By 1925 the world revolutionary wave sparked by October 1917 in Russia was on the wane. Across the world workers' struggle was in retreat and capital was advancing its counteroffensive. The working class in Germany had suffered a series of defeats by the hand of the SPD and the rest of the capitalist state. The Hungarian Soviet Republic was strangled in its cradle, and a notable strike wave in North America in 1919 had also been put down. In Italy, the Communist Party had only been formed after the Two Red Years (1919-20) of widespread factory occupations which had had no coherent political agenda. By the time revolutionaries had organised independently of the social democrats who simply wanted to reform capitalism (January 1921) they were being pushed back, by both the “democratic” state and Mussolini's fascist gangs.

In Russia itself, the workers' councils, the heart of the social revolution, had become empty shells through the course of the economic crisis and civil war, with the population of Moscow and Petrograd decreasing by 50% as workers deserted the cities in search of food or died at the front. A ‘moderate’ estimate of the numbers who had died by the winter of 1921-22 is 5 million. The nail in the coffin for soviet power (i.e. democratic control from below through a widespread network of workers’ councils) was the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt and the subsequent banning of factions inside the Bolshevik Party. At the time, though, revolutionaries in the Bolshevik Party largely assumed it was a question of their hanging on to power until the proletarian revolution could be rescued and revived by support from a victorious working class revolution elsewhere.

Yet this policy was a two-edged sword. Hanging on by making concessions, signing treaties, with capitalist powers obviously involves the danger of conceding to and joining the network of those powers. Moreover, prioritising the survival of the Russian regime increasingly meant quashing any voices of opposition inside the newly formed International. It was in this historical context that the policy makers of the Third International would push the “Bolshevization” of the world party, adding the final nails in the coffin of the revolutionary wave and increasingly turning the International itself into a tool to ensure the survival of the evolving state capitalist regime in Russia. It was these opportunistic twists and turns in tactics that those who formed the Committee of Intesa would struggle against. The “united front”, and the slogan of “workers’ government” were very real reversals from the principles which the Comintern was founded on. Lenin’s original call for a new international in 1915 was based on a clear recognition that social democracy had crossed the class barricades as the majority of the Second International’s parties had lined up with their own national capitals in WW1. This recognition was only reaffirmed as the social democrats participated in capital's offensive exemplified by the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by Ebert's SPD government. After all this, the leaders of the Comintern were calling for an alliance between the PCd’I and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), who they had just split from a few years earlier. The “united front” the leaders of the Comintern had in mind was not that of class unity irrespective of party in a strike, as had been the case leading up to the October Revolution, but a parliamentary alliance with social democracy. The workers’ government they were calling for was a parliamentary coalition, and not for smashing the capitalist state or for the political supremacy of workers’councils.

The disastrous effects of “Bolshevization” in Italy can perhaps be best understood through the Matteotti crisis. With the arrest of Amadeo Bordiga in 1923 and the resignation of the party’s executive committee in protest to the directive that the party merge with the PSI, the leaders of the Comintern saw an opportunity to install a leadership more favourable to their line headed by Antonio Gramsci. Though the “centre” had been put into the leadership, the base of the party was still firmly on the left. When the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti was murdered in 1924 at the hands of fascists, Mussolini's government, which had not fully cemented its control of the Italian state, came into crisis. When the other bourgeois parties walked out of parliament in protest, horrified at the flagrant fascist offence to the norms of liberal democracy, Gramsci directed the communist deputies to follow these bourgeois parties, aiming to create an “anti-fascist” "anti-parliament". But this parliamentary charade with bourgeois parties had nothing to do with solidifying an independent working class, which at the time was suffering massive attacks through a rise in the cost of living and a revocation of the right to strike. As the scandal unfolded, the twists and turns of Gramsci and the flip-flopping of the Comintern leadership left the wider class rudderless at a time when they were ready to take to the streets, missing the opportunity for the Communist party to regain its footing and go on the offensive after four years of retreat.

It is mistaken to think that in every situation expedients and tactical manoeuvres can widen the Party base since relations between the party and the masses depend in large part on the objective situation.

Platform of the Committee of Intesa, leftcom.org

It was in this context of opportunism and floundering, that the Committee of Intesa was formed by militants on the Left, notably Onorato Damen, who managed to persuade a reluctant Bordiga to support the effort. The Committee stated bluntly that “the [leadership] consider the problem of conquering the “masses” as a problem of will. However, little by little they are adapting themselves to circumstances and are essentially lapsing into opportunism.” Here they were absolutely correct in posing this division between the two conceptions. For the left of the party, the revolution could not be merely willed into existence, much less decreed by an utterance of the Comintern, but by relating to the working class where it objectively was and on its own terrain. The party needed to remain at the forefront of the workers’ struggle against the very real economic attacks facing the class whilst staying true to the working class’ final goal and not playing parliamentary games à la Gramsci. In practice this means working towards the seizure of political power itself, certainly not parliamentary maneuvers and political mergers to numerically widen the party at the expense of its programme and class standpoint. The Committee were also right to say that the problem wasn’t confined to Italy, declaring that “the Left firmly believes that a satisfactory solution to the question of the Italian Party is impossible without a solution to international questions”. However, any serious attempt to take stock or reflect was not to be. In fact the ‘problem’ of the Committee of Intesa was doggedly discussed in the pages of Unita, (the party newspaper instituted by the ‘bolshevised’ Gramsci leadership in Italy), almost entirely in terms of the Trotsky problem: a sign of how much the individual sections of the Comintern were simply turned into a mirror of what was going on in the Russian party. Eventually, under threats of expulsion and orders to search the persons and dwellings of the “factionalists,” the Committee agreed to dissolve, hoping perhaps in vain that some form of debate would take place at the coming congress. What would follow would be expulsions from the party by the ‘centre’, arrests by Mussolini, and many other militants fleeing into exile.

It has been many years since the struggle of the left of the party through the Committee of Intesa but its lessons are still of value to revolutionaries today. Firstly, the Committee highlights that revolution will be international or it will fail, and that communists can never lose sight of this fact. The root of the degeneration of the Comintern was the ebbing of the revolutionary wave and the national isolation following the Russian Revolution. In this situation the leaders in Russia tried to salvage what they could by attempting to maintain power by hoping to form friendly “workers’ governments” and pursuing trade deals with capitalist powers at the expense of the principles the international was founded on. In hindsight, it was impossible to maintain a revolutionary Russia isolated in a capitalist world, let alone with the waning vitality and power of the workers' councils, but the opportunism they pursued ensured that no external emergent revolution would be coming to the rescue. Secondly, the Committee demonstrated that the communist party is not a party of parliamentary coalitions and political maneuvers but a party that fights for the revolutionary program inside the working class where it objectively is, ebb or flow. Neither does the party confuse the proletariat by engaging in capitalist politics for momentary success. The party doesn’t will the revolution into existence but acts accordingly to the unfolding historical movement and in accordance with its revolutionary principles.

Today our class faces many challenges and has clear weaknesses. Like 100 years ago in Italy, we are once again facing a cost of living crisis. The various nations are gearing up for an imperialist confrontation whose horrors would be unimaginable. Workers’ struggles which do emerge are often confined to trade unions, isolated and weak. If our class is going to overcome this dark period we will need to form a revolutionary party to fight on the front ranks of our class. International in scope, firmly entrenched in the struggles of the class and clear on its final goal of workers' revolution and the communist future. This all may seem far off but it's not going to be willed into existence. Only the real work of revolutionaries today can produce the indispensable organ of the workers' struggle; the future revolutionary international.