Introduction

Introduction

 

To this very day, the Italian Communist Left (‘sinistra italiana’) is still unknown — and is even misrepresented — in the very countries where it emerged and to which it spread through the immigration of its militants.

It emerged in Italy during the years preceding the First World War, around Amadeo Bordiga, who was its main inspiration, and from 1921 to 1925 was to be found at the head of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). In this period Gramsci’s current played no more than a secondary role within the party, as its right wing. In fact, in spite of pressure from the Comintern, the latter had great difficulty getting rid of the left leadership, which was supported by the majority of the PCI. But in 1926, following the Lyons Congress, the old ‘Bordigist’ majority were gradually excluded from the party. Soon after, its most prominent militant, Bordiga, was imprisoned. Once freed, he retired from all militant activity, and devoted himself to his profession as an engineer and architect. He did not break his silence until 1944.

It was therefore without Bordiga and outside Italy — where ‘fascistic’ laws impeded any organised political activity — that the Italian Communist Left was to perpetuate itself. It became the Left Fraction of the PCI in April 1928, then the Fraction of the Communist Left in 1935, and from its founding at Pantin right up to its dissolution in 1945, it worked to reclaim the heritage of the party which had been under the leadership of Bordiga.

Following its exile in 1926, the Italian Communist Left gradually lost what was specifically ‘Italian’ in its origins and development. It was a group of Italian immigrant workers in France and Belgium who went back to the original traditions of the PCI. As immigrant workers forced to leave their native land, strongly committed to the tradition of the Communist International, they had “no nation or national boundaries”; as such the ‘Italian’ Fraction was truly internationalist. It was to exist not only in France and Belgium, but also in the USA. It would have militants in Russia for a few years and contacts as far afield as Mexico. It managed to escape the inwardness that was so strong among political groups of immigrants, and constantly sought a confrontation of ideas with all the groups that left or were expelled from the Comintern; from the Trotskyists to the left communists who had broken with Trotsky. In spite of a series of ruptures with these groups, this perseverance with international discussion bore fruit. A Belgian Fraction (which came out of the League of Internationalist Communists of Hennaut — LCI) was formed in 1937, followed by a French Fraction in 1944. This showed an undeniable extension of its influence which was, however, more ideological than numerical. From now on, the Italian Communist Left ceased to be specifically ‘Italian’; in 1938 it became the International Communist Left, and an International Bureau of Fractions was set up.

The Italian Left was internationalist to the core both in its political positions and in its activity. For this small group of workers, internationalism meant not betraying the cause of the world proletariat. In an historic period which was particularly terrible for small revolutionary groups which became more and more isolated from the proletariat, it was one of the very rare organisations which chose to swim against the current. It refused to support democracy against fascism; it rejected the defence of the USSR and the struggles for national liberation. In a period which was completely dominated by the war, it tirelessly called for revolutionary defeatism, as Lenin did in 1914, against all military camps. It tirelessly defended the need for a world proletarian revolution as the only solution to crises, wars and mass terror.

In spite of the hostility it encountered amongst the workers, the vast majority of whom followed the directives of the Popular Front and ‘anti-fascism’, it put forward its own directive: not to betray the working class. And so, although already isolated, it made the difficult decision to isolate itself still further in order to staunchly defend an internationalist position against the war. During the war in Spain, it was the only group in France which refused to support — even critically — the Republican government, and called for the “transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war”. It was supported in this only by a minority of the LCI in Belgium and a small Mexican group, so its isolation became total; as it did for the Union Communiste in France, the LCI in Belgium and the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) in the USA. The price it paid for the intransigent defence of its positions was internal splits which lead to a significant minority leaving. Although weakened numerically in this way, the Left Fraction nevertheless came out of it strengthened ideologically. When the war broke out, a war that it believed to have been postponed to a more distant time, it, together with the Dutch internationalists, the German RKD and the French Revolutionary Communists, was one of the few groups to denounce the imperialist war, and the resistance fronts. Against the war, it put forward the need for a proletarian revolution that would sweep away all blocs and military fronts. Against the massacre of workers in the war, it called for their fraternisation across national boundaries.

In characterising their positions, some historians and/or political adversaries have labelled them both ultra-left and Bordigist. In fact, the Italian Communist Left was neither ultra-left nor Bordigist, and from the very beginning it always defended itself against the charge. It did not try to be original in its positions; although attacked by Lenin — with the German Communist Workers Party (KAPD) — in Left-wing communism, an infantile disorder, it was above all an expression of the left of the Comintern. What it wanted was to continue the revolutionary tradition of the latter’s first two Congresses. This is why, although it was one of the first left currents to arise within the Comintern, it was also one of the last to leave, and even then it did not leave of its own volition but because it was expelled. Although accused of “ultra-leftism” by Trotsky, it still worked and discussed for several years with the Trotskyist current, which finally excluded it. It arose as an intransigent Marxist current before the First World War and remained ever faithful to the original “intransigence” of the Comintern, although the Comintern itself later went off in the opposite direction, when it adapted the tactics of the ‘United Front’ and ‘workers’ states’.

The Italian Communist Left kept going as a current, not because it tried to be ‘extremist’, but because its political experience forced it to evolve and to question past schemes that seemed outdated to it. It believed that the experience in Russia should not be turned into something hallowed, but should rather be passed through the sieve of vigorous criticism. As far as it was concerned, Marxism was neither a bible nor a list of recipes; it was there to be enriched in the light of the proletariats experience. It refused to reduce Lenin and Bordiga to eternal religious dogmas. As it believed that the Russian revolution and the whole period that followed, should give rise to a precise ‘bilan’ (balance sheet), to be made without prejudice and without ostracising anyone, it criticised certain positions of Lenin and of Bordiga, which were still nevertheless part of its own history. Whether it was on the union question, on ‘national liberation struggles, or else on the state in the period of transition, it did not hesitate to make innovations, when it considered it necessary. It cannot therefore be pigeon-holed either as Leninist or Bordigist in the period from 1926 to 1945. It is certainly this critical bilan of the part which enabled it to survive the Second World War and to continue as a current up to today.

The longevity of the Italian Left, wrongly called ‘Bordigist’, cannot be explained in terms of individuals like Ottorino Perrone (Vercesi), who was one of the main originators and inspirations of the Left Fraction. However brilliant he might have been, what Perrone had above all was the crystallisation of a theoretical and political activity which flowed from every militant. His political hesitations, for example his surprising participation in an antifascist coalition in Belgium in 1944-45, showed that the ideological continuity of the ‘sinistra italiana’ depended more on the organisation as a whole than on simple individuals. To use an expression dear to the Italian Fraction itself, each militant reaffirmed himself within the organisation, just as the organisation reaffirmed itself in each one of its militants. If it extolled ‘proletarian leaders’ such as Lenin, it was in order to show that these ‘leaders’ synthesised the organic life of their party. For this reason, it tried as much as possible to give an anonymous form to those militants who were most in view. In doing so it was responding to a preoccupation of Bordiga in the 1920s, who had always tried to ensure that the life of the party was based not on a passive following of its leaders, but on its political programme.

It is certainly amazing that the groups today that claim descent from the tradition of the Italian Left pass over their own history in silence, although same of their militants belonged to the Italian Fraction. When they are obliged to speak of Bilan, they represent this review as a small review produced by Italian immigrants and remain silent about the positions they defended. This is true of both ‘Parti Communiste International’, for example, represented in France by Programme Communiste and in Italy by Programma Comunista. Although claiming complete continuity with the Italian Left since 1921, invariance in its positions and absolute faithfulness to all the positions of Bordiga and Lenin in the 1920s, it nevertheless takes great care to maintain a political silence about the Italian Fraction abroad between 1926 and 1945.

In fact the history of the Italian Communist Left reveals an important split between 1943 and 1945, when the ‘Partito Comunista Internazionalista’ (PCInt) of Italy was formed. This led to the dissolution of the Italian Fraction in France and in Belgium, as most of their militants were integrated as individuals into the new party, without even knowing what its programme was. In the excitement of joining the PCInt of Italy, which had thousands of militants and was crowned with leaders as prestigious as Bordiga, Damen, and later Perrone, many of the old divergences were forgotten momentarily; many militants joined in the hope of seeing the party of Bordiga resurrected intact. Its concern with numeric strength lead the PCInt to defend a sectarian policy which was very different from the Fraction of the International Communist Left in France and in Belgium. It refused all discussion and confrontation of ideas with groups like the RKD-CR which had nevertheless refused to support the war and had maintained internationalist positions. In fact it excluded some militants of the French Fraction which wanted to maintain the tradition of Bilan and which had been responsible for awaking the fractions in France and Belgium from their slumber during the war.

A few years later, the new party in Italy experienced a profound crisis, with a proliferation of splits and resignations. The ‘party’ saw its resources reduced and it became a small organisation of militants who still went on declaring that they were the party, although they had neither the form not the means in a period — like the 1930s — in which they were profoundly isolated. In 1952, the Damen tendency which had formed the PCInt, separated itself from the pure ‘Bordigist’ tendency, as a result of several years of divergences with Bordiga, who wasn’t even a member of the party. This pure ‘Bordigist’ tendency would return to the theses of Bordiga and of Lenin in the 1920s and, consequently, rejected all the theoretical developments made by Bilan, Octobre and Communisme throughout the 1930s. In the 1990s, of all the groups of the existing Italian Left, only the PCInt (Battaglia Comunista), who are the successors of the PC Internationalist founded by Damen in 1952, lay claim to Bilan. At the time of the 1952 split, most of the members of the ex-Fraction of the Italian left joined the Damen tendency.

Although it did not develop from the Italian Communist Left during the two wars, the International Communist Current (ICC) lays explicit claim to Bilan and the French Fraction which, after 1945, tried to develop its positions around the review Internationalisme. This current has published texts of Bilan in several languages.

To publish a history (more an outline of a history) of the Italian Communist Left between the two wars may be seen by many as a non-starter. But the Italian Left had a political influence and importance far greater than its numerical size. Today more than ever when the whole bourgeoisie is crowning the ‘death of communism’, when the lie that Stalinism equals communism has reached a point of paroxysm, it is vital to show that these authentic communists who resisted this lie from the beginning, and who both maintained and critically developed the real acquisitions of the October Revolution against all the distortions and defamations of the Stalinist counter revolution.….

The existence today of numerous groups coming from or claiming to come from a more or less mythical Italian left, the history of which they artificially reconstruct when they don’t just simply hide it, demands a work of research into the less well-known period of its existence in the emigration from 1926-1945, in France and in Belgium (but also in the USA) and in Italy, from the Lyons Congress (1926) to 1943-1945, which saw the disappearance of the Italian Fraction in the new party.

We won’t hide the enormous difficulties involved in this work. Practically no study has been written on this key period, neither in Italy, France, nor Britain. In Italy, the Bordigist current is clearly better known than in France; but its study is often limited to the period before 1926. The texts of Bordiga, written when he was at the head of the Italian Communist Party, have been republished bit by bit. Numerous studies have been devoted to this party, its origins, more and more insisting on the importance of Bordiga and putting Gramsci and Togliatti back in their right place. But such studies often limit themselves to the personality of Bordiga rather than the current that he helped to form. Alongside some honest works (in particular that of De Clementi) there are many books written by members of the PCI or leftist groups, whose avowed goal is to show the ‘sectarianism’ even ‘infantilism’, of ‘Bordigism’, in order to contrast it with “realistic” ‘Gramscism’.

In France, it would be difficult to find a study on the ‘Bordigist’ current before 1926. The political fashion of the day, of Stalinist or leftist leaders or intellectuals looking for an historic affiliation less compromised than of Stalin, had given birth to ‘Gramscism’.

There doesn’t exist any study of the Italian Fraction, for the period 1926-1945, outside of a short note published several years ago in the International Review of the ICC (cf. bibliography). Some collections of texts of Bilan that the Italian Fraction published in French, dedicated to the war in Spain (published in Paris ed. 10/18, Barcelona, etcetera) showed a still growing interest for the ‘Bordigist’ current in the emigration in France and in Belgium.

In Britain, with its tradition of insularity, the Italian Communist Left is even less known which is why the translation of this history into English has a special significance to show that the history of the revolutionary movement is an international affair; the development of communist positions doesn’t obey national frontiers.

To carry out our project, we relied essentially on the texts, and papers published by the Italian and Belgian Communist Left from 1928 to 1939, by the French and Italian fractions from 1942, and by the PCInt from 1943 to 1945. Published in Italian and in French, they show the continual evolution of this current in the historical thread of events. We haven’t neglected the internal Bulletins which were published after 1931, in the discussions with Trotsky, in 1937-38 (Il Seme Comunista, in 1943-44 international bulletins of the Italian fraction) when it was possible for us to obtain or consult them.

If, fortunately, newspapers like Prometeo, Bilan, Octobre, and Communisme are to be found in different libraries in Europe (Milan, Paris-Nanterre, Amsterdam, Brussels), this is not the case for the archives of militants of the left fraction. This gap has been partly filled little by little by the depot of the so-called Perrone Archives (in fact the Ambrogi Archives) at the BDIC of Nanterre, and of Piero Corradi at the library of Folonica.

One can only hope that such an example will be followed and supplemented to make the Italian Communist Left better known.

We haven’t neglected the reports of the Italian police which can be found in the Perrone Archives and in the Italian Archives (Archivio Centrale di Stato, Casellario politico centrale Roma). After 1944-45 for a short period, the militants hounded by fascism after 1922 could see the reports and documents concerning them. Needless to say the archives of the French and Belgian police will certainly not be open for quite a while.

The testimony of Piero Corradi concerning the Réveil Communiste and the minority of Bilan at the time of the war in Spain has been extremely fruitful, as has been that of the former militants of the Italian Fraction Marc Chirik, Bruno Proserpio, living militants of the Italian Fraction. We – for obvious reasons – use their pseudonyms instead of real names unless their names have fallen from public knowledge for a long time, particularly in Italy

If in the course of this study we have sometimes given the names and pseudonyms of dead militants, it’s not only through the concern of a historian to be as scrupulous and as exact as possible. We know that the Italian Communist Left tried to act as an organisation and not as a sum of personalities and individuals. It manifested itself more by its publications, in an anonymous way, than by putting forward illustrious names. But all organisations, the Italian left being no exception, find themselves at one moment or another confronted by divergences which crystallise around tendencies and thus the people who were their most visible and resolute spokesmen. The Italian Fraction moreover, more than any other revolutionary organisation, always refused to hide its divergences behind a facade of monolithic unity. It always tried hard to facilitate the expression of political disagreements, even if they were only held by a few militants.

We hope above all, in taking the Italian Communist Left out of total anonymity, to encourage militants who are still alive, or their familiars, to rectify certain historic errors, to enrich the history of a current which should be known, and to break the silence enforced on it.

Finally we thank Mme Annie Morelli, daughter of a sympathiser of the Italian Left to have had the kindness to send us the notes that she made on the ‘Bordigists’ in her thesis on the Italian immigration in Belgium. In particular those devoted to L’Italia di Domani and to the role of Perrone in the Anti-fascist Coalition, have been very useful.

We have considered it necessary to separate this very succinct history of the left fraction into chronological sections. We have also made a resume of its origins and development in the PCd’I before 1926.

We have made the deliberate choice to insist particularly on the political positions of the Bordigist current, in showing their progressive evolution, determined by the historic context. Without neglecting the social history of the Italian Fraction, or the organisational history, it seems to us particularly important and necessary to make its positions stand out. They reflect a whole historic period, rich in debates in the wake of the Russian Revolution; debates which are far from concluded given the importance of the questions raised.

A history of the Italian Communist Left can only be political because, as well as the problems raised, the replies given have been and still are political. We are passionately convinced that the history of the Italian Communist Left is not a dead letter, but embraces the future through the richness of the responses given by it in the 1930s.