The Internationalism

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 10 From the series Asian giants With the commissioning of the Fujian , China inaugurates the three-aircraft-carrier era . The building of the fourth, fifth, and sixth aircraft carriers is widely seen as just a matter of time. However, since the previous Liaoning and Shandong carriers are less advanced, the prospect of always having an advanced aircraft carrier deployed will only become possible with the launching of the fifth: three are needed to maintain a steady rotation with one in use, one in maintenance, and one in training. The real novelty is the capacity to launch the AEW&C Xi'an KJ-600 — Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft, i.e., planes equipped with radars — from the ship's deck thanks to an electromagnetic catapult: this allows the carrier to operate beyond the range of AEW&C aircraft taking off from land bases. The Sichuan , a helicopter carrier amphibious assaul...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 1 Thirty years after the death of Arrigo Cervetto , we are publishing here the concluding passages of the introduction to his Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”) for the series Biblioteca Giovani (“Publications for young people”), soon to be published in Italian. The 1944-45 partisan war in Italy. The political battle within libertarian communism. The Korean War, and the watchword of “neither Washington nor Moscow”. The layoffs at the Ilva and Ansaldo factories, the political battle and trade union defence in the struggles of post-war restructuring. From 1953 onwards, the crisis of Stalinism, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the 1957 Theses and the challenge of theory and strategy vis-à-vis the tendencies of unitary imperialism. The political struggle within Azione Comunista (“Communist Action”) and the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista (“Movement of the Communist Left”). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, t...

Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Page 10 From the series Giats of Asia : the dillemas of Chinese single-party pluralism Only the materialist analysis of the intraction between structure and superstructure can explain the variety of the political forms. Why did the entrenchment of the capitalist mode of production in China occur in populist and Maoist forms? Why does Chinese imperialism express itself in CP single-party pluralism and not, for example, in the classical multi-party system of imperialist democracy? This specific political analysis does not regard the study of the economic causes which determine China’s political struggles, a scientific investigation which is its premise, “but the way” in which these struggles present themselves in the superstructure. “By analysing basic economic facts, Marxism can identify at first the interests which find expression in the political struggle. The form in which these interests appear politically, however, is a qu...