Atom and industrialisation of science

Hand and Brain and Artificial Intelligence

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 1 From the series Artificial Intelligence In the introduction to Dialectics of Nature and in his unfinished essay The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man , Friedrich Engels outlined the evolutionary process that led from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens . The text stands out for the conceptual power of its materialist method, and from it we draw five fundamental concepts. First, for Engels, the brain is a product of labour . It is in the dialectical relationship of mutual action and reaction with labour – made possible by the articulation of the hand freed by man's upright posture, the result of hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection – that the brain evolved to perform the most complex functions and develop self-awareness. In turn, labour is an expression of the social relations at th...

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...

Libertarian Communism: A Different Kind of Communism

Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM An examination of the debate within the groups that were to create GAAP (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) gives a vivid picture of the problems that between 1948 and 1951 had to be slowly and painfully faced. Three major confrontations, progressively more serious, took place between Cervetto and Masini in the autumn of 1949 and again in the spring and autumn of 1950. As preparations were being made for the National Conference at Pontedecimo – from which GAAP would be born – debate on the nature of the organisation and on theories of the State and imperialism began to define the characteristics of the new political group, but also revealed the differences. The first step had been to look for ‘a different kind’ of communism in anarchism. Along this road Cervetto , with an ever-surer grasp, would raise the issue that had been first posed by Marx and Lenin : our militant...

Capitalist Chaos and Artificial Intelligence

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 1 It may seem curious that the Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti refers to neuroscience and the theories of David Eagleman, which reflect a materialistic conception of consciousness. The explanation probably lies in Eagleman’s self-definition as a possibilian , a not particularly clever neologism that seeks to distinguish itself from atheism, but also from agnosticism: we know too little, so science must keep multiple possibilities open at once. In Engels’ view, agnosticism is shamefaced materialism . The scientist, as such, is a materialist. However, outside his own field, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism . Eagleman is even more circumspect, so it is understandable that religion sees an opening for itself in the possibilities left open. In Die Zeit , Benanti is quite explicit about Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial in...

The Theoretical and Political Battles of Arrigo Cervetto: VII

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...

Cyberspace and the Digital: Between Productive Forces and Ideologies

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 1 From the series Artificial Intelligence In his 1953 essay, Amadeo Bordiga argues for a very broad conception of economic structure and the means of production : The concept of the ‘economic base’ of a given human society thus extends far beyond the limits of a superficial interpretation confining it to the facts of the remuneration of labour and commercial exchange. It encompasses the entire field of the forms of reproduction of the species, i.e., family institutions; moreover, while the resources of technology and the provision of material instruments and tools of every kind form an integral part of it, its scope is not limited to that of a product showroom, but includes every mechanism available for the transmission from generation to generation of social ‘technological knowledge’. Accordingly, writing, song, music, the grap...

The Spider Web of OpenAI Agreements

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...

American Improvisation and the Third Gulf War

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Pages 4 and 5 According to The Economist , the war that began on February 28th with the American and Israeli attack on Iran has rightly earned the label third Gulf War . A clarification is needed: the war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988, cost at least half a million lives and left its mark on the Persian Gulf no less than the subsequent conflicts. However, if we consider only the wars initiated by the United States in an attempt to manage its own decline, the current conflict follows on from those of 1991 and 2003. Hence, the third Gulf War . The conflict has already transcended regional boundaries, involving all countries in the area; the unprecedented assassination of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s religious and political leader, on the first day of the war, was the turning point. The war’s objectives are unclear: it is a war without a strategy , writes The...

The Four Petrochemical Giants

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 15 From the series Major industrial groups in China When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, oil extraction in the country was practically non-existent, and the country was completely dependent on imports. The exploration and development of domestic oil resources required a major effort. As Jin Zhang reports in his book Catch-up and Competitiveness in China [Routledge, 2004]: The required massive human resources were supplied by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). In 1952, Mao Zedong ordered the reorganisation of the 57 th Division of the 19 th Army of the PLA into the 1 st Division of Oil . The effort led to the discovery of several oil fields, the most significant of which was in Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, in northeastern China, in 1959. It became operational the following year, reaching a ...

Contested Capital

Internationalism No. 82, December 2025 Page 11 From the series Industry and pharmaceuticals On August 15 th , the White House published a long list of the most recent investments in American manufacturing. The statement emphasised the role of President Donald Trump who, with the aim of revitalising American industry [...], has spurred trillions of dollars of investments in US manufacturing, production, and innovation [ The White House, “Trump Effect: A Running List of New US Investment in President Trump’s Second Term” ]. The list includes around twenty pharmaceutical companies, which have announced a total commitment of over $340 billion in investments, more than half from European companies. Stephen Farrelly, an analyst at ING, estimates that investments in the United States announced by pharmaceutical multinationals amount to more than $400 billion [ Il Sole 24 Ore, October 15 th ]. Political pressures and old problems This i...

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