THE UNITARY IMPERIALISM ISSUE

Chapter Six

In 1951 Europe, and the world, was shrouded in mist. The ‘Cold War’ ideology ruled, and the war in Korea made a world conflict between the USA and the USSR seem a real possibility. In France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, the talk was of rearmament. Europe, at that time urged by the USA, was planning the EDC (European Defence Community) to keep step with German rearmament. The concept of a ‘unitary imperialism’ was the strategic choice that helped the small GAAP group remain politically independent. But translating this into an ‘Internationalist Third Front’ slogan was unfortunate. It facilitated a link with French libertarian communists, but could also cause confusion with its suggestion of a ‘Third Force’ between the USA and the USSR, which in Europe was supported by important bourgeois currents. Although opposition to unitary imperialism consolidated the internationalist struggle, the theory required to be developed and perfected. This would take place in the years to come, as the mists of the ‘Cold War’ cleared. Not that the USA and the USSR were the only factors in play: capitalist development was throwing up contradictions throughout the whole world, starting with Asia. Washington and Moscow were the capitals of unitary imperialism, but so were London, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo – and Rome.

In his last letter of 1950 Cervetto returned to the issue of studying imperialism. It’s one of his clearest descriptions of a working programme to analyse the nature of the USSR, and the political aim comes across. It was necessary to achieve a scientific definition of the nature of the USSR, following the criteria of Lenin’s Imperialism:

Over the last few days I’ve been reading Lenin’s Imperialism: the Highest Stage, etc. It’s a good basis for the study, analysis and interpretation of our own times. If we were well-versed in economics we could use Lenin’s theories to define the imperialist nature of the USSR, but I don’t yet know how. For example, Lenin wrote that ‘capitalism exported goods, imperialism exports capital’, and stresses that this shift is inevitable, since imperialism is the final stage of capitalism. Has the USSR exported capital to its zones of influence, and if so, how much? Only after we have investigated the economic activity of the USSR throughout the world can we State, according to Lenin’s criteria and hence scientifically, in line with Marxist doctrine, that we accept as the base of our ideology that the USSR is imperialist.¹¹¹

The issue was linked to the search for a scientific formula for unitary imperialism, of which the first signs may be observed in the summer of 1950. As we know, Cervetto was already dissatisfied with Amadeo Bordiga’s Mighty Dollar the idea of an all-pervading American imperialism that crushed any possibility of political action – and had criticised Masini for traces of the same in his thinking. By the end of August Cervetto was noting that his criticism of Bordiga was as yet only «instinctive» and that Masini was showing traces of schematism on the issue of imperialism.

Three notes on unitary imperialism

Cervetto wrote three notes between the autumn of 1950 and the spring of 1952 (the long gap is attributable to his year’s absence in Argentina). They confirm his line of thinking during that historical turning-point marked by the Korean War, and help to set the scene for the rapidly-deepening differences with Masini as to the political tactics to follow. As we shall see, Cervetto’s doubts on the ‘internationalist Third Front’ as an alliance of forces opposing imminent war were paralleled by his theoretical reflections on unitary imperialism.

A meeting held on 23^rd September 1950 at Nervi discussed a document that laid out the political line for the National Conference. From the correspondence we know that the original draft was Masini’s: whether Cervetto made any subsequent contribution is unclear. This, with one or two modifications, was the text approved at Pontedecimo in February 1951. One revealing passage, on which we have already touched, was destined to give rise to debate:

Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, dominates the scene in our times. It has reached such an uncontainable degree of concentration that for the first time in history it has given rise to the maximum – and dramatic – antagonism between two single opposing big State blocs. On the international level it has brought about the end of nation-State autonomy: the cancelling out of any fundamental difference between the old metropolises and their colonies (now independent and integrated into their own new political superstate orders: the end of the uneven development of a capitalism now controlled and levelled out by the centres of imperialistpowers, and the end of the politics of power balances and of all pre-existing international juridical organisation».¹¹²

The end of nation-State autonomy: the end of uneven development: the end of the politics of power balances: we have highlighted three aspects of a stiffer version of the unitary imperialism theory. A note of Cervetto’s for the meeting indicates that imperialism was one of the problems yet to be resolved: is imperialism unitary and homogeneous?

A note on the theory of uneven development

The issue crops up again in May 1952, when on his return from Argentina Cervetto was able to study the exchange of letters that made public the break between Amadeo Bordiga and Onorato Damen. As we will see from an analysis of the sources, the period in Argentina was a fertile year for his thinking, and the Bordiga debate was to be only one factor in his attempts to refine the concept of unitary imperialism. A hand-written note that can be dated to the spring of 1952, entitled ‘Theoretical note: the question of capitalism’s uneven development’, lists nine points requiring further study:

1. What do we mean by ‘capitalism’s uneven development?
2. Can we take it from this that imperialism’s development is also uneven, given that it is the highest stage of capitalism?
3. Or is it that capitalism passes through stages of uneven development on its way to its highest stage, imperialism? (e.g. some capitalist countries aren’t yet imperialist, others are on the way, others are already imperialist?)
4. Or is it: there are feudal countries developing towards capitalism, others semi-feudal, others again semi-capitalist?
5. Are we to understand that the first phase of capitalism has not yet spread throughout the whole world?
6. Damen writes of «international capitalism, considered to be unitary in fact, albeit to different degrees given the effects of its uneven development».¹¹³
7. Is it true to say that the law of capitalismes uneven development is at the basis of the imperialist disproportion between the USSR and the USA?
8. Can we speak of ‘uneven development of imperialism’?
9. Finally, how should we formulate the overall question – quality or quantity? (Are we talking about uneven development in terms of quality or of quantity) while at the same time considering dialectically this quality-quantity relationship (and the passage, or leap, between them?)».¹¹⁴

The note clarifies the presuppositions of the debate that took place between Cervetto and Masini in May-November of 1952, and may be considered the preamble to Cervetto’s letter of 22^nd May 1952: You can’t eliminate all the theoretical problems imperialism raises by mechanically waving a Zimmerwald flag.

At GAAP’s second National Conference in Florence on 1-2^nd June 1952, Cervetto maintained that: «We must examine, analyse and explain the situation. It’s not enough to say that the two blocs are the same: this would be mere schematism and wouldn’t correspond to reality». Masini’s reply – don’t let yourself get caught up in the Bordighist debate – may be understood as part of the same discussion.

The ambiguities of ‘Third Front’/ ‘Third Force’

We will examine this issue more closely in the next chapter, but first it’s useful to reconstruct how the ‘Third Front’ initiative was debated between the autumn of 1950 and the spring of 1951, in the international context of that phase of the ‘Cold War’. In this apparently bipolar confrontation between two blocs, the USA and the USSR, the very expression ‘Third Front’ lent itself to being confused with the formula of a ‘Third Force’ i.e. with those currents that saw in Europe a possible third bloc with the potential to avoid being caught up in a future war between Washington and Moscow. Masini supported the formula, among other reasons for its potential to facilitate unity of action with the French libertarian communists of Georges Fontenis’ Libertaire, but when it was formally adopted in April 1951, Cervetto’s reservations centred on precisely this inevitable confusion between ‘Third Front’ and ‘Third Force’.

«a. The formula ‘3^rd Front’ is inappropriate, not to mention inexact as far as ‘3^rd’ goes; should be talking about a revolutionary or internationalist front. 3^rd immediately implies an erroneous evaluation of the imperialist struggle: apart from the risk of being associated with ‘Third Force’ formulas, there is also the danger of lending comfort to Third Force petit-bourgeois elements, etc.
b. The Front should be proletarian, working class, in nature.
c. A Front of exactly which political forces? [...] the Trotskyists would probably be the only ones to Join».¹¹⁵

‘Highly dangerous and wild’ formulations

A third note of Cervetto’s, still attributable to the spring of 1952, provides a direct example of the political risks in an ill thought-out and superficial formula casually employed to direct militant politics. Cervetto set himself to examine back numbers of the French Libertaire. An unsigned April 1951 article maintains that the West may be for peace, but the East is waiting for war – even if it comes from America – in order to free itself from totalitarianism.

Cervetto notes:

The article contains some highly dangerous and wild formulations. Among much else, it examines the problem of war from the viewpoint of Western and Lastern populations. According to the author, Western populations are against war because war is worse than the capitalist system, in spite of the latter’s defects. The Eastern populations, on the other hand, are supposed to be waiting for war to deliver them from totalitarian slavey. Other statements, such as ‘the main struggle should be against Stalinism’ display a theoretical inadequacy, quite apart from compromising the 3^rd Front line – see the resolution on 3^rd Front, VI Congress FAF (Libertaire 270).¹¹⁶

This resolution of the VI Congress of the French Anarchist Federation was an attempt to clarify the ‘Third Front’ line, and overall had succeeded in maintaining an autonomous internationalist position. The ‘Third Front’, read the resolution, was «inflexible opposition to Russian and American imperialism», a working-class front for all the exploited against the exploiters, whether capital or State. It was neither a slogan nor a permanent cartel of diverse organisations but an expression of anarchist struggle; hence the ‘Third Front’ position should properly be defended, controlled and directed exclusively by the Anarchist Federation absolutely independently of any other organisation supporting either of these sources of oppression. The formula ‘Against Truman without being for Stalin: against Stalin without being for Truman’ was chosen to highlight «anarchism’s revolutionary pacifism»

Cervetto’s handwritten note on the issue of the “French 3^rd Front”.

Cervetto’s concern that the ‘Third Front’ formula would leave an opening to highly dangerous positions indicates that even a principled internationalist position was vulnerable in the absence of a deeper understanding of the nature of unitay imperialism and its dynamics.

In summary, the conceptual core of the issue was simple enough, but an ordered chronology of its development is required. An accurate reconstruction of the clash around the idea of unitary imperialism and the ‘Third Front’ slogan throws light on how Cervetto and Parodi arrived at their choice of a Leninist strategy-party. We will consider the European currents that made up the ‘Third Front’, the French genesis of the slogan in Georges Fontenis’ Libertaire, and the initial discussions in Italy during the autumn and winter of 1950, during the preparations for the meeting at Pontedecimo. We will go on to consider the clarificatory debates of the second half of 1952, Cervetto’s theoretical sources during that year, and finally the theoretical conclusion he developed in 1968, with the scientific discovery (of) the true partition between the USA and the USSR.

The European currents of the ‘Third Force’

In the bipolar world view that was gaining ground at the end of the 1940s, the notion of a Third Force had a multiplicity of uses. At times it had an internal parliamentary significance, as in France, but in its overlap with the bipolar outline of the ‘Cold War’, the two dimensions tended to coincide. For the SFIO (the French Socialists) and for the British Labour Left, ‘Third Force’ was as distinct from the Conservatives (Gaullists and Tories) as it was from the two super-powers.

For some currents ‘Third Force’ took on a European meaning, with Europe as the alternative to Washington and Moscow, although to different degrees. In France, for example, the Gaullists were conservatives but not aligned with the USA; in Great Britain the fact that the ruling administration was Labour facilitated the identification of ‘Third Force’ with a non-Stalinist European socialism, but the crux of the matter was also obscured by Labour’s insular policy. All these meanings – especially in France, as was to become clear when the French parliament checked plans for a European Defence Community – were affected by the fact that European unity meant German rearmament.

‘Third Force’ had its Catholic variation (the MRP, French-European centre, allied with the SFIO); its socialist variation (Guy Mollet in France, Aneurin Bevan in Great Britain); its liberal-radical variation (in Italy, Pannunzio’s Il Mondo and Altiero Spinelli’s European federalists); and its Gaullist variation (Le Monde and Charles de Gaulle, note the biographers of the paper’s editor Beuve-Méry, were often to be found saying the same thing at different times).

British Labour were not alone in being a nationalist variant. There was also Kurt Schumacher’s German SPD, in the sense that the refusal of any alliance with Washington or with Moscow was ‘nationalist’ rather than Europeanist – a national Labour or social-democrat socialism. There was an Eastern ‘Third Force’ variation in Tito’s Yugoslavia, and Belgrade would shortly give birth to the ‘non-aligned’ front at the Bandung Conference.

Amid the ambiguities of the ‘Cold War’, variants of ‘Third Force’ were openly or secretly influenced from abroad, whether from the Atlantic or the Stalinist camp. In Italy the Congress for Cultural Freedom was linked to the initiatives of Ignazio Silone and Pannunzio’s Il Mondo: Altiero Spinelli would present ties with Atlantic politics as a prerequisite for Europe’s emancipation. On the opposing side, neutralist positions within the Labour Left, the French SFIO Left and maximalist socialist currents in Italy were often encouraged by Stalinist party headquarters.

As the positions of the USA and the USSR became more and more polarised, the intellectual components of neutrality became an obvious area for Stalinism to influence. The meaning of ‘Third Force’ evolved alongside the first freeze (1947-48), with the exit of the PCF and the PCI from the French and Italian governments, and following the second souring of relations in 1950, when the Korean War was making an imminent war seem all too likely. This served to accentuate the bipolar line-up of political forces and currents, but the counter-tendency was that it caused Europeanist currents, which had started from a Euro-Atlantic core, to become more structured. The most interesting aspect for us is that between the end of the 1940s and the first years of the 1950s, ‘Third Force’ was a key element, both nationally and internationally, in the political debate. When in April 1951 Cervetto objected to the ‘Third Front’ formula as soon as he saw it, maintaining that ‘Proletarian Front’ would not lend itself to the same ambiguities, he appealed to elements of the political scene who were already following the Europe debate. What makes Cervetto, as distinct from Masini, stand out is his refusal to let himself be used, and his resolve to guard against any future attempts to use him. It was the same instinct he had displayed in 1944 – the capacity to immediately grasp the essence of an issue.

The ‘Third Force’ in France

In France, too, the dominant view of the ‘Cold War’ was of confrontation between two blocs, along with a permanent fear of open war. This meant that international themes prevailed in internal debates leading to a close interweaving of internal and international issues within political parties.¹¹⁷ This indicates a collective psychology similar to that which existed in Italy: the issues of political struggle were defined as imminent war, rearmament, neutrality or Atlanticism, ‘Russian party’ or ‘American party’.

The few differences are worth noting. Due to the political traditions of France, the French experience of the war and Charles de Gaulle’s opposition to the Yalta agreements, the issue of a neutral or ‘Third Force’ position in the Washington-Moscow confrontation was particularly important. For a period the daily Le Monde, edited by Hubert Beuve-Méry, was to be the unexpected platform for an armed neutrality line, along with periodicals such as Esprit and Temps Présent.

Beuve-Méry had been educated by Dominican priests, and held Catholic-Solidaristic third way views combined with economic-technocratic ideas on the State. At the military academy of Uriage, during the Occupation, he had flirted with the pro-planning theories of the Vichy regime’s ‘social’ soul. On 19^th October 1945, an article of his in Temps Présent was entitled ‘Neutrality’:

The establishment of a Western alliance comparable to the United States and the USSR, situated geographically, economically and politically halfway between these two powerful ‘partners’ presents as logical, desirable, and advantageous to all. But with one proviso: that the new organisation be independent of both Washington and Moscow.

Jacques Julliard and Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Beuve-Méry’s biographers¹¹⁸ note that this meaning of ‘neutrality’ was more ‘non-alignment’ – an expression that was not current at the time. This neutrality (in 1946 a version ahead of its time) meant an autonomous European unit militarily and ideologically located equidistantly from the two existing blocs. Only subsequently would the term shade into an idealistic pacifism that could be easily manipulated by proUSSR propaganda. From 1947 on, and with the Prague coup of 1948, Moscow’s increasingly hard line caused Beuve-Méry to abandon the notion of equidistance. A few days before the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty he wrote that the need to defend the West was no longer an issue, rather it was a question of how to defend it and from then on he abandoned the term ‘neutrality’.

His two biographers note three features of Beuve-Méry’s ‘neutrality’. Firstly, it sought to retain some freedom of action for France in the face of the Atlantic Treaty’s double bluff. Sirius, as was Beuve-Méry’s Le Monde pseudonym, was extremely doubtful of automatic American intervention in the event of Western Europe being invaded. Secondly, as far as Sirius was concerned German rearmament was to the Atlantic Treaty «as the seedling is to the tree»: the phrase that caused a sensation, but was to be proved entirely accurate. Thirdly: rearmament was fine, but was it necessary to «consider war as immediate and inevitable?»

If this was the case, maintained Beuve-Méry in provocative mode, then Germany should rearm with all urgency, the French Communist Party should be outlawed, factories should be transferred to North Africa, and Paris should join the federated States of the USA, with two elected French representatives in the Senate.

If this wasn’t the case, a strategy for peace was required: a refusal to join in the arms race and a political strategy of détente, of diffidence towards the USA, national independence, a rejection of the ‘blocs’ logic, and rearmament exclusively for the purposes of national defence. Julliard and Jeanneney note that at the time such views were not particularly popular, though later finding support. Ultimately, Beuve-Méry and Charles de Gaulle held many ideas in common, even if these were never shared at the same point in time.

The ‘Gauche’ and the ‘Cold War’

Another important difference between Italy and France was that the French Communist Party was isolated by reason of its ties with Russia. The French Socialist Party lined up with the Atlantic Treaty, and up to 1951 were part of a centrist coalition – labelled as a ‘Third Force’ coalition – because this excluded both Gaullists and Stalinists. For the lifetime of the Fourth Republic, the Socialist Party were part of this «broad majority» in foreign policy. Prior to the 1948 turnaround, however, non-alignment was a big card in the socialist propaganda pack. In 1947 Guy Mollet was for an «international Third Force». Léon Blum returned to the theme in a speech that played on the coincidence of ‘Third Force’ in the French parliament and a ‘Third Force’ between Washington and Moscow:

The majority of French citizens want to be neither Communists nor Gaullists, just as the majority of the world’s citizens want to be neither protégés of the Americans nor subjects of the Soviets.¹¹⁹

In January 1948, the leaders of the French Socialist Party defined an «international Third Force» as lying within their objective of a United Socialist States of Europe in opposition to expansionist American capitalism and the Soviet Union’s totalitarian and imperialist Communism. From the spring of 1948 on, the socialists’ move towards Atlanticism is confirmed by the Treaty of Brussels and the launch of the Atlantic Alliance. The Prague coup on 25^th April 1948 was the definitive turning-point of the ‘Cold War’, which was also exacerbated by the Berlin blockade between June 1948 and February 1949.

Guy Mollet’s «Atlantic socialism» was strengthened in the second half of 1950 by the outbreak of the Korean War. France launched an unprecedented rearmament programme, and lengthened the period of national service, a decision passed in the face of opposition from a substantial minority of the Socialist Party leadership. In a similar situation, Aneurin Bevan left the British government and led the Labour Left in opposing an increase in military spending. In Paris the weekly L’Observateur, started by Claude Bourdet, Roger Stéphane and Gilles Martinet, became the catalyst for dissident socialism and neutral pacifism – the future deuxième gauche in embryonic form. In September 1950 Bourdet acknowledged that neutrality served Moscow’s policies to the precise extent that at this moment in time the USSR fears a world war. We are quite disposed towards this meeting of interests. It was to be an anomalous kind of support notes Anne Dulphy,¹²⁰ different from the open backing Moscow received from the intellectuals of the French Communist Party, which from 1952 on was to lead L’Observateur to present the USSR bloc in a positive light.

Michel Pablo’s ‘The Coming War’

Following this slightly incongruous train is Michel Pablo (alias Michalis Raptis) leader of the Trotskyist 4^th International, and his theories. The pamphlet La guerre qui vient (August 1952) makes unscrupulous use of the Stalinist theory of «two camps» gathered around the USA and the USSR respectively, endorsing the Yalta partition as a victory for international socialism. This led to opportunist sophistry based on an incorrect reading of the nature of USSR society and the outcome of the Second World War.

In The Coming War we read that a «new world» has come out of world war: a third of humanity lives in a new social order «preparatory to socialism»: capitalism continues to exist, but has to function in new conditions that cause a permanent and continually worsening imbalance. Two regimes face each other along frontiers thousands of kilometres long: there cannot be peaceful co-existence because the two systems are different in nature, and this leads to conflict. In every crisis «weakness within one of these two systems is automatically translated into reinforcement of the opposing camp». Within the capitalist system a new relationship is growing up between the two capitalist— properly speaking – centres, Western Europe and the USA and this is also taking place between each of these two centres and the colonial and formerly colonial countries. In this misrepresentation, the essential features of the new relations between powers were based on ambiguity as to the social nature of the USSR and the socialist camp and on the notion that capitalist development was stagnating.

Capitalist Europe has irremediably lost its industrial predominance in the capitalist world to the USA, in a relative equilibrium that may be compared to that existing between the two world wars». The colonial and the ex-colonial areas of the world, which had previously ensured European equilibrium by providing raw materials and absorbing capital are either no longer colonies or on their way to independence, and some are in such an unstable condition that capital investment has practically dried up. The countries of Eastern Europe, agricultural producers and consumers of manufactured goods, have been absorbed into the USSR orbit, and the Cold War means that there is no trading with them. The Asian markets have disappeared following revolutions, to the advantage of either new socialist regimes or of the national bourgeoisies that have risen to power (India, Ceylon, Indonesia). In other regions of Asia and Africa, permanent instability reduces the chances of profit (Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma, Iran, the Middle East). In Latin America most European footholds have been eliminated in favour of either American imperialism or of the local bourgeoisies.

Europe’s position in relation to America has now changed to one of increased and irreversible dependence. Only with permanent financial aid can it manage its dollar deficit, paying the price in political concessions that bind capitalist Europe ever tighter to the chariot of American imperialism.

The USA was now at the heart of the system as once Great Britain had been, as workshop and banking centre of the world. The requirements of war had developed the productive forces to an incredible level, which had assisted in surviving the 1929-33 crisis, but world conditions have been changing in a direction contray to balanced development for this capitalist power. In order to maintain and increase its current productive forces, American capitalism needs unlimited territorial expansion and a constantly extending market. It would need the same world conditions as existed at the time of British hegemony – vast colonial and semi-colonial reserves – but with the changes the war has brought about, this is precisely what is lacking.

The USA is obliged to channel its surplus into the artificial markets of arms and aid: the State assumes a regulatory role but due to this very fact, the development of American imperialism is irremediably committed to preparing for war, and to meddle politically and aggressively in the affairs of all the other capitalist countries.

Having reached the height of its power late in the overall capitalist system the USA cannot exploit the paths of expansion taken in the past by Great Britain and the other capitalist countries. It is the very image of imperialism’s final, parasitic, decadent and destructive phase.

The need to control and if possible monopolise raw materials becomes urgent for the USA as its domestic supplies become exhausted. Enormous economic and political consequences arise from this hunt for raw materials: European dependence, knock-on effects on the sterling area, and interference in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, expropriating of old colonial masters or collaborating with them in arms against nationalist movements.

This theory, that crisis and stagnation would converge in imminent conflict – ‘the coming war’ – facilitated an unbelievable about-face.

More and more ‘intelligent’ bourgeois thinkers, assisted or driven by events, are becoming accustomed to the idea that the capitalist system is irremediably doomed, and that some sort of modus vivendi with the forces of socialist revolution is preferable to a war that would prove catastrophic above all for capitalism. They form the ‘neutral’ – their bourgeois opponents would say ‘defeatist’ – section, particularly of the European bourgeoisie.¹²¹

In 1968 Cervetto was to write that during the early 1950s this hypothesis of an imminent war between the USA and the USSR hampered revolutionary strategy because it failed to understand European imperialism. The references to intelligent bourgeois thinkers and «particularly the European bourgeoisie» – thus transformed into allies against the logic of war – indicate the level of degraded opportunism which seized on that failure to understand both the timescales and the forces of imperialist competition.

The ‘Third Front’ of France’s libertarian communists

In the early postwar period the Fédération Anarchiste Française experienced clashes similar to those which in the Italian FAI led to Masini and Cervetto’s initiatives for an «organised and federated» movement. As Masini built his network of contacts from Gioventù Anarchica (Young Anarchists) it was from Jeunesses Anarchistes that Georges Fontenis (1920-2010) similarly attempted to consolidate a «libertarian communist» organisation, selecting his forces from the varied sectors of traditional anarchism. Towards the end of 1949 Fontenis started ‘Organisation-Pensée-Bataille’ (OPB: Organisation-Thought-Struggle). In terms of timescales and method this initiative was similar to the activities organised by Masini and Cervetto after the FAI Congress at Livorno in the April of 1949. Unlike the Italians, who were to establish GAAP in February 1951, OPB operated within the Fédération Anarchiste as a secret group. In 1953 it was to become the FCL, Fédération Communiste Libertaire, and along with GAAP and other groups would attempt to set up a Communist Libertarian International. In 1954 OPB’s entryist nature was to become the subject of furious controversy, and in France ‘Fontenisism’¹²² would be attacked by official anti-organisation anarchism in the same way as in Italy Masini’s methods were censured by the leaders of FAI and by Volontà’s ‘Resistentialist’^* currents.

In reconstructing events,¹²³ Fontenis himself later acknowledged that OPB’s underground nature had been a psychological error and a pointless organisational romanticism since OPB had been in the majority anyway in their areas of strength, primarily Paris. From Fontenis’ memoirs we learn that his ‘Berneri Group’ in the 19^th arrondissement of Paris, whose members were mainly Renault and Thomson workers, had some bent for organisation. At the Paris regional conference in April 1950, he reports that 290 copies of Libertaire were sold during that week, and 411 in the preceding month. Internal dilemmas reflected those familiar to FAI, with the Bordeaux group refusing to pass on information on the grounds that they opposed centralism.

The idea of a libertarian ‘Third Force’ wrote Fontenis, had been put forward by Fédération Anarchiste in the 1940s, in order to mock the «weakness» of the tripartite government that included the French Socialist Party. Originally, therefore, the notion was little more than a slogan, for effect. Transformed into ‘Third Front’ the formula came back under pressure of the war in Korea and the threat of a «Third World War». On 28^th July 1950 Libertaire was headlined ‘Towards World War: What Is to Be Done?’ and launched the watchword ‘Against Stalin without Being for Truman: against Truman without Being for Stalin’. On 8^th September the headline was ‘Facing the Coming War’: the following week carried an appeal to the ‘Proletarian Third Front’.

On 20^th October ‘Why a Third Front’ attempted to clarify the slogan in the face of resistance and opposition. Some letters defended a pro-American position:

There are two imperialisms, but I know one that is particularly dangerous and totalitarian [...] I don’t support the withdrawal of American troops from Korea [...] In Korea I see only one war criminal: Stalin.¹²⁴

Fontenis describes his discussions with a group of Milan anarchists in January 1949. Pio Turroni lamented the minute attention to words and the dated sentimentalism of the old anarchists: under the pretext of individual freedom many had become craft workers or shopkeepers, he told Fontenis during a meeting in Paris: guidance was not uniform throughout the regions: there was a «workerism»^** tradition in Milan and vague humanism elsewhere. Masini’s first letter to Fontenis is dated 7^th February 1950. It’s likely that Mario Mantovani was involved in suggesting the contact, since it was at this time that Masini, Cervetto and Parodi were arranging to collaborate with him on Libertario.

We have already seen that Masini and Cervetto were in Savona in June 1950 to discuss the editorial ‘Neither Washington Nor Moscow’ but in this case there was no link with Fontenis’ Libertaire. A shared internationalist opposition to both blocs explains the similarity between the slogans, and denouncing the USSR’s State capitalism probably comes from Amadeo Bordiga.

The first signs of an internationalist ‘front’, if not yet a ‘Third Front’ date from November 1950. In a letter to Cervetto and Vinazza, Masini notes that I don’t think the time is ripe yet to talk about the projected ‘front’.¹²⁵ Subsequent discussions clarified the issue. Masini was unsure which tactic to choose: an agreement with other internationalist groups of the Trotsky/Bordiga persuasions or «an initiative of our own for an anarchist movement on the same lines as the Spanish anarchists».¹²⁶ Cervetto tended towards the second solution, since the nature of anarchism would leave more freedom to work on PCI members. The big question of the moment was whether to turn to the Communist Left or to rely solely on the anarchist tradition: above all it was necessary to consolidate GAAP before taking any further initiative. The internationalist dimension was always in the background: ultimately Masini agreed on the tactic based mainly on our own specific initiative and concluded that a front «is only a present necessity if its base is anchored within such».¹²⁷

Studying international politics

By the second half of 1950 Cervetto was regularly writing on international politics in Libertario. Although these writings were within the general two blocs framework – the USA and the USSR both part of unitay imperialism:it is worth noting the indicators that as early as 1950 Cervetto did not consider this framework to be absolute. On 20^th September 1950 his article ‘Dirty Wars in the East’ recorded the clash in Asia between US politics and British and French interests. On 4^th October he surveys the situation in India, noting Nehru’s opening to the USSR and China, and doesn’t exclude that this displays traces of British interests. On 8^th November ‘War Returns to Europe’ focuses on the issue of Germany:

«Evey one knows that this problem is a stumbling-block for relations between the two blocs and that the negotiations to find a common solution have now been dragging on for five years. If we needed concrete proof of the imperialist nature of the United States and Soviet Russia, the policy that they are pursuing in Germany would hand it to us on a plate.

Because of its key position, Germany is a very important card in the warmongering game. It may be said that whoever holds Germany has won. Hence, Germany can never be completely aligned with a single bloc, but will remain divided, as it now is, into satellite States, each one obedient to its own central control.

This is the normal situation. Will it be able to remain like this? Undoubtedly not. As Germany is one of the factors that determine power relations, and as the aim of the cold war is the breaking of the balance of those relations, a normal situation cannot continue to exist, and, and if it is able to, it will be on condition that it becomes of secondary importance.

At present, we know, because we have observed it, that the centre of the struggle between the two imperialist groups is shifting to Europe. Needless to say, Germany is becoming the linchpin of this struggle».¹²⁸

On more mature consideration, Cervetto was to discard the idea that the ‘Cold War’ aimed to upset the balance in Europe, reaching the opposite conclusion; that in fact the clash between Washington and Moscow was a specific – and mutual policy of equilibrium directed against Germany and Europe. As early as 1950, however, he did not exclude that Germany’s division could be normalised.

By 15^th November 1950, he was taking a two-sided view of the friction between Washington and Paris over German rearmament. The Franco-American disagreement could be seen as one example of imperialism’s internal contradictions. On the other hand, Cervetto notes that France is solidly integrated into the Western bloc, therefore cannot form any part of a capitalist alliance against America. In his analysis of French reluctance to see Germany rearm may be discerned the tones and nuances of the international media:

«If we wanted to find the elements that explain this stance, it would be very useful to read the debates about the German question published in such specialised French newspapers as “Le Figaro”, “Le Monde”, etc. At the root of the stance are serious economic reasons that led to last summer’s launching of the ‘Schuman Plan’, regarding the future of the Ruhr industrial and mining basins in particular. Economic reasons are undoubtedly closely linked to the French capitalist structure and, indeed, underpin the logical demands of the French monopolistic groups, besides being the leaven of French nationalism and militarism.

There is one thing for sure – the French position has no possibility of prevailing both because it is too independent and because it really is demagogic, i.e. tailored to French public opinion, more jealous of its independence than the Italian».¹²⁹

Paris could not prevail because it was «too independent», but its line reflected the interests of the big French business groups. Cervetto was already several steps beyond the idea of an amorphous Atlantic bloc dominated by Washington; he was also aware of the French Le Monde – Le Figaro debate, in which Beuve-Méry, alias Sirius, defended the European third forre while Raymond Aron took stock of Euro-Atlantic ties, and his note on the French liking for independent formulas shows his attention to the detail of national political traditions.

In ‘Imperialism Is Indivisible’ (22^nd November) the prospect of war is still in the background, «an extremely dangerous slope, with a third world massacre looming at the bottom», but the article also makes a distinction between Washington, whose aggression is an influence on the USSR, and Moscow, which represents imperialism’s tendency towards detente. The revolutionary opposition fights against both the USA and the USSR, but has enough political maturity to avoid indiscriminately plunging all the specific and differing aspects of its targets into one melting-pot. Knowing how to distinguish helps one not to fall into «ideological traps»:

«Subjectively, the USSR demonstrates the conciliatory tendency of imperialism.

If the Stalinist theory of peaceful coexistence between socialist and capitalist countries is stripped of the demagogy and ideological falsification that deceive the working masses with the myth of socialism in one country, it simply means: the antagonism between the two groups can be resolved in the economic field, without having recourse to war». ¹³⁰

A forecast on China

‘Moscow and Washington on the Attack in China’ comments on Britain’s game in granting Mao’s China diplomatic recognition, and speculates as to whether the USA would take a similar line in the event of a divergence between Moscow and Peking. On the political front, London knows that only a political agreement and strong economic ties can make China independent of the USSR. China needed capital, machinery and raw materials:

«If Russia can meet this need, China will fully align itself with the Kremlin. Otherwise it will have to depend on other capitalist nations in yet unforeseeable ways and extents.

The UK is not the only country that understands this economic requirement on China’s part; it is also understood and seen as important by the United States, and is one of the reasons behind its policy».¹³¹

It’s worth noting that this article appeared on 29^th November 1950. The first tensions between Russia and China were to arise in 1957: open crisis ten years later; Washington’s opening to Peking twenty years later. The material was later to be reproduced in Unitary Imperialism:

‘The Emergence of the ‘Chinese Question’ as an Element Extraneous to the Cold War’, ‘Imperialism Is Indivisible; the USSR Is Closely Linked to the United States’, ‘The German Stumbling Block’, ‘The Pleven Plan, an Episode in the Interimperialist Clashes’.

We get a clear sense of just how early a large part of Cervetto’s theories grasped the dynamics that escaped the simple dialectic of USA/USSR bipolarism.

The same is true of a further two articles, published in December 1950. An update on the war in Korea evaluates the USA’s nuclear threat, which had put it at loggerheads with London and Paris.

It is obvious that if Truman’s threat was, as one might suppose, to put pressure on France and the UK in order to soften their recent hardline views on the German problem, NATO, and US policy in Asia, its aim has not been attained for the moment. Indeed, future events will demonstrate how much the French and British weigh in Asian policy.¹³²

A report on the summit meeting between the American President Harry Truman and the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee also turns on diverging USA-Europe interests in Asia. China had come into the Korean War, and this was significant for London and for the imbalance in Anglo-Chinese relations which had only just been established. This divergence of interests was clarified in the course of the meeting:

There has been talk of a Truman-Attlee compromise. Certainly, relations between groups of imperialist allies can only be based on a series of compromises, and in this case also the outcome of negotiations cannot be other than a compromise. The terms could be: peace in Korea (which for the United States would place significant limitations on their actions in Asia): rearmament and increasingpower for Europe (which would give the United States more room for action, with the advantage of having its European satellites lined up broadly in agreement).¹³³

In the final article of 1950, which records the defeat of the French Fronde, the imperialist two-bloc structure and the imminence of war resurfaced. «The French Fronde was only a phase in a process of uniting imperialist groups on one action platform», wrote Cervetto: the centralising process had accelerated preparations for a third world conflict. Nevertheless, his analysis did not abandon the search for distinctions between the two blocs:

In fact, we are witnessing the increasingly evident manifestations of the natural trend of the imperialist phenomenon, namely, internal struggle between the various national groups: this leads to more or less important diplomatic battles in the political field, while in the economic, it is reflected in the attempts of the main financial branches of the respective national structures to integrate.¹³⁴

For Cervetto, German social democracy’s opposition to rearmament was one of the policies imperialism keeps in reserve. Masini couldn’t grasp this analysis: in the protests of the Left and in anti-war feeling throughout Europe – Bevan in Britain, the followers of Tito in Yugoslavia and of Cucchi and Magnani in Italy – he saw the potential for a Zimmerwald Right that might be vulnerable to pressure from an internationalist movement.

During the early part of 1951 Cervetto’s thinking continued along the same lines as the previous year. In 1952 his ‘Third Front’ critique was to link up with the first elements of analysing the distinctions between European imperialism and the Atlantic Treaty ties, although he wasn’t to make a clear break with the ‘catastrophe – war imminent’ theory until his September 1953 article on the crises at the margins of imperialism. Another article, in March 1954, specifies the need to analyse the «qualitative» as well as the quantitative aspects of crisis, and distances itself from any expectation of a general crisis. Finally, in September 1954, Cervetto’s analysis has reached the fundamentals of the German question, the nerve-centre of the crisis... [a Germany] that has once more become a great economic power.

The Third Front decision

The articles Cervetto wrote around the time of the Pontedecimo Conference, between the autumn of 1950 and the spring of 1951, reveal that he was not completely held hostage by the two blocs view: that he already possessed sufficient analytical elements to be able to object to the Third Front formula as based on an erroneous evaluation of imperialist struggle.

The formula had, however, already been adopted in France by Georges Fontenis’ Libertaire, and reappeared in the spring of 1951 in the context of news of a strike in Barcelona. There was no overwhelming need to co-ordinate with the French movement; however this was the main reason for continuing to support the slogan, although by this time Masini was also having doubts. Further discussions took place in December 1950, during the preparations for the meeting at Pontedecimo. Masini would have liked to adopt the French Anarchists’ charter for GAAP – partly due to the disagreement with the Italian anarchists – but he had a clear opinion of the organised strength and political level of the French:

As a matter of interest, I can tell you that FAF has no more than 875 members, and that its statement of principles is a pretty awful collection of banalities (but on the other hand, their organisational structure seems basically sound).¹³⁵

Nevertheless, the links with the French were decisive in the adoption of the ‘Third Front’ slogan in the spring of 1951. The May 1951 issue of L’Impulso carried ‘Eight Points for the Third Front’:

«1 ) The third front is the working-class line of opposition to imperialism, the workers’ line of resistance and their counter-offensive against the current imperialist war.
2) The third front is opposed to imperialism as a unitary and indivisible phenomenon, as a contradiction typical of the international organisation of society in competing capitalist States: consequently the third front is opposed to the two biggest head quarters of the imperialist world – the United States of America and the Soviet Union – which in their clashes represent in a concrete way that phenomenon and that contradiction.

3) The third front opposes imperialism and all its policies, from specific single-State policies established by diplomatic agreement and by economic, political and military coalition to the general policy emanating from imperialism’s biggest permanent headquarters, the United Nations.

4) The third front opposes imperialism and all its political, economic, religious and cultural branches that in every country are managed by the official political parties, the church, the trade unions, and the other various bureaucracies at their service.
5) The third front is not an automatic and bureaucratic combination of political parties, but is the front line of all the revolutionary forces which oppose both imperialist blocs and all their agents.
6) The third front is not electoral or parliamentary. It has reservations in principle concerning both elections and the parliamentary system and condemns election competitions and parliamentary assemblies both in themselves and as breeding-grounds of imperialist war.
7) The third front defines and condemns neutrality, the myth of national defence^*, and the concept of a third force as attitudes that are either powerless and naive tricks of the bourgeoisie, or insidious expedients devised by imperialism to confound and weaken the masses’ resistance to war.
8) The programme of the third front includes: propaganda inspired by the principles of working-class internationalism; the unmasking of patriotism and nationalism; the organisation of all anti-imperialist energies arising from this; the development of the healthiest revolutionary traditions of the proletariat; action and struggle against the machinery of imperialism in all countries. And the liberation of the working class».¹³⁶

In the same issue, Masini referred to the French anarchists’ initiative and the controversy it had aroused among the Italian anarchists, primarily in order to respond to the concerns that the slogan ‘Third Front’ could be confused with the ‘Third Force’ formula:

[...] the slogan III Front [...] may be distinguished from ‘third force’ because whereas the latter represents a plan for a new coalition of States to counter-balance the two opposing blocs, III Front employs a class line to smash coalitions of all States, with their alliances and their clashes.

Masini’s internationalist consistency is here indisputable: clearly, he was also taking Cervetto’s reservations into account. But his subsequent clarification tracked back to his idea that the bipolar confrontation had wiped out any space for a ‘third force’ line, and in 1952 this led to a fierce argument with Cervetto:

On the other hand, the danger of possible ambiguities has now been overtaken by the way the erisis itself has developed. It is no longer possible, as it was say three years ago, to take up a ‘third force’ position, whether as a geopolitical reality or as a moral democraticpacifist demand locating itself outside imperialism but also outside the anti-imperialist revolution.

Today the pull of the two blocs has become so strong as to allow no alternative other than imperialism or internationalist working-class anti-imperialism: all those not caught up in the coils of official politics will be forced to the extreme Left. From the time of its inception the ‘third force’ was never a political reality: it has died as a democratic plea for balance, mediation and peace: what remains of it is only a mediocre fiction of psychological warfare, or an even more mediocre expedient of electoral battles.

Hence, not only can we exclude any confusion of ‘third force’ and III Front, but we can also exclude that ‘third force’ will ever be in a position to poach the III Front slogan.¹³⁷

Here were those traces of schematism that Cervetto had already discovered in Masini’s interpretation of «unitary imperialism».The extreme view taken of the two blocs and the idea that war was imminent completely rejected that there might be any dialectic within the two sides. It was a contradiction that Cervetto had already analysed in his international articles. It wasn’t a case of «foundering in the Byzantine Sea»¹³⁸, as Masini had hastily jotted down that autumn, because a general picture of imperialist forces could allow an evaluation to be made of their political strength, and therefore of the tactics to be used in opposing them. One example may be observed in the tactics adopted in relation to the MLI, a Tito-inspired group that broke away from the PCI, and on a more general level, in relation to all the other dissident groups of European socialism:

The MLI phenomena is interesting though its strategic planning is debatable. It’s the Italian version of Bevan’s rebel Labourism, of the German UAPD: an important moment in the march of the European working class. Two contradictory tendencies seem to be at work here: on the one hand Atlanticism’s usual feint to the Left in order to get the working-class masses to fall into line and get used to the idea of war (the ‘third force’ con repeated, only more to the Left): but on the other a real working-class shift to the III Front line and opposition to imperialism. It’s only an intermediate phase, of course – the ‘neutrality’ that was around in the First Imperialist World War. It’ll take a while for them to get to Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and even longer to get to the victory of the Zimmerwaldian Left! But within the limits of the possible we’re working on the MLI.¹³⁹

Lorenzo Parodi notes that Masini was reading 1951 as if it was 1914. But in that era of Cold War ideologies it wasn’t possible to force the theory of indivisible imperialism into the list of factors that had precipitated the Great War. He was imagining a «neutralist» phase that could in turn validate «the theory that the’international working class, motivated purely by free will, was moving towards a ‘third front’».¹⁴⁰

A year of fertile ‘exile’ in Argentina

In June 1951 Cervetto went back to Argentina, having lost his job in a round of sackings at the Ilva plant. He spent a year in Argentina, and overall it was a fertile ‘exile’, a year of reading and thinking. The benefits surfaced in 1952. By the time Cervetto returned to Italy for the second National GAAP Conference, his concept of unitary imperialism had matured, deepened and sharpened. In the biographical outline in his ‘Notebooks’ is one page on that year in Buenos Aires. Reading alternated with evenings spent with exiled anarchists, many of whom had fought in the Spanish Civil War. In Cervetto’s accounts of their often naive and exaggerated stories, there is never any hint of his adopting a superior attitude: Life isn’t talk – it’s passion, struggle, action.

The June sun set, and the first lights came on in the city that was slowly receding from us. The loudspeaker on deck was nostalgically broadcasting ‘Thinking of you’^*: I was enchanted by the strange scene, and my initial sadness melted away. Then the sea breezes woke me from my sluggishness and shook me out of my mood. There weren’t many people left on deck; I went down to my cabin and began to read. I spent the following days reading leaving my cabin in the evening.

I was in Buenos Aires for nearly a year, and that’s how I continued to spend my time.

I raked through the bookstalls of the Cabildo, looking for books on Latin America and the Spanish war. Occasionally I came across Pitigrilli, who’d been a popular writer at the time of Fascism, but also an OVRA^** spy, doing the same. As the booksellers got to know me they would put aside for me the sort of books they knew interested me. So the days passed much as they had in Savona. Month after month I tried to dodge the persistent, humid heat. In the evenings it was slightly cooler, so you sweated a bit less.

I used to sit in the city centre bars where the clientele was mostly Spanish political émigrés. They were trade union anarchists, POUMists, Stalinists, socialists. I was the only Italian, apart from a young anarchist from Puglia with whom I struck up a friendship. There were some Argentinians, but they weren’t very political. I used to sit in silence for hours listening to all these people. Some used to say that I knew a lot more about politics than they did, but I learnt a lot from listening to what had happened to them during the war in Spain: all those many stories of a pari of living history, and their unknown protagonists, their memories of legendary heroes, Ascaso or Durruti: the hatreds, the passions, the mistakes, the naivety, the innocence.

I spent my days reading memoirs and histories of the Spanish War that I had picked up on the bookstalls. From them I gathered precise and useful information on that page of history: they helped me organise a whole heap of facts along mayor historical lines. But there was a lot I could only really understand by listening to those guys even when I realised they were getting dates wrong or were exaggerating the importance of events in which they’d been involved.

There’s nothing so stupid as wanting to dot the i of reality, of facts: nothing more useless than trying to cross the t of reality as it’s lived by real people in a real world – the irritating punctuation of those who never see that life isn’t talk – it’s passion, action, struggle. Logic lies in the dynamic of facts, not in our heads.

During those hot evenings, in the busy centre of Buenos Aires, I pent hours listening to these men telling how they had lived their lives and their histories. For them, history was what I could explain with my historical details – yet it wasn’t the same. These guys were twenty years older than me.

Compared with them, I was just a boy, and I kpt quiet unless they asked me something about Italy.

They organised for me to peak at a couple of conferences held in social clubs in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of that immense city, the names of which I don’t now recall. One day they invited me to a secret meeting out in the Pampas. I met a few young Brazilians who had interesting ideas and a good grasp of Latin America’s history and problems, which they were methodically studying. The conference was held in a big corrugated iron hut that got hotter than I would ever have believed possible. For three days I drank boiling maté like everyone else. I didn’t fancy the meat roasting on a charcoal grill, so I kpt myself going with oranges.

A discussion on ‘totalitarianism’

As part of this period in Argentina, it seems appropriate to consider here two notes on ‘totalitarianism’ which relate back to the issue of the State. Both were written between the second half of 1951 and the opening months of 1952, when in Buenos Aires Cervetto met the Spanish anarchist Sinesio García Fernández, alias Diego Abad de Santillán.

The first note records a debate on theories of totalitarianism. We have seen from Cervetto’s ‘Notebooks’ his generous and human attitude towards the Spanish War exiles he met in Buenos Aires. But it was a different question when the principles of revolutionary theory were under discussion, and here he could be mercilessly critical. Santillán maintained that capitalism is a secondary enemy in the face of the Number One danger, the State. He held that capitalism had awakened the human race to a «new liberal civilisation», it was totalitarianism that had made the State master over everything and everyone: he believed that even among liberals and socialists there were those who opposed totalitarianism, and that it was possible to fight together. Inevitably, Cervetto saw Santillán’s theories as an example of the «Philistine logic of the old anarchist harking back to the Resistance».¹⁴¹

The second note is a programme of study on this issue, introduced by a reminder to Cervetto to himself to make further notes on how this has been dealt with, firstly by the libertarian socialists and Gramsci, and then those who still think they’re in the Resistance, the anarcho-liberals, etc.. The term «estatista»^* echoes the vocabulary employed by the Spanish exiles:

1) Totalitarianism seen as a estatista phenomenon that cancels out the individual (clearly, the core of this critique comes from modern liberal ideology in all its variations: Russell, Huxley).
2) Totalitarianism seen as the expression of an allegedly new class (the State) in opposition to the traditional classes who have now become (as per the liberal ’48 view) ‘the people’, or, to borrow Quaker terminology, ‘society’.
3) It would be a good idea to draw up a review (which might someday be placed in the Museum of Nonsense of Cultural Idealism) of all the various definitions of totalitarianism.
Work schedule: a) research historical genesis of the term ‘totalitarianism’ (at present I think it comes either from Mussolini himself or Fascist propaganda) b) extend the research beyond the terminology, to how the liberals of 1800 and even earlier saw the concept c) research into the history of how anti-Fascism began d) the various phases of the dispute e) the first anti-totalitarian theories / studies f) the various anti-Fascist currents g) separate study on anti-totalitarianism in the Italian anarchist movement (NB In Spanish War propaganda the anarchists used ‘Fascism’ more than ‘totalitarianism’).
4) ‘ Totalitarianism’ is an intellectual term: it comes from idealist philosophy. It was in fact first used by intellectuals. Revolutionary currents don’t use it (even the anarchist movement doesn’t use it). Only recently has it contaminated revolutionary currents that are in crisis (and the anarchist movement among the first). It’s been introduced by anti-Stalinist groups, among others.
5) For a definitive study of the problem (to take in certain new aspects of the political-cultural superstructure, I intend to base myself on Lenin’s Imperialism».¹⁴²

We have reproduced the original text in its entirety, apart from having completed abbreviations for the sake of clarity. The timing of the writing is important: less than a year after the conference at Genova Pontedecimo, Cervetto had already gone beyond both his original theory on the State and on the issue of imperialism.

The Internationalism

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