Amadeo Bordiga

Introduction to the Amadeo Bordiga archive on the Libertarian Communist Library

Bordiga (1889-1970) was an influential member of the Italian communist movement and leader of the Absentionist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party and for a time leader of the Italian Communist Party, before resigning in favour of Gramsci, under pressure from Lenin.

The Story Of Our Origins

Some sections of "le roman de nos origines" from La Banquise No. 2 ( 1983 ) in english translation.

These three sections are from the second part of the article.

Arguments for the creation of workers' councils (or "Soviets") in Italy, based in part on the Russian experience. The Leone statement of the Bologna Socialist Party Congress follows in the Appendix. Amadeo Bordiga January/February 1920 First Published: Il Soviet, Vol. III, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7; January 1, 11, February 1, 8, 22 1920;

The decontamination to which we dedicate 90% of our humble work will be continued a long time after us and be realised only in the distant future. This decontamination combats the epidemic - always and everywhere dangerous, of those who - in all places and at all times - innovate, bring up to date, renovate and revise...

Amadeo Bordiga 1952

First Published: Battaglia Comunista No. 8, 17-20 April 1952;

In launching our communist programme, which contained the outlines of a response to many vital problems concerning the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, we expected to ace a broad discussion develop on all its aspects. Instead there has been and still is only furious discussion over the incompatibility of electoral participation, which is soberly affirmed in the programme.

Amadeo Bordiga May 1919

First Published: Il Soviet, 13 September 1919, Vol. II, No.38;

1. Marxism is not a matter of choice between conflicting opinions, in the sense that Marxism is connected with a historic tradition. 2. Orientation of the dialectic method of Marxism; the contradiction between the productive forces and social forms; classes, class struggle, party-conformism, reformism, anti-formism...

In Italy, we have long experience of "catastrophes that strike the country" and we also have a certain specialisation in "staging" them. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, rainstorms, epidemics... The effects are indisputably felt especially by poorer people and those living at high densities, and if cataclysms that are frequently much more terrifying strike all corners of the world, not always do such unfavourable social conditions coincide with geographical and geological ones.

First Published: Battaglia Comunista No. 24 1951;

Letters from the Central Committee of the Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party to the Moscow Committee of the IIIrd International, November 1919 and January 1920.

The patriotic saga of Italy raised the Piave to the status of the national river, and designated it as such, in 1917. In the war which was to have been the Fourth War of Independence, leading the country in a leap beyond the Venetian frontiers (won by no means by armed might) already gained from the Third. After two years of an immobile front on the Isonzo, streaming blood from a dozen battles, the direction then changed with the famous defeat at, and flight from, Caporetto, with the Austrians flooding onto the plain through this breach.

Amadeo Bordiga 1963
First Published: Il programma comunista no, 20 1963;

Letter written in 1926 Naples, on 28th October 1926 about Karl Korsch's platform

At the Lyons Congress of the Communist Party of Italy in 1926, shortly before the Communist International adopted the theory of "socialism in one country", the Left presented a draft theses (The Lyons Theses) which predictably was rejected by the largely Stalinised party.

Seventy years ago the wave of proletarian strife and insurrection which had brought the lst World War to a close was all but over. Instead of being strengthened and supported by the establishment of a European soviet republic and beyond, the Russian proletariat had been left high and dry.

(Lax and uncaring technology -- Parasitic and pillaging management)

I. Actual and Potential Violence

In the history of social aggregates we recognise the use of material force and violence in an overt form whenever we observe conflicts and clashes among individuals and among groups which result, through many different forms, in the material injury and destruction of physical individuals.

I

1. Communism is the doctrine of the social and historical preconditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

With a document like this it is difficult to avoid a certain disproportion between the different parts, inasmuch as ongoing discussions have rendered certain points and certain arguments more topical, whilst others, of equal importance, have been cast in a minor light. In order to give as full an idea as possible of the thinking of the group of comrades responsible for the present theses, it is worth providing references to some texts, which, although well known, are nowadays rather difficult to find. We believe it therefore useful to precede the present text with references to some documents relevant to the same line that is reasserted and defended here.

Adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920

Two of the articles in our last issue, one devoted to an analysis of the communist system of representation and the other to an exposition of the current tasks facing our Party, concluded by asking whether it is possible or appropriate to set up workers' and peasants' councils today, while the power of the bourgeoisie is still intact.

The working-class disturbances of the past few days in Liguria have seen yet another example of a phenomenon that for some time now has been repeated with some frequency, and that deserves to be examined as a symptom of a new level of consciousness among the working masses.

The patriotic saga of Italy raised the Piave to the position
of the national river, and designated it as such, in 1917. In
the war which was to have been the Fourth War of Independence,
leading the country in a leap beyond the Venetian frontiers
(won by no means by armed might) already gained from the
Third. After two years of an immobile front on the Isonzo,
streaming blood from a dozen battles, the direction then
changed with the famous defeat at, and flight from, Caporetto,
the Austrians flooding onto the plain through this breach.,