Blame the masses

Amadeo Bordiga became the leader of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921, but was replaced by the more famous Antonio Gramsci in 1924. Bordiga and his dwindling band of followers were eventually expelled from the world Communist movement on the orders of Stalin. Today, Bordiga is almost unknown, although a few "Bordigist" groups are still active in Italy and France. Few articles by Bordiga have been translated into English, and those that have are usually anonymous. The politics of the Bordigists are hard to fathom, but seem to be a very abstract and dogmatic form of Marxism-Leninism, so dogmatic that even Lenin himself criticized Bordiga for being too sectarian and ultraleft (it takes one to know one?).

"Murdering the Dead" is a booklet published by Antagonism Press, which seems to be an anarchist group. It contains six articles by Bordiga, plus a short introduction by the publishers. It's unclear why anarchists would want to translate and publish texts by a super-authoritarian Communist? The publisher has decided to give Bordiga a quasi-Green, anti-civilization "spin", a bit like Jacques Camatte (an ex-Bordigist reviewed by me elsewhere).

While this is probably the wrong way to read Bordiga, his articles do contain formulations that easily render themselves to such an interpretation. Thus, Bordiga attacks "Progress" and "Civilization", the specialization of labour, the subordination of men to machines, and at several points suggests that precapitalist modes of production had better safety thinking and long-term planning. There's also a curious footnote, either by Bordiga himself or added by the editors, which talks about the chivalry of the feudal nobility! Since Bordiga also extols the virtues of the early capitalists and industrialists, while demanding a collective economy based on advanced technology, I suspect that his "primitivist" formulations are a form of subtle irony. But yes, Bordiga seems to put more emphasis on environmental destruction, including deforestation, than more dogmatic Marxists.

Bordiga's articles are peculiar in other ways as well. They are heavily sarcastic, something I did not expect from a writer usually considered a super-theoretical bore. At one point, he calls Stalin "big moustache"! Also, the articles frequently seem to "blame the masses" for the failures of the system. Bordiga loathes his native Italy, with its corrupt politicians, greedy bureaucrats, incompetent engineers and lazy populace on constant look out for new handouts. The finance minister Ezio Vanoni is a special object of spite - according to the editors, the hapless Vanoni introduced an income tax which entered the Guinness Book of World Records as "the least paid tax in the world". The titles of Bordiga's articles are also pretty strange, and frequently sound Situationist: Murder of the Dead, Weird and Wonderful Tales of Modern Social Decadence, Doctrine of the Body Possessed by the Devil...

The articles also contain frequent contradictions. As already noted, Bordiga could be given an "anti-progress" spin, but at other times, he rather attacks capitalism for being too inefficient, and harks back to the "heroic" period of early Italian capitalism, before corruption and stagnation set in. Was Bordiga unsure whether he wanted to be a Luddite or a Saint-Simonist? Another contradiction concerns the Soviet Union, which the author denounces as "state capitalist". However, he also says that capitalism means independent firms and the abolition of rigid castes and estates. In the land of "big moustache", however, firms were not independent while the labourers were virtually enserfed. North Korea would become even worse, yet that too is "capitalist" according to the Bordigists. Somehow, this doesn't compute.

I'm not sure who (except me) would be interested in purchasing "Murdering the Dead", but I give it the OK rating for at least making me bewildered...