LOTTA CONTINUA Part 2 (Related Political Organisations no 2)

What Do We Want? Everything!

This post follows on from the previous one on Lotta Continua. I promised in a comment there to provide some additional publications written by or about Lotta Continua from the Big Flame Internal Bulletin, and here they are.

Discussion with Lotta Continua members no1

This discussion in 1975 ranged across three areas:

–   The current situation in Italy including the relationship of the Italian Communist Party [PCI] to the Christian Democracy/Socialist Party Government; the “auto-reduction movement”; the LC attitude towards workers’ councils in factories; Lotta Continua itself (LC is “not the party of the revolution. We are a revolutionary party but not THE party”).

–   International issues including Portugal and the LC approach to internationalism (LC is “against ‘twin’ organisations” but does have fraternal/sororal links with groups).

–   Lotta Continua’s support for the Communist Party in the Spring 1975 regional elections (on the basis this vote was a defeat for the right wing and Christian Democracy, “voting for the CP is not identifying with the revisionist line, the bureaucracy of the CP”.

Click here on view Report from discussions with comrades of Lotta Continua (Internal Bulletin Oct/Nov 1975)

Discussion with a Lotta Continua member no2

This discussion occurred a year later. It consists of answers to a series of questions, which included these issues:

–   The change from the strategy of supporting the Italian Communist Party [PCI] to becoming part of Democrazia Prolerari [Democratic Proletariat] (over the last year “the political project of the PCI has been clarified”. Participation in PD is part of a strategy of “building unity at the base”).

–   LC’s attitude towards factory councils (there is “no one line” for all workplaces).

Click here on view Interview with Lotta Continua (Internal Bulletin June 1976)

Extract from a Adriano Sofri article

This is quite a short extract from an article by Adriano Sofri in the Lotta Continua newspaper in March 1973 called “On the question of delegates and of organisation”. The introduction to the extract covers the different stages in LC’s development and quotes from the position agreed at the 1975 congress on the necessity of a party. Sofri discusses the meaning of the slogans “mass organisation” and “communist vanguard”. He acknowledges mistakes in the previous position on factory councils.

Click here on view Vanguard, Mass Political Work and Mass Organisation (Internal Bulletin March 1976)

French Trotskyist Critique of Lotta Continua

This is a translation of an article by Daniel Bensaid in the journal of the French section of the USFI (United Secretariat of the Fourth International). Bensaid focuses on the theses agreed at LC’s 1975 congress, and his article is in four parts: (a) Violence and the Army, (b) The International Strategic Line (including the various internationals and China), (c) The Notion of the Prolonged Crisis (including the CP and the unions), (d) Building the Party (LC constitution and internal organisation). The version of the translation I have from the BF IB ends mid sentence in part (c), so this is all I am able to reproduce here.

Click here on view French Trotskyist on Lotta Continua (Internal Bulletin March 1976)

There is one more Big Flame publication with Lotta Continua documents which I know about but have not been able to track down. This was published by West London Big Flame in 1976: Documents from the 1975 Lotta Continua Congress. If anyone out there has a copy, please tell me.

Archive Archie