In the previous translation from our Italian comrades we dealt with what the International Party of the Proletariat is not, here we explain what it is. Once again for a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between party and class we refer everyone to the documents already on our website.

In keeping with Marxist analysis, we believe that a true communist alternative to capitalism can only be built thanks to the revolutionary action of the proletariat: no Party can replace the class. However, for a revolutionary transformation of the economic system and society, we believe that the role of a Revolutionary Party is fundamental.

As previously stated, we are against all the institutional parties. Nowadays, everyone associates the word "Party" with elections and bourgeois institutions. This is also thanks to the old Italian Communist Party of Togliatti and associates. The function that revolutionaries have historically attributed to the Communist Party was something quite different from what people today (even those who say they are communist) are used to thinking. The function of a Communist Party is:

… to imbue the masses of the proletariat with the ideas of socialism and political consciousness, and to organise a revolutionary party inseparably connected with the spontaneous working-class movement … to facilitate the political development and the political organisation of the working class.

Lenin, The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement

… the building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any “drab, peaceful” circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a “declining revolutionary spirit”; moreover, it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts; the party must be in a state of readiness to launch activity at a moment’s notice.

Lenin, Where to Begin?

The revolutionary transformation of society must be an act that sees the proletarian class as the protagonist. But the proletarian mass, spontaneously, develops "only" a class instinct, that is, a consciousness that stimulates it to defend its immediate economic conditions, without perceiving the practical need to overcome capitalism. This can give rise to a prolonged and determined struggle, but it cannot go any further, from a strategic point of view. This, of course, is not out of stupidity, but because of the continuous effect of the ideological dominance that the bourgeoisie has in place. In particular, the bourgeoisie has managed to make us believe that, in spite of everything, this economic system is the only one "realistically" applicable, that it is almost a natural result and not a historical product and that, therefore, it should be defended as a valuable asset, improved if need be, but never attacked frontally or, much less, superseded.

The function of Communists is precisely this: to be a revolutionary political reference point for the class, to bring revolutionary ideas, conscience and political agendas into the class. The Communist Party must be the organisation of the revolutionary vanguard, of those who have developed a revolutionary consciousness (aware of the nature of capitalism and the need to overcome this system). The Party therefore gathers the most conscious proletarians and also the non-proletariat (who abandon the interests of their class of origin) who have developed a revolutionary consciousness making the interest of the proletariat their own.

The revolutionary party of the proletariat will not be a mass party but a vanguard party of communist cadres. It must, however, be a Party that appeals to the class as a whole, since this is the subject of the revolution.

The Communists must intervene in the class, independent of their own strength and regardless of the historical stage. Intervening in proletarian struggles to enrich one's wealth of experience, to enrich one's analytical ability and the political programme by experiencing the reality of the class. The Party as a political instrument of class struggle must make the effort to be present in the class struggle always, regardless of the stages of reflux or resumption of the struggles themselves.

To put forward revolutionary demands on the ground, however small, in the current insecure and feeble conditions of workers' struggle, to engage in an active political militancy not just restricted to a typewriter and theorising which is an individual activity that is always debatable in intention as well as results.

O. Damen

The Communists intervene in the class struggle by actively participating in it, also acting as a revolutionary political reference point, stimulating the sector of the class where they intervene towards a revolutionary critique of their own conditions of exploitation.

The Party, a body of theoretical preparation, practical organisation and political leadership, is therefore a product, and a factor at the same time, of class struggle; it is the indispensable tool for the realisation of the proletarian revolution.

The Party is fed by the constant elaboration of the theory and criticism that distinguish scientific socialism; with the formation of its cadres and their inclusion in the daily political struggle; organisational growth in close contact with the class and for the class.

The Party will never be the result of a haphazard unification of groups and adaptation of programmes, but the centre of convergence of the revolutionaries who spontaneously accept the role of militants, making its principles, its tactics and its ends their own.

The Party is the organisation of political struggle of the revolutionary proletariat. The elements that make it up are actively engaged, in workplaces, in neighbourhoods and in all other proletarian environments, in the defence and propagation of the class programme – or integrate usefully and assume ancillary tasks in that battle.

The revolutionary organisation is characterised by the fact that it is the organisation of men and women who share the same method, the same principles and the same objectives expressed in the fundamental documents of the organisation (platform, theses, etc.).

While the parties of the bourgeois left identify with their governing bodies or even their leader, the revolutionary party values the entirety of its militants. Its internal life is governed by the method of democratic centralism, towards the realisation of that organic unity that certainly does not derive from forced impositions but – although there are no absolute guarantees – is part of a process of theoretical and practical homogenisation which, through discussion on the basis of common principles, allows all militants to be protagonists of the political line of the Party. And then to select their own leaders, that is, to realise the political centralisation of the Party through executive collective bodies.

The Party of the proletariat can only be international and internationalist, it cannot fail to see in the international union of proletarians the force capable of ending the capitalist system. Working for the Party means working for the future Communist International.

12 May 2020