Amadeo Bordiga

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Amadeo Bordiga (born June 13, 1889 in Resina ( Province of Naples ), † July 23, 1970 in Formia ) was the founder and first chairman of the Communist Party of Italy .

Life

At the age of 18 he read the “ Communist Manifesto ” in high school under the guidance of his philosophy teacher. Gradually he acquired the Marxist theory and frequented the socialist circles of Naples . In 1910 he began studying engineering in Naples and joined the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI), the Italian social democracy. Just two years later he founded the Circolo Carlo Marx (" Karl Marx Circle") in Naples , which opposed reformism in the party. He became head of the newspaper L'Avanguardia , which mainly campaigned against the Italian military adventure in Libya. At the 1912 PSI Congress in Reggio nell'Emilia , he acted as the leader of the “Revolutionary Youth”.

In 1914, with the newspaper Il Socialista , he turned against the war advocates and against the official neutralist stance of the PSI. Then he was drafted into the military in 1916 at the age of 27, but did not serve at the front. After the First World War he married Ortensia De Meo, with whom he later had two children. She was a combative socialist whom he already knew from the Circolo Carlo Marx . In December 1918, he founded the newspaper Il Soviet , which very soon became the organ of the communist current in the PSI and which strongly criticized the party's reformism. At the 15th PSI Congress he demanded support for Lenin's theses on the international revolution and was a spokesman for the Abstentionist Communist Group.

In 1920 Bordiga took part in the 2nd Congress of the Communist International . Here he supported Lenin and contributed to the drafting of the " 21 Conditions ". He spoke out against the participation of the communist parties in the elections within the industrialized countries, because this would rather hinder the revolutionary development. In October he presented the “Communist Faction” manifesto. Antonio Gramsci and Umberto Terracini also took part in the discussions about a possible spin-off from PSI .

In January 1921 at the PSI Congress in Livorno , Bordiga declared the impossibility of cooperation between revolutionaries, reformists and maximalists. The communists left the building and founded the Communist Party of Italy (KPI) as a section of the Communist International in another bar . The party moved its headquarters to Milan and started its activities under Bordiga's chairmanship. Bordiga now wrote in all four regularly appearing newspapers, Il Soviet , Il Comunista (whose direction he takes over), L'Ordine Nuovo (under the direction of Antonio Gramsci ) and the theoretical organ Rassegna Comunista . Among other things, he took the view that the Communist International should not become a federation of national parties, but a unified world party. In December he took part in the PCF Congress in Marseille as a representative of the International.

At the 4th Congress of the Communist International at the end of November 1922, Bordiga represented the Communist Party of Italy. The fascist march on Rome was just two weeks ago. In the spring of 1923 he was arrested by the police and charged with "plots against the state". In June the arrested party leadership was replaced by Togliatti and Terracini.

After trial and imprisonment, the Communist International called on Bordiga in December to resume his seat on the party's executive committee. He refused on the grounds that out of discipline he had to take positions there that were not his, which would be a mistake towards the organization. In January 1924 he published the monthly magazine Prometeo in Naples to give the party left a mouthpiece. In March of the same year, at the Como conference , most of the party supported the theses of the left. Bordiga refused to stand for the elections. At the 5th Congress of the Communist International, he presented theses on tactics, particularly directed against right-wing revisionism , which threatened the Russian party. The theses are rejected. At the (secret) congress of the KPI in Naples he clashed with the party leaders who were on the line of the Comintern.

In 1925 he defended Trotsky against the attacks of the Stalinists , in the following year he held Stalin face to face in Moscow for having betrayed the revolution. His main concern was the fight against opportunism within the Comintern and the KPI. In December his “Program of Action for the Left” was published in the Unitá newspaper . In 1926 he clandestinely took part in the 3rd Congress of the KPI in Lyon , France. The “Lyon Theses” of the communist left were rejected by the party, which has since changed significantly. In March, the participants took part in the meetings of the 6th Extended Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI). He developed correspondence with left communists in other countries, for example Karl Korsch . In November 1927 Bordiga was sentenced to three years in exile by the fascists without trial. In his absence, his house was devastated. In 1927 he was exiled to Ustica and later to Ponza , small islands off the Italian coast. Together with Antonio Gramsci he organized courses for the prisoners on scientific subjects. There he wrote a philosophical treatise on studying the writings of Friedrich Engels and the small introduction to Das Kapital by Karl Marx , Elements of the Marxist Economy . At the end of 1929, Bordiga was released and placed under house arrest.

In 1930 he was expelled from the Italian Communist Party for " Trotskyist factional activity". He dedicated himself to his profession as a bridge construction engineer, since the house arrest that lasted from 1930 to 1943 under constant surveillance by the fascist political police made it difficult for him to pursue any other activity.

In 1943, the Left Communists and supporters of Bordiga founded the Internationalist Communist Party ( Partito Comunista Internazionalista ) in northern Italy . After the advance of the Anglo-American troops in 1944, he made his first political contacts with old comrades in southern Italy.

From 1945 to 1968, Amadeo Bordiga worked as a leading theorist in the Internationalist Communist Party (later the International Communist Party ), also through numerous publications in the newspapers of the Battaglia Comunista , Prometeo and Il Programa Comunista party . Due to illness and age, he retired from party life in 1968. Amadeo Bordiga died on July 23, 1970 in Formia of complications from a stroke.

Fonts

literature

  • Christian Riechers , Felix Klopotek (ed.): The defeat in the defeat: texts on the labor movement, class struggle, fascism in Italy. Unrast, Münster 2009 ISBN 3897714531
  • Helmut König: Lenin and Italian Socialism 1915–1921. A contribution to the founding history of the Communist International. Series: Research reports and studies on contemporary history, 13. Tübingen 1967. Zugl. Diss. Phil. University of Tübingen , August 14, 1967

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bordiga, Amadeo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the Italian Communist Party
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Resina
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1970
Place of death Formia