International Communist Party

The roots of the International Communist Party can be traced to the left wing of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), founded in 1892. The first two decades of the PSI were marked by an internal struggle led by the left faction to establish Marxism as the party's official ideology.^[2] Initially a minority, the left gained prominence at the 1910 congress, where they organized themselves as the Intransigent Revolutionary faction. By 1912, this faction had become dominant within the PSI, with key figures including Benito Mussolini, Angelica Balabanoff, and Amadeo Bordiga.^[3]

The outbreak of World War I led to significant ideological divisions within the PSI. Mussolini broke with the left by adopting a pro-Allied stance, while Bordiga developed an anti-war position similar to Lenin's revolutionary defeatism. This position, though rejected by most socialist leaders, established Bordiga as a prominent voice within the party base.^[4] After Mussolini's expulsion for his increasingly militarist position, leadership passed to Giacinto Menotti Serrati's centrist faction, which maintained an ambiguous position between the right wing led by Filippo Turati and the left.^[5]

Like Lenin, faced with the Second International's support of various sides in the war, Bordiga called for the formation of a new international.^[6] When the left encountered Lenin's views after the October Revolution, they considered them not a new adaptation of Marxism but a restatement of it.^[7]

Under the influence of the Russian Revolution, the 1918 congress of the PSI officially adopted the policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat.^[4] In 1919, the left organized as the Abstentionist Communist Faction, seeking to exclude reformists and align with the Communist International (Comintern). The implicit support given by the Comintern at the 2nd World Congress enabled the Abstentionist Communist Faction to break out of its isolation as a minority in the party.^[8] Simultaneously, the Ordine Nuovo group emerged in Turin under Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti. Initially close to Serrati's maximalists and in favor of participating in elections, they first entered into polemics with the Abstentionist Communist Faction, only to move closer to it in 1920 as it gained majority support in cities such as Naples, Milan, Florence, and Turin.^[9]

In January 1921, these revolutionary elements split from the PSI to form the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I) under Bordiga's leadership, taking with them approximately one-third of the PSI's membership and most of its youth wing.^[10] The new party maintained a critical stance toward several Comintern policies, including the strategic position of anti-fascism, the tactical position of the united front, the policy of "Bolshevization" and the formation of workers' governments.

Despite representing the majority faction, the PCd'I's left leadership was replaced in 1924 by Gramsci under pressure from the Comintern, then effectively controlled by Joseph Stalin.^[11] This didn't prevent Bordiga from challenging Stalin directly at the 6th Enlarged Executive of the Communist International in 1926, arguing that Russian affairs had to be decided by the International.^[12]

The Left Faction of the Communist Party of Italy formed in 1928, primarily composed of Italian émigré communities in Belgium, France, and the United States.^[13] The formation was prompted by Leon Trotsky's expulsion from the Soviet Union, the adoption of the theory of socialism in one country, as well as a growing number of other disagreements with Comintern policies.

Though initially sympathetic to Trotsky's Left Opposition, the faction maintained its independence. Trotsky eventually turned towards the New Italian Opposition, formed by former Stalinists, as his Italian contacts due to the faction's hesitation about hastily forming heterogeneous opposition groups into an organized whole.^[14]

The Left Faction opposed the Spanish Civil War, viewing it as a prelude to the coming imperialist war.^[15] In 1938, the International Bureau of Left Factions was founded as the only organ from which the future party would emerge.^[16] During World War II, the scattered militants maintained a revolutionary defeatist position.^[17]

In 1943, a nucleus led by militants including Onorato Damen, Fausto Atti, Mario Acquaviva, and Bruno Maffi established the Internationalist Communist Party in Northern Italy.^[18] The party conducted significant anti-war agitation among factory workers and partisans.^[19] Eventually, Atti and Acquaviva were killed by Italian Communist Party members in 1945 for their intervention among partisan groups.^[20] Following the Allied invasion of Italy, the Left Faction of Communists and Socialists around Bordiga formed in Naples and was absorbed into the new party in 1945,^[21] although Bordiga himself did not formally join until 1949.^[22]

Immediately, serious divergences emerged between two main currents of the Internationalist Communist Party, eventually leading to a split in 1952. The faction centered around Damen favored electoral participation and rejected both union work and national liberation struggles, whereas the faction centered around Bordiga opposed the policy of revolutionary parliamentarianism, supported union work, and maintained the Communist International's position on national and colonial questions.^[23] Following the 1952 split, Damen's group continued to publish the magazine Battaglia Comunista, while Bordiga's faction published Il Programma Comunista.^[24]

The faction around Bordiga, now organized as a new party, did not officially adopt the name International Communist Party until the early 1960s.^[25][26] Afterwards, its internal organization underwent significant changes. The policy of democratic centralism was replaced with organic centralism, which eliminated internal mechanisms of democracy. Party congresses were substituted with general meetings featuring detailed presentations, and a single commissioner (Bruno Maffi) was appointed with the task of linking different sections of the party.^[27]

In 1964, the Milan section split off to form Rivoluzione Comunista, which was opposed to the concept of organic centralism.^[28] In 1966, the Paris section under Jacques Camatte and Roger Dangeville split off as well. Camatte's group formed around the magazine Invariance, and Dangeville's followers gathered around Le Fil du Temps.^[28]

The party experienced significant growth in France following May 1968, despite taking a critical stance toward the student protests.^[29] However, it recognized the workers' strikes as superior to those during the 1937 May Days in Spain.

Between December 1971 and January 1972 several sections of the International Communist Party in France seceded, opposing the support of the party for working within, rather than against, trade unions.^[30]

In 1973 the Scandinavian sections, which had come into conflict with the International Communist Party center for their drift towards the positions of the KAPD, split over opposition to the union policy of the International Communist Party and briefly published the newspaper Kommunismen.^[31]

In 1974 the Florentine section grouped around Giuliano Bianchini, who had led the ICP's Central Trade Union Bureau since the 1960s, split with the ICP. The Florence section would form its own International Communist Party around the newspaper Il Partito Comunista and the theoretical review Comunismo.^[32]

In 1982 the International Communist Party underwent a severe crisis centered around the shift over the 1970s in favor of anti-imperialism, which had led the French section of the party around Le Prolétaire to support groups such as the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Palestinian fedayeen, and the Khmer Rouge.^[33]

The crisis broke when the Algerian-focused newspaper of the Paris section of the party, El Oumami, published an article in July 1982 calling for solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was engaged in the 1982 Lebanon War, which was supported by the leadership of the Paris section.^[34]

The Ivrea and Turin sections were expelled from the party in 1981, soon forming the periodical Lettere ai compagni which would eventually form the journal n+1.^[35] In 1982 the Schio section formed the ICP-Bollettino and would publish until 2005.^[36] The Spanish section broke away in 1983, forming the magazine El Comunista.^[37]

Bruno Maffi, leader of the International Communist party, was ousted from the International Central Bureau and Il Programma Comunista in 1983 which were taken over by a group named Combat. After a court ruled in favor of Maffi's ownership of Il Programma Comunista in 1984, Combat was forced to give up the paper and briefly published Giornale per il partito comunista internazionale.^[38] A new paper, Il Comunista, would appear during this internal struggle around 1983-84, and would link up with the remaining members of Le Prolétaire to form a new International Communist Party in 1985.^[39]

In 2005, former members of the ICP-Bollettino who split in 1987 to rejoin Il Programma Comunista re-split to form the ICP (Su filo rosso del tempo).^[40]

In 2024, a split occurred within the ICP (Il Partito Comunista), over "factionalism from above"^[41] and "questions of organic centralism and union address"^[42], led to the creation of the IntCP. The IntCP maintains legal ownership of Il Partito Comunista, and the ICP now publishes Il Partito Comunista Internazionale, however the two parties are currently in a legal conflict over the theoretical review Comunismo which both continue to publish.^[43]

Several organizations now claim the ICP name, distinguished by their publications:

• ICP (Il Programma Comunista – Kommunistisches Programm – The internationalist) Publications in Italian, German, and English
• ICP (Il Partito Comunista Internazionale – The International Communist Party – el Partido Comunista Internacional – Enternasyonal Komünist Partisi) Publications in Italian, English, Spanish and Turkish
• ICP (Le Prolétaire – Il Comunista – El Proletario – Proletarian) Publications in French, Italian, Spanish, and English
• ICP (El Comunista – Per Il Comunismo – The Internationalist Proletarian) Publications in Spanish, Catalan, Italian and English
• ICP (Il Partito Comunista – The International Communist) Publications in Italian and English