From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works"), recently published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista.
III
In the autumn of 1957, the Livorno conference of the Movement of the Communist Left marked the beginning of the crisis. Cervetto and Parodi ended up in the minority, challenged by the maximalist faction whose moral factor did not allow them to accept the core of the Theses submitted to that assembly: the forecast of a long cycle of global capitalist development that would fuel the social-democratisation of the masses rather than their radicalisation. In the contingent defeat, which reflected the impatience in the psychological time of these militants, the 1957 Theses were nevertheless a scientific success and provided a clear framework for the strategy that would guide the party for the next half-century.
Everything seemed to go wrong for me that day in Livorno. I arrived on November 3rd with a swollen knee from a trivial accident the night before my departure, and I was already feeling the first shivers of a fever. The day was not cold, in fact, but in the Piazza Grande I wanted to go straight to sleep at the hotel. [...]
I had just managed to gather my notes and write up our theses for the conference, but I hadn't reckoned with the unexpected. Masini didn't show up at the conference because he was ill; I gave my presentation while taking aspirin to try to bring down my high fever. I argued that the counter-revolutionary phase would last at least twenty years, the time needed for the industrialisation of Asia, China, and India, and that in the meantime it was necessary to build a Leninist party of cadres, without deluding ourselves about heterogeneous movements destined to reinforce the inevitable social-democratisation of the masses. I was 30 years old and had no fear of the future or of the truth. Bruno Fortichiari and others were older but, above all, they lacked the theoretical background necessary to control their feelings and prevent them from influencing their political judgement. For them, passion and political judgement were one and the same thing, in that mixture of mood and political activity that has always been the hallmark of maximalism and will always be the weakness of the revolutionary movement.
What I said to them deeply upset their state of mind. They attacked me with passionate vehemence and an ensuing political short-sightedness.
Parodi, disgusted, wanted to end the confrontation immediately. Some of our supporters did not show up because they had decided to switch to Bordigism, which, in my view, meant going into retirement. [...]
In that confusion, the only person missing was the one with whom it would have been useful to discuss the matter, partly because he justified his rejection of my theses by stating that, in his view, a minority movement no longer had any historical significance. I had discussed this with Masini in Milan, during a sort of 'last supper', and, with the frank advice that he should devote himself more to historiography than to politics, we had concluded the conversation that had once brought us together at a table in the bar at the Prolungamento. My advice was sound: Masini is one of the best and most accomplished Italian historians, and his books are not only widely read, but also useful.
Had he come to Livorno that day, the debate would have allowed me to escape from a monologue destined for defeat. We would still have been in the minority, but the political terms would have emerged more clearly instead of being stifled by emotions. The absence of an interlocutor added to the many misfortunes of Livorno.
Today, the Theses are rightly considered an important milestone in our strategy. Facts have confirmed their validity and, a quarter of a century later, they stand out with surprising clarity for the assertions they contain. But, at the time, they were for me a synthesis, by no means extraordinary, of what I had been thinking for years
.
Two battles: the EEC as a third bloc
of unitary imperialism and the crisis between the USSR and China
At the turn of the 1960s, strategic analysis of Europe and China was at the heart of two battles closely intertwined with the fate of Azione Comunista (Communist Action
). Ultimately, it was the start of the European unification process that created the strategic opportunity for the socialists to break away from Stalinism. This was the objective force that had influenced the drift of the militants linked to Masini.
By 1957, Italy had already joined the EEC and was being driven by the powerful German engine. I understood the importance of this fact; I knew that Italy was destined to undergo profound changes, and I considered Togliatti's opposition ridiculous. As always on economic matters, he followed the crude propagandistic assessments of E. Varga and of Russia.
I reread Marx on free trade and wrote an article
.
Cervetto would return to the subject five years later, in his study on The Economic Blocs of Imperialism [Unitary Imperialism, vol. 1] in the autumn of 1962:
I emphasised the creation of regional economic blocs seen in the US, the EEC, and Comecon. In reality, the degree of integration between these regional blocs, especially between the US and the EEC, was greater than I could have imagined
.
We should remember that Cervetto's assessment contained in the Quaderni dates back to 1981-1982; the emphasis on that
degree of integration
with the US – greater than had been hypothesised in the idea of a clearer separation between protected blocs
– would later prove a fruitful insight in understanding the actual process of European unification, in the context of the cycle of imperialist liberism and the transformation, rather than breakdown, of Atlantic relations.
The second battle closely linked to the fate of Azione Comunista concerns China, because the onset of the conflict between the young Chinese capitalism and Russian imperialism began to influence the maximalist current of the Movement of the Communist Left, drawing it into Maoist illusions.
The world was in the midst of a process of forming new nation-States in Africa, spurred on by the Algerian War. In the spring [of 1955], I wrote articles on these movements and, from June onwards, I began to focus on the People's Communes in China and China's position in the détente negotiations between the US and the USSR. Ahead of the official positions that would fill the front pages of newspapers for years to come, I saw that the USSR could not help China's industrialisation and that, as a result, China had every interest in greater autonomy. I knew what kind of change in international relations a break in the Russian-Chinese alliance would cause. I predicted that it would also have consequences in the PCI [Italian Communist Party], introducing a third factor into the traditional dualism of the 'American party' and 'Russian party' that had paralysed Italian politics for fifteen years. The Chinese shock would reshuffle the cards, not only globally but also in Italy, and allow a revolutionary movement which understood this to re-enter political activity, overcoming the sectarian stage of being a small propaganda group. I studied the problem in depth and was the first in Italy to write about it in an organic manner. I had no sympathy for China or for Maoism. Mine was a cold strategic assessment. As always, when what I had glimpsed and forecast came to pass in the following years, many were swept away by passion, and my calculations, based on reason, remained limited to a few militants
.
The clashes in Genoa on June 30th, 1960, were among the first manifestations of a cycle of spontaneous workers' struggles just beginning, prompted by the rapid development of the economic miracle and the accelerated process of rural disintegration that was concentrating a young proletariat in the cities of the North; the same would happen in July 1962 with the events in Piazza Statuto in Turin.
At the end of June 1960, Genoa found itself on the brink of civil war. One hot evening, after actively participating in that movement, I happened to reflect on the absurdity of the situation and to openly communicate my thoughts. The Italian metropolis was rapidly advancing in its economic development, and in Genoa a heated conflict was brewing due to the remnants of fascism. What surprised me was that everyone acted as if this glaring contradiction did not exist. Once again, people were acting on their passions, heedless of everything else. These passions were exploited by reformist currents to break the resistance of centrism, which in turn exploited nostalgic fascism. By dint of stirring up passions, these had got out of hand and therefore took on a life of their own. They were quelled with machine-gun fire. I was perfectly aware of all this and tried to understand why something was happening that was at odds with normal political developments in a period of intense economic growth. It was not hard for me to grasp because, as a boy, I often found myself in political situations where men acted on their impulses rather than on rational political calculation. Only in retrospect are these impulses finally rationalised in a theoretical explanation that does nothing more than justify what has already happened. What happened in the summer of 1960 therefore did not surprise me. More than [...] the how, I couldn't explain the why. I wrote about it, discussing the movements in Japan, and began to frame the phenomenon of spontaneity in the rapid processes of industrialisation and proletarianisation that were underway. I later developed an analysis of maximalist spontaneity as a specific feature of the Italian workers' movement and of opportunism in Italy. Reflecting on that summer allowed me to develop the concept of the cadre party, which I had enunciated in 1956 as a necessary condition for the reconstitution of the Leninist party after decades of counter-revolution, in opposition to maximalist spontaneity. In 1963, I drew together the threads of these reflections in a series of internal lectures, which were then summarised in an article on the strategy-party. Finally, in 1964, I wrote the articles that make up the book Class Struggles and the Revolutionary Party. These concepts then allowed me to define 'trade union spontaneity'. But already in 1960, I thought that the only way not to be overwhelmed or neutralised by spontaneous and emotional movements was not the impossible task of controlling them, but the possible one of having an organisation composed of people sufficiently tested in practice and prepared in theory not to be influenced by them. Such an organisation of cadres would therefore be able to attempt to direct the spontaneous movement towards contingent objectives derived from a broader strategic analysis.
The problem I faced at the time was to see how these Italian upheavals could affect international developments. In reality, they had no effect. They were merely a symptom of the temporary uncontrollability of intense proletarianisation. I therefore ignored any reference to the youth culture that had become fashionable”.
The scientific approach to that political and organisational battle, amid the tumultuous transformations of that accelerated development, made use of the formula of the American script
:
In recent years, I had studied extensively the history of American economic development and its social stratification, from blue-collar to white-collar workers, from industrial to service sectors, from immigration to the melting pot of ethnic groups. I thought Marx's observation was valid, namely that the most advanced capitalist country shows the way forward to the more backward ones. I called the material I had collected 'the American script'. I gave several presentations on this material and wrote a few articles. I judged that the future would involve the Americanisation of Italian society. I was not wrong, because that is exactly what happened, and many of the problems I raised are still relevant today. I was wrong, as always happens, about the pace and timing, which is why I often found myself, and still find myself, analysing as immediate phenomena that were only in embryo and would only become politically significant in five or ten years' time
.
Understanding the imperialist development and maturation of the Italian metropolis, predicting its character and direction in the Americanisation of society, and grasping the contradictions that an organised minority could seize upon – this was the theoretical and analytical side of the battle to establish a party based on the Bolshevik model in that imperialist maturity. The notion of the science-party and strategy-party lay at the heart of the 1964 text Class Struggles and the Revolutionary Party; in that battle, which began in the 1960s, the practical significance of that formula became clear:
Thanks to Lenin, I could finally see the development of capitalism in Italy as a molecular process. I drew the conclusion that, for a certain period of time, this process would create such and so many contradictions that it would allow a group, which was able to analyse the process scientifically and follow it closely, to create a revolutionary organisation. When, inevitably, over the course of decades, the contradictions became catastrophic, this organisation would be the only one to have full awareness of the events and could use them to overturn social and political relations.
Leninism was able to do this in Russia because it had scientifically analysed the development of capitalism in its early stages in the Slavic region. We could have done the same in a metropolis that was maturing imperialistically, provided that we had scientifically analysed this phase of maturation
.
The battle over anti-colonial revolutions and wars in developing countries
The 1960s saw the end of the cycle of national revolutions driven by the new bourgeoisies in developing areas; the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israeli wars marked the transition to the 1970s, when that process could be considered complete. Here too, the theoretical and scientific battle was the premise for the internationalist political battle. It was exactly the understanding of that unrepeatable cycle of development, in line with the strategic forecast of the 1957 Theses, that made it possible to avert the contagion of Third-worldist ideologies.
The process of forming new nation-States was now coming to an end. I had been following it for four or five years and, in my latest commentary articles, I found confirmation of what I had thought and written at the beginning, when that process had begun to break down the rigidity of the blocs that had emerged in the postwar period. The Leninist position of support had been correct, and the theoretical clarity on the subject was equally as important. In the years to come, it would be extremely helpful because it prevented us from being infected by all those forms of Third-worldism, from Castroism to Maoism, which swept over a new intellectual generation, pushing some sections towards the aberration of terrorism.
Often in political struggle, many theoretical battles seem to be of little importance, given their very limited immediate practical effect, and this impression can cause discouragement in relation to the commitment they require. Only over time can their practical effect be measured, when they help to choose a course of action of some significance.
I have always been aware of this aspect of the struggle, at least since I deepened my knowledge of history.
Having framed decolonisation within the trends of unitary imperialism, I was thus able to see what I had defined in July [1961], perhaps with an imprecise term, as the new plan of imperialism and which, in the autumn, I would link to the new programme of the CPSU. In other words, I argued that the industrialisation of backward areas and the development of the Russian area were part of imperialism's new plan to export capital. I cited statistical data to support my analysis of a trend that, in the years that followed, would unfold on such a scale that it requires no further comment. Based on this type of analysis, it was easy for me to reject the whole 'underdevelopment' fashion that plagued the 1960s
.
The crisis of Azione Comunista and the birth of Lotta Comunista: Ten lost years
In December 1965, the split with the pro-Chinese faction put an end to the experience of Azione Comunista and the Movement of the Communist Left. As the first issue of Lotta Comunista was published, Cervetto realised that he had lost ten years
on that fruitless merry-go-round.
On December 6th, we held a CN [Centro Nazionale,
National Centre
] meeting in Milan. Given Bruno Fortichiari's conciliatory stance, we were unable to eliminate the pro-Chinese sympathies of Luciano Raimondi and his associates, and a split ensued. Azione Comunista was over. Ten years earlier, I had been right to see it as a contradictory movement. But by then many things had changed. Above all, I had lost ten years.
Ten years in history are a mere breath, but in a man's political life they are a long time. He does not have many decades left in his lungs. I had tried to build something by taking into account the opinions of others, opinions that I did not share. I was wrong. From then on, I would not do that again, because losing another ten years would be a disaster for me and for everyone. I knew perfectly well that this choice was not the ideal solution. I am a materialist, and do not believe that an individual can do what only a collective force can do. Nor do I believe that an individual can know more than a collective force can know. I do not presume this of anyone, least of all myself. If there is a role for personality in history, it is not so much a matter of seeing what others do not see, but rather of acting in such a way that others act in a certain way. Predictions remain just that and do not move people. Action, on the other hand, intervenes in the materialistic process of consciousness.
Sometimes taking into account the opinions of others, each of which reflects an aspect of reality, means remaining paralysed in action. Lenin magnificently exemplifies this stalemate in political action when he advocates the formula: 'Act, then we shall see'. This is not rationalistic presumption; it is materialist dialectics
.
The Prague Spring and the true partition
between the US and the USSR
In August 1968, the USSR used its tanks to put an end to the Prague Spring, a period of political upheaval in Czechoslovakia the ultimate cause of which was the penetration of German capital into Russia's sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Moscow could not accept this, but the use of military force was at the same time an admission of the economic weakness of its State capitalism vis-à-vis Germany. The fact that the United States stood by and watched as Russian tanks rumbled through Wenceslas Square prompted Cervetto to reflect more deeply on the balance of power and to refine the concept of unitary imperialism. Without understanding the specific political and military dynamics of the powers, it was impossible to understand how the imperialist struggle worked, which was not simply a reflection of economic power relations. And without grasping the reality of European imperialism, it was impossible to combat the ideologies of the Yalta partition, which concealed the de facto alliance between Washington and Moscow and obstructed the battle against imperialist Europeanism.
I saw the invasion of Prague as a manifestation of the 'true partition of the world'. In my analysis, I rejected the established thesis of the division of the world between the US and the USSR. Reflecting on the concepts used by Marx and Engels of 'equilibrium' and the 'balance of powers', I came to believe that the Yalta Agreement was the American application of a balance of power strategy in Europe. By conceding Eastern Europe to the USSR, the United States had mortgaged the future of European imperialism.
The upheavals of 1968 were a great opportunity for me to study, reflect, and process. I was equipped to do so and, above all, not to be distracted by marginal and secondary events. My practical training and experience were once again indispensable. Without them, I would have been more influenced by what appeared on the surface. But the scald on my skin, like that of the proverbial cat, had not been in vain. Black, white, red, green, and yellow shirts had long been nothing more than old rags to me.
It is no coincidence that 1968 was an opportunity for me to deepen my analysis of unitary imperialism. The facts allowed my way of thinking to finally see the practical implications of the dynamics of unitary imperialism, which was conceived mainly in the form of an abstraction. In the 1950s, I had seen imperialism as a single global mechanism that took the form of a division into two blocs. I had followed the failed attempt of the creation of a third bloc in Bandung around India and China. The creation of the EEC led me to define the 'Three blocs of imperialism'. The dynamics of 1968 allowed me to see how the mechanism of formation, existence, and balance of the blocs of world imperialism worked in practice. I had no difficulty in rectifying the previous, overly abstract definition of unitary imperialism, even though it had nevertheless enabled me to continue my scientific analysis. [...]
I believe that the 'true partition of the world' was a discovery. It was certainly very useful in the years that followed. Even though the French crisis led me to overestimate the relative weakening of France, 1968 was an exceptional harvest for me. One had to go back to 1956 to find a similar one in my political journey. The rest was secondary, even if more striking