Manchette (What Distinguishes Our Party)

What distinguishes our party: the line running from Marx to Lenin to the foundation of the III International and the birth of the Communist Party of Italy at Leghorn (Livorno) 1921, and from there to the struggle of the Italian Communist Left against the degeneration in Moscow and to the rejection of popular fronts and coalitions of resistance groups; the tough work of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and the party organ, in contact with the working class, outside the realm of personalized politics and electoralist manoevrings.

Ever since our party, the International Communist Party, was formed in 1952, the “What Distinguishes Our Party” has been prominently displayed in all of its publications, newspapers, reviews, and texts. This short manchette¹, included in our press for fifty years, continues to be useful in defining “Who we are, and what we want”. Indeed anyone who has happened to have one of our publications pass through their hands, even if just the once, would have been made aware of our invariant programme just by reading this brief resumé.

An attentive, or indeed malicious reader, (and we have plenty of both) might wonder why the manchette has suddenly changed after so many years of stubborn “petrification” and think perhaps there’s something behind it all.

The International Communist Party back in 1952 was an organization largely confined behind the Italian frontiers and the manchette, excellent summary though it was, was formulated for Italian readers. When party sections started forming in other countries, slight variations arose in how it was translated into other languages – French, English, German, Spanish – even though substantially the same concepts were preserved. These variations aimed to highlight revolutionary, and counter-revolutionary, developments that were of particular relevance to the local reader, and also consisted of attempts at improving the way the manchette was formulated.

Today, our political organization is still weak in numerical terms, but it has nevertheless spread to other countries, and is known about even where it doesn’t have any members. This is what has prompted the current changes: our revolutionary programme is unique, rising above the various local idioms, our banner is unique, and the watchword by which we mark ourselves out is unique.

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Marx represents the doctrine of revolutionary communism as a whole and Lenin is its accredited restorer, especially so after the social-democratic betrayal of 1914/1918.

The III International was constituted with the aim of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and translating it into practice.

The birth of the Partito Comunista d’Italia is an indispensable reference point in defining who we are. The party today is more directly and inextricably linked with Livorno, 1921, than it is with the Russian revolution and the International. In short: we derive from the Italian “Sinistra Comunista” (Communist Left).

For similar reasons we need to distinguish the extremely consistent struggle conducted by the Italian Communist Left against the degeneration in Moscow, from the generic anti-Stalinist opposition towards it.

The Italian and French versions have borrowed from the others a condemnation of Popular Fronts; formerly not included because the tactical policies of the Popular Fronts were, after all, already condemned insofar as they were social-democratic rather than revolutionary. Nevertheless, above all in view of the Spanish experience – where not just Stalinists and socialists but also so-called revolutionaries (trotskists, anarchists etc) joined the Popular Front – we thought it appropriate to reconfirm our opposition to, and condemnation of, that dual strategy method which professes to reconcile revolutionary and class goals with frontist, democratic, and populist demands and agitations. Finally, it was precisely the Spanish Popular Front that helped the partisan coalitions take their first faltering steps, and provided them with prior theoretical justification.

Apart from that, the original manchette has been translated literally from the Italian into the other languages.

In conclusion, our watchwords have only been changed very slightly with a view to making them more homogeneous in the various tongues, and in order to all the better proclaim that which we have always, and will continue, to proclaim.
 

1. Manchette is a French printers’ term (meaning literally cuff) and we use it to refer to the left-hand block of the masthead. The masthead of the publication is the place where the name of the publication, and other details go, on the top of the front page of newspapers etc. ↩︎