Amadeo Bordiga

Photo of Bordiga.

Amadeo Bordiga (13 June 1889 – 23 July 1970) was an Italian left-communist political figure, Marxist, and engineer by profession, who had joined the socialist movement in 1910. During World War I he was one of the leaders of the revolutionary (“uncompromising”) wing of the Italian Socialist Party, which demanded the exclusion from the party of reformists who wanted collaboration with the bourgeoisie. After the war he maintained this position and became the leader of the abstentionist faction, who rejected legal forms of working class struggle. His views as leader of the abstentionists were criticized by Lenin in "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, which supported his criticisms but disagreed with the conclusions. Actively supporting separateness from the reformists, Bordiga became a leader of the Communist Party of Italy, founded in 1921 after it broke away from the Socialist Party. In 1923, Bordiga was removed from the leadership of the party, and the third congress of the Communist Party in 1926 condemned his views. In 1930 he was expelled from the party after being accused of Trotskyism.