The Internationalism

From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”), soon to be published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista. II “Neither Washington nor Moscow”, “Neither Truman nor Stalin”. These were slogans sufficient to rally the internationalist cause, not only against the influence of the Stalinist Italian Communist Party (PCI) on one front, but also, on the opposite side, against the pro-American, “Westernist” leanings present in certain political currents of anarchist individualism. There was a unitary imperialism to be fought, of which the US and the USSR were both expressions. 1951, Genoa Pontedecimo In the ideological climate of the Cold War, heightened by the Korean War, a third world conflict was considered imminent; La guerra che viene (“The coming war”) was the title of a Trotskyist-inspired pamphlet that ultimately leaned in favour of the USSR, but reflected a widespread perception. The internation alist principle alone proved insufficient. To maintain...

From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”), soon to be published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista. I Arrigo Cervetto was the founder, theorist, and leader of Lotta Comunista. From his first involvement in the partisan war in 1943-44 until his death in February 1995, his more than 50 years of political activity can be summarised in around twenty key battles. It goes without saying that those struggles - aimed at the restoration and develop ment of Marxist theory on economics, politics, social change, and international relations - are the common thread running through this selection of his writings. His memoirs, Quaderni 198I82 (“Notebooks 1981-82”), provide an account of those battles up to 1980. First battle: the factory and the partisan war The son of emigrants to Argentina from Savona in Italy, Cervetto was born in Buenos Aires in April 1927, a circumstance that would later influence his thinking about international politics. His early for...