The drifts and ambiguities of bordiguism on the national question

The anti-internationalism of some nostalgic ‘Bordigists’ of the 1920 Baku Congress. The NON-internationalist position of the microconstellation : IL Comunista (Italie), Le prolétaire (France), Proletarian, etc., which claim to be Bordiga’s followers.

Three organizations still call themselves the International Communist Party, after the implosion of autumn 1981. Two, such as Il Programma comunista (based in Milan), and Il Partito comunista (based in Florence and Genoa), have effectively abandoned their position on support for national liberation struggles, including Palestine :

• « We have always shown that the prospect of the « double revolution » envisaged by the « Theses on the National and Colonial Question » in 1920, came to an end around the mid-1970s, more or less concomitantly with the closing of the economic expansion cycle of the second post-war period and the opening of the crisis phase of commodity and capital overproduction into which, with its ups and downs, we are still plunged. Since then, the as yet unresolved « national questions » have lost their potential revolutionary impetus, and remain only as gangrenous remnants infecting the body of the international proletariat with the decisive assistance of all the « infectious agents » active in the major imperialist metropolises, and which can only be overcome and erased by pure and open revolutionary struggle, directed against all national states and all imperialisms, under the leadership of the revolutionary party.. The mystico-religious approach therefore takes the place of the communist perspective, nationalism that of internationalism: this is why placing oneself on the terrain of national demands and building around them one’s program of action, moreover abundantly nourished by religious ideology, means doing an openly anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary work. » (Il programma comunista, "Notes à contre-courant sur le Hamas et le "mouvement palestinien", 12 décembre 2024)

• « The capitalist oppression of the Israeli wage-earning class and the dual capitalist and national oppression of the Palestinian proletariat will only end with the proletarian revolution against the Israeli and Palestinian bourgeoisies, with the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class. » (Il Partito comunista, 2025, On the side of Palestinian and Israeli proletarians and for their unity! AGAINST WAR BETWEEN BOURGEOIS STATES!)

The position of the micro-constellation « Il comunista »/Le Prolétaire is quite different. It hides itself behind the Leninist-Zinovievist theses of Baku, 1920.

All the better to preach an anti-imperialist crusade: the Palestinian and « Arab » « revolutionary war » against « imperialism », allying themselves - as Trotsky once said - « with the devil and his grandmother ».

Quotations from the « Il comunista » brochure, May 2024:

Lénine : « Socialists must not only demand the immediate, unconditional and uncompensated liberation of the colonies - and this demand, in its political expression, means nothing other than the recognition of the right to self-determination - but also support in the most decisive way the revolutionary elements of these countries, in the most decisive way the revolutionary elements of the bourgeois democratic national liberation movements, help them in their insurrection and, if necessary, in their revolutionary war against the imperialist powers that oppress them». (Underlined by Pantopolis)

« … this position was also decisively reaffirmed by us (« our party ») in the 30 years following the Second World War with regard to the colonial movements, so much so that it was one of the reasons for the confrontation and split with the comrades who later followed the Damen group (« Battaglia Comunista ») » [1].

All proletarians in the Middle East, bled for decades by repeated imperialist conflicts, will rightly appreciate this call to support "the revolutionary elements (Hamas? Daesh?, etc.) of the « bourgeois democratic movements » (in other words: the national bourgeoisie, armed to the teeth against the proletariat) ; to « help them in their insurrection and revolutionary war (thus: create Arab-Palestinian ’international brigades’, with a few meagre relics of the "bordigist" movement?).

The aim of this call for a Baku bis version of 2025 is nothing less than to turn the proletarians of the Middle East into cannon fodder for capital, whichever imperialist camp they choose, instead of preparing them revolutionary workers’ insurrection against all bourgeoisies : Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian, American, Russian, Chinese, until the total disappearance of the capitalist mode of production, replaced by authentic world communism, that of humanity reunified at last.

Pantopolis, April 2, 2025 PB / Pantopolis.