The Composition of Our Fraction - Amadeo Bordiga

When in a given political situation, in a certain historical moment, the Party divides into currents, tendencies, fractions, which prepare to clash in a congress, it is logical that not all the nuances of opinions and personal positions - practically unlimited in number - are able to be classified exactly in one of the tendencies that come to the fore of the respective programs.

Today we find ourselves faced with the fact that many comrades, even among the best, not yet feeling like siding with us on the precise terrain of the manifesto-program launched by us, due to more or less extensive differences of opinion - but on the other hand fundamentally disagreeing not only with the reformist right, but also with the center fractions, which is organizing itself under the name of socialist communist on the terrain of the unity of the Party - present their point of view and ask - if not to establish contact for a common discussion between the two communist tendencies on the basis of the old maximalist faction at least to broaden the field of our faction to them, admitting their theses to discussion with those announced by us in the manifesto-programme, to reach a more effective understanding between communists on a broader numerical basis.

These friends of ours are led to ask us: has the program or the field of your fraction perhaps been fixed a priori? Why shouldn't it overcome the perhaps narrow limits that an initiative of a few people draws on its content of methods and men? And what, in this case, is the scope and purpose of a summons of the communists to Imola? We recognize the right of these comrades to ask such questions, and we think it is our duty to clarify this issue.

We could first of all, referring to our beliefs in favor of the disciplined centralization of the International, reply that our manifesto-program is nothing other than the translation into Italian of the communist principles, of the resolutions of the two congresses of the Third International, of the 21 conditions for the admission of parties within this. Translation begun by the Moscow Congress itself, and completed in Italy by elements who fully accept the results above and beyond some tactical divergences on which everyone's discipline is undisputed.

And we could add that this initiative was not proceeded at random, or due to... aggregative sympathy of people, but upon precise invitation and with the guidance of those who, authorized to represent the supreme bodies of the International, cannot, for reasons obvious to every revolutionary, carry out this work as the good norms and... happy traditions of an enlightened democracy would require. And we could also say that the initiative, and the programmatic manifesto in which we implemented it, were sanctioned by the complete approval of the Moscow Executive Committee, as is also clear from Zinoviev's letter, published above.

But, if we hold, against all the old and foolish prejudices of petty-bourgeois liberalism, to the procedure - the only revolutionary one and congruous to revolutionary aims no less than to our principles - of resolute centralized discipline; if we are willing to ignore the ironies that could be invoked by alluding to dictatorships, to investitures, to consecrations - we are however even more keen to add that the position and the thoughts and the intentions of our fraction derive clearly and directly from the history of the action of our party, from the needs of proletarian action in Italy, highlighted by multiple events of the class struggle, whose teachings have been heard in Italy by the left-wing groups of the party, and happily recognized and supported by the International and the its congress.

We want to say that it was not chance or Moscow's whim that changed the basis of the division of tendencies from Bologna to today, but the logic of the development of the class struggle, just as it changed from one moment to the next in the life of the Party, before Bologna, by gathering and moving groupings and programs.

The maximalist majority in Bologna was constituted - leaving aside a declared communist tendency towards abstentionism - on a broad coalition of various currents, made possible above all by the postponement of a serious problem: that of party unity.
While the right of this great majority adopted daily action based on the situation left by the Congress, the left, however, through the multiple episodes of the proletarian struggles which it is superfluous to review, formed the awareness that the work of the Bologna Congress had been incomplete from a revolutionary point of view.

We don't even want to remember in detail all the manifestations of the emergence of this state of mind; today finally realized in the hamlet.

It can be followed in the internal discussions of the Party Leadership, of the Parliamentary group, in all the debates and disagreements that accompanied the unfolding of the great proletarian unrest of this year.

At the National Council in Milan the left outlined itself on a Misiano agenda which reported twenty-six thousand votes as opposed to that accepted by the Directorate, while another minority of ten thousand votes asserted itself in an even more radical sense.

In the meantime, the active extremist movement headed by the «New Order» of Turin had aroused within the party a broad consensus, and in all the most important sections there was an opposition to the direction that emerged from Bologna.

An anti-unity current was formed in the youth movement which soon became the vast majority, establishing itself in the central and governing bodies.

Among the comrades who work in the workers' movement, dissent and protest against the reformist directives of the leaders are increasingly intensifying, while on the other hand the attitudes of some parliamentary leaders have raised increasingly lively protests among the masses of the Party.

All these demonstrations had their echo in the International whose Congress agreed with them in the criticism of the Italian movement and in the measures to be taken to give it revolutionary effectiveness.

Moscow was also able to solve the problem of captivating the various currents of the Italian communist left by resolving the secondary issues that divided them. This seems to us to be enough to demonstrate the continuity of the genesis of our fraction. It has as its platform the decisions of Moscow. In the manifesto we launched, the results of the historical experiences outlined here are condensed on this ground.

The Imola conference, to which we invite the comrades who are with us, will have to transform the manifesto into a resolution to be brought to the National Congress; above all it will have to establish the precise and unequivocal procedure for implementing the Party's selection of non-communist elements, a procedure that will easily be traced excluding the absurd hypothesis of the rise of three Parties.

There can and must be a place for discussion about this and more, such as the definitive constitution of the fraction's governing bodies and the technique of its preparatory work for the Congress.

But let us say clearly that certain points which form the intimate content of Moscow's decisions and are at the same time categorical indications of the Italian situation, must remain uncontroversial in the Fraction's camp, without which it would lose too much of its compactness and vigour.

We want to allude above all to the fundamental concept of the elimination of non-communists, to the severe limitation of the autonomy of the Parties in the International, to the change of the name of the Party, to the renewal of parliamentary tactics, to the trade union question, as according to the norms of the Moscow theses our manifesto presents it: fight against reformism and confederal reformists, replacement of the current ambiguous relations between the Party and the Confederation with the effective direction of the Italian proletarian movement by the Communist Party, through the discipline of communists operating in trade unions.

It seems to us that anyone who still hesitates to accept these substantial points cannot collaborate usefully with the Communist Fraction.

And we are at the same time convinced that very soon these programmatic and tactical cornerstones will constitute the common ground of thought and action of the Italian communists.