Report of the Editorial Staff of the Party’s Printed Periodicals
Although a very serious, complex and demanding historical situation remains for us despite our minimal resources, we can boast of the regularity and rapid pace we have managed to maintain, even in the publishing field. This serene efficiency is based not on the exceptional intellectual or moral abilities of our members, but essentially on the way our group feels and works, free from the miseries of personalistic intellectualism and the impatience of voluntarism and politicking.
Thanks to the generous work of all our comrades, old and young, we can boast the regular publication of six substantial printed organs, in four languages. They are all worthy of continuing today in the tradition of the centuries-old Marxist school and of providing continuity to the party’s historical assessments, managing to promptly address many of the difficult issues that the situation presents to us.
A great factor in the strength of the Party is the relationship of centralization within the international organization. Where new requests and additions converge from many sides and comrades can continuously defend and confirm the historical red thread of communism. This factor facilitates internal growth on the levels of self-awareness and extension in its numerous functions, attentions and interventions.
Let’s not go so far as to aspire to be a single international editorial board, which would only stifle the party’s capabilities and energy. The party is the same everywhere; each local group fully expresses the party’s voice in a given context. If, due to war or repression, connections between the sections and the center are severed, the party groups will continue to know, understand, and speak to the class, even in the absence of central directives. Nevertheless, the power of close coordination between the different sections is evident, and will allow us in the future to grow the editorial offices of our periodicals.
If newspapers are the "collective organizers" of the party for the comrades who receive, read, and distribute them, they are also the same for those who write them, for the transmission of information and contributions from the periphery to their editorial offices, where those newspapers are designed and built. It is an arsenal where a warship is launched at regular intervals. It is a trench in which communists find refuge and from which they can attack. Our well-connected editorial teams are both a product and an important factor in the development of an effective international party. Because the newspaper is much more than the sum of the articles published there, which obviously we don’t sign, because they are the result of a collective effort that the editorial staff is called upon to carry out, of selection, reworking, adaptation, titling, etc.
Since 1957 the party had given itself “Programme Communiste”, in French, the international language at the time, with an editorial office in Marseille, France, which in 1973 was 60 issues have already been released. Having lost "Programme" in the 1973 split, in 1979, given the growing number of reports submitted to general meetings, which could no longer be included in "Il Partito", it was possible to resume publication of a dedicated magazine, a biannual one we gave the peremptory name "Comunismo”.
Issue 99 of this magazine was published last July, respecting its periodicity for half a century. Issue 2 of “Communism”, which has sold 150 copies, is now in print and already on the website. The intention is to once again showcase the party with its own international magazine, this time in English, which will feature the most important of our doctrinal and historical studies. There will be a corresponding edition of the magazine also in Italian, the continuation of “Communism”, and when possible in other languages, if not in print then on the website. The content is of interest to the world communist movement, and even the examination of local events and situations transcends the occasional to reach general considerations and conclusions.
Already in the English and Italian editions these reports are gradually coinciding, while waiting to conclude the series already begun on “Communism”. We showed our comrades a proposed summary and convergence plan for the next issues. An international magazine is now necessary because our English language International Communist Party covers mainly national issues, as our newspapers have always done, for Italy, Venezuela, and Turkey. In the eight tightly packed pages of the latest issue, half of the headlines comment on events in the United States and half on international affairs: this seems like a fair balance to us.