Bordiga, the Leninist who put his hopes in the Axis

The (unmentioned) source is evidently historian Roberto Gremmo's 2009 book Gli anni amari di Bordiga. Un comunista irriducibile e nemico di Stalin nell'Italia di Mussolini, from which the same passages are quoted by Bourrinet in an abridged history of Italian left communism (first part, in French, October 2015 version): http://www.left-dis.nl/f/resum.hist.gci.pdf

Can anyone elaborate on the extent of Bordiga's collaboration with the police? He knew they were cops? Many of these comments sound like something a censor would say. I just want to be sure of this when Bordigists dispute these claims. I know it's controversial because I've used the quote about Hitler and Mussolini in the past but the only sources were the ICC and M. Dupont.

I'm not sure if the quotes above can be taken as Bordiga's actual positions; it seems to be more likely that he told people he thought as informers what he wanted them to report (and the source of these quotes are these reports). In the Avanti Barbari article it's said in a quote that Bordiga kept his true views to himself. Of course the political position of the International Communist Left which had members who perished in concentration camps and spent years in fascist or Nazi prisons and later the International Communist Party against all sides in WW2 is well known, and it's telling of Bordiga's real views that he never defended such nonsense positions within the organizations he was an influential member or supporter of. Since its earliest days, the Italian left defined fascism as a reactionary movement of the big bourgoeisie which was absolutely not revolutionary in any way. These were the positions Bordiga personally defended publically in congresses of the Communist International, and continue to defend after he resumed political activity in 1943.

These are just excuses really. Dude blabbered to the cops on a regular basis. There were plenty of pro-revolutionaries in that time, certain anarchists, who set much better examples in their lives. The fondness for Hitler and Mussolini is disgusting. Marxism for ya..

What a person has said to people he thought were police informers, based on the reports written by the latter, should not be taken as an accurate representation of their political views. I don't think Bordiga had a choice in talking to people working for the regime that wanted him under control: his choice was doing this in "liberty" or in prison, and keeping his views to himself or openly exposing them in these talks; and the latter option would have landed him in prison. It is not disgusting to feed a police informant disinformation in order to avoid repression; perhaps it isn't particularly heroic to do so either but he doesn't deserve to be treated as if he actually became a collaborator by publically taking a pro-Axis position - which he never did, in fact publically Bordiga always acknowledged WW2 to be an imperialist war. It seems to me that the worst Bordiga can be accused of here is lying to police informants about his views. I don't find that disgusting, though if he said those things in public, I do think disgust would be justified.

Anti-marxist anarchists love using things like this for lack of better arguements against marxism though (for example claiming Marx's personal letters about Lasalle to be equal to Bakunin's publically anti-semitic position that favorably claimed the massacre of Jews to be an inevitable consequence of any revolution). As for Italian anarchists during WW2, many of them went on to join partisan groups lead by Stalinists, social-democrats and other bourgeois parties and incidentally the best of them went on to develop a cooperation with... the "Bordigists".

I think there is a huge difference between considering Anglo-American imperialism as the most powerful and dangerous exponent of capitalism compared not only to Axis but also Stalinist Russia (a consideration which was in fact proven correct as the Ango-American block was not only far older than its rivals but also went on to outlive them all), and actually hailing Hitler and Mussolini as revolutionaries and supporting their war effort.

In fact, the quotes in the original post put forward a point of view against internationalist communism and revolutionary defeatism and signify actual support for the Axis war effort whereas the quote from Bourrinet about Hitler working "in spite of himself" is made in reference to the common expectation among the internationalist communists at the time that the war would be concluded with a wave of proletarian revolutions, like the last war. In fact, nowhere in the quotes in the original post is Bordiga talking about internationalist communism or world revolution: He's not saying he anticipates the defeat of both sides, he's not saying he anticipates or hopes the imperialist war to turn to class war, he's talking about things like "life of nations", and in fact the opposition of one side against the plutocracy and supercapitalism of the other: positions which all left communists would have considered an open betrayal of everything internationalist communism stands for had they been defended openly. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only people Bordiga spread such nonsense to were these informants. In fact I think reporting regime-friendly statements of support for the fascist powers was the main thing the police infiltrators would be interested in the whole exchange and though it is of course possible that these informants falsified or exaggerated statements in their reports for whatever reason, it nevertheless seems that Bordiga gave them what they wanted to hear, and used language and concepts they would understand and relate to (as I've never seen Bordiga talk about "life of nations" anywhere else). And I think it should also be considered that Bordiga in fascist Italy was a former political prisoner, who was not a member of any organization, who was simply working professionally and who nevertheless was open about not having changed his internationalist communist positions. A former political prisoner living in such conditions is a hostage and it is impossible to avoid surveillance by the regime, under constant threat of repression (which of course, wasn't nearly as bad in fascist Italy in general as it was in Nazi Germany - communists, anarchists and many others in Nazi Germany weren't exiled to beautiful coastal islands).

I haven't seen any direct evidence that there was an understanding between Bordiga and the regime that as long as he refrained from any political activity, he was free to voice his true (i.e., internationalist communist) views in private, but I'd be surprised if Bordiga would put his trust on such a freedom. As Bordiga hasn't actually written anything directly supporting the Axis war effort or describing Mussolini and Hitler as revolutionaries (though he's written a number of texts which defended the opposite views), in fact if it is only in the reports of these informants that he's taken these positions whereas the organizations he was involved with always denounced the war itself, and all sides that participated in it, I think there is reasonable cause to think he was telling the informants what he wanted them to report so that he would be left alone by the regime. He may not be fooling anyone about his true convictions, but may well have fooled the regime to think that he wouldn't join with the rest of the Italian left communists who were taking an openly internationalist position as they did in the previous war and thus posed no threat against the war effort - in fact he couldn't have joined them if he defended these positions openly and would be denounced as a traitor (as left communists proved they were ready to do so when a false rumor spread that Bordiga supported the advance of the Red Army in Eastern Europe).

I don't know what theses Bordiga is talking about here, however I'm sure the quotes above did not exceed the modest competence and preparation of these specialists of the political police so I don't think Bordiga is referring to these positions which he never defended elsewhere and which are completely contrary both to the political tradition he was a part of and the positions he himself defended throughout his life. In any case Bordiga didn't make this comment on Troiani's reports at the state archive quoted above which wouldn't be available to him or anyone else at the time.

Bordiga is saying here that the preferable outcome would be the collapse of London as well as Berlin, "the outbreak of revolution throughout Europe", not victory of Axis over the Allies in general and Axis domination instead of Allied domination over Europe. I think it's clear that there's miles between this position and what Bordiga said to the informers.

Bordiga isn't talking about internationalist communism or world revolution in the first quote, he's talking about an axis victory somehow bringing capitalism down simply by bringing Britain down - there is no mention of revolution, the working class, internationalism or communism.

I think he started getting involved in 1943 with the Fraction of Naples, which was the year other left communist organizations like the Internationalist Communist Party as well as the anarchists partisan groups started operating as well, indeed in the period Italian fascism was collapsing, but the Axis war wasn't finished yet and Mussolini was still in power in Northern Italy thanks to German support. Bordiga didn't keep to what he had told the informants, as the Fraction Bordiga was involved with was opposed to the Axis as well as the Allies and considered the war to be imperialist in nature. Indeed he posed no threat to the fascist war effort and despite a brief resurgence of class struggle in Italy, the war did not lead to a revolutionary situation anywhere.

Yes, he is saying London before Berlin, but Berlin before anywhere else as well since he explicitly says "beginning with Berlin", and in any case nowhere is he talking about domination of the Axis over Europe in the quote you are referring to, or even domination of Axis in Britain. An outcome of the war that's not conservative, that's revolutionary would mean the collapse of London would be like the collapse of Russia in WW1, that is if we take the quote in the context of the actual positions Bordiga defended in his texts rather than try to link it to statements he made to police informants in the past. Besides it shouldn't be forgotten that the context of this quote is Bordiga lamenting about the Soviet Union contributing to the stability of Europe instead of disrupting it by letting Britain and Nazi Germany fight it out, but he's definitely not saying the Soviet Union should have joined the war as an ally of Axis which is exactly what someone who actually believed in those things he said to the informants would argue. I consider Stalin's Russia to be no less imperialist than Nazi Germany or the United Kingdom so I don't sympathize with Bordiga's point here, or in fact in any of the quotes discussed in this thread.

Nevertheless I don't see a continuity between what Bordiga told the informants and the other quotes because it seems to me interesting, for example, that Bordiga omitted his thoughts on the fall of Berlin and the subsequent fall of Rome as well which is implied when he was talking to his informers. Nor is he talking about the anti-supercapitalist, anti-plutocratic and revolutionary nature of Hitler and Mussolini, ironically or otherwise in the later quote. Indeed, wishing far the fall of Berlin right after London (that is before the US, USSR etc.) would not be in line with considering the regime in Berlin and Rome any of those things. Generally, the other quotes don't contradict the generally internationalist and revolutionary positions of the communist left which Bordiga subscribed to (which took a clear position of opposition to all sides in WW2 as internationalist marxists did in WW1, and I presume you know it is this perspective that has always been defended in all the works of this current in its various incarnations), despite being wrong in certain ways.

The positions Bordiga took in his discussions with the informers, however, had they been his public positions, would be going so much further than being mistakes that they would have been considered a betrayal by the left communists which is probably why Bordiga has always voiced contrary views in his works.

So as well as being for the crushing of Kronstadt and for party dictatorship, Bordiga wanted the Axis to win?

What is it going to take for libcom to finally realise that he and his followers are not libertarians nor, for that matter, communists? Why they are given space here is lost on me -- resources wasted which could be used for genuine libertarian communists.

It is not like Marxism has just proved anarchists correct? Whether it is becoming reformist with social-democracy or becoming the dictatorship over the proletariat, I guess actual evidence matters little for "scientific" socialists...

Oh, but I forgot, for the followers of Boridiga having a dictatorship over the proletariat is fine -- as long as they are the dictators.

So, again, these people are neither libertarians nor communists -- why are they here?

The International Communist Party does not defend a dictatorship over the proletariat, they write:

Source: http://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/English/51PrDict...

It seems to me that this is a design which doesn't actually allow for a party to be in power in the conventional sense because it's the entire class that's in power and there is no act of delegation as it's a system based rather on rotation than elections. The ICP text goes on to define the role of the party to win over a majority to the slogan: "All power to the Soviets!", and the only way there can be a rule of a communist party in this scheme is through having the support of a majority in the soviets even if it's the party itself that animates the establishment of a soviet regime by consistently defending the dictatorship of these organs. I think the only way a party can rule in such a system is as a political guide that is a part of the class in power, not as an hegemonic power over the class itself.

Also, I've read online that Bordiga didn't actually take a clear position on Kronstadt, he said he lacked information about it though of course his impression of the events were based more on the Comintern side of the story. I personally think that Kronstadt was a tragedy, and not a "tragic necessity" as some "Bordigists" claim, but an avoidable, unnecessary tragedy, and I think a study of Kronstadt shows that the Bolshevik Party were wrong to suppress it. In my opinion it is clear that there is a contradiction between Lenin's position of comradely coexistance with ideological anarchism which, while for some groups like the All-Russian Federation of Anarchist Communists meant they experienced no suppression until 1925 despite being openly supportive of Kronstadt and critical of its repression, there were many ideological anarchists who were often falsely accused of being bandits and terrorists by the Cheka and wrongly repressed. In my opinion, the suppression of anarchist youth organizations and anarcho-syndicalist unions and the repression of Makho's peasant movement was unnecessary and wrong as well so long as they recognized soviet power and were willing to participate in the soviet system. Though of course there is a Bolshevik side of these events as well who had better, more internationalist and class oriented politics than even the best of the groups they were suppressing and who were facing a civil war and imperialist encirclement and who, for example in the case of Kronstadt, suffered far heavier casualties than the rebels, I absolutely don't see any reason to make a virtue out of these mistakes which in the end harmed the revolution itself.

This being said, I don't think marxism or the communist left can be described as libertarian or authoritarian. I agree with Marx when he says: "All socialists see anarchy as the following program: Once the aim of the proletarian movement – i.e., abolition of classes – is attained, the power of the state, which serves to keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government become simple administrative functions.” Though Lenin and the communist left afterwards didn't really take up the term anarchy in the way used here afterwards, I believe it's appropriate, and in line with the soviet system described above as well as Lenin's "Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing".

Avoiding having to go through state repression again? Why would he share his honest view of the situation only with people he knew to be police informants but never shared it with anyone else he talked to or never defended it elsewhere?

I expect he would have been arrested if he had done so, or perhaps if he had not said what he did even. It was exactly because he was an "unrepentant communist" he was under surveillance. I don't think he had any obligation to accurately expose his positions to the informants who wanted to talk to him and reported the conversations to the fascist police.

The catastrophe he's talking about is the London government not emerging for the hundredth time intact from the storm of war, so he is talking about Britain being effected by war and losing it, but this doesn't necessarily mean a victory of Axis over the United States or the USSR, and was something Bordiga predicted would lead to a revolutionary situation in Britain as well as in Germany right after it.

Well, he is talking about what the Soviet Union has done, and here's what he says about it's earlier alliance with Nazi Germany, making it clear that he was opposed to this: "When the war broke out, Moscow signed a pact with Berlin: this historical reversal, accompanied by Marxist arguments about the imperialist and aggressive nature of the war waged by London and Paris, in which the self-proclaimed communist parties were called upon not to participate, will never be subjected to the criticism it deserves."

I don't think statements like those provoked the police at all, especially considering that they were tied only to an axis victory and nothing else of the sort of things Bordiga defends in his writings to accompany an actual collapse of the capitalist system, that is workers councils, a communist party etc. Of course being known as an unrepentant communist, he had to justify the nonsense he had to say somehow.

Yes, I agree we're running in circles. What I'm saying is that there is a noticeable difference, even a contradiction between what he told the police informant Aliotta, that is what is quoted in the original post, and all the other quotes mentioned, to the extent that:

This isn't even true for example when you consider the position as reported by Aliotta, since alliance with one bloc - never defined as imperialist in discussion with Aliotta - would be good, not bad. This is not consistent with any of the other statements we are discussing here, which clearly define Axis as an imperialist block and the Soviet alliance with Axis and then Allies are both denounced without being compared. In fact, Bordiga's position in his letters to Damen is that the Anglo-American block is more powerful and well-rooted than the Soviet block but even then he doesn't defend the Eastern block against the West despite pointing out that it is weaker and newer.

I think you're reading way too much into what a former prisoner told someone who reported his words to his former captives and seeing connections between these to texts and quotes where clearly different and in some cases contradictory views and perspectives are defended while ignoring all other evidence, that is the body of Bordiga's work when he was politically active where he voiced irreconcilable opposition to fascism as well as democracy. Honestly, I think assuming he wanted "to sound less enthusiastic about it than he actually was" in texts he voluntarily wrote for his organization in order to save the argument that he was sincere and honest in his inescapable conversations with police informants is absolutely absurd. And you're neglecting the fact that Bourrinet says Bordiga shared the positions of the International Communist Left against the war which declared it to be imperialist as did the Fraction he was involved with starting from 1943. Exactly because he was as a member of an organization composed of many people for whom the fascist regime did not mean a comfortable middle-class existence in Naples, but rather imprisonment, exile, and internment in concentration camps (in the case of his comrades in territories under Nazi control), I would take the simplest explanation to be true: that his true views on fascism and Nazism are what he wrote in public documents as a member of such an organization rather than the reports made by a police informer.

I too rest my case, repeating that:

This point, again lumps not only what Bordiga told genuine communists and the informants together, ignoring the contradictions, the most important of which is that that there was nothing communist about what he told the informants, nor did he speak highly of Mussolini or eulogized him and Hitler as revolutionaries to anyone else, considering fascism and Nazism to be transitory forms of capitalist and bourgeois conservation, a correct assessment, compared to the more enduring model of classical Western democracy which in fact went on to assimilate fascism and Nazism to a great extent during the Cold War.

I find your insistence on the supposed "similarity" of the argument in that article which you distort by ignoring the fact that the quote is about Soviet intervention in the war and Soviet alliance with Axis has been condemned a few sentences earlier, and the earlier quotes reported by the police informer strange. Simply, there is nothing similar between supporting the leaders of a block as revolutionaries and condemning them as imperialists, between celebrating a war and condemning it regardless of what one might speculate on the effects of the outcome.

Once again, I think it's established that of the three imperialist blocks, Bordiga considered the Anglo-American one to be the strongest and most capable of establishing a stable order by putting off any prospect of a revolution. However nowhere except in the reports made by that police informer did Bordiga actually defend the idea of an Axis victory in the war, and you're, once again, ignoring that his later article speculated on a revolutionary conclusion of the war which would see the fall of Berlin after that of London - but before anywhere else.

Bordiga and the communist left of which he was a representative and a leader rather than a defining founder, defended "this moralistic conception of internationalism" in all their public and internal texts, and never the idea of a red-brown front that is clearly implied in what Bordiga was telling that informer. Speculating about how a revolutionary instead of conservative outcome of the war, (that is an outcome similar to that of WW1, not the outcome of WW2 but with an Axis victory) is one thing, considering the beginning of the war a great day and praising Mussolini and Hitler as genuine revolutionaries is something entirely different - the latter is a position completely in line with the social-chauvinists who Lenin, Luxemburg and others including Bordiga condemned during WW1 and which, I repeat, would have made Bordiga no different than Bombacci, that is a traitor in the eyes of the communist left had this been his public, sincere position rather than something he told an informer (and in fact, something an informer reported to the state) in what undoubtedly contributed to him avoiding further harassment by the regime. During the period of his inactivity as a former political prisoner in fascist Italy, Bordiga's life was disturbed several times by interrogations, arrests or police provocations. If the report is accurate, what Bordiga did, making such a statement in order to avoid further imprisonment, though understandable, is something which itself warrants criticism - perhaps, Bordiga should have gone to prison rather than saying such nonsense to a police informer. He was the proponent of a patient approach of waiting for the next generation and didn't recommend anyone to get caught up in acts of martyrdom and heroism. In all honesty, he hadn't had that difficult a time in prison (that is in exile on an island town, a far kinder fate than a concentration camp in Poland or even an isolator in Siberia) to warrant saying these things to avoid it, but he had given up all political activity and was focusing entirely on his professional life so it's clear that he nevertheless didn't want to be in the hands of the regime again, to whom he owed no truth.

On the other hand, the fact is if Bordiga was sincere about all those things he told that informer, he was well capable of acting on such convictions in fascist Italy, in fact such a pro-Axis activity would have been promoted by the regime itself, he wouldn't be the only one to collaborate with the regime without changing all his former convictions and his name would add a good deal of prestige to the regime. So why didn't Bordiga become another Bombacci? As an unrepentant yet unorganized communist Bordiga managed to have a social life so much that the Fascist police noted in July 1939 that "…Bordiga in Naples finds always new sympathies even among his adversaries, and meets a broad adhesion in the camp of the intellectual middle-class" however no one who talked to him from this period, other than a single police informant, reports Bordiga celebrating the war and hailing Mussolini and Hitler as anti-plutocratic revolutionaries. Indeed, instead of taking the road of a red-brown alliance, Bordiga broke his promise of non involvement in political organizations to the fascist regime and got involved with the Fraction in 1943, an organization which was clear in denouncing all sides of the war and exposing its imperialist nature, that is an organization which took "this moralistic conception of internationalism" that is supposedly "totally alien to Bordiga himself", in fact an organization which was far more sympathetic towards the partisans than it was to the fascists (and indeed, Bordiga and other left communists predicted and strongly criticized Togliatti for disarming the partisans). On the question of the war, the Fraction Bordiga was involved with was without ambiguity: They put ahead the need for "proletarian internationalism" and "the transformation of the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war". They expressed no sympathy towards the Fascists or the Nazis and despite being against anti-fascism and democratic fronts, they considered certain movements of partisans positively expressed "the attempt at a class revenge, at an autonomous demonstration of revolutionary forces..." I think it's clear that the direction of the voluntary organizational activity a person takes is much more indicative of their sincere convictions than what they told agents of the regime that had recently imprisoned them.

btw.: German council communist Willi Huhn also wrote in 1939 some disturbing stuff in which he declared support for Germany's war against Poland

Do you have more info about that E.? I could find on google snippet view (Siegfried Prokop 1997, p. 28) that Huhn indeed supported Hitler's war.

The council communist who actively supported Hitler in the war.

Here's what Onorato Damen, of the Internationalist Communist Party, wrote about Bordiga's attitude towards the Axis (tldr: it was never the position of the party which had an internationalist policy; Bordiga himself briefly entertained the notion only to abandon it after the war, some Bordigists revived his hypothesis later on):

"One final note, which we hold to be particularly important, regards the attitude of Bordiga to war, and to reject the theoretical deformations by Bordiga’s epigones attributed either to him, or to the communist left in general, which on this issue, as the foundation of its revolutionary strategy, has all its papers in order.

So what is the attitude that the comrades of Programma Comunista [periodical of the group which was headed by Bordiga after the split of 1952] say they have had and continue to have in the face of war? Here’s how they put it:

“We wrote about war, for example in “The historic course of the proletarian class movement”: “War is undoubtedly a result of social causes (we would say primarily economic) and its military outcomes fit as first order factors in the process of transformation of international society, interpreted from the materialist and class point of view.” There are historical phases in which it is our duty to influence as much as we can a certain outcome of the war. In others, absolutely not. The outcome always interests us.”

And, by way of illustration, they add:

“The accusation that we wanted an anti-American victory in the Korean War, does not make us either hot or cold, and only a fool can interpret it as “intellectual sympathy”. We went much further: we went as far as saying it would be more advantageous for the resumption of the class struggle in the world, that America and its allies were defeated in World War II. Can it be said that we have an “intellectual sympathy” for Nazism, or just love paradox? Everyone can see the result of the Anglo-American victory: the oppression of the whole world, blurring the viewpoint of some to such an extent that they believe that it can determine everything that happens even in the remotest corner of the earth!”

Dialectics here are used with a sly purpose, dishonestly trying to deflect from their own ideological and political error in order to justify it. Whoever wrote this rubbish, picked up in a hurry in the filth of bourgeois culture, must have in his veins the social-patriotic blood that, in anticipation of the next imperialist war, already feels inclined to turn its back on the Leninist slogan of “revolutionary defeatism” by disavowing any attempt to distinguish the only strategy that puts all the protagonists of the war on the same level of responsibility, excluding none, whether the American bloc, or the Russian or Chinese bloc.

He who dares to say, “we went as far as to say it would be more advantageous for the resumption of the class struggle in the world, that America and its allies were defeated in World War II” is lying and knows it, and hasn’t even the political honesty to take responsibility for what he writes by signing it. Anyway, we can demonstrate that none of the militants of our party, from its foundation to the split of 1952, (including therefore the comrades now in Programma Comunista) ever solidarised with these positions, and never expressed opinions of this kind in written or oral statements.

It is true that there was a vague hypothesis that Bordiga formulated before or during the war, but once the war was over, he returned to his old mathematical “vice” of supposing that historical events could be understood according to the laws of probability without thinking about the future inexperienced imitators who would use it with no regard to context thus turning a simple laboratory hypothesis, even if badly put, into a political line to be implemented.

And they add, smugly: “Everyone can see the result of the Anglo-American victory”. Would they perhaps prefer, we ask, the victory of the Italian-German axis in the context of the class struggle? Chauvinism apart, the very formulation of this hypothesis is repugnant and indicates a huge ignorance of the imperialist phenomenon which the proletariat has no choice but to try to defeat." (1975)