"Vae victis", Germany!
A 1960 article by Amadeo Bordiga on the role which Germany played in the two world wars and which the author expected it to play in a future communist revolution, translated into English for the first time. The translation does not imply endorsement; the article is reproduced here for reference and to illustrate Bordiga’s uneasy internationalism, which was characterized by a firm rejection of support for either the US or the USSR, but also by a dismissive, if not sympathetic attitude toward Nazi Germany.
The revolutionary program of communist society eliminates all forms of ownership of land, the instruments of production and the products of labor - Partito Comunista Internazionale
In this 1957 text drafted for the Partito Comunista Internazionale, Amadeo Bordiga, with his usual acerbic wit, restates some of the “invariant” principles of Marxism, denounces the idea that communism means collective or individual “property” or “ownership”—terms he subjects to historical analysis as transitory juridical forms—argues in favor of social usufruct as the concept most adequate for the future classless society, ridicules the “metaphysical and idealist” error of the “immediatists” who hold that “socialism is a struggle for the individual liberation of the worker” and, just to rub it in, condemns drinkers and smokers as “usufructuary traitors” against the health of the species.
Bordiga and the passion for communism – Jacques Camatte
Jacques Camatte’s 1972 essay on Amadeo Bordiga, discussing the Italian Marxist’s notorious “invariance”, his “hermeneutics” of “the precise connection between the proletariat and theory”, his “prophetic vision” of the communist future, his identification of the party with the class, his disdain for the cult of personality, his “anti-gradualism”, the impact of the publication of the Grundrisse and the Economic Manuscripts of 1844 on his thought, his precocious environmentalism, his anti-individualism, and his failure to recognize the significance of May ’68, pointing out that despite all his contradictions and limitations “his works are full of starting points for new research”.
Commentary on the Manuscripts of 1844 - Amadeo Bordiga
Bordiga’s 1959 commentary on Marx’s 1844 Paris Manuscripts.
Dialogue with Stalin - Amadeo Bordiga
In the 1950s, the International Communist Party undertook a world-historic task: unravelling the Russian enigma. Through a series of articles they attempted to grapple with the nature of the Russian revolution. We present to you for the first time Bordiga’s “Dialogue with Stalin”. A one way conversation with Stalin and his “Economic Problems of the USSR”. Through a careful textual analysis, reference to Marx and Engels and the Marxist method, Bordiga systematically reveals what is left unsaid but implied, by the admissions of the Stalinist bureaucracy: That capitalism had triumphed over the revolution.
Collection of the translated writings of Amadeo Bordiga
This is a collection of, to my knowledge, all the translated writings of Amadeo Bordiga. Spanning from 1912 to 1965, this collection features every topic from the nature of the USSR, the role of the communist party, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Loren Goldner - Amadeo Bordiga, the Agrarian Question, and the International Revolutionary Movement
Loren Goldner's introduction to Amadeo Bordiga's critique of Soviet Industrialization and capitalism, and how it differs from his contemporaries such as Trotskyism.
Against anti-fascism: Amadeo Bordiga’s last interview
The text of the interview was originally published in Storia Contemporanea no. 3, September 1973. Bordiga also spoke to journalists Sergio Zavoli and Edek Osser for a filmed interview, excerpts of which were included in a documentary on the rise of Fascism. Translated by Giovanni Tiso.
Down with the Bourgeois Republic! Down with Its Constitution! – Amadeo Bordiga
An article from 1947 by Amadeo Bordiga in which he discusses the debate over the constitution of the new Italian republic, the role of religion and secularism in Italian history, the opportunism of the Communist Party, “conformism” in Italian politics, the incompatibility of religion and socialism, the idolatry of the “sacred and inviolable” rights of the “Individual”, the fraud of political decentralization (which he correctly saw as opening the door of politics to the Mafia), the “demagogic appeal to labor” in modern “totalitarian” ideologies (the goal of the workers movement is “a society founded not on labor, but on consumption”), the illusion of self-management, etc.
Dialogue with Bordiga – Jacques Camatte
In this 1988 essay, Jacques Camatte reassesses the continuing relevance of Bordiga’s emphasis on the need for a “radical break” (scisma) with democracy—a view that Camatte maintains is “not the exclusive property of the extreme right”—which, since the prospect for communist revolution was nullified by the victories of the United States in the two world wars, must now, according to Camatte, serve as the presupposition for another radical break—a break with the culture that is the product of the Enlightenment and its cult of science and productivity—and our reconciliation with nature.
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