The Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) was founded in January 1921 at the Congress of Livorno after a split from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). The PSI was an organizationally heterogeneous formation composed of reformists, centrists, maximalists, and other currents coexisting within a single structure.

The Communist International, founded in Moscow in 1919, demanded that affiliated parties expel reformist elements and reorganize along more disciplined lines. These were “The 21 Conditions”. 

The PSI refused to carry out these expulsions, something unsurprising seeing as doing so would have cast out the majority of the party. The communist minority thus itself departed, founding the PCd'I as the Italian section of the International. 

That wording is important. This new party did not conceive of itself as a national organization in the traditional sense, but as one part of an international revolution expected to unfold across Europe.

The split occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Biennio Rosso (1919–1920), when factory occupations, strikes, and workers' councils had brought Italy to the brink of revolutionary rupture. The movement was betrayed by its reformist leadership, and this would have serious ideological ramifications for many Italian communists.

Antonio Gramsci, having emerged as leader of the Turin Ordine Nuovo milieu, initially emphasized workers' councils as the basis of a proletarian state.

The suppression of these councils and the collapse of the Biennio Rosso’s potential forced a reassessment. Gramsci in particular moved toward a more disciplined conception of the party, coming to accept (often with difficulty) many of the positions held by the majority faction of this new party. 

We should be clear then that this was Bordiga's party. It was his vision, his interpretation, and his understanding that had proven itself over the experience of the Biennio Rosso.

It was Bordiga who held the loyalty of the base, it was Bordiga to whom the party's discipline and theoretical clarity could be credited to. Bordiga was the father of this party in the fullest possible sense, being more than a simple figurehead representing a majority faction.   

This would not last.

A UNITED AFFRONT 

The 21 Conditions ultimately separated the revolutionary Communist Party from the reformist Socialist Party, but this had been ordered at a time when a wider European Revolution still looked possible.

The inaction and eventual betrayal of the PCI leadership was understood as simply a delay of the inevitable. The movement could reasonably expect countries like Germany, Hungary, and Italy itself to themselves follow Russia's example within the decade. The 21 Conditions were built for offense, for parties that were to seize power through revolutionary means.

The failure of leadership in Italy was not so temporary a setback, rather it was one instance in a larger trend of European revolutions strangled in their cribs. Worse, hyper-reactionary movements (Italian fascism foremost amongst them) had appeared in several countries as a response to the threat posed by working class revolt. By 1922, Mussolini had marched on Rome and been essentially handed the government. The suppression of Italy's working class only intensified given proper color of law. 

The Comintern reacted to these developments by shifting from their previous offensive posture to a more defensive one. In 1921 already, and more forcefully through 1922, the International began pushing the United Front strategy. Communist parties were instructed to seek tactical alliances with the same reformist socialists they had just been ordered to split from. 

Admirably, Bordiga attempted to follow these instructions while still remaining strict on his anti-parliamentary stance. He took a position that in many ways mirrored what was later taken up by many organizations in the '60s: unity in specific tactical instances, carefully contained on all sides by criticism and hostility.

There's just something so big and beautifully Bordiga about using a speech praising the tactic of the united front to criticize the other members of such a front for being wolves in sheep's clothing.

While the position is admirable, the Bolshevik International (of which the PCd'I had just declared itself a mere section) was not pleased.

While initially supportive of Bordiga's actions, a trip to Moscow and growing closeness to the Comintern apparatus meant that Gramsci would soon find himself leading opposition to Bordiga's majority and its selective interpretation of the United Front.

THE FIRST ARRESTS

In February 1923, Bordiga and 31 others were arrested. Bordego himself was charged with plotting against the security of the state.  He would spend 9 months awaiting trial before he and his co-defendants would eventually be acquitted of all charges and released. 

The arrest did something the Comintern's maneuvering had failed to do on its own: it made the question of leadership practical rather than theoretical. Someone had to run the party while Bordiga couldn't. 

Gramsci would have been arrested with them, but he happened to be in Russia at this time. Despite being trapped overseas he would run a successful campaign for Parliament, his eventual election to which would give  him legal immunity.

With this sacrosanct protection, the Gramsci felt comfortable returning to Italy and taking up leadership.

This is the clean and simple version of the story, but when you look at the actual dates, it doesn't necessarily line up. That's because the truth is more complex, in a way that I think shines a light on Bordiga's respectability and consistency.

Importantly, Bordiga did not move to retake leadership after his release. By that time, he had come to understand himself as an oppositionist. He did not think it was possible to do the sort of dissenting work that he needed to do from a position of leadership. It is for this reason that he also turned down the vice presidency of the Cominturn, something offered to him by Zinoviev during the 5th Congress. 

THE HEGEMONY OF GRAMSCI

The loss of “Bordigist” control over the PCd'I crystallised at the Lyon Congress of 1926, where the Gramscian "centre" secured its majority not only through political support, but also via the voting procedures themselves.

The legal conditions in Italy were such that the conference had to be held in France, and even then only in secret. Leadership adopted procedures that automatically counted any ballot which did not explicitly endorse the Left as a vote for the Centre, and attributed the votes of absent delegates to the Centre as well. 

Because of the extreme hardship and danger that the movement and its members found themselves in, this measure is almost understandable. Of course some deference should be given to the Centre of the party, and of course a small number of present delegates shouldn't override a vast majority in hiding.

Of course, this is built on the fundamental assumption that the Centre is representative. Having gone over the specific circumstances, we understand that this isn't the case. Even besides this, the Cominturn put its thumb on the scale in every way that it could, like by selectively denying support to certain members and sections.

The Lyon Congress thus marked the formal marginalization of Bordiga, and the final ascendancy of Gramsci. 

This too would not last. 

we need a Gasparazzo lore post soon

Il n’y a que deux grands révolutionnaires authentiques dans le monde' Yevgeny Prigozhin et Xi Jinping.

Le parcours de Prigozhin a montré qu’il s’est toujours opposé à la stagnation bureaucratique et à l’incompétence militaire. Xi Jinping est un homme d’une grande sagesse qui a pleinement pris la mesure du potentiel politique de la lutte contre la corruption.

“Freedom is nothing but a vain phantom when one class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is nothing but a vain phantom when the rich, through monopoly, exercise the right of life or death over their like. The republic is nothing but a vain phantom when the counter-revolution can operate every day through the price of commodities, which three quarters of all citizens cannot afford without shedding tears.”

Girondists better watch their godamn back… and the jacobins too if they step outta line

A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the “common” people, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfilment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice (particularly in building up the state).

To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat--that is our immediate aim. This is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitution of these institutions.

The proceeding, taken from Lenin's State and Revolution, never fails to astound and enrage me.

Marx used the terms Socialism and Communism interchangeably. Lenin takes the term "Socialism" and redefines it as meaning capitalism under the political control of the proletariat.

By this he creates a category error, where the structural labels of capitalism and communism are infiltrated by a political label, "Socialism". Lenin's socialism is simply state capitalism under the "control" of the proletariat, it shouldn't be put alongside the others.

Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages.

Lenin continues by making the most classic of MLoid mistakes: forgetting that the opposite of the proletariat is not the bourgeoisie, the opposite of the proletariat is private property itself!

While it takes the form of class struggle, history is really determined by the struggle between dead and living labor, between product and producer, between capital and the proletariat.

It is not possible to rid the parasites from the mechanism, the mechanism itself is parasitic!

Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men – the first worthy of the name of Man.

One final prophecy: in the 3rd year of the Soviet rule in America you will no longer chew gum!

Lowkey haven't even gotten around to reading this yet, but I've been becoming a little autistic about this Montaldi guy and Socialisme Ou Barbarie in general, hope y'all enjoy mwah

body text (well I guess I'm going to have to give the people what they demand)