Arrigo Cervetto

Arrigo Cervetto (Buenos Aires, 16 April 1927 – Savona, 23 February 1995) was an Italian communist revolutionary and politician. He was the founder of Lotta Comunista, with Lorenzo Parodi.

Biography

Arrigo Cervetto was born in Buenos Aires to Amedeo Cervetto and Bernardina Pasquino, who had emigrated from Liguria. He returns to Hometown, in Liguria, and he started working at a very young age as apprentice in "ILVA" (a steel complex), in Savona. Arrigo Cervetto develops a class consciousness during these years of work. On 25 July 1943, he takes part in the first demonstrations after the fall of Mussolini. On 8 September he fought as an anti-fascist partisan in Piedmont during the Italian Liberation War.

Arrigo Cervetto, with friends and comrades like Piero Parisotto and Antonio Bogliani, left the PCI (Italian Communist Party) after a year of militancy, he rejects the policies of Palmiro Togliatti because Togliatti wanted to break the tradition supported by Communist left, and so Palmiro wanted to accept alliances with international bourgeois forces. Arrigo declares himself an anarchist.

As anarchist, Cervetto approaches to Libertarian Communism; Savona had a very developed libertarian movement, there were prestigious figures like Umberto Marzocchi. In 1948 Arrigo Cervetto meets Pier Carlo Masini and Lorenzo Parodi who became his political companion for all of his life. Still during those years, as self-taught worker, he read the works of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Antonio Gramsci and he approaches to marxist positions. He defines himself an "anarchist-marxist".

In March 1950 he takes part in the Conference organized in Genoa-Pontedecimo by the Ligurian Anarchist Federation, that aims to concretely define the political struggle of the FAI (Italian Anarchist Federation). He collaborates with the milanese newspaper "Il Libertario" (The Libertarian) in May 1950 until May 1951, and with the Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action's (GAAP) newspaper "l'Impulso" from 1950 to 1957, here he wrote a lot of articles about the Cold War and about Decolonization, he also explored the capitalistic nature of Soviet Union arguing the theory of State Capitalism.

Cervetto Arrigo theorizes the "Unitary Imperialism" starting from "Imperialism" of Lenin, which is opposed to the common vision of a bipolar world divided into two camps, the sovietic socialism and the American capitalism. Cervetto states that both powers were imperialists and capitalists, and that the unequal economic development compelled them to a continuous struggle for the hoarding of new markets. The two blocks were not so different in nature.

Also in Genoa-Pontedecimo, in 24–25 February 1951, is one of the founders of the "Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action" (GAAP), he presents the thesis of "Liquidation of the state as an apparatus of class." In his thesis he argues that "the social revolution, that installs a classless society, is accomplished with the simultaneous liquidation of the bourgeoisie as a class and the liquidation of the state as an apparatus of class" and that "it's the task of the proletarian mass organizations (factory councils, agricultural community, people's committees) expropriate the capitalist system of its facilities and to take on the direct and collective management".

In the GAAP coexisted the libertarian-socialist tradition, represented by Pier Carlo Masini, and the Marxist-Leninist tendency, represented by Arrigo Cervetto. This divergence will be the cause of the split in 1958.

In 1950's December, Cervetto will be fired by ILVA of Savona, in restructuring, and in May 1951 he will return in Argentina where he will stay for one year, until May 1952.The return to Savona will see him engaged in the political-theoretical struggle, he will begin to try to organize a revolutionary party. Arrigo Cervetto no longer receives any salary, and so he accepts to work for Feltrinelli, he had to write a biography of the "Worker's Movement of Savona". In those years he deepens the historical research on the origins of class consciousness in the proletariat that has taken the first steps. Later, to survive, he will accept a job as representative of the publisher Giulio Einaudi Editore.

Collaboration with Azione Comunista

In 1953 Stalin died and the Soviet Union begins the phase of the thaw. Stalinism is in crisis and this is also reflected in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) with the clash between Peter Secchia and Palmiro Togliatti. It is at this juncture that Giulio Seniga, former assistant of Secchia, founded in 1954 the movement of "Azione Comunista" which is the mouthpiece of dissent within the Italian Communist Party.

In 1956, following the events of Hungary and the "Report Krushiov" the crisis of Stalinism speed turns and in June it released the newspaper "Azione Comunista". In December, Azione Comunista along with historical anti-Stalinist currents, the Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action, the PC Internationalist of Onorato Damen, and the Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Communist Groups of Livio Maitan shape the "Movement of the Communist Left" with a demonstration at "Cinema Dante", in Milan.

Cervetto, even contrary, following the decision of the National Committee, is sent to Milan to work at the paper. He will do this until August 1956 striving to counteract the maximalism and extremism but it's above all its analysis and definition of the USSR as "state capitalism" to create acute differences. Among the promoters of the Communist Action there are, in addition to Seniga, other ex-PCI as Raimondi and Vinazza still supporters of the "myth" Stalinist USSR, Pier Carlo Masini increasingly focused on the PSI and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I), Bruno Fortichiari.

In 1957 GAAP melt and flow into Azione Comunista and at the First National Conference of the Movement of the Communist Left on 3 and 4 November 1957 in Livorno, Cervetto and Parodi, now clearly Leninist positions, expose organically their strategic vision, presenting the "Thesis of 1957". In them, facing the analysis of the global cycle of development of capitalism, they explicitly excluded the possibility of a global crisis in the short period and they indicated as a priority the formation of the class party from "a deep and passionate theoretical work." But the difference of positions caused the expulsion of Masini and Seniga, who then joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) of Pietro Nenni. In 1959 the organizational strength after removal of Masini and Seniga is very heavy: loss militants, demoralization, removals.

Limited the possibility of making active action policy, 1960–61 are for Cervetto and especially for Parodi, years of study and theoretical analysis on China defined as a "nascent state capitalism", on the colonial question and on the Europe as a new economic bloc. In 1963, the divergence of positions causes the break with Raimondi and other ex-PCI sympathizers for China and the Maoist movement that depart from the newspaper in open contrast with the Cervetto's thesis concerning about maoist China seen as a result of a democratic-revolution bourgeois and as state capitalism.

In 1963 Cervetto and Fortichiari decide to transfer the preparation and printing of the newspaper in Genoa and from April 1964 they published a series of Cervetto's Articles, which aim to 'make clear the basic lines of the Leninist conception of the party' . It is a study (which will be collected two years later in volume, with the title of "Class struggle and the revolutionary party", and over again until the sixth edition of 2004) on the Leninist concept of political action, understood as the basis Scientific solution 'to the problems left unsolved by the inclination of Amadeo Bordiga objectivist and subjectivist from that of Leon Trotsky' '. "

Cervetto research this solution finding the organic link between the "Capital" by Karl Marx and the "What is to be done?" by Lenin; starting from here, he addresses the issue of workers' coalition; Finally, the last chapter focuses on the role of the revolutionary party on the definition of the strategy, such as' result of a scientific analysis of a given stage of the class struggle . "

Foundation of "Lotta comunista"

It's on this basis that, exhausted the coexistence of incompatible positions, Cervetto in 1965 can turn the page on the experience of "Azione Comunista", and form a new organization fully homogeneous: in December 1965 it's published the first issue of "Lotta Comunista" and it starts a vast work of settlement organization.

The consolidation and development of this work will allow Cervetto to start a long career of arrangement of its entire theoretical production, in order to publish in organic form the main themes of his analysis:

• "Imperialismo Unitario", Milan, 1981, which is organically collected the material for analysis of the course of world imperialism since the fifties until 1980;
• "The World Contention", Milan, 1990, where the imperialist contention eighties is considered as a 'the end of a war of capital in course of fifty years' : on the Eastern Front Russia has lost and Germany won, while on the western front the outcome is still open;
• "The political cycle of state capitalism, 1950–1967", Milan, 1989: the tendency to form of state capitalism is found in the development of capitalist production, and Stalinism regarded as a political movement supporter of that form legal ownership;
• "The unequal political development, 1968–1979", Milan, 1991, a report on the development of Italian capitalism in the seventies and the analysis of the profound imbalance between the movement of the economy and the movement of the political superstructure;
• "The difficult question of time", Milan, in 1990, where Cervetto intervenes in the debate on the pace of the revolution between Stalin, Trotsky and Bordiga: while it is scientifically possible to identify the general trend, or development as it is called Lenin, capitalism and predict the 'inevitability of its markets or results, it is impossible to predict its deadlines, where he was hired as an active factor in the party;
• "The housing policy", Milan, 1994, which contains reflection on the materialist conception of politics, which began in the mid-seventies, the analysis of the "political head" addressed by the method of study of the "social body ".

Cervetto dies in Savona on 23 February 1995, but the publication of his writes goes by "Edizioni Lotta Comunista". After 1995 they come out like this:

• "The multi-polar world, 1990–1995", Milan, 1996: in the writings of the last years of Cervetto on international politics has underlined the multiplicity of world players, in an economic cycle sustained and unprecedented dimensions, with accelerated dynamics of change and instability of balance and alliances;
• "Forces and forms of Italian change" Milan, 1997, where it is reconstructed the process of change in the socio-economic formation within the Italian long international expansion since the second World War;
• "Method and science party", Milan, 1998: Here are collected the writings in which Cervetto research into the origins of the method and political science as well as in modern history since the sixteenth century, "the axis of the theory" for the transition period of the contest multipolar;
• "Research and writings", Milan, 2005, which collects the works of the '50s, from the study of the origins of the bourgeoisie from Savona to Savona on those working, running from the early struggles of the "Siderurgica" to get to the Resistance .

Some of the major texts of Cervetto are translated into English, French, German, Russian (by Editions of Marxist Science of Paris) and Greek (by issues Diethnismos of Athens).

See also

• Lotta Comunista
• Left Communism
• Anti-stalinism
• Leninism

References

Bibliography

• Guido La Barbera, Lotta comunista Il gruppo originario 1943–1952, Milano, Lotta Comunista, 2012.
• Guido La Barbera, Lotta comunista Verso il partito strategia 1953–1965, Milano, Lotta Comunista, 2015