Since its establishment in the post-war period, and at least since 1952, the study activity of the party, in search of its roots in doctrine and historical battle, took place in the form of oral communications in periodic general meetings. Of these, 62 were counted up to 1973 and after this meeting 153.

The General Meetings are not deliberative assemblies but working meetings (not there being nothing left to decide). The results of this faithful tracing of the foundations of revolutionary communism and their application to the investigation of the events of the class struggle was subsequently reproduced in the party press.

These works, although intended to be as faithful as possible to orthodox Marxist theory and the tradition of left communism, were never intended to be definitive or exhaustive, but rather awaited further study and completion by our future investigations and the lessons of history. All this hard work, aimed at restoring the foundations of the party’s activity, has always been framed within a joint, comprehensive, preventive plan, known to all, deemed logical and necessary, which set objectives, methods, and timeframes for implementation.

Certain comrades volunteered and were tasked with implementing it. It is certainly not a perfect machine, nor is its results entirely predictable. But we tried to avoid entrusting it to the initiative and contingent preferences of individual comrades, who might end up presenting unexpected reports. This impersonal continuation of work inserted into a flow has made the phase of the so-called preventive control on the documents, of which the whole party already knows the precedents, the themes, the arguments in advance. In this multi-handed activity, individual speakers pass, the work of the party remains, which impersonally accumulates and passes on.

Today, therefore, after a century and three-quarters of Marxism and three-quarters of a century of the current organization, our school has produced a monumental body of literature, an entire library, on the most diverse topics: from the theory of history, to economic science, to the theory of knowledge, to the facts of ancient and current history, to the critical conscience of our communist movement. This material does not emerge from an Academy, but is produced by generations of proletarian fighters, driven by the demands of the struggle, often subjected to bourgeois persecution, starting with Karl Marx, who was so destitute he could barely support his family.

Our works should be considered "on the edge of time", as a whole, identifying the threads that bind the parts of that unified body of thought. It is known that "without a revolutionary theory, revolution is impossible". We don’t need a party of scholars, but a party of wisdom. Our movement must be able to draw on our knowledge, self-awareness, and guidance for action. In the 1950s, precisely in order to master the boundless material that was rapidly accumulating from general meeting to meeting and in the press, the then young comrade Livio, from Naples, was charged to establish, and subsequently maintain, an Index of Party Work. This included three tools:- an Index of General Meetings, in chronological order, which listed the Reports;- An Index of the Press which, for each issue of “Programma”, page by page, it reported all the titles, the main ones of which indicated the Topic;- A Subject Index, with reference to the General Meetings in which they were were addressed.

The Periodic Update Pages of these documents (transcribed meticulously by hand, as electronics did not yet exist) were then transferred onto matrices, reproduced on a mimeograph machine and distributed to comrades at each General Meeting. Livio then continued this careful reading, taking note and consideration of the contents, and transcribing the titles, moving from the numbers of “Programma” to those of “Il Party” and “Communism”. Finally, since 1999, when, thanks to the knowledge and technical tests of a comrade from Paris, we were able to inaugurate the party’s Internet site. Ezio took charge, after having learned to use the computer, of digitizing the many hundreds of pages of the Indexes from Livio’s tiny handwriting. What we have today comes from this previous loving and meticulous work. What do we have today instead?

1. - A General Index of the site’s pages, in order of insertion (international-communist-party.org/Address.htm). This, obviously, is updated almost daily. 2. - The Language Indexes of the new entries. Here the new writings and texts of different archives are listed separately. 3. - The Newspaper Index: for each issue we publish, all the titles and subtitles, with the subject next to them. 4. - We also have the Indexes by Subject, currently 24 (international communist-party.org/Indices/IIndices.htm) The growth and improved structure of each of them reflects the amount of work the party can devote to the corresponding topic.

As a Note on the Page states: "The purpose of this tool is to facilitate the task of those who approach our doctrine. It certainly should not be considered exhaustive of the rich Marxist literature: the use of comrades will always suggest additions and improvements to the structure.

Research into our knowledge is now greatly facilitated by the tools of computer scientists. This does not take away the difficulty of learning: as Engels recalled, "the Marxism is a science and, like all sciences, it must be studied". We will not create a scholastic, immutable and lifeless, but a school, where the field of study is continually deepened and expanded by study itself, faced with the infinite evolution of the natural, material, and social world. A learning that spans past modes of production and up to the Revolution and Communism