Interview with the International Communist Party on the SICobas movement

Juan Conatz

Introduction

The party did not form the SICobas: the SICobas arose entirely independently of the party and there are no ties binding the two organizations. The party is not now, nor has it been in the past, in the SICobas executive.

While the ICP might not have been part of the creation of SI-COBAS, it was clearly created by cadre from Marxist-Leninist party organizations, and some of them remain leaders.

In What is To Be Done (1901), Lenin wrote that Social-Democratic consciousness could only be brought to the workers from without.

“The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc.”.

The Communist Left – 1957, The Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism:

Syndicalists “are actually far removed from Marxist determinism, and the interaction which occurs between the economic and political spheres is a dead letter to them. Since they are individualist and voluntarist, they see revolution as an act of force which can only take place after an impossible act of consciousness. As Lenin demonstrated in What is To Be Done? they turn Marxism on its head. They treat consciousness and will as though they came from the inner-self, from the ‘person’, and thus, in one deft movement, they sweep away bourgeois State, class divisions, and class psychology. Since they are unable to understand the inevitable alternative – capitalist dictatorship or communist dictatorship – they evade the dilemma in the only way that is historically possible: by re-establishing the former”.

Therefore the specific and principle task of the party within the union is not to politicize workers. The communist party does not work to make the trade union a watered-down version of itself, nor, in the revolutionary process, does the party dissolve itself and blend in with the trade union.

The communist party, from outside, with the support of the communist fraction within the trade unions, which is composed of the minority of communists among the militants and members of the union, comes to conquer its leadership. The working class, as an army, is already organized in the trade unions: the party sets out to lead this army; first in its defensive economic struggle, and then, when the historical situation allows it, in its political and offensive struggle.

How is this any different from Trotskyite/Marxist-Leninist boilerplate that has been disproven by history? Just read Rosa Luxemburg's The Mass Strike for historical documentation of how the working class in Russia and Poland proved wrong Lenin's vanguardist dogma in What Is To Be Done?.

The idea of "taking over" trade unions to turn them into truly fighting revolutionary working class organizations is a thoroughly outdated and authoritarian ideology.

And this caricature of syndicalism is shamefully disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.

The Bakuninists at Work is a good take-down of the political bankruptcy of 'mass strikism'.

So is reading Jeremy Brecher's 'Strike!' (likely against his own intent) wherein the American working class raises specific, sectional, labor struggles to a fever pitch *repeatedly* and fails to grapple explicitly with the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Or if you prefer, with the generalized re-organization of society, the placing of workers in power in society. At every moment that workers in a city or a few, take over, they are beaten back by police and starved out. This is similar on an international level as well. This problem doesn't go away with bigger strike. It has to be addressed head on, as a set of strategic problems.

I get that people are pretty averse to 'communists leading the unions' it recalls all the problems of Stalinism in the U.S., which was a gigantic detour away from socialist politics generally. But the ICP advocate for things quite similar to that of the IWW, in their work in the SI-COBAS

Also, thanks Juan, for posting this.

Pennoid

I get that people are pretty averse to 'communists leading the unions' it recalls all the problems of Stalinism in the U.S., which was a gigantic detour away from socialist politics generally. But the ICP advocate for things quite similar to that of the IWW, in their work in the SI-COBAS

While SI-COBAS has done admirable organizing among rank-and-file logistics workers, what's worthy of being averse to is how the Marxist-Leninist cadre who created it have hidden this connection. SI-COBAS didn't rise organically out of the class, it was created by a vanguard. It would be hard to say that about the I.W.W.

And Luxemburg's critique of Bakuninist "calls" for general -- and mass -- strikes is as strong as her emphasis on working class self-activity during the wave of agitation, from the wave of strikes in 1896 that culminated in the St. Petersburg Soviet in 1905, having refuted Lenin's ideas of consciousness being brought from the outside.

Hieronymous

While SI-COBAS has done admirable organizing among rank-and-file logistics workers, what's worthy of being averse to is how the Marxist-Leninist cadre who created it have hidden this connection. SI-COBAS didn't rise organically out of the class, it was created by a vanguard. It would be hard to say that about the I.W.W.

Which vanguard? And readings? And why is the SI Cobas organizationally tainted vs ILWU, UE, etc?

FWIW: IWW was founded by SPA and SLP not without their own political organizational self-interest.

Hieronymous

While the ICT might not have been part of the creation of SiCobas, it was clearly created by cadre from Marxist-Leninist party organizations, and some of them remain leaders.

I think you mean ICP.

fnbrilll

Hieronymous

While SI-COBAS has done admirable organizing among rank-and-file logistics workers, what's worthy of being averse to is how the Marxist-Leninist cadre who created it have hidden this connection. SI-COBAS didn't rise organically out of the class, it was created by a vanguard. It would be hard to say that about the I.W.W.

Which vanguard? And readings? And why is the SI Cobas organizationally tainted vs ILWU, UE, etc?

Some regular posters on libcom, as well as an avid reader who never posts, visited Italy last fall and interviewed many of the IKEA workers who had been on strike. I was with them at a screening of Ditching the Fear, where they pointed out the factual discrepancies in the film. I don't remember the names of the Leninist groups, but they are ones from the 1970s.

Comrades, please post these details.

And sorry for my typo: I meant the ICP.

I don't know about the MLs. But I don't think a tout court rejection of the merger formula makes any sense. It's a sort of slippery authenticity game that isn't very useful because it doesn't highlight those institutional mechanisms or strategies or tactics which make the inauthentic so. Instead it counterposes leadership in the abstract with 'workers themselves' an absurdly simplistic way.

Juan Conatz

I found the parts where the questions are answered by referring to party documents both offputting and a bit cultish. I suppose its not surprising if you remember the few times that members of that group have posted here, but still, disappointing. You should be able to explain stuff without referring to approved party documents.

When it's formulaic to the point of being liturgical, it's simply hard to accept as credible or take seriously.

Juan Conatz

Other than that, I'm glad this interview was done because there doesn't seem to be much English-language information on the SI Cobas, or really any of the Cobas organizations.

Here's an account that's so thorough and full of details from first-hand interviews with S.I. Cobas militants and historical information about class struggle in Italy contemporily, that it makes the ICP wooden documents seem frozen in time (i.e. 19th century):

"Ditching the Fear!"

Also check out the Clash City Workers website (the English translations) for articles like this:

"The national campaign against IKEA in Italy: ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’"

With insights like this, about the class collaboration of cooperatives that affects the class composition in this sector:

Clash City Workers

The peculiar element in the Italian logistics sector is not the strategy of the outsourcing per se, which is broadly adopted, but the role that cooperatives have come to play within it. The system of cooperatives has expanded significantly in the last few decades within the Italian economic fabric, in particular within the logistics, the retail and the service sectors. Born as a form of alliance between capital and labor (in favor of the latter) and according to the principles of mutuality and democratic participation, cooperatives are nowadays ‘temp agencies’ that guarantee a flexible workforce for a system of production and distribution based on the ‘just in time’ logic.

For more background on these struggles, a video of interviews (with English subtitles):

"The Cycle of Struggles in the Logistics Sector in Italy"

An interview with an Egyptian immigrant logistics worker:

"The Revolution in Logistics"

Insurgent Notes article with good background on the struggle of S.I. Cobas, but with the blind spot of not mentioning its origins in the sectarian Leninist parties of the 1970s:

"Struggles in Logistics in Italy"

But in the above text, Loren Goldner did take editorial suggestions of comrades into account when the final draft ended with this proviso:

Goldner

In conclusion, a note of caution comes from some libertarian comrades. They argue that many of the struggles were initiated by the workers themselves who then asked for help from SI Cobas. They also readily acknowledge that the struggles in logistics in Italy are important, and indeed have been the only victorious struggles there in recent years. SI Cobas, undoubtedly, has played an important role in them.

But workers in logistics, these comrades point out, have exceptional power when they disrupt the supply chain. Not, of course, that it is easy to organize strikes, given the criminal networks that control the work force, using violence. But we should not underestimate the fact (as was pointed out above) that these strikes are immediately effective, and that this efficacy is a highly relevant stimulus to action. They also point out that the logistics workers are organized by the structure of the work itself, and by informal networks of ethnicity, as much as they are organized by SI Cobas.

Finally, these comradely critics also warn against a certain mythology that has grown up around the union, promoted by people who do not do the hard work of organizing, while at the same time taking nothing away from the dozens of youth from the social centers who have definitely played a positive role in confrontations with the Mafiosi bosses and aggressive cops. Finally, these comrades question SI Cobas’s own self-conception on the centrality of struggles in logistics and on the possibility of extending their organizing model to other sectors.

Yes, it crosses over with this earlier thread that also references both the ICP and the ICT:
http://libcom.org/blog/base-unions-italy-05062013 although Hieronymous's links above are more comprehensive.

Nice, lots of extremely interesting material in the comments section - might be worth uploading some of it onto libcom.

Most of the stuff linked is reports from SICOBAS conferences, that is, things written by people directly involved, or publications from the paper or leaflets. I agree that it would have been nice to just state the views of the interviewer, in a literary sense, but they've opted instead to give a representation of the wider views of the organization through direct linking of their own publications on the various topics. Its like referring people interested in the IWW to read the published experiences of their organizers in the IW. In fact the only 'official party position' they reference is the 1957 text, the relevant passage being quoted in full toward a given argument.

Don't get me wrong, the body of invariant theses stuff is kinda strange to me (anti-personalistic overkill probably) but most of the texts referenced here aren't in that 'body'.

i agree with H. the stuff on how the party relates to the unions seems so much like boring from within, and totally against the idea of politicizing workers through struggle and co-education. the union are the army to be lead by the party leaders who have captured union leadership. i brought this up to fnbrill on facebook.

What does 'politicizing workers' entail?

Wobblyism

Alongside mentorship, another essential but often-lacking component of our organizing has been education. Early Wobblies identified three key components of our revolutionary organizational practice known as “the Three Stars of the IWW”: Education, Organization, and Emancipation. Throughout the first decades of Wobbly activity, a rich culture of working class self-education prevailed, giving the rank and file a compass toward Emancipation to guide their daily activity on the job. Fellow Workers led classes on economics using real-world terminology and illustrations. “Ordinary workers” recorded their ideas, often very advanced even for our time, in union publications or in pamphlet form32. They recognized that it was important for workers to understand their position in society in order for them to use it to the class’s advantage. They knew that workers could not only grasp concepts of struggle, but expand on and improve them, because they too were workers who yearned to resolve the system’s contradictions that played out in their everyday lives. Clearly, education plays an indispensable role in Wobbly organizing, now as much as then. The challenge today is to identify obstacles to successful education practices and to overcome them. Specifically, the IWW needs a method of co-education where Wobblies share their knowledge and experiences to build a smarter, more vibrant organization on a trajectory toward universal emancipation.

To be clear, our perspective as revolutionary organizers is not as professionals or intellectuals, hoping to insert correct ideas into an ignorant and passive working class from the outside. “The workers” - if we can refer to “them” in the third-person - are neither ignorant nor passive as a whole, and we are living examples of that. Our approach to education is from within the class, and this shapes our education practice. Further, even as “well-read” revolutionaries, we do not find that we have to bring politics33 into organizing, but that politics is implicit in everything we do. The power relations built into this society touch every aspect of our lives. We do not have to search long to find the connection between an aspect of our lives and the system. Thus the personal becomes political in a profound way. “Politics”, we find, are lying around everywhere.

That said, our role can be seen as two-fold: one is to draw out the contents of this system from our co-workers’ lived experience and facilitate a process of connecting that experience to the big picture of the system and revolution; second is to give them the tools to better agitate and organize on their own. In doing so, we stand to learn as much as we share. In fact, we should approach our education practice expecting to learn something from our co-workers that we didn’t know before. While we will often have organizing and political tools that others have not yet developed, we should not see ourselves as possessing all relevant knowledge. We say that a Wobbly educational component should resemble a two-way street; we call this co-education.

Our approach to co-education will necessarily vary with the circumstance. We should be flexible and do our best to orient education around our co-workers' interests, experience, and capacity. While study groups are appropriate for some, others might get more out of a film or discussing how things went on their first picket line. Drawing from a Food Mart example, we’ve adapted dense texts to a slideshow presentation, adding visuals and extracting key quotes for discussion. This way, the contents of the text can be communicated more easily for more people, and there’s more time to discuss how it relates to everyone’s lives. Further, by breaking down complicated concepts this way, we’re better able to take these concepts into the workplace and enrich our agitation skills.

Obviously, a key ingredient in this process is a desire to participate. Our co-workers have to want to be part of this, and we have to want to initiate and follow through with it. As with everything else, there are no silver bullets to revolutionary co-education. It is challenging, and at times discouraging, but nonetheless necessary - and possible.

That sounds good and all, but I wonder if it's shooting ourselves in the foot and condescending. If we have specialist knowledge, aren't we obligated to present it and put it in clear terms. Further, if we have a set of skills, aren't we obligated to put them at the dispensation of the membership? (Staff). Since the sixties (and in some wings before) people have been obsessed by demonstrating a knowledge of the 'really radical' tradition inherent in 'everday working class life'. If 'everday workingclass life' was so damned politicizing , we wouldnt need cooeducation or a union or organizing! :P

It doesn' really offer a definition of 'politiciszation'. It contradicts itself and argues instead that the process is moot because the 'political is implicit in the everyday'. That doesn't answer the questions; what is politicisization? who will lead the unions? A bureaucracy? The abstract 'workers'? That's part of the problem for me; there is no 'pure' or abstract proletarian will. There are strategies for accomplishing particular aims (political strategy) and ideologies derived from these strategies often color sections of the working class. The strategies (from Nativism, To general strikism, to social democracy to liberalism) often present themselves as 'authentic' especially in places or times when their strategy or its premises deviate far from reality. Authenticity shouldn't be the question; workers are in regime unions, or bureaucratic unions; it's fact, whether or not those unions represent 'authentic' feelings. The deeper point would be that there is no 'authentic' feeling which we must 'awaken' through cooeducation, but tactics and strategies that we have to outline, discuss, amend, implement, revise. The 'authentic' move is that which is a win for working class power as an organized force in society, in order for it to throw off capitalism. Politicization (I wouldn't use the word) might be said to be 'getting workers talking' about these very things. That entails education, organization, agitation, for sure.

As for leading the unions-

Let me pose it this way; if we want workers to be communist, and we are communist workers, don't we advocate for our ideas? If we want people running the unions who look out for workers interests and steer clear of bourgeois traps, then don't we want our comrades to win out in terms of policy? Whether we and they are anarchist, schachtmanite or Sandersnistas?

The ICP doesn't advocate getting leadership positions in what they call 'regime trade unions', those integrated with the bosses. It's not as if their strategy applied to the U.s. would see them trampling over members in order to get Hoffa jr.'s spot atop the teamsters. Instead, they've joined the unions as members and gone to congresses openly as their org and stated their positions; in good faith. Indeed 'leadership' in a democratic organization implies (barring foul play) winning out in terms of ideas and general policy among a majority of the membership.

Hieronymous, who cares if the Cobas were originally formed by some M-L groups back in the day and some of their members are still in the union and even hold leadership positions? A union is going to be multi-tendency by nature because there are political contradictions in the working class. Should the ICP just abstain from working in the Cobas since everything Stalinism touch turns to evil, or should they work within them and win leadership positions and educate the rank and file to challenge the Stalinists?

donald parkinson

Hieronymous, who cares if the Cobas were originally formed by some M-L groups back in the day and some of their members are still in the union and even hold leadership positions?

The rank-and-filers who call bullshit on the myth being peddled about how the group began. It's disingenuous regardless of which party hack you interview.

donald parkinson

Should the ICP just abstain from working in the Cobas since everything Stalinism touch turns to evil, or should they work within them and win leadership positions and educate the rank and file to challenge the Stalinists?

Yes (on abstain).

But their bigger problem is the robotic language they use and mechanistic formulations they try to transmogrify from the 19th century to 2016.

@pennoid i see nothing really wrong with the formulations you put forward, but they just seemed simultaneously against the battle of ideas within the unions framework (only for doing political education and agitation outside of them? who knows why) and for capturing leadership.

i agree if you have successful leadership around policy then you might win out positions in unions, struggle bodies, etc and that is okay. but it just seemed like their piece was awkward about that. against education, and agitation... because you needed to keep the unions economistic and pure. can't taint the workers!!! at the best it seemed they thought there needs to be a separate time and place to talk politics and that should be outside the unions within the party framework.

personally i don't think you should separate the two. struggle around economic exploitation should be linked to discussing and winning politics.

I think it's less of a forceful separation, and more of a recognition of a fact of capitalism. Workers tend to come together in order to defend sectional interests - workers of a trade or industry, or small area. Here they often unite along those lines. But the task at hand is to foster a class unity. This can be done within unions, but ultimately, workers need to unite around a political program - a plan of action to seize power and coordinate a transformation of society internationally.

Why? Because workers interests *as workers* extend beyond the workplace. Certainly organizing at work plays a very key role and will serve to 'radicalize' many workers. But radicalizing them is not enough. The 'party' or 'political organization' can win out by suggesting policy and leading the unions (democratically) and in a way that confirms their basic program.

For example if the ICP argues that territorial based units within the union will foster more class based action and wrench more from the bosses, and if they prove correct, they've advanced a correct policy line in that respect. There are no shortcuts. To my knowledge they don't carry a policy of 'protecting the workers' or leading them by their noses. They outright argue for their positions, which is exactly what communists ought to do.

Does that make sense?

Even I've participated in making of this interview I have to say that I'm not here to defend it at all as I think its pretty bad and far from what I've initially wanted. I was quite disappointed and angry when I saw this, but we learn everything from every mistake (unless we are fools). Now I'm calm and therefore I post.

I think that biggest flaw of this interview is the fact that it was made with activists from some small political group that operates within the union, instead of rank-and-file members of union, more militant workers or maybe even union organisers. But sometimes there are language barriers and poor execution (at least from my side). Second thing is the fact that Bordigist group interviewed here had more interest in proving its worldview correct than engaging in the real discussion about this union. That is one of the biggest problems of 21st century left. They are all like ostriches that dug their heads in the sand of abstraction instead of dealing with concrete questions. All my more concrete questions were answered with links to "party" papers which is really annoying and it proves what I've just said about abstraction vs. concrete.

Before reading all the comments I wanted to post AWW's piece on SI COBAS, but I see that Hieronymous has already done that. I think that that piece is essential for any discussion on SI COBAS.