Left Communism - Italian Left Communism Until 1926

Italian Left Communism Until 1926

The Italian left communists were named "left communists" at a later stage in their development, but when the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) was founded, its members actually represented the majority of communists in that country. This was a result of the Abstentionist Communist Faction of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) being in advance of other sections of the PSI in their realisation that a separate communist party had to be formed which did not include reformists. This gave them a great advantage over the sections of the PSI who looked to figures such as Serratti and Gramsci for leadership. It was a consequence of the revolutionary impatience common at a time when revolution, in the narrow sense of an insurrectionary attempt at the seizure of power, was expected to develop in the very near future.

Under the leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, the left was to control the PCI until the Lyons Congress of 1926. In this period, the militants of the PCI would find themselves isolated from reformist workers and from other anti-fascist militants. At one stage this isolation was deepened when communist militants were instructed to leave defense organisations that were not totally controlled by the party. These sectarian tactics produced concern in the leadership of the Communist International and led to a developing opposition within the PCI itself. Eventually these two factors led to the displacement of Bordiga from his position as first secretary and his replacement by Gramsci. By then, Bordiga was in a fascist jail and he was to remain outside organised politics until 1952. The development of the Left Communist Faction was not the development of the Bordigist current (as it is often portrayed).

The year 1925 was a turning point for the Italian left as it was the year that the so-called Bolshevisation took place in the sections of the Communist International. This plan was designed to eliminate all social democratic deviations from the Comintern and develop them on Bolshevik lines or at least along the lines of what Zinoviev, the secretary of the International, considered Bolshevik lines. In practice, this meant top-down bureaucratic structures in which the members were controlled by a leadership approved of by the Comintern's International Executive Committee. In Italy this meant that the leadership which had formerly been in the hands of Bordiga was given to a body that came into being when the Serrati-Maffi minority of the PSI joined the PCI, although Bordiga's group were in a majority. The new leadership was supported by Bordiga, who, as a centralist, accepted the will of the International.

Nevertheless, Bordiga fought the IEC from within, only to have an article of his which was favourable to Trotsky's positions on the disputed Russian questions suppressed. Meanwhile, sections of the left motivated by Onorato Damen formed the Entente Committee. This committee was ordered to dissolve itself by the incoming leadership, led now by Gramsci who only then opposed Bordiga's positions, which had gained prestige after a successful recruitment campaign. With the party Congress of 1926 held in Lyons, crowned by Gramsci's famous Lyons Theses, the left majority was now defeated and on course to becoming a minority within the party. With the victory of fascism in Italy, Bordiga was jailed and when he opposed a vote against Trotsky in the prison PCI group, he was expelled from the party in 1930 . He took a stance of non-involvement in politics for many years after this. The victory of Italian fascism also meant that the Italian left would enter into a new chapter in its development - this time in exile.