From the series Sixty years of Lotta Comunista in the Workers' Clubs
From September to December, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of Lotta Comunista, all of our workers' clubs engaged in meetings in which a collective reflection took place on the concept, formation, and experience of our Leninist party, and on the concrete implementation of its strategy. In December 1965, the outline and structure of today's newspaper and party were already in place. In every directive, even in the remarks on the margins of reports, even in what may seem to be mere details, that party objective was evident.
The starting point for all these reflections was this remark by Friedrich Engels, who on September 12th, 1882, replied to Karl Kautsky, almost surprised at the question: You ask me what the English workers think of colonial policy. Well, exactly what they think of any policy — the same as [the bourgeoisie] think
. Here, in a nutshell, lies the necessity, then as now, for a communist newspaper that brings to the workers a different method of analysis, an opposing point of view.
In 1962-63, within the Azione Comunista (Communist Action
) movement, a current that followed the Maoist fashion had taken hold; that current was siding with the Chinese Communist Party accusing the Russian and Italian Communist Parties of revisionism
. Some of them made contact with the embassies in Beijing and Tirana, some travelled to Albania. This was not a theoretical debate, but a rift between States
, Russia and China, and a split became inevitable.
The basis of all these recent reflections are data from Guido La Barbera's book on the history of our party. Compared to 1952-53, when the fundamental ideas had been acquired, Cervetto's assessment is clear
: instead of the dozen reliable and generous men
of L'Impulso (the newspaper of the time), in 1965 there were now ten Leninists
who were suited to understanding internal problems, and another ten in local groups
. Around them, there were around 100 generic adherents and sympathisers
. L'Impulso had a circulation of 2,000 copies, a thousand of which were sent to an address list made up of meticulously compiled cards filed in a shoebox.
Birth of Lotta Comunista
In 1965, therefore, Arrigo Cervetto and our original group
had already been fighting for years for a newspaper that expressed the science-party, the strategy-party, and the plan-party, concepts that had been gradually refined over the years. These are not terms used for effect or to strike a pose; they are the definition of Marxism. The party is already in Marx's Capital
, wrote Cervetto.
Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto [1848] marks the birth of the strategy-party. The struggle was to bring the Manifesto, the strategy, into the national and social struggles of the 19th century
. Lenin's What Is To Be Done? is the strategy-party projected into the era of imperialism. This was followed by Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, The State and Revolution, and “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, stages of the strategy brought close together by the crisis of the First World War and by the October Revolution.
Cervetto's Class Struggles and the Revolutionary Party is the strategy-party resuming its journey in the long counter-revolutionary phase, after the defeats of the 1920s, Stalinism, and the Second World War, within the long times of global capitalist development.
Strategy is not just a large area for research and the development of analysis, from which tactical choices are derived. In the process of formation and assimilation, it becomes a powerful lever to raise the passion and the will of militants towards a struggle that is fought in the present, but which goes beyond, projecting itself into the future. A struggle that commits one's life.
Ten years earlier, in May 1956, in response to criticisms of Leninists for being too theoretical
, for being sectarian
, and for producing a difficult newspaper
, Cervetto wrote to Pier Carlo Masini: The newspaper should be a periodical of information, opinion, and revolutionary education [for] gathering together layers of elements who think in a certain way
— political formation of militants in order to orient and assemble a vanguard of the class, with a view to broader and more decisive battles. As Cervetto said at the time, a newspaper with one page on Italy, one on France, Germany, Russia, and China, and with pages on the economy, history, and the trade unions. This is the newspaper of today.
One might object that reality has changed in 60 years. Of course it has, and we have studied that changing reality, we have described it, we have fought within that reality. We have developed the tools: the newspaper itself, publishing houses, pamphlets, leaflets, demonstrations; yet, over the long term, that original approach has remained indispensable. The newspaper has been the backbone and driving force behind all the party's activities, including the meeting rooms of the workers' clubs where discussions were taking place at the time.
A difficult
newspaper
The so-called difficult
newspaper was indispensable because the times were long and difficult
and only with such a tool could they be tackled. Today, faced with complicated and unprecedented developments in rapid succession — almost night after night — it is even more so. We have said anchor yourselves to the newspaper
— a precise, strong directive.
The Main Enemy Is at Home
, the first issue of 1965, was that anchor
immediately, and remains so. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall: is this the collapse of communism? No, anchor yourselves to the newspaper; it is the victory of Marxism over Stalinism. The dissolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI): is this the end of the workers' party? No, anchor yourselves to the newspaper; it is the end of a deception, even for the members of that party. Imperialist China: is this the failure of Marxism? No, anchor yourselves to the newspaper; it is the confirmation of Lenin on imperialism.
This anchor
also applies on a personal level. Militant life goes on through difficult times, personal events, sometimes very serious ones, and anchoring oneself to the newspaper helps one face them. Political commitment intersects with different personalities in the daily life of a workers' club, resulting in dissent and quarrels that are insignificant on the scales of history; therefore, they must always be resolved by reasoning on a broad scale, anchoring oneself to the newspaper
.
The objections of some readers regarding the difficult newspaper
have been raised in recent meetings and needed to be explored further. The newspaper is difficult
, but not because of the writing itself. If an article touches on a topic that is unfamiliar, it can be explored further; if a sentence seems complex, it can be read again; if an adjective is unfamiliar, a dictionary can be used. This is the case with any newspaper or magazine, or even a novel.
In reality, the newspaper is perceived as being difficult
overall because of the topics it addresses and the Marxist point of view from which it addresses them — different from, and opposed to, the way we have been accustomed to thinking since our school days; as we grew up with books, newspapers, television, and so on, we absorbed the bourgeois ideas that envelop the entire lives of workers
, as Engels explained to Kautsky.
In other words, it is not difficult
to read and understand Lotta Comunista, but it is difficult
to accept the concepts expressed and the analyses that go against the tide, because they force us to reconsider what we have taken for granted, because they force us to rethink ourselves, to study, and to take a stand. In this sense — the only truly concrete sense — in the years ahead, we will have to identify, combat, and overturn the ideas of the ruling classes, ideas which will be even more invasive, aggressive, pressing, and bellicose. It will be necessary to have greater commitment and effort, more hard work, and therefore an even more difficult
newspaper. Resign yourselves to it.
Study and political action
For Marxism, study
cannot be distinguished from action
; it is an integral part of it. After all, Marx and Engels completed the drafting of the Manifesto on the eve of the 1848 revolutions; Marx wrote The Civil War in France while the Paris Commune was still burning; Lenin wrote Imperialism in 1915-16, while people were dying in the trenches, and set to work on The State and Revolution when he was forced into hiding a few weeks before October 1917; Cervetto published the articles of Class Struggles and the Revolutionary Party during the clash that led to the split and the birth of Lotta Comunista in 1965. This is the history of Marxism, the history of its texts, and the history of its struggles.
On the subject of significant details, the real title of Cervetto's book was Struggles of Classes (plural) and the Revolutionary Party. We underestimated the carelessness of the small printing house Ottobre Rosso, a group that had emerged from the Bordigist tendency, which printed the first edition for us. Cervetto told us: True, the book sells just the same of course, but it is you militants who must understand the correct title
. Classes
in the plural meant the succession and intertwining, over the course of two centuries, of the aristocracy, the mercantile and manufacturing bourgeoisie, the temporal power of the Vatican, the overwhelming mass of peasants, and the artisans who became workers. In short, it meant the historical development of communist strategy and of the political tasks derived from it.
Support for our activities was only possible by regularising the contributions of our adherents, subscriptions, and the distribution of our newspaper in factories and homes, which was producing our first supporters. Another detail: we called them subscriptions, but subscription
has a commercial meaning, while supporter
is a political proposition. Cervetto remarked: True, people don't make the distinction, so you make the distinction, you must explain it. Don't stop at the administrative aspect, though fundamental, it's a political battle
.
Why did the first headquarters change its name, why did we call them workers' clubs? This too may seem like a detail, but it was an indication of political work in a social situation in which spontaneous pressure was growing among workers and young people. It was not enough to have a place to meet, keep materials, and give reports; we might as well have closed it and saved the money. A headquarters ought to be a reference point for the working class, in its class, and organising it. The club is the party taking root, establishing itself in its class, and organising it.
Various groups (which called themselves extra-parliamentary) were saying that it was necessary to immerse oneself in the movements that were already appearing. Cervetto replied that this would always be a reactive approach, merely amplifying the positions of the main parties, trailing behind their parliamentary politics, following in the wake of their demonstrations, becoming unwitting instruments of increasingly intrusive media campaigns.
The Bordigists, who were still present at the time, told us that militants are recruited one by one, not by seeking them out among the masses, as we do in Lotta Comunista — this, they said, ends up as opportunism. Cervetto replied: we also recruit one by one, and we do so from among the hundred whom we need to mobilise and organise in the neighbourhoods, factories, and schools, without waiting passively to meet that one individual. Some participate, help in various ways, spread the word, vote for us in the factory, and join the demonstration. The one who chooses full militancy is shaped and emerges from within this process.
In the current decade we are mobilising thousands, but the selection rate for militancy remains one in a hundred. It may become two, as seems to be happening, but still only two out of a hundred. And then there are the fake phone numbers, the pensioner who welcomes us because he is lonely, the one who supports us because we remind him of the old PCI, and the one who still calls us Lotta Continua
[a now extinct political group]. And so it may seem like a lot of useless work, but we have our compass (one in a hundred), the cornerstone of our political work. The recurring criticism of our systematic distribution activity in the neighbourhoods — we do not know who will open the door, we do not know if they will be genuinely interested — fails to grasp that this continuous political work has been the basis of organisational entrenchment, of our self-financing, and a source of our recruitment. One in a hundred, of course.
Today, we can add the criticism of those who do not understand that volunteering for class solidarity
should not be viewed in terms of the professional providing a service to those who give or receive aid. It is a concrete commitment that can lead to an understanding of how capitalism is the cause of the heavy class disparities against which our volunteering intervenes, thus paving the way for the transition to communist solidarity
in many ways and at many levels of engagement, including militancy.
We have never defended the petty interests of property and parasitism in the neighbourhoods, even when these are disguised as environmentalism, but are in fact against factories, against workers, and against migrants. A Leninist party must train militants capable of intervening in any situation, otherwise it might as well shut up shop.
The scientific newspaper and young people
By the 1960s, the number of young people attending high schools and universities had increased. We had to equip our small party to move and engage in environments that until then had been little frequented. Clarifications came from Cervetto, with his 1968 theses on the crisis in the school system, and from Parodi on trade unions, with The Prospects of Trade Unionism. The results can be seen in the rapid sequence of quotations from Cervetto, taken from articles or the minutes of meetings.
- 1973, less than a decade after the newspaper's inception: we could now
enter an orbit which is completely our own [...] and established our own political sphere
. What is a workers' club today? If we want to summarise it, it is this. - 1974, one year later:
We now have the key, with a precise organisational formula, to place the Leninist party within, and not on the margins of, the Italian political arena
. - 1975:
Deep work towards the real masses
. This was the directive expounded in the articles “The Decisive Struggle” and “The General Task”, in order to ascertain theprecariousness and weakness
of the vaunted mass parties. It was the basis of theplan-party
for a systematic, recorded, and evaluated work of distribution, and to accustom comrades to that type of work, to show them how to politically distinguish themselves from the drift of an environment that identified a supposedopposition to the system
with non-conformism, dress, and personal behaviour. And to distinguish ourselves with our scientific newspaper and even with the tie that we wear. That too waspolitical education
. The tie aroused much irony, which we met with amusement, but it quickly came to represent the difference in image we had sought. However, it was not an impromptu idea. Two or three years earlier, in the middle of July, crammed into a Fiat Cinquecento on the way to a meeting, a young, somewhat impertinent man had asked Cervetto why, in such hot weather, he was wearing a suit and tie. The answer was decisive:Because I'm going to talk to the workers
. - 1976, ten years after the first issue of Lotta Comunista:
For the first time, in this imperialist phase, there is a political class formation — theoretically, politically, and organisationally autonomous — which has surpassed the technical level of the small group
. - 1986, twenty years on:
A new generation of young people could be attracted to Lotta Comunista as a ‘party of scientific order’ in their passion for theory and struggle: ‘A taste for understanding, a taste for fighting’
. Thattaste
being passion and commitment, but also pleasure and satisfaction.
In 1965, the immigrants were Italians, mostly from the southern regions. Similar to today, there were issues like undeclared work and difficult social integration: finding housing, getting children into school, mistrust even within our class, and the language, with a need to teach them standard Italian, as we do today with migrant workers from abroad. Lorenzo Parodi, writing in Lotta Comunista in 1967, already pointed to the new type of immigration that would come to Italy from every continent. We intervened on the issues of migrants in large factories, including on the tragedy of migrants not being able to find housing, not even social housing, which was distributed sparingly and through patronage.
At a meeting in March 1985, Cervetto analysed these strata of workers, undeclared work, and precarity. When prompted by some militants, he replied: Adding these factors to the analysis shows that we do not yet have the strength to address them; since we cannot address those factors
, which would allow us to expand our sphere of influence, our tactic is inevitably constrained
. Cervetto never gave abstract directives. However, he prepared us to address those issues today. Are there difficulties? Of course, even greater than before, but now we have the strength
to measure ourselves concretely on multiple terrains.
Political, trade union, and cultural work
First of all, the fundamental theoretical clarification, i.e., the distinction between the role of the party and the role of the trade union: the trade union negotiates wages; the party seeks to abolish the wage system. This is a clear and sharp distinction. The party works politically within the trade union; it does not create a small trade union for its own comfort, which is neither a party nor a trade union. The party is an active part and, when it can be, a leading part, in the workers' struggles, participating in the victories and defeats of the class.
Cervetto highlighted all the aspects and contradictions within our own class in order to equip us against any romanticism. Parodi had confronted Giuseppe Di Vittorio at the CGIL National Executive Committee in the stormy year of 1956. Aldo Pressato shook his comrades by forcefully stating that the working class is carniccia
(roughly translated as fodder
), paraphrasing Engels (they think what the bourgeoisie thinks
): it even absorbs the waste of the ruling class and must be brought to class consciousness through study and struggle.
In June 1986, Cervetto forced everyone to confront a doubt that had always been suppressed, regarding the ability of those workers immersed in bourgeois lifestyles to lead society: We address the workers not as workers, but when they engage in class struggle; otherwise, we address them as individuals, and then we do so without class distinctions
. Only the class struggle — step by step, recovering the setbacks — leads individual workers to reflect together, instilling in them a spark of socialism
, which must be allowed to mature in them, and which then transforms them.
Cervetto did not neglect to intervene in public debates on any subject, whether scientific, political, or cultural, in order to convey the Marxist interpretation. Parodi did so in Genoa, as can be seen from his letters, as did the young people of the second generation who were sent out, still somewhat reluctantly, to engage with well-known academics.
Thirty years ago — let us take the date established by a pamphlet from the Filippo Buonarroti Centre in Milan — we believed we had the strength to commit ourselves to that type of work on a stable basis. We enjoyed using the formula of sending our paratroopers behind enemy lines
, where, however, they increasingly found a no man's land
.
In his last years, Cervetto used an unusual image: we are also building a small international PCI
. As he often did, he wanted to provoke a surprised but attentive reaction. That unusual combination served to make militants understand that the political struggle is to take men and women away from our opponents and bring them to us, wherever possible. Without denigrating their previous personal commitment, without arrogance on our part, taking from that experience what can be useful and what we can now manage, or at least try to manage.
A newspaper for this decade
A 60-year-long journey for the newspaper, spanning four or five generations, — not one of waiting, not one of boredom but, far from it, one of struggle and enthusiasm. Necessary steps in order to face today's accelerated times
, when the recurring terms in the newspaper are that it is urgent to update
the general task, that we need to be prepared
, and that we need to accelerate
our political work.
The newspaper as a collective organiser
was the link that young people — we might say the youth cell
of the time — had grasped in the second half of the 1960s, fully aware of the scarcity of forces for that immense task, but also capable of maintaining good humour in the face of such a challenge.
Cervetto instilled a sense of history in our political commitment, and this has remained a characteristic feature of Lotta Comunista. He made us feel like a living part of that history, as if we were with Marx in the General Council of the First International, in the Bolshevik Central Committee with Lenin and Trotsky, in the secretariat of the Italian Communist Party with Bordiga and Fortichiari, or even in Barcelona in 1937, with the anarchists of Buenaventura Durruti.
We had to understand how those great revolutionaries who preceded us dealt with their strategic and tactical issues — not only by studying history, but also by seeing how militants behaved in those situations, by talking to them, because we too were learning to think like revolutionaries. In this way, we assimilated the concept of the strategy-party
in its various historical phases, across successive generations, in its concreteness, because we felt we were part of it.
That 1965 newspaper, of information, opinion, and revolutionary education
, as Cervetto wanted it to be, has accompanied us for 60 years in the growth of the party and in our own growth as communist militants, including our personal growth. A newspaper and a party, Lotta Comunista, to which it was worth dedicating our lives, and to which it is still worth dedicating our lives today.