When 150 years ago, in March 1871, the young Paris proletariat attempted to "storm heaven", fiercely put down by the bloody reaction of the French bourgeoisie - in agreement, on that occasion, with the Prussian invader to crush their common deadly enemy - it was once again clear, as is written in the Manifesto, that the history of all hitherto existing societies is "the history of class struggle". As early as 1848, the working class, which had begun to take its first steps just a few decades before, had had to pay a tragic price for its illusion that its political battle could be fought in agreement with the bourgeoisie, albeit with its more liberal and progressive currents. With the Commune, whatever remained of that ingenuous hope was swept away by cannon fire, while it was clear, on the contrary, that "workers of all countries, unite ! " was not just a simple appeal to feelings of solidarity, but a fundamental scientific synthesis, a vital requirement for revolutionary strategy. It lasted for only two months. And yet an unreplaceable legacy of experiences was concentrated in the short span of that ardent season, in the heart of Paris. It definitively resolved, when put to the test, a series of fundamental theoretical issues of socialism. It was the first attempt to create a new world : a revolution, according to what Marx stated in his first draft of the text, "not against this or that - legitimist, constitutional, republican, or imperialist - form of state", but against the state itself. It was against this "supernatural abortion of society", the tool of the "war engine of capital against labour", for the "resumption by the people for the people of its own social life".

The Civil War in France

Lenin explained that in the decades of relatively peaceful development of capitalism, from 1871 to 1914, the social materials that would give birth to social-imperialism accumulated. This objective process emerged in various ideologies ; all of them had a common feature : « opportunistic prejudices » about the nature of the State. The revolutionary process was destined to be stifled by nihilism, maximalism, and inconclusiveness ; to meet with self-destruction, unless it got out of the quicksand of prejudices about the State.
The first imperialist world war produced the material conditions for revolution : in February 1917 the political crisis in Russia emerged in an acute form, leading to the fall of the autocracy and the birth of the most democratic of republics. What was arrived at was dual power. The parliament and governement co-existed with the soviets, the political shell for the most genuine expression of the revolutionary forces : the workers and poor peasants in uniform.
The Russian revolutionary labour movement had to operate politically within the framework of the most democratic republic history had ever produced. Without a revolutionary theory about the nature of the bourgeois State there could not be a revolutionary movement of opposition to the most efficient shell of this State - democracy.

The state and revolution ; the marxist theory of the state and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution

This work saw the light of day in the heat of a decisive battle for the international proletariat.
What Is to Be Done? constituted the essential weapon with which to fight revisionism. This, even in its Russian form, denied the scientific nature of Marxist analysis, i.e. it excluded for the proletariat even the possibility of equipping itself with a strategy.
What Is to Be Done? is the precious magnifying glass that allows us to reread the chapters of the history of our class from a Leninist point of view.
Between 1884 and 1894, Marxist theory gathered strength, but the Marxists, among the currents of avant-garde thought, only had very few disciples. Between 1894 and 1898, the labour movement revealed its political awakening in the struggle via strikes. 1898-1902 was a period of dispersion, of theoretical and organisational eclecticism; it was the artisanal phase of the political struggle fought by the vanguard of the Russian proletariat. What Is to Be Done? was published as the theoretical guidebook allowing that phase to be left behind.
Lenin focused on the Russian precursors of revolutionary Marxism. The latter had the merit of being considered the world vanguard of the revolutionary democratic movement. Lenin hoped that the nascent social-democratic movement would be able to be nurtured with the «same devoted determination and vigour».
The party's activity is the struggle to strengthen and spread the organisation of the vanguard of the revolutionary class against the attempts to «degrade the programme and tactics». As Arrigo Cervetto recalled, tactics in the language of Lenin's time was the synonym of strategy. Programme and tactics are the consciousness from without. Only Lenin's strategic vision could arrive at the need for a party that has «a strategic plan and that in order to implement this strategic plan has to plan the development of the necessary organisational tool with this end in sight».

What is to be done?

La stratégie révolutionnaire est ancrée dans la théorie et dans l'analyse scientifique du développement impérialiste et de la dynamique internationale des puissances. Cervetto commente certains articles de Lénine en partant de trois idées simples :
- la stratégie révolutionnaire est basée sur l'analyse marxiste du développement capitaliste du marché mondial ;
- la vision de Lénine n'est pas une stratégie pour la révolution en Russie, mais pour la révolution internationale ;
- c'est pour cette raison que la théorie du développement impérialiste et les prévisions de Lénine à propos des perspectives et des conséquences en Occident de ce développement en Asie demeuraient la pierre angulaire pour le cycle stratégique successif, au delà de l'échec d'Octobre.

Plus que l'échec d'Octobre, c'est la perte de cette boussole, dans la tempête des années 1920 et 1930, qui a pesé sur le retard historique du parti révolutionnaire : la perte du fil rouge de la théorie du développement capitaliste dans l'ère de l'impérialisme, de son lien avec la stratégie et de leur intégration dans la conception du parti comme parti-science, discipliné non pas par le fidéisme, mais par l'action consciente guidée par la stratégie.

Ce fut là le signe de l'insuffisance stratégique de Trotsky. Sans une théorie du développement mondial du capitalisme, il ne pouvait y avoir de stratégie, et sans stratégie, il ne pouvait y avoir de parti-science, mais uniquement le tacticisme des épigones exposé à tous les vents de l'idéologie, du maoïsme aux théories du sous-développement, jusqu'aux mythes du progressisme démocratique et de l'électoralisme.

Construire le parti-stratégie signifiait également se vacciner contre les mythes et les illusions du radicalisme intellectuel et petit-bourgeois, préserver le marxisme scientifique et faire en sorte qu'il s'enracine chez les nouvelles générations, reconstruire l'internationalisme après que stalinisme, idéologies du capitalisme d'État et mythes tiers-mondistes l'avaient complètement dénaturé.

Dans Lénine et la révolution chinoise Cervetto analyse l'échec de la Révolution d'Octobre par rapport à la stratégie, mais laisse en arrière-plan l'autre grande question qui y est nécessairement liée : la nature sociale de l'URSS et du stalinisme. Il est tout à fait évident que le concept même d'internationalisme puisse être reconstruit uniquement en affrontant le noeud de la contre-révolution stalinienne parce que la rupture au sein du parti de Lénine plongeait ses racines justement dans la contradiction entre les intérêts nationaux de la Russie et la stratégie internationaliste.

Un essai en appendice propose les éléments pour un indispensable approfondissement.

Lénine et la révolution chinoise ; « Les matières inflammables de la politique mondiale » et autres écrits

Ohne revolutionäre Theorie gibt es keine revolutionäre Bewegung, hat Lenin behauptet. Seine Behauptung scheint so einfach zu sein, aber in Wirklichkeit ist sie das nicht, denn die revolutionäre Theorie ist eine komplexere Auffassung, als es beim äußerlichen Lesen der politischen Schriften Lenins scheinen mag. Die leninistische Theorie ist nämlich genau das Ergebnis einer tiefgreifenden Untersuchung der sozialen Wirklichkeit und gleichzeitig das Werkzeug, womit die Arbeiterklasse auf die ökonomischen Basen sowie auf die politischen Überbauen einer historisch bestimmten Gesellschaft wirkt. Wenn wir die leninistische Parteiauffassung untersuchen, so stoßen wir sofort auf die revolutionäre Theorie als marxistische Wissenschaft, das heißt, wir stoßen auf die Frage der wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der politischen Praxis. Mit anderen Worten, kann man die leninistische Parteiauffassung nicht begreifen, wenn man die gesamte wissenschaftliche Analyse der ökonomischen Basis nicht begreift, welche, bei Marx und bei Lenin, die Grundlage jener Auffassung darstellt. Ohne ihre wissenschaftliche Grundlage würde die leninistische Parteiauffassung wie ein – vielleicht riesig großes – Denkmal politischer Willenskraft wirken, ein Denkmal der Organisationstheorie, aber ein Denkmal ohne Sockel. Dies erklärt, warum das äußerliche Beistimmen einigen leninistischen Thesen noch keine Aufnahme der revolutionären Theorie, d.h. die Aufnahme jener allgemeinen wissenschaftlichen Auffassung ist, welche die Grundlage des Leninismus bildet. Daraus ergibt sich außerdem, daß die leninistische Parteiauffassung das Ergebnis der ökonomischen marxistischen Analyse ist, und daß wir ohne eine folgerichtige Anwendung dieser Analyse nicht zu jener Auffassung – nicht einmal in der organisatorischen Form – gelangen können. Diese dialektische Entwicklung finden wir auch in der marxistischen Biografie Lenins. Es entsteht also die Frage, die Aufnahme der revolutionären Theorie in ihrem vollständigen Wesen zu betrachten. Klassenkämpfe und revolutionäre Partei ist das Ergebnis der Ausarbeitung jener Fragen.

Klassenkampfe und revolutionare partei

With regard to man as a biological individual, time is set by the experience of generations – childhood, adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age succeed each other and provide time with a rhythm. Tragic events, whether individual or collective, can take place, socio-economic changes can extend the average life (as occurred in the 20th century), but in any case the significance of biological time is a stable element. Political time, on the contrary, is a historical time subject to the dialectics of accelerations and decelerations. "There are days that are worth twenty years – Cervetto reminds us, citing Marx – and yet, in the movement of matter, one day is one day." The strategic divide of 1989, that sanctioned the end of the East-European State-capitalist regimes that had been passed off as socialism, was a remarkable evidence thereof. Biological time and historical time merge in the psychologies of the individuals who are the protagonists of class struggle. This is difficult terrain, because it is subject to the inevitable commingling of rationality and emotions. A revolutionary, a Marxist, anticipates the paces of social changes in his heart. It should not surprise, therefore, that the class movement, through the voice and understanding of its best representatives, has often imagined faster paces than the actual ones. At the end of the 19th century, during a phase of full capitalist expansion, August Bebel did not realize it, and affirmed at the convention of the Social-Democratic party in Erfurt (1891) : "Indeed, I am convinced the realization of our goals is so close at hand that few of you in this hall will not live to see it." Science only can emancipate us from the ascendancy of present time, that almost inevitably leads to mistakes about the reality of today – perceived as absolute reality, independent of any evolution – and thence prepares the disappointments of tomorrow. This emancipation, this freedom, does not pursue any abstractly predicted aims, but practical objectives. Cervetto wrote : "Revolutionary strategy is based on the analysis of times, not to arrange the future, a task for which an objective real movement doesn't have any need, but rather to establish time deadlines that can act as references in defining immediate tasks in the present, the tasks of tactics. (...) Tactics address temporary situations that are multi-faceted combinations, to take up Lenin's definition, of long-term historical processes." The more solid the strategy, the more flexible can tactics be. The ‘question of times' finds its place in practice, in the daily struggle : "Science is freedom, and it is such because it is not a theory detached from practice. Instead, it is practice guided by theory."

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