Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin

WE HAVE NOW come to the first point of verification in our debate. What this entails is an attempt to determine not so much the correctness of Lenin’s journey from the theory of capital to the theory of organization, in its historically determined moment or, to use his terms, in its determinate social formation, but rather a definition, problematic as it may be, of the correspondence between Lenin’s discourse and the problems that the theory of class struggle presents us with today. We will later apply this kind of analysis to another fundamental shift in Lenin, that from the theory of organization to the theory of insurrection (in lessons 5, 6, 7, and 8). But let us now deal with the first question.

Undoubtedly, on this issue, the main question, in What Is to Be Done? and in the outline of a theory of the party, concerns the shift from economic to political struggle, from particularity to generality, from the process of struggle to the external consciousness of the political generality of the conflict. We have already seen how this shift occurs in a given political composition of the Russian working class, how it is placed in that particular phase of class struggle and the power relations between those classes, and correspondingly in the structures of production as they are based on a dialectics of antagonism. On the one hand, there is an ongoing process of industrialization and the formation of some class vanguards, which are splitting; on the other hand, there is the rest of the country, involved as it is in the difficult labor of exiting semifeudal or precapitalist modes of production, a working class limited but now able to assume and configure, in itself, and by virtue of its contradictory relation with the overall development of society, a concept of organization as a general interpretation of the needs of society as a whole. This workers’ vanguard actually finds itself in the position of having to interpret the need for a shift to a higher level of labor organization and a more advanced reconfiguration of social relations: while fighting against exploitation, the working class posits itself as the interpreter of this development. This historical paradox of the revolution common to all underdeveloped countries finds its most extreme expression in Lenin’s Russia. The fight against exploitation is here a fight for development, a struggle to build the conditions of liberation from exploitation and, simultaneously, a struggle against exploitation, against labor, to build a communist society. It is precisely in such dramatic relation that the correspondence between Lenin’s thought and a determinate class structure finds its place: the workers’ consciousness is external to class and to the whole of the proletariat. In this determinate situation, the need for an overall recomposition of development and of the struggle against exploitation cannot be carried forward by a vanguard without an external project and leadership: but this externality is still entirely workers’ based—it is the recording and subversion of a situation that capital exploits for its own development and the development of exploitation, and that must instead be assumed in the theory of the party as the driving force of the revolution. Here again the proletarians storm the heaven. The problem seems unsolvable within the everyday of political discourse: and yet, the determined moment in Lenin’s discussion, where the correctness of his treatment of the determinate social formation and the status of class struggle of his times is shown, is this giant effort to subvert a given structure that is consolidated in the capitalist mode of production, in the determinate phase of Russian development, and to subvert it in order to turn it, instead, into the key to the subversion and destruction of the overall command of this development. Lenin proceeds from an assumption of the particular class interest: this deep assumption of the “general” is imposed by an adherence to the class particular.

Let us now move on to the second problem: does Lenin’s discussion, which is correct in relation to its given social situation, correspond to our needs? Evidently, for it to correspond to our needs, there would have to be a significant degree of homogeneity between the kind of political class composition that Lenin’s analysis is situated in and the kind of political class composition that Marxist analysis operates in today. In fact, we can immediately note some instances of great heterogeneity that emerge from a material analysis of facts, with respect to both working-class comportments and the overall analysis of the power relations, and hence the needs, organizational forms, and even mechanisms that spontaneity assumes in the current situation. With particular reference to the same core problem, two thematic doubles are completely reconfigured in our situation: these are the relationship between the particular and the general, and the relationship between the economic and the political. Undoubtedly (from the standpoint of the working class, but even more so from the standpoint of capital), whereas in the context of Lenin’s times and their class composition these doubles presented themselves as alternatives within which the subjective will to impose an organizational shift needed to be exercised, now their antagonistic form has dissipated. This is to say that today at a stage of capitalist development where control needs to extend not simply to the level of the factory but to the level of society as a whole, today in a phase of capitalist development where the process of valorization and realization of capital requires conditions that involve society globally, the very terms of the socialist project (particular and general interest, private and public, and so on) fade and tend to merge into nothingness. The factory walls, as they are empirically given, crumble. The specific process of factory exploitation extends over the whole of society, and capitalist exploitation actually turns the form of control of the relation between factory and society into a continuum: control is such that this continuity is verified and consolidated.¹ If we read the problem of continuity between the economic and the political not only from the standpoint of capital but from that of the workers, we grasp it in the same terms, with an accentuation that is typical of the sectarian position of the workers against capital: thus we identify the reasons for the terrible precariousness of capitalist domination today. Because in fact, insofar as this continuity was determined, insofar as factory control has had to spread to the whole of the social process of valorization of capital, insofar as the economic revolt could be immediately configured as a political struggle, this attacks not only the field of the relation of exploitation in the factory, but the whole of the social conditions that allow for the determination of the exploitation in the factory.

Only a few years ago, these elementary truths seemed hidden, but they are now assumed even by the official working-class movement, whatever distortions they are submitted to. Reformism assumes the continuity between economic and political struggle as its necessary foundation, mystifying in this continuity the antagonistic character of workers’ struggles. However, in Italy and all of the countries of developed capitalism (and the demonstration of this comes from the workers’ struggles of our times), we know that where the last and most general phase of subsumption of labor under capital occurs (to say it in Marx’s terms), capital covers the whole of society and there are no longer any forms of production or cooperation that are external to capitalist domination. The totality of capitalist domination over society in this phase is realized, to say it with Marx, as “real subsumption.”² The situation that Lenin describes in The Development of Capitalism in Russia can be defined as the last phase of the “formal subsumption” of labor under capital, where by formal subsumption we mean a mode of production that without being directly capitalist entails the hegemony of the capitalist world over the market and the circulation of commodities, though they are still produced in various and diverse ways. This is the situation in Russia that Lenin analyses, where there is still a vast amount of precapitalist forms of production despite the tendency of capitalism to dominate them.

But this is no longer the situation we experience, despite the fantasies of the most fervid apologists of the orthodoxy of the situation Lenin describes. Instead, our condition is defined by a relationship of direct domination of capital over society through a series of mechanisms that can be described analytically, though the materiality of this description is always changing, as a relation that sees the spread of capital over the globe and the whole of the social fabric, so that, conversely and consistently, there is a need for an objective and determinate recomposition of class, which is regarded as an essential premise of the analysis. Therefore, from this standpoint, one of the most specific and fundamental presupposition of Lenin’s discourse does not apply. The shift from particularity to generality, from economic to political struggle (with its wealth of implications), loses the meaning it had in Lenin’s thought. Of course, for Lenin the shift from economic to political struggle does not exclude the possibility that at some junctures the economic struggle is as valid as the political one; but the problem lies elsewhere: the problem is that for Lenin, beyond a certain limit, political struggle is no longer economic, and in general, political struggles are not only economic struggles. Conversely, today, in our situation, economic and political struggles are completely identical, and this assumption leads to crucial changes both in terms of the theory of organization and, as far as questions we will later analyze are concerned, from the theory of the revolution to the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. These are changes that affect the whole of Leninist theory and, above all, as we will see in part 4, the conception of the withering-away of the state. Here we begin to express ourselves on this issue.

At this point, it is legitimate to ask what we agree with Lenin on. From the standpoint of opportunism, so long as we deny any equivalence between the determinate social formations Lenin operates in and our current situation, the problem is solved: when reformists predicate the pacifist path to socialism, the reforms of structures, and the other weapons that belong to the arsenal of their lies, they claim to be in agreement with Lenin’s method and that the problem can be solved by substantiating this method with the differences that emerge in determinate historical situations one by one. In my view, this distinction between method and substance, methodological and material determinations, is one of the biggest theoretical betrayals of the whole tradition of theory, especially of Marxist practice. The distinction between method and substance, between form and content, is entirely one with idealist thought and belongs to an essential theoretical need of capital to mark distinctions in the continuity of its own domination of the variety of contents on which it exercises itself. Unsurprisingly, bourgeois law, a fundamental and privileged instrument of the capitalist organization of society as well as a theory of the form of domination, often relies on its ability to develop vast and adequate modes of application to different contents that the new comportments of the working class and the new forms of insubordination present it with. The law is a fluid and effective form placed to cover up the holes that, in the compact system of bourgeois domination, are opened by workers’ subversion. Only capital, insofar as its development and domination over development are determined by the workers’ struggles, finds this distinction between form and content of any use.

To use the distinction is useless and unpleasant. Therefore, the answer to the question of how Leninist we are is far from being that Lenin’s method is fine but we don’t like the substance of his discourse. On the contrary, we answer that our agreement with Lenin can only be found starting from the totality of the standpoint of the working class that is proper to this determinate social formation, without even raising the question of continuity or discontinuity with the Leninist tradition. Our Leninism is an outcome, not a premise; the entire Marxian tradition is premised on class struggle, not the assumption of theoretical questions: theories that arise from and place themselves outside the struggle and the determinate relations in which it develops, theories that do not turn into a revolutionary material force, have no place in the Marxian tradition. Theoretical problems, when isolated from the determinate location of each social force in the development of struggles, have no place in the Marxian tradition. Therefore, the only answer that can be given to the question of how far we are Leninists today is that we are Leninists insofar as from within our contemporary determinate situation we affirm a class standpoint geared toward subversion. Clearly there can be times when Lenin’s discourse is summed up and valued, but as the outcome of a confrontation, not as a premise.

At this stage, we can see things from a second perspective, with reference to a problem that was recently raised in a debate among reformists. The debate concerns the concept of determinate social formation and the polemic that split Sereni from Luporini:³ moving from a comparison between Marx’s and Lenin’s category of “forms” of “economic formations,” they both note their difference, but Sereni characterizes the Leninist category in the traditional terms of Gramscianism, that is, in terms of political science, whereas Luporini defines it in more modern, structuralist terms, as the definite index of a synchronic analysis. Going back to the questions we have raised in this conversation, let us ask, for us and in relation to these analysts, what the value is of the category of “determinate social formation,” and in what ways we can adopt it in our stock of knowledge in the struggle. Initially, when compared with the pacifying and naive historicism of Sereni, Luporini seems to be right. After clarifying the difference between the concept of determinate social formation and the concept of economic formation in Marx, Luporini claims that in Marx the shift from different forms of production (from Asian to feudal, capitalist, and communist) entails a continuing progress and is thus based on a historicist projection (that also corresponds to his general notion of development), whereas in Lenin, there is a deeply different, punctual, and scientifically fixed determination. In this, we believe, Luporini tries to come close to the concept of political class composition that emerges from more recent Marxian research (especially that which originated in Italy with operaismo, but also including some motifs of structuralism in its historical genesis). Our agreement with Luporini, however, ends here; in fact, from this point onward our views go in opposite directions, because the expunction of the methodological elements of historicism cannot allow for a split between the Marxian and the Leninist category: while historicism separates the two, dialectics unites them. Moreover, if the Leninist concept of determinate social formation is different from that of “historical formation” used by Marx in the analysis of the overall economic development (from the Asian mode of production up to communism), we still nonetheless find the notion of determinate social formation in Marx, often confused and at times juxtaposed with that of historical formation, but always present. In this debate, albeit not always explicitly, Marx presents a series of elements that entail constructing a concept of working class and its composition; these are, if not more mature, very close to Lenin’s definition—it is their premise, in fact. There are two moments worth focusing on in this respect: the first concerns the definition of the wage and the relationship between the constitutive moments of the wage (both quantitative and qualitative) and its composition, that is, the quality determined by the working class. The second moment can be traced in the theory of class antagonism and its effects on institutions, which Marx discusses mainly in his historical writings.

On the first issue, Marx offers a clear exposition, from the early writings up to the Grundrisse and Capital: that is, the determination of the relationship between wage levels, technical levels, political levels, and the subjective quality of class, and therefore the analysis of the constant transformation that class is subject to and of which it is a subject. If the wage corresponds to determinate needs and has paid for that essential aspect for the capitalist system that is the reproduction of the workforce, if the definition of the wage includes “historical and moral” elements and these constantly change, then with it changes the quality of the workforce reproduced and the very mechanism of reproduction.⁴ These dialectical elements together make up the historically changeable structure that characterizes the very substance of the concept of class and are the foundation of its dialectical reality and, consequently, also the dialectical mechanism of the revolutionary development of its composition. Marx outlines, in generic terms, a progressive trajectory from structure to structure. For instance, the English proletariat of the middle nineteenth century is radically different from the proletariat as we know it today, when among the costs of the reproduction of the workforce a certain use of social goods needs to be taken into account, and the relationship between the satisfaction of needs and the demand for power must be identified. In any case, here we can read the following: (a) a homogeneous use of the concept of composition, insofar as both structures are defined by a dialectical whole of materially differentiated components; (b) the dialectical moment of development, where the subjective composition of the proletariat finds, in an open-ended relation between needs and struggle against exploitation, the space for a demand for power. The concept of composition (of determinate social formation with reference to class) becomes an operative concept here. In Marx’s theory of the wage, the relationship between the satisfaction of needs and the demand for power becomes less and less important: at the pace of development today we come to a situation where the working class (to use the prophetic terms of the Grundrisse) is recomposed not only in terms of a homogeneous offer of social labor (abstract labor), but also as a “historical individual,” the indispensable foundation of the production of all possible wealth, where the relation between labor supply and reproduction of life, as well as the demand for power, is turned on its head, when compared to the forms of composition of the early nineteenth century. This perspective in the Grundrisse comes to define the working class that no longer satisfies needs but demands power because its role is so radically essential and necessary to the process of production that any class movement affects the whole power structure, determining and undermining its existence.⁵

But this is not enough. In a way that is parallel to it, in his so-called historical writings Marx returns to the analysis of the relation of class composition; this time he confronts it with a series of institutional moments and builds the foundation of an analysis of the political structures and the composition of the revolutionary subject. If, for instance, we consider his writings on Bonaparte and the Commune, we find a precise and internal analysis not only of the development of class, but also of the power relations that characterize this development, of the historical and political realm where this determinate working class can develop. If it can develop, organization needs to make itself adequate to this possibility and become more and more internal to the kind of development potential described. This is the case both in the event of defeat and in that of victory.⁶ The definition of the goals of the proletariat, both material and political, is already there in the classical perspective of Lenin: in Marx’s description of the determinacy of the composition and the situation, the notion of a shift from the call for social republic to insurrection and the Commune is verified in and through the same methodological terms we can recognize in Lenin.

So to return to the thread we left halfway through this discussion, we initially saw, in the verification of the validity of Lenin’s thought, how a series of statements, especially on the double thematic opposition of particular and general as well as economic and political, no longer applies to the current class composition. We have argued that what we were interested in grasping, to the extent to which we are Leninist, was the operability of the concept of composition, and we subsequently showed, against some contemporary positions, that the concept of composition and the political choices it calls for as such entail and unfold in a complete continuity from Marx to Lenin. Here we reinstate the first conclusion, after this further proof of the orthodox continuity of the methodology we refer to. We cannot imagine a Marxian orthodoxy consisting in anything other than an ability to grasp the revolutionary process and the material laws of development starting from the movement and the struggle and immediately from the organization of refusal, hatred, and the negation of the present state of things. There is no possible continuity of themes unless we characterize and locate the will to insubordination in the political composition of this insubordination. From here derives the specific determination of the proletarian subject; and only starting from this subject can any theoretical proposal begin to be of value, insofar as it is translatable into a practical proposal, played, won, or lost within the specific class struggles.

The acceptance of these presuppositions is a fundamental aspect of this problem in relation to reading Lenin: not to distinguish between method (form) and substance (content), but on the contrary, to assume, from the outset, the same intensity of the practical standpoint that characterized Marx and Lenin and to immediately turn science into the expression of the proletarian subject. Some will accuse us of idealism, and so on. We will remind them that the subject is defined by its material composition: materiality of struggles, wage, institutional location. We are proud of our materialism when confronted with all the old positions that can only praise Leninism in terms of “class consciousness.” (Where the other pole of the dualism, the material one, ends up they never tell us: they lost it on the way.) And we are also proud of our materialism in the face of the more recent structuralist apologies for Lenin, which separate the analytical from the subjective moment, the science of the acting materiality from the class struggle.