An account of the groups to the left of the PCI, during WW2 by Arturo Peregalli. First published in 'Revolutionary History, Vol.5, No.4' ( Translated by Barbara Rossi and Doris Bornstein. It is based upon Peregalli’s 'Il Partito Comunista Internazionalista', and 'L’altra Resistenza: Il PCI e le opposizioni di sinistra in Italia, 1943–45', which first appeared as a series of fascicles in the 'Studi e Ricerche' series of the Centro Pietro Tresso (nos. 2, 4, 5, 8, 16, 17 and 21) and later as a full length book published by Graphos (Genoa 1991).
Mythology About the Middle Class and the Class Struggle libcom.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from libcom.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Tours Congress and the Birth of the French Communist Party
It is now 100 years since the Tours Congress of 25 to 31 December 1920, when the majority of delegates of the French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) voted to join the Third International.
Whilst the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) was formed on the basis of a real, open split from the pacifist, opportunist and parliamentarian Social Democrats, the French Communist Party (PCF) adhered to the positions of the International but held onto the gangrenous parliamentarist and opportunist majority that led it.
It was an evolution in a completely opposite direction. The left fraction1 would have to wait several years before it came to lead the PCF (from 1923 to 1924) before being rapidly expelled from it by the bolshevisation, and then the stalinisation, of the party. The PCd’I, on the other hand, was led by its left wing from its creation, having broken quite cleanly with the opportunists of all shades, befor
100 Years Since Livorno
In January 1921, more than three years after the October Revolution in Russia, some two years since the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin at the behest of the German Social Democratic Party, and in the aftermath of two wasted years of workers’ factory occupations in Italy itself, the intransigent revolutionaries in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), led by Amadeo Bordiga, finally won the day and broke from the old party of compromise and accommodation with capital to form the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I).
To commemorate the centenary of this bitter/sweet event, we join with our comrades in Italy in re-publishing an article written by Onorato Damen for the fiftieth anniversary in 1971. In the run-up to Livorno, Damen himself was one of those who had been pushing for a clear split with Social Democratic fudging and against the idea that the Third Communist International could justifiably include elements who dithered and ultima
An Introduction to the Work of the CWO and ICT
The article which follows is a transcript of an introduction to an online meeting of CWO members and sympathisers on 21 November 2020.
What Distinguishes the ICT?
The world is full of organisations claiming to be revolutionary, communist or even internationalist. The majority of these have a theory and practice that we would not recognise in any of those categories. Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism, and all forms of Social Democracy are to be found under the heading “false friends” of the working class. We have to expose these organisations as lost to the working class even though we may recognise that they contain people like us who are searching for an alternative to capitalism and who we should be ready to argue with as individuals.