100 year Anniversary of the Communist Party of Italy - GENERAL MEGATHREAD for Thursday, 21th of January 2021

Bella Ciao

The PCI was founded as the Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci.

Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played a major role in the Italian resistance movement the most famous being the Brigate Garibaldi with over 500 brigates during WW2, at the end of the War when Benito Mussolini was escaping to swizerland he was captured and recognized by Communist Partisans and Executed

In the 1970s the PCI reached its all-time maximum electorally: 34.4% in the 1976 general election (12,600,000 votes, 3 million more than in the previous election in 1972). Membership also saw a similarly sharp increase, with over 1,800,000 in the same year (300,000 more than in 1970). becoming the Biggest Communist party in the Imperial core

Sadly due to Fascist violent, State oppresion and CIA intervention (operation gladio) that culminated in the Years of Lead the PCI was not able to mantain itself.

Achille Occhetto became general secretary of the PCI in 1988. At a 1989 conference in a working-class section of Bologna, Occhetto stunned the party faithful with a speech heralding the end of Communism, a move now referred to in Italian politics as the svolta della Bolognina (Bolognina turning point) Under his leadership, the PCI dissolved and refounded itself as the Democratic Party of the Left, which branded itself as a progressive left-wing and democratic socialist party.

Antonia Gramsci - The Prison Notebooks no Gramsci emote :angery:

Amadeo Bordiga - The Science and Passion of Communism :bordiga-despair:

Absolutely! The best single history of the PCI (the Italian Communist Party) is Magri’s The Tailor of Ulm .. For the origins of the Italian Communist experience during and after WWII check out Pavone’s epic A Civil War , which is fantastically written by a former member of the Resistance. For a more on the ground look at how the PCI functioned, check out Rossanda’s The Comrade From Milan (a memoir) or Morselli’s The Communist (fiction). For a deeper look into Italian Autonomist Marxism, a philosophical strain of Marxism pioneered in the PCI, check out Wright’s Storming Heaven (which is a history of the movement) and Tronti’s Workers and Capital (its chief theoretical text). There’s plenty else to check out, including works by Gramsci and Bordiga, but I haven’t personally read them so can’t recommend. That said, I’m sure they’re good!

by @thethirdgracchi

Today is the day of the LeftComs so there are allow to be sectarian by the way

The State and Revolution

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

The Conquest of Bread

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the ChapoChat twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:

!bloomer@hexbear.net :bloomer: