Letter to the Editorial Board, La Verità, March 25, 1934

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Greetings to La Verità

To the Editorial Board, La Verità

Dear Comrades,

Yes! the Italian proletariat needs a genuine Marxist paper. Nothing shows more clearly the complete corruption of the Social Democracy and the Stalinist party than the fact that an organization like Giustizia e Libertà [Justice and Liberty] can claim to have an independent revolutionary role. Almost a century ago Marx mercilessly banished justice, liberty, etc., from democratic mythology, and now in the thirty-fourth year of the twentieth century the bourgeois, antifascist Italian intellectuals are saying, not without success, that it is necessary to restore to their thrones, in all their splendor, the goddesses who had been dethroned. They are not so expert when they speak openly of the need for "the myth of liberty." The myth is always a twisting, a deformation of reality; in its political application, a lie. Like the priests of the church, the republican antifascists work with lies to save the soul.

How are we to explain this unheard-of relapse? Only by the monstrous bankruptcy of the two workers' parties.

I would like to recall here an interesting episode. On June 15 and 16, 1932, the Social Democratic communal council of Zurich shot down a revolutionary workers' demonstration. To justify itself, the Swiss Social Democracy wrote, "Lenin and Trotsky did no different with their enemies." In one of my letters to the Zurich workers, I permitted myself to recall the "trifle" that we had defended the workers' state and socialist property while the Social Democrats defended the bourgeois state and capitalist property. The head of the Italian Social Democracy, Nenni, then replied, saying that our comments were only "sophisms": inasmuch as the Bolsheviks defended their power in the state and the Social Democrats did the same in the city of Zurich, the only difference between them was quantitative. Then I said to myself, what a wretched theoretical and political level Signor Nenni is at! Even after the lesson given by Mussolini, he thinks it is possible to conquer power piecemeal. He does not understand that capital tolerates Social Democratic “power” in the communal and cantonal councils only so long as Nenni’s friends, in the exercise of this power, are prepared to shoot down every revolt against the capitalist state and capitalist property.

Communal and parliamentary successes are one thing, the conquest of state power is an altogether different thing. The fate of the Vienna Commune will provide a sufficiently important lesson on this theme. Italian fascism will be able, indeed, to face the future without worry if it does not meet other enemies than Nenni and his party.

As far as the Italian Stalinist party is concerned, it can be said that it has done everything possible to compromise the principles, the banner and the name of communism. On the fringes of democracy, for some time at least, it will be able to lead a militant existence, even with an entirely false policy, especially when it has certain financial resources at its disposal. But in illegality that is not enough. In that condition, the party can be built only on devotion, loyalty, persistence, the spirit of sacrifice. And these qualities can be aroused, mobilized and tempered only when the policy of the party inspires trust, that is to say, when it shows itself to be correct in even more difficult tests. The Italian example shows that it is impossible for an illegal party with a false policy to exist for long.

Giustizia e Libertà can only occupy the gap that occurs between the collapse of the old parties and the building of the new, genuine Bolshevik Party. Fascism can be overthrown only by proletarian insurrection. In order to lead this insurrection to victory the proletariat needs a real class party. The beginnings will be difficult, for the ground is strewn with ruins and wreckage. But this work must be done. You wish to rally the genuine Bolshevik elements under the banner of the new party. Under this sign I warmly greet your paper!

Leon Trotsky