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We publish in this bulletin two small historical texts. The first one by Bordiga in 1920 on the question of the seizure of power by the proletariat ; the second one by Lenin in 1911 on the Paris Commune. Both have in common to deal the same central question, the one of the revolutionary proletariat's relation to the State power whether it is the one of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism or the one of the transitional period in which the revolutionary class exerts its class dictatorship on the whole society. They also have in common the fact they respond to questions which already arise in the struggles we see springing up. Here is their “immediat” interest and the need to make them known and to draw political lessons from them.
In front of the proletarian reactions at international scale, and more particularly around the Mediterranean Sea and in Europe, against capitalist crisis effects, the bourgeoisie leads a true ideological and political offensive on the theme of “Democracy”. One of the consequences is that, amongst the participants of the present movements, such as the “indignados” and, unfortunately also amongst the revolutionaries, numerous are those who fail into the fetichization of the “general assemblies” seen as places of “true and exemplary democracy” and as panacea and aim of the fight against capitalism's crisis and its consequences. Bordiga's 1920 text was written at a time when the Italian proletariat was self-organizing in factory councils and was occupying these ones letting believing in the illusion of a workers victory without... direct and political confrontation with the capitalist State, without the destruction of this one and without seizure of political power. This is to this trap, amongst others, to which the text we reproduce, answers to. In that sense, it is of great actuality.
By claiming the legacy of the Commune, by reaffirming that the “The cause of the Commune is the cause of the social revolution, the cause of the complete political and economic emancipation of the toilers. It is the cause of the proletariat of the whole world. And in this sense it is immortal”, Lenin's text comes to respond to an indispensable need and of some urgency : the coming back in the workers consciousness that another society is possible, that it does exist a revolutionary perspective in front this society of misery and barbarity. This more or less precise consciousness, more or less strong, has been violently and with success attacked by the anticommunist and democratic campaigns which has been unleashed after the collapse of the USSR and stalinist State capitalism. It is basically the success of these ideological campaigns which explains for the essential the slowness of the workers struggles revival since 2001. Without this “consciousness”, in the absence of this “idea of revolution”, it means without revolutionary perspective more or less present in the workers masses, the immediate and daily struggles of the working class are inescapably defeated and reduced. Today when capitalism's bankruptcy openly explodes to the eyes of everyone, the return amongst the workers masses of the idea that another society is possible and necessary can't but favour the development of the present fights and the positive evolution of the relation of forces between the international proletariat and the whole bourgeoisie in relation to the massive classes confrontations which approach. In that sense, it is too of great actuality.
The FICL.
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