Science and Passion of Communism

Amadeo Bordiga was one of the greatest figures of the Third International. A socialist militant from the age of 21, he became the undisputed leader of the Communist Party of Italy before being imprisoned by the Mussolini regime. After a long hiatus, he resumed his political and theoretical work in 1944, producing many significant writings in the years up to his death in 1970.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).

Interview by David Broder with Pietro Basso on Jacobin about “the burying of Bordiga’s name, his ecological vision of communism, and how he challenged Joseph Stalin to his face” [Click here]“[The book] is the first English-langauge selection of Bordiga’s writings to cover both the chronological spread and thematic diversity of his interventions. 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… For many decades, even the results of this research have had a tiny readership… [but] when you do get your hands on a copy, you will be in doubt that Bordiga is a wrongly overlooked thinker.” - David Broder, in: Weekly Worker [Full review]

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresIntroduction: Yesterday’s Battles and Today’s WorldPart 1 The Italian Left in the Great Revolutionary Struggle (1912–26)1 Against the War2 On Elections3 On Soviets4 On Strategy and Tactics5 On Fascism, against Fascism6 The Lyons Theses7 Against Stalin and ‘Socialism in One Country’Part 2 The Struggle for the Rebirth of Revolutionary Communism (1945–65)Section 1 Russia and Revolution in Marxist Theory8 Lessons of Counter-revolutions9 Forty Years of Organically Analysing Russian Events within the Dramatic Context of the Social and Historical Course of the WorldSection 2 The Critique of Triumphant Capitalism10 Property and Financial Capital11 Welfare Economics12 The Law of Hunger13 Murder of the Dead14 Inflation of the State15 The United States of America (1947–57)Section 3 On the ‘Gigantic Movement of Emancipation’ of the Coloured Peoples16 The Factors of Race and Nation in Marxist Theory (1953)17 East18 The Multiple Revolutions19 ‘Racial’ Pressure of the Peasantry, Class Pressure of the Coloured PeoplesSection 4 On the Revolutionary Prospects of Communism20 The Revolutionary Programme of Communist Society21 Who’s Afraid of Automation?22 The Immediate Revolutionary Programme in the Capitalist WestSection 5 On the Party23 Considerations on the Party’s Organic Activity When the General Situation is Historically Unfavourable (1965)Annotated Bibliography of Bordiga’s WritingsAnnotated Bibliography on Bordiga in ItalianReferencesIndexIllustrations