The question of the petty bourgeoisie, the workers and the tasks of the communists
by editorial staff
1) The state of the art of the communist question in Italy
The formation of a communist party, in which to bring together the vanguard of the working class, which manages to exert a real influence on the subordinate classes and on society as a whole, can be considered today as the fundamental task of the Italian communists. At different levels, it is a need felt by all organizations, groups and parties that refer to the communist historical experience.
A task certainly to be related to the historical development of the international workers' movement, which has been in profound reflux since 1989 and in general to the capitalist restructuring of the 1970s. This reflux translated into the progressive submission of the proletariat to capitalism - evident today, at the moment in whose large groups of workers seem to have almost completely introjected the values of the class enemy - facilitated by the reformist line promoted by the most important western communist parties since the end of the Second World War, up to the landing at the shores of the first social democracy, and of the "social -liberalism ”or third way then (during the 90s).
In Italy in particular, the task of creating a communist party in step with the times assumes great importance if the events of the workers' movement are kept in mind, especially from the turning point in Bolognina and from the dissolution of the communist experience organized in the center-left governments until the subsequent marginalization and pulverization.
The defeat of revolutionary Marxism and with it workers was certainly a supranational process, favored by the development of the imperialist phase of post-70s capitalism, triggered by the capitalist restructuring and the emergence of the new "globalized, generalized and financialized" monopolistic groups (Amin [ 1]) of the financial capital that dictates the law through the ubiquitous "financial markets". This process has left heeling and ininfluence in our ranks, difficulties of all sorts for those who today try to rebuild the threads with a history made of defeats, but also of great victories, and which however continues outside the West, in a vital and creative in countries that lead anti-imperialist struggles and seek to develop despite US unilateralism and hegemonism.
This situation gives rise to innumerable debates and controversies, both on the international positioning with respect to contemporary socialism, in particular the Chinese one on the one hand; both on internal strategy, where one of the most heard questions regards who the party should speak to at this stage, and who its interlocutors are on the other. All in a conjuncture where the petty bourgeois revolt seems to be the protagonist of discontent and the workers of Italy sensitive to the conservative sirens of the sovereign branch or immersed in generalized apathy.
There is debate as to whether everything should focus on a pure class line, or open to the petty bourgeoisie (the craftsman, the merchant, the VAT number) objectively oppressed by the domination of monopoly capital.
We will try with this short article to clarify the issue and make our contribution to the debate.
2) Class structure of Italian society
Imperialism, i.e. industrial and banking monopolistic capitalism linked to the dynamics of globalized financial capital (whose accumulation and operating center is Wall Street, and which relies on supranational institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, EU-ECB, NATO) is the predominant element in Italian society, as in every western society, and the force that most determines its development. In this context, the aim that the ruling classes set out to achieve from the 1990s on was to conform states and capitalist societies to the renewed demands of financialized monopoly capital. It was a new modernization, which was essentially a viable liberal restoration without resistance after the fall of the USSR. Specifically:
Accession to the EU is a piece of this inevitable modernization, as a large center of dependent accumulation, but with autonomous and competitive ambitions (as far as possible), from Washington, and as an extended area of implementation of the new liberal policies, no longer confinable to the level of individual European states. The highest levels of economic concentration and capitalist centralization occur in this period and, thanks to these dynamics, the internationalization of the Italian top groups is successfully completed (FCA, Ferrero, Unicredit, Intesa etc). The Italian bourgeoisie therefore stabilizes its monopolies and takes its place at the big table on the chessboard of the capitalist West.
It finds itself faced with large non-monopolistic national enterprises, medium enterprises and small diffused production, typical of the Italian manufacturing fabric since the economic boom, as gregarious but often recalcitrant forces . It therefore supports the mature and internationalized capitalist class, a class of local capitalists and an extended small bourgeoisie of traders, artisans, professionals, and a high-end (middle class) white collar and urban wage-working class. Upper bourgeoisie which, on the other hand, can count on the almost unconditional support of a metropolitan "intellectual" class which benefits from imperialist income - while retaining "progressive" beliefs - and is often linked to the liberal-democratic currents of the bourgeois "left".
The extension of this property class, small and medium, and the lower compactness of the monopolistic bourgeois class [2] , makes their claims an extremely important element in the political life of the country (and almost always in a reactionary sense, starting from from fascism). The relative weakness of the bourgeoisie in the face of the tasks of imperialist modernization requires compromises and constant attention to the petty bourgeoisie that is pauperizing. The latter has the feeling of losing the social status that it enjoyed when the economy "was doing well", and suffers from the comparison with the suffering of today due to its inability to take advantage of the extreme internationalization and financialisation of the system.
The usual dynamics of these clashes within the Italian property classes is usually resolved in the substantial solidarity of interests between privileged groups. A solidarity to the bottom, where the ruling class, expression of the mature and imperialist bourgeoisie, grants: evasion, subsidies and low wages - which, moreover, it also takes advantage of - to keep afloat the activities of medium production and small commerce. This dynamic marks the relative backwardness of the Italian system compared to other western capitalist countries.
Hence a chronic permanent depression of the productive forces, all at the expense of the majority of workers, with little hope and no prospect other than emigration, gradual impoverishment, precariousness, misery and unemployment. The working class is annihilated. Objectively fragmented as everywhere in the West, following the innovations and restructurings of the 70s (when the incipient technological revolution was used by the ruling classes to allow outsourcing, subcontracting, relocations; inverse process to factory centralization so far characteristic of historical capitalism), and subjectively no longer aware of its role.
2.1 Who are ours ?
What have been the effects of these processes on the Italian social structure, on the classes from which and for whom a subject capable of representing them in the struggle for their emancipation should arise? Without going into a detailed sociological analysis, but aware of the need to draw a faithful picture of the situation, we can try, using the latest Istat data and some analyzes already produced on the matter, to outline the contours of a precise reference block.
Out of 60 million inhabitants in our country, the demographic structure is divided roughly as follows:
0-14 years: 13.5%, 8 million
15-64 years: 64%, 38.5 million
65 years and over: 22.5%, 13.5 million [3]
Always Istat points out that the prevailing trend in the population is aging. The first indication that comes from the data is that of the 38.5 million in working age there are 25 million employed, of which more than 19 million are employees while the independent ones are about 6 million [4] .
Within the fixed-income dependent working population and largely at low wages (lower than in the rest of Europe, both in the private sector and in the public administration) we can identify, following the groupings of the Istat table , macro- branches that each bring together approximately 25% - more than four million employees each - of total employee work:
1) The extractive and manufacturing industry, a place of the "working class" in the classical sense, and we could say Fordist; agricultural buildings and workers and laborers
2) The salaried service for private services: wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, transport and storage, accommodation and restaurant services.
3) The salaried employee of public services: in particular social security, education, health and assistance
4) The remaining 25%, in our breakdown, results from an aggregate of service activities, ranging from artistic and entertainment, to the repair of household goods, to scientific and technical activities, information and communication services, financial, insurance and real estate activities.
Next to this mass of subordinate workers we have, then, an audience of 6 million independents which include the different layers of the ownership classes, from large and medium entrepreneurship, to small employers, to traders, professionals, real autonomous. A sociologically disparate reality, but very important and politically influential, numerous and which tends to act as a block.
On the European scene, Italy ranks third in terms of the incidence of independent work on total employment (22.9 percent in 2018), after Greece and Romania, and well above the European average (15, 3 percent). [5]
The numbers in detail of these 6 million independent are these:

Source:
https://infogram.com/autonomi-1hdw2j7nm7gj2l0
As can be seen, among them professionals and self-employed (first of all traders) together together, in 2019, about 3.3 million people, while instead the real capitalists, together with professionals and traders who exploit labor waged, they are 1.4 million. [6]
Lastly, in view of the recent changes in the world of work, the subordinates and exploited, false self-employed para-subordinates, VAT numbers fall instead:
figures that have subordination constraints more typical of dependent work. [...] "partially self-employed", which amounts to 338 employees. The distribution of the employed by sector of economic activity clarifies even more the specificity of the partially self-employed, who have greater implications in the sectors of services to families and people, health and social assistance, education and public administration and transport and storage. . […] In the South, higher portions of partially self-employed (compared to pure self-employed) are estimated between home and remote salesmen and call center operators. In the North there is a greater presence of bricklayers, drivers of heavy vehicles and trucks, porters and workers in charge of moving goods. [...] The tripartite division of self-employment therefore shows coexistence,of a more vulnerable group of independent and uncertain professional identity, which is in many respects closer to subordinate work than to independent work. Among the most relevant aspects, the weight, among the partially self-employed, of the female component and of the younger workers, that is of two traditionally fragile categories in the labor market, should be underlined.
Instead, the number of professionals is growing, in particular without employees. They are 1 million 233 thousand, about 300 thousand more than 15 years ago. They are all those workers in the field of consultancy, research, information, who often carry out activities with a high intellectual content, often young people, who in the last few years have put themselves on the market and, by choice or necessity, are not employed by employees. none, but they work with a supply relationship with the various customers. Similar to these are the collaborators, coordinated and continuous, but they are decreasing. [6]
Just as this pocket of subordination is hidden among the independent or autonomous, which is analogous to dependent work, similarly among the employees there is a layer of high-level wage earners who are assimilable to the capitalists in that they represent their functionary and share their interests: "Modern workers aristocracies, public or private, manual or intellectual who are" [8] . Directors, administrators and managers, superior cadres, in the statistics reported as wage earners, but in reality a particular layer of privileged beneficiaries of the system, with a material and ideological situation that leads them to think and act as capitalists. Those with the highest remuneration and the most senior positions in companies are themselves part of the upper middle class of business as shareholders and investors.
However, this cross-section would be incomplete if we did not consider that we have spoken so far of the so-called active population. What is remarkable of the Italian figure, however, is the mass of inactive people who reach a population of 13 million people, as shown in the graph below:

Source:
https://infogram.com/quanti-inattivi-in ... mv95mvz6xo
Without a doubt, in addition to the students, within this category we count the countless exploited illegal workers and other invisible ones. In this further graph we can have more precise knowledge of it, bringing out a very interesting fact:

Source:
https://infogram.com/inattivi-per-motiv ... zyewmoq2yo
If the students and pensioners, which together amount to about 6 and a half million, are separated from the 13 million inactive, they remain just as many which in fact constitute the data, this real yes, of unemployment in Italy - in spite of the accounting somersaults and the scarce typical transparency of bourgeois surveys - providing a complete picture. In addition to the 2.4 million real unemployed (i.e. only those who are registered in the official job placement lists) there are another 6.5 million unemployed who are expertly expunged from the statistics and who in fact bring real unemployment in Italy close to 9 million .
2.2 Employment relationships
But what is the situation within the labor relations of this mass of workers ?
The first indication we have from this very broad overview is that the industrial proletariat tends to be a minority, this is due to the tertiarisation that characterizes advanced capitalist economies. However, it is still an ever-present and central nucleus: it is necessary to consider that Italy is still a manufacturing country and that a large part of this outsourcing consists "in the outsourcing of many services: those that were provided within industrial companies, today they are mainly produced by specialized companies classified as "tertiary" " [9] .
The second is that the wage-worker of services (to companies and individuals, public and private, the "tertiary") is a growing development basin of the contemporary working class: drivers, railroad workers, nurses, warehouse workers, teachers, educators, employees of the large distribution, commerce and catering, public employees etc ). All these categories contribute to filling the ranks and defining today's proletariat, which is at first sight more composite than the "old".
In short, we are faced with a diverse working class within it, where the wage workers of the services come to join the mainly industrial proletariat of factory and numerically in decline, at least in the West. They objectively support each other since these professional figures are increasingly related to the classic worker, in the methods of management and organization of the work they undergo, in work processes managed according to managerial methods marked by the private individual in increasingly harsh conditions. Furthermore, flexible and precarious contracts are used in public services no less than in the private sector: the proliferation of fixed-term contracts and other types of contracts is the general trend of our time, especially in Italy. In short, contemporary capitalism tends to produce widespread precariousness.
In numerical terms, if almost 14.9 million permanent workers are employed, the remaining 3 million are temporary workers " [10] and precarious workers, the latter component with a general trend towards growth. We can draw an excellent glimpse of the situation from a pertinent investigation made at the time by the collective Clash city worker [11] . An inquiry that offers us a real photograph of a fragmented and scattered contemporary proletariat, where large companies with tens of thousands of workers have given way to large production complexes, linked by subcontracting and outsourcing systems. Countless supply companies, subcontractors, temporary employment agencies and small pseudo-independent companies have developed around large companies.
Photograph of a working class struggling with the integral internationalization of companies , in which it becomes more international as it increasingly comes into contact with multinationals that settle in the territories, as well as the classic national companies which fight exclusively in and for the internal market.
Finally, a photograph of a working class invested by a growing integration between manual and intellectual work , thanks to information and communication technologies, which develop at unprecedented speeds, in the context of a production process that requires ever increasing technological knowledge in various sectors; this tendency is generalized and the distinction between workers and employees becomes weak and often arbitrary, to the extent that all workers are incorporated into production:
thanks to the changes that took place in the work process and in the company organization, the distinction between workers and employees loses more and more meaning as worker work becomes more and more intellectual work and that of employees increasingly mechanical and alienating. This also translates into a lower differentiation of the respective wages [12] .
To complete this quick excursus, it is necessary to consider the approximately two million "chronic" unemployed people reviewed by official statistics, which when added to the ten million "inactive" indicated above, gives us the measure of the true reserve army available to the capitalists in the country-system Italy . These, together with the overwhelming majority of the 19 million wage workers, as seen, and the new pseudo-independent exploited, form a basin of more than 30 million people who are, in disparate conditions and systemic crisis, subject to subordinate employment relationships, parasubordinated, of real slavery (hired labor and gig economy) and ultra-precarious exploitation. To this we must support pensioners, victims in turn of violent anti-social counter-reforms, underway in Italy and Europe [13].
A completely voiceless mass, and often a mass of maneuver for the reactionary or liberal adventures of the parties of the bourgeoisie, which, without going to investigate the numbers in detail, we have seen accounts for a small numerical minority and which however occupies, indeed monopolizes, the whole spectrum of political representation, economic, media and hegemonic power.
3) Strategy: our tasks
Therefore, given the results of the class struggle, the social structure given and the state of the movement of the workers and the communist parties, it seems clear that the task of the communists is to get to know and have a link with the dependent work, to seek in it its reason to be and the social block of (re) departure . With a global vision that unifies: these are the struggles of the workers of Ilva, the protests in the health or school sectors, the struggles of the laborers, the employees of the large-scale distribution and trade, logistics, the anger of the precarious and the exploited from online platforms (we think in particular of the riders), of the worries of the employees of multinationals who cut costs and restructure by laying off, and of the professionals of intellectual and artistic activities, often precarious and poorly paid; of all those who work for a salary, and that concerns how we have seen something like 19 million people, classified in the main branches indicated above: industry, private services and public services.
It is a one and only working class. Our main task is to unite and bring out a new class consciousness among these workers. From this point of view, one of the essential questions is: "to move the bulk of the workers out of apathy", ie the trade union question; ie make sure that a movement of workers takes effect (similar to the French one, to say [14]). Only in a wide and varied sea of workers' protagonism it is in fact possible to develop a policy of unity of the sectors of the work that meet and recognize each other in their common interests and as subordinates fighting against a common enemy for emancipatory purposes. And, speaking of protagonism, positive signals come precisely from that part of foreign workers often, and superficially, indicated as a passive tool - through an unprejudiced use of the concept of industrial reserve army - to weaken the claims of the salaried workers: think of the recent workers' strike, an event that is certainly not without precedent, however neglected by the media. [15]
Secondly, and only secondarily, there is the discourse of knowing how to speak "to other classes" for example the petty bourgeoisie that proletarizes itself, that is, small traders and craftsmen, small entrepreneurs etc. The discussion with these subjects must however be in a perspective of trying to impose the hegemony of the proletariat on them, and not the other way round. In short, our task is not to represent their class instances. In case - strong of an in-depth analysis, of the investigation, of a platform representing workers, and capable of speaking in their name and with a certain influence on them - you will have to go to meet him to make it clear that their fate depends on the fight against the capitalist system. Try to make them understand that the liberation of workers is also liberation for them,
In this perspective, the direction of the process, of the propaganda cannot be entrusted to the petty bourgeois interests, which in certain perspective cannot be delivered to the reaction, but to make hegemony we must first recreate the conditions of our legitimacy, the lost link with the world of work. Our proposal moves in this connection. Only then can we think of social alliances. The working class can do them only when it "exists", that is, it is at the head of the movement with a unified purpose and will and can exercise an ideological and practical hegemony over the adjoining classes.
In short, the primary objective of the communists should therefore be the expansion of their consensus and their ability to manage among the ranks of the working class and the question of social alliance with the petty bourgeoisie is secondary at this stage. In other words, if unifying, representing and taking root is an immediate practical political task; taking into consideration the world of the petty bourgeoisie is a medium-long term theoretical task. The communists must not preclude anything, they must be able to act dialectically among the masses. Recreating the link with the workers (i.e. raising the level of class consciousness) is the main front. As in war, there is always a main front and one, or more secondary. The relationship with the petty bourgeoisie is one of these, which dialectically must also be linked with all the other secondary fronts, even if the workers' front is always the one that must have the pre-eminence.
There is a "hierarchy" of interests that necessarily come into conflict in certain contexts of struggle. In order not to get lost, we must always look to the main front. This configuration of struggle can and must change when and if the class struggle of the subordinates and their political subjectivity has developed, and the main enemy will be correctly identified: the financial capital of the monopolies, and a capable social alliance will be built to isolate the ruling class of capitalists and their lackey officials. Only in this sense can it be said that authentic perspectives for a revolution in the West will have opened.
[1] S.Amin , La loi de la valeur mondialisée: Valeur et prix dans le capitalisme, 2013; S.Amin, The implosion du capitalisme contemporain, 2012;
https://www.sinistrainrete.info/crisi-m ... ile-2.html
[2] Cf. our historical series on Italian capitalism available here
https://ottobre.info/2020/06/15/la-rico ... l-secondo- war /
[3] Istat table, Population residing on 1st January:
http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?DataSet ... IS_POPRES1# ;
[4] Istat table, employment by branches of activity
http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?QueryId=12581 ;
[5] Istat, ANNUAL REPORT 2019, The situation of the country:
https://www.istat.it/storage/rapporto-a ... le2019.pdf
[6] Crf
https://www.truenumbers.it/lavoratori-autonomi/
[7] Istat, ANNUAL REPORT 2019, The situation of the country:
https://www.istat.it/storage/rapporto-a ... le2019.pdf
[8]
https://www.emilianobrancaccio.it/2020/ ... QMsyyz1A_8
[9]
https://www.lacittafutura.it/economia-e ... o-i-nostri
[10]
https://www.documentazione.info/occupat ... o-i-numeri
[11]
https://www.lacittafutura.it/economia-e ... o-i-nostri
[12]
https://www.lacittafutura.it/economia-e ... o-i-nostri
[13]
https://pcifermano.wordpress.com/2019/1 ... in-france/
[14] Podcast, "The awakening of the class struggle in France":
https://guerrigliaradio.simplecast.com/ ... in-francia
[15]
https://www.usb.it/leggi-notizia/pieni- ... azione-or- they will follow- others -mobilitation-of-the-invisible-1628.html ;
https://sbilanciamoci.info/migranti-e-l ... -di-nardo/
https://ottobre.info/2020/06/25/la-ques ... comunisti/
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