Amadeo Bordiga (13 June 1889 – 25 July 1970) was an Italian Marxist theorist,
revolutionary socialist, founder of the
Communist Party of Italy
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
(PCI), member of the
Communist International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
(Comintern) and later a leading figure of the
International Communist Party
The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party which is often described as Bordigist due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga, although the adherents of the party don't define themsel ...
. Bordiga was originally associated with the PCI, but he was expelled in 1930 after being accused of
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
.
Bordiga is viewed as one of the most notable representatives of
Left communism
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they reg ...
in Europe.
Biography
Family and early life
Bordiga was born at
Resina
Ercolano () is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania of Southern Italy. It lies at the western foot of Mount Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples, just southeast of the city of Naples. The medieval town of Resina () was bui ...
in the
province of Naples
The Province of Naples ( it, Provincia di Napoli; nap, Pruvincia 'e Nàpule) was a province in the Campania region of southern Italy.
In 2014/2015, the reform of local authorities (Law 142/1990 and Law 56/2014), replaced the Province of Naples ...
in 1889. His father, Oreste Bordiga, was an esteemed scholar of
agricultural science
Agricultural science (or agriscience for short) is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. Profession ...
, whose authority was especially recognized in regard to the centuries-old agricultural problems of
Southern Italy
Southern Italy ( it, Sud Italia or ) also known as ''Meridione'' or ''Mezzogiorno'' (), is a macroregion of the Italian Republic consisting of its southern half.
The term ''Mezzogiorno'' today refers to regions that are associated with the pe ...
. His mother, Zaira degli Amadei, was descended from an ancient
Florentine family and his maternal grandfather Count Michele Amadei was a conspirator in the struggles of the
Risorgimento
The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
. His paternal uncle,
Giovanni Bordiga
Giovanni Bordiga (2 April 1854 in Novara – 16 June 1933 in Venice) was an Italian mathematician who worked on algebraic and projective geometry at the university of Padua.
He introduced the Bordiga surface.
Giovanni as the son of Carlo and Am ...
, another militant of the Risorgimento, was a
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and professor at the
University of Padua
The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...
. Bordiga's upbringing, while being thoroughly radical, was also of a highly scientific nature.
An opponent of the
Italian colonial war in
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
, Bordiga was introduced to the
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country.
Founded in Genoa in 189 ...
(PSI) by his high-school
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
teacher in 1910. Bordiga eventually founded the Karl Marx Circle in 1912, where he would meet his first wife, Ortensia De Meo.
Bordiga graduated with a degree in
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
from
University of Naples Federico II
The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...
in 1912.
Personal life
Bordiga married Ortensia De Meo in 1914. They had two children, Alma and Oreste. Ortensia died in 1955, and Bordiga married Ortensia's sister, Antonietta De Meo ten years later in 1965.
Political career
Italian Socialist Party
Within the newly founded Karl Marx Circle, Bordiga rejected a
pedagogical approach to political work and developed a "theory of the Party", whereby the organization was meant to display non-immediate goals as a rally of similarly minded people and not necessarily a body of the
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
. However, Bordiga was deeply opposed to
representative democracy
Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represe ...
which he associated with
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. ...
electoralism:
:Thus if there is a complete negation of the theory of democratic action it is to be found in socialism (''Il Socialista'', 1914).
Therefore, Bordiga opposed the parliamentary faction of the PSI being autonomous from central control.
In common with most socialists in
Latin countries, Bordiga campaigned against
Freemasonry
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
which he identified as a non-
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
group.
Communist Party of Italy
![Amadeo Bordiga](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Amadeo_Bordiga.jpg)
Following the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...
, Bordiga rallied to the communist movement and formed the communist
abstention
Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrasted with ...
ist faction within the PSI, abstentionist in that it opposed participation in bourgeois elections. The group would form with the addition of the former ''
L'Ordine Nuovo'' grouping in
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
around
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a fo ...
the backbone of the
Communist Party of Italy
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
(PCd'I), founded at
Livorno
Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronou ...
in January 1921. This came after a long internal struggle in the PSI as it had voted as early as 1919 to affiliate to the
Comintern
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
, but it had refused to purge its
reformist
Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement.
Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can ...
wing. In the course of the conflict, Bordiga attended the 2nd Comintern Congress in 1920, where he added two points to the
Twenty-one Conditions The Twenty-one Conditions, officially the Conditions of Admission to the Communist International, refer to the conditions, most of which were suggested by Vladimir Lenin, to the adhesion of the socialist parties to the Third International (Cominter ...
of membership proposed by
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
. Nevertheless, he was criticised by Lenin in his work ''
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder'' (1920) over a disagreement regarding parliamentary abstentionism.
For Bordiga, the party was the social brain of the
proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
whose task was not to seek majority support, but to concentrate on working for an armed insurrection in the course of which it would seize power and then use it to abolish
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
and impose a
communist society
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of co ...
by force. Bordiga identified with the
dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...
and the dictatorship of the party and argued that establishing its own dictatorship should be the party's immediate and direct aim. This position was accepted by the majority of the members of the PCd'I, but it was to bring them into conflict with the Comintern when in 1921 the latter adopted a new tactic, i.e. that of the
united front
A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political ...
with reformist organisations to fight for reforms and even to form a workers' government. Bordiga regarded this as a reversion to the failed tactics which the pre-war
social democrats
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
had adopted and which had led to them becoming reformist.
Out of a regard for discipline, Bordiga and his comrades (who became known as the
Italian communist left) accepted the Comintern decision, but they were in an increasingly difficult position. When Bordiga was arrested in February 1923 on a trumped-up charge by the new government of
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in ...
, he had to give up his post as member of the Central Committee of the PCd'I. On his acquittal later that year, Bordiga decided not to reclaim it, therefore implicitly accepting that he was now an oppositionist. In 1924, the Italian communist left lost control of the PCd'I to a pro-Moscow group whose leader Gramsci became the party's
General Secretary
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
in June. At the Third Congress of the PCdI held in exile in Lyons in January 1926, the manoeuvre of the pro-Moscow group was completed. Without the support of the Communist International to escape from
Fascist
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the ...
control, few members of the Italian Communist Left were able to arrive to the Congress, so the theses drawn up by Bordiga were rejected and those of the
Stalinist
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...
minority group accepted.
Under arrest
In December 1926, Bordiga was again arrested by Mussolini and sent to prison in
Ustica
Ustica (; scn, Ùstica) is a small Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is about across and is situated north of Capo Gallo, Sicily. Roughly 1,300 people live in the '' comune'' (municipality) of the same name. There is a regular ...
, an Italian island in the
Tyrrhenian Sea
The Tyrrhenian Sea (; it, Mar Tirreno , french: Mer Tyrrhénienne , sc, Mare Tirrenu, co, Mari Tirrenu, scn, Mari Tirrenu, nap, Mare Tirreno) is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. It is named for the Tyrrhenian pe ...
, where he met with Gramsci and they renewed their friendship and worked alongside each other despite their political differences. Bordiga was concerned about Gramsci's ill health, but nothing came of a plan to help him escape the island. In 1928, Bordiga was moved to the Isle of
Ponza
Ponza (Italian: ''isola di Ponza'' ) is the largest island of the Italian Pontine Islands archipelago, located south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina i ...
, where he built several houses, returning after his detention in 1929 to finish them.
Opposition
Following his release, Bordiga did not resume his activities in the PCd'I and was in fact expelled in March 1930, accused of having "supported, defended and endorsed the positions of the
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
opposition" and been organisationally disruptive.
[ With his expulsion, Bordiga left political activity until 1943 and he was to refuse to comment on political affairs even when asked by trusted friends. However, many of his former supporters in the PCd'I went into exile and founded a political tendency often referred to as Italian communist left.
In 1928, its members in exile in France and Belgium formed themselves into the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy which became in 1935 the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. This change of name was a reflection of the Italian Communist Left's view that the PCd'I and the other communist parties had now become counter-revolutionary. The Bordigists, as they became known, with their theory of the party and their opposition to any form of frontism, held that program was everything and a gate-receipt notion of numbers was nothing. Bordiga would again work with many of these comrades following the end of ]World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
.
International Communist Party
After 1944, he first returned to political activity in the Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adm ...
-based Fraction of Socialists and Communists, but when this grouping was dissolved into the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt) Bordiga did not initially join. However, he did contribute anonymously to its press, primarily ''Battaglia Comunista'' and ''Prometeo'', in keeping with his conviction that revolutionary work was collective in nature and his opposition to any form of (even incipient) personality cult
A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (2017) ''Populism: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. is the result of an effort which is made to create an id ...
. Bordiga joined the PCInt in 1949.
When the current split in two in 1951, he took the side of the grouping that took on the name International Communist Party
The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party which is often described as Bordigist due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga, although the adherents of the party don't define themsel ...
, publishing its ''Il Programma Comunista''. Bordiga devoted himself to the party, contributing extensively. Bordiga remained with the ICP until his death at Formia
Formia is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Latina, on the Mediterranean coast of Lazio, Italy. It is located halfway between Rome and Naples, and lies on the Roman-era Appian Way. It has a population of 38,095. Istat 2017
History
...
in 1970.
Theories and beliefs
Bordigism is a variant of left communism
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they reg ...
espoused by Bordiga, who was a founder of the Communist Party of Italy
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
and a prominent figure in the International Communist Party
The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party which is often described as Bordigist due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga, although the adherents of the party don't define themsel ...
. Bordigists in the Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country.
Founded in Genoa in 189 ...
would be the first to refuse on principle any participation in parliamentary elections.
On Marxism-Leninism
On the theoretical level, Bordiga developed an understanding of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
as a capitalist society
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...
. Bordiga's writings on the capitalist nature of the Soviet economy
The economy of the Soviet Union was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. An administrative-command system managed a distinctive form of central planning. The Soviet economy was ...
in contrast to those produced by the Trotskyists
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
also focused on the agrarian sector. In analyzing the agriculture in the Soviet Union
Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes ( prodrazverstka, pro ...
, Bordiga sought to display the capitalist social relations that existed in the kolkhoz
A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz., a contraction of советское хозяйство, soviet ownership or ...
and sovkhoz
A sovkhoz ( rus, совхо́з, p=sɐfˈxos, a=ru-sovkhoz.ogg, abbreviated from ''советское хозяйство'', "sovetskoye khozyaystvo (sovkhoz)"; ) was a form of state-owned farm in the Soviet Union.
It is usually contrasted wit ...
, one a cooperative farm and the other a wage-labor state farm. In particular, he emphasized how much of the national agrarian produce came from small privately owned plots (writing in 1950) and predicted the rates at which the Soviet Union would start importing wheat after Imperial Russia
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...
had been such a large exporter from the 1880s to 1914.
In Bordiga's conception of Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and vario ...
; Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, and later Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...
, Ho Chi Minh
(: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as (' Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as P ...
, Che Guevara
Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...
and so on were great Romantic revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
aries, i.e. bourgeois revolution
Bourgeois revolution is a term used in Marxist theory to refer to a social revolution that aims to destroy a feudal system or its vestiges, establish the rule of the bourgeoisie, and create a bourgeois state. In colonised or subjugated countries ...
aries. He felt that the Marxist–Leninist states that came into existence after 1945 were extending the bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. ...
nature of prior revolutions that degenerated as all had in common a policy of expropriation and agrarian and productive development which he considered negations of previous conditions and not the genuine construction of socialism.
On democracy
Bordiga defined himself as anti-democratic, believing himself to be following the tradition of Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' single-party state
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of sovereign state in which only one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other partie ...
. Indeed, he saw fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and t ...
and Stalinism
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the the ...
as the culmination of bourgeois democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into dif ...
. To Bordiga, democracy meant above all the manipulation of society as a formless mass. To this, he counterposed the dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...
, to be implemented by the communist party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
based on the principles and program enunciated in ''The Communist Manifesto
''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Commu ...
'' (1848). He often referred to the spirit of Engels' remark that "on the eve of the revolution all the forces of reaction will be against us under the banner of 'pure democracy'" (as every factional opponent of the Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
in 1921 from the monarchists
Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. ...
to the anarchists
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...
called for soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
without Bolsheviks—or soviet workers councils not dominated by Bolsheviks).
As such, Bordiga opposed the idea of revolutionary theory being the product of a democratic process of pluralist views, believing that the Marxist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
perspective has the merit of underscoring the fact that like all social formations, communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
is above all about the expression of programmatic content. This enforces the fact that, for Marxists, communism is not an ideal to be achieved, but a real movement born from the old society with a set of programmatic tasks.
On the united front
Bordiga resolutely opposed the Comintern
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
's turn to the right in 1921. As leader of the Communist Party of Italy
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
, he refused to implement the united front
A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political ...
strategy of the Third Congress. He also refused to fuse the newly formed party, dominated by Bordigism, with the left-wing of the Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country.
Founded in Genoa in 189 ...
from which it had just broken away. Bordiga had a completely different view of the party from the Comintern which was adapting to the revolutionary ebb that was announced in 1921 by the Anglo-Russian trade agreement, the Kronstadt rebellion
The Kronstadt rebellion ( rus, Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR port city of Kronstadt. Loc ...
, the implementation of the New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
, the banning of factions and the defeat of the March Action
The March Action (German "März Aktion" or "Märzkämpfe in Mitteldeutschland," i.e. "The March battles in Central Germany") was a 1921 failed Communist uprising, led by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Communist Workers' Party of Germa ...
in Germany.
For Bordiga, the Western European communist parties' strategy of fighting this ebb by absorbing a mass of left-wing social democrats
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
through the united front was a complete capitulation to the period of counter-revolutionary
A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revolu ...
ebb he saw setting in. This was the base of his critique of democracy, for it was in the name of conquering the masses that the Comintern seemed to be making all kinds of programmatic concessions to left-wing social democrats. For Bordiga, program was everything, a gate-receipt notion of numbers was nothing. The role of the party in the period of ebb was to preserve the program and to carry on the propaganda work possible until the next turn of the tide, not to dilute it while chasing ephemeral popularity.
Bordiga's analysis provided a way of seeing a fundamental degeneration in the world communist movement in 1921 (instead of in 1927 with the defeat of Trotsky) without simply calling for more democracy. The abstract formal perspective of bureaucracy/democracy, with which the Trotskyist tradition treats this crucial period in Comintern history, became separated from any content. Bordiga throughout his life called himself a Leninist
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...
and never polemicized against Lenin directly, but his totally different appreciation of the 1921 conjuncture, its consequences for the Comintern and his opposition to Lenin and Trotsky on the united front issue illuminates a turning point that is generally obscured by the heirs of the Trotskyist wing of the international left opposition of the 1920s.
On communism
Although most Leninists distinguish between socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
and communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
and Bordiga did consider himself a Leninist, being described as "more Leninist than Lenin", he did not distinguish between the two in the same way Leninists do. Bordiga did not see socialism as a separate mode of production from communism, but rather just as how communism looks as it emerges from capitalism before it has "developed on its own foundations". Bordiga used the term socialism to mean what Marx called the lower-phase communism. Sticking to Marx's concept of communism, for Bordiga, both stages of socialist or communist society
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of co ...
—with stages referring to historical materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
—were characterised by the absence of money, capital, the market and so on, the difference between them being that earlier in the first stage rationing would be done in a way in whic
"a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form"
with deductions being made from said labor to fund public projects, and difference in interests between the rural and urban proletariat would exist, whilst in communism "bourgeoisie law" would be no more, hence the ''equal standard'' applied to all peoples no longer would apply, and the alienated ma
but rather become a new "Social Man". Arguing against what Bordiga saw as the "bourgeois" idea o
he instead declares that under communism (whether it be the lower stage or higher stage), production and consumption are both enslaved to society.
This view distinguished Bordiga from other Leninists and especially the Trotskyists, who tended and still tend to telescope the first two stages and so have money and the other exchange categories surviving into socialism, but Bordiga would have none of this. For him, no society in which money, buying and selling and the rest survived could be regarded as either socialist or communist—these exchange categories would die out before the socialist rather than the communist stage was reached.
Legacy
Influences
Jacques Camatte
Jacques Camatte (born 1935) is a French writer and former Marxist theoretician and member of the International Communist Party, a primarily Italian left communist organisation under the influence of Amadeo Bordiga. After Bordiga's death and ...
began corresponding with Bordiga from the age of 19 in 1954, and Bordiga developed a long-standing relationship with Camatte and ideological influence over him. Camatte's early work very much reads in line with the Bordigist current, and Bordiga frequently contributed to Camatte's journal '' Invariance'' near the end of his life. Even after Camatte's break with Marxism following Bordiga's death, Camatte's preoccupation within the subject of 'Gemeinwesen' (community, commonwealth) within Marx's work is consistent with Bordiga's emphasis on the anti-individualist and collectivist aspects of Marxism.
Bordiga also influenced Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé ( pen name Jean Barrot; born 1947) is a French political theorist, school teacher, and translator associated with left communism and the contemporary tendency of communization.
Biography
In collaboration with other left communis ...
, and had great influence over the Ultra-leftist currents of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
General Legacy
The Amadeo Bordiga Foundation was established in 1998 in Formia, in the house where Bordiga spent the last several months of his life. The foundation organizes publications of Bordiga's works and encourages further expansions upon his ideas.
In August 2020, ''Historical Materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
'' published ''The Science and Passion of Communism'', an anthology of English translations of Bordiga's work.
See also
* International Communist Party
The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party which is often described as Bordigist due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga, although the adherents of the party don't define themsel ...
* Left-communism
* Leninism
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin, dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary Vanguardis ...
References
External links
The International Library of the Communist Left - Bordiga Page
at Marxists.org.
at "n+1" Review.
Libertarian Communist Library Amadeo Bordiga archive
25 October 2009).
25 October 2009).
* ttp://www.international-communist-party.org/ International Communist Party
Earlene Craver The Third Generation: The Young Socialists in Italy, 1907-1915
Philippe Bourrinet, The "Bordigist" Current, (1912-1952)
a
"Left Wing" Communism - an infantile disorder?
* https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1960/immutable-tablets.htm
* https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
* https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bordiga, Amadeo
1889 births
1970 deaths
People from the Province of Naples
People from Formia
Executive Committee of the Communist International
Italian anti-capitalists
Italian atheists
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Italian Marxists
Italian male journalists
Marxist theorists
Italian Communist Party politicians
20th-century Italian politicians
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Left communists
Anti-Masonry
Anti-Stalinist left
20th-century Italian journalists
20th-century Italian engineers