Lotta Comunista

The origins of this organization go back to the 1950s, when some former partisans of GAAP (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) who supported the FCL (Libertarian Communist Federation), and who were subsequently expelled from FAI (Italian Anarchist Federation) because they became Leninists, subsequently joined the group called Azione Comunista. It had been expelled from the Italian Communist Party (PCI) as a result of the position it had taken in favor of the 1956 Hungarian insurgents, who were harshly repressed by the Soviets. Stalinism was defined as the reactionary policy of the counterrevolution after the death of Lenin. The group also protested against the positions of the Italian Communist Party, considered dependent on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and dominated by the foreign policy of the USSR. It was also considered in collusion with Italian capitalism. This situation would have strengthened the geopolitical structure that was emerging and so that would have prevented emergence and development of Marxist and internationalist forces.

In 1965, after a phase of theoretical clarification within the group, it assumed the name of Lotta Comunista that continued the line of abstention strategy against the participation of the party in elections and to what is defined as "bourgeois parliamentary democracy."

Unlike other extra-parliamentary groups, Lotta Comunista has never implemented or supported forms of armed struggle, even during the 1960s and 1970s. The party thinks that a revolution cannot take place if an ideology is not well-established locally, nationally and internationally otherwise the revolution will degenerate into state capitalism like Stalinism or a social democracy. So it is devoted only to peaceful propaganda of Marxist ideas, waiting for an event of global reach, like a world war to start a revolution.

The goal of the party is to take root at the organizational level in neighborhoods, factories, and universities of some European countries to ensure that a significant proportion of the European working class, in the near future, can be found in the Leninist party. It will be a reference and a guide on how to face the gigantic upheavals that capitalism is leading worldwide. Capitalism, according to Lotta Comunista's thesis (taken directly from Marx), is in fact unable to maintain a world order. According to these claims, the capitalist system of production throws world society into a situation of chaos on a cyclical basis. It creates armed conflict to redefine the market, but, in turn, the general crisis of capitalism gives communists the opportunity to exploit the wars generated by capitalism to promote the proletarian revolution. On this aspect, the thesis of Lotta Comunista refers to the teachings of Lenin outlined in his April Theses.

One of the fundamental points of the Lotta Comunista's policy is the so-called "correct and consistent application of Marxism."

Lotta Comunista has always rejected the idea that the Soviet Union, in its satellite countries and Asia, had achieved a form of communism or socialism. Instead they think that the Soviet Union, after Lenin's death, had taken shape as a true aristocracy of bureaucrats constituting a form of capitalism directed and controlled by the ruling political class or state capitalism.

Stalin also betrayed the revolution not only by highlighting his personal power, but also by theorizing the possibility of development of a communist system in a single country in a world dominated by capitalist powers (the theory of socialism in one country), contrary to what was said by Lenin and Marxists in general. Historiography indicates Lenin as the source of this internationalist concept. It is true that the definition, coined by Stalin to the Congress of the CPSU in 1923, happened at a time that Lenin was greatly weakened by disease and unable to communicate. In which case, the version of a paternity Stalinist historiography remains the most reliable. The featured characteristic of state capitalism created by Stalin, over the savagery in the repression and espionage (particularly against the Bolsheviks critics of Stalinist policy), was the autarchic closure that he justified by theorizing an imaginary division of the world market into two blocks. Guido La Barbera, one of the current leaders of Lotta Comunista, said that Stalinism overcame an inherent weakness and chronic capital investing in war, and heavy industry and not in developing economic and social infrastructure.

On 7 November of each year, Lotta Comunista celebrates the anniversary of the October Revolution. On May 1, defined by Lotta Comunista not as "Labor Day" but as a day of international struggle of workers, Lotta Comunista celebrates the "First May Internationalist" (Primo Maggio Internazionalista) with demonstrations (in Genoa, Milan, Turin, and Brescia) and initiatives in the cities where it is present as an organized political party.

The headquarters of Lotta Comunista are historically located in Genoa but the party operates in more industrial and university realities (the circles of Milan, Turin and Rome are still very active) and it also opened several offices abroad, particularly in France, Russia, Spain (recently) and Greece and Brazil. The purpose of Lotta Comunista is to entrench a Leninist party in some locales of key European cities such as the Italian industrial triangle and the Ile de France in Paris. Lotta Comunista publishes and disseminates the namesake monthly, founded in 1965, which is completely self-financed. Editions Lotta Comunista, collects, or proposes and reproduces material produced since 1950 in the Italian, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Greek languages.

The organization is among the most strongest extra-parliamentary formations in Italy, with about 40,000 copies of its Lotta Comunista publication sold each month, house by house, by its activists. Currently it is active in cities such as: Genoa, Milan, Pavia, Turin, London, Paris, Nice, Rome, Parma, Savona, Brescia, Bergamo, Padua, Verona, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Udine, St. Petersburg, Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Bari, Brindisi, Lecce and recently Valencia.

Lotta Comunista has another publisher, Science Marxist, which publishes books in several European languages: French, Greek, English, Russian, Portuguese, German, and Spanish.

Lotta Comunista publishes Italian texts that address to the deepening and the history of the labor movement. Editions Pantarei also republishes important texts such as the History of the Italian Communist Party by Giorgio Galli.

In Genoa Lotta Comunista he has created the Institute for the Study of Capitalism, with a large library including documents that is reflected in several publications of the "Edizioni Panta Rei".

In honor of the militant Sergio Motosi, who died in 2002, Lotta Comunista founded in Genoa, the Sergio Motosi Institute for the Study of International Workers' Movement in 2005. Its goal is to deepen the study of the history of the labor movement around the world.

Lotta Comunista has created an NGO in Russia: the Centre for International Studies Noviy Prometey, which deals with the publication and dissemination of the Bulletin Internationalist and books by the group translated into Russian. It also offers courses on Marxism as it does in Italy and France.

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