Contribution to the Organizational Issue

A socialist living in Italy wrote an article on the question of organization from the point of view of the experience of the Italian illegal labor. Il Nuovo Avanti, the Pary organ of the Italian Socialist Party, published this article on 10/12/08 under the title “Socialist propaganda in Italy; contribution to the study of the problem of organization”. Since the content of this article is of interest, we reproduce it here, omitting the political introduction and concluding reflections.

In the circumstances created by fascist totalitarianism, the party form of organization mentioned above has become completely unusable because of its construction and the psychological and moral qualities it imparts to the organized. This form must be replaced by a new one, which we want to call simplification.

To be more precise: the Party organization form, with which we have held it until now, has become radically and irrevocably incompatible with the internal conditions of the country, which have spontaneously given birth to a new form: the Association.

In contrast to the Association, the Party prioritizes the possibility of organizational connection between center and periphery, i.e., between tip and base: after all, each party is like a pyramid: at the tip is the center, which is connected by many threads to the people at the base. Naturally, these channels of communication are formed by intermediaries (groups, sections, liaison officers, etc.).

Partyism is based on these channels of communication, on the possibility of transmission, on the help of newspapers, brochures, manifestos, circulars, meetings, sessions, meetings.

After the party is formed and begins to function, a division of labor takes place among its members. A few examine the situations that arise, discuss the paths to be taken and the steps to be taken, and leave the organizational instructions to the other members. The base members receive the instructions and act. And here the problem arises that some people, especially those who have the experience of the German Social-Democratic and Communist Parties in mind, consider the organizational form of the Party to be innate. If this occurs in times of diminished freedom, it represents a fatal weakness against fascism. The shortcoming is that the base gradually loses its independence of thought and initiative.

There is a tendency for the base to always have less educated elements at its disposal; the cultural work dulls: the habit increases of expecting everything from above and of doing nothing of its own accord, a habit which is encouraged by the strikers, although involuntarily and with the best of intentions; finally, the strikers strive to lead the people at the base to the “right” path, by which is meant, of course, their own path, etc.

With the establishment of the totalitarian regime, the whole mechanism of the party is more or less completely paralyzed and collapses. Meetings are prohibited, gatherings of too many people become dangerous: one has to give up, or more or less. The publication of newspapers becomes impossible. If a newspaper appears somewhere, it is only by name, because it has lost its function and falls under the category of the pamphlets. The printing of brochures becomes difficult; one can try to publish them, but the risk is too great. Manifests and circulars are easy to produce: however, as their distribution is dangerous and their usefulness is limited, they automatically stop. The only way of keeping up a livelihood that remains is personal meetings; however, they have proved to be insufficient to maintain the party pyramid.

However, when the meetings, sessions, newspapers, circulars have ceased, the party is also destroyed. After the wires are severed, the members scatter, since they are no longer connected to the leading center, their artificial brain, and they do not possess an independent, working brain of their own. At the tip then remains the disembodied brain, which floats aimlessly in the void with which it is surrounded.

The death stryd of the parties expresses itself in the confusion of their spires. Despite the radical change in relations after the fascists' seizure of power, the party leaders insisted on rebuilding a party, a pyramid, at home as well as abroad, by all means. So they continued to stretch the threads in the direction of the base and achieved the following result: as often as elements for the base were discovered and the thread was discovered and broken, these elements became victims. Every wire turned into a fish gag. Whoever had bitten became a victim. The tip of the pyramid teetered in vertigo, casting its threads in all directions in search of life. However, since all these threads emanating from the spire turned into as many stings, the whole thing became like a net: whoever fell into it was caught.

At this moment the whole territory of the country seems like a vast swamp, which has covered everything. Only here and there small islands are visible; before our eyes even an entire sea of islands appears. On each island a few people remain, who in the past belonged to a party at the base of a pyramid. As the threads that connected them to the spires of different, sometimes hostile, parties have been severed, they stand closely together on the same island, fraternized by the threatening swamp that surrounds them, that expands and threatens to separate them further. They look each other in the eye and discover that they are fraternized. That is the birth of the new order, the unification. Three factors play a role in their creation:

1. An immediate, common enemy. — The common danger may at first cause a flight in all directions and make the dividing even more acute. But with time, when the situation stabilizes, one sees that one can better combat the common evil. Even if the aims which the individual people strive for are different, as soon as the first common obstacle arises, all stand side by side in the struggle for the victory of this impeding obstacle.

2. The disappearance of the conditions that caused the separation. People joined different parties because of differences of opinion about the way one should behave toward different things in these circumstances. However, those conditions and those things no longer exist. The differences of opinion have no basis in the new circumstances, the words lose their content, because they refer to things from the dead past.

3. The birth of independent thinking After the remaining elements were cut off, their brains slowly begin to work, and the idea arises that they must think independently. This circumstance also brings them closer together. Since they live in the same center with the same feelings and the same enemy, they at least come to the same discoveries, conclusions and decisions. Spitefully, however, they do not have the opportunity to enrich their minds too much. Now that they would like to, they cannot: there are no more books.

Thus the new form of organization is gradually taking shape: no more party and no more pyramid, but union and sea of islands.

Is that good or bad? We do not know and we are not interested. It is a fact, a consequence of circumstances. Irrevocable, just as circumstances are irrevocable. One must accept them as they are.

Every society has as its goal the achievement of certain things. That is not what we want to deal with now. It develops the activity that it considers most consistent with the goal to be achieved.

We only want to examine the organizational side: how can a society live and develop under totalitarian rule, apart from its goal and activity.

The contact is limited to the meetings on the island: meetings of a few; often, if they are not known as socialists, because then this rarely happens in succession.

Can an island detach itself from isolation? It cannot and should not refer to a solid connection with another island. Only a direction to vague possibilities, the awareness that in the swamp, at the horizon, there is another island: knowing where to land; but only an address and nothing more. Rare and short landings: exchanging what is possible and then months of isolation. To this end, connections must be limited. Every attempt to get a stable and extended sensation forms a net: one is mangled.

The addresses for these rare landings can be given in the form of I, L, and Z. They are in the I form, i.e. they refer to a direct connection between two people standing at the end of the I when they give their addresses. This is always true. They are in the L-shape, when he who stands at one end of the connection does not give his own address, but that of his neighbour. When finally the one at the other end also gives his neighbour's address, a kind of Z arises, in which the diagonal refers to the connection. This is best. (Translation note: The author takes the letters I, L, and Z as graphic examples: I is the direct connection between two people, L the one with the involvement of an intermediary, Z the one with two people in between).

The movements (between two points ensuring the connection) must be made only once (by the same route), as repetition is dangerous.

It is the duty of every person in the society to discover from himself a small island, be it far or near, and to get the address of a neighboring friend through the discovered room. Thus he will have built a Z, as often as possible exchange. Again obstacles (borders, etc.) have to be overcome.