The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026, Special Issue Pages III and IV From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works") , recently published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista. VII In this chapter, we offer a selection of writings on the Italian cycle, in both politics and in social and economic change, taken from three books that collect articles written over a 40-year period, from 1950 to 1991. Il ciclo politico del capitalismo di Stato ( The political cycle of State capitalism ) spans from the post-war period, at the beginning of the 30 years of the accelerated development of the economic miracle, until 1967, when the first signs of the struggles of workers’ spontaneity had already appeared, but before the explosion of the autunno caldo ( hot autumn ) of 1969. These are articles that appeared in Libertario , l’Impulso , Agitazione (the internal bulletin of the GAAP), Azione Comunista , Prometeo an...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026, Special Issue Pages I and II From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works") , recently published in Italy by Edizioni Lotta Comunista. VI The reflection on the political shell – in which Cervetto returned to the fundamentals of the Marxist theory of the State – was itself a political battle, as it equipped the new generation of the party against the myths of true democracy that accompanied the reformist line and the electoral expansion of the progressive PCI into new social strata. The very title of the book recalls Lenin’s formula of democracy as the best political shell for the dictatorship of capital. However, these editorials were not limited to restoring the concepts of Marx, Engels, and Lenin; the theory was developed and updated to apply to contemporary forms of imperialist democracy . Alongside those crucial notions, dozens of politic...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 16 Here it is at last, the Trump Doctrine , laid out in black and white in the NSS, the National Security Strategy. Some comment that it is more of an ideological manifesto than a real action plan, a patchwork of positions from the various political currents that move in and around the White House. That may be true; sometimes these documents amount to little and end up forgotten. Yet, the fact remains that the NSS pieces together fragments of pre-existing American policies, and is therefore not simply dominated by Trump's ideological fervour. Moreover, it describes things that the United States is already doing. It asserts American primacy in Central and South America – and Washington is increasing military pressure on Venezuela. Russia is no longer considered an enemy – and Trump is dealing with Putin over the heads of the Europeans. There is an offer of coexistence with China – and we sa...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 15 From the series Atom and industrialisation of science Nikolai Krementsov, of the St. Petersburg Institute for the History of Science and Technology, writes in Science in the Twentieth Century [1997] that at the end of the 1920s, the scientific community in the Soviet Union was completely co-opted into the system of power relations and occupied a prominent place in the social structure of the State. The global economic crisis in the 1930s changed the situation. World autarchy The crisis, which began with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929, led to a contraction in world trade and to the spread of autarchy among the leading nations. Russian State capitalism adapted to the new situation with forced industrialisation, which found its political expression in the Stalinist terror. The Bolshevik Party kept its name, but became something entirely different: adopting the theo...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 14 From the series The telecommunications battle There are two interwoven and contrasting trends in the American economy. On the one hand, we are witnessing steady growth in the value of securities linked to the furious race towards artificial intelligence (AI), which could lead to a financial bubble; on the other, an increase in GDP, precisely due to the huge investments in this field, is taking place. In the first week of November, a downward correction saw many technological securities devalue by $1.2 trillion on the stock exchange. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, the biggest American bank, predicts that there is a one-in-three probability of a collapse, albeit not imminently. As I see it — he states — artificial intelligence is real and, all in all, it will pay off [...] just as happened in the past in the case of automobiles and television sets . Products which, however, have also seen many...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 13 From the series Industry and pharmaceuticals The Trump administration wielded the sword of tariffs against pharmaceutical companies, with the declared aim of bringing productive activities back to America . The largest multinational life sciences firms responded with investment announcements — estimated to total $400 billion. It is not always clear whether these are entirely new allocations or whether they include capital already committed to earlier expansion plans in the US market. In any case, the expected increase in pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the US will take a few years to materialise. The administration nevertheless emphasised the Trump effect . The relocation of production lines to existing or newly built plants relates to some branded drugs protected by patents. Generics, which account for 90% of prescriptions in America, are not affected. Global supply chains ...

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 12 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The American establishment faces a truly difficult conundrum. On the one hand, it is confronted with Donald Trump, who has been gripped by show politics to the point of delirium: a recent tragic example was the president’s comments on social media about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, which he blamed on the director’s anti-Trump hatred. On the other hand, there is the attempt to uncover a rationale behind the policies of the Trump presidency, insofar as the measures aimed at countering American decline partially represent continuity with the lines of previous administrations, or with certain currents within them. In recent months, this second approach has been taken by Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and several Biden administration officials, including Kurt Campbell. In their view, there a...