Italy

We are very excited to announce the release of the Italian edition of History of Philosophy, a Marxist Perspective, by our editor-in-chief, Alan Woods. We congratulate our Italian comrades on producing this translation, which has made this important text accessible to an entirely new audience. 

I wrote this article in early 1977, (it was published in the Militant, issue 349, 1 April 1977) when the leaders of the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, were supporting a minority Christian Democrat government, which was carrying out austerity measures. In October 1976, that government announced its programme, immediately unleashing a wave of spontaneous strikes across Italy. The PCI leaders used their huge authority among workers to pull them back and accept the “sacrifices” as necessary measures to “get the economy back on its feet”. This moment represented a major betrayal of the Italian working class, which was to mark the beginning of the end of the wave of class struggle

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From 12 to 14 April, Marina di Massa was flooded with the revolutionary enthusiasm of hundreds of militant communists, gathered for the National Congress of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione (SCR), the Italian section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). This congress marked a historic turning point in the struggle for communism in Italy. During the discussion, the comrades of SCR decided to launch a campaign to build a Revolutionary Communist Party in Italy, which will officially be founded in the autumn and will form an integral part of the Revolutionary Communist International.

On 16 February in Naples, the comrades of the Italian section of the IMT, Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione (SCR) held a successful launch event at the Sala del Capitolo of the Complesso Monumentale di San Domenico Maggiore, in the city’s historic centre, for the Lenin lives! Campaign – an initiative to reclaim the real revolutionary legacy of Lenin in this, the centenary year of his death.

2024 will mark the centenary of the death of one of history's greatest revolutionaries: Lenin. Communists do not honour such great figures through pilgrimages or ceremonies; we think the best way to honour a great revolutionary is to study and learn their ideas.

IMT comrades in Modena, Italy (Sinistra Classe e Rivoluzione) organised a campaign inside the FIOM (metalworkers’ union of the CGIL) in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and in particular in support of an appeal issued by Palestinian trade union organisations. At a demonstration at the weekend, 2,000 workers and youth, both immigrant and native Italian, marched together in a lively demonstration, showing their full solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for an end to the Israeli bombing and occupation.

On Saturday 16 September in Trieste, Italy, comrades of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the IMT in Italy, who were holding a stall as part of the “Are you a communist? Then get organised!” campaign, were suddenly attacked by fascist thugs, who overturned the stall, physically assaulted the three comrades and then ran off. A few hours earlier, the national page of another fascist organisation had posted a poster of our campaign.

Billionaire media tycoon and former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, died of leukaemia today. He will be remembered for his involvement in numerous corruption scandals, sleazy ‘bunga bunga’ parties, child prostitution allegations, and for the attacks perpetrated by his governments against the working class. The liberal wing of the ruling class would like to distance itself from him, but for all that, Berlusconi held up a mirror to the rottenness of his class.

Today, 25 April, is a day of celebration in Italy. It is the anniversary of the final fall of the hated Fascist regime in 1945. The official history books tell us that the anti-fascist movement, the hundreds of thousands of armed partisans who fought in the resistance, were fighting for a democratic republic, which is what was finally established. This ignores the fact that what was taking place was a social revolution – not just for democracy, but for workers’ power. In this brilliant text written in 1930 – 15 years before these events – Leon Trotsky predicted that a “democratic republic”, i.e. a bourgeois-democratic regime, would only emerge from a defeat of the revolutionary

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Almost 180 comrades from over 25 cities gathered in Milan from 24-26 February to attend the 22nd national congress of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the Italian section of the International Marxist Tendency. This was our first in-person congress since the beginning of the pandemic three years ago, which ushered in a period of intense and profound change. As a revolutionary Marxist organisation, we have sought to bring out the fundamental trends underlying this period, identifying its unique features and distinguishing between superficial characteristics and the key processes going on under the surface.

On Saturday 26 November, a national demonstration was called in Rome as part of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There were possibly around 10,000 on the demonstration, at most: far fewer than the 100,000 or so of previous years.

A century has passed since the Italian capitalist class handed power to Benito Mussolini’s fascists. Below we present a series of articles by Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the Italian section of the IMT, on the events leading up to Mussolini’s infamous ‘March on Rome’, the first three of which are compiled below (and the fourth will soon be available in Italian on their website). It is important we understand the lessons of fascism’s rise to

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Yesterday, what is described as the “most right-wing” government since the Second World War was elected to office in Italy, with Fratelli d’Italia [Brothers of Italy], led by Giorgia Meloni, emerging as the first party, with 26 percent of the votes cast. How does one explain this surge in votes for a party that in 2018 won a mere 4.3 percent and elected only 32 MPs and 18 Senators? We will outline in this article the reason why such a radical change has taken place in Italian politics and outline the most likely perspective.

The 2022 national camp of Alziamo la Testa (“Let's raise our heads”), the first held by the youth organisation of the Italian Marxists, was a big success. We are particularly proud of what we have achieved in the last few years, and our progress was attested to at the event, which was attended by young revolutionaries from more than 26 cities, who were all thrilled to finally meet all the new comrades face-to-face after two years of the pandemic.