100 Years Since Livorno
In January 1921, more than three years after the October Revolution in Russia, some two years since the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin at the behest of the German Social Democratic Party, and in the aftermath of two wasted years of workers’ factory occupations in Italy itself, the intransigent revolutionaries in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), led by Amadeo Bordiga, finally won the day and broke from the old party of compromise and accommodation with capital to form the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I).
To commemorate the centenary of this bitter/sweet event, we join with our comrades in Italy in re-publishing an article written by Onorato Damen for the fiftieth anniversary in 1971. In the run-up to Livorno, Damen himself was one of those who had been pushing for a clear split with Social Democratic fudging and against the idea that the Third — Communist — International could justifiably include elements who dithered and ultimately rejected the revolutionary core of the International itself. Already, behind the scenes in the run-up to Livorno, Bolshevik advisers had been urging for a new Party that would be able to accommodate elements who were somewhat less intransigent than Bordiga and the Left. As it was, the Party was formed without Serrati’s oscillating left Social Democrats but the isolation of the Russian Revolution had taken its toll and the new, intransigent-led Communist Party in Italy soon found itself up against the Comintern Executive’s united front policy. In Italy itself the working class was also on the back foot and the new Party almost immediately came up against the Fascist counter-revolution. As we recall the hopes and aspirations of the comrades who formed the revolutionary party in January 1921 and their aim to join the international struggle for a new world community (when the word ‘communism’ was not equated with totalitarian state control), we cannot but remind ourselves of the paramount lesson from the defeat of the post-World War One revolutionary wave: the need for an international revolutionary party of the working class which will be in a position to give intransigent political guidance to the insurrectionary battles provoked by capital’s attacks which will surely come.