For a brief history of our party

The intention of this summary is to provide the basic facts of our history in a simple form, whilst it will not be possible to look deeply into all the connected issues in an exhaustive manner.

This means that it becomes necessary to take a brief look back at a few general premises. Firstly, what characterizes the “Italian” Communist Left, so that it becomes an obligatory point of reference? After establishing these initial points, an account will be given of the beginning of the Internationalist Communist Party in 1943-44, to see how the various questions characterizing the Communist Left are posed in the period (of incubation, so to speak) from 1944-52.  Lastly, we shall touch on the divergences arising within the Party in the subsequent period, with the exit of various elements that led to the founding of other formations, more or less taking the Communist Left as their point of reference, with the aim of better clarifying what separates us from these formations and how the Party reacted to these episodes.

1. The Communist Left, whilst being “Italian” in organizational terms, was not so in political terms, since the problems tackled have always been posed from a general point of view not linked to Italian contingencies or to the country’s specific situation.  This was clearly to be seen from the II Congress of the Communist International onwards, in which the issues posed by the Left (then still within the Italian Socialist Party) regarded the organization of the International itself and not programmatic divergences, but respected the urgent need to reinforce and stiffen certain key points and certain political-organizational demarcations (see both: the “question of parliamentarianism” and the “question of the ‘points of adhesion’”, made stricter and more binding thanks to our intervention). It will be a constant mark of the Left to pose questions regarding the whole of the International, particularly on the ground of tactics (the “united front”, the “workers’ government”, in general the attitude of the world communist movement to bourgeois democracy – all of which will become burning issues around ’21-’22 and, not having been resolved, will open up the way – just as the Left had previously warned – for serious and irremediable mistakes at a theoretical level), in the conviction that clarity in the field of tactical issues and a clear definition of them contribute to preventing a lack of balance at the level of principles. All these issues were raised by the “Italian” Communist Left alone and this also explains why a fusion between the Trotskyist Opposition and the Left was later impossible, because the former remained a constant victim of the tactics of its contradictions regarding the “united front”, the “workers’ government” and, more in general, democracy.
2. After the Communist Party of Italy’s Congress in Lyon in 1926 (which approved the shift of the Party’s majority, technically not at all clear, to Gramsci and Togliatti), the “Italian” Communist Left suffered systematic ideological and organizational persecution. Whilst a small group of militants remained in Russia, and was soon physically eliminated by Stalin’s counter-revolution, the rest of the Left’s activists had to face three different scenarios:  that of prison (or going underground), that of internment, with consequent political isolation, for those remaining in Italy, or that of exile and the diaspora, with all its connected difficulties, both practical and political.  Amongst the latter, the largest group (around two hundred militants) re-organized in France and Belgium as a Foreign Fraction (Conference of Pantin, in the suburbs of Paris, 1928), gravitating around the journal Bilan, with the objective of taking up their previous characteristics, defending them and conserving them (smaller groups would operate in the United States and Latin America, encountering serious difficulties to keep in touch,).  It did not neglect contacts with other organizations (e.g. the Trotskyists) but remained isolated for obvious political reasons (up to the final break with Trotsky). In the course of the years to come, however, in the work of the Foreign Fraction a series of errors of evaluation developed that could not fail to occur in that situation of total isolation and the persisting “non-conclusion” of a whole historical cycle (this also explains Bordiga’s extreme caution in making evaluations in this period, even at the cost of isolation: it was above all a matter of understanding what was going on; a balance of the whole cycle was needed and most importantly an in-depth study of  the social situation and the politics in Russia – see  the content, in advance, of the letter to Karl Korsch, printed in our text The Crisis of 1926 in the Communist International and in the Russian Party – presently available only in Italian).  It was therefore a phase of total isolation for these comrades, who were carrying on a battle not only theoretical but also one of violent clashes with Stalinism: for us this was the real function of the Fraction, rather than the theoretical elaboration, which inevitably suffered from its isolation – a demonstration of obstinate devotion to the tradition and experience of the party, above and beyond any wavering or theoretical failings.  The problem is that these comrades, or some of them, were unable to arrive at a real assessment of the phase they found themselves in, and in some cases – particularly towards the end of the Second World War – also fell into theoretical errors: an inadequate analysis of the situation in Russia (to what extent it was or was not capitalist) and an “infantile” forcing of the positions of the Left itself (on the united front, the national and colonial issue, the trade unions). Moreover, things were made more difficult and these slips were favoured by the fact that, in the countries where the comrades found themselves, no real Marxist tradition existed, whilst there was a strong democratic or anarcho-syndicalist tradition, so that the elements they came into contact with derived from these matrixes and they were not always able to shake them off (see the issue of the anti-imperialist struggles of colonial peoples, which were denied any revolutionary value or historical importance; see the evaluation of the unions – especially in the later period – as completely integrated, fascist).  In addition, the end of the war brought with it the widespread idea that this was a revolutionary phase (this was the case of the Trotskyists): a hope later disappointed; the consequence was that the forcing was incremented and there arose the concept of the formation of the party as an extremely long-term process, which would consist in the spontaneous work of the proletariat in the revolutionary period to come.  These were positions sustained by a group of comrades from the Foreign Faction, who were not to enter the Internationalist Communist Party in 1944 and to whom the International Communist Current-ICC now refers – taking them up exactly as they were or pushing them to extremes.
3. Right from its formation, then, the Internationalist Communist Party experienced both the positive and negative effects of the preceding battle.  In this sense, Bordiga’s role is not so much to pose the bases of the party, as much as to contribute, also as guide, at a theoretical level, giving a direction to the new political movement (see the: Tracciato d’impostazione, in Italian) and this is opposed by a whole series of contrasting positions, which once again take up the uncertainties and forced positions of the Fraction and assume a concrete shape in the 1952 division, when the organization splits into two and Onorato Damen’s group takes with it the newspaper “Battaglia comunista” and the journal “Prometeo”, whilst Bordiga and the others (the minority) of the organization found “il programma comunista”, with the aim of continuing the work already begun through certain fundamental texts.  The divergences with “Battaglia” are as follows:

1. The question of the party: it is emblematic that Battaglia comunista continues to consider Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet criticizing Lenin and What do do? as a “text of the party”. The pamphlet attenuates the centralization and very function of the party, conceiving of it mainly as an organism of a democratic nature, an expression of the masses, with the obsession (typical both of Luxemburg and of the Mensheviks) that it might “superimpose itself on the masses”.
2. The question of the unions: according to Battaglia comunista, they are completely integrated into the bourgeois State and economic claims are outdated (see here also the ICC); the union cannot be used by the party and is not a possible chain of transmission; it is stated, however, that the party must work within it to create organisms that are already political (soviets?), with the intention of carrying out political work and propaganda in the unions, as opposed to a work of class organization on the economic field. In any case, despite periodic oscillations, it was and is an incorrect way of posing the relationship party/intermediary union organizations.
3. The question of the anti-imperialist battle: Battaglia comunista denied the existence of these battles, which by it are held not to arise from the needs of the national bourgeoisies or the peasantry or parts of the proletariat, but to be episodes in the battle between the two imperialist powers (USA and USSR) – or manoeuvres by them. Thus, for Battaglia comunista, the party had no interest in supporting these fights and should not even take an interest in them. All this is in contradiction to Lenin and the “dual revolution” according to Marxism, for which instead: 1) all battles that are fought on the ground of international contradictions should be taken into account, to understand how they take place and explode and what the outcome is (see our evaluations of the Second World War, which scandalized Battaglia comunista so much, because they were seen as indicating that we supported one side rather than the other!); 2) revolutions or bourgeois advances in backward areas play a revolutionary role and must be examined, just as Marx and Lenin did (see our text, representing one of the break-off points with Battaglia Comunista, I fattori di razza e nazione nella teoria marxista / Factors of race and nation in Marxist theory – available in Italian).
4. The Russian question: the position of Battaglia comunista can be traced back to their thesis according to which imperialism dominates everything and is a single undifferentiated block. Moreover, since, according to them, full State capitalism was in force in Russia, this means that capitalism there was more modern and highly developed: thus: Russia=United States, without grasping the specific characteristics of Russian capitalism. It was in this precise field that one of the break-off points with Battaglia comunista occurred, on the occasion of Bordiga composing the Lezioni delle controrivoluzioni (Lessons from Counter-revolutions, available in Italian) in which it was emphasized that Russian capitalism was really only very slightly developed, with an internal market still under construction (see also our Proprietà e capital / Property and Capital – available in Italian). Battaglia comunista’s analysis is far more similar to that of the Trotskyists in the importance it gives to the nationalization of industry (despite being the other way round compared to Trotskyism, for which this is already a sign of “socialism”)- For Battaglia comunista, it is a sign of enormous capitalist development: for us this is not true and the truth is that capitalist forces in Russia are still jammed. What happened at the end of the ‘80s is a clearer and definitive confirmation of this: not by chance Battaglia comunista had considerable problems in dealing with the “collapse of the USSR”.

4. All these issues raise theoretical and tactical problems and after 1952 the party works mainly (but not only) on settling all the questions previously raised.  In addition, the party expands, at an international level, too (France and Belgium) and inevitably the problems of how to pass on the party’s political experience to the class arise once again: here it is mainly the two toughest issues that are involved, the national-colonial issue and that of the unions, for which it is necessary to clarify how work should be carried out, what claims should be advanced, what evaluations should be drawn. The first splits following that with Battaglia Comunista would thus take place on this ground.
5. Leaving apart individual cases, the first split comes in ’61-’62. In Italy a group leaves the Party and launches the journal Ottobre rosso (which lasts only briefly) and then merges with the Milanese group “di Corso Garibaldi” (L’internazionalista, an autonomous internationalist group): it expressed an essentially “union” line, according to which the CGIL (the main union, linked to the big Stalinist Italian Communist Party) should not be much attacked, but economic indications should be launched that limited themselves to being greater and more radical than those of the union, since it was presumed that the CGIL would proceed towards a class position. This position was counterbalanced by another, which involved leaving aside economic claims, to propose exclusively political positions, conceiving of the economic movement as the basis for a purely propagandistic and political approach, in practice a little like Battaglia comunista. For us, on the other hand, it is clear that what must be done is to launch claims that incorporate the objective of organizing the class: the political message is to a certain extent independent of them. Reconciling the two demands is certainly a difficult task and the party must be aware of it. The “group of Corso Garibaldi” ceased to exist decades ago.
6. In 1964, there was another big split, again in Milan, which reflected (and had consequences) not so much at the theoretical level, as at the organizational and at that of propaganda. The immediate cause was of an organizational nature: how to give a different organizational form to the party and its Centre. The function of the Centre was discussed and “organization committees” were suggested. Our Theses of ’64 and ’65 intervened, with the aim of invalidating the illusion of being able to use certain internal mechanisms of a democratic matrix to guarantee the political line; and, indeed, excluding this democratic method from inside the party. This split – from which, in roundabout ways, the group Rivoluzione comunista was later to emerge – seriously conditioned work in Milan, and reflected on the general political level. For Rivoluzione comunista everything boiled down to the fact that we (the International Communist Party) were held to be those who limit themselves to theory: their positions are that of activism and unrestrained demagogy and all their work  is carried out to exalt the form of the organization, to the detriment of any broader preparation and theoretical elaboration.
7. In 1965, a split came in France, too, which was in a sense the reflection of the latest one which took place in Italy:  following some progress in the party’s development, the need was felt to ground an organ of agitation to accompany the theoretical journal Programme comuniste.  The opposing faction questioned this need and some groups thus detached themselves, later becoming Invariance and Le fil du temps, according to which the party’s main work should consist in “forecasting”; the revolution becomes “an objective fact”; the masses would then “find” the party, which had been waiting for them, having foreseen the time when they would encounter one another. From here, it is a short step, especially for Invariance to characterizing the party as the anticipation of a future communist society and not an organ for achieving it; thus an actual refusal of the party and any political form; lastly, the actual negation of class (a negation that periodically comes back into fashion) and finally the complete rejection of Marxism.
8. Around 1970, a further small group of elements in Denmark detached, assuming positions similar to the KAPD’s ones, once again consisting in the undermining of the party’s role as director and organizer and conceiving of it instead as an organism for “enlightening” the masses and theorizing forms of “direct organization” – something that expresses itself as a tail-endist way of working ^[1].
9. In 1973, came the break with a large part of the Florence section, which, a few months later, was to begin publishing Il partito comunista (The Communist Party) and also self-proclaiming itself the International Communist Party. The split had been ripening for some time at a union level; some differences had arisen with the group, made responsible by the party for producing the central union organ (Il sindacato rosso), since the positions that were gradually being assumed were turning into empty demagogics, both in terms of the role of the party and in terms of union activity.  Very soon, however, it was realized that the dissent was not limited to the union level, but was present on a more general, political scale: that of the role and organization of the party. Any decisions of a disciplinary nature were refused and things went so far as to affirm that the sense of organic centralism lay in the fact that, since each individual element had agreed to the party’s programme, it was safe from errors and deviations and could thus not be criticized by the Centre, once again falling back into an idealistic and democratic concept.  For us, instead, centralization is necessarily rooted to the structuring of the party and organic division of work: the problem is that this structuring and this organic division must not be of an artificial nature. The “Florentines”, on the contrary, come to a “mystical” concept of the party, seen as the prefiguration of a communist society. Moreover, at a union level, the nucleus of their original position (which was later to be turned completely upside down, as is shown by their present positions on the issue!) is the “re-conquering” of the “red” CGIL.  In this sense, a negative evaluation was given of the possibility of the union with the others trade unions – the Catholic one and the Socialist-inspired one), which was seen as a loss of the CGIL’s potentially “red” nature: the problem was said to boil down to the fact that the direction of the CGIL was in the hands of opportunists – it was thus a matter of working from the inside to get rid of them and take over the direction ourselves.  In addition (and this position, too, was later to be turned upside down!), there was the total denial of any value in all other experiences outside the union in those years (the so-called, “sindacati di base”, “rank-and-file unions”), whilst the function of the party was again limited to the “political enlightenment” of the class and never seen as its organization. Today the “Florence party” pursues the illusion of “class unions” to be drawn up around a table and plunges into pure activism as an end in itself.
10. In 1974, a group of Milan elements distanced themselves, as a reflection of the “primitive” concept (implicit in the previous split) of revolution through the acknowledgement of the party by a part of the class, which up until then was supposed to have carried out the work of enlightenment (a position, it should be stressed, that found its material roots mostly in the party’s detachment from the class, a detachment that lasts up until the present): the group again fell into the opposite position, theorized by some comrades from Milan and Savona, who called into question the role of the party towards other groups (privileging certain specific groups here, especially the Trotskyites), with the intention of creating a sort of “battlefront” with them. In practice, it was argued, though not clearly, that the party would come into being later.  A group was formed that would ground the newspaper Il militante and totally abandon the tradition of the Communist Left, entirely re-evaluating the heritage of Trotskyism and proposing to “reconstruct the IVth International” (it should be noted that this group would merge into the mainly Stalinist Rifondazione Comunista [!!!], later leaving to contribute to the founding of the present Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori).
11. In the second half of the ‘70s, elements were then to leave which, through successive evolutions, would found the group revolving around the newspaper Che fare?, this, too, now entirely outside the tradition of the Communist Left.
12. The ’81 -’83 crisis.  More complex to describe (and to explain), unlike that “of the birth” in 1952 – this crisis was very serious and risked wiping out decades of theoretical-political work.  Substantially, it was again a case of “a crisis of activism”, to which other material and more or less contingent factors contributed, with truly dramatic final results.  Here again, the preceding situation must be described.  Over the course of the ‘70s, the party had spread geographically to some extent: it published not only in Italian and French (the two “historical” languages), but also in German, Spanish (for Spain and Latin America), Turkish, English and Arabic and each of these languages corresponded to one (or more) operational nuclei of the party. Moreover, the party had links with workers’ groups and particularly “hot” situations (Latin America, the Middle East). Precisely this extension, with all the strategic-political and practical-organizational problems it involved, ended up by weighing heavily on the party in a negative manner, because it was thought by some comrades (even some with central responsibility), that it was possible a) to intensify our activity in a purely quantitative (and not qualitative) sense, b) to force a “militantism” disproportionate both to the real situation of the party and to the actual necessity dictated by outside reality – and this introduced rough dynamics into the party, totally foreign to our tradition. Faced with the events that witnessed protests by sectors of the half classes and a stratum of the proletariat in those years, these comrades allowed themselves to be overcome by the opportunist illusion that they could contrast the entity and duration of the counter-revolution by a basically generic militantism that distanced them more or less consciously from the method of restoring the organic party, indicated and practiced with effort and tenacity by the comrades who organized themselves in 1952 around Il programma comunista.  These wave of activism and militantism gradually led to elements and groups from the Party distancing themselves and culminated in the “explosion” (éclatement) of 1981-83.  In this situation we once again witnessed how hard it is to assimilate the theory and practice of Communism (and thus of the Communist Party).  Moreover it is not a matter of formulae, which makes it always arduous to keep this theory and practice alive and vital in the operational unit of Theory-Principles-Programme-Tactics-Organization.  Since the ‘50s, the party had correctly foreseen that a new structural crisis of capital would open up halfway through the ‘70s, once the postwar cycle of expansion had been exhausted. And in fact the crisis occurred, acute and destined to drag on, amongst peaks and dips, right up to today.  And, although the party repeatedly warned comrades of the error of expecting the economic crisis to lead automatically to a social crisis, in many of them (even some with central responsibility) the impatience to finally be inside a phase of class recovery was so great as to see this recovery even where it did not exist. The engine generating this sequence of opportunist attitudes is to be found precisely in the mechanism (contrary and opposed to dialectic materialism) by which one of the most important results of our work of critique of political economy, with the significant title of Corso del capitalism mondiale / The course of world capitalism, was distorted (and thus betrayed).  This work identified the conclusion, halfway through the 1970s, of the cycle of accumulation following the Second Inter-imperialist Bloodbath and thus the beginning of a period of structural crisis.  It is evident that, on setting out these results, the comrades “of the ‘50s” also expressed the hope that the economic crisis might, in the near future (“in perhaps a generation”, they wrote), lead to a social crisis as well, and to a political crisis laden with revolutionary potential. And this in the firm knowledge that the revolution is not made but directed; that the party prepares the class for revolution but does not prepare the revolution; and that in any case “Communist revolutionaries must, instead, be those who, tempered collectively by experiences of the battle against the degeneration of the proletarian movement, firmly believe in revolution and firmly desire revolution, but not with the credit and the desire that one has to exact payment, exposed to desperation and mistrust if a day goes past after the deadline for the promissory note,” (from our Party and class action, 1921). This “optimism” was, in any case, subordinate to and bound to the development of the reorganization (restoration!) of the revolutionary class organ (the party), also and above all in terms of its ability (and duty) to act in contact with the class and in social movements springing from the contrast between the forces and forms of production, never subordinating our own aims and interests to those of the “half classes”, also obliged to “make a move”, and indeed  applying to them a tactic directed either at neutralizing those “moves” or obliging them to work on preparing a revolution.  The years that witnessed our “explosion” were, for example, those that concluded this confused period of modernization and renewal of certain bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideological forms generally summed up by the expression “May 68” – a period that wove its way in at the end of the vast movement for economic claims by our class, apparently victorious in remediating that “little something” made available by the culmination of accumulation but almost simultaneously threatened by the jamming of that same process of accumulation.  Lastly, the final component to intervene was the distortion and misrepresentation of the “national question”, just when, with the conclusion of the war in Indo-China and the gaining of independence by the Portuguese colonies, all the tactical potential of the dual revolution was finally exhausted. It thus happened that many of the “movements” of a purely inter-classist or pacifist nature that developed over those years were interpreted as signals of a recovery of class consciousness, whilst on the contrary, they were expressing the ill-being of essentially petit-bourgeois sectors faced with the first pangs produced by the crisis. The party was thus driven towards them with the idea not of making an open criticism of them but … of placing itself at their service. Added to this was the fact that, from a mistaken evaluation of those movements, there also derived the impatience of comrades in the more delicate situations (Algeria, Middle East), for the party to come up with a “more militant” “tactical plan” to deal with time frames that were seen as far more advanced than they actually were. To this, markedly theoretic errors were added, for example towards the “Palestinian situation”, which was conceived of as still being a situation of dual revolution, or one in which the party should support – whilst still maintaining its complete organizational autonomy – the “national” claims of the Palestinian population (on the other hand, it should be clear that, today as yesterday, throughout the area there was the prospect of pure, proletarian revolution and that the national bourgeoisies in the area all form a coalition against the Arab-Palestinian proletariat). When the crisis exploded, there was thus a mixture of activism, impatience and scarce analytical theory which found its expression, as well as in the demand for greater militantism, in the request for democratic mechanisms to be introduced into the party’s organization (the Centre of the party as a mere sum of the “representatives” from its sections). The crisis dragged on for a year, dividing the Centre of the party itself and disorienting many sections and individual comrades, who gradually abandoned the organization, creating, or attempting to create other organizations referring to the Left.  Moreover, since the real situation did not mature towards the expected aggravation of the social crisis and the more intense activism of the party did not seem to be fruitful, either from the point of view of new followers, or of a class orientation of these “movements”, some comrades theorized a sort of “genetic inability” of the Communist Left to make contact with the class, influence it and direct it.  This led to the party being abandoned by sections and individual activists, who ended up by “merging into the movement”, setting up a group around the journal Combat (which was very short-lived, however, despite wasting precious energy). The upset was enormous and in the space of only a few months literally risked destroying the party. It was a small group of comrades from the “old guard” who took up the reins of what remained of the organization (amidst many technical and logistic difficulties involving effective contact with comrades scattered throughout the world), re-establishing the correct orientation, starting to publish first the Italian newspaper and then a French review again and re-connecting the threads of the organization in Italy and elsewhere. It should be added that the “movementist” elements and activists that split from the party disappeared quite quickly, abandoning active politics; and numerous comrades who had initially remained isolated and on the margins gradually resumed contact and later close bonds with the organization, in Italy and elsewhere.  This does not alter the fact that it came as a hard blow: it meant that almost all our press and the party’s international network disappeared, resulting in the need to start the organizational work over again from the beginning, as well as re-settle the theory and take stock of the mistakes that had been made. We are not so much interested here in going into the polemics and distinctions of one little group or another emerging from the ’81-’83 crisis and its subsequent repercussions, declaring that it is modeled on the communist Left (Il Comunista-Le Prolétaire, n+1, Schio’s international communist Left or other Italian or foreign circles or ex-militants’ discussion groups) – polemics and discussions that run the risk of becoming gossip and personalism and, from outside, would most probably seem obscure and of little importance. Certainly, the main points of these differences do always revolve around the two opposite but convergent dangers of activism and academism; but also, and no less dangerously, around attitudes that identify the party with the biological lifespan of its most famous exponent (Bordiga) or reduce the party’s work to launching a series of slogans or, lastly, to repeating its positions in a barren and abstract manner, often as high-sounding as it is demagogic^[2]. On taking the party in hand again, the comrades who reacted to the 1981-‘83 crisis have always identified the four key points around which political work should revolve.  What interests us is to operate on reiterating these key points, both at a theoretical and at a practical level.  Only by measuring ourselves with these four points it possible to gain any clear picture of respective positions. They are:

- Centralized re-organization of the party against all federalist temptations

- Definitive closure of the “national question”

- Correct practice of “union work”, finalized to reintroducing into the class the key points of a revolutionary perspective through the experience of re-creating (not around a table, not as inter-groups, not as “embryos of soviets”, not as union-parties) territorial organisms of defence for living and working conditions

- A precise critique of the political economy through the constant analysis of the “course of capitalism”

***

A few brief final considerations. Every crisis is born of objective inadequacies in the  party and its organization and in vain we look for the causes in the “faults” or political insufficiencies of those who distance themselves. Every crisis concentrates the party’s efforts not only on clarification, but often unbalances the organization in the opposite direction, a lack of balance that is a herald of  possible opposite trends. This is what the history of the whole of the communist movement tells us, not only that of our own party. The attention must therefore always be concentrated on a precise identification and definition of mistaken trends, in an equally precise framework of the historical moment in which they take place. It is on this basis that we indicate to those who read us or are taking an interest in our positions the possibility of working with and for the Party and, consequently, the way for gaining a better understanding of our differences with other groups. With which, we should repeat, we do not have or intend to have any relations, preferring to work for our class.

^[1]  Khvostism, The word is Russian in original and loosely translated meaning the tail wagging the dog (khvost is the Russian word for tail): “tail-endism,” i.e., following the masses.

^[2] To the recurrent accusation that we did not “take stock” of the ’81-’83 crisis, we reply that this “stock-taking” (a political and not a petty one!) was done, both in the articles published by our Italian newspaper Il programma comunista “Riprendendo il cammino” (no.1/1984), “Chiudendo definitivamente una recente polemica” (nos. 2 & 3/1984), “La nostra via diritta” (no.1/1985), and in the political and organizational work carried out since then, first to survive and then to start strengthening ourselves again – work often made arduous by the objective conditions the Party found itself operating in.