International Communist Party Index

No. 3 - December 2025 - Year II Last update January 10, 2026 Paperback

– How the Working Class Takes the Field Against Imperialist War – Race, Class & The Agrarian Question in the United States (Part 2 continued) – The Origins of the Communist Party of China (Part 3) – The Ideologies of the Bourgeoisie (Part 4) – Alienation, Sex, Love and the Crisis of Human Relations in Capitalism – The Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today (Part 1)

How the Working Class Takes the Field Against Imperialist War

The present epoch parades before us a bourgeois class armed with automation, surveillance systems, drones, and mass prison systems. They imagine history has been frozen forever secured by their technological supremacy and state monopoly on violence. Yet the bourgeois state’s military force and state apparatus does not function autonomously. It is a dependent function of economic power and capitalist economy, far from being eternal, is riddled with internal contradictions and destined for cataclysmic crisis that will see its ultimate destruction at the hands of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Wars have always existed, driven by economic motives. Even the empire of Sargon of Akkad, around 2350 BC, considered the first empire in history, had economic motives for its expansion, including the need for tin, which it lacked, to melt it with copper to obtain bronze.

Even in imperialism, the terminal phase of capitalism, the will of heads of state, puppets in the hands of capital, is worth very little: it is the bourgeoisie’s need for survival that decides on war when its existence is threatened by crises of overproduction that can no longer be contained. The various national bourgeoisies are forced to try to crush competing capitalisms in order not to be crushed themselves.

The relentless propaganda of all states proclaims that war is holy because it is against an aggressor – whether “terrorist” or “hybrid” – and that the proletariat must go and kill and die, preferably with joy, in the name of the Fatherland, God, Democracy, Freedom, or some other deception.

These “noble principles” that seem carved in granite often quickly dissolve, given the extreme mobility of inter-imperialist alliances, and it happens that a state finds itself allied with what until recently was portrayed as “the absolute evil.” Italy is an example of this. In the First World War, it went to war against the states with which it had been allied until the very end, and in the Second World War, it changed sides during the course of the conflict.

Even the strongest imperialist powers, such as the United States, are no exception: the US recently changed course, imposing war on its reluctant European vassals and then abandoning them in order to seek better relations with Russia, in an anti-Chinese move. The servile European states are now undecided between giving up the bone or continuing to foment war in order to gain at least the crumbs, however substantial, that will come from the reconstruction of Ukraine. But they have no choice: war is imposed on capitalists by the advance of the economic crisis.

The bourgeoisie, in defense of their profits, are always ready to abandon their pacifism. They are immediately accompanied by the “left-wing” parties. In Italy the example of the socialist Turati is eloquent: after the stampede of Caporetto. 1917, he supported the abandonment of the already treacherous slogan “neither join nor sabotage,” to move on to open defense: “The homeland is on the Grappa, at the front of line!”

Communists know that the only alternative to imperialist war is class war, war against war, pushed to the point of communist revolution. Our slogan was formulated by Lenin: “Turn the imperialist war into a civil war”.

This perspective requires the presence of a strong class-based union influenced by the revolutionary Marxist Communist Party. The Party leads the class through its organizations, the “transmission belt,” which are as indispensable as the former.

For this reason, it made no sense to oppose “trade union work” to “political work” within the Party, or to alternate between them depending on the situation. The intertwining of the Party’s activity in the trade union field and its revolutionary communist programmatic action can never be understood, whatever the situation, as something separate.

Lenin responds to Natsia on October 13, 1905: “By setting itself the task of armed insurrection, the task of leading the trade union struggle of the proletariat inevitably recedes into the background”. In my opinion, this is theoretically incorrect and tactically wrong. Armed insurrection is the supreme method of political struggle. For it to be successful from the point of view of the proletariat, it is necessary to develop all aspects of the workers’ movement extensively. Therefore, the idea of contrasting the task of insurrection with the task of leading the trade union struggle is completely wrong".

If the Party is the general staff of the revolution, the class union, composed of proletarians, constitutes a large part of its army. Since the only alternative to imperialist war is victorious class war, the latter needs that army and that general staff. They are needed to sabotage the war and practice revolutionary defeatism, to hinder the flow of soldiers and weapons to the front, to block their own country at war with a general strike, until the power of the bourgeois class is overthrown in some large states.

The proletariat, led by its international communist party, will then no longer use weapons against its class brothers wearing different uniforms, but will turn them against its true enemies, against its own bourgeoisie, decreeing the end of the infamous regime of Capital.

9. - Before King Cotton There Was Norman Wool

When the Romans subjugated Britain, the quality of the islands fleece and textiles was already well known through the limited indigenous trade networks of the time. The damp climate and fertile pastures had created hardy flocks of sheep with long, soft, and durable fleeces, making wool from the isles one of the most desirable fibers on the continent. Rome soon established workshops and trade networks, but with the dissolution of central imperial authority, only the flocks remained. Natural selection did its silent work, as sheep continued to be utilized for local consumption needs with limited exports of small surpluses under the Anglo Saxon kingdoms. Regardless, by the eleventh century English wool was still known as the finest raw material in Europe even if it had not become a commodity for mass export and sale on the emerging world markets which began to take shape as the early crusades led to a reemergence of trade networks across Europe connecting it to the east.

Before the Norman Conquest of 1066, England’s agricultural system was shaped by centuries of Anglo-Saxon practice. At its core was the open-field system tied to the village community. Land was divided into large arable fields, which were further subdivided into strips. Each peasant household held scattered strips across different fields, ensuring access to both good and poor soils. Surrounding these fields were commons (meadows, woods, and pastures) used collectively for grazing livestock, collecting firewood, and other subsistence needs. This system was maintained through customary rights and obligations, enforced at the level of the local village and hundred courts. While there were dependent peasants, slaves, serfs, and cottars, the Anglo-Saxon system allowed for a significant number of ceorls (free peasants) who held and worked land relatively autonomously, paying rents or rendering service to local lords but often retaining mobility and rights.

The Norman Conquest radically restructured this order into the manorial system. William and his barons redistributed land wholesale, seizing it from Anglo-Saxon nobles and free peasants and concentrating it into estates held by Norman lords and the Church. These estates (manors) became units of extraction where peasants were bound to the demesne (the lord’s land) through villeinage, obligated to perform labor services in addition to rents and tithes. The Normans also expanded the role of monasteries as massive landholders, many specializing in sheep raising and early forms of commercial agriculture. While Anglo-Saxon England had been relatively decentralized and sustained by mixed subsistence farming, Norman rule militarized and monetized the countryside, integrating it more tightly into networks of surplus extraction and long-distance trade.

By the time of the Norman Conquest, the Flemish textile towns of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres were already thriving centers of cloth production, employing tens of thousands of weavers and fullers. Their looms consumed vast quantities of fine wool sourced within Europe, which was in relatively short supply on the continent but abundant in England. The Normans, with their strong feudal ties across the Channel (many Norman lords also held fiefs in Flanders) moved quickly to exploit this opportunity. By seizing control of English wool production, they could funnel the raw material directly into the Flemish mills, where it was transformed into high-value cloth sold across Europe. This Anglo-Flemish partnership enriched Norman abbots and barons while also deepening England’s integration into continental markets. For peasants, however, it meant the reorganization of their subsistence agriculture into pasturage for commodity exports, with rents, tithes, and forced labor extracted to sustain a trade whose profits accrued to elites rather than to those who sheared the sheep.

By the late 12th century, England was exporting around 35,000 sacks of wool annually, each sack worth roughly a knight’s yearly income, making English wool the finest and most sought-after in Europe and giving the crown enormous leverage in continental politics and finance. By the 13th–14th centuries, the English wool trade had expanded and exports often reached 40,000–45,000 sacks per year, and the wool customs tax introduced in 1275 soon supplied over half of the crown’s annual income. This revenue allowed English kings to fund wars in France and assert political influence across Europe. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, sheep farming in England already resembled agriculture on an semi-industrial scale, the whole country being widely liked to “one great sheep farm”. Regions such as the Welsh Marches, Lincolnshire, and the Southwest specialized in producing fleeces that were shipped in enormous quantities to the cloth-making towns of the Low Countries, France, and Italy. English ports like Hull, King’s Lynn, and Southampton thrived on the trade, while monarchs treated wool exports as their greatest source of revenue. It is from this trade that a growing merchant class began to rise in England.

10. - The Hundred Years’ War and the Banking Crisis: Setting the Stage of the Bourgeois Revolutions

The Hundred Years’ War, formally beginning in 1337 when Edward III pressed his claim to the French throne. Beneath the banner of the king’s dynastic struggle lay the economy of wool and cloth. Flanders, with its great textile cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, depended on a constant flow of fine English wool, yet remained under French suzerainty. Flemish burghers, threatened by their own overlords, invited Edward’s intervention not out of loyalty to a crown but to safeguard their looms and their profits. To sustain the circuit of production between English Wool and Flemish textiles, Edward imposed heavy duties on wool exports, an embryonic form of fiscal-military policy. These export tariffs enabled the crown to meet its military obligations for a short time but fell ultimately on the backs of peasants and small producers, binding their subsistence labor to the costs of international warfare.

War of this scale demanded more than tariffs and it pulled England directly into the circuits of international finance. The Florentine banking houses of the Bardi and Peruzzi advanced Edward vast loans, secured against the very wool exports wrung from the countryside. For a time, this arrangement worked, armies were funded, and the Flemish cloth industry remained supplied. But the campaigns drained surplus faster than it could be extracted, and by 1345 Edward defaulted on colossal sums. The collapse of both banks destabilized Florence itself, sparking credit contraction, bankruptcies, and class conflict. Yet financial power does not vanish with one collapse, it shifts. With the ruin of the great Florentine firms, the balance of European finance tilted northward. Flemish and German merchants and bankers, especially those operating out of Bruges and Lübeck, stepped into the breach, expanding their influence within the emerging Hanseatic trade network and tightening their grip on the wool and cloth circuits that Florence could no longer dominate.

The Hanseatic League’s kontors (London’s Steelyard, Bruges, Bergen, Novgorod) tightened their grip on North Sea–Baltic trade; Bruges (then Antwerp) deepened as clearing hubs; and northern merchants expanded short-term credit, exchange, and shipping on their own terms. The Hanse wasn’t a “bank,” but its cartelized control of bulk commodities (grain, timber, fish, metals) plus privileges in English ports entrenched non-Italian circuits of capital and supply, reducing the day-to-day indispensability of Tuscan financiers to northern crowns.

Once English and north German elites could fund themselves via wool customs, staple controls (e.g., Calais), and northern merchant credit, rather than leaning on papal-aligned Italian banks, the leverage of Rome and the Curia’s fiscal taps (annates, Peter’s Pence, provisions) weakened. In the Empire, princes found it easier to refuse papal taxes, cultivate local/imperial city financiers, and, once the Reformation opened the door, seize ecclesiastical lands to build territorial treasuries.

The Florentine banking crisis also set the stage for the eventual rise of the Medici. The failure of the Bardi and Peruzzi discredited the older model of large family banks tied directly to monarchs through risky state loans. The Medici, building their financial empire in the fifteenth century, learned from this catastrophe. They avoided overexposure to royal debt, diversified their credit instruments, and linked their banking operations to Catholic Church and papal finance, trade, and industry. In this sense, Edward III’s default in 1345 not only shifted financial weight toward Flemish and German merchants in the short term but also indirectly created the conditions for the Medici to emerge as the new arbiters of European finance under the papacy in the emerging age of the reformation and counter-reformation just as new independent trade and finance circuits began to develop in the North. Thus the English wool trade, the Flemish mills, and Florentine defaults were not isolated events; they were moments in the restructuring of international capital, whose crises reshaped the political economy of all Europe.

11. - The Black Death and the Rise of the Anglophone Yeoman Farmer

The Black Death in 1348 was not only a biological catastrophe but a profound rupture in the feudal order of England. Occurring in the midst of the intense war between England and France and shortly after the English financial default, it was emblematic of the kind of social cataclysm which prefigures massive revolutionary social ruptures of between the exploited and exploiter classes. With between one-third and one-half of the English population dead, entire villages were abandoned and vast tracts of land went untilled. In some counties, records show as much as 40% of arable land lying fallow in the immediate aftermath, while monasteries and great estates lost tenants by the hundreds. This sudden scarcity of labor gave surviving peasants unprecedented bargaining power. Norman lords, desperate to keep their demesnes productive, were forced to offer higher wages, reduced rents, or commutations of labor service into cash payments. Yet many peasants simply refused villeinage altogether. The ruling elite responded with repression, enacting the Statute of Labourers in 1351, which attempted to freeze wages at pre-plague levels and bind workers to their lords under penalty of law. But enforcement proved impossible: in many places, manorial courts went empty, and tenants walked away from obligations with little fear of reprisal.

Out of this demographic and social upheaval emerged the expanding yeoman class. In medieval and early modern England a yeoman was a member of a social class ranking between the peasantry and landed gentry. Before the plague, yeomen were already a small but significant group of free tenants and prosperous peasants, often holding between 30 and 100 acres. After the plague, their numbers swelled as survivors acquired abandoned plots, negotiated long-term fixed rents, or outright purchased land from desperate lords. Estimates suggest that by the later fourteenth century, yeomen and freeholders accounted for as much as 20–25% of rural households, a dramatic increase from the early 1300s. This petty-proprietor stratum symbolized both the breakdown of feudal dependence and the emergence of new class relations. Their independence was never absolute, they remained subject to taxes and market fluctuations, but they carved out a measure of autonomy that sharply contrasted with the servile obligations of villeins. The yeoman’s foothold in land became the social base not only for later agrarian capitalism but also for the radical movements of the English Revolution.

Their rising stature is reflected in the cultural imagination of the time. The tale of Robin Hood, crystallizing in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, spoke to a society where peasants and smallholders fantasized about striking back at sheriffs, abbots, and lords who sought to hold them down. Robin’s longbow, a weapon synonymous with the English yeoman, and his redistribution of wealth dramatized the antagonism between those who labored and those who lived parasitically off rents, tithes, and forced dues. In reality, the monarchy had already codified the yeoman’s military role: since the early 1300s, all able-bodied men were required to practice archery, a law designed to harness peasant skill in the service of the state. By the mid-14th century, yeoman archers were central to Edward III’s armies. At Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), lightly armed commoners with longbows annihilated the charges of French knights, proving that disciplined masses of peasants could shatter the military monopoly of the aristocracy and its heavily armored knights once thought militarily unbeatable. Returning home, they were emboldened, conscious of their value both in war and in labor, and increasingly unwilling to be forced back into servile dependency.

Across Europe, the plague radicalized social tensions. In France, the Jacquerie revolt of 1358 exploded when peasants, crushed by heavy taxation, war devastation, and aristocratic exactions, rose against the nobility. Armed with improvised weapons, they attacked manor houses and killed lords, venting long-suppressed resentment. The revolt was swiftly and brutally repressed by nobles and royal forces with an estimated 20-30,000 peasants being slaughtered, but it revealed the deep class tensions that the war and the Black Death had intensified; in Flanders, artisans and weavers rose repeatedly against taxes and guild elites; in Florence, the collapse of the wool guilds’ dominance triggered the Ciompi Revolt of 1378, where proletarian laborers entered into open revolt.

In England, discontent boiled over in 1381 with the Peasants’ Revolt. The crown’s imposition of poll taxes to fund war was the immediate spark, but the deeper causes lay in decades of economic strain, labor coercion after the plague, and resentment at feudal dues. Led by Wat Tyler and inspired by John Ball’s radical preaching of equality, tens of thousands of yeoman rebels marched on London. They stormed the Tower, executed royal officials, and demanded an end to villeinage and serfdom, reductions in rents, and the abolition of aristocratic privilege. Tyler pressed for nothing less than a revolutionary reordering of society.

John Ball’s radical preaching marks an early rupture in the ideological apparatus of feudalism. Ball was no marginal figure: his sermons provided the ideological spine of the uprising, giving voice to the grievances of villeins, artisans, and smallholders crushed by poll taxes and lordly exactions. While Tyler led the mass of peasants to London, it was Ball who gave their actions a universalizing language, preaching against the “gentlemen” and declaring that the ruling class was not divinely ordained. His challenge “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” was more than rhetoric; it was a material assault on the theological justification of feudal privilege. Ball also demanded that scripture be heard and read in the local tongue, rejecting the clerical monopoly of Latin as the language of class domination. By calling for a Bible in the vernacular, he aimed to dissolve the ideological barrier that kept peasants dependent on priests for divine truth, just as they were materially dependent on lords for land and survival. Although the rebellion was bloodily suppressed and Ball himself executed, the ideological break he represented reverberated beyond England. His insistence on equality before God and the vernacular Bible prefigured currents that would resurface with explosive force in the sixteenth century in Germany. Though the revolt was brutally suppressed, it marked a decisive moment in England as the old feudal order could not be restored. Combined with the demographic reality of labor scarcity, the revolt ensured that serfdom in England collapsed in the following decades. On the continent, repression preserved feudal structures, but in England, peasant resistance and demographic shifts loosened them. This divergence shaped England’s path toward agrarian capitalism and, eventually, bourgeois revolution, contrasted with the persistence of seigneurial domination which lasted for hundreds of years longer elsewhere in Europe.

12. - The Material Basis of the American Yeomanry & the Historical Contradictions of It’s Petit-Bourgeosis Idealism

After Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in 1381, serfdom though not abolished by decree, withered under the twin pressures of demographic collapse after the Black Death and waves of resistance to feudal dues. Out of these conditions grew the yeoman class, independent smallholders and free tenants who secured leases or ownership of land, embodying an ideal of self-sufficiency and autonomy. The fifteenth century marked a golden age for the English yeoman, when conditions in the countryside were unusually favorable to smallholders. Yeomen enjoyed secure tenures, moderate rents, and access to ample land for cultivation and grazing. Wages were comparatively high, while the cost of grain and other staples remained low, allowing farming households to sustain a comfortable standard of living. Many yeomen were able to expand their holdings, invest in better tools, and diversify production, giving them both stability and modest prosperity. They stood as a confident and independent stratum between the gentry and landless laborers, strong enough to support families, enter local politics, and even provide sons for trade or the church. In this period, the yeoman farmer represented a rare balance of autonomy, security, and social standing in the English countryside.

Yet, over the long term, the most decisive transformation of the English countryside was the rise of the gentry. The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) shattered much of the old feudal aristocracy, thinning out the ranks of great magnates who had dominated medieval politics. Into this vacuum stepped a stratum of lesser landowners, the gentry more aggressively oriented themselves toward market agriculture and sheep grazing, and aligned their fortunes with the expanding wool trade. From the late fifteenth century onward, they pressed enclosures with growing ferocity, fencing off commons and converting arable fields into pasture. This process enriched those yeomen who managed to secure leases or small freeholds, but for the mass of poorer peasants it meant dispossession. The swelling ranks of landless laborers and “sturdy beggars” testify to the violent restructuring of the countryside, as subsistence gave way to commodification.

The Tudor monarchy (1485–1603) cemented this transformation by forging a strategic alliance with the gentry. Henry VII and Henry VIII recognized that the crown’s survival depended not on the old baronial houses but on a rising class of local landowners, whose economic interests tied them to commerce rather than feudal retainers. The Tudors employed them as justices of the peace, sheriffs, and administrators, giving them unprecedented local authority in exchange for loyalty to the crown. This alliance deepened with the break from Rome and the establishment of the Church of England and its Anglican Protestantism. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s expropriated one-quarter of England’s land, much of which was sold off at favorable rates to gentry families. This act simultaneously destroyed the institutional power of the Church, transferred vast wealth into private hands, and provided the gentry with the material base for their further ascent. Protestant reform thus dovetailed with class interests as it broke the ideological monopoly of Catholicism while justifying and legitimizing new forms of property accumulation.

For the yeomanry, this restructuring was double-edged. Some prospered by leasing former monastic lands and integrating into market agriculture, joining the gentry as their “junior partners”. Others, however, found themselves squeezed between the enclosures of the gentry and the taxes of the crown, gradually eroded as an independent force. The Tudor state, while at times rhetorically defending the “commonwealth” against enclosure, consistently sided with the gentry when conflicts sharpened. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the countryside had become polarized: on one side, a confident gentry reinforced by prosperous yeomen; on the other, the mass of dispossessed laborers, cottagers, and wage-workers. Out of this polarization emerged England’s distinctive path to agrarian capitalism, a social order in which wool and sheep defined the economy, Protestant ideology armed the gentry, and the basis was laid for the later confrontation of Parliament and monarchy in the English Revolution.

By the seventeenth century, poor yeomen provided much of the social foundation for the radical wing of the English Revolution. In movements like the Levellers and Diggers, elements of this class pressed for common ownership, equal rights, and the dismantling of aristocratic privilege. Yet they remained divided as a class strata unable to fully cohere itself around a historical program distinct from the bourgeois, despite its at times proto-communistic manifestations. Still, their relative material independence gave them both the leverage and the ideological conviction to challenge entrenched class hierarchies at times.

13. - Heading for the “New World”

Yet, the advance of enclosure from the fifteenth century onward steadily eroded this independence by enclosure. This wave of expropriation became a central driving force behind English emigration to the New World. In the early seventeenth century, many of those who settled in Virginia, New England, and the middle colonies were not the landless paupers but middling farmers and yeomen fleeing enclosure and the looming fate of proletarianization. In America they sought to reconstitute the lost independence of the English village in the form of family farms. But this “freedom” rested on dispossession of a different kind, the seizure of Indigenous lands. What enclosure had begun in England, colonization continued abroad. A perpetual frontier where the yeoman ideal could be temporarily renewed through violent expansion.

In the United States, this tradition crystallized into the yeoman farmer as a republican ideal. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yeomen were typically non-slaveholding, landowning family farmers, subsistence-oriented in places like the Appalachian uplands, commercializing where land was fertile. Their holdings ranged from 50 to 200 acres in the South, while in the North the overwhelming majority of farms were operated by yeoman households. Thomas Jefferson elevated the yeoman into a political archetype, the supposed bedrock of republican virtue, independent, incorruptible, and free from the vices of urban wage labor or speculative capital. This agrarian idealism, was used to justify and defend the interests of economic program of the early commercial capitalism in the United States within the dominant Southern colonies and its ruling class of landed gentry against both the old monarchy and against the rising financial and industrial capital in the North under the leadership of the Federalists and then the Whigs with its conflicting economic demands. This interclassist Jeffersonian vision was carried forward into Jacksonian democracy, which presented the “common man” as sovereign while simultaneously channeling the desperation of displaced farmers into Manifest Destiny and defending slavery as a way to maintain the status of the independent farmer against the developing industrial despotism in the still small urban manufacturing centers. The tragic irony was that the flight from enclosure in England, and later from capitalist concentration in America, fueled a settler-colonial project that violently displaced Indigenous peoples to make way for a new cycle of small proprietorship, each cycle destined, in turn, to be devoured by the accumulation of capital.

By the late nineteenth century, the material basis of the yeoman class began crumbling. Industrial agriculture, railroad monopolies, and wage labor reduced the independence of smallholders, even as political movements like the Grange sought to defend their position. In reality, the yeoman, the independent peasant, was not a timeless class but a transitional one. In Europe it had been a historical byproduct of feudalism’s dissolution and capitalism’s rise. Its ideology of self-reliance, modest prosperity, and individual liberty became the cultural mask of the American middle class which remains as a noxious delusional aspiration within the American working class who continue to bind itself to petit-Bourgeosis aspirations and nationalist interclassist programs of the exploiters political parties. But as Marx observed, small property is always self-undermining, torn between the pressures of capital accumulation and its own narrow base in petty production. The yeoman dream was thus historically doomed, first fenced in by enclosures, then expanded through colonization, and finally obliterated by industrial capital. The same is and will be true of the contemporary middle classes and labor aristocracies. The yeoman’s enduring “middle class” myth serves only to obscure the necessity of collective struggle of the proletariat beyond property and beyond democracy towards the emancipation of the human species through the opening of the class civil war, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and eventual development of full communism.

14. - Hapsburg Control of the Low Lands & the First Bourgeois Revolutions: The Ignition of English and Dutch Colonialism

The English and Flemish cloth circuit wasn’t to be a permanent fixture and it’s disruption at the ascendancy of Spanish hegemony in Europe would give further economic incentive towards a break and the eventual establishment of it’s own colonial networks to offload its wool products to, before the rise of the Tudor’s and Lutherism in Germany. The Habsburg takeover of Flanders in 1482, and its consolidation under Charles V in the early sixteenth century, tied the once semi-autonomous Flemish cloth towns into the orbit of a vast European empire. English wool had long been indispensable to the looms of Flanders, but now the trade was subject to the political strategies of Habsburg rulers who also controlled Spain, Burgundy, and much of Central Europe. As disputes between England and the Habsburgs grew, especially during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the English crown and merchants faced increasing risks in relying on Flemish markets alone. Antwerp rose as the commercial hub of the Low Countries, but the vulnerability of English exports to embargoes, wars, and heavy taxation encouraged a shift: instead of remaining raw-wool suppliers to continental weavers, England began to build its own textile industry.

By the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this transformation was visible in the settlement of Flemish weavers in Norfolk, Suffolk, and the West Country, where English wool was spun and finished into cloth at home. Refugees from continental wars and religious persecution, including the Huguenots from France, further enriched English skills and methods. As a result, England increasingly bypassed Flemish intermediaries, selling finished cloth directly to foreign markets. This development reduced dependence on the Habsburg-controlled Low Countries, but it also created new pressures: an expanding textile industry needed both secure sources of raw materials and guaranteed markets for its products.

Here the logic of colonialism emerged as a vital necessity for capitals continued growth. Wool remained central, but the search for alternative fibers like cotton, and the need for captive consumers, pushed England outward. The future colonies in the Americas and Asia were barred from developing competing textile industries and were instead required to import British cloth. At the same time, raw cotton from India and, later, the American South sustained the mechanized the English mills of the Industrial Revolution. Thus, the Habsburg monopoly over the Low Countries did not strangle the English textile industry; rather, it spurred England to independence, self-sufficiency, and eventually imperial expansion. The cloth trade became both the engine and the justification for England’s colonial empire, linking sheep pastures, colonial plantations, and global markets into a single system of economic power.

15. - The Habsburgs and the German Peasant Revolutions A Continuation

The dawn of the sixteenth century saw the dramatic rise of the Habsburg dynasty as the central power in Europe. Through dynastic marriages and inheritance, Charles V united the crowns of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, placing under one monarchy vast territories that stretched from Iberia and the Americas to Germany, the Low Countries, and parts of Italy. This concentration of authority represented the most ambitious attempt at universal monarchy in feudal Europe, projecting immense military power. Yet this empire was already riven with contradictions as it rested on the medieval foundations of divine-right kingship while depending more and more on the emerging bourgeoisie (merchants, financiers, and bankers) who provided the credit and infrastructure for its wars. Spanish treasure and German loans fueled imperial expansion, but the extraction of surplus to sustain the dynasty intensified class antagonisms across the continent.

It was precisely in this crucible that the first shockwaves of the Reformation erupted. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, condemning indulgences and denouncing the corruption of the papacy. But Luther’s attack on clerical abuses quickly escalated into a broader assault on the spiritual and material authority of Rome. What began as a theological quarrel over church corruption became a mass movement, as urban guildsmen, students, and peasants seized on the language of reform to challenge the crushing exactions of both Church and state. Protestant congregations organized independently of Rome, rejecting the centralized hierarchy of Catholicism in favor of more localized and collective forms of worship. For artisans, townsfolk, and peasants alike, Protestantism became a banner against feudal rents, tithes, and clerical privilege. The German princes themselves split along these lines, some embracing Luther as a weapon to wrest political autonomy from the Habsburg emperor and his allies in the papacy.

Not long after, the Church of England was formally established in 1534 with the Act of Supremacy under Henry VIII, broke England from Rome after the pope refused to annul his marriage. While its origins lay in dynastic politics, its consolidation was inseparable from the wider tide of German Protestantism: Henry’s break mirrored the defiance of the German princes who shielded Luther, both asserting national sovereignty against papal and Habsburg authority while consolidating the emerging bourgeois forces around the alliances of convenience with established monarchical states and principalities who sought to greater profits by breaking out from under the burdensome Spanish and Catholic yoke.

The Spanish and Portuguese colonial projects had already been sanctioned by papal bulls like Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), which authorized enslavement and conquest in the name of Christ while giving Spain and Portugal dominion over most of the world outside of Europe. As bullion from the Americas poured into Habsburg coffers, papal authority was exposed as not merely spiritual but profoundly an apparatus of economic plunder and repression. Meanwhile The northern German princes had clear material reasons for breaking with Rome. Under Catholic order they were mostly excluded from the expanding riches but, they were required to pay heavy tithes and tribute to the papacy, and vast tracts of land and wealth were tied up in monasteries and bishoprics that acted as semi-independent powers. By embracing Luther’s doctrines, princes could seize church lands, appropriate monastic revenues, and end the financial drain to Rome, thereby increasing their own treasuries and consolidating sovereignty within their territories. The Reformation was thus both an ideological revolt against papal authority and a profitable redistribution of wealth from church to secular rulers. The Tudors in England moved along a parallel track.

Between 1500 and 1650, Spain imported an estimated 180 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver, much of it from the Potosí mines in Bolivia. This flood financed imperial wars but destabilized Europe, fueling the “Price Revolution”. While merchants and financiers thrived, peasants saw rents and taxes climb beyond subsistence levels. In Spain, smallholders were taxed into ruin; in Germany, Spanish-financed Habsburg princes intensified exactions to fund wars of religion and dynastic ambition. Colonial plunder thus fed directly into the oppression of European peasants, fusing the fate of Andean miners with that of German serfs.

The Peasants’ War of 1524–1525, in which nearly 300,000 German peasants rose demanding the abolition of serfdom and relief from feudal burdens, must be understood in this context. The rebels often drew inspiration from the radical edge of Protestant preaching: Thomas Müntzer, for instance, insisted that divine justice demanded the overthrow of lords and the communalization of property, echoing the demands of John Bell during Wat Tylers rebellion. Engels, in The German Peasant War (1850), argued that these uprisings were not isolated explosions but the “first great act of the revolutionary class struggle in Germany,” linked by a red thread to the revolutions of 1848 and connected back to the same historical arc that began with the peasant revolts in the fourteenth century. For Engels, the continuity between sixteenth-century peasants and nineteenth-century workers revealed the unfinished character of the German bourgeois revolution, repeatedly strangled by alliances between aristocracy, princes, and the emerging gentry.

This revolutionary historical arc would circle back to the young United States when after the defeat of the 1848 revolutions produced a vast exile of German revolutionaries, the “Forty-Eighters,” many of whom fled to the United States. There, dispossessed of their European hopes, they carried with them the memory of failed uprisings and the radical traditions of democracy and socialism. In the American Civil War, these émigrés in the thousands enlisted in the Union Army to contribute to the final project of the completion of the anglophone bourgeois revolution and the destruction of slavery, while leaders like Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel and even communists closely tied to Marx such as Joseph Weydemeyer held prominent commands. In this way, the struggle against slavery in America was not only a domestic conflict but the continuation of Europe’s unfinished revolutions. The war for Union and emancipation represented the culmination of the Anglophone bourgeois revolution what began with the English Civil War and the American Revolution reached its consummation in the destruction of chattel slavery.

16. - The Spanish Black Legend: Origins of Racialized Slavery in the Counter-Reformation

As the Spanish grip under the Habsburgs grew to encompass all of Europe it likewise strengthened it’s hold over the Americas. As indigenous revolts began to spread it’s colonies and protestant revolts developed across old world christendom, the spanish developed the counter-reformation, utilizing inquisition and a series of institutional reforms and innovations in an attempt to maintain it’s increasingly backwards feudal hegemony over Europe and the New World.

Spain entered the sixteenth century as the most powerful monarchy in Europe, carrying the banner of Catholic expansion. Through missions, forced baptisms, and the destruction of temples, the Church claimed millions of souls in a few decades in it’s colonies. The territorial conquest of the New World was organized first through the establishment of the encomienda. This was the central institution of early colonization where grants of land were given by the Crown to conquistadors, settlers, and clerical orders. Under the encomienda, whole indigenous villages were forced to pay tribute in goods, crops, or direct labor. In name, encomenderos were guardians of their wards, charged to Christianize and “protect” them. In reality, it was slavery and Indians were driven into the mines, the fields, and the workshops under the lash, often worked to death. In Hispaniola alone, hundreds of thousands perished within a generation. In Mexico and Peru, entire communities were uprooted to supply labor for silver and gold.

Alongside the encomienda rose the hacienda, a system that consolidated land in permanent estates. While encomiendas were technically temporary grants, the hacienda fixed both soil and people to landlords and religious orders. Indigenous peasants were transformed into tenants and debt peons, bound by coercion and endless obligation. Together, encomienda and hacienda fused feudal exactions with the logic of colonial accumulation. They became the pillars of Spanish domination in the Americas, binding Indians to tribute, debt, and coercion, while concentrating land in the hands of a colonial oligarchy tied to Crown and Church.

Yet this despotism carried within it contradictions. The Church preached universal salvation, while encomiendas and haciendas enforced slave labor from baptized Christians. Large scale indigenous rebellions such as Enriquillo’s in Hispaniola (1519–1533) and the Mixtón War in western Mexico (1540–1542) revealed the fragility of Spanish control. As the social tumult and expanding contradictions of the decaying medieval society stretched thin, reformist Spanish priests such as Bartolomé de las Casas denounced the cruelty of encomenderos, arguing that Indians were rational beings capable of conversion. Confronted by the dual threat of indigenous revolts and the emerging Protestant fomentation in Europe, the Crown began to recognize it was facing an existential crisis. Thus the process of organizing the counter-reformation, to entrench the legitimacy and power of the church and Spanish rule began with haste. Key to it were the New Laws of 1542 to restrict Indian slavery. This was not conscience but calculation as Spain sought to reduce the excesses in the colonies which triggered revolt, while preserving an image of a benevolent Catholic state in Europe to undercut the Protestant Reformation which was unmasking Rome’s abuses in order to arm the ascendant bourgeoisie with a language and pretex for revolution.

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation became inseparable from the defense of the old colonial empire and justification of it’s new and expanded ones where the development of the means of production was no longer held back by feudal fetters. Luther’s call for scripture in the local vernacular shattered the clerical monopoly over knowledge. Guildsmen, peasants, and townspeople seized upon the new faith to resist rents and tithes. Protestantism spread like fire, carried by the printing press, the new weapon and productive technology of the age. Rome replied at Trent (1545–1563), centralizing doctrine, empowering the Jesuits, and enforcing censorship through the Index of Forbidden Books. Spain, the mailed fist of the papacy, vowed to keep its dominions free of Protestantism. It proved this in blood at Fort Caroline in 1565, where Pedro Menéndez massacred the French Huguenot settlers. The global struggle between Reformation and Counter-Reformation was fought with sermons, pamphlets, and massacres alike.

Despite Spain’s alleged labor reforms, ideology could not alter the material need for growing ranks of exploited labor power. Mines and plantations devoured bodies. Disease annihilated millions of natives. Encomiendas collapsed under revolt and depopulation. To sustain it’s labor demands, Spain turned systematically to African slavery. The asiento de negros (1517 onward) granted monopolies to merchants who supplied enslaved Africans in return for payments to the Crown, more deeply binding the slave trade into the fiscal machinery of empire.

This shift to African chattels, demanded a new ideological justification. Under the old dispensation, enslavement was justified by religion as heathens could be held in bondage until baptized. But Africans remained enslaved regardless of conversion. The Valladolid debate of 1550–1551, held by the Spanish clergy, staged between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas, crystallized the contradictions of Spain’s colonial rule. Sepúlveda drew on Aristotle to claim that the Indians were “natural slaves,” born for servitude, while Las Casas defended their rationality and capacity for Christian conversion. The debate, alongside reforms like the New Laws of 1542, helped curtail formal Indian enslavement but only by redirecting the burden of colonial labor.

At the time, Las Casas himself endorsed the importation of Africans, arguing they were better suited for hard labor and could replace the Indians, effectively reproducing the “natural slave” logic he denounced when applied to Amerindians. Later in life he bitterly regretted this position, acknowledging that African slavery was equally unjust and inhumane. Yet irregardless of his personal sentiment under the asiento system, the Crown licensed the mass importation of Africans to sustain sugar plantations in the Caribbean and silver mines like Potosí. Out of this shift emerged the racial caste order, the sistema de castas, which bureaucratized hierarchy by blood and phenotype. Thus the apparent “victory” of Las Casas spared Indians from formal slavery, but at the cost of hardening African bondage into a permanent, heritable condition, laying the foundation for the fully racialized colonial order of Spanish America. In Spain, limpieza de sangre statutes were developed to exclude Jews and Moors of “impure” descent; in the colonies, the sistema de castas were eventually developed which codified hierarchy by ancestry and skin. Slavery was transformed from a religious penalty into a racial condition, permanent and heritable.

The protestants, building on Las Casas critical writing against Spanish despotism, had developed the notion of the indigenous Americans as “noble savages”. Protestant writers, eager to undermine Spain’s legitimacy, reimagined the American Indian within a new stereotype as innocent, uncorrupted by European decadence, and therefore a victim of Catholic tyranny rather than a people destined for chains. This rhetorical move served two purposes. It gave Protestant powers moral ammunition in their denunciation of the Spanish “Black Legend,” and it moraliz their own disinterest or inability to enslave Native Americans en masse after they had acquired their own coloines. Instead, natives were cast as potential allies or trading partners, at least until land hunger and expansion rendered them obstacles to be dispossessed and exterminated. Extenuating into their latter evangelical theological justifications under Manifest Destiny and their claims of colonialism as a humanitarian mission aiming at spreading civilization.

Yet for both the protestants and the catholics, the Africans, by contrast, remained trapped in the category of “natural slaves”, an ideological construction that erased the contradictions of Christian universality and reduced them to a heritable labor force.The supposed moral distinction masked a simple calculation for the English and Dutch as well. Unlike Africans, who were uprooted, transported, and marked as outsiders from the start, Native Americans were rooted in their own lands, difficult to dispose in mass, prone to resistance, and too essential as trading partners or military allies in the struggle against Spain and France. Enslaving them wholesale (as Spain had attempted) was impractical for the English, who instead relied on forced treaties, and war to clear territory for settler colonies. Africans, torn from their homelands and racialized as permanent outsiders, could be more easily reduced to a hereditary labor force. Thus the Protestant powers’ selective outrage at indigenous American slavery, and their silence on the African trade, revealed not humanitarian scruples but the calculated logic of the emerging bourgeois classes who sought to frame their emerging order as a universalistic cause for all classes and all humanity but in reality only served their narrow self interests of capital accumulation.

Despite denouncing Spain through the “Black Legend,” the English and Dutch eventually built their own racial slave systems in Virginia, Barbados, and Suriname. Bourgeois “science” provided it empirical sanction: Bernier’s racial taxonomy (1684), Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (1735), and Blumenbach’s “varieties of mankind” (1775/1795) recast domination as natural fact. Thus Catholic and Protestant, feudal lord and bourgeois merchant alike, eventually converged on the same new objective reality: race, not religion, as the universal justification for slavery. As the unity of the Christian world dissolved, both emerging colonial powers could at least agree on this new worldview. Christianity’s promise of universal salvation could not coexist with a plantation order that required permanent, heritable bondage. The contradiction was resolved by discarding universality and enthroning race. Sword, sermon, and bourgeois “science” fused to sanctify the chains. This was capitalism’s dawn: primitive accumulation carried out by the extermination of Indians, the enslavement of Africans, and the ideological invention of race to make the artificial hierarchy and historically transient forms of labor exploitation, once justified under divine law, now under apparent natural law.

17. - The Dutch Under the Habsburgs and the 80 Years War

The Netherlands was a critical commercial hub within the Spanish Habsburg empire. By the 1500s, the Northern Netherlands, particularly Holland, had one of the highest urbanization rates in Europe. A dominant merchant and artisanal class, organized around textile manufacture, fishing, grain trade, and shipping. Towns with considerable autonomy, self-governance, and their own urban militias developed.

Although Spain conquered and colonized the Americas, the benefits of colonial plunder flowed indirectly into the Dutch economy. Dutch merchants acted as secondary carriers of Spanish American bullion and goods, especially before the Dutch Revolt. Amsterdam and Antwerp were major redistribution centers for American silver, sugar, tobacco, and dyestuffs. Dutch firms financed Spanish imperial logistics, built ships, and lent money to merchant houses. Spain lacked a strong domestic capitalist class. It relied on Genoese and German financiers for loans, Dutch and Flemish merchants to circulate bullion and distribute goods, shipbuilders and artisans from the Netherlands to sustain its fleets. This trade created a self-sustaining commercial capitalist class in the Netherlands, eventually developing a mode of production that was largely capitalist in tendency, with wage labor, commodity production, and market exchange. This created a paradox. As feudal spain’s own colonial system partially relied on the labor, infrastructure, and capital of its future bourgeois class enemy which helped the Dutch develop economic and technical autonomy before the revolt began.

The Spanish Habsburg monarchy heavily taxed the Low Countries to fund imperial wars. It tried to impose the Inquisition, military garrisons, and sales taxes on relatively autonomous Dutch towns as protestantism began to spread. This met fierce resistance from merchants, guilds, and city councils, who wanted free trade, low taxes, and local control. The costs of maintaining Spain’s vast empire across Europe and the Americas led to economic exhaustion. Dutch bourgeoisie, especially in Holland and Zeeland, resisted the draining of their wealth for foreign wars and feudal-monarchic goals. The first major successful bourgeois revolution erupted with the 80 Years War in 1566 when the Dutch bourgeois entered open rebellion and would eventually triumph in 1648 establishing the fully bourgeois Dutch Republic. A year later in England the English Revolution would begin with Charles I execution in 1649 by the English Parliament and England entered into a republic, Commonwealth, that lasted until Charles II was reestablished as king of England in 1660

As the Dutch cast off the backwards papist yoke of the Spanish the ascendant Dutch bourgeois gained control of many of the Spanish’s colonial holdings in the east, and it was able to freely break up the guild structures and fully develop its system of urban manufactures domestically which created a greater demand for English wool for it’s textile mills. This inturn spurned English nobles to begin further producing surpluses for export, and landlords began to consolidate their estates, removing subsistence farmers in favor of maintaining large flocks of sheep. In the mid-1500s, England was a secondary, underdeveloped power, still dominated by landowning aristocracy and limited in trade and finance. The Tudor state was heavily indebted and dependent on taxes and confiscated monastic lands. There was little domestic silver production and a chronic shortage of coin.

18. - Dutch and English Bourgeois and Shipbuilding

The eventual English and Dutch rise as colonial powers in the 16th and 17th centuries was closely tied to their superiority in maritime technology and shipbuilding, which gave them a decisive edge over the Spanish and Italians, both of whom had dominated earlier in the age of commerce. This naval advantage was not just technical, it was deeply tied to bourgeois economic organization, capital investment, and the transition from feudal mercantilism to maritime capitalism. The superior design, productivity, and cost-efficiency of English and Dutch ships allowed them to break the Iberian monopoly on global trade and to challenge Spanish imperial supremacy on the seas.

The Dutch developed the fluyt (or fluit), a narrow, lightly armed, deep-hulled merchant ship that carried more cargo with fewer crew, had a shallow draft, ideal for coastal and river navigation and was cheaper to build and maintain than Spanish galleons. English shipbuilding followed similar trends by the late 16th century, Lighter, faster galleons and merchantmen replaced heavy, cumbersome designs. Innovations in rigging and hull design allowed greater maneuverability and speed, key to evading or engaging in naval warfare.

Dutch shipyards in Amsterdam and Rotterdam employed advanced division of labor, standardized parts, and mass production techniques, reducing costs dramatically. By the 17th century, Dutch shipyards could produce vessels twice as fast and at half the cost of Spanish yards. English yards, supported by state contracts and private capital, followed suit, especially after the Naval Defence Acts of the late 1500s.

Spain relied on large, heavily armed galleons, ideal for treasure fleets but Expensive and slow, unsuitable for bulk commercial trade, Dependent on state financing and plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency. Spanish shipbuilding remained artisanal, reliant on feudal guild structures and lacking the capitalized, industrial coordination of Dutch or English yards.

Italian maritime power (Venice, Genoa, Pisa) had peaked in the late medieval period, largely in the Mediterranean context. They failed to transition effectively to Atlantic trade and deep-sea navigation, in part due to. Political fragmentation. Narrow merchant oligarchies. A lag in technological adaptation (e.g., caravel to fluyt evolution).

During the 80 Years War, Dutch and English privateers and fleets began intercepting Spanish treasure ships, undermining the Habsburg financial system. The Dutch Republic used its shipbuilding strength to dominate Asian trade and to challenge Iberian control in the East Indies, Brazil, and West Africa. English fleets, under Elizabeth I and later Cromwell, launched naval raids, colonial ventures, and mercantile monopolies that would culminate in the seizure of Caribbean and North American territories. By the mid-17th century, the Dutch had the largest commercial fleet in the world, and the English were rapidly building a naval-industrial apparatus that would become the basis of the British Empire.

19. - English Bourgeois Piracy

Thus, the young English bourgeois of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enriched itself through state-sanctioned piracy, or privateering, aimed largely against the Spanish Empire’s colonial wealth. Far from random lawlessness, privateering was a deliberate strategy of primitive accumulation, transferring treasure, goods, and enslaved labor from the declining Iberian empires into the coffers of a rising English merchant class. The most famous episode was Francis Drake’s circumnavigation (1577–1580), authorized by Queen Elizabeth, during which he raided Spanish ports and treasure fleets across the Pacific. His haul, over £600,000, more than England’s annual revenue, flowed directly into the crown and into London’s merchants, financing naval expansion, gentry advancement, and commercial ventures. John Hawkins, another privateer and early slave trader, pioneered England’s entry into the Atlantic slave trade in the 1560s, trafficking Africans to Spanish colonies in defiance of papal monopoly. In capturing Spanish ships, Hawkins and his successors seized bullion, sugar, spices, and human beings, all of which were absorbed into the circuits of London and Bristol capital.

This infusion of plunder provided the seed capital for England’s early joint-stock enterprises. The Muscovy Company (1555), the East India Company (1600), and later the Royal African Company (1660s) were built on foundations of piratical booty and contraband trade. What began as raids on Spanish galleons hardened into a system of monopolistic chartered companies, armed forts, and colonial settlements. In this way, the spoils of piracy were transformed into the infrastructure of empire: the ships, warehouses, and trading posts that anchored England in global markets. Privateering and slaving were not marginal episodes but central to the consolidation of a merchant class that turned piracy into policy, slavery into commerce, and colonialism into empire.

These external sources of wealth were paralleled by violent transformation at home. The enclosure of the commons fenced off formerly communal fields, expelling peasants and transforming them into a landless proletariat. This agrarian upheaval dovetailed with the growth of the wool trade, as English merchants exported raw wool to the advanced looms of the Dutch Republic and reinvested profits into shipping and trade. The enriched gentry and merchants began to challenge the old feudal order by undermining the guild system. Through the “putting-out” system, capitalists subcontracted textile and craft production to dispersed rural households, bypassing guild regulation and bringing labor under their direct control.

By the early seventeenth century, the bourgeoisie, allied with sections of the monarchy but increasingly at odds with its monopolies, sought political power to match their economic dominance. Parliament became their instrument, used to contest royal control over trade, taxation, and chartered companies. These tensions culminated in the English Civil War, where the monarchy’s monopoly over commerce and state revenues was broken, and the political supremacy of property and capital was asserted. Thus, piracy, enclosures, and the wool trade converged as twin engines of primitive accumulation: externally through plunder and colonial trade, and internally through the expropriation of peasants. By the close of the seventeenth century, both English and Dutch bourgeoisies had consolidated enough capital and maritime power to launch increasingly systematic colonial projects in the Americas, laying the foundations for a world market built on manufacture, slavery, and commerce.

(To be continued in the next issue)

Our doctrine distinguishes between the historical party and the formal party. The party in the historical sense contains the concept of continuity, and therefore of the invariance of the doctrine as formulated by Marx “not as an invention of genius, but as the discovery of a result of human evolution,” constituting a heritage that transcends generations of revolutionary militants and encompasses the theory, principles, and aims of the revolutionary movement as well as all the historical experience of the class in struggle. The formal party, that is, the various organized formations of revolutionary fighters in which, throughout history, the doctrine, program, and principles of the communist party have been embodied, is situated on that historical continuum.

Thus our Theses states: ’For victory, it will be necessary to have a party that deserves to be called both a historical party and a formal party – that is, in which the apparent contradiction (which has dominated a long and difficult past) between the historical party, in terms of content (the historical, invariant program), and the contingent party, in terms of form, which acts as the force and physical praxis of a decisive part of the proletariat in struggle, has been resolved in the reality of action and history.’

The birth of the Third International represented a reunion of the historical party with the formal party. The Theses of the Second Congress condensed into a single body the teachings of Marxist doctrine and the lessons learned from the few brilliant victories and many bloody defeats of the world revolutionary movement. The Communist International aimed to present itself as the world party of the proletariat, as a single Communist Party with sections in different countries. Theory, principles, aims, program, and tactics were to be considered unified and valid for all sections. The birth and development of the national sections of the International were indeed processes that took place in specific national and historical contexts, whose tactics had to adapt to the particular development of capitalism and the course of the class struggle, but they concerned the international communist movement, which, in order to defend itself from recurring opportunist waves, which had always betrayed the proletariat by claiming alleged national particularities and interests, adopted a single program that was binding on all. The various national sections were parties present in a single country which had to adapt to the specificities of their national context, but these were all already foreseen and codified, and coordinated by a central, anti-democratic body which directed the communist movement of all countries of the world on the basis of a single world program.

The birth of the Communist Party of China took place in this context. In the early 1920s, at the time of the Second Congress of the International, which had established a single revolutionary program for the whole world, China did not have decades of Marxist doctrine and proletarian organization behind it, as was the case in the West. Driven forward by the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Marxism was only just beginning to be known in China, and the working class was extremely small in society. In addition to the endogenous forces of nascent capitalism and corresponding proletarianization, decisive factors in the birth of the CPoC were the advance of the world revolution towards the East and the guidance provided by the International for the formation of communist parties in all countries, not as national parties but as sections of a single world party. The birth and course of the PCoC were closely linked to the progress of the world revolution, its advance and, above all, its defeat, which in subsequent years led to the victory of the counterrevolution in Moscow and the subjugation of the Communist International and the world communist movement to the interests of the Russian state.

3.1 - The Advance of the World Revolution Towards the Easty

The seizure of power in Russia in November 1917 marked a historic turning point of immense proportions: a vast and important state, which had always been a bastion of conservatism, was conquered by the proletarian revolution, ushering in an era of social revolution throughout the world. The Russian Bolsheviks, like revolutionaries in all countries, counted on the revolution spreading to Europe, the heart of world bourgeois rule, and the main efforts to break out of the isolation in which the revolutionary government in Russia found itself were directed toward expanding the revolution in Europe. But immediately after the seizure of power, the Eastern question also became central to Bolshevik policy, as it was of vital importance to the Soviet government, given that its vast territory bordered on Turkey, Persia, the various entities of Central Asia, and China and Korea in Asia.

The eastern front had also been one of the main fronts of the civil war. For most of 1918 and until mid-1919, the Bolsheviks were under pressure and advanced upon from the east by White troops supported by numerous imperialist armies that came to threaten the heart of the communist state.

In this critical situation, all the efforts of the Communist Party and the Soviet state were aimed at the survival of the revolution, which meant victory in the civil war, and the only possible foreign policy was that aimed at extending the world revolution. In the East, the Chinese question was particularly important, both because of the importance that the great Asian country held for all imperialist powers and because of the revolutionary potential that could be unleashed there. Moreover, the situation in China directly influenced the armed pressure that the communists were under from the East.

In July 1918, Chicherin, Moscow’s Foreign Affairs Commissioner, announced Soviet policy towards China in his report to the Fifth Congress of Soviets: Moscow renounced the conquests of the Tsarist government in Manchuria, restoring Chinese sovereignty there; it renounced extraterritorial rights in China and all indemnities that “under various pretexts had been imposed on the Chinese people,” and withdrew all armed garrisons imposed by the Tsarist regime to defend Russian consulates in China. It was a genuine program of a communist government, in open contrast to the abuses of all the imperialist powers in China. But with Russia in turmoil from civil war and armed intervention by foreign armies, any incisive foreign policy was impossible.

The ups and downs of the conflict on the eastern front, with the counterrevolutionary armies that had advanced as far as the Volga, began to shift in favor of the communists in the spring of 1919. The Red Army’s advance eastward increased the chances of revolutionary success in Asia, where anti-imperialist movements were developing in India, Korea, China, Persia, Turkey, and throughout Central Asia.

The opportunity for regime change in China came with the events of May 4, 1919, when anti-government and anti-imperialist protests erupted in Beijing and soon spread to many other cities, sparked by the decisions taken by the great powers at Versailles. A revolutionary propaganda effort was directed from Russia toward China.

On July 25, 1919, with the so-called Karakhan Manifesto, the Soviet government addressed the Chinese people and the governments of southern and northern China, declaring that it renounced any territorial annexation and any kind of indemnity. The Manifesto contained Chicherin’s statements and made further concessions: all treaties imposed by the Tsarist government were declared null and void, and everything conquered by Tsarist Russia, either alone or in agreement with Japan or other powers, was returned to the Chinese people. In particular, the reference was to Manchuria, but the Soviet government specified that it would also return, without any compensation, the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) and Russian mining concessions in China. The obstacle to the immediate transfer of the CER was explained by the occupation of Siberia by foreign troops, mainly Japanese, and by the involvement of the Beijing government in the invasion of Siberia. The Bolsheviks’ goal was to promote the national revolution in China.

From the summer of 1919 until early 1920, the civil war moved eastward to Siberia. At the beginning of 1920, it turned in favor of the communists. The White armies were defeated and a direct confrontation with Japan was avoided. In April 1920, the Far Eastern Republic was established, effectively ruled by the Communist Party.

With the advance of the Red Army towards the East, the field of action of the International expanded, and between July and August 1920 it established a political office in Irkutsk, Siberia, responsible for propaganda and the organization of revolutionary work in the Far East. Meanwhile, the Second Congress of the International established the world communist strategy: in its Theses, it clearly stated that for the world victory of communism, the openly classist struggle of the proletariat of the capitalist metropolises had to be intertwined with the double revolutions of the colonial countries, attributing to the proletariat of the colonies and their nascent communist parties the role of leading the national revolutions. Around this perspective, the first forces oriented towards communism gathered in China.

The advance of the communist revolution towards the East thus came into contact with the Chinese national revolution where, at the beginning of the 1920s, a first workers’ movement was gaining strength in the presence of an active nationalist movement, which in some of its fringes took on an openly anti-imperialist and revolutionary character.

3.2 - Backwardness of the labor movement in China

The delay in capitalist development in China affected the development of class struggle in this large Asian country. Even at the dawn of the 1920s, there were only about two million proletarians in China out of a population of over 400 million. But despite their numerical weakness, the Chinese working class had already begun to take independent action before the 1920s. Between 1895 and 1918, there were about 152 strikes in China. Over the years, antagonism between capital and wage labor grew steadily: 10 strikes between 1898 and 1899, 15 between 1904 and 1906, 38 between 1909 and 1913, and 46 between 1917 and 1918. These strikes were mostly protests against low wages or attempts to reduce them, against worsening working conditions or the lengthening of the working day. In most cases, these were spontaneous strikes, with no organization to take the initiative and lead the struggle. This spontaneity was reflected in the violence that often accompanied the strikes and in the tendency to destroy factories and machinery. This Luddite character of the early strikes, hostile to modern industrial techniques, was due to the peasant or artisan background of the workers. The backwardness of these early strikes was also expressed in regional rivalries involving only workers from the same province.

The primitive nature of the Chinese working class had its political reflection. With the end of the imperial dynasty and the founding of the Republic, hundreds of organizations spread throughout China. Several of these claimed to represent the interests of the working class, but in general, due to their ideology, political objectives, and activities, they only sought to profit from the workers’ movement while representing the interests and ambitions of the petty bourgeoisie and national capitalism. They arose mainly from the attempt of some politicians to gain a working-class clientele by presenting themselves as spokesmen for the world of labor.

Among these was Jiang Kanghu’s Socialist Party, founded in late 1911, which primarily had electoral ambitions. According to its founder’s estimates, at the beginning of 1912, the party had 4,000 to 5,000 members and about 30 branches, and in the 1913 elections, it won about 30 seats.

The Workers’ Party, also founded in 1911, had a slightly different connotation. It had much in common with the many social promotion organizations that had sprung up in China in those years, and some of its statutory objectives were the development of modern industry in China and the improvement of workers’ technical knowledge. Some of its activities were aimed at forming cooperatives and collecting money among workers. However, the Workers’ Party also presented itself as an organization for the defense and participation of the working class in political struggles in accordance with its interests. The statute spoke of “reducing the suffering of workers” and forming “workers’ corps”; it also set out a number of demands and called for the unity of the working class, overcoming all corporate and regional distinctions. The Workers’ Party promoted a number of measures presented to Parliament, such as weekly rest, a guaranteed minimum wage, and workers’ insurance, and supported several strikes. It spread across much of the country, with about 70 local branches, and its leadership included representatives from various industrial sectors.

Both parties were outlawed following the so-called “second revolution” of July 1913, a rebellion by some southern provincial governors against the regime of Yuan Shikai. None of these early organizations would have any influence on the subsequent development of the Chinese labor movement, but the tendency of the bourgeoisie to divert the labor movement from the revolutionary path in order to subjugate it to the needs of bourgeois development would remain.

From an ideological point of view, anarchism spread more widely than Marxism in this initial phase. The anarchist movement developed several currents in China, each orienting its activities in different directions: some groups focused mainly on the peasantry and carried out their propaganda in the countryside; other anarchist groups turned to trade unionism, participating in the organization of dozens of unions. For anarchists, the development of organizations was closely linked to the education of workers, as they believed that the Chinese working class was too culturally backward to organize itself. They therefore proceeded to found schools and clubs for workers. There were numerous anarchist publications during this period, some of which were the first to deal with the conflict between capital and labor and to propagate its solution through social revolution. In China, too, typical slogans spread by anarchists were general strikes and the occupation of factories by the “producers”. In general, the anarchist movement spread to some extent in Canton and Hunan, but also in Shanghai, and their methods of organization were of some importance in the early days of the labor movement.

Throughout the period preceding the October Revolution, Marxism was virtually unknown in China. Sporadic references to Marx appeared at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by a handful of intellectuals. Greater interest began to emerge after the Russian Revolution of 1905, as groups of revolutionaries tended to draw parallels between the struggle against tsarist absolutism and that against the Manchu dynasty. However, Marxist doctrine was not very appealing to the impatient bourgeois revolutionaries, many of whom turned instead to the terrorist practices of various Russian revolutionary groups. However, a sporadic interest in the writings of Marx and Engels began to appear in some radical Chinese magazines, and the first translations of some of their works appeared. For example, in 1908, the first chapter of the Manifesto was published in Chinese. But there were not many translations of Marx and Engels’ writings into Chinese before the Chinese world came into contact with the force of the October Revolution. Marxism first spread in China following the revolutionary events in Russia.

Immediately after the Revolution, taking advantage of its geographical proximity, the young Russian government sought to establish initial contacts with China. Between 1918 and 1920, foreign military intervention and the White Army failed to prevent communications along the thousands of kilometers of the Sino-Russian border. From the beginning of 1918, the communists sent emissaries and agents to China with the aim of exploring the situation and revolutionary potential, and establishing initial contacts. Agents were recruited directly from among Russians living in China, who knew the country and the language.

They came from different social backgrounds and professed different political beliefs. There were democratic socialists, anarchists, and even former Tsarist officers who, for various reasons, had chosen to support communism and the International. Most of the Russian émigrés, about 5,000 in 1920, lived in Shanghai, where a Communist-led organization was formed to attract potential Chinese revolutionaries.

But the first contacts between the Chinese working class and the revolution took place mainly through Chinese workers in Russia and Russian workers in Tsarist enterprises in eastern China. At the end of the world war, there were tens of thousands of Chinese workers in Russia. A number of them actively participated in the Red Army in the civil war. In January 1919, an association of Chinese workers was formed. From this association came the delegates who spoke at the first congress of the International: they spoke on behalf of a Chinese Socialist Workers’ Party that existed only in intention. The communists attached great importance to working among prisoners of war and foreign workers in Russia, many of whom joined the communist movement and, once repatriated, became active in the communist parties of their countries of origin. Furthermore, communist ideas and organization also penetrated among Chinese workers employed in Russian companies in the Far East, especially in Manchuria, where they worked alongside Russian workers. Between 1917 and 1919, when the White Army ruled the region, there were strikes carried out jointly by Russians and Chinese. These struggles also led to armed clashes between soldiers and workers and a close union between Russian and Chinese workers.

Other channels of contact with the international labor movement were represented by Chinese workers in France during World War I and by Chinese emigrants in Japan, who came into contact with the socialist and trade union movement that had developed there, and by seafarers through their contact with foreign workers, especially British ones.

Some of the Chinese workers thus came into contact with the ideas and practices of the international workers’ movement for the first time, but the young Chinese working class was still scattered and lacked class-based organizations for economic defense. Above all, the absence of its own political organization placed the proletariat under the control of other social forces, as was clearly evident in the struggles that developed in China in 1919, known as the May Fourth Movement.

While the labor movement in China still showed its backwardness, a nationalist movement had been born and developed for several years, within which a decidedly anti-imperialist and revolutionary wing had formed.

3.3 - The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement

At the time of the First World War, China was dominated by many warlords, military leaders, and provincial governors; the formation of these military cliques kept the country divided and fueled internal wars. These warlords were supported by various imperialist powers that sought to extend their influence over the great Asian country, so in reality the wars in China were essentially a struggle between imperialist powers: on one side was Great Britain, supported with caution by France, and on the other was Japan, which, in return for its alliance against Germany, demanded more space in China.

Although there was no sovereign government over the whole of China, imperialist pressures had pushed one of the factions that alternated in power to formally ally itself with the Entente powers in the fight against the Central Powers, so that China was also among the participants in the world conflict. Towards the end of the First World War, a ‘republican’ parliament had been established in Canton to control the southern provinces, supported by southern militarists determined to oppose the northern military authorities, while in the north, starting in mid-1918, the ruling militarist clique split into two groups: on the one hand, the pro-Japanese Anfu clique formed, and on the other, the Chili clique, linked to British interests, which began to regain ground in China as the war effort in Europe drew to a close.

This political subjugation of China had led to the rise of a strong nationalism that spread mainly among intellectuals, taking on decidedly revolutionary forms. Historically, in China, the holders of culture had always been very important, thanks to the social structure of ancient China and their role in the exercise of political and economic power. For centuries, China’s ruling class had been recruited from among the intellectuals, who held key positions in the management of power and the administration of the state. But already in the early 20th century, the traditional role of intellectuals was gradually disappearing: with the abolition of the imperial examinations in 1905, traditional culture lost its economic value, while later, with the rise to power of the warlords, intellectuals were also replaced in their traditional bureaucratic positions. Intellectuals, in addition to being drastically impoverished, had suffered a heavy political defeat, having openly supported the 1911 revolution, and many of them had fought in Sun Yat-sen’s movement: they soon had to acknowledge its failure and submit to the rule of militarists and local notables.

It was in this situation that some intellectuals decided to rebel. The practice of “consensus” with the established order, which had traditionally characterized intellectuals, began to crack, and the conviction spread that it was necessary to react to the country’s collapse and that in order to “save China,” it was necessary to completely renew the values and principles that underpinned social coexistence. Obviously, for intellectuals, the instrument of action would be culture, but a “new culture,” no longer aimed at “consensus” but at “revolt,” a weapon against China’s subjugation to foreigners and against the Chinese ruling classes, accomplices of foreigners and responsible for the country’s decline: in essence, a “cultural revolution”.

In support of this perspective, the magazine New Youth was founded in the summer of 1915, which became a tool for spreading innovative ideas and influenced large sections of the Chinese youth who took part in the revolutionary movement in the following years. Among the founders was Chen Duxiu, who would play a key role in the early years of the CPoC. He wrote the first issue of the magazine, which went down in history as an “appeal to youth” to break with the past, in the belief that only the strength of young people could “save China”. Politically, the magazine did not have a homogeneous orientation, due to the presence of a more moderate line and another more decidedly revolutionary one. The latter, however, did not have clear ideas, generally influenced by an idealized vision of France, identified with the Jacobin revolution, but also with the days of June 1848 and the Commune. The openly revolutionary intellectuals of New Youth were certainly interested in deepening their understanding of socialist thought, but they did not yet clearly distinguish the differences between, for example, Marxism, anarchism, and other currents of the working class.

From the beginning of 1919, numerous other magazines joined New Youth, and youth and student associations sprang up throughout the country, embracing the need for radical renewal in China. At the root of the change in perspective of most of these young people was the October Revolution, which led to a differentiation between revolutionaries and the rest of the intellectuals. One of the first to recognize the importance of the Bolshevik Revolution, to approach Marxism, and to spread it was Li Dazhao. In 1918, three significant articles by him appeared in which his limited knowledge of Marxism is evident, but his enthusiasm for the revolution in Russia, considered the “spark of the world revolution,” is clear. "The French Revolution of 1789 heralds the revolutions of the 19th century in all countries. The Russian Revolution heralds the world revolutions of the 20th century". These were the first signs of adherence to a revolutionary method that was still foreign to the Chinese world, but which social dynamics would soon allow to spread not only among intellectuals but above all among the young proletariat. Before this transition, one last illusion about the possibility of China’s emancipation through means other than proletarian revolution had to fall.

3.4 - The May Fourth Movement: Students and Middle Classest

The end of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles dashed hopes that China would be emancipated in the post-war settlement. In fact, Germany’s colonies in China were handed over to Japan. This led to a strong anti-Japanese and anti-government reaction: on May 4, 1919, there were large student demonstrations in Beijing. Thousands of students demonstrated, demanding the return of Shandong to China, calling for the Treaty of Versailles not to be signed, and demanding the resignation of pro-Japanese ministers. The May Fourth Movement spread throughout the country and from students and intellectual circles to the business world in all provinces. A propaganda campaign was launched in favor of boycotting Japanese goods. The economic interests of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie were expressed in a demonstration of patriotic attachment to territorial integrity.

In June, the movement entered a new phase following the arrest of hundreds of students in Beijing. Starting on June 5, merchants showed their solidarity with the students by closing their shops, increasingly interested in the slogan of boycotting Japanese goods.

The demonstrations and boycotts were joined by strikes involving tens of thousands of strikers. The participation of workers in the May Fourth Movement had the same dependent character that had already marked the first manifestations of proletarian political activity in previous years: although widely supported by the working class, the initiatives essentially represented the interests of other social strata and were directed by them. The working class did not yet have, nor could it have, its own political and organizational autonomy. Workers’ participation in the movement was subordinate to the bosses, who controlled it through various bodies, such as mixed guilds and industrial promotion organizations. The demands put forward by the working class represented the objectives formulated by the national bourgeoisie, such as the return of Shandong to China, the removal of pro-Japanese ministers, the boycott of Japanese goods, and the release of imprisoned students, and did not formulate the economic or political demands of the proletariat itself.

The May Fourth Movement achieved its immediate goals: the Beijing government forced the ministers considered traitors to resign, and the Chinese delegation in Versailles refused to sign the peace treaty and thus to endorse the transfer of rights over Shandong to Japan. For the first time in China, it had united elements of the bourgeoisie, intellectuals, the petty bourgeoisie, and the industrial proletariat in a common action, a sort of class bloc, without the peasants for the time being, with the proletariat in a subordinate position to the national interests of the other classes, which demanded an end to the conservative government and the restoration of China as a sovereign state, putting an end to international dependence on foreign powers.

But while demonstrations and workers’ strikes played a subordinate role at that time, in the months and years that followed, the struggles for rights spread increasingly, and workers’ organizations were formed and grew stronger. Meanwhile, the events of those months in 1919 had had a significant impact on the young people who had enthusiastically participated in the struggles.

At Versailles, the victorious powers proceeded to divide up the world, openly revealing the brigand nature of imperialism and showing that the war just fought had been nothing more than a war of plunder. Those decisions suddenly dashed the hopes of regaining sovereignty and territorial integrity that part of the Chinese youth believed possible through negotiation and agreement with the great powers. If in May 1919 the imperialists confirmed their interest in keeping China subjugated and continuing to plunder its resources, in July, as we have seen, with the concessions made in the Karakhan Manifesto, the revolutionary government of Russia showed the Chinese people the policy of communist power. In this way, Chinese nationalism was captivated by the revolution in Russia.

The Third International, operating within nationalist movements and distinguishing between the moderate wing, inclined to compromise with imperialism, and the decidedly revolutionary wing, would bring national revolutionary movements out of the confines of the national liberation struggle against foreign oppression and link them to that of the proletariat of the developed countries in the great world strategy for communism.

3.5 - The First Communist Groups

The Communist International had decided not to appeal to bourgeois democratic movements, but to revolutionary nationalist movements, which was not simply a different formulation but indicated the precise revolutionary policy for the colonies and semi-colonies: it was wary of alliances with the indigenous bourgeoisie, which was inclined to come to terms with foreign oppressors in order to maintain its privileges, and turned to those national movements that were truly engaged in revolutionary struggle. From this perspective, it became essential to establish relations with the revolutionary movements developing in the various countries subjugated by imperialism. As far as China was concerned, as we have seen, the revolutionary nationalist movement found expression in the so-called May Fourth Movement. The most radical elements of this movement were among the first to join with communism.

The victory of the October Revolution had already brought about a profound change in the Chinese revolutionaries’ view of Russia. Tsarist Russia, along with all the other imperialist powers, had been responsible for the territorial dismemberment of China and its political subjugation. In contrast, the policy of Bolshevik Russia towards China, renouncing the benefits previously extorted by violence from the tsarist regime, aroused the enthusiasm of the Chinese revolutionaries. Moreover, it stood in stark contrast to the predatory attitude of all the major world powers, which had reaffirmed their determination to perpetuate the political subjugation of the Chinese nation at Versailles. As a result, sympathy for the Soviet government and Bolshevism spread among the radical intellectuals who had enthusiastically participated in the May Fourth Movement, and interest in a deeper understanding of Marxist theory grew. The cultural movement of radical renewal that had been shaking Chinese youth for several years entered a new phase. Many of these young Chinese, fascinated by the revolutionary events in Russia, began to organize themselves into study groups increasingly influenced by Marxism.

Despite the difficulties of the civil war, the Russian Bolsheviks immediately attempted to establish contacts with China. But it was only in April 1920, following a series of missions, that the Far East Bureau of the Bolshevik Party, in agreement with the leaders of the International, sent a group of communists led by G. Voitinsky to China with the aim of organizing the first communist groups there. These emerged from the radical associations that had formed during the May 4 Movement. They were present in various cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Jinan, Tianjin, Hunan, and Sichuan, each a product of its local environment. Although there were contacts between the various groups, there was no national organization to direct or even coordinate their activities. Voitinsky came into contact with the main leaders of this movement, including Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and with a few others began to form the nuclei of the future Communist Party. Under the leadership of the International, the forces available for revolutionary work as conceived by the communists were brought together.

In his report to the Executive Committee of the International dated September 1, 1920, Vilensky, who ran the East Asian Secretariat, a newly formed body for guiding revolutionary activity in the Far East, wrote that the Secretariat’s organizational task was to “carry out the work of establishing the Party in China by setting up communist cells among student organizations and among workers in coastal industrial areas”. With this in mind, Shanghai, the heart of Chinese industrial development, was chosen as the starting point for communism: a communist group was organized in the large metropolis in mid-1920. The first documents on the activities of the communists in Shanghai date back to May 1 of that year. Active and enthusiastic, under the direction of the emissaries of the International, within a few months the Shanghai group began to function as the provisional center of the party.

The main task of the communists in China was to establish a connection with the working class. In Shanghai, strong industrial development had created a large and concentrated working class. In addition to establishing contact with existing trade unions, the work of the communists among the Shanghai proletariat aimed to form new trade unions, achieving some success: for example, in October 1920, the communists managed to organize a mechanics’ union.

A propaganda campaign was also launched and various publications began to be distributed among workers. In Shanghai, the magazine The World of Labor was published, in Beijing The Voice of the Workers, and in Canton The Worker. The Shanghai publication was divided into two sections: the first contained articles of a theoretical nature, issues that were completely new in China, such as class struggle as the engine of history, the theory of surplus value, the movement of prices and wages, the need for a trade union coalition, etc.; the second was devoted to the situation of the working class, wages, living and working conditions, the struggle against imperialism and Chinese capitalism, etc. Alongside The World of Labor, the Shanghai organization began publishing The Communist, which was aimed primarily at militants and sympathizers of the Chinese section of the Third International. It dealt with the main theoretical issues, such as the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the conception of the Party, the function of the Soviets, etc.; there was space for the history of socialism and the workers’ movement, the proletarian Internationals, the degeneration of the Second International, the critique of anarchism, etc. The Communist reported on the international communist movement and the activities of the parties and organizations affiliated with the International, with ample space reserved for the International’s official documents. Another important magazine published by the communists was New Youth, which was distributed throughout the country and maintained contact with students and sympathizers of the May 4 Movement.

For proselytism, the Shanghai organization set up two structures, the Young Socialist Corps and the Society for the Study of Marxism. The Corps was created to spread communism among students and young people in general. Initially, the admission criteria were quite flexible in order to attract a diverse group of young radicals, anti-Confucianists, anti-militarists, and anarchists. This continued until May 1921, when it was dissolved and reorganized. The young people who were members participated enthusiastically in its activities, contributing to the establishment of the first workers’ unions in Shanghai. The Society, on the other hand, was conceived as a permanent school to raise the theoretical level of activists and dealt with the main theoretical issues of Marxist doctrine. In Shanghai, membership of the Society was reserved for communists, while similar societies that appeared in other cities had broader admission criteria.

The presence of these organizations open to students and intellectuals reflected the backwardness of Chinese society and the immaturity of the communist movement, which had not yet emerged from its “circle” phase. In fact, communist groups consisted of only a few members, initially just five in Shanghai, and operated illegally.

Marxist study societies were their public front. A foreign language school was also established in Shanghai, which also served to provide cover for revolutionary work, as well as to prepare young people to be sent to Moscow to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, an institution created to welcome young people from various Eastern countries and train them for the revolutionary development that Asia promised.

Towards the end of 1920, the Shanghai group had become the center of the work: it provided publications to other groups, guided them politically, and supported them organizationally. In addition, Shanghai maintained contact with the Third International and the world communist movement. It was also considered by the International as the center from which to lead the revolutionary movement in two other important countries, Korea and Japan, and in general throughout the Far East.

However, communist groups had also formed in other cities. Reports to the First Congress of the PCdC provide information on communist groups in Beijing and Guangzhou. According to the report, the Beijing group was founded in October 1920. Given the characteristics of the capital, a political center but with backward industrial development, its members were intellectuals from pre-existing study societies. Unlike Shanghai, the Beijing group had five anarchists among its nine initial members, but they soon left the organization due to obvious incompatibility with the principles of Marxism. The Young Socialists’ Corps had about 40 sympathizers, and more than 50 attended the Marxist Research Society. However, the admission criteria in Beijing were much less strict than those in Shanghai. The characteristics of Beijing also influenced the type of activity: as industry was underdeveloped, propaganda work among the working class focused on the railway workers on the Beijing-Hankou line. A school for workers was founded in Changxindian, an important railway station not far from Beijing, to bring these workers closer and spread the need for trade union struggle among them. This resulted in the founding of the railway union, which would play an important role in the struggles that would develop over the next few years.

The situation in Canton was more complicated, mainly due to the strong influence of anarchists and the fact that the Kuomintang had established close ties with certain sectors of the working class in the city. At the end of 1920, an initial group of nine members was formed, seven of whom were influenced by anarchism. It was only with the arrival of Voitinsky and Chen Duxiu in January 1921 that the group was reconstituted without the anarchists.

Other communist groups, even smaller and less important than the others, had formed in Wuhan, Jinan, and Changsha. There were also two groups abroad, one in Japan and another in France.

3.6 - The Communist Party of China did not Arise from Circless

This was the starting point of the Chinese communist movement. It is clear that the Communist Party in China was not formed through compromises between various groups on theory or tactics in order to assemble a party, but rather that its maturation into a party was informed by the single doctrine and program of communism.

As we have written, "the essential function of the political party is (...) never to break away from the ‘historical party’, from the program, from tradition. The political organization of the party is a special organization, different from and opposed to all other parties, because it embodies the program of the proletarian class; of communism. Given this, it follows that the history of the political party is the history of the class’s conquest of communist consciousness.

“With the advent of the Third Communist International, with a single world center, moving towards the International Communist Party, the working class acquired what Lenin called ‘organizational consciousness’, the programmatic and tactical content, the global dimension, and the pyramidal structure of its political organization” (“The party does not arise from ‘circles’”).

The characteristic feature of the Communist Party is that its organization is based on the principles of centralism and discipline, which are not separate from the program. From this point of view, the nascent party in China was, without any dissenting voices, in line with the integral Communist program as reestablished by the Communist International. The first communist groups that formed in China certainly had a petty-bourgeois social and ideological background, with the anarchist, utopian, and nationalist tendencies of the diverse world of radical intellectuals. But in their adherence to the impersonal and pre-existing program of the Communist Party, there was no concession to any of these immature and opposing doctrines.

This aspect is particularly evident in relation to anarchism. Certainly, in this initial phase, there was a significant presence of anarchists, but within a few months they abandoned the communist organizations due to the stark incompatibility between Marxism and anarchism. The anarchists’ unwillingness to engage in any organized work and, above all, their aversion to the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat soon led to a definitive split. The controversy with the anarchists unfolded exactly as it had in all the most developed capitalist countries at the time, with the Chinese anarchists using the same arguments against Marxism as their Western counterparts, and in rejecting their arguments, the Chinese Marxists were on the same ground as communists in all countries. No concessions were made to those young anarchists on the dictatorship of the proletariat: only a revolution that established the dictatorship of the proletariat could bring China into the era of socialism; all other solutions would lead to the defeat of the revolution, overwhelmed by the combined forces of the indigenous and foreign exploiting classes.

The dictatorship of the proletariat as the basic principle of communism was explicitly affirmed in the Manifesto of the Chinese Communists of November 1920, a document used as a guide for new members joining the party. The Manifesto states: "The overthrow of the capitalist government and the transfer of political power to the revolutionary proletariat is only one of the aims of the CP, and its success has already been proven. In any case, this will not be the last task of the CP, for the class struggle will continue to exist. Only its form will change and become the dictatorship of the proletariat.“ And again: ”The meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat lies exclusively in the seizure of political power by the revolutionary proletariat. This does not yet mean that the residual forces of capitalism, i.e., the counterrevolutionary forces, have been completely eradicated. This is absolutely not the case. The task facing the dictatorship of the proletariat is, on the one hand, to continue to use force to combat the residual forces of capitalism and, on the other, to adopt revolutionary measures that produce many communist methods of construction".

Despite the diverse backgrounds of the early militants, it was not theoretical improvisation or compromise with similar political movements that united the first communist groups: under the guidance of the International, the Party in China was founded in line with historical doctrine.

3.7 - The First Congress of the Communist Party of Chinas

The first Party Congress opened in Shanghai after July 23, 1921, and concluded its work in early August. Historiography cites four or five different dates: the PCoC was underground at the time, and comrades disclosed different dates to throw spies off the trail. The party, which claimed to have been formed in November 1920 with the merger of seven groups from seven cities, now went to the congress with 12, perhaps 13 delegates representing 53 members in China and abroad, and with the participation of two envoys from the International.

The party was organized in total secrecy, even in Canton, where Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang party was in power.

The founding principles of the PCoC were total independence and opposition to the national bourgeoisie allied with imperialism. It therefore asserted that the PCoC was dealing with two governments, the hated Northern Government and the Southern Government of the Kuomintang, which, despite painting itself red, was also to be overthrown like the former. This was one of the reasons why the Congress was organized in Shanghai, where the Communist presence was stronger and where the group that served as the party’s center was located.

What would become the incredible adventure of the first congress, according to official historiography, which is very close to legend and which Chinese culture at the time fed deeply on, lasted about 10 days. It began in Shanghai in the French concession district, first in an apartment and then in a school in Xindiandi, a residential neighborhood for international figures living in the city. Warned of a police intrusion, it was moved to Lake Jaxjing, where the second part of the speeches and the conclusions were held on a boat.

The two most representative comrades of the new PCoC, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, were unable to attend the congress. However, they had laid the foundations for the party’s program and its membership of the Third International. It seems that Maring attended the first part of the congress on behalf of the Comintern and Nikolsky on behalf of the Far East Secretariat.

The exclusion of anarchist elements, who rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat, was complete, even though some of those present still had serious gaps in their knowledge of even the fundamental concepts of Marxism. The entire debate revolved around two points of view, that of the minority, represented by Li Hanjun, and that of the majority, represented by Liu Renjing. Li argued that the working class was not yet ready, that Marxism was practically unknown to it and that the Communist Party would therefore have to go through a long period of study, education, and proselytizing among the masses in order to raise their level of consciousness. The second position, that of the majority, would be the one that would formulate all the documents that emerged from the congress. Above this dissent, the tiny party was united and confident of its future development and determined to work on theoretical study and practical intervention in the direction of the working class, its point of reference. This is confirmed by all the documents that emerged from the first congress and which can now be found in the Comintern archives. As reported in the August 1921 report, the first two days were spent by President Zhang Guotao explaining the significance of the congress, presenting reports from small local groups and reports on the general situation. This was followed by considerations on the weakness of the party and its non-working-class composition, then on the need for propaganda and the organization of workers. Maring gave a speech on the world situation, the mission of the Communist International, and the tasks of the PCoC, emphasizing the importance of paying particular attention to the formation of workers’ organizations. Nikolsky presented the newly founded Far Eastern Secretariat and the function of the Red International of Labor Unions. At Nikolsky’s suggestion, it was decided to send a telegram to the Far East Secretariat in Irkutsk, Russia, to inform it of the progress of the congress and, at Maring’s suggestion, to appoint a commission to draw up a program and a work plan. The commission took two days to do this, suspending the work of the congress in the meantime.

The third, fourth, and fifth sessions were devoted to studying the program. The basic points of the drafts were approved by all participants, but divergent positions emerged on the question of whether party militants could hold official government positions and be members of parliament. The two opposing views did not reach a final decision, postponing the question to the second congress. One argued that this was possible only under the leadership of the party and with the permission of the executive committee. The other categorically rejected participation in the bourgeois parliament, stating in the report:

"Some firmly believe that agreeing to enter parliament would degenerate our party into a yellow party. Taking the Social Democratic Party in Germany as an example to show that when you enter parliament you gradually abandon your principles and become part of the bourgeoisie, you become traitors, seeing the parliamentary system as the only meaning of struggle and work. Just as we do not engage in any joint activity with the bourgeoisie in order to concentrate our forces for the attack, we will certainly not participate in parliament but will engage in the struggle outside. Moreover, taking advantage of parliament would not have improved our situation but would have made the people think that we had privileges, thus abandoning the revolutionary cause.

"The others insisted on defending the position that our work in the open must be linked to clandestine work. If we believe that the state cannot be eliminated in 24 hours and that a general strike can be suppressed by the capitalists, then political activity becomes a necessity. Although the opportunities for uprisings or rebellions are few and far between, we must prepare for them. We must improve the conditions of workers, broaden their horizons, and lead them to revolutionary struggle, the struggle for freedom of the press and assembly. The free propaganda of our theories is an absolute condition for success, and the adoption of joint activities with other oppressed parties and factions in parliament could produce partial success".

In the end, they unanimously decided that communists could not be ministers or provincial governors and that, in any case, they could not hold important administrative positions.

The sixth session discussed the commission’s report on practical activity, i.e., the attitude the party should adopt towards other parties and factions. Two positions emerged on this issue as well, sparking a heated debate. One side argued for the “need to cooperate with all elements opposed to our common enemies, the warlords, who are enemies of all other classes of society”. The second position recognized the need for joint action and collaboration with other classes for the sole purpose of strengthening the party for the revolutionary seizure of power as soon as conditions were favorable. The situation was one of transition of political power from the feudal classes to the bourgeoisie; the party had to strengthen itself in union with the other classes against the common enemy in order to be ready, with its firm criticism in its press organs and without renouncing its principles, to develop its revolutionary action to overthrow the new power of the bourgeoisie.

The question of relations with other parties or factions was certainly of paramount importance for the young Chinese communist movement, which was operating in a predominantly pre-capitalist context where industrial development was still in its infancy and the young industrial proletariat was vastly outnumbered by the endless masses of peasants. Given the situation, it was necessary to establish a correct revolutionary line that would determine the attitude to be taken towards the political representatives of other social forces. In general, the act of undertaking joint actions with other parties does not violate our principles. The problem arises when these actions are carried out by renouncing the political, ideological, and organizational independence of the Party, as unfortunately happened.

As we have seen, the issue had already been discussed and resolved by the world communist movement. The Communist International, in the theses approved at its second congress in July 1920, had clearly identified the presence of two distinct movements in the oppressed countries: on the one hand, a “bourgeois-democratic nationalist movement” with its program of political independence and bourgeois order and development; on the other, “that of the uneducated and poor peasants and workers” who were fighting for their emancipation from all forms of exploitation. Given the existence of these two movements, the International had decided to confront the attempt by bourgeois democracy to control the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants; it was necessary to “energetically combat” all attempts by those pseudo-revolutionary movements that were emerging in the colonies under the guise of communists (the Chinese communists were thinking in this regard of the Kuomintang, which cloaked itself in socialist rhetoric), recognizing as an indispensable condition for supporting the revolutionary movement developing in the colonial countries the grouping and organization of true communists with the clear task of fighting the bourgeois and democratic movement.

To this end, it became a fundamental task in the colonies to organize workers and peasants into communist parties, the only way to maintain their class independence and lead the revolutionary struggle until the seizure of power and the establishment of the Soviet republic. Ultimately, with regard to the attitude to be adopted towards the various revolutionary movements in the colonial countries, the International could not ignore the need to avoid mergers with those movements; it was necessary to preserve “the independent character of the proletarian movement, even in its embryonic form”.

It was on this basis that the nascent, small, and weak Communist Party, aware of its limitations, unanimously adopted the basic elements of the Party Program, which stated: "a) With the revolutionary army of the proletariat, to overthrow the capitalist classes and rebuild the nation from the working class, until class distinctions are eliminated. b) To establish the dictatorship of the proletariat to carry out the struggle between the classes until their abolition. c) To overthrow private ownership of capital, the confiscation of all means of production, such as machinery, land, buildings, semi-manufactured products, and so on, to entrust them to social ownership. d) For unity with the Third International" (First Program of the CPoC, July-August 1921).

The nascent party established very strict rules for its organization and recruitment. Among the resolutions adopted were, for example: that the party and its members must break completely with other parties and “yellow” intellectuals, i.e., opportunists; each Party member had to attend a local branch and abide by Party discipline, keep its secrets and not reveal their identity; new members were subject to a two-month probationary period; the activities and financial statements of local organizations were subject to supervision by the Party’s Central Committee.

As regards the Party’s tactics, point 1 refers to the formation of industrial unions, the organized presence of communists within them, the reorganization of trade and industrial unions, the promotion by communists of new trade union organizations provided they have a minimum of 200 reliable members and the presence of at least two communists to help with their formation.

In point 2, concerning propaganda, it was proposed that each local section should produce all kinds of publications, from daily newspapers to weekly magazines, brochures, etc., as well as a trade union newspaper, all under the direction of the party and without articles that were inconsistent with the principles, policies, and decisions of the party.

Points 3 and 4 concern the promotion of a trade union school as a preparatory step towards the formation of industrial unions, with a governing council composed exclusively of workers and teachers chosen directly by the party. These schools could gradually become the leadership centers of the unions. The establishment of a “trade union studies” organization, made up of class-conscious workers and party militants, was intended to discipline all the practical work of the party, which many workers were already carrying out in the trade unions, in the various proletarian movements, and in the investigation of the conditions of the proletariat and their trade unions.

Point 5 deals with the attitude towards contemporary political parties: "a policy of independence, hostility, and incompatibility will be adopted. In the political struggle, in opposition to militarism and bureaucracy, and in the demand for freedom of speech, press, and assembly, when we must declare our attitude, our party will stand up in defense of the proletariat and should not consent to relations with other parties or groups".

The last point, number 6, addresses the operational relations between the CPoC and the Third International, with periodic reports and the sending of CPoC delegates to Irkutsk to coordinate the united movement of the international class struggle.

The last part of the congress divided up the tasks and assigned roles of responsibility within the organization: the party headquarters was entrusted to three members, Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao, and Li Da, with three deputies. The organization of the party was entrusted to Zhang Guotao and propaganda to Li Da.

3.8 - Membership of the Party

The fact that part of the Chinese youth generously turned to communism, even without personal training and “Marxist culture,” can be explained by the fact that individual adherence to the battle front is not a matter of knowledge and study but, as we have always affirmed, is first and foremost a matter of “enthusiasm, instinct, and faith”. In this regard, our current clearly states that joining the class party and its doctrine is not due to mature consciousness but is determined by material social factors: “It is historical, social, and material forces that push individuals to join the party, to accept this unique bloc of theory and action that constitutes the party, even without ever having read a text by Marx or Lenin”.

As was evident in reports on the situation of communist groups, the intellectual component was almost exclusive, far superior in number to the working class. The first Chinese communists came from the intellectual world that was taking its first steps in politics in a climate of rising nationalism for Chinese redemption. They had broken with the old world and subsequently been attracted by the revolutionary ideas of the Bolshevik Revolution. But their adherence to Marxism was possible because, not only were capitalist social relations imposing themselves in China, but throughout the world there was a clash between immense social forces that had led to the first victory of a sector of the world proletariat with the conquest of power in Russia and allowed the birth of the world party of the proletariat. The first communists in China had thus adhered to Marxism instinctively, moved by the determinism of history. They had not spent years studying the doctrine; in a short space of time, the disruptive force of social upheaval had led them to embrace the entire communist program.

Young Chinese people who were beginning to gravitate towards communism were required to possess only those qualities of “courage, self-sacrifice, heroism, and willingness to fight” that they had begun to express in their early struggles. It was that social reality, fraught with revolutionary upheaval, that made it possible to join the revolutionary program.

Of course, enthusiasm alone is not enough. But the young recruits of Chinese communism were then guided by the world party of the proletariat, the still uncorrupted Third International, which alone could and should have directed them in the correct revolutionary direction, in continuity with theory, organization, and tactical methods.

In a short space of time, the Communist International attracted fervent vanguards from all corners of the world, which it organized and trained. It was under the leadership of the International that the Communist Party of China was founded in 1921.

But that party would have remained confined to a narrow sphere if social dynamics had not polarized the forces of the classes in the field and directed the proletariat to fight under the banners of communism. Hundreds of thousands of anonymous Chinese proletarians instinctively recognized the CPoC as their guide, not for the political emancipation of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but for the destruction of the capitalist mode of production that already dominated the West and was spreading to China.

(To be continued in the next issue)

We are still in the prehistory of bourgeois ideology. But if we are going to be examining concepts from the 13th and 14th centuries it is not because we are particularly interested in them as such: the party is not an academy of historical or philosophical studies. Nor is it an academy of Marxist studies. What interests us about those concepts is how useful they were to the nascent bourgeoisie, which then adopted them as its own. All this regardless of whether or not they were faithful to the doctrines in question, which were almost always distorted according to the needs of different societies in different eras.

Scholasticism

Scholasticism means the philosophy of the school: a scholasticus in the Middle Ages was a teacher of the liberal arts, and later of philosophy and theology, who taught in the cloister and cathedral, and then in universities. The task of Scholasticism was to lead man to understand revealed truth through rational activity, which meant the use of a particular philosophy. However, not trusting reason alone, it also appealed to religious or philosophical tradition, with the use of auctoritates. An auctoritas is the decision of a council, the judgment of a Church Father, a biblical saying, and if this was a limitation, it was at the same time a virtue, that is, the manifestation of the common and not individual character of research. This was also manifested in the fact that writings were often unsigned. On this single point, we are in perfect agreement: intellectual property is the most despicable form of private property, which tends to separate the human species from the use of its best achievements. We have not invented anything new here either: we have recovered, not eclectically but dialectically, a part of our history, of the history of the species, a history which, as we have already written, we claim in its entirety, from the cudgel to the computer.

Scholasticism is any philosophy that sets itself the task of rationally illustrating and defending a religious tradition or revelation. In antiquity, Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism were scholastic; in the Middle Ages, Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism; in the modern world, the philosophy of Malebranche, Berkeley, the Hegelian right, Rosmini, etc.

Scholasticism is commonly understood to mean Christian philosophy from around the 9th to the 16th century, although we can trace its beginnings back to Augustine of Tagaste in the 4th century, who is usually classified as belonging to the ‘Patristics’, a classification that includes the doctrine of the early Church Fathers.

In the early centuries of Christianity, there was a shift between those who rejected all previous knowledge as pagan and those who considered it insignificant in comparison to Revelation, but not to be despised as it was the fruit of human reason, which was limited but nevertheless created by God, and had the purpose of being fully realized with and in Revelation.

Augustine made Neoplatonism the philosophical basis of Christianity, purifying it of certain aspects, as it was still a pagan philosophy. It lent itself to this purpose much better than other philosophies for various reasons: the main one was that it accepted the concept of creation from nothing, which made it acceptable to the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish religions. Other philosophies of the Greek world, including those of Plato and Aristotle, spoke of an eternal and uncreated world, which was unacceptable to the aforementioned religions. A few centuries later, a similar process took place within Islam and Judaism, again on a Neoplatonic basis. Neoplatonism, combined with Stoicism, remained the basis of Christianity for around eight centuries, until the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 13th century.

The Stereotype of the Uniformity of The “Dark Ages”

For several centuries, bourgeois intellectuals have contrasted their alleged freedom of thought with the lack of freedom and uniformity of the intellectuals of the ‘dark ages’ of the Middle Ages. As for the freedom of thought the bourgeoisie we have no need to insist on the insignificance of such a statement: we need merely recall what Marx said, that the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, and that they are all the more false the more they appear to be true and even obvious.

The cult of the auctoritates is certainly strong and undisputed in Scholasticism, but that does not add up to uniformity in its doctrines and writings. To support a given position, a supporting quotation was sought in the writings of Augustine, Aristotle, or others; the supporter of the opposite position would similarly seek a quotation, often from the same author, sometimes from the same work, and almost always find it. Thus, we find positions that do not coincide even among authors who are very near to one another.

Classifications are useful for orienting ourselves, so we speak of Aristotelians, Averroists, Thomists, etc. However, there are no two Aristotelians, Averroists, or Thomists who think alike. Each author makes a personal synthesis of the various classics, who in their turn had done the same. All of this obviously never brings Revelation into question, but rather seeks to confirm it. Originality is a criterion to which we attach no importance, but in terms of uniformity of thought today’s bourgeoisie are not particularly different from the men of Scholasticism: just as the latter did not question revealed Truth, so the former do not question Capitalism. Revealed Truth and Capitalism were and are the common denominator of conceptions and philosophies that are also considerably different from each other.

The Rediscovery of Aristotle

Aristotle, a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, and his teacher Plato, were the philosophers who inspired all those who came after them. With the crisis and end of the Western Roman Empire, and of the ancient world in general, many works, not only those of Aristotle, were lost, either in whole or in part, for various reasons: due to wars and fires and sometimes Christian and Islamic fanatics. The latter, although not always, reasoned as follows: texts that conflict with the Holy Scriptures are dangerous and must be destroyed, and those who affirm what is in them are useless, and therefore they must be destroyed. But it has to be said that there were several important exceptions to this behavior.

Many texts on science, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, etc., which were lost in the Christian world, were preserved in the Islamic world, in Cairo, Marrakech, Toledo, and Baghdad. The latter, the capital of the Abbasid dynasty, was between the 8th and 10th centuries a center of translation and of a hunt for texts in Greek, Arabic, Persian, Indian, etc., which covered every field of knowledge. In the 11th and especially the 12th century, in Toledo, Palermo, and Constantinople, many ancient texts were translated into Latin from Arabic, Greek, Syriac, etc.. While in Toledo, which fell into the hands of the Christian kingdoms in 1085, texts were translated from Arabic and Hebrew, in Constantinople they were translated from Greek, and in Palermo from all these languages. Hebrew texts were often translated from Arabic, and Arabic texts from Greek or Syriac. All these steps obviously rendered translations uncertain and difficult to comprehend.

The commentaries on Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias, a Greek author in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, translated in part by Avicenna and later during the Renaissance, were important. Of particular importance in the 12th century were the commentaries on Aristotle written in Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, i.e., the Caliphate of Cordoba, by Ibn Rushd, called Averröes by the Latins. Along with his commentaries, many previously unknown works of Aristotle arrived in the Christian world in the following century, mostly in Hebrew translations. There were also translators who originated from elsewhere such as Constantine the African and the Englishman Adelard of Bath, who translated texts on medicine and science in particular. Directly or through Averröes there had arrived Arabic and Persian texts by Al Kindi, Al Farabi, Avicenna, Al Gazali, etc. And complicating gaining an understanding of them, there were elements of Shiite Islamic mysticism mixed with Aristotelian doctrines.

Like the Christians, the Muslims Al Kindi, Al Farabi, and the physician Ibn Sina, called Avicenna by the Latins, were Neoplatonists: they inserted Aristotle, whom they commented on, into a Neoplatonic scheme, despite the diversity of the three authors’ syntheses. In Spain and in the years of Averröes, the same was true of the Jewish physician and philosopher Moseh ben Majmon, later known as Maimonides. His “Guide for the Perplexed”, which argued for an absolute convergence between reason and faith, was an inspiration for Thomas Aquinas.

At the beginning of the 13th century, Aristotle’s works, which had arrived in the Christian world, were immediately met with mistrust and hostility on the part of the Church. The concept of the eternity of the world was foreign to revealed religions, as was that of the mortality of the soul, which was not openly supported but easily deduced from the philosopher’s works. If the individual, like everything else, was composed of ‘matter’, that is the body, and ‘form’, that is the soul (at least in the Aristotle of Christians, Muslims, and Jews), with death, the form, which was inseparable from matter, dissolved with matter. Matter and form could not exist separately, at least in the original Aristotle.

Condemnation of Averroism and Acceptance of Aristotelianism

In 1210, the Paris Provincial Council banned the public or private reading of Aristotle’s Physics, and in the following years, many propositions considered heretical were banned, rather than particular individuals. This did not apply everywhere, so in 1228 and 1231 Pope Gregory IX spoke out against these doctrines, while admitting, after careful examination by a commission of theologians, the revocation of the ban on reading Physics. But by the middle of the century, all the writings in question were being read and were known. Around 1240, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics had also been translated, and around 1265, William of Moerbeke translated his Politics from Greek for the first time. These last two texts became particularly important.

In 1270, the Bishop of Paris, Tempier, condemned 15 Aristotelian theses, mostly Averroist. In 1277, supported by Pope John XXI, he promulgated a new decree of interdiction and condemnation concerning 219 propositions, including many by Avicenna and Averröes, but also some by Thomas Aquinas.

With Albertus Magnus of Cologne and Thomas Aquinas, both strongly critical of Averroism, Aristotelianism was incorporated into the Christian worldview. Thomas purged Aristotle of everything that was contrary to the Christian religion, of which he became the philosophical backbone. In 1325, two years after Thomas was declared a saint, Bishop Tempier revoked the condemnations concerning Aquinas: his Aristotelianism was now fully accepted by the Church, constituting from then on its unofficial doctrine, and from the 16th century its official one as well. Thomism is still the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Medieval Aristotelianism

The importance of Averroism was undeniable but at the same time overestimated: the most important thing, over and above the differences between the Averroists, Alexandrians and others was the rediscovery of Aristotle. With Thomas, the Church unknowingly adapted to a world that saw the birth of a new class, the bourgeoisie, and the slow decline of feudalism and, consequently, of its ideological foundations. Thomism was the ideology of a still feudal world, but one in which cities and the bourgeoisie who inhabited them were becoming increasingly important. It was a masterstroke of the Church: it opened the doors to the enemy, Aristotelianism, and captured it.

We are interested in the role played by Aristotelianism for the bourgeoisie, which increasingly represented the municipal ruling class. The importance of Aristotelianism in the 12th and 13th centuries, as well as of Platonism and Renaissance Neoplatonism, is beyond question. What is obvious, but only to us Marxists, is that these concepts did not transform their world, but were a reflection of its transformations. The problems of knowledge cannot be solved by knowledge, but only by practical activity, that is, by Revolution.

In the third manuscript of the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”, Marx writes: "We see how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, action and suffering lose their opposition only in the social state, and thus lose their existence as oppositions; we see how the solution of theoretical oppositions is possible only in a practical way, only through the practical energy of man, and how this solution is by no means only a task of knowledge, but also a real task of life, which philosophy could not fulfill, precisely because it understood this task only as a theoretical one".

We will not deal here with the materialistic aspects and outcomes found in Aristotelianism, as they are outside the scope of the topic we are dealing with, aspects and outcomes that are not exclusive to Aristotelianism but are also present in the Platonic-Augustinian tradition. The interest in the investigation of nature, stimulated by Aristotelian texts, was a step, albeit a timid one, on the road to claiming greater autonomy on the part of the nascent bourgeoisie. Autonomy and self-confidence in the face of an Augustinian religious and philosophical tradition, for which knowledge of the world was of minimal importance, given that God was within man and therefore true knowledge was considered to be inner knowledge. It was also important to think in terms of cause and effect: Aristotle’s determinism, even stronger in Avicenna and Averröes, led to the view of a cosmos governed by necessary laws, which in some authors could be identified with God himself, a God who was nevertheless different from that of the biblical tradition. A God whose omnipotence and absolute freedom were denied by necessity, to the point of rendering him a useless hypothesis, as in the answer attributed to Laplace in response to Napoleon.

Various philosophers, clerical and otherwise, found themselves playing the role of unwitting and unconscious representatives of the nascent bourgeoisie by providing it with ideological tools. Aristotle’s Politics was of considerable importance in the second half of the 13th century. Here we find that human communities are governed by their own laws, by their own natural laws, without the need to introduce the concept of divine law. Here too, we are not interested in a non-existent law of nature as such, but in the way it is understood in the context in question. We should add that in the 17th and 18th centuries this was a revolutionary ideology, while in 5th-century BC Greece it was conservative, serving the aristocracy, as is also evident in Sophocles’ Antigone.

If in previous centuries the law of nature was part of divine law, from which it did not differ, it now gained its own autonomy, to a greater or lesser extent. For Thomas Aquinas what was important was the relationship between man and God while that between men was considered of little importance. A new sphere was now discovered, politics, regulated entirely by the law of nature, where it was not necessary to introduce divine law. The fact that, a few centuries later, the bourgeoisie greatly expanded that very limited and insignificant natural law, making it their own revolutionary ideology, cannot be attributed to an error on Thomas’s part, but to a class reality that overwhelmed and overturned not only the old world but also the old ideologies.

We have already said that the struggle between the papacy and the empire was increasingly replaced by a struggle that saw the papacy and the empire on the same side, as the cornerstones of the feudal system, against the kings of monarchies that were still feudal but tending towards absolutism, generally allies of the nascent bourgeoisie. In Italy, instead of kingdoms, there were regional seigniories, which behaved in a similar way, although they were much weaker than the large kingdoms and more prone to frequently changing alliances. The struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and the King of France, Philip the Fair, at the end of the 13th century, highlighted the defeat of papal theocracy and the increasingly marginal role of the Empire, which Petrarch would later define as “a vain name without substance”.

While the supporters of theocracy used Aristotelian language, the same ancient language was used to support political concepts expressed by the new historical reality of monarchies and the bourgeoisie. While the monarchies that had the power claimed total autonomy from the Church and the Empire, the various bourgeoisies also sought it, by making their services, and in particular their loans to the kings, indispensible.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, with Humanism and the Renaissance, beginning with Petrarch, there was greater interest in Plato, Augustine, Cicero, and later in the Neoplatonists. The controversy at that time against religious orders and the ascetic life was due to a new appreciation of the active life, with commerce at its center. The contemplative life was no longer the preferred perspective, as it had been for Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neoplatonists, and the Scholastics in general. The greater interest in Plato was also due to the fact that, with his myth of the cave, he spoke of the need to isolate oneself from the human community, but with the aim of arriving at a knowledge that could then be brought back to mankind: compared to Aristotle, there were fewer elements susceptible to scientific and materialistic development, but there was a goal concerning active rather than contemplative life.

The humanist chancellors of the Florentine Republic of the 14th century, such as Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, were more interested in Plato, but this did not mean that they ignored Aristotle. While the latter was mainly interested in the logic and physics in Scholasticism, the focus now shifted to ethics and politics. In Aristotle’s ethics and politics, the bourgeoisie of the 14th and 15th centuries, while remaining Christian, found a way to assert their partial autonomy from the Church and the feudal world it represented. To this same end, in the 15th century, the old Neoplatonism was revived and given new meaning.

Islamic Spain

Islamic penetration of the Iberian Peninsula began in 711 and quickly spread everywhere, apart from to a few mountainous areas in the north, from the Basque Country to Cantabria and the Asturias. In 756, Abd Al-Rahman, a survivor of the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus, which had been overthrown and exterminated by the Abbasids, inaugurated Umayyad power in Al Andalus, ‘the land of light’, a power that lasted for almost three centuries, first in the form of an emirate and then a caliphate.

The legend of ‘religious tolerance’ in Muslim Spain has some connection with the Umayyad period, but not with subsequent dynasties. In reality, during the Umayyad period, as was generally the case in Islam, ‘the people of the Book’, i.e. Christians and Jews, were treated better than other non-Muslims. Christians and Jews, and elsewhere also Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists, were called “dhimmi”. In exchange for recognizing the authority of the Muslim government and paying a tribute, they were under the protection of that same authority: they could keep their faith and places of worship, own property, and pass it on. Coexistence was not always peaceful, but Jews certainly lived better under the Umayyad dynasty than under the various Christian kingdoms of Europe. Eastern Christians themselves often found Islamic rule less burdensome than that of the Byzantine Empire.

In 1031, due to internal strife, the dynasty came to an end and there appeared the “Reinos de Taifas”, some forty small states fighting among themselves and with the Christian kingdoms, which from the north increasingly expanded until they conquered Toledo in 1085. At this point, the Reinos de Taifas called on the Berber Almoravid dynasty from Morocco for help, who soon stopped the advance of the Christian kingdoms, annexing to their domain the half of the Iberian Peninsula that was all that remained of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The Almoravids, while formally continuing to treat the dhimmis in the same way, in reality increased the tax burden and effectively forced them to choose between conversion and exile.

In 1147, the Almohads, another Berber dynasty, took Marrakesh, the capital of the Almoravids, and the rest of the kingdom, including the Caliphate of Cordoba. They were then overthrown by the Marinids, who took Marrakesh in 1269. The Christian kingdoms had already taken Cordoba in 1236, Valencia in 1238, and Seville in 1248.

The Almohads often persecuted, exiled, killed, or forced Christians, Jews, and Muslims considered heterodox, to convert; mosques, synagogues, monasteries, and libraries were burned to purge Al-Andalus of all Shiite contamination, which meant all influence from the Abbasid caliphs. The religious beliefs of the Almohads were, however, difficult to define. Their Sunni fundamentalism and anti-Shiite hatred were accompanied by the appropriation of elements typical of Shiism: their founder, Ibn Tumart, proclaimed himself Mahdi, leader of the faithful. The Mahdi was a figure typical of the Shiites.

Social Structure of Islamic Spain

We know little about this due to the scarcity of evidence, and as this is not the subject of this work we will therefore only give a brief outline of this complex social structure. We refer to a text entitled “La legge e la spada” (The Law and the Sword) by the scholar Alessandra Minniti, which discusses five distinct human groups:
     “1. Arabs, a small minority, but owners and lords by right of conquest;
     “2. Berbers, more numerous, also owners by right of conquest, but socially and politically subjugated to the Arabs;
     ”3. Muladies, a very large social group, made up of Christians who spontaneously converted to Islam;
     “4. Mozarabes, a large group made up of those who remained faithful to Christianity... Like the Jews, the Mozarabes enjoyed their own social and legal status as protected people of the Book;
     ”5. Jews, a small but very cohesive group.

"Islamic power was headed by the sovereign; the political-administrative establishment, the functional aristocracy, reported directly to him in legal matters; the nobility, jassa, was a real but not legal reference point. Serving the functional aristocracy were slaves and freedmen. Below them on the social ladder were the notables, A’yan, including writers, scientists, philosophers; great craftsmen, engineers, architects, artists; merchants and landowners. Slaves and freedmen were also legally dependent on them. Finally, there was the masses, the people, ’Amma, made up of small craftsmen, vendors, employees, settlers, and farm laborers. Some of them could afford to keep a slave”.

It should be noted that the Mozarabs were not a kind of fifth column of the Christian kingdoms, ready to betray the Islamic power: sometimes Christians and Muslims fought together against other Christians or Muslims. When Charlemagne besieged Zaragoza in 778, hoping for the help of the Christians of that city, the Mozarabs made common cause with their Muslim fellow citizens, causing the siege to fail.

The historian Maillo Salgado, in his text “La desaparicion de Al-Andalus”, writes: "Al-Andalus could be described as a mercantile tributary social formation, in which cities prevailed over the countryside. This was not the case in the contemporary societies of the Christian kingdoms of the north of the peninsula and medieval western Europe, which were characterized both by legal ties of vassalage and feudalism in their superstructure and by a dominical economy anchored to the countryside. This does not mean that in the Andalusian tributary social formation most people did not live off the proceeds of the land; however, the seat of power, institutions, and decisions was ultimately rooted in the city, where a large part of the landowners who received rents lived, and where the market, which received and distributed products, functioned fully".

We should add that at the time of the Almohads, land trade took place between cities near the border between the Caliphate and the Christian kingdoms, while in maritime trade there was a preferential relationship with the city of Pisa. In the 10th century, Cordoba was the largest and most prosperous city in the world at the time. As is evident from the above quotation, the Spain of Averröes and of the preceding centuries has some elements in common with the contemporary Italy of the communes, where the city prevails over the countryside. One difference is that, while in the communes of central and northern Italy the bourgeoisie took power into their own hands, in Islamic Spain power remained in the hands of a tribal structure linked to the ruling dynasty, as Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century Maghrebian Islamic historian, had already understood. This composite society then gave way to feudalism, which arrived on the tip of the swords of the Christian ‘reconquista’.

The Myth of Averröes as Champion of ‘Free Thought’

This myth has survived to this day, portraying Averröes as rationalist, if not atheist, making him a sort of ante litteram Enlightenment figure. However, within specific political and religious boundaries, all the philosophers mentioned had substantial freedom of research and study, being careful not to stray into heresy and to not irritate their protectors. More or less the same was true of their Christian colleagues. As for the Abbasid caliphs, it should be noted that they were Sunnis, but initially ambiguous on the matter, needing the support of Shiite populations in the fight against the Sunni Umayyad dynasty. Later on, they had many Persian viziers and officials, therefore Shiites, whom they made use of along with Christian officials, and who proved useful in the management and preservation of their power in an empire where the Shiite component was very strong. This does not mean that from time to time they did not persecute Shiites.

Averröes was neither an atheist nor a supporter of the theory of ‘double truth’ attributed to him. He advocated a strict distinction between the realm of faith and the realm of reason, since problems could only arise from confusion between the two realms.

The theory of ‘double truth’ was more suited to the bourgeoisie, who saw in it a new form of double-entry bookkeeping: while as Christians they condemned lending at interest, always considered usury, as bourgeois bankers or merchants they practiced it. Sometimes the bourgeoisie bequeathed to the Church part of the wealth earned through usury, in order to obtain discounts on the punishment for their sins in the afterlife; however, the fear of hell did not prevent them from practicing usury.

Averröes, in his writing “The decisive treatise on the agreement of religion with philosophy”, writes: “Now, since our religion is true and encourages speculative activity that culminates in the knowledge of the truth, we Muslims cannot but be firmly convinced that demonstrative speculation cannot lead to conclusions other than those revealed by religion, because the truth cannot contradict the truth, but rather harmonizes with it and bears witness to it”.

Bourgeois scholars see in Averröes a limitation in the belief that the right reasoning illuminates the right faith and vice versa. We Marxists, on the other hand, agree with Averröes: for us too, “right reasoning illuminates the right faith and vice versa”. Our science, without our communist faith, would be nothing. It is not even possible to separate them, except by making an abstraction. If communist faith and sentiment without science are blind and bound to fail, a Marxist science separated from communist faith and sentiment would resemble a Golem. Like the Golem of Central European Jewish tradition, it would be directionless: a sort of mysterious pure science, or pure technology, destined to turn against its creator.

Something like that has already happened with reformism and the Stalinist counter-revolution. Obviously, the comparison is only partially valid: the collapse of communist faith and sentiment could not but lead to the collapse of communist science, over and above the repeated fidelity to principles, which was all the more ostentatious the more it was betrayed. Underlying it all was the defeat of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, a defeat that found ideological expression in reformism, in the social patriotism of the Second International, and in the degeneration of the Third.

Averroist Single Intellect, and General Intellect in Marx

Between the two conceptions there are some points of contact, which does not mean that Averreös was a dialectical materialist or that Marx was an Averroist or an Aristotelian, even if there have been those who have supported this latest stupidity.

Let’s start from the end, that is from the seventh notebook, of Marx’s “Grundrisse”: "Nature builds no machines, locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules, etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of man’s will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain created by the human hand; the power of knowledge objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process".

In Averröes we find an interesting intuition heading in this direction, which cannot be other than an intuition, and which had no particular influence on the Christianity of his time or on Islam itself. In Christianity, bourgeois individualism was reflected in Thomas Aquinas’ concept of the individual soul, and the same happened in Islam. Referring back to Aristotle, Averröes speaks of a single active intellect, usually identified with God, which brings knowledge by uniting with the material intellect of men. He considers this material intellect to be unique and no longer multiplied for each man. This meant that there were no individual souls, and that upon the death of the body, the individual intellects individualized by matter were reunited with the single intellect. This was a severe blow to the power of the Church, which could no longer determine the fate of souls in the afterlife, and that was certainly the most scandalous thing of all. In this conception immortality was no longer that of the individual but of the species; knowledge belonged to the single intellect, so that upon the death of individuals, who merely participated in it, it was not lost but remained in the species. In The Incoherence of the Incoherence of the Philosophers, translated into Latin as The Destruction of the Destruction of the Philosophers, Averröes writes, ‘in the intellect there is no individuality whatsoever’.

Averroism

Here too, we will not discuss the aspects of materialism that can be found in these concepts: materialism could be a consequence of a kind of pantheism, which is not present in Averröes but is a possible outcome of his concept of the unity of the intellect.

The possible pantheistic interpretation was not accepted in the Christian world, with some exceptions in the Renaissance: other aspects of the philosopher were useful to the bourgeoisie. Paradoxically, Averröes was not an Averroist, while those who distorted his meaning were: Averroism in the Christian world was the conception of some philosophers, useful to the nascent bourgeoisie, for whom the rigid separation between the realm of reason and the realm of faith, between the investigation of nature and revealed truth, was the means of asserting the autonomy of the ‘earthly city’ from the ‘city of God’. All this meant greater autonomy for the bourgeoisie from the power of the Church and the feudal relationships it embodied. The ‘earthly city’, while remaining a corrupt and faded copy of the other, was the place where man could attain happiness: happiness inferior to eternal happiness but nevertheless important, and consisting of knowledge. While in Aristotle, Al Farabi, and Averröes, happiness consists in attaining knowledge and contemplation, now the latter becomes characteristic of the “city of God”, while knowledge increasingly has as its goal active life, politics, and the production of wealth.

The Averroist John of Jandun, born in the Ardennes around 1280, was declared a heretic in 1326 along with Marsilius of Padua. With the latter, he sought refuge with Emperor Louis the Bavarian, in whose retinue he died in Todi in 1328. In his commentary on Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”, he writes: “When faced with the question of whether most men can attain knowledge of the truth, we must distinguish between the individual and the collective. But to say that the individual is capable of perfect knowledge is false... If we want to resolve the question in a collective sense, we will say that in most men gathered together, philosophy becomes perfect wisdom and all collectively attain the truth”.

The author follows in the footsteps of Averröes and Sigeri, for whom the ultimate goal is the considerable happiness obtained in contemplation, but the importance given to the collective is a theme taken up by Dante and Marsilio da Padova, whose aim, especially for the latter, is much more focused on active life. The Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi, between the 15th and 16th centuries, rejected the asceticism of what he considered to be Averroist mysticism, placing greater value on the ‘physical dimension’ of man. In his treatise De immortalitate animae, he denied the immortality of the soul, without being materialistic. In this treatise, he expounded an organicist conception of society inspired by the famous apologue of Menenio Agrippa: in this conception, harmonious coexistence between classes presupposes inequality between men, seen as both a metaphysical and political necessity. What would be considered a reactionary view today was not so at the time: it was certainly a class-based view, but one that was functional to the establishment of the bourgeoisie over an epifeudal social structure.

Ockham

The English Franciscan William of Ockham was born around 1290 and died around 1350. He studied and then taught at the University of Oxford, the center of Franciscan Augustinianism, just as Paris had been for Aristotelianism and Averroism. In 1324, he went to Avignon to defend himself against accusations of heresy, and from there, in 1328, he went first to Pisa and then to Munich to Emperor Louis the Bavarian, together with the Franciscan minister general Michele da Cesena and other brothers, all declared heretics by Pope John XXII.

Ockham clearly separated science from faith, but even here there is no conception that we can define as scientific, given his presupposition of the primacy of faith, in the line of a tradition that goes from Franciscan Augustinianism with Joachimite tendencies to Luther and Jansenism. The concept that the cosmic order was not necessary but contingent and due to divine freedom destroyed Aristotelian and Neoplatonic cosmologies and philosophies. It is a traditional conception that at the time had a revolutionary ideological function, unlike today’s eggheads who talk about the ‘inexhaustible wealth of history’ and adopt the same arguments against necessity to deny the very possibility of understanding and therefore of intervening in reality. These people are below Averröes, who said that ‘he who denies the cause denies the effect’.

Ockham, in his polemic against Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics, goes so far as to deny the very principle of causality: this does not lead in the direction of science, but of experimentalism, which takes the place of the apriorism of Platonic ideas and Aristotelian categories. Already in Roger Bacon, a 13th-century Franciscan and English philosopher, experimentalism is at the forefront, along with magic and alchemy. The latter will also be important in the Renaissance and will contribute to the birth of modern science. Magic is the opposite of science, but it arises from confidence in man’s ability to transform the world around him, the same confidence that is the basis of science. What the bourgeoisie adopted was not the denial of the principle of causality, and experimentalism only in part, but the nominalism that underlies it.

Nominalism

The dispute over Universals got underway in 11th-century Scholasticism. Universals are genera and species (Earth, Water, Air, Fire; the Elements, etc.), which for some, called ‘realists’, have an existence of their own: they are not just a concept but a necessary essence, an actual substance of things, according to the Platonic-Aristotelian logical tradition. Others, called ‘nominalists’ and inspired by the Stoic tradition, deny the reality of Universals, considering them concepts, verbal forms, signs. At the beginning of the 12th century, Rossellino and then his disciple Abelard had already supported the latter position in different ways.

Science, therefore, no longer has the universal as its object, according to Aristotelian and Thomist conceptions, but the individual, whose knowledge can only be based on experience.

Criticism of Aristotelian Physics

The collapse of Aristotelian physics brought with it the collapse of Scholastic concepts. Ockham’s nominalism does not recognize any reality of its own underway, which can no longer be distinguished from real things. In Cesare Vasoli’s “History of Medieval Philosophy” we read: "The ‘qualitative’ perspective, which was characteristic of Aristotelian mechanics, is definitively rejected. Nor is it difficult to understand how these positions, later pushed to their most extreme consequences, could give rise to doctrines of an evident atomistic nature and, at the same time, to significant tendencies to apply the already developed methods of mathematical calculation to the understanding of the different phases of phenomena. It is clear that this incipient mathematization of natural inquiry – which picks up the thread of a trend that had already emerged in the 12th century and was interrupted by the predominance of Aristotelian physics – does not have the rigor and conscious necessity that Galilean science later had... But... the fact that in Ockhamist science the concrete sense of experience is already combined with the need for a precise quantitative definition of natural phenomena is indisputable proof of the progress made by the scientific disciplines in the first half of the 14th century.

Ockham’s razor, i.e., his method of eliminating all superfluous entities as unnecessary for the explanation of phenomena, combined with elements of the Augustinian and Franciscan traditions, led the philosopher to consider “earthly matter” as no longer different from “celestial matter”. The term matter had different meanings at that time: there was also talk of a “celestial matter” of which angels and the heavens of the “fixed stars” were made. According to Aristotelian physics, there was a world of “fixed stars”, beginning with the Moon, which was not subject to change and corruption, and a sublunary world subject to change and corruption, and therefore to the laws of physics. To say that the entire universe is governed by the same laws means rejecting all the constructs of Scholasticism and all the theological concerns of reconciling faith and reason, arriving, on the opposite side, at conclusions similar to those of Averröes. At the end of this path we find Galileo.

Nominalism, Ockham’s razor, and materialism

Nominalism, with the consequent ‘Ockham’s razor’ and the rejection of the multiplication of superfluous entities, is a first step towards materialism. Regarding the soul, Ockham writes: ’He who follows natural reason would admit only that we experience in ourselves intellection, which is the act of a corporeal and corruptible form. And consequently he would say that such a form could be received in extended matter. But we never experience that kind of intellection actual operation of an immaterial substance; therefore, through intellection, we cannot conclude that there is in us, as a form, an incorruptible substance".

Nicola Abbagnano, in his History of Philosophy, writes: "Ockham admits the possibility that it is the body itself that thinks, that is, that the body is the subject of those acts of intellection that are the only sure data from which reasoning can start... All concepts... are naturally caused by the individual objects present in experience, that is, without the intervention of either the intellect or the will. Once individual things are known through intuition, universals are formed in us spontaneously, through their action".

The Legacy of Ockhamism in Bourgeois Ideology

Averroism and Ockhamism took to their extreme consequences the foundations on which their philosophies were based: Aristotelianism, for most of the of the Dominicans, and Augustinianism, for most of the Franciscans. In doing so, they also showed their inconsistency. It was an attack from two opposing ideological sides that contributed to the dissolution of Scholasticism.

Ockhamism, with its nominalism and emphasis on experience, was the more disruptive of the two. Individualism, which Ockham also took from Duns Scotus, was certainly the main aspect taken up by a bourgeoisie which was uninterested in other aspects of his thought. Ockham’s political ideas, which were adopted by the bourgeoisie, are also linked to his nominalism, according to which the Church should not claim temporal power. The rigid separation of the spiritual plane of faith from the worldly plane of reason translates into a pro-imperial position, whereby truth no longer resides in the Church as a hierarchy or in the Pope, but in the Church as the totality of believers. A totality formed by the reality of individual Christians, in whom faith and truth reside. These ideas were of use to all classes that resented the feudal structure of society: the bourgeoisie as well as the poor peasants. Sometimes even to kings and nobles who were in conflict with ecclesiastical power.

John Wyclif, a political and religious reformer in 14th-century England, was inspired by Duns Scotus and Ockham. His ideas were radicalized and transformed into a revolutionary political and religious ideology, inspired by evangelical communism, by the Lollard movement, which was responsible for a major peasant revolt in 1381 that was harshly suppressed. Wyclif inspired Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415 in Constance during the Council. Wyclif was accused of heresy but managed to avoid the consequences, thanks to the support of the king and part of the nobility, who shared his opposition to the prerogatives of the Church and its properties, which kings and nobles often wanted to confiscate. In 1377, Pope Gregory XI condemned Wyclif’s doctrines in a ‘bull’, saying that ‘they present, with a few minor changes, the perverse theory and heretical opinions of Marsilio da Padova and Giovanni di Jandun’. In 1428, Wyclif’s remains were exhumed, burned, and scattered.

If the bourgeoisie had not yet developed its own ideology, the same was true, and even more so, of the lower classes made up of peasants and artisans.

(To be continued in the next issue)

The crisis of human relations in capitalist society – manifested in the commodification of sexuality, the degradation of intimate bonds, and the pervasive loneliness that characterizes modern life – cannot be understood separately from the material conditions that shape social existence. These phenomena are not simply cultural or psychological problems, but direct consequences of the capitalist mode of production and the social relations that accompany it.

As Marx demonstrated in his analysis of alienated labor, capitalism systematically separates human beings from their nature as social and creative beings. This alienation extends far beyond the workplace, into the most intimate spheres of human experience, transforming friendships, love, sexuality, and family relationships into commodified exchanges governed by the same logic that dominates economic life.

The Material Basis of Alienation in Human Relations

Marx’s concept of alienation provides the theoretical basis for understanding the degradation of human relations under capitalism. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx identified four forms of alienation experienced by workers under capitalism: alienation from the product of labor, from the act of production, from being a species, and from other human beings. This last form, alienation from other human beings, is crucial to understanding contemporary relational dynamics.

Marx observed that under capitalism, “the relationship of man to man” is mediated by the commodity form. Human beings do not encounter each other as complete persons, but as bearers of exchange values, as means to private ends rather than as ends in themselves. This commodification of human relations permeates every aspect of social life, including the most intimate personal relationships.

The alienation inherent in capitalist production creates isolated, competitive individuals who are incapable of forming genuine human bonds. As Marx wrote in the Grundrisse, “the individual carries his social power in his pocket, as well as his connection with society”. This reduction of social ties to monetary relations undermines the possibility of an authentic human community and mutual recognition.

Historical Development of the Family in Class Societies

Engels’ masterpiece, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, provides an essential historical context for understanding how class societies have shaped relationships. Engels showed that the modern monogamous family is not a natural or eternal institution, but a historical product that emerged alongside private property and class division.

“The modern individual family is based on the open or hidden domestic slavery of the wife,” Engels wrote, “and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as molecules”. The bourgeois family performs multiple functions for capital: it reproduces the labor force, provides unpaid domestic labor, and creates a sphere of consumption for capitalist commodities.

Engels explained that monogamous marriage did not develop out of love between individuals, but out of economic necessity: the need to ensure the patrilineal inheritance of private property. “It was the first family form based not on natural conditions, but on economic ones: on the victory of private property over primitive and natural common ownership”. This economic foundation continues to shape contemporary relationships, even if romanticism obscures these material realities.

The struggle against the oppression of women cannot be separated from the broader struggle against capitalism. As was made clear in The Communist Revolution and the Emancipation of Women (Communism No. 2, May 1979): “The oppression of women is not simply a question of male chauvinist attitudes or patriarchal culture, but is rooted in the material structure of class society itself”.

Here, “woman” must not be understood as a biological category, but as a social and economic position within capitalist relations of production and reproduction. Women represent those who perform the unpaid labor of reproducing the workforce, i.e., childbirth, education, and maintenance of workers for capitalist exploitation. This includes sexual relations and unpaid domestic labor that sustains capitalist production by reducing the cost of maintaining the workforce. Within the family structure, as Engels demonstrated, women occupy the proletarian position in relation to the bourgeois position of men, characterized by economic dependence, lack of control over property, and submission to patriarchal authority. This category is a historical rather than a natural product, emerging alongside private property and class society to serve the needs of capital accumulation through double exploitation: as wage workers and as unpaid reproducers within the family nucleus.

Objectification and commodification of sexuality

The objectification of women and the commodification of sexuality are particularly acute forms of alienation under capitalism. The logic of commodities, which reduces all qualities to quantitative exchange value, transforms sexual desire and intimate relationships into marketable goods.

Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism illuminates this process. Just as social relations between people appear as relations between things in the exchange of commodities, sexual relations increasingly take on the character of transactions between objects rather than encounters between subjects. The huge pornography industry, the spread of dating apps, which reduce human complexity to fleeting profiles, and the general sexualization of culture all reflect this process of commodification.

Women in particular suffer double alienation under capitalism. As members of the social category of “women,” defined by their function as reproducers of labor power and performers of unpaid domestic labor, they are exploited both as workers (when they participate in wage labor) and as unpaid reproducers of labor power within the family. This double exploitation creates conditions in which women’s bodies and sexuality become sites of particular objectification and control.

The commodification of sexuality also distances men from authentic intimate relationships. The reduction of sexual relations to acts of consumption, whether through pornography, prostitution, or commodified dating culture, prevents the development of authentic mutual recognition and care that characterize non-alienated human relationships.

The Bourgeois Family as a Place of Contradiction

While recognizing the oppressive character of the bourgeois family, Marx and Engels also saw it as a contradictory institution that contains within itself both the seeds of human liberation and the mechanisms of domination. The family is meant to offer a space of emotional intimacy and mutual care that is largely absent from the competitive sphere of market relations, but it does so within structures of inequality and economic dependence.

“Within the family, he [the man] is the bourgeois, and his wife represents the proletariat,” Engels observed. This class relationship within the family creates tensions that mirror broader social contradictions. The ideology of romantic love and family happiness conflicts with the material reality of economic dependence, the exploitation of domestic labor, and patriarchal authority.

Contemporary relationship problems – femicide, domestic violence, dishonest behavior, emotional distance, the crisis of masculinity, etc – can be understood as expressions of these underlying contradictions. The family cannot keep its ideological promise of providing a refuge from capitalist competition when it is itself structured by the same property relations and power dynamics that govern capitalist society.

Alienation and the Crisis of Masculinity

Capitalism’s assault on human relationships affects all genders, albeit in different ways. The evident crisis of masculinity in contemporary society, expressed in phenomena such as involuntary celibacy and rising male suicide rates, reflects the particular way in which capitalist alienation affects men’s ability to form intimate relationships.

Traditional male identity was built around the role of head of the family and patriarch, roles that capitalism both requires and undermines. The competitive individualism required by capitalist accumulation conflicts with the vulnerability and emotional availability necessary for intimate relationships. Men socially constrained between instrumental rationality and emotional repression struggle to form the empathetic bonds necessary for authentic relationships.

This crisis cannot be resolved through individual therapy or cultural change, but requires addressing the material conditions that produce alienated male subjectivity. As long as men must compete with each other for economic survival and status, and as long as social value is measured by market success rather than human contribution, the structural basis of male alienation will persist.

Love Under Capitalism: Ideology and Reality

The ideology of romantic love performs important functions for capitalist society, while also pointing to the possibility of human liberation. Romantic love promises the overcoming of the isolated individualism imposed by capitalism, offering the possibility of genuine mutual recognition and care. However, this promise is systematically undermined by the material conditions in which contemporary relationships must develop.

Marx understood that authentic love requires the recognition of the other as a complete human subject rather than as a means to one’s own ends. In the 1844 Manuscripts, he wrote: “If you love without arousing love in return, that is, if your love as love does not produce mutual love; if, through the living expression of yourself as a loving person, you do not make yourself loved, then your love is powerless, a misfortune”.

In capitalism, this mutual recognition is systematically prevented by the reduction of human beings to bearers of exchange value. The commodification of intimacy, the economic pressures on relationships, and the competitive individualism required by capitalism hinder the possibility of mutual recognition that authentic love entails.

The crisis of marriage, rising divorce rates, and widespread dysfunction in relationships do not reflect personal failures, but the contradiction between the human need for authentic connections and the alienating structures of capitalist society. People enter relationships in search of the authentic recognition that capitalism denies them, only to find that their relationships reproduce the same instrumental logic that governs society at large.

Sexual Liberation and Revolutionary Transformation

True freedom in intimate relationships cannot be achieved within capitalist social relations. Sexual liberation movements that focus primarily on cultural change, leaving economic structures intact, ultimately fail to address the material basis of sexual oppression.

True sexual liberation requires the abolition of the economic conditions that reduce human beings to commodities and make those in the social position of “woman” economically dependent on “men”. The liberation of women – and with it the liberation of sexuality from its distorted forms under capitalism – requires the revolutionary transformation of society as a whole.

This does not mean that struggles for immediate reforms – reproductive rights, equal pay, protection from sexual violence – are not important. Rather, it means understanding these struggles as part of a broader revolutionary project aimed at creating social conditions in which unalienated human relationships are possible.

Engels, on socialism, once the economic basis of women’s oppression had been eliminated, concluded that “what we can now assume about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the imminent overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited mostly to what will disappear. But what will be new? The answer will be given when a new generation has grown up”.

Women in the Trade Union Struggle and the Limits of Bourgeois Feminism

The revolutionary potential of those who occupy the social position of “woman” extends crucially to the sphere of organized trade union struggle. Women workers suffer particular exploitation because they perform both wage labor and unpaid domestic labor, which makes them a potentially explosive force within the proletarian movement. Their participation in strikes and union organizing offers a unique insight into the totality of capitalist exploitation, which extends beyond the workplace to the home.

However, this revolutionary potential is constantly threatened by feminism, a bourgeois democratic ideology, which seeks to channel women’s legitimate demands into reformist dead ends that leave capitalist property relations intact. Bourgeois feminism focuses on achieving equality within the existing system – equal access to exploitation, equal opportunity to become exploiters – rather than challenging the material basis of oppression. It promotes the illusion that women’s liberation can be achieved through legal reforms, cultural changes, or individual advancement, leaving the fundamental structures of class society intact. The danger of bourgeois feminism lies in its ability to hijack genuine revolutionary energy and redirect it toward goals that actually serve capitalist interests. When women’s struggles are separated from the class struggle and reduced to identity politics, they become tools for dividing the working class rather than uniting it against capital. The revolutionary movement must combat bourgeois feminist ideology by supporting the concrete struggles of women workers as an integral part of the broader proletarian movement.

Forms of Relationships Under Capitalism: Monogamy, Polyamory, and the Illusion of Choice

Contemporary debates about relationship styles – monogamy versus polyamory, traditional marriage versus alternative forms – are often presented as matters of personal choice and individual liberation. These forms of relationship must be analyzed in terms of their function within capitalist social relations rather than as expressions of personal preferences or moral superiority.

The focus on relationship styles as sites of liberation represents what Marx identified as the fetishization of social relations, or the transformation of historical and material conditions into seemingly natural or personal choices. This obscures the material basis of human relations under capitalism and prevents the recognition of the revolutionary transformation necessary for true liberation.

Monogamous marriage, as Engels demonstrated, developed as a mechanism to ensure the patrilineal inheritance of private property. Its continuation under capitalism serves multiple interconnected functions within the system of capital accumulation: it provides unpaid domestic labor that subsidizes the reproduction of the workforce, creates stable units for the consumption of commodities, maintains the privatized reproduction of the working class, and establishes a legal framework for the transfer of accumulated wealth between generations. The romantic ideology of monogamy serves to obscure these material functions by presenting marriage as the natural expression of human love. This ideological mystification is fundamental to capitalism because it transforms what Engels called “the open or hidden domestic slavery of the wife” into an apparently voluntary expression of personal commitment and emotional fulfillment.

Polyamory and other alternative relationship styles which are in part an expression of humans seeking to do away with the strict propertying relations of the monogamous form, and often presented as radical challenges to traditional structures, frequently reproduce the same underlying alienation in new and more complex forms. When polyamorous relationships operate within capitalist social relations, they often become elaborate systems for managing multiple commodified exchanges rather than expressions of genuine human liberation. The complexity of organizing multiple partners, negotiating boundaries and agreements, and managing jealousy and competition often mirror the instrumental rationality that governs other spheres of capitalist life. The reduction of intimate relationships to a negotiation between autonomous individuals – however complex and egalitarian it may appear – reflects rather than transcends the mercantile logic that structures all social relations under capitalism.

What presents itself as liberation from traditional constraints often becomes a more sophisticated form of the same fundamental alienation. The multiplication of emotional and sexual relationships does not overcome the commodification of intimacy, but extends it to a wider network of connections, each governed by the same logic of exchange and mutual advantage that characterizes market relations.

Neither monogamy nor polyamory represent an inherently revolutionary form of relationships. Both can serve as vehicles for both exploitation and authentic human connection, depending on the material conditions in which they operate. The focus on relationship styles as sites of liberation represents a form of bourgeois individualism that locates the problem in personal choices rather than social structures.

As stated in The Communist Revolution and the Emancipation of Women: "We oppose the ideology of ‘free love’ only insofar as it seeks to replace revolution as the means of resolving once and for all the problem of relations between the sexes. On the contrary, we want to make it clear that it is precisely feminism – as an ideology – that seeks to distort into a self-sufficient political goal the positive tendency of millions of women to seek their inner and outer independence and the affirmation of their individuality, as they try to escape from the protection of men in order to reestablish an egalitarian rather than antagonistic relationship".

This passage highlights the fundamental error of approaches that see the solution to relational problems in the adoption of particular styles of behavior rather than in the revolutionary transformation of social relations. The positive trend toward independence and equality manifested in contemporary relational experimentation goes beyond itself and points to the need for a social revolution, but bourgeois ideology seeks to contain it within individualistic solutions that leave capitalist property relations intact.

The communist conception provides a clear critique of bourgeois feminism and identity politics. These movements, despite their claims to radicalism, remain trapped in bourgeois forms of consciousness and organization that reproduce rather than transcend capitalist alienation. Bourgeois feminism, even in its most radical forms, conceives of liberation in terms of individual rights and opportunities within capitalist society. It is incapable of imagining relationships that transcend the competitive individualism and privatized subjectivity imposed by capitalism. Similarly, contemporary identity politics, with its focus on personal experience and life choices, represents an exaggerated form of bourgeois individualism.

Our 1979 text continues with a radical vision of the relationship between personal liberation and social transformation: "The search for free love, if purged of all radical-bourgeois ideologies and the anathema of conservatives and reactionaries, is an aspect of the self-affirmation as human beings that millions of women feel the need for. New forms of relations between the sexes cannot emerge without completely destroying the existing social order, but the process leading to this end is already recognizable in the independent path followed, despite difficulties, by many women and which in fact derives from the growing decomposition of current institutions".

A genuine transformation of intimate relationships is inseparable from the “total destruction of the existing social order”. The experimentation with alternative forms of relationships that characterizes contemporary society reflects the “growing decomposition of current institutions” under the pressure of capitalist contradictions, but these experiments cannot realize their liberating potential within the limits of capitalist social relations.

True sexual and emotional liberation will not be achieved through the adoption of particular relationship styles, but through the revolutionary transformation of the material conditions that reduce human relationships to property relations. In socialism, with the abolition of private property and the socialization of domestic labor, new forms of human relationships will emerge that we can hardly imagine from our current alienated condition.

The Class Party and Communist Relations Between Comrades

The party, in its struggle against capitalism, does not simply represent one among other political organizations, but the anticipation of communist social relations.

In capitalism, human praxis – conscious and creative activity – is systematically inverted, with human beings serving the needs of capital accumulation rather than human development. The class party, the organized expression of revolutionary consciousness, represents the beginning of this reversal already within capitalist society.

In socialism, the human species ceases to be a mere object of historical forces and becomes a conscious subject capable of directing its own development according to its real needs.

As Marx demonstrated throughout his critique of political economy, authentic human relations require the recognition of others as complete subjects rather than as means to particular ends. The party, insofar as it embodies the program of communism, becomes a space where such recognition becomes possible already within capitalist society. The party cannot be an instrument in the struggle for communism while maintaining within itself the same alienated relations that characterize capitalist society. On the contrary, the party must strive to prefigure communist relations in its own organizational life, aspiring to maintain within itself “a fiercely anti-bourgeois environment”.

While social relations – whether marriage, friendship, or work – remain entangled in private property relations and competitive individualism, relations between communists are based on a shared revolutionary commitment and mutual recognition as fighters for the same cause, regardless of bourgeois individual “value”: age, gender, sex, nationality, occupation, preparation, education... supporting and encouraging the harmonious development of all outside of fixed roles or expectations.

The equality of the role of women in the party thus transcends both the traditional subordination of women within marriage and the competitive negation that characterizes progressive alternatives that claim to have overcome patriarchy.

This transformation of human relations within the party manifests itself in several crucial characteristics that draw on the communist future. Relations between comrades transcend the calculation of private advantage that characterizes all bourgeois relations, including the most progressive forms of alternative experimentation. Comrades do not relate to each other as potential sources of personal benefit but as participants in a common revolutionary project that transcends individual interests.

The collective and shared consciousness of communism provides the basis for an understanding and solidarity that goes beyond personal sympathies, compatibility of background, and elective affinities.

Marx’s concept of species-being – the essential nature of human beings as social and creative beings – finds its first concrete expression in the revolutionary party. The relationships between comrades anticipate the free association of producers that will characterize communist society, where human development becomes both the means and the end of social organization.

On the scale of society, the concrete alternative to both traditional patriarchal structures and bourgeois feminist alternatives can only come about after the communist revolution.

Nor is the party a utopian monastic order, autarchic and closed, where ascetics, saints, or heroes dwell, and which for some utopians should also have been productive and reproductive. Although the party devotes extreme attention and all its energy to maintaining a communist environment of fraternal and organic relations within itself, individual militants remain conditioned by the broader context of capitalist social relations and the daily material difficulties from which they cannot completely escape.

This also applies to romantic relationships, whether between party comrades or with a non-communist partner(s). It cannot be said that the economic and structural issue of men and women within the party has been resolved or is resolvable.

Only the party as a whole can “overthrow the praxis” and help its militants overcome the behaviors linked to the society from which they come. The revolutionary commitment of individuals cannot generate the new forms that will only be possible after the revolution, as the material conditions for them do not yet exist. We must therefore not be disappointed when we see weaknesses in the behavior of even our closest comrades, and resist the tendency to resort to useless moralizing. It is only in the common struggle that we can help each other to compensate for individual weaknesses and shortcomings, and develop the relations that enable us to make the best use of the gifts and capacities of our comrades in order to achieve this great human need of ultimate emancipation.

In communism, romantic and sexual relationships will develop within the wider human community and contribute to it, rather than forming isolated units competing with each other. The privatization of intimate life that characterizes bourgeois society will be overcome through forms of relationship that strengthen human solidarity instead of fragmenting it.

They will be supported by material conditions that encourage rather than undermine human solidarity and mutual care. The economic basis of relational oppression will be eliminated through the abolition of private property and the socialization of reproductive labor.

The Way Forward: Revolutionary Practice and Human Liberation

The analysis of alienation in intimate relationships, developed through the Marxist theoretical framework, points to the need for revolutionary transformation rather than reformist solutions. The crisis of human relationships under capitalism cannot be resolved through better communication techniques, therapies, cultural changes, or the adoption of alternative relationship styles, even if these can provide temporary relief to individuals trapped in alienated relationships.

The liberation of human relations requires the abolition of private property, the socialization of domestic labor, and economic conditions that allow all individuals to develop their potential. When human beings are no longer forced to sell their labor power in order to survive, and when social production is organized around needs rather than profit, the material basis for truly free relations will exist.

This revolutionary transformation requires an organized political struggle of the working class led by its communist party. Those who occupy the social position of “women” – as reproducers and nurturers of the workforce and providers of unpaid domestic labor – have a crucial role to play in this struggle, as their oppression is both integral to capitalist accumulation and potentially explosive in its revolutionary implications.

Their participation in union organizing and workplace struggles brings a radical critique of the totality of capitalist exploitation.

The class party, as the conscious expression of the revolutionary movement, plays an indispensable role in linking all scattered struggles to the broader project of human emancipation.

The struggle against the oppression of women is therefore inseparable from the broader class struggle against capitalism. These are different fronts in the same historical battle for liberation: to create the conditions in which human beings can relate to each other as free, creative, and mutually recognized subjects, rather than as objects in a market economy.

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! BREAK THE CHAINS OF CAPITAL! FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF ALL HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CLASS PARTY!

The crisis of romantic relationships, sexuality, and family life under capitalism reflects the alienation inherent in a social system based on commodity production and class exploitation. The objectification of women, the commodification of sexuality, the breakdown of intimate bonds, and the pervasive loneliness that characterizes modern life are not accidental by-products of an otherwise beneficial system, but necessary consequences of the reduction of human relations to market transactions.

Marxist analysis asserts that true human liberation, including liberation in the sphere of intimate relationships, requires a revolutionary transformation of the material foundations of society. Only when human beings are free from the compulsion to sell their labor power, from patriarchal competition, when social production serves human development rather than the accumulation of capital, will the material conditions exist for genuine love, genuine sexuality, and mutual recognition, which remain unfulfilled promises under capitalism.

The path forward requires strong defensive organizations, both of the working class and of all the oppressed, including women. It also requires the historical clarity provided by the theoretical program of the communist party, which directs all these spontaneous movements toward the common revolutionary goal.

The crisis of relations under capitalism points to the possibility of their liberation under communism. The liberation of relations between individuals will be a fundamental aspect of the general emancipation of humanity. The class party, as the bearer of revolutionary consciousness and organizer of the revolutionary struggle, is the indispensable instrument through which this liberation will be achieved.

Part one
Struggle for Power in the Two Revolutions

XI - 105. The Light of October - 106. Destruction of the State - 107. The Constituent Assembly - 108. Trotsky and Lenin - 109. Decree of Dissolution - 110. War and Peace - 111. Tragic Chronology - 112. A Serious Crisis Within the Party - 113. Lenin’s Evaluation - 114. The Terrible Civil War - 115. October’s Three Socialist Tasks - 116. The Results are in - 117. Solitary Supreme Effort - 118. In Russia and in Europe - 119. “Ionization” of History - 120. Dialog between Colossi

[ It is here ] 

(To be continued in the next issue)