ONORATO DAMEN BORDIGA BEYOND THE MYTH Prometheus Publications 1 Prometheus Publications BM CWO London WC1N 3XX www.leftcom.org email: [email protected] Translated from the Italian by Jock Dominie, Anthony Pace, and Liz Rayner. Layout: Roger Martin. Thanks to all the comrades who proofread and corrected this work. 2 Contents Introducing Onorato Damen 7 Preface to the New Italian Edition (2009) 9 Remembering Onorato Damen on the Thirtieth Anniversary of his Death 11 Amadeo Bordiga – The Value and Limitations of an Experience in the History of the “Italian Left” 13 Introductory Note to the First Edition (1971) 15 Introductory Note to the Second Edition (1977) 16 Amadeo Bordiga – Beyond the Myth and the Rhetoric 21 Five Letters and an Outline of the Disagreement 31 On The Union Question 63 Points of Disagreement with the 1952 “Platform” Drafted by Bordiga 68 Crisis of Bordigism? Maybe, But Not a Crisis of the Italian Left 74 The Irrational in the World of the Superstructure 85 Axioms of Revolutionary Theory and Practice 91 The “Absolutes” of Neo-Idealism 98 We Defend the Italian Left 104 You Can’t Build the Party Playing with Paradoxes 120 Bologna 1919: A Page from History 131 Appendix One: The Fraction and Bordigism 135 Appendix Two: A Brief History of the Italian Left 138 Appendix Three: Letter of Bordiga to Karl Korsch 141 3 Appendix Four: Letter of Bordiga to Umberto Terracini 145 Notes to the English Edition 147 4 To my companion Cecca* for a whole life lived in active militancy, with a modesty equal to her intense activity and her total fidelity to the cause of socialism *Francesca Grossi (born Milan 1901), member of the Committee of Intesa of 1925 and wife of Onorato Damen, she was a founder member of the Internationalist Communist Party in Autumn 1943 and remained dedicated to it until her death in Milan in 1996. 5 6 Introducing Onorato Damen In the English-speaking political scene there is still enormous ignorance about the Italian Left and its key role in maintaining and stimulating the reawakening of a wider internationalist communist movement of which the CWO came to be a part. Too often the phrase “Italian Left” is associated with Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Writings have become a favourite in left reformist and academic circles and who is often mistakenly or deliberately portrayed as the founding-figure of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921.1 Even amongst more politically aware, the Italian Left tends to be regarded exclusively as ‘Bordigism’. This is much nearer the truth, in that Amadeo Bordiga emerged as the prime spokesman when the Communist Party of Italy was formed at Livorno in 1921 (where Gramsci never said a word) and was the undoubted political leader in the new Party Executive until his imprisonment in 1923. Seizing the opportunity the Comintern manoeuvred to oust the Left from the Party Executive even though the Left were still the majority in the Party as a whole; amongst them was Onorato Damen. Damen always recognised the genius and contribution of Bordiga but was not uncritical of some of his tactical and theoretical positions. Even in 1919 he had been critical of the fact that Bordiga put a tactical question of abstaining from parliamentary activity before the need to form a Communist Party. The result was that the Party’s formation was delayed until 1921 by which time the “Red Two Years” were over. Damen was also critical of the way Bordiga passively accepted his substitution as leader of the party by Gramsci and Togliatti in 1923 (Gramsci having been groomed in Moscow on how to keep the party in line whilst Bordiga was imprisoned by the Fascists). Damen and others urged Bordiga to fight back and in 1925 formed a Comitato d’Intesa (Committee of Agreement or Entente) to fight “bolshevisation” but when they were told to dissolve it by Gramsci, Bordiga complied, against the opposition of the other signatories.2 Ironically all three were to meet again in 1926 as prisoners of the Fascist regime on the remote island of Ustica. Damen arrived first and set up a kind of communist living quarters in an old “saracen tower” (where the population used to hide from Arab slavers). This became the “Villa Damen”. When Gramsci arrived with Bordiga a party “school” was set up where Gramsci led on literature and history, Bordiga on science and Damen on Marxist economics. Gramsci mentions this, and what he and Bordiga did, but Damen was perhaps too controversial and politically active a figure to mention in the Prison Letters. After all it was only a few months since the Gramsci- Togliatti Executive Committee had sent out orders to all local PCd’I federations that if Damen turned up anywhere his person and his accommodation should be searched and any documents found on him sent to the leadership. The school only lasted 6 weeks before its members were transferred to less congenial surroundings. Within a few years both Damen and Bordiga were expelled from the party they had founded 7 and Bordiga retired from all political activity for a decade and a half. For the next 17 years Damen was to be in and out of prison, once gaining his release after organising a prison riot in Civitavecchia. He did, however, maintain secret contact with the Italian Fraction, of internationalist communists in exile in France and Belgium. Thus, when a new Internationalist Communist Party was formed in 1943 in opposition to the Stalinists and to both sides in the imperialist war he became one of its most militant and public organisers. Bordiga did not join the new Party but from 1945 wrote a column for its paper, Battaglia Comunista. By 1948 however, Bordiga was arguing for a return to the positions of the Party in 1921 even though history had moved on. He even questioned the very formation of the party as premature and seemed to be arguing for purely theoretical work. His document “On Activism” was written against those like Damen who insisted that theory and practice (praxis) were equally impotent if separated. “On Activism” has valid points against the kind of sterile activism we see so much of amongst the so- called Left today but it was not an accurate picture of what Damen and his comrades were arguing. For Damen the party could not be built “just by sitting behind a typewriter” and argued that there had to be an ongoing attempt to reach the wider working class, even in the situation of an apparent capitalist revival. This became one of the bases of the famous split in the Internationalist Communist Party in 1951-2. All the documents in this collection refer to one or other aspect of the differences with the new cult of what we call “late” Bordigism which emerged in the 1950s. The International Communist Party which was founded by Bordiga has endured numerous splits since with each new manifestation claiming to be the authentic “Bordigist” Party. Fortunately there is no cult of Damen. Yet his life was a remarkable one. He might easily have been shot for mutiny in the First World War. He managed to survive gun battles with Fascists in the early 1920s, could have been done away with in the prison riot of Civitavecchia or by the Stalinists at the end of the Second World War but somehow he survived it all. We hope the translation of this collection of his writings will bring him to a wider audience as part of our work to carry on and develop what we consider to be the real heritage of the internationalist communist left to which he contributed so much. Communist Workers’ Organisation December 2015 8 Preface to the New Italian Edition (2009) The originality and importance of this volume – in a expanded edition including new documents and editorial notes, from the two previous editions: 1971 and 1977, EPI (Editoriale periodici italiani) – mainly lies in the documents that throw permanent light on the distinctive development and perspectives of the “Italian Left” over decades (among the most tragic in modern history) in the history of international communism. Putting the two names (Damen – Bordiga) together is no accident, but neatly demonstrates a coincidence of ideas and work, as well as heated debates on the different ways to consider these ideas and that work which, in the concerns of both of them, cemented the organisation of the revolutionary party. There is no political dilettantism here, but dialectically unavoidable contradictory positions, trying to find the correct line of theoretical and practical interpretation in the exclusive interest of the revolutionary party. Gathered here are the most significant critical analyses about the series of divergences that developed in the post-war period – and “exploded” at a certain point – into real disagreement between Bordiga and a group of his supporters, and a number of comrades who were distinguished by their consistently strong political leadership and revolutionary militancy, both before and after the end of the imperialist conflict. Comrades who had held high the banner of the Left, never giving in or abandoning the struggle despite enormously adverse conditions and persecution; comrades who, with commitment and sacrifice, had continued to develop a theoretical elaboration that was not statically contemplative and allowed a minimum of practical activity, in sharp contrast to what Bordiga advised, and gave an example of, in his own conduct. Militants who, though working in the difficult situation of the period, could certainly not be pushed aside with charges as false and politically defamatory, as ... “activism, the historic refuge of the renegade,” dictated by the frenzy of their “political and personal electioneering.” The thirtieth anniversary of the death of Onorato Damen has given us the opportunity to reorganise and enrich this collection of writings and documents, with additional explanatory notes and an appendix consisting of new writings, letters etc ... Materials which, taken together, contribute to a critical analysis of the more than questionable views and behaviour which Bordiga demonstrated after his reappearance at the end of the war. His formal declarations of intransigence were accompanied by a claim to represent, in a personal interpretation which brooked no discussion an “invariant” Marxism which threatened to discredit the figure of the still prestigious representative of the Italian left that was Bordiga himself, at least until the mid-twenties. Not only that, but the group that had gathered in the shadow of this new character saw the work they had done so far for to reconstruct the class political organisation taken 9 down a blind alley. It was down to Onorato Damen, who we will remember as an indomitable communist fighter in every period of his life, to highlight errors in some of Bordiga’s political perspectives, to denounce the danger which threatened not only the recently reconstructed party, but also all the theoretical political and organisational heritage of the Italian left: that is to say, the one revolutionary current that had managed to maintain uninterrupted, throughout the longest and most tragic period of the international communist movement’s history, its basic theoretical principles and the political praxis which flowed from it. 10