Science and Passion of Communism

Pietro Basso has been Associate Professor of Sociology at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. His works include Modern Times, Ancient Hours (Verso, 2003), Le racisme européen (Syllepse, 2016), and Le grandi questioni sociali del nostro tempo (Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2018, co-edited with Giuliana Chiaretti).

"Pietro Basso has done a great service to the socialist movement by making available this wide-ranging selection of Amadeo Bordiga's work, together with an extensive introduction covering all periods of his activity. Little known to English readers, Bordiga's role as founder and early leader of the Communist Party of Italy, and an independent voice in the Communist International, can now be properly studied and appreciated."—Marcello Musto, Professor of Sociology at York University, author of The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography"Amadeo Bordiga, a key founder of the Italian Communist Party, is the least known of the major European revolutionaries from before and after World War I. After he was sidelined by Stalin and Togliatti, he continued to write major theoretical works into the 1960s. This anthology will help to correct the near-anonymity that enveloped him after the mid-1920s. He was a revolutionary and theoretician on the level of Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg."—Loren Goldner, author of Revolution, Defeat and Theoretical Underdevelopment: Russia, Turkey, Spain, Bolivia"The fine translations by Giacomo Donis and Patrick Camiller allow non-Italian speakers fresh insight into what Basso charmingly calls the "goldmine" of Bordiga's vast array of research."—Weekly Worker

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Yesterday’s Battles and Today’s World Pietro BassoPART I: THE ITALIAN LEFT IN THE GREAT REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE (1912–26)1 Against the WarAgainst the War as Long as It LastsFrom the Old to the New Anti-militarismWe Take Our StandThe ‘Fait Accompli’Nothing to Correct2 On ElectionsAgainst AbstentionismThe Electionist IllusionThe Electoral TrapRevolutionary Preparation or Electoral Preparation3 On SovietsThe System of Communist RepresentationIs This the Time to Form ‘Soviets’?Take the Factories or Take Power?4 On Strategy and TacticsThe May 1920 Theses – Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist PartyThe Tactics of the Communist International – Fourth Congress (1922)Theses on the Tactics of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome Theses – 1922)5 On Fascism, Against FascismReport to the Fourth Congress of the C.I. (1922)Report to the Fifth Congress of the C.I. (1924)6 The Lyons Theses Draft Theses for the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyons, 1926) 7 Against Stalin and ‘Socialism in One Country’ The Trotsky Question Bordiga at the Sixth Enlarged ECCI (February 1926) Letter to Karl Korsch PART II: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE REBIRTH OF REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNISM (1945–65) Section I: Russia and Revolution in Marxist Theory 1 Lessons of Counter-revolutions 2 Forty Years of Organically Analysing Russian Events within the Dramatic Context of the Social and Historical Course of the World Section II: The Critique of Triumphant Capitalism 1 Property and Financial Capital 2 Welfare Economics 3 The Law of Hunger 4 Murder of the Dead 5 Inflation of the State 6 The United States of America (1947–57) America America Again! Attack on Europe The USA’s European Policy Korea and the World Democratic ‘Points’ and Imperial Programmes ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Imperialism You cannot stop, only the proletarian revolution can stop you, destroying your power Appendix: With the Academic Seal of Approval the American Economy becomes ‘People’s Capitalism’Section III: On the ‘Gigantic Movement of Emancipation’ of the Coloured Peoples 1 The Factors of Race and Nation in Marxist Theory (1953) 2 East 3 The Multiple Revolutions 4 ‘Racial’ Pressure of the Peasantry, Class Pressure of the Coloured Peoples Appendix: ‘Negro’ Rage Shook the Rotten Pillars of Bourgeois and Democratic ‘Civilisation’ (1965) Section IV: On the Revolutionary Prospects of Communism 1 The Revolutionary Programme of Communist Society 2 Who’s Afraid of Automation? 3 The Immediate Revolutionary Programme in the Capitalist West Section V: On the Party 1 Considerations on the Party’s Organic Activity When the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable (1965) Annotated Bibliography of Bordiga’s Writings Annotated Bibliography on Bordiga in Italian References