The Communist Party’s 1930 left turn destroyed its leadership and underground network

Evidence

The “three” were narrowly defeated, and soon after established contact with Trotsky (by now on Prinkipo)—for which they were expelled. The whole experience of the left turn was a disastrous one for the Italian party. The leadership was shattered; of the eight members of the 1928 Political Committee, five were expelled by 1931 (Tasca, the “three”, and Silone—who was a moral and political casualty of the period). Bordiga too, still formally a member of the Central Committee although in prison, was expelled in 1930. In addition, the militants sent back to Italy as part of the new policy were arrested almost to a man or woman, and membership inside the country as we have mentioned was reduced to miniscule proportions by 1934, at the end of the “left” period. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 226

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the concrete organizational history behind Gramsci’s prison theorizing — links forward to how factional instability shaped his reflection on party strategy and hegemony.