Marxism

Collection of writings from people associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or the Frankfurt School

The notion that there exists a growing middle class whose livelihood rests neither on wage labour nor manufacturing or industrial profits has long been used to challenge Marx’s revolutionary perspective that ultimately the future of capitalism will be decided by a struggle between the two great contending classes in modern society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or if you prefer, the bosses and the workers.

The following piece is a slightly condensed translation of the Italian original, published in the January edition of Battaglia Comunista, journal of the ICT’s founding section in Italy.

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).