A new generation of communist militants has been emerging in recent years. This phenomenon is accelerated by the anguish and awareness that capitalism not only cannot resolve its economic contradictions, but above all that it is dragging humanity into the abyss of generalized imperialist war. How can “conscious” individuals oppose this dramatic outcome if not through militant revolutionary, and therefore communist, commitment? This generation – a relative category we use here for ease of exposition – is called upon to constitute the world party which, armed with the communist program and the slogans of insurrection and dictatorship of the proletariat, will be able to and will have the task of “leading” the proletariat in the midst of the hurricane and the various social class battles to come. The bourgeoisie is, and without a doubt always will be, compelled to attack the proletariat in preparation for and on the road to war.
Periods in which the proletariat mobilizes en masse – particularly during revolutionary and even pre-revolutionary periods – alter the social atmosphere in which the party, or at least communist groups, and its members live and act, compared to periods where massive struggles are rare. In the absence of such working-class struggles, revolutionary forces and their members, as communist militants, find themselves “socially” isolated to a greater or lesser extent, sometimes even at odds with the feelings and opinions of individual proletarians. The result, among other things, is that individual communist commitment – to be distinguish from leftist militancy [1] – is “socially” marginal, including among exploited workers, and largely ignored and misunderstood, sometimes even by those close to the communist militant. As a result, the latter may find it difficult to link the militant and personal dimensions of their daily individual life.
Among the new and young comrades, there are many questions about the relationship between militant life and personal life: can one engage in organized communist combat and maintain personal relationships with non-militants, or even people who are strangers to and insensitive towards communism and revolutionary commitment? And if so, to what extent? What can be said to them, and what can be shared with them? How to manage both the realization of the militant tasks and the family, romantic relationships, professional life, education and childcare?

An Individual Way of Life “in line” with the Fight for Communism

The understanding of the party-member relationship is a political question, which the labor movement has already addressed, and on which it has already defined general principles. It is no coincidence that, since the Communist League, questions of functioning and organizational rules dictating relations within the political organization have also been considered programmatic issues. As such, the statutes of the communist organization must be considered an integral part of the political platform of any communist group – tomorrow of the party. As early as 1847, one of the first conditions for membership of the Communist League was that the member should adopt “a way of life and activity which corresponds to this aim” [2], that is to communism.

From the outset, a number of rules follow. To give a simple example that should be clear to all, a communist militant cannot be in the service of the capitalist state’s anti-proletarian repression. A member of a communist organization who is a police officer or agent of a state intelligence service would pose a risk to the party in terms of repression and infiltration. But they would also find themselves in open contradiction with any form of communist conviction and commitment, by the very fact of their day-to-day, practical activities that their “livelihood” implies. The situation would be untenable for the individual, in the highly unlikely event of them sincerely believing themselves to be a communist. The same applies to other activities such as trafficking in drugs, arms, [3] human beings and so on. The list is not exhaustive. It includes religious belief, which can only express a fundamental misunderstanding of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, i.e. historical materialism or Marxism, or membership to Freemasonry. Likewise, the communist organization cannot accept into its ranks militants who display openly racist, xenophobic or sexist opinions and practices, the exercise of physical violence in a romantic relationship, etc.

More complex to settle are cases where the member has set themselves into a personal impasse, leading him or her to engage in dubious and dangerous activities in an attempt to “get out”. For example, a member who may have been a gangster, or has gambling debts, or has had to engage in prostitution to survive. Unfortunately, such situations have arisen and will no doubt recur in the future. Another difficult situation for the member and the organization to manage is the situation where the former has in their close circle – family, friends, work – individuals belonging to the police, the underworld, or even active members – leaders in particular – of bourgeois political parties. To what extent the communist militant can succeed in avoiding evoking, not their “political ideas”, but their commitment and militant activity in a communist organization remains an issue and a permanent preoccupation.

When such individual situations arise, the organization is obliged to face up to them and help – and protect – the member to respond or get out of them. Often, it can only do so with delay, because the member does not dare confide in the organization and still hopes to get out of the situation by one way or another. This poses two dangers for the Whole which is the organization: the first is to put the member at risk of being blackmailed, particularly by the repressive forces of the state; the second is to greatly weaken, if not destroy, their political and militant conviction. All the more so as it is sometimes, but not always, possible for the communist organization to prevent and help members to avoid finding themselves in such personal impasses, which can only be catastrophic both for the individual “private person” – or even those close to him or her – and for the communist militant. This is why all membership and integration into a communist organization must go through a systematic process of clarification and political verification, not only of the aspiring member’s agreement with the organization’s programmatic positions and general orientations, but also of what militant commitment means, of the organization’s rules and statutes, and of the comrade’s conditions and way of life. This is both for the security of the organization and the future of the communist militant within it as a militant, of their militant willingness and political convictions.

The principle guiding the resolution of these exceptional and particular cases, sometimes painful and serious, is not enough to clarify and expose the relationship between the different dimensions of the individual life of the communist militant. On the basis of the experience of the workers’ movement, Marxism has defined a whole series of rules for the proletarian political party which have value as a principle. For the reader, let us recall the continuous thread of struggles between the forces that Lenin described as pro-party and anti-party throughout the history of communism. It began in earnest with Marx and Engels’ fight within the Communist League against the proletarian sects of the time, and within the 1st International, the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), against Anarchism. “The history of the International was a continual struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects and amateur experiments which attempted to assert themselves within the International itself against the genuine movement of the working class.” [4] Then it continued within the 2nd International on at least two levels: that of the party’s relationship to its parliamentary fractions, which were aiming for autonomy, and that against the circles Lenin led in the Russian Social-Democratic Party – his pamphlet One step forward, two steps back is an essential moment in the historic struggle for the proletarian political party. It is followed by the joint struggle of the Bolshevik Party and what was then still the Abstentionist fraction of the Socialist Party of Italy, the so-called “Left of Italy”, for the adoption and observance of the 21 conditions for admission to the Communist International. Finally, it continued with the struggle of this Left, before becoming a fraction of the CP of Italy, and later, in the 1920s, against the Zinovievist Bolshevization that paved the way for the Stalinization of the Communist parties of the time.

Later, the so-called “Bordigist” and “Damenist” [5] currents enjoyed direct organic continuity with the Italian Communist Party and its left fraction. No doubt this is why they only returned to these issues on a few occasions. For its part, the International Communist Current (ICC), a direct offshoot of 1968 and influenced by the individualism of the student protest atmosphere prevailing at the time, was forced to conduct several internal debates and struggles on the organizational question, particularly during its successive organizational crises. The result was a number of texts that readers can find in its International Review. [6]

Before going any further on our subject, the different dimensions of the communist militant’s life, it is therefore necessary to recall in a very general way the main principles which define the militant relations and in which framework or historical struggle they must be articulated.

The Proletarian Class Produces Communist Organizations, not Communist Individuals

By assigning to the revolutionary party its place and its role in the genesis of a new society, the marxist doctrine provides the most brilliant of resolutions to the question of freedom and determination in the activity of mankind. When extended to the abstract ’individual’ however, the question will continue to furnish material for the metaphysical lucubrations of the philosophers of the ruling and decadent class for years to come. Marxism on the other hand situates the problem in the correct light of a scientific and objective conception of society and history. The idea that the individual – and indeed one individual – can act on the outside world and shape it and mould it at will as though the power of initiative partook of some kind of divine inspiration is a million miles from our view. We equally condemn the voluntarist conception of the party according to which a small group of men, after having forged for themselves a profession of faith, proceed to spread and impose it by a gigantic effort of will, activity and heroism.” [7]

Historically, the proletarian class, “from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness”, [8] does not produce revolutionary individuals, but political organizations that integrate militants who join and compose them. In this sense, the organization, the Whole, enables the militant to transcend their own singularity, provided they integrate themselves into the revolutionary activity of the collective body. In so doing, the active member, in the course of collective action, becomes a product and an expression of the Whole, of the organization, and of the permanent struggle for its unity, just like any other part of the organization, local or territorial sections, central organs, etc. As a result, the Whole, the communist party or group takes precedence over the individual militant. The political implication of this position is that the party or organization is not at the service of the militant, but that the militant is at the service of the collective. For example, the proletarian political organization has no conception of educational schooling, nor any particular duty for the individual theoretical training and development of its members. On the other hand, it does have the responsibility of leading and overseeing the re-appropriation and theoretical and political deepening of the Whole, for its ongoing struggle for theoretical-political clarification and political unity.

Expression and materialization of the communist consciousness, the programmatic positions of the communist organization, of the party, are not the sum of the individual positions of each of its members, nor the product of this or that thought of an individual communist, nor even of a succession of particularly brilliant communist thinkers. They are first and foremost the historical product of the proletarian struggle, which communist minorities – highest expressions of class consciousness – have been gathering together and synthesizing since the Communist Manifesto. In return, they have the task of propagating this class consciousness in the workers’ ranks and ensuring the political leadership of the proletarian struggle. This vision does not mean that the role of the individual militant can be summed up solely as the – indispensable – re-appropriation of programmatic positions. [9] The member has a duty to participate in their collective verification and development. In this sense, while they can and must make an individual contribution that cannot be denied or rejected, it can only be made within the framework of the historical heritage and within the organized and collective framework of the militant communist organization.

With rare historical exceptions corresponding to a bygone period of capitalism, individual energies can only find their field of action and their role within the formal framework of the party or communist organization, the material expression of this Whole. There may be individuals with revolutionary positions on the fringes of communist political organizations. Those who may still appear as such today have almost all been members of Communist Left or other groups, which they eventually left for one reason or another. The political positions they are able to defend are also the product of the historical experience of the proletariat they have acquired through their time in communist organizations or through their direct or indirect reference to them. But the existence of non-organized revolutionary individuals can only be temporary and circumstantial. Sooner or later, to one degree or another, these individuals are obliged to attach themselves to and refer to a programmatic framework and a historical communist current if they are to maintain their communist conviction and a minimum of militant will. Otherwise, they are condemned to individualistic justification of their refusal to participate in an organized militant collective, then either move away from revolutionary positions, or become demoralized and, ultimately, to disappear as effective proletarian militants. “It is also clear from these arguments how grossly Feuerbach is deceiving himself when (...) by virtue of the qualification ’common man’ he declares himself a communist, transforms the latter into a predicate of ’man’, and thereby thinks it possible to change the word ’communist’, which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category.” [10]

Today’s positions of the Communist Left are the result of all the work carried out by successive generations of revolutionaries, or more precisely, communist organizations, groups and parties. But there is no point in redoing work that has already been done. “Any conception of the party organism based on the requirement of perfect critical consciousness and a complete spirit of sacrifice (…) would be totally erroneous.” [11] Hence the work of re-appropriation, which differs from those who want to discover everything for themselves. It is impossible today for individual militants to be able to “rediscover” and redo by themselves the entire theoretical and political journey accomplished since The Manifesto. The task is immense, and a lifetime would not suffice. That is, to give just one example, why it is pointless for a party member to want to read and reread the whole of The Capital before being able to take a political stance on this or that question related to the Marxist critique of political economy. Such a method can only lead to an incomplete re-appropriation with erroneous political consequences. This is not to say that we do not invite and strongly encourage all comrades, and will not just as strongly encourage party members tomorrow, to read and reread the classic theoretical and programmatic texts of the workers’ movement, starting with The Capital. But the scholastic or academic approach of saying that you cannot take a political position, or even commit yourself as a militant, until you have read all of K. Marx’s texts can only lead to an individualistic academic approach, impotence and militant renunciation. It is through active participation in the revolutionary action of the communist organization as a whole that the militant can “educate” themselves theoretically and politically, and acquire militant experience.

The Member’s Participation in the Party’s Collective Activity

These considerations and general rules on the relationship between party-communist organization and member-militant, in particular the collective and, in principle, “impersonal” dimension of communist commitment, have multiple political implications for the question of the party and its functioning, on the one hand, and the relationship of members to both. It is based on and develops a critique of the bourgeois ideology and mystification of the individual-king, the individual-unit, and rejects all forms of individualism – and by the way, of the democratic ideology and mystification.

Setting out from the individual-unit in order to draw social conclusions and to construct social blueprints or even in order to deny society, is setting out from an unreal supposition which, even in its most modern formulations, only amounts to refurbishing the concepts of religious revelation and creation and of a spiritual life which is not dependent upon natural and organic life. The divine creator – or a single power governing the destiny of the universe – has given each individual this elementary property of being an autonomous well-defined molecule endowed with consciousness, will and responsibility within the social aggregate, independent of contingent factors deriving from the physical influence of the environment. Only the appearance of this religious and idealist conception is modified in the doctrine of democratic liberalism or libertarian individualism. The soul as a spark from the supreme Being, the subjective sovereignty of each elector, or the unlimited autonomy of the citizen of a society without laws – these are so many sophisms which, in the eyes of the Marxist critique, are tainted with the same infantile idealism, no matter how resolutely ’materialist’ the first bourgeois liberals and anarchists may have been.” [12]

All proletarian action and struggle is, by its very nature, collective. "The power of the human individual has disappeared before the power of capital, in the factory the worker is now nothing but a cog in the machine. In order to recover his individuality, the worker has had to unite together with others and create associations to defend his wages and his life." [13] And this collective, in action, in struggle, far exceeds in a “superior” unity, a class unity, the simple addition of proletarian individuals, the simple addition of their individual thought or will. Every workers’ strike or struggle means a superseding of the proletarian as an individual in a collective action, without which the strike or struggle extinguishes itself. “As an isolated individual, the proletarian is nothing. His whole strength, his whole progress, all his hopes and expectations are derived from organization, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels big and strong when he forms part of a big and strong organism. This organism is the main thing for him; the individual in comparison means very little.” [14]

The same applies to the communist party and organizations, which represent and go far beyond the political and militant consciousnesses and wills of the individual members who make them up, if only because of the historical and international, universal dimension of the communist program and the positions and orientations that flow from it. “The integration of all elemental thrusts into a unitary action occurs by virtue of two main factors: one of critical consciousness, from which the party draws its programme; the other of will, expressed in the instrument with which the party acts, its disciplined and centralized organization. It would be erroneous to consider these two factors of consciousness and will as powers that can be obtained by, or are to be expected of, individuals since they are only realisable through the integration of the activity of many individuals into a unitary collective organism.” [15] The individual militant is therefore no more than the mouthpiece, or the pen when they write, of political positions produced not by their own thought, but by the entire history of the proletariat. They must reject any conception of their militant individuality as an individual whole. Instead, they must consider themselves as member of a collective whole.

Whether these positions are more or less clearly expressed and defended, whether they are more or less correct, by the militant mandated – directly or not – for the organization’s intervention changes nothing. When intervening in a workers’ assembly or political meeting, the militant – preferably the delegation of militants – is merely the tool available to the communist organization for carrying out a party intervention. This does not mean they are just a robot repeating party formulas. But it is only insofar as the political organization has been able to define, on the basis of its programmatic framework, the right orientations, and insofar as the individual militant has been able to make them their own, including by participating in and contributing to their definition and elaboration within the collective framework, that they can best assume the Party intervention.

The party does not expect all its members to have the same capacity for commitment, “work” or time to dedicate to the organization, nor the same “political” qualities and experience. One will have writing skills that the other will not. The other will have greater abilities to speak in a public meeting. Others will have more organizational skills, and so on. There is not and cannot be absolute equality between the abilities and effective participation of party members, just as there cannot be equality of commitment to a strike between the different proletarians taking part in it. The communist organization’s conception of its members’ individual participation to the tasks is based on the principle of “each according to his ability”. The ability of the organization in party [16] – i.e., based above all on the communist program and the political positions derived from it – to make use of the individual capacities enables it to go beyond the simple addition of the individual capacities of its members and turn them into a historical force. Far from starting from the individual-unit, the communist party or organization starts from the party-unit, passing through its various parts, i.e. local sections as basic cells, central organs of all levels and individual members, to arrive not at an individual-unit, but at party-unit.

Against the Maintenance of the “Circle Spirit and Methods”

The struggle against individualism is therefore a historic and permanent battle for communists, particularly within proletarian political organizations. Throughout the history of the workers’ movement, this has been expressed in one form or another, particularly in the era of sects and circles. “The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary.” [17] Lenin’s fight at the 2nd RSDLP congress in 1903, which his pamphlet One Step Forward, Two Steps Back reports on, was to establish a real party, which until then had been made up of circles, i.e. more or less formal groupings based essentially, or primarily, on personal ties or even friendships. “The issue thus came down to this: circles or a party?” [18]

It seems to us that it is possible and useful to draw a parallel between the reality of today’s proletarian camp and the reality of the revolutionary forces that were then attempting to create “genuinely Party official institutions”. Materially, numerically, today’s proletarian camp as a whole, starting with its main organizations, comprises a tiny minority of members, the oldest of whom have known each other personally for decades and who have remained, and still remain, largely isolated from their class. It remains largely marked by the conditions of its emergence in the post-1968 and 1970s, and in particular by the remnants of the circle spirit that endures to this day. The task of this generation – or what is left of it today – is to pass the baton to the new generation that is emerging today, which is tending to regroup. This new generation suffers even more from the individualistic practices inherent in the emergence of new media, the Internet and social networks, which bourgeois ideology takes up and propagates to reinforce social atomization and individualism in general. How can we fail to recognize the reality of the groupings, debates and discussion circles characteristic of today’s social networks in the following practices criticized by Lenin in 1903?

“... the Party consisted of separate circles without any organizational tie between them. Any individual could pass from one circle to another at his own ‘sweet will’, for he was not faced with any formulated expression of the will of the whole. Disputes within the circles [we can today add within the social networks] were not settled according to Rules, ‘but by struggle and threats to resign’.” [19]

Anyone who hangs out or has hung out on social networks cannot fail to recognize the overwhelming predominance of the circle method and spirit on the networks. No real debate. No effective polemics. No open, well-argued confrontation of divergent positions. Anyone expressing a divergent position is removed from the list of subscribers without further appeal. Formulas just as radical, even grandiloquent, but devoid of practical meaning, i.e. political and class-based. Worse still, the formalism of organization is destroyed, if you try to impose it. No status. No program. No reports or summaries of discussions. No conclusion of the debates with a collective position in the form of an organizational resolution or other political statement. No effective political centralization of discussions and debates. The individual is free to think and say whatever comes to mind. They are accountable only to themselves or their smartphone, and at best to their circle, or network. In the end, the selection criteria are not political but personal. The opposition between circle spirit and party spirit can be summed up as loyalty to friends and buddies, or loyalty to communist positions and principles, and therefore to one’s political convictions. [20]

As a corollary, the practice of video meetings is unfortunately tending to replace physical meetings. We have nothing against the organization of video meetings between isolated comrades, especially at an international level, who cannot meet in the same place. On the other hand, the fact that militants no longer make the effort, or even consider it superfluous, to travel and take part in physical meetings, or “face-to-face” meetings as managers in companies call them, is a step backwards from a political acquisition and an organizing principle of the workers’ movement. [21] But what is the point of leaving home for a local meeting, taking pen and paper, or even a laptop to take notes, and to make the effort to get to the place when you can hold one at home by video with your smartphone? When one can stay warm – or cool, depending on the season – at home after a day’s work. Or, not sacrificing part of a weekend with family or friends for a meeting. Especially if the video reunion means you can also look after the family, look after the children, or keep an eye on the washing machine.

In so doing, the basic cell of any communist organization, which sets the pace for the life of communist militancy and the political life of the collective body – the weekly local section – disappears. Dissolved. The privileged moment that is the local meeting, indispensable to political life and the circulation of blood in the political organism, is no more. Gone is the privileged moment for each individual militant, the meeting with their comrades, which makes them an integral part of the organization. Gone is the time when, unlike other moments in their personal life – work, family, etc. – the militant can devote themselves entirely, unreservedly, unhindered, undispersed, for just a few hours, to collective militant activity and give their all to the organization and the common struggle. No more is the special moment when the communist militant can realize in practice what it means to put communist commitment at the center of their life – we do not say all their life and all their time – and thus, in addition to giving life to their organization, strengthen, consolidate and give life to their political and militant convictions.

The danger of the penetration of the individualistic and democratic ideology of the Internet goes far beyond the communist forces. The recent strikes in the United States, at UPS, in the car industry, the public sector strike in Quebec, ended with votes, for or against the agreements signed by the unions, over the Internet. An “assembly” by video conference brought together 4,000 education workers in Quebec! Everyone at home! Besides the total control by the unions organizing the video conference allowing all maneuvers in case the vote does not suit them, the fact of staying at home not only does not allow to engage a real contradictory “debate” on the struggle itself, here the value of the wage agreement and the direction and modalities of the strike itself, but even more so does not enable the workers to “feel” the strength and vitality of their collective, that they can become aware that united in the struggle, they are much more than a sum of voters for or against.

Informalism and individualism specific to social networks and smartphones reinforce the danger of circles and the circle spirit. The organizational and militant concessions that the main communist organizations make by “habit” [22], by ease and immediatism [23] to informalism and individualism specific to the Internet media represent an obstacle in the indispensable effort of theoretical, political, organizational and militant re-appropriation that the young generation must accomplish. The same is true, at least in great part of the previous generation, that which must pass the baton and which, for the vast majority, more or less neglected or left the past experience aside. In particular, the groups of the Communist Left must re-appropriate and put into practice the lessons learned by the workers’ movement to fight the maintenance of the circle spirit in the ranks of the proletarian camp and its organizations. In One step forward, two steps back, Lenin and the Bolshevik fraction advance a party method against the one associated with the circle spirit.

It was unnecessary and impossible to give formal shape to the internal ties of a circle or the ties between circles, for these ties rested on personal friendship or on an instinctive ‘confidence’ for which no reason was given. The Party tie cannot and must not rest on either of these; it must be founded on formal, ‘bureaucratically’ worded Rules (bureaucratic from the standpoint of the undisciplined intellectual), strict adherence to which can alone safeguard us from the willfulness and caprices characteristic of the circles, from the circle wrangling that goes by the name of the free “process” of the ideological struggle. (…) When I was a member of a circle only (…) I was entitled to justify my refusal, say, to work with X merely on the grounds of lack of confidence, without stating reason or motive. But now that I have become a member of a party, I have no right to plead lack of confidence in general, for that would throw open the doors to all the freaks and whims of the old circles; I am obliged to give formal reasons for my “confidence” or “lack of confidence”, that is, to cite a formally established principle of our programme, tactics or Rules.” [24]

This party method, opposed the method of the “old” circles as well as the new “circles 2.0” of today, is for us a principle. The member of the organization, like any other part of the organization, including its central organs, is not free to “think what they want”. Stalinism, widely taken up by all forms of leftism, completely distorted the militant’s relationship to the party. We cannot forbid, if only because it would be in vain, the individual to have political thoughts and positions and to believe that they are the product of their own brain. On the other hand, the communist militant is responsible and accountable to their organization as the latter is to the international proletariat. It is not a question of imposing by formal discipline, a decree or an organizational status, for the militant to think “properly”. Even less to impose on a member who disagrees with the party’s position to defend it “by discipline” as the Zinovievist bolshevization established within the parties of the International in the early 1920s and which Stalinism developed into a caricature – dramatic and bloody – thereafter. Apart from the fact that the defense of the position will be less effective from the point of view of the Whole, of the political organization, or even totally counterproductive, if the member mandated to intervene does not share it, to defend by discipline a political position with which they disagree can only lead to the weakening and final destruction of their political and militant convictions. [25]

The individual militant, therefore a member of the organization, just like any other part of it, including the central organs as we have said, must always refer to the program, the political platform of the organization to which they have adhered, its positions and orientations adopted at its congresses or other general meetings when they express particular or divergent positions. It can happen that a militant, or a group of militants, ends up adopting a particular position that can, to a greater or lesser extent, question a particular point or a passage of the group’s political platform, or even an orientation or position adopted by the organization. While the organization cannot “prohibit” the existence of this position on behalf of the respect of the platform – this would be absolute and dogmatic – it must emphasize that it is contrary to it and call on the member, or group of members, who defend it to refer to the historical document that is the platform or any other programmatic text – even by questioning it, or ultimately leaving the organization if they cannot convince the organization to change the platform.

Today, at the very moment when a new generation of militants tends to emerge and regroup around the Communist Left, and even to join the organizations composing it, the struggle against the maintenance of the circle spirit and method and resistance to passing to the party method and spirit becomes a priority. Either the communist groups of today will succeed in overcoming their historical weaknesses in this matter and in resisting the siren calls of immediatism linked to the circle spirit 2.0, or else they will be drawn into the fatal and dissolving slope of individualism and informalism. Now that the drums of the generalized war are beating louder and faster, the matter is becoming urgent.

The Militant-Personal Life Relationship of the Member of the Communist Organization

But let us go back to our initial point. The difficulties that the communist militant may encounter in their daily life in managing or carrying out their political commitment and the different aspects of their personal life together must be addressed based at the same time:
 on the general rules or principles guiding the member’s relationship to the organization;
 and as part of the ongoing struggle against individualism and the circle spirit, especially in the age of the Internet and social networks and the increasingly totalitarian grip of state capitalism in all areas of social life.

The political organization is not at the service of the member, as we have said. It has therefore no function or aim to solve the individual and daily personal difficulties faced by its members. However, it is forced to take into account the actual reality of its forces, those on which it can count for the realization of this or that task on this or that occasion. It cannot therefore deny or neglect that members can go through periods and moments that see their commitment and militant mobilization limited or sometimes “suspended”, due to any kind of particular personal difficulties of the member.

It therefore often happens that the two dimensions are experienced and felt as contradictory by the individual member. If one remains on the level of the individual-unit, the temptation is great to eliminate one of the two terms of what is experienced as a personal contradiction. Sacrifice, or at least “neglect”, the personal dimension for the realization of the militant task and thus “resolve” the contradiction. Or sacrifice, at least “neglect”, the militant task to preserve one’s personal, family, emotional or other life. The two options have in common to seem to solve the difficulty by eliminating one of the two terms of the contradiction instead of superseding it. The consequence, when it is not the cause, of the misunderstanding of the nature of individual communist commitment is either a kind of sacrificial or integral militancy leading to a voluntarist and activist vision and practice, or a dilettante one leading to a fatalist vision and practice.

By way of these considerations, the marxist conception of the party and its activity, as we have stated, thus shuns fatalism, which would have us as passive spectators of phenomena into which no direct intervention is felt possible. Likewise, it rejects every voluntarist conception, as regards individuals, according to which the qualities of theoretical preparation, force of will, and the spirit of sacrifice – in short, a special type of moral figure and a requisite level of ’purity’ – set the required standards for every single party militant without exception, reducing the latter to an elite, distinct and superior to the rest of the elements that compose the working class. The fatalist and passivistic error, though it might not necessarily lead to negating the function and the utility of the party, at the very least would certainly involve adapting the party to a proletarian class that is understood merely in a statistical and economic sense. We can sum up the conclusions touched on in the preceding theses as the condemnation of both the workerist conception, and that of an elite of an intellectual and moral character. Both these tendencies are aberrations from marxism which end up converging on the slippery slope to opportunism.” [26]

Dilettant militantism makes militant engagement a hobby, an occupation among others of the individual. Their communist engagement is not at the “center of their life”. Their political and militant conviction is in the background much more a revolutionary posture, than a real commitment of communist militant in the collective party struggle. [27] In doing so, carrying out this or that task is of little importance: why distribute a leaflet that no one will read, why organize a public meeting to which few will come, what good are their arguments when they are not willing to participate in party intervention? How many times have we heard fatalist words such as: what good is this or that intervention, or we are nothing, or so little...

The militancy that we describe here as integral is of the sacrificial kind. The priority of the militant is all the time and constantly revolutionary activity, however much their personal life may suffer. Their communist engagement is not at the center of their life, but is “all their life”. Such militants have the merit, only apparent, to show a much more determined commitment. This is similar to many forms of leftist, Maoist or Trotskyist militancy in particular. Very often, they cannot accept that their relatives, partner for example, are not also a communist militant. The couple then becomes “militant”. The education of the children then also becomes a political task. The circle of friends is reduced to militants only. In short, they tend to make their daily life a communist catechism and often would like the organization to be an island of communism, which can only eventually lead to a vision and practice of a sect. But like the dilettante, their vision starts from the individual and not from the collective interest of the proletarian organization. “He forthwith offers proof of his “religious heart” by marching into battle as a priest, in the name of others, that is, in the name of the “poor”, and in such a manner as to make it absolutely plain that he does not need communism for himself, he would have it that he is marching into battle in a spirit of pure, generous, dedicated, effusive self-sacrifice for the “poor, the unhappy and the rejected” who are in need of it.” [28] The result is a militant vision and practice that not only leads to sectarianism, but also quickly descends into voluntarism and activism.

Both dilettante and integral - or “total” – militantism, are based on an individualistic misunderstanding of what the individual commitment of the communist militant is and must be. In addition to the political consequences of the erroneous practice of militant engagement and the conception of the party that accompanies it, it expresses the weight of individualistic ideology on the revolutionary forces. It is only by starting from the party-unit, the organized and centralized collective, that one can supersede the contradiction that the militant individual can feel. Immediately by evaluating with the member, thus also by gaining their political conviction, what is a priority and what is not. The communist party or political group cannot intervene everywhere and always, it must choose priorities among the political objectives. Among these, and depending on the moment, preserving and protecting the member, or members, from a personal situation that may become impossible – a crisis in their intimate relationship for example – can become a stake for the organization. The communist militant that the class has entrusted to the party is precious for both. Moreover, the individual communist commitment is a lifetime commitment, not for a particular and limited time. Not to “burn” militants or exhaust them – the situation arises differently for the organization and the member themselves during mass mobilizations, even more during revolutionary periods – must also be a concern of the communist organization.

“If the organization ensures as much as possible the good condition of each of its members, it is above all in the interest of the organization, so that each of its cells can better accomplish its share for the organization. This does not mean that we ignore the individuality of the militant and his problems, but that the starting point and the end point is the organization to enable him to accomplish his task in the class struggle, which is why the class made him arise.” [29]

It follows that the organization may have to relieve a comrade of a task for which they are responsible so that they prioritize, in a particular moment, the resolution or prevention of personal difficulties – for example, ensuring the harmony of the couple in the case mentioned above. It is not a question in this case for the organization to meddle, much less to resolve, the personal situation of the member, but to ensure both the most effective possible functioning of the organization and the protection of the militant whose situation becomes difficult, at the risk of weakening their militant capacity and political conviction.

The organization must also convince its members that it is necessary to warn those very close to them, partner, a child of sufficient age to understand, sometimes parents and close friends, of their militant commitment. It is not a matter of involving them within the internal life of the organization, or even informing them, at the risk of mixing personal and family relationships with political ones. The militant/non-militant distinction is important to respect and highlight. It is rather a question of preparing and protecting relatives from all the vagaries of the life of the revolutionary militant. For example, in case of repression, the family and relatives are directly affected with more or less intensity and practical consequences. More broadly, it is important that those with whom the party member shares their daily life be informed of the militant commitment to better manage the practical consequences on the daily life of the family. [30]

These few examples and situations cover only a small part of the different difficulties and situations that the militant may face and which the organization must take into account in the first place for the accomplishment of this immediate and long-term tasks term; second, for the defense and protection of the militant who is not a super-human. On a daily basis, they are a social being atomized like others who finds themselves confronted with the same personal difficulties as others. If the organization cannot help them to solve their problems, it can serve to help them to face and overcome certain difficulties of daily, emotional, family life, depression or fatigue...

That is the end of these reflections. We are aware that we are far from having addressed all the questions that younger and less experienced militants can have about communist engagement. Especially since personal situations and practical cases are innumerable and often in themselves unique and particular. Just as the communist party or organization cannot resolve the personal difficulties of their members, these general and largely incomplete considerations cannot be used as a recipe for the organization and the member to face the daily personal difficulties they may encounter. On the other hand, we think that this will help provide the approach and method to be used to treat and overcome them.

Above all, it is about fighting individualistic and political ideology as well as the circle spirit in general and including its contemporary expression. The approach and purpose can only be based on the collective whole, that is, party-unit, and not the individual-unit.