Onorato Damen
Encyclopedia
Onorato Damen was an Italian left communist revolutionary who was first active in the Communist Party of Italy
. After being expelled, he worked with the organized Italian left, became one of the leaders of the Internationalist Communist Party
, commonly known by their paper Battaglia Comunista. The Internationalist Communist Party formally founded in 1945, was numerically the largest left-communist organization in the post-WWII period. In 1952, Amadeo Bordiga
, who had by then fully came out of retirement to found the International Communist Party
, known by its paper Programma Comunista. Many elements of the original Internationalist Communist Party left to join the party Bordiga had formed. Onorato Damen lead the older party that did not follow Amadeo Bordiga into the new party but rather maintained the original name Internationalist Communist Party, maintained the original theoretical journal Prometeo
, and their paper Battaglia Communista. Onorato Damen was politically active his entire adult life. He was the author of Gramsci: tra marxismo è idealismo.
(PSI), within which he opposed the politics of Turati, Treves and Modigliani. A little more than twenty years old at the start of the First World War, he was drafted as a Sergeant
. At the end of the hostilities he was demoted to the rank of private and subsequently condemned to two years of military prison
by a military tribunal
for "endangering public institutions"; this was essentially for his support of revolutionary defeatism, motivated by "incitement to desertion
" and for denouncing the "imperialistic
character of the war". Set free in 1919, he returned to his position in the party collaborating on the socialist periodical of Fermo La Lotta (The Struggle).
In the two biennio rosso
of 1920–21, the richest period of political and social tensions, Damen worked first in Bologna
with the local Trade Union Council
and then with the Casa del Popolo
("House of the People") of Granarolo as the secretary of the Community Legal Committee.
During this period, Damen supported Amadeo Bordiga
, and thus joined the Communist Party of Italy
. In the months immediately preceding the split of Livorno
he worked as secretary of the Trade Union Council in Pistoia
and as the chief editor of the periodical L'avvenire. He remained in Pistoia up to his arrest in the months of the electoral campaign of 1921 for the action from Poggio a Caiano
.
Already in February 1921 he was denounced by the judiciary for certain violence of language used during a rally in the Piazza Garibaldi in Pistoia
. On the basis of his frenetic activity and, above the events at Empoli
, he became one of the principal targets of the nascent fascist reaction in Tuscany
, where he had been organising during those months. On May 10 while returning from a rally held on behalf of the candidate of the Communist Party of Italy in the elections in the village of Corbezzi, he was detained by the fascists who took him to their offices in the city. Here they tried to beat him into renouncing his "Bolshevik
" ideas. Failing in their first objective, he was transferred to their headquarters at Piazza Ottaviani in Florence
. He was sent to Dumini with the proposal: "You should disappear for the entire period of the electoral campaign or hide yourself in a villa in Fiesole or remain in Florence under continual surveillance."
Rejecting these proposals, he was held in Dumini throughout the general strike
; a protest erupted into violence in Pistoia on his release. Renewing contacts with the party and overcoming the reserve of the comrades, he decided to return to Pistoia where he remained in order to continue the task of agitation. On the return trip, made by car under the escort of a certain number of armed comrades, he encountered a squadron of fascists on the road from Pioppo to Caiano. This encounter resulted in the death of a fascist and the wounding of two others. Damen was sentenced to three years confinement in the Murate in Florence.
Given what took place en route from Poggio
to Caiano and the subsequent incarceration, the leadership of the party decided to send him to France
as a part of their "political bureau" to represent the party and to preside over the organisation of groups of exiled comrades, coordinating their political activity as the director of the weekly L'humanité
in Italian
. Later, upon his clandestine re-entry in the country in 1924, the party presented him as a candidate in the elections and in spite of the strong opposition of the fascists was elected as a deputy on the city council of Florence.
Meanwhile within the PC of I, the rupture between the direction imposed by Moscow and the left continued to delineate itself more clearly. Bordiga, who enjoyed widespread support within the party, initiated his "Aventine" cession (named from a famous plebeian revolt in ancient Rome 4th century BC). He attended the meeting of the central committee but did not intervene in the debate, thus not obstructing the change in political direction that was supported by Antonio Gramsci
and Palmiro Togliatti
.
Damen was a supporter of Communist Left, not the new party direction. Togliatti attended a meeting of the central committee of the Florentine Federation of the CPI to discuss the position of Damen – although Damen himself was not invited. The meeting was unguarded and so the police were able to disrupt it – ultimately, it ended in a flight following a false alarm.
In 1925, Damen, along with Luigi Repossi and Bruno Fortichiari, formed the "Intesa" committee with the aim of defending the work of the left in the party. The Platform of the Committee of Intesa was hailed by Leon Trotsky as a seminal work of the International Left Opposition referring to it in his writings as the Platform of the Left.
In November 1926, Damen was imprisoned in Ustica, while in December of the same year he was arrested and sent again to the Murate in Florence for participating in the action of Florentine communists in plotting against the state. Condemned by a special tribunal to 12 years of seclusion, he spent years in prisons in Saluzzo
, Pallanza, Civitavecchia
(where he led a prison revolt) and in Pianosa
. Released under amnesty at the end of 1933, he was sent to Milan
under watch for 5 years, while the head of the prison in Pianosa communicated to the Casellaria Centrale that "the punishment he has suffered has had no moral effect" and described him as an "unshakeable communist".
He was again arrested at the end of 1935, under suspicion for spreading communist propaganda about the Spanish Civil War. At the time, police sources testified, he "did not participate in the propaganda turn of the clandestine reorganisation of the Italian Communist Party" because, remaining faithful to his Left-Communist orientation, Damen diffused the propaganda of the international opposition against the politics of the Comintern and against Stalinism in Spain".
Arrested again at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was confined for the entire period of the war. He was finally released by the Marshal Badoglio regime at the end of the war.
Damen was in prison when the Internationalist Communist Party was launched, but his alignment with it was well known. In 1945, Togliatti and the PCI, while advocating the freedom of real fascists, petitioned in the CLN
to have the leaders of the Internationalist Communist Party condemned to death as saboteurs and with the calumnious label of agents of the Gestapo; they included Damen in their list of its leaders. Togliatti's Italian Communist Party had already assassinated two of their founding members and organizers, Fausto Atti and Mario Acquaviva.
In the early 1950s, Bordiga began calling for a return to the positions of the Italian Communist Left as they were in the early 1920s when he was the leader of the Communist Party of Italy. The group around Battaglia Comunista (and their theoretical journal Prometeo) disagreed and split. The solidified party with Bordiga, the International Communist Party
, then launched their paper, Il Programma Comunista. In the seventies the Internationalist Communist Party around Prometeo and Battaglia Comunista organized the first of the International Conferences of the Communist Left. Out of these conferences the Internationalist Communist Party and the Communist Workers Organisation together formed the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party around the basis of a common platform. Onorato Damen died in 1979.
Communist Party of Italy
The Communist Party of Italy was a communist political party in Italy which existed from 1921 to 1926. That year it was outlawed by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. In 1943, the name was changed to the Italian Communist Party.-Foundation:The forerunner of the party was the Communist Faction...
. After being expelled, he worked with the organized Italian left, became one of the leaders of the Internationalist Communist Party
Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista)
The Internationalist Communist Party is a left communist party in Italy.It was founded in 1952 by the wing of the International Communist Party led by Onorato Damen, which opposed Amadeo Bordiga's advocacy of a "return to Lenin"...
, commonly known by their paper Battaglia Comunista. The Internationalist Communist Party formally founded in 1945, was numerically the largest left-communist organization in the post-WWII period. In 1952, Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga was an Italian Marxist, a contributor to Communist theory, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, a leader of the Communist International and, after World War II, leading figure of the International Communist Party.- Early life :Bordiga was born at Resina, in the province of...
, who had by then fully came out of retirement to found the International Communist Party
International Communist Party
The International Communist Party is a left communist international political party which is often described by outside observers as Bordigist, due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga...
, known by its paper Programma Comunista. Many elements of the original Internationalist Communist Party left to join the party Bordiga had formed. Onorato Damen lead the older party that did not follow Amadeo Bordiga into the new party but rather maintained the original name Internationalist Communist Party, maintained the original theoretical journal Prometeo
Prometeo
Prometeo is a 150-minute opera by Luigi Nono, written between 1981 and 1984 and revised in 1985. Here the word "opera" carries the generic Italian meaning of "work," as in work of art, and not its usual worldly meaning. Indeed, Nono scornfully labels "Prometeo" a "tragedia dell'ascolto," a tragedy...
, and their paper Battaglia Communista. Onorato Damen was politically active his entire adult life. He was the author of Gramsci: tra marxismo è idealismo.
Biography
Damen was born in Monte San Pietroangeli (Ascoli Piceno). In his youth, he joined the Italian Socialist PartyItalian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
(PSI), within which he opposed the politics of Turati, Treves and Modigliani. A little more than twenty years old at the start of the First World War, he was drafted as a Sergeant
Sergeant
Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....
. At the end of the hostilities he was demoted to the rank of private and subsequently condemned to two years of military prison
Military prison
A military prison is a prison operated by the military. Military prisons are used variously to house prisoners of war, enemy combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by the military or national authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime...
by a military tribunal
Military tribunal
A military tribunal is a kind of military court designed to try members of enemy forces during wartime, operating outside the scope of conventional criminal and civil proceedings. The judges are military officers and fulfill the role of jurors...
for "endangering public institutions"; this was essentially for his support of revolutionary defeatism, motivated by "incitement to desertion
Desertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
" and for denouncing the "imperialistic
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
character of the war". Set free in 1919, he returned to his position in the party collaborating on the socialist periodical of Fermo La Lotta (The Struggle).
In the two biennio rosso
Biennio rosso
The Biennio Rosso was a two year period, between 1919 and 1920, of intense social conflict in Italy. The Biennio Rosso was followed by the extremely violent reaction of the Fascist blackshirts militia and eventually by the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini in 1922...
of 1920–21, the richest period of political and social tensions, Damen worked first in Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
with the local Trade Union Council
Trade Union Council
The Trade Union Council was a political party in Trinidad and Tobago. It contested the 1950 general elections, receiving 4.8% of the vote but failing to win a seat. The party did not contest any further elections....
and then with the Casa del Popolo
Casa del Popolo
Casa del Popolo is a notable bar, bistro, and music venue in Montreal, on Saint Laurent Boulevard. Its name is Italian for "House of the People".It was established in September 2000 by Mauro Pezzente and his partner Kiva Stemic...
("House of the People") of Granarolo as the secretary of the Community Legal Committee.
During this period, Damen supported Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga was an Italian Marxist, a contributor to Communist theory, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, a leader of the Communist International and, after World War II, leading figure of the International Communist Party.- Early life :Bordiga was born at Resina, in the province of...
, and thus joined the Communist Party of Italy
Communist Party of Italy
The Communist Party of Italy was a communist political party in Italy which existed from 1921 to 1926. That year it was outlawed by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. In 1943, the name was changed to the Italian Communist Party.-Foundation:The forerunner of the party was the Communist Faction...
. In the months immediately preceding the split of Livorno
Livorno
Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...
he worked as secretary of the Trade Union Council in Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
and as the chief editor of the periodical L'avvenire. He remained in Pistoia up to his arrest in the months of the electoral campaign of 1921 for the action from Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano
Poggio a Caiano is a town and comune in the Province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. The town lies 9 km south of the provincial capital of Prato.-The Medici villa:...
.
Already in February 1921 he was denounced by the judiciary for certain violence of language used during a rally in the Piazza Garibaldi in Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
. On the basis of his frenetic activity and, above the events at Empoli
Empoli
Empoli is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, about 20 km southwest of Florence, to the south of the Arno in a plain formed by the latter river. The plain has been usable for agriculture since Roman times. The commune's territory becomes a hilly one as it departs from the river...
, he became one of the principal targets of the nascent fascist reaction in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, where he had been organising during those months. On May 10 while returning from a rally held on behalf of the candidate of the Communist Party of Italy in the elections in the village of Corbezzi, he was detained by the fascists who took him to their offices in the city. Here they tried to beat him into renouncing his "Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
" ideas. Failing in their first objective, he was transferred to their headquarters at Piazza Ottaviani in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. He was sent to Dumini with the proposal: "You should disappear for the entire period of the electoral campaign or hide yourself in a villa in Fiesole or remain in Florence under continual surveillance."
Rejecting these proposals, he was held in Dumini throughout the general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
; a protest erupted into violence in Pistoia on his release. Renewing contacts with the party and overcoming the reserve of the comrades, he decided to return to Pistoia where he remained in order to continue the task of agitation. On the return trip, made by car under the escort of a certain number of armed comrades, he encountered a squadron of fascists on the road from Pioppo to Caiano. This encounter resulted in the death of a fascist and the wounding of two others. Damen was sentenced to three years confinement in the Murate in Florence.
Given what took place en route from Poggio
Poggio
Poggio is an Italian word meaning "knoll". It may refer to:-France:*Poggio-di-Nazza, a commune in the Haute-Corse department of Corsica*Poggio-di-Venaco, a commune in the Haute-Corse department of Corsica...
to Caiano and the subsequent incarceration, the leadership of the party decided to send him to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
as a part of their "political bureau" to represent the party and to preside over the organisation of groups of exiled comrades, coordinating their political activity as the director of the weekly L'humanité
L'Humanité
L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...
in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. Later, upon his clandestine re-entry in the country in 1924, the party presented him as a candidate in the elections and in spite of the strong opposition of the fascists was elected as a deputy on the city council of Florence.
Meanwhile within the PC of I, the rupture between the direction imposed by Moscow and the left continued to delineate itself more clearly. Bordiga, who enjoyed widespread support within the party, initiated his "Aventine" cession (named from a famous plebeian revolt in ancient Rome 4th century BC). He attended the meeting of the central committee but did not intervene in the debate, thus not obstructing the change in political direction that was supported by Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
and Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
.
Damen was a supporter of Communist Left, not the new party direction. Togliatti attended a meeting of the central committee of the Florentine Federation of the CPI to discuss the position of Damen – although Damen himself was not invited. The meeting was unguarded and so the police were able to disrupt it – ultimately, it ended in a flight following a false alarm.
In 1925, Damen, along with Luigi Repossi and Bruno Fortichiari, formed the "Intesa" committee with the aim of defending the work of the left in the party. The Platform of the Committee of Intesa was hailed by Leon Trotsky as a seminal work of the International Left Opposition referring to it in his writings as the Platform of the Left.
In November 1926, Damen was imprisoned in Ustica, while in December of the same year he was arrested and sent again to the Murate in Florence for participating in the action of Florentine communists in plotting against the state. Condemned by a special tribunal to 12 years of seclusion, he spent years in prisons in Saluzzo
Saluzzo
Saluzzo is a town and former principality in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont region, Italy.The city of Saluzzo is built on a hill overlooking a vast, well-cultivated plain. Iron, lead, silver, marble, slate etc...
, Pallanza, Civitavecchia
Civitavecchia
Civitavecchia is a town and comune of the province of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio. A sea port on the Tyrrhenian Sea, it is located 80 kilometers west-north-west of Rome, across the Mignone river. The harbor is formed by two piers and a breakwater, on which is a lighthouse...
(where he led a prison revolt) and in Pianosa
Pianosa
The small island of Pianosa , about in area, forms part of Italy's Tuscan Archipelago. Its name comes from the Italian pianura . Its highest point stands above sea level. Pianosa is part of the Elba island municipality. On clear days, Elbans see Pianosa as a dark blue line over the lighter blue sea...
. Released under amnesty at the end of 1933, he was sent to Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
under watch for 5 years, while the head of the prison in Pianosa communicated to the Casellaria Centrale that "the punishment he has suffered has had no moral effect" and described him as an "unshakeable communist".
He was again arrested at the end of 1935, under suspicion for spreading communist propaganda about the Spanish Civil War. At the time, police sources testified, he "did not participate in the propaganda turn of the clandestine reorganisation of the Italian Communist Party" because, remaining faithful to his Left-Communist orientation, Damen diffused the propaganda of the international opposition against the politics of the Comintern and against Stalinism in Spain".
Arrested again at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was confined for the entire period of the war. He was finally released by the Marshal Badoglio regime at the end of the war.
Damen was in prison when the Internationalist Communist Party was launched, but his alignment with it was well known. In 1945, Togliatti and the PCI, while advocating the freedom of real fascists, petitioned in the CLN
National Liberation Committee
The National Liberation Committee was the underground political entity of Italian Partisans during the German occupation of Italy in the last years of the Second World War. It was a multi-party entity, whose members were united by their anti-fascism...
to have the leaders of the Internationalist Communist Party condemned to death as saboteurs and with the calumnious label of agents of the Gestapo; they included Damen in their list of its leaders. Togliatti's Italian Communist Party had already assassinated two of their founding members and organizers, Fausto Atti and Mario Acquaviva.
In the early 1950s, Bordiga began calling for a return to the positions of the Italian Communist Left as they were in the early 1920s when he was the leader of the Communist Party of Italy. The group around Battaglia Comunista (and their theoretical journal Prometeo) disagreed and split. The solidified party with Bordiga, the International Communist Party
International Communist Party
The International Communist Party is a left communist international political party which is often described by outside observers as Bordigist, due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga...
, then launched their paper, Il Programma Comunista. In the seventies the Internationalist Communist Party around Prometeo and Battaglia Comunista organized the first of the International Conferences of the Communist Left. Out of these conferences the Internationalist Communist Party and the Communist Workers Organisation together formed the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party around the basis of a common platform. Onorato Damen died in 1979.