The Internationalism

David Petraeus, Commander of the US forces in Iraq and the Gulf in 2007-2008, then director of the CIA in 2011-12, described the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 rd in Baghdad as a defensive action , with which the Trump presidency restored a US deterrence , which was weakened by recent Iranian actions . This is a reference to the attacks conducted indirectly, unclaimed by Tehran, against the Saudi oil infrastructures on September 14 th 2019. In March 2008, when the forces under Petraeus’ command supported the Iraqi Army in the fight against local Shite militias, Soleimani sent a message to the American general: informing him that he was the person in charge for Iranian policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza therefore the channel through which to define an agreement to resolve the various issues with Tehran. Petraeus holds the advisors of the Quds Force, the spearhead of the Pasdaran asymmetric operations, responsible for the killing of around 600 ...

The Analysis of a Defeat From the special series 1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International It was in Lenin’s legacy that the generation of the ’20s and ’30s could have found the theoretical tools to deal with the unprecedented Stalinist counter-revolution and execute an organised retreat for the world party. Socialism in one country? Lenin had already framed the essential characteristics of that issue in 1915: given that Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism , it could be assumed that the victory of socialism would be possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone . What that first unequivocally means is that either the socialist revolution is replicated internationally, or it is inevitably defeated. Moreover, since the revolution had begun in backwards Russia, in 1917 it was already predictable that the time given to this inception in one country would be very short. Of course, ext...

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks”. This is Karl Marx, a century and a half ago, but since then the reality of a capitalism that has grown senile — in the late maturity of imperialist society — has imbued those words with a disconcerting and practical truth. Through globalisation, capital runs the markets at all latitudes, seeking out, from two billion wage-earners, the surplus value that keeps it alive. Moreover, in the old powers where capitalism was first born, before spreading to the whole world and feeding new aspirant powers - eager to redefine the partition, the whole scaffolding of the social system could not stand without a growing share of migrants in the labour force. Described by Lenin, the analyses of parasitic degeneration and the putrefaction of a capitalism in its imperialist phase, are science, like that of Marx, and not simple moralistic invective. In Europe, America, Japan,...

The Fourth Congress From the special series 1919-2019. One hundred years from the foundation of the Communist International The historian Branko Lazitch wrote that the IV Congress, compared to the first three, placed itself in a regressive line : while the I Congress held the perspective of working in anticipation of an imminent future world revolution, the IV Congress acknowledged that such an objective had fallen out of reach and they had to learn to conduct political activity over much longer timeframes. Arrigo Cervetto comments: In a way it is true. After having tried the revolution with a communist party, Lenin wants to prepare the revolution with a Leninist party. His job is to prepare this party . Italian fascism Karl Radek was commissioned to give a report focused on “The Capital Offensive”: the Italian events represented the most serious defeat that socialism and communism have suffered since the beginning of the world revolution . But the speaker denied that a paralle...

The new strategic phase in the world balance, with its new corresponding political cycles within powers, requires attention to the materialistic, historical and dialectical method of political analysis itself. The changing forces and basic trends need to be identified; we can make conjectures about the developments in single political battles, but the outcome of these battles will always require us to contemplate a plurality of solutions: some more probable. others less. but never Just a mechanical consequence of long-term economic movements. Many fixed points of the method of political analysis are usual tools in our Marxist elaboration, but this does not mean they must be taken for granted: it is of use to recall them, in relation to the new unknowns of the political battle. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from t...

This page serves a technical issue:

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...