An interview with Roberto Massari by Michele Azzerri
Dear friend and comrade,
this is the English translation of the interview on my idea of revolution made by Michele Azzerri on April 2011. I hope you'll find the time to read it and, if possible, to comment it. It is just an interview (then not a theoretical text) but I consider it a good synthesis of my present approach to the possibility (hope?) of revolution. It has been necessary for me to go through 45 years of revolutionary experiences in various parts of the world and the writing of almost 30 books in order to arrive to such a synthesis: but I know that it might be overcome in the same moment you read it. Luckily that on the ground of principles, the pace of change is not so rapid. So you may still find in it something reasonable. That "reasonable" part can be further discussed and improved. It can be also a mean of political connection between us, provided that you still consider the process of thinking a possible future revolution in the first place as a collective project.
Thanks for giving your attention to it.
Roberto Massari
 |
| © Jean Michel Basquiat |
To begin with, can you introduce me to Red Utopia - to its national and international profile?
RU is a
libertarian political association, which at the moment is comprised of comrades
of many origins: Marxists, Libertarian Marxists, Anarchists, Situationists, Trotskyists,
Guevarists, Leninists, Feminists, trade unionists, and Christians, if I haven't
forgotten anyone.
Everyone is free to maintain his own
individual ideology and is not responsible for the ideological positions of the
others. We try to operate in a way that allows everyone to learn and understand
the positive aspects that come from the various ideological origins. It is therefore
a non-ideological association (nor ideologised) in which statutes do not exist,
there are no conventions, executive committees, hierarchies, or similar structures.
Neither is it obligatory to pay any membership dues. In fact, on closer inspection,
there are no obligations whatsoever, apart from respecting the six principles
of revolution that we will discuss later on. You are a part of RU because you
want to be, at your own pace, without sacrifice, obligations or being made to
feel guilty for «non-involvement».
Viewed in
comparison with the small political groups, our most unusual characteristic -
which was, however, a founding characteristic of the First International until
it split - is that we do not have a political programme. Despite the fact that
I have personally written many of them during my long life as a militant (as
one can read from the collections of my unpublished writings: up to now there
are four volumes, dating from the 1960's until 1980; the fifth volume is a work
in progress). Leaving aside the controversy with small groups or political
factions who utilize the supposed Programme (with a capital P) as a sort of
panacea or a tournament of teams, even for more serious organisations adopting
a single and obligatory programme is a foolish thing.
In the first
place a revolutionary political programme cannot be written once and for all,
but it should act as a guide to the course of events and therefore it should be
continuously brought up to date in real-time (something that has never happened
in history, with the partial exception, however to be discussed, of
February-October 1917).
The truth is
that the so-called revolutionary Left is continually quarrelling about past
written programmes and agendas which are unfailingly left behind by reality.
And it is not worth wasting a single word on the texts, often infantile and
theoretically unfounded, that small political factions pass off as
«Revolutionary Programmes» - they are actually timeless and unrealistic shopping
lists.
And also
because a political Programme assumes that when there are differences they
should cohabit within the same organization and under the same leadership:
however, the entire history of Leninism (and of Trotskyist parties) shows that
differences can only live together for a short time. There are always
majorities that expel the minorities or minorities which sooner or later
separate from the majority (which is more or less the same thing): it is only a
matter of time.
If all the
historical evidence was not enough to prove this, one can recall what happened
to the comrades of the old Fmr (the Third International tendency or fraction
within the Fourth International of Mandel, Maitan, Frank) when after three
years of written and rigorously elaborated criticism of the majority leadership,
they were expelled in Italy, Austria, in Portugal and even erased from the
history of that organization. The funny and absurd thing is that in relation to
the political line of the majority we were right about everything (you can read
the almost 600 pages of materials dedicated to this episode material that I
have published), even though being right is always relative, tied to a
determined context, as well as to a certain accumulation of knowledge.
In the end, it
should be said that the existence of a programme that is connected to reality
(unlike the dogmatic statements like those of the Bordigists or
Trotskyist-Bordigists) inevitably brings new divergences when dramatic changes
occur in a national or international context (think of the end of the USSR...). When
things like that happen on such a scale, you cannot impede the serious new
divergences that arise, and you end up being divided into more than one
programme, each one of which will be subjected to the majority-minority dynamic
that earlier I was talking about, producing new expulsions or splits and
therefore new small political parties if not even new (Fourth) Internationals.
I cannot forget for example, the effects (devastating for us in the Fourth
International at that time) of the development of the Cuban Revolution in a
pro-Soviet direction.
We believe that
it is a caricature to organize oneself in the form of a political party, around
an alleged political agenda, in order to have the so-called and mythical «political
line».
RU believes
that you can remain united whilst maintaining and learning to respect differences
in political ideologies, different views of reality and therefore also the dissimilar
«political lines», which may arise from the diversities. Time will obviously
demonstrate soon enough which views were wrong and which were right (or
relatively right).
In order for
you not to think that this is only wishful thinking, I'll try and give you some
examples of what RU has been putting into practice for the past few years, with
slow but steady success.
Apart from the
old comrades of the ancient Fmr (Third International Tendency and Fraction
within the Fourth International) - like Michele Nobile, Pino Papetti, Antonella
Marazzi or myself - within RU or in the editorial staff of its blog, there are
comrades like Pier Francesco Zarcone who at the time he joined RU was and has
remained a member of the Federation of Anarcho-Communists; and Pino Bertelli,
who needs no introduction, for having been always an Anarcho-Situationist,; we have
a Christian (Valdese) comrade who feels free to continue to fight for the
Fourth International, meanwhile the general direction of the RU favours the
creation of a Fifth International of movements, associations, etc.
We have a
comrade (Humberto Vázquez Viaña), who was part of Che's guerrilla force in Bolivia
And of course
we have inside RU various sorts of Marxists. Among them an economic and
sociology scholar like Michele Nobile, whom without hesitation I consider the
foremost theoretical Marxist in Italy
No political line, no ideological homogeneity. What
keeps you together?
We remain
united on a few (very few) questions of principle
that we have elaborated over the past tens of years and that should be valid in
Italy or abroad, for scientists or for the newly landed immigrant, for a
radicalised woman or a young rebel, for the unemployed or for the elderly
retired person, in other words: for everyone. There are six principles at the
moment, succinct and easy to translate in every language. We call them «short
phrases» [frasette], to lighten them up and apply a bit of irony to ourselves.
They fit on half a page and I can quote them for you (with indication in brackets
of the historical Internationals that are the references for each particular
point):
a) The end does not justify the means, but the
means which we use must reflect the essence of the end.
[Priority of ethics
(Guevara) and scientific truth above every other consideration]
b) Support for the struggle of all peoples
against imperialism and/or for their self determination, independently of their
political leaderships.
[Beginning of the
Third International]
c) For the autonomy and total independence from
the political projects of capitalism.
[The Zimmerwald Left
from the Second International]
d) The unity of the workers of the world -
intellectual and material workers, without ideological discrimination of any kind
(apart from the basics of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and of socialism).
[First International]
e) Fight against political bureaucracies, for
direct democracy and rank-and-file councils.
[Anti-authoritarian
International of Saint-Imier and the Fourth International]
f) Save all life on the planet, save humanity.
[Real new historical
task of the Fifth International of movements for which we fight].
But the
decisive principle is the first one, and here I will pause because it has an important
theoretical and scientific meaning. I'll immediately tell you why. Scientific
and theoretical discussion has not been moving ahead since the beginning of the
twentieth-century. When Bernstein, Luxemburg, Parvus, Trotsky, Kautsky and
Lenin were fighting among themselves, all in all it was still a golden age, it
was Eden
Well then,
starting from the first months following the victory of the Russian Revolution,
and already during the first congresses of the Comintern (not to mention what
later happened as a result of Stalinism and its successors) it no longer meant
anything to be right or wrong.
The classic
example is obviously Trotsky, who in the polemic against Stalin was right about
everything (from internal politics to foreign policy) without half measures or
ambiguity, meanwhile Stalin was wrong about everything, also without half
measures.
An unequivocal
historical fact that not only did not change the way of the world, but over
time became a handicap: it is wrong to be right, because if you are capable of
clearly examining reality and furthermore of voicing this opinion out loud, you
will be segregated, become the minority, and therefore isolated: look at the
history of the Fourth International from the point of view of its being part of
the world communist movement; look at the history of the Fmr within the Fourth
International (for example our definition of this political current as
«centrist sui generis» today more than ever proven by historical events); look
at the destiny of Guevara in regards to Castroism; look at the history of Il Manifesto within the Pci; take the
episode of Ferrando [Pcl] within Rifondazione Comunista - I would be able to
give you hundreds of examples from Portugal, Bolivia, Argentina, France,
Venezuela and elsewhere.
Setting aside
for the moment the experience of the Fourth, let's take the problem of Maoism.
Many Italian intellectuals, 99% of them, suddenly became Maoist at the end of
1968 and during 1969. Those who have not passed away or moved on to other endeavors
are, politically speaking, still in circulation: well, there is not one amongst
them that has apologized or admitted to have been wrong, not one single person.
Many deal with the problem simply by denying having ever been Maoist or stating
that they were, but only for a very brief period of time... Another small lie,
a mean justified by the end: an end that as such can change at all times to
suit the personal needs of the liar.
In order to
avoid appearing dogmatic on the subject, I'll return just for a moment to
clarify that if it is true that Trotsky was always historically right against
Stalin, he was not always right in regards to history. He was late in
understanding the horror and danger of the phenomenon of Stalinism; he shared
very serious blame along with Lenin, for having cleared the path for Stalin
with the liquidation of the workers’ committees and the Soviets, and with the
transformation of a centrist party - the Bolshevik party - in a
counter-revolutionary dictatorial party; he even attempted to create the Fourth
International in a new party form as a caricaturised imitation of what they had
once been (albeit badly) Bolshevism and the Comintern. He erred in his choice
of his closest collaborators; he did not understand early and for some time the
impossibility of fighting Stalinism on its own ground, and much more.
Can you go back to the main point, to the question of
being right which it seems to me that you put in terms of revolutionary ethics.
I said that
from a certain point on (the beginning of the twentieth-century, certainly after
the October Revolution) being right no longer meant anything, because the
decisive and only question was and continues to be: who is controlling the apparatus? That was true in the struggle
between the Stalinists and the old Bolsheviks. It was true in the splits that
characterised the first years of rebuilding of the Fourth International after
the war. It was true of the battle waged by the Third International Tendency
within the Fourth International. It has been true in the struggles of all the
organized currents we have seen in Rifondazione etc., etc.
I'll repeat and
clarify: when I speak in terms of «being right» I also mean to say that
knowledge is relative because the elements of evaluation change with time and
the individuals themselves that cultivate that knowledge change. The most that
is conceded to human beings is to be right in relative terms. The problem is
that if it is no longer important who is right and who is wrong - although in
relative terms - theoretical discussion is finished, it is of no use, and no
longer determines political action. And if revolutionary political action is
not determined by theory, the only thing left to determine it are caste
interests (the apparatus) or mere improvisation. And this improvisation has
often a limited local base, with leaders who are instinctively rebellious elements,
but devoid of any theoretical formation or even, a times, just the product of
psychological distress or real mental illness (that as such in the beginning
can appear to carry creative connotations, but in the long run generate demoralisation,
anxiety, and a detachment from reality).
Actually, the
first principle of our statement is based on ethics and on love for the historical
and scientific truth (within the limits of our capacity for comprehension). Our
way of understanding the concept of political association (for the moment Red
Utopia, who knows what tomorrow) offers great appeal to self-discipline, to
maturity and personal honesty. I've come to the conclusion, after forty-five
years of being in the (revolutionary) front line, that if you do not impose
values upon yourself, there is no external method to impose them on you (imposition
from the outside as opposed to self-imposition). From this point of view
democratic centralism or the party apparatus are useless, as useless are the
statutes, the programmes, the expulsions, the party splits.
Not even the
legal system of the bourgeoisie - which is in effect the most advanced legal
system of our age, built upon over centuries of elaboration and experience -
can ensure co-existence within an association or any public institution based
on fundamental values. Imagine if it can be guaranteed by improvised statutes,
created ad hoc by cynical representatives of political castes (established ones
or in the making), operating exclusively for the benefit of whomever is running
the apparatus at that particular moment. Party or splinter party statutes are a
step backwards in respect to the Roman-Mediterranean-Enlightenment-Democratic-Bourgeois
legal civilization that I recognize as mine, even if it is no longer enough and
I yearn for the next step.
Can we examine another of the six points that you
consider important?
Certainly, the
second one, regarding the struggle
of all peoples for their self-determination, that needs to be supported
independently of the political leadership they have. This is a matter of
principle. There can be different analysis about self-determination, or
overlappings of liberation struggles, or situations that appear impossible to
work out or are made that way by imperialism (or in the past by the Ussr
It may sound strange but this is the only
theoretical heritage of Lenin that I respect in its entirety and that is still
hundred per cent valid. If we look back, we can see that Lenin continually
oscillated about fundamental issues (from the theory of the permanent revolution that he really
never understood to the conception of the party, from the instrumental use of
democracy to the Nep, not to mention the freedom of action conceded to the
growing bureaucracy); but regarding the question of the people’s right to
self-determination, he has always been right and still is today.
By the way, I
can easily prove that is the one single theoretical issue about which Lenin did
not change sides or zigzag. On the issues I have just mentioned, and others -
like terrorism, the unions, the Soviets, the State, the economy of transition,
the International, the relationship with the Mensheviks or other parties - he
turned about face and back again. On the other end, regarding the people's
right to self-determination, from 1913 on he never changed his main position
and close to death, his last battle (against Stalin) was precisely on behalf of
self-determination. He left us a golden rule: The principle of
self-determination is an absolute and not a relative right of the people.
Another point?
The fifth,
about direct democracy and against the castes or political bureaucracies. For Italy Italy
is also valid in France , the
United States , Germany or Japan Venezuela
Voting or not
voting is a tactical choice. The real problem is direct democracy and the
deadly fight (yes, deadly…) to wage
against the political apparatus, the castes and the bureaucracies that stand in
the way of the class struggle which takes place between the more advanced
sectors of humanity and the national bourgeoisies. Needless to say, also the
refusal of the party form for revolutionaries is part of this radical vision of
the degeneration of politics.
Historically, what were Social Democracy and
Stalinism? How has the Trotskyist movement differenced itself from these two
currents of the labour movement?
Historically
the labour movement was and continues to be fundamentally Social Democratic. It
is Social Democracy that embodies the continuity of the labour movement. One
might not like it, but in 2011 one cannot negate this historical reality. Only
the Social Democratic parties have survived in a few important countries and
only they have a mass following specifically among the workers. The historical
role of the unions explains this permanence and relative hegemony over time. In
the various phases of the degeneration process of Social Democracy, other
currents have been born; among them a fundamental role was played at the
origins by the Leninist-Trotskyist current, although its historical experience
was brief. Then there was the longlasting survival of the Stalinist current.
(I’ll leave
aside the experience of the relationship between the working class and Peronism,
which is fascinating, but complicated and to which I dedicated a book in the
1970's).
Stalinism grew
from inside the labour movement and became the organizer of its most combative sections. Many years ago I
would have spoken in terms of the most advanced sections, but now I am careful
to not say that. The Stalinist labour movement was not the most advanced for
the simple fact that it accepted and covered up the great and unforgettable
crime against humanity represented by the camps of the Gulag. A notable sector of the Russian and international working
class that accepted and went through the experience of the gulag (albeit passively) is a retrograde sector of a social class,
condemned to never be able to exercise a dominant social role. This is true in
view also of the fact that the international bourgeoisie, on the other hand,
has been able to shake off the (co)responsibility of Nazism, that is to say of
a similarly atrocious experience, but of shorter duration and quantitatively
less tragic then Stalin’s Gulag with its more than twenty million deaths.
Allow me to
return again to the pact between Hitler and Stalin that I consider a watershed
[a divide] in world history. I no longer stand to listen to people who try to
justify that strategic alliance, which was operationally aggressive in regards
to Poland, Eastern Europe and the Balkans (not to mention the renewal of the
pact with the Japanese adhesion).
Those that
support it are morally responsible for the related crimes of Nazism and Stalinism
in the first year and a half of the war, including the massacre of unarmed Russian
people at the start of Operation Barbarossa (June 1941). The Nazis were able to
take advantage of the stupid and blind faith that Stalin had placed in that
pact. That’s not all. With time I’ve come to think that without that evil pact
the World War probably would never have even begun. In fact, Hitler would not
have had the possibility of attacking the West if he didn't have his back covered
in the East. Therefore, we also have to blame both Hitler and Stalin equally
for the greatest massacre that humanity has ever known.
To understand
how we can place ourselves within the various currents of the labour movement,
it should be mentioned that the basis of thought for Red Utopia is actually one
of not accepting even the split of 1872-74 of the International Workingmen’s Association
- the First International - in which the main responsibility lies with Marx. We
consider that split (against Bakunin and the Anarchists) as the first great
tragedy that opened the door to all the others. With that split it was acquired
the principle that only one political line must prevail, that you must accept
it as a rule and those who do not accept it must leave and create their own
International. Which is exactly what the Anarchists with little success tried
to do, in contrast to all of the other factions that were present within the
International Workingmen’s Association: Owenists, Saint Simonians,
Cooperativists, Proudhonians, Mazziniani, Garibaldini, Fourierists, various
forms of Marxists, Independents, Anti-Czarists, and various branches of
Anti-Hapsburgists etc.
Without being
too lengthy: that separation started the beginning of a process which broke the
labour movement in two. I often repeat this phrase: with the separation, the
Marxists came away with the reason while the Anarchists came away with the
ethics. These two marvelous faculties of the human species from that time on
have never met again on a mass level. In addition, the Marxists no longer have
the reason and the Anarchists no longer have the ethics. It has all trickled
away into small parties, small groups, local interest associations, etc.
Without that
separation probably the degeneration of Social Democracy would have been different,
perhaps minor and not major. We'll never know. History is not made of «what
ifs», but there is no doubt that the separation influenced the process of the
statist and pro-capitalist degeneration of Social Democracy.
Red Utopia is
not so foolish to think of asking the struggling humanity to take a step backwards
(even though as a dream I quite like the idea). I think, although, that one of
its objectives should be to overcome that separation, certainly from a
theoretical point of view, but also from a practical stance (according to ours small
possibilities), by our example and by our mere existence.
Today, after the fall of the Berlin
No. They no
longer make sense.
Not even Trotskyism at this point?
No, Trotskyism
was never an interpretative category in a historical sense, other than perhaps
during the bloodiest phases of the battle against Stalin. I believe that not
even Trotsky himself would have thought that, in founding the Fourth
International in 1938 and in taking note that it no longer existed by 1939.
Therefore, besides the battle in that specific time, Trotskyism (hoping that we
agree on the meaning of the term) never had any practical, historical function
of any significance.
On the
theoretical ground, however, it had great merits. In any case, on this level,
no other current can compete with it. The books, the magazines, the
intellectuals - from Naville to Mandel, from C.L.R. James to Serge to dozens of
other prestigious minds - are there as proof. Not to mention the many others
that were drawn to Trotskyism and then moved away from it.
While denying
that Trotskyism played a concrete historical role in combating Stalinism, I
have however to concede that 1) at least it tried for tens of years and paid an
indescribable human price, 2) no other current was able to do more or better. Actually,
those that could, adapted themselves to Stalinism sooner or later. Think about
the Italian Socialist Party...
As you've just said, interpretative categories such as
Stalinism, Social Democracy and Trotskyism are no longer valid. What about Reformist or Revolutionary?
Not even those.
Because Reformism does not exist and in fact has never existed as a historical
reality. Yearning for revolution instead exists. But, precisely, it is an aspiration,
a spiritual and mental matter, a theoretical fact even though, for some people
I know, in the Internet age it has become something essentially virtual. I do
think that nobody could consider as real «reformism» the fact that certain
parties take part in the parliamentary game and propose measures in order later
to win the elections. This is not Reformism. As I have said previously, also in
regards to this subject, the theoretical debate has not moved ahead since the
beginning of the twentieth-century when Reformism seemingly took on the
appearance of statehood, taking shape in the action of the German Social
Democracy. But then it went the way we know, with the vote of war credits in
1914.
At the
beginning of my political life (the second half of the 1960's) people used «reformist»
as an (insulting) epithet when referring to Social Democrats who were not at
all reformers. Reforms were made by the bourgeoisie. The large scale nationalisations
in France were made by De
Gaulle, the nationalisation of electric energy in Italy
To be
«reformist» is a latent aspiration of bourgeois ideology, corresponding to the
meaning of the word: that is to reform the system. We know, starting from the
beginning of the twentieth-century - and Marxism (with Rosa Luxemburg in first
place) already amply explained it - that a structural reform of the capitalist
system is no longer possible. But the aspiration remains as an ideological fact
and not necessarily in bad faith: the anti-global movement or the theoretical
world of «degrowth» [sustainable negative growth] are full of reformist
aspirations for the capitalist system that obviously have no chance of being
realised until the private control of the main means of production will exclude
from decision-making the world of material and mental workers (and within this,
first of all the scientific world).
Social Democracy
in general was not reformist, even though at times has exploited the allurement
of reforms in order to better insert itself in the state apparatus and from
there force the workers to pay the price of capitalist accumulation and
economic crisis.
Those of us who
belonged to the ex-extreme left, who at the time denounced as «reformists» the
pro-Soviet communist parties (Pci, Pcf, Pce - before the fairy tale of Euro
Communism), were wrong. Where has there ever been a Stalinist or Communist
Party reformism? Did anyone see it in Allende's Chile Union of the Left?
Today, when we
use the word «reformist», for example in regards to Rifondazione Comunista in
Italy, it borders on the ridiculous because this mini-caste, this electioneering
apparatus, every time it entered the government (Italian Communists twice, the
Bertinotti’s party only once), went there only to do the same things that the
ex-Communists, the ex-Socialists, even the Fascists, the Right and Berlusconi
did. We shall never forget that the vote in favour of the military mission in
Afghanistan (in July 2006) saw the two branches of the Italian Parliament offer
unanimous support, from the Fascists of Pino Rauti to the two senators of
Sinistra Critica/Fourth International (Turigliatto and Malabarba), passing
through the Italian Communists, Rifondazione, Greens, Gays, women and linguistic-ethnic
minorities.
Getting back to present day. The crisis of the
economic system and of the social capitalism of today proposes more conflicts.
Is the conflict between capitalism and labour still the principal contradiction
of the capitalist system? If so, how does it compare to other conflicts around
the question of gender, the environment or civil rights?
I find it
difficult to answer you because since a long time I have freed myself from
Hegelian terminology and the Hegel’s presence in Marx; therefore whether the
contradiction between capitalism and labour is the principal one or not is a
language that I have difficulty in understanding. I do not know anymore what
does it mean, because I can no longer accept this type of formal and abstract
terminology: it's good for all sorts of plays on words or to build upon it the
academic careers of those Marxologists whom I have already mentioned.
There is no
doubt that capitalism (i.e. the imperialist bourgeois class that is still subdivided
in memberships of national states) dominates on a world scale, and dominates
everything: the material, spiritual and virtual world. It governs all types of
conflicts, wars, economy, exploitation, ideologies and above all it dominates
the exponential growth of the all-pervasive mechanisms of the society of the
spectacle. At least about one thing there are no doubts: the enemy continues to
be capitalism and it is not a virtual fact, since they are physical individuals
who make up the bourgeoise, even if they are difficult to detect behind the
various types of firms or capital companies (private, mixed, etc.). This social
class has become the principal enemy not just of the workers, but of the ever
increasing masses of citizens of the world, independently of their position in
the production process: members of the human species who can work or not, can
be poor or rich, male or female, young or old, religious or atheist - but who
are beginning to experiment on themselves, and therefore are beginning to
understand that the survival of capitalism endangers the survival of the Earth.
Not by accident
the sixth short phrase of RU is «save life on the planet, save humanity».
Personally, since I strongly believe it and I picture to myself the physical concept
of species (completely incompatible
with the language based on Hegelian contradictions that I was speaking of
earlier), I expect that the human species be capable by its instinct of
survival to get rid of capitalism. Frankly I don’t think any longer that the
workers alone will be capable to free us from capitalism, because they already
had the historical chance, and they squandered it early in the
twentieth-century when they allowed that in their name the great hope of
communism would transform itself in the system of the worst crimes against
humanity that we have ever seen. As you can see, we always come back to
Stalinism; and unfortunately it will be necessary to come back to it again and
again until humanity will not have rejected it, thereby assuming a historical
task that the labour movement was not capable of fulfilling.
Are you saying that the subject of social
transformation is no longer the working class struggle but rather all humanity?
Almost all of humanity in its conscious parts, even though I prefer to use the term taken
from the biological sciences («species») rather than that taken from philosophy
or literature («humanity»). Having enough time, I could attempt to explain the
difference.
Humanity or the
species that it is, it becomes interesting at this point to understand the
dynamics, the formation and diffusion of the process through which the
acquisition of consciousness takes place. The growth of consciousness, in fact,
proceeds according to the classic principles of unequal and combined development (another fundamental theoretical
contribution by Trotsky): sometimes it can take place in geographical places
(like Cuba in the very beginning of the 1960's), at times in a specific movement
(for example the collective communities of Catalonia in 1936-37), at times with
regard to one of the sexes at a particular moment (the launching of the new
feminist movement in the '60s), the gay movement in certain countries, at times
in certain cultural communities (I think of some Situationist experiences, but
also, why not, of the present Red Utopia and of the many analogous experiences
that are certainly growing without our knowledge). Experience has abundantly
demonstrated that these developments never have a positive evolution if they
are lived by the isolated intellectual, preoccupied only with himself, his own
books, his own career, and centered on his own narcissism. I can't think of a
single positive example, although I have known many clever intellectuals from
all over the world - at times really clever - but not interested in the
construction of collective processes of acquiring consciousness…
Excuse me if I interrupt. The consciousness that you
speak of has historically been the class consciousness, to be intended today in
the terms you have proposed, or is it a different type of consciousness?
It is a
consciousness that first of all must have a negative connotation, namely it has
to be anti-capitalist. When for example we commit ourselves to the feminist
movement, we affirm that the feminist movement should merge the criticism of
male-chauvinism or of patriarchalism with anti-capitalism, although this is not
the really the case in any country yet. The feminist movement was
anti-capitalist in a few instances, limited to some countries (Usa , France ,
Italy
Therefore,
regarding the global enemy, it's very clear: it is capitalism. And this is
something we need to come to terms with, in the thousand and one different ways
offered by the «biodiversity» of human beings.
However, to
such a so clearly exposed enemy, it does no longer oppose itself a single,
social entity, endowed in its Dna with the seeds for transformation, but
various layers or social sectors to the extent that they are capable of obtaining
awareness. (The term «movements» would suffice, but I do not think it works for
Italy where - in the minds of many political organizers - it is identified with
huge spectacular parades, or with purely protest strikes or with momentary
bursts of insubordination at a local level over problems like water, garbage,
incinerators and related issues.) Layers and sectors whose struggles may no
always take a physical, visible form, but who succeed in some way to prove the
impossibility of solving some specific social and/or cultural problems.
There could be
for example a radicalization of nuclear scientists in one or more countries who
denounce in the press or on the Web the danger of new nuclear plants. It's not
essential that they strike or demonstrate in the streets: it is an opinion
movement that could have a profound effect in an anti-capitalist sense. The
same could apply to any current of judges that oppose the anti-democratic
nature and the class character of justice. Or to city planners coming forward
with a white paper about building speculations. Or to publishers who stop
running behind the trends set by television... Or to television viewers who
begin the turn off their damned cathode boxes... In short, various examples of
social unrest that are inevitably destined to conflict with the capitalist
system if they want to be consistent with their own objectives.
In order for
their development to occur it is fundamental from the beginning the stage of propagandistic
popularization (in this we publishers would have a potentially giant
responsibility). But as soon as the first steps forward take shape, the
fundamental problem becomes that of direct
democracy. Until this problem is not resolved, the so-called «natural
leaders» of these movements will inevitably end up on the candidates
list for the next administrative elections or within the organizational career
of some union or political party, or in a showcase on television readily
manufactured by the society of the spectacle. While two years later no one
remembers a thing about «the movement» (look at the airport in Vicenza
Can you give me your interpretation of the current
social-economic crisis? What are the causes?
On a
theoretical level, broadly speaking I acknowledge what has already been said by
Rosa Luxemburg, that since awhile capitalism does not find new territories for
expansion (valorization of capital) neither from outside nor from within. I
think therefore that at a maximum level of abstraction you can still define it
as a crisis of an overproduction of capitals that overlaps with an
overproduction of goods (existing, however for the latter, the possibility of
new placements). They are two sources for the crisis that are structurally
distinct and do not always coincide. I feel uncomfortable, however, in speaking
about these macroeconomic problems in a few phrases, and quite frankly I would
prefer to refer to the two volumes by Michele Nobile that I have already mentioned
(one from 1993, more relevant than ever, and one from 2006, in the «Red Utopia»
series).
In relation to
the economic crisis by tradition I situate myself among the anti-catastrophists
(and since I have been preaching prudence in this area for almost forty years,
I am further strengthened in my beliefs). If you go back and read certain documents
of the battle we fought as Third International tendency, you will find many polemics
against the economic catastrophism that raged in the Fourth International of
the 70's, which at the time had a great thinker like Ernest Mandel as its
direct leader.
Today, when I
read the short obituaries written by small groups or individual thinkers (I
call them the «of themselves ideologists» [«I da soli ideologici»]) it brings a
smile to my face and I do not feel the need to start a debate because it will
be enough to wait for time passing by, to show how many cards the international
bourgeois can play in order to resolve its own economic problems, as long as
they remain only economic. If only I could read a single line of self-criticism
on the part of the new generation of catastrophists. Nothing: they always appear
to be already thinking about the next obituary of the system, believing that at
a certain point the final crisis will actually arrive. Who knows, perhaps one
day they will end up being right; but at the moment they are only confusing
their own dreams with reality. (Apart from the fact that I do not dream at all
of a collapse of the system due to an inability to overcome the economic crisis
- I imagine the transfer of power being more dignified, more collective and
more constructive.)
I see the
alternation of the economic crises, with their cyclical recovery ever more frequently
(as already explained by Kondratiev’s theory of long waves - another unfortunate
victim of assassination by Stalinism and highly respected by Trotsky), but I do
not see any subsequent political crisis of the international bourgeoise worse
than what they had in the last ten years, not in political terms, not in
cultural terms. Maybe I see it as less heavy and I think that from the end of
the Second World War, this is a period for them of maximum political splendor. I obviously hope that, as happens with great
empires (the Roman empire for example), that
the height of power and manoeuvrability leads to a period of new and effective
decline and therefore of high vulnerability for the system.
The history of
capitalism is a history of crisis after crisis. Capitalism has grown over the
centuries passing through and by resolving its own crises, mostly with
non-economic devices, i. e. political or military. One must not undervalue the
capacity of capitalism to regenerate itself in every latitude of the globe and
under the most unpredictable political regimes. Capitalism has the possibility
to rid itself of the effects of the crises either with traditional methods: making
the workers pay for them, waging wars - which are primarily destruction of
goods, but also of productive forces that allow the restarting of the economic
mechanism - or devising new solutions, e.g. in the technical-computerized field
or with further huge growth of the society of the spectacle. Don't ask me how China
In short, Capitalism
has all the possible and imaginable leeways, because it is not rivaled by any
credible adversary. The labour movement does not seem destined to start up
again (and as I have already stated, it will not make a comeback without first
a rejection of the monstrosity that Stalinism represented also for the same
labour movement), without counting the new problems that arise along the way,
like the diffusion of Islamic fundamentalism, the exponential growth of
nationalism, the charismatic diffusion of the domination by the society of the
spectacle in the so-called Third world, and so forth.
Between the
Nineteenth and Twentieth-centuries the opponent of the bourgeoise had appeared
in all its fearfulness: and it was the labour movement in many key European
countries (but also in the Usa
Historically,
Capitalism is incapable of coping with the problems of saving the Earth, firstly
because it doesn't have the experience as a class. Secondly, it cannot deal globally
with the demands of the environment, because this poses a contradiction in
terms for that class: the search for profit at all costs is incompatible with
the socialization of the main means of production on a world scale. Today, if
you want to think in terms of the principal contradiction, in homage to the
Hegelian tradition of Marxism, it is between the saving of the species and that
of Capitalism (that is the private management of the main means of production).
As such it is incurable and it will remain incurable unless the human species
decides to collaborate and work together to solve the problem, suddenly
overcome by a self-destructive rampage. In such a case it would demonstrate
that it is not a species and that the scientists, before and after Darwin
In the building of «another possible world», to use
the phraseology of the no-global movements of a few years ago, or in other
words of an alternative society in general, are the coordinates of «revolution»
and «internationalism» still valid? If so, what type of revolution and what
type of internationalism?
Yes, now more
than ever and increasingly. For the second part of the question, I have run out
of space and will therefore refer back to the previous answers.
Today, how would it be possible to re-propose a
concept of revolution?
As always, it
is easier negatively: abolishment of capitalism and the private ownership of
the principal means of production on a world scale. This has to be the final
aim of a revolutionary process. Instead, positively describing revolution means
to be able to construct a rational system of running the economy and social
relationships on a world scale. This is the innovation. The perspective of
gaining power in just one country is no longer existent. It is unthinkable, it
is out-of-date and besides unobtainable.
Therefore it is one of those historic lessons that we
have learned from the experience of Social Democracy and Stalinism?
Yes. People
that haven't already understood this lesson have not learned from history.
Returning to
the concept of revolution, I am not clear how the revolution will take place,
but I know that it will have to cope both with the negative and the positive aspects
that I mentioned.
Regarding the
revolutionary process, however, I will say one clear-cut thing: enough with the
apparatuses that in the past have substituted themselves to the social classes
and today would like to do the same with the destinies of the species. It is
not possible for these apparatuses to turn out to be socially better than the
bourgeois class, which on the other hand has demonstrated an exceptional
historical aptitude in realizing its own interests in all possible and imaginable
fields. The unrealistic attempt to overcome such a bourgeoisie with opposing
apparatuses, was already insane when it was first proposed in the beginning of
the Twentieth-Century, today is only laughable.
Everything that
is extraneous to the social body, that overlaps it or slips in beside it, is
negative and will therefore be seen by the same citizens as something alien to
the social body. Would you like me to radicalize the concept? Ok, the apparatuses are all negative, political
parties are all negative, their historical function has been fundamentally
negative: the bourgeoisie has understood this for a long time and for this
reason has utilized its own apparatuses and its own political parties, but
without identifying itself with any of them. When it did occur for a while
(look at the late Italian Fascism or German Nazism) it has thrown them off with
a shrug.
Seen in
relation to the single objective (the single
item, as comrades of the American Swp would have said in the past, before
they transformed themselves into a propaganda center for Castroism in the
States) or in relation to the solution of a confined problem, namely in an
immediate sense, the small parties and their surrogates (like youth social
centers [Centri sociali], solidarity
associations with foreign countries, certain municipal councils or
rank-and-file trade unions, commitees, etc.) can also be capable of playing a
momentarily positive function: for example in helping newly landed immigrants,
the young people of the Federation of the Left [Prc and Pdci] (in truth, very
few), are likely to do better than the Red Cross or the National Police
(Carabinieri). The same for removing refuse from the streets or saving young
people from drugs. Frankly, I do not see more than this.
On the other
hand the damages that are done by these small parties and their apparatuses I
could name by the hundreds. Actually, we have listed them in two books of the
«Red Utopia» series (in my publishing house): the mythical The Red Racketeers [I Forchettoni
rossi] and The False Left [Le false sinistre].
With this, I do not wish to say that I am
against all types of organizations. For instance I am in favour of unionism,
even if I mean it in terms that are very different from what we see. In the
political field as long as we agree on the libertarian principle (no obligations
to political programmes), anti-hierarchical (no institutional leaders,
conventions or statutes - although there will always be degrees of major or
minor effort and influence) and a focus on volunteering (no paid officials, no
careers or economic benefits). RU has the enormous presumption to be the first
revolutionary regrouping that has managed to put into practice three things
that seemed impossible: 1) operating collectively (for the moment as international
political community) without an apparatus; 2) granting constructive coexistence
between different ideologies, drawing a dividing revolutionary line only on the
basis of certain principles; 3) placing ethics above all else.
Coming to the next question. Regarding the concept of
revolution and the consequent transformation of society, how would you place
the question of power? In the last few years, within the social movements we
have heard many times the slogan «change the world without taking power». Is
the question of power still central?
This slogan is
suspect and susceptible to various interpretations. Each one gives it the
meaning he wishes (now is the concept of «buen vivir» that has come into
fashion...). It certainly responds to an extremely strong need for pacifism,
but still does not remove its ambiguity. I know that real power exists and I
believe that it should be destroyed. Without a doubt. We do not have to «take power»: we
have to destroy it and substitute it
with the organizations that will be built and composed by those that participate
collectively in this process. Luckily I do not have clear ideas about what type
of organization: to have them it means to enter into the description of a utopian
perspective, often silly, always naive.
At a factory
level I would be for sure in favour of workers’ self-management, but that
doesn't mean that the same choice is also valid for neighborhoods. In general
terms I would fight for a decentralized system based on several communities
(micro or macro-communities, depending on the size of the “thing” to manage)
that coordinate themselves in a pyramidal sense, trying to reach a certain form
of centralization. But I must repeat that I am not clear about what would
substitute the destroyed state apparatus - certainly not another State and not
the Soviets either, due to how they let themselves to be deprived of authority
in just a few months, the last time they rose up and took power.
On this ground
I still believe in the necessity of violence, even though I would very much
like that it wouldn't occur. But unfortunately the process of reacquiring
social ownership of the principal means of production will not be peaceful,
except maybe for the last ones who enter the fight, after the first victories -
as Guevara said. I am not a pacifist as I was instead as a high school student
(during the first struggles for conscientious objection) and I stopped being
one in 1966 when, in front of the US Embassy, the police beat me up while I was
sitting on the ground, in the front line, but with my back to them. There was Vietnam
I would like to
be able to be a pacifist again (in which case I would choose Gino Strada as a
model), but non-violence will only be a slogan as long as there are wars,
parliaments that vote them and soldiers that are willing to fight them because
no one tells them to desert, but above all because as mercenaries they make big
money.
What would you like to say about the theme of
internationalism?
From a personal
point of view my political life has always been, 100 per cent, one of
internationalism. I joined the Fourth International in 1966 (when I was twenty
years old), but I already had a certain familiarity with it because my sister,
Rossana Massari, was already associated since 1961.
After the
expulsion from the Fourth International in 1975, we gave rise to an international
organization - the Marxist Revolutionary Fraction - with its principal section
in Germany , other smaller
ones in Italy , Austria , France ,
and with relationships in Portugal ,
England 1980 in order not to sustain the umpteenth
small international party.
In 1983 I held
a meeting in Florence
But we didn’t
give up and we went ahead. Our blog opens with a dedication to the necessity of
constructing the Fifth International - an International which must be composed
fundamentally by movements, associations etc., but founded on the above listed
principles. For the moment we limit ourselves to set the example that the
libertarian model can work. For the future we plan a book by many authors to be
written on this theme.
My questions are finished. Are there any arguments
that we have not touched on in which you would like to come back to in order to
expand on them or give more details?
We haven't
talked about the society of the spectacle,
which for us at RU is fundamental. I am referring to the concept taken from the
title of the book that Guy Debord wrote in 1967 (one of the books that I sell
the most as a publisher and that was edited by our expert in Situationism -
Pasquale Stanziale), and to the actualization of that critical vision of the society
in which we live. It would take a long time to explain it here, but almost all
of us in RU believe that the society of the spectacle is today the main weapon
of domination in the hands of capitalism, but also that as a critical theory of
present societies it perfectly explains the politics of all the existing
parties (big or small) and of their bosses.
The example is
Bertinottism [from Bertinotti, ancient leader of the party called Rifondazione
in Italy
There is also a
new discipline we have begun working on as RU, and for which we are desperately
asking for help from professionals in the psychiatric field. I am referring to political psychopathology.
We have
published small texts about paranoia, narcissism, cult of the charismatic
leader, etc. and we have begun to apply these categories (this diagnosis) to
the behavioral study of ideological groups, micro-parties, their leaders, their
rituals and their reassuring hierarchies.
In other words,
after tens of years dedicated to theoretical and political polemics against
political factions, small groups or single intellectuals who have demonstrated
themselves to be substantially deaf to criticism and not open to debate, we have
decided to no longer analyze these groups on the basis of the political line
they are proposing (and which they themselves mostly do not believe in). We
rather analyze them as examples of political psychopathologies, i.e.
personality disorders, mental illnesses, hysteria, paranoia.
None of us can
exclude the possibility that these pathologies could be found also inside Red
Utopia. It happens that even among ourselves these symptoms can appear, and
when it occurs, it puts our libertarian, ethical and collective criteria to a
difficult test. It would be mere illusion to think that RU is an island of
psychological well being and mental health, hidden away from the laws of
capitalism, social frustration and from the society of the spectacle.
This type of behavioral
interpretation of politics was a very important discovery for me, although many
years ago Antonella Marazzi was already pushing me in this direction. It was a
time when I was extremely high-informed about the political lines and the
history of all the main political factions, in Italy
and abroad (from England to Latin America ...). Since several years, instead, I have
started to clearly see that they are not political phenomena, but rather
personality disorders. For these factions or groups (about which one often
wonders how they were born or why) the so-called «political line» or the
«Leninist theory of the party» or the «Programme» are only psychological covers
for insecurities, already analyzed in his own time by Wilhelm Reich.
The small
apparatus, the group complicity, the Leninist or Trotskyist discipline, the
rite of the conventions etc., are only psychological expedients to alleviate
the widespread mental uneasiness in our alienated society. For the craftier
ones, however, they can turn out to be career opportunities. We won't run out
of examples of this either.
The fact
remains that young people who join the militant factions, small groups etc. are
insecure people who feel the need to be dominated, to identify themselves from
within an apparatus. Probably they have problems with their paternal or
maternal figures and they are looking for substitutes with the authority
figures that they never had in their family. There, in the hierarchical
structure of small political factions or groups, they will find them (for a
certain time, of course, but not forever…).
In conclusion, can you give me a definition of
Communism?
Communism is
the movement, primarily ethical and necessarily collective, of the more aware
sectors of humanity that struggle to remove the private ownership of the means
of production from Capitalism in order to safeguard the survival of the species.
Well, it is a definition, so it has to contain only the essentials. But
it seems to me that I haven’t left out anything important...
Bolsena, April 10, 2011
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