|
Biografia (english)
Arrigo Cervetto (April
16, 1927—February 23
1995, Savona), was
an Italian communist,
the founder of Lotta
Comunista in 1965.
Early life
Born in Buenos
Aires, where his
parents had
emigrated from
Liguria (before
returning to Italy),
Cervetto began his
political career
when he was very
young, in the midst
of World War II: in
July 1943, as a
worker at Savona's
ILVA steelworks, he
marched in the first
demonstrations after
the fall of Benito
Mussolini, and then
- after September 8
(when Mussolini
returned to power in
Northern Italy) -
took part in the
Italian Resistance
against the Italian
Social Republic and
its Nazi backers (wounded
during combat, he
was awarded the
Distinguished
Service Cross).
A communist, without
being a member of
the Italian
Communist Party (PCI),
after his experience
as a partisan the
young Cervetto -
together with youths
of the same age
living in the same
working-class
district - decided
to refuse the policy
of PCI leader
Palmiro Togliatti -
who had done his "Salerno
about-turn" (after
the seat of Italy's
first post-Fascism
government, and in
the sense that he
had joined the
mainstream) - and to
break with Stalinism.
He approached his
city's and region's
anarchists, who had
a firm foothold in
the area and a long
tradition of
struggles against
the Blackshirt
squads and the Black
Brigades and inside
the factories. In
March 1950 he took
part in the
conference organized
by the Ligurian
Anarchist Federation
at Genoa-Pontedecimo,
backing the
positions of the
group proposing "an
oriented and
federated movement"
with the aim of
fighting Anarchist "nihilism"
and of giving the
Federazione
Anarchica Italiana
(FAI) a prospect of
concrete political
struggle.
After this
conference
collaboration began
with the newspapers
Il Libertario and
L'Impulso, and
Cervetto undertook
an intense activity
of reorganisation.
Views
The outcome was the
national conference
held at Genoa-Pontedecimo
at the end of
February 1951,
during which the
Anarchist Groups of
Proletarian Action (GAAPs)
were set up.
However, there were
two traditions
inside the GAAPs:
one that was
Liberal-Socialist
and Anarchist -
represented by Pier
Carlo Masini - and
another of Marxist
inspiration -
represented by
Cervetto. One of the
basic themes that
characterised
Pontedecimo's 51
theses was that of
the unitary nature
of imperialism:
"There do not exist
two imperialisms at
a different level
and of a different
nature, between
which the working
class may make a
choice. There exists
imperialism as the
unitary
manifestation of a
society divided into
classes and States:
a single block, even
though shaken and
buffeted by
lacerating internal
contradictions.
Hence, the only
problem facing the
world proletariat is
the choice between
imperialism and anti-imperialism".
In his reports to
the GAAPs'
subsequent annual
conferences,
Cervetto used this
assumption as the
starting point for
an in-depth analysis
of imperialist
contradictions,
spurring the
militants to focus
their attention on
the themes of
international
politics and its
consequent crises,
at the time still "peripheral"
(workers' revolts in
East Berlin, the
French working
class's opposition
to the Indochina War,
etc.).
On the political-action
plane, this analysis
of the world scene
turned into the
polemic against
those who tend "to
consider imperialism
as a huge machine,
an enormous
compressor" that
would not leave any
margin for
revolutionary action
and that would lead
to a "liquidation"
of political action
and of the class
party. On the
contrary, Cervetto
underlined that,
also in the general
counterrevolutionary
condition, knotty
political problems
that are more or
less widespread and
that must be worked
on crop up regularly.
Alongside the
political-theoretic
struggle and the
organizational
effort to assemble
and form a core of
revolutionary cadres,
which also saw
collaboration with
the new series of
the review Prometeo
(1954, 1959 and
1960), Cervetto
worked on historical
research into the
origins of that
consciousness in the
proletariat where he
took his first steps:
between 1954 and
1958 he published
three studies on Le
lotte operaie alla
Siderurgica di
Savona, 1861-1913 ("Working
Class Struggles at
the Siderurgica of
Savona, 1861-1913"),
La crisi del
movimento operaio
savonese e
l'attività di G. M.
Serrati nel 1912 ("The
Crisis of the
Savonese Workers'
Movement and G. M.
Serrati's Activity
in 1912") and
Dopoguerra rosso e
avvento del fascismo
a Savona ("Red
Post-World War I
Period and Advent of
Fascism in Savona"),
and worked on a
study of the
Resistance in Savona.
Meanwhile, the
marked
contradictions of
De-Stalinization
encouraged confused
attempts to unite a
Communist Left. In
1955 Azione
Comunista was born
of a PCI "dissidence":
Cervetto
collaborated by
attempting to
contrast its
maximalism and what
he viewed as purely
"Garibaldian"
attitudes.
His articles in
Azione Comunista
(1957-64) centred in
particular on the
theme of De-Stalinization,
analysed by starting
with theses on the
Soviet Union's "capitalist
nature" and the
causes of the
Stalinist
counterrevolution.
Cervetto
particularly
analysed the events
of November 1956 as
an example of
imperialist
contradictions, with
the Suez Crisis
coinciding with the
Russian intervention
against the workers'
Hungarian Revolution.
The following year,
Cervetto formulated
his strategic vision
in a systematic way,
presenting his Tesi
sullo sviluppo
imperialistico,
sulla durata della
fase
controrivoluzionaria
e sullo sviluppo del
partito di classe ("Theses
on Imperialist
Development,
Duration of the
Counter-Revolutionary
Phase, and
Development of the
Class Party") at the
first conference of
the Communist Left
in Livorno in
November 1957.
In them, he poses
the need for a
theoretic battle
capable of acting as
a barrier to
supposed opportunism
at the moment when
the Italian
consequence of De-Stalinization
was the Social-Democratisation
of the former
radical workers'
parties:
"The
bureaucratisation of
these parties is not
a degenerative
phenomenon of the
workers' movement
but is a necessity
of capitalism as it
aims, through its
political agents, at
establishing its
hegemony over the
workers' movement.
It is absurd to
think of competing
with this particular
form of the
organization of
capitalist hegemony":
hence, he argued,
the Communist heft
had the "historical
duty" of organizing
itself as the
vanguard of the
revolutionary party
body, a prospect
that was meant to
clash with the
perceived naivety of
both the
ideologically
anarchistic and
those that have left
the PCI.
In the "Theses" this
discussion on the
party is anchored to
the evaluation of
the characteristics
and duration of what
is identified as an
on-going
counterrevolutionary
phase, in contrast
with those who
confined themselves
to pointing out that
"the situation has
been revolutionary
since capitalism
entered its
imperialist phase".
Here Cervetto called
attention to the
theory of the uneven
development of
capitalism, and
hence to the "question
of times" as regards
the possibilities of
a socialist economy
on an international
scale; in this
context he singled
out the prospect of
India's and the
People's Republic of
China's
industrialization,
posing the problem
of the time that
will be needed for
these countries to
reach an "intermediate"
level of development,
such as to
incentivate
imperialist
exportation.
It is through this
strategic vision
that he posed the
need to fight "idealism
and voluntarism",
linking the Marxist
theory of
imperialism to the
question of the
construction of the
class party; in a
counterrevolutionary
situation, struggle
is "necessarily
reduced to the
recall to activity
and formation of the
cadres".
It is on these
problems that, in
the following years,
the clash in the
Communist Left would
flare up between
Cervetto's Leninist
approach and the
line of the PCI
dissidence or of
those who believed
in approaching
Social Democracy.
Cervetto's position
in those years also
included a polemic
against grass-roots
initiative (as in
his critique in
February 1957 of the
French writers of
Socialisme ou
Barbarie's
interpretation of
the Hungarian revolt),
and then his
opposition to the
influence of Maoist
ideology in Italy,
in particular
through a series of
articles published
in 1962 in Azione
Comunista (later
collected in a
booklet with the
title Lenin e la
rivoluzione cinese
("Lenin and the
Chinese Revolution"):
drawing on Lenin
writings on China,
he defined Maoist
populism as "a false
socialism realising
a true capitalism",
and he identified in
the development of
capitalism in China,
and more in general
in Asia, a legacy of
the Russian October
Revolution despite
the Stalinist
counterrevolution,
the most important
premise of the
maturation of a
profound crisis of
world imperialism.
In the ambit of his
reflection on
China's role in the
international
workers' movement,
Cervetto also
clarified his
attitude towards
struggles for
national liberation,
which he had been
studying for years
in relation to the
processes of
Decolonization. In
December 1960 he
wrote:
"The colonial
question at a
certain stage of
international
industrialization -
and we are not
speaking of many
years hence - will
lose its specific
importance, since in
very vast economic
areas the social
forces will polarise
around the
predominant and
generalised
relations of
capitalist
production. Class
alignments, both
capitalist and
proletarian, will be
internationalised
and interdependent
to the highest
degree. The
proletarian
revolution, with its
economic and
political programme,
will be the
objective thread
binding all the
world trends."
In April 1964 he
began to publish in
Azione Comunista a
series of articles
whose aim was "to
clarify the basic
lines of the
Leninist conception
of the party",
moving with Lenin
from Karl Marx's
primary idea "of a
natural historical
process of
development in
socio-economic
formations".
This is a study (that
would be published
two years later as a
volume with the
title Lotte di
classe e partito
rivoluzionario ("Class
Struggles and
Revolutionary
Party") and
reprinted various
times up to the
sixth edition in
2004) on the
Leninist conception
of political action,
seen as the
scientific
foundation of the
solution "to the
problems left
unsolved by
Bordiga's
objectivistic and
Trotsky's
subjectivistic
inclinations".
Cervetto sought this
solution by tracing
a link between
Marx's Das Kapital
and Lenin's What Is
to Be Done?:
starting with this,
he than faced the
theme of the workers'
coalition and of the
economic law that
determines it, but
also of the class's
political
consciousness,
introduced from
outside the
relationship between
workers and
employers; in the
last chapter he
centres the role of
the revolutionary
party on the
definition of
strategy as the "result
of a scientific
analysis of a
determinate phase of
the class struggle".
It is on these basis
that, as the
coexistence of
positions that had
become incompatible
was no longer
possible, in 1965
Cervetto passed from
the experience of
Azione Comunista to
the formation of a
new and fully
homogeneous
organisation; in
December 1965 the
first issue of Lotta
Comunista was
published and the
huge task of
building up the
organisation was
undertaken.
Published works
L'imperialismo
unitario ("Unitary
Imperialism"), Milan,
1981, which gathers
the analytical
material on the
course of world
imperialism from the
1950s to 1980;
La contesa mondiale
("The World
Confrontation"),
Milan, 1990, in
which the
imperialist
confrontation of the
1980s is viewed as a
"first conclusion of
a war fought through
financial capital
over the course of
fifty years": on the
eastern front Russia
has lost and Germany
won, while on the
western front the
outcome is still
undecided;
Il ciclo politico
del capitalismo di
Stato, 1950-1967 ("The
Political Cycle of
State Capitalism,
1950-1967", Milan,
1989: the tendency
to the formation of
state capitalism is
pinpointed in the
development of
capitalist
production, and
Stalinism is
considered as the
political movement
upholding that
juridical form of
property;
L'ineguale sviluppo
politico, 1968-1979
("Uneven Political
Development,
1968-1979"), Milan,
1991: an assessment
of the development
of Italian
capitalism during
the 1970s and the
analysis of the deep
imbalance between
the movement of the
economy and the
movement of the
political
superstructure;
La difficile
questione dei tempi
(The Difficult
Question of Times"),
Milan, 1990, in
which Cervetto
intervenes in the
debate on the times
of revolution among
Stalin, Trotsky and
Bordiga: while it is
possible to
scientifically
identify the general
trend - or evolution
as Lenin calls it -
of capitalism and to
forecast the
inevitability of its
outcomes (e.g.
crisis, wars), it is
impossible to
forecast its
deadlines, in which
the Party is an
active factor;
L'involucro politico
("The Political
Shell"), Milan,
1994, which contains
Cervetto's
reflection on the
materialistic
conception of
politics; begun in
the mid-seventies,
it is the analysis
of the "political
head" tackled with
the study method of
the "social body".
Cervetto died in
1995, but the
publication of his
books still
continues thanks to
Edizioni Lotta
Comunista. Hence,
after 1995 the
following volumes
have been published:
Il mondo multipolare,
1990-1995 ("The
Multipolar World,
1990-1995"), Milan,
1996: in Cervetto's
later writings on
international
politics he
underlines the
multiplicity of the
protagonists on the
world scene, in a
quickly evolving
economic cycle of
unprecedented
dimensions, and with
an accelerated
dynamic of change
and an instability
of balances and
alliances;
Forze e forme del
mutamento italiano
("Forces and Forms
of the Italian
Transformation"),
Milan, 1997, which
reconstructs the
process of
transformation in
the Italian socio-economic
formation within the
long international
expansion starting
after World War II;
Metodo e partito
scienza ("Method and
Science Party"),
Milan, 1998: this is
a collection of the
writings where
Cervetto seeks, in
the origin of the
method and of
political science as
well as in modern
history from the
16th century onwards,
"the axis of the
theory" for the
world-shaking
passage to the
multipolar
confrontation;
Ricerche e scritti
("Researches and
Writings"), Milan,
2005, which gathers
'the works of the
1950s, from the
study of the origins
of the Savonese
bourgeoisie to those
on working-class
Savona, starting
with the first
struggles at "Siderurgica"
and ending with the
Resistance.
Some of Cervetto's
main texts are
translated into
English, French,
German, Russian (edited
by Editions Science
Marxiste, Paris) and
Greek (at the hands
of Diethnismos
Publications, Athens).
Resources
Arrigo Cervetto
Archive at
Marxists.org |
Dossier Haití
