of Brezhnevite social-imperialism has opened the way for a new offensive of imperialism called precisely "globalization," which is a savage affirmation of the rule of finance capital and of the law of maximum profit, through free trade (free circulation of money, of capital, of goods, of labor power), information-processing, the technological revolution and the interdependence of the markets and of production.

Marx and Engels in the "Communist Manifesto" already described this globalization, and now history is repeating itself with a colossal breadth and depth, but with new consequences. The national and multi-ethnic states are entering into a crisis, the international division of labor condemns entire continents to hunger, confines the scientific-technical and productive base to a few enclaves, concentrates capital and knowledge in a few countries. It impedes the development of others that were once developed, the inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens the conflicts and places in danger the hegemony of the old powers.

Liberalism in the economy is liquidating the welfare state (health, pensions, education), attacking wages with a flexible labor market and part-time work, transforming wages into a dependent variable on profit, liquidating job security, creating enormous unemployment in the industrialized countries and under-employment in the "second and third world" countries with miserable wages.

The excessive power of finance capital and the hangman's noose of public debt are breaking down all the illusions in revisionism and social-democracy. One speaks increasingly of an "implosion," namely the internal collapse of the industrial powers themselves, and fantastic prescriptions are concocted for the reduction of hours of work, for the employment of the unemployed in "socially useful" labor, of equal taxation and similar fables.

In the USA, while Clinton boasts of the increase of real wages and the decrease of unemployment to 5.1%, the real wages of unskilled workers has fallen in the last 23 years by 13% and one-third of the labor force is unemployed, under-employed or is living from day to day.

The social polarization is assuming a planetary dimension and is impoverishing enormous layers of the middle class in the metropolises. The contrast between manual and intellectual labor has assumed dramatic aspects, whether because it imposes a technical-scientific undevelopment, or whether because it condemns peoples and nations to dullness and to total dependence on the model of cosmopolitan culture and life.

In the new productive processes the working class is losing much of its professional capacity, leading to a form of paroxysmal alienation.

This phenomenon, together with the precariousness of work and the increasing material and cultural poverty, is not the only phenomenon that shows how imperialism is destroying the productive forces, the wealth of the planet and life itself. Imperialism is the export of capital and goods, while production financed from abroad seeks ever lower costs, leaving economic devastation on the shoulders of the peasants and suburbs that are crowded with the unemployed.

The bourgeoisie and its intellectuals are aware of the end of the capitalist system, but they do not believe in a higher civilization, no longer dominated by the "eternal" laws of the jungle. The "theory" of "endism" rules: the end of history, of ideology, labor, politics, the state, arts, science, the family, of the human race, of the world itself. In reality it is capitalism that is dying, killed by its own laws.

Capitalist imperialism has buried the very democratic liberties, which in the form conceived historically by the bourgeoisie have shown themselves insufficient for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

Liberty and democracy as demands assume today a different content because the collision of classes has reached a higher stage.

Faced with the disturbing reality that the very bourgeois ideologists denounce, what is the alternative for progress, for a radical change, what is the force, that social actor, that can prevent a new Middle Ages, the decomposition caused by "local" and world wars, genocide, misery, racism, nationalism, moral and cultural degeneration? The only revolutionary force, which has nothing to lose, which plays the determinant role in the economy, which aspires to progress, has always been and still is the proletariat! But this class, in order to be able to fulfill its historical role, in the new conditions of globalization needs the following conditions:

- the reappropriation in rigorous and scientific terms of Marxism-Leninism, in particular the thought of comrade Stalin and of comrade Enver Hoxha, who have made a present-day contribution to the understanding of the modern forms of opportunism and revisionism, especially when it takes power!

- the development of Marxist-Leninist theory regarding the analysis corresponding to the new reality of imperialism, especially in regard to the development and the function of finance capital, of the international monopolies, the regional political and military strategy of the old and new great powers, the imperialist political economy in the international division of labor and in relation to wage and salaried labor.

The crisis of political bourgeois democracy, of culture, the use of science, the hitching of the parties of the "left" and of the trade unions to the chariot of the monopolies.

- the deepening of the analysis of classes on a national and international scale, especially regarding the urban salaried workers of the metropolises who today have a social weight that is superior to that of the poor peasants and who endure conditions of life similar to that of the working class, and of the mass phenomenon of the social degradation and loss of social position of a substantial portion of the proletariat.

- the creation, on the basis of the politics of the proletarian United Front and of the democratic United Front of organizations of the masses that operate among different social strata and in various spheres of the ideological superstructure.

The tactical flexibility of working wherever the masses may be, whether they are organized or not, carrying out ones strategy on a day-to-day basis and on a specific level, without distortion and at the same time adhering to concrete reality.

The creation, with the approval of the masses, of class trade unions, continuing at the same time intelligent and complex work in the reformist and conservative trade unions to discredit the politics, isolate the bureaucracy and to bring the workers to their anti-capitalist positions.

- But above all the proletariat needs a Leninist party, a vanguard which recruits the best part of the class.

A party of the masses (not a mass party), with leaders organically linked to the class, capable and monolithic on the theoretical level, organized on the basis of cells both on a factory and territorial basis. A party of the class struggle, capable of adapting itself rapidly to all forms of struggle, to the ebbs and flows of the situation. A Party that is highly centralized and democratic, with an iron discipline, finally a Bolshevik Party as Stalin had taught.

The history of the decades before and after the death of Stalin has demonstrated with extreme clarity how fundamental is the struggle to prevent the petty-bourgeois "revolutionary" theories from operating in the party and taking over.

If we can summarize the fundamental cause of our defeats, we can say that the proletariat and its party have been defeated when the ideology of social strata and groups alien to the proletariat have taken the leadership of our movement, as happened for example in the USSR with the Bogdanov-Bukharin-Yaroshenko-Khrushchev trend, in China with Mao-Tsetung Thought, in Italy with the Bukharinite Togliatti.

In conclusion the globalization of the economy, a result of the general crisis of finance capitalism, demands a new internationalism, the unity of the proletariat and the peoples.

A comprehensive strategy, a reaffirmation without confusion of the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

A general line which makes each party of the working class of each country into a department of the revolutionary army which will overthrow imperialism. Otherwise, the global strategy of the reactionary forces will dominate for a long time.

Only an alternative ideal and politics capable of mobilizing the masses can prevent the catastrophe, can put an end to the agony of imperialism and isolate the opportunists.

The crisis of bourgeois democracy and the planetary development of capitalism, forces us to elaborate political proposals that are more advanced in their economic and social contents.

To "endism" we must counterpose concretely the communist objectives, first of all the dictatorship of the proletariat, the only thing that will bring back the masses to the struggle.

It is the grand ideals of communist freedom, of social equality, of the affirmation of the aspirations of nations and peoples that will restore the communist movement to hegemony.

The objective conditions are working for us, in vast areas of the world continual social conflicts are breaking out; we must make sure that these are not led by the national bourgeoisie or manipulated by imperialism in the framework of their rivalry.

Therefore, the working class is and will be the midwife of the new world. From its ideology will arise a new humanism, a new cultural and moral rebirth.

Therefore forward to the barricades of class struggle; the century that is about to begin will be the century of the communist revolution of the proletariat.

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