The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 6 From the series Sixty years of Lotta Comunista in the Workers' Clubs In recent weeks, we have been commemorating the newspaper’s 60 th anniversary throughout Italy. We publish some excerpts from the conclusions of the event held in Genoa. In 1959, Arrigo Cervetto wrote to Lorenzo Parodi, who was working at Ansaldo and developing the Genoa group: You too must study, with perseverance and method: a few hours a day, but study. It is what ultimately remains to us as most important: study and time . They were only in their early 30s and at the time were in the minority in the movement. Cervetto and Parodi are no longer with us, but that study is the newspaper you hold in your hands, and that time is also the same newspaper you hold in your hands; distributed by activists for years and decades, it has bound the second, third, and fourth generations to the party. It is study and tim...

Internationalism No. xx, XXXX 2025, Special Issue Pages XX and XX From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works") , recently 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, bu...

Internationalism No. xx, XXXX 2025, Special Issue Pages XX and XX From the introduction to Arrigo Cervetto’s Opere Scelte ("Selected Works") , recently 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 Apr...

Lorenzo Parodi, Pubblicato su “Lotta Comunista” n. 295 marzo 1995 Il 23 febbraio è mancato improvvisamente Arrigo Cervetto. Pubblichiamo l’orazione funebre pronunciata da Lorenzo Parodi, che per cinquant’anni lo ha accompagnato nella sua battaglia politica e teorica. Avevamo appena ricordato insieme il nostro cinquantesimo di attività politica. La nostra generazione operaia aveva dovuto fare la sua scelta nel 1943-1944. La seconda guerra imperialistica aveva ancora una volta accelerato il ritmo della storia, con l’impiego delle tecnologie della distruzione di massa, con l’immissione di nuove masse nell’organizzazione della produzione. Nella scelta del 1943-1944 avevamo colto istintivamente l’aggettivo “imperialista” della guerra: quello che delimita il rapporto col mondo, il senso del tempo e dello spazio; quello che fa maturare improvvisamente la coscienza della discontinuità, in quanto produce uno spartiacque e una frattura nel mondo contemporaneo, suscitando il confronto tr...