Expert vulcanologists commenting on Italy's Mount Vesuvius have pointed out that ­it isn't a question of if it will erupt but when. Before an actual full-blown eruption there are the telltale signs: the magma begins to build up beneath the surface, there are increased tremors, and changes in gas emissions or steam activity. Minor lava flows can take place before a major eruption.

The general strike on 3 October was a historic leap forward for the Palestine movement and for the class struggle in general. A human tide poured onto streets across Italy: 300,000 in Rome, 150,000 in Milan, Naples, and Bologna, 100,000 in Florence. The list is too long for this article. In total, an estimated 2 million people took to the streets in at least 100 cities. The next day, 500,000 people flooded Rome again for the national demonstration.

What happened in Italy on Friday 3 October has very few precedents. Think about it. A politicalstrike. A political generalstrike. A political general strike over internationalist solidarity and against imperialism.

Friday, 3 October 2025, will be remembered as a major turning point in the class struggle in Italy. It is the day Italy saw millions participate in a general strike in support of the Palestinian people. The strike was called jointly by the USB union and the CGIL, the biggest trade union confederation in Italy, with its five million members.

On 26 and 27 September, delegates from important dockworkers’ trade unions in Europe and the Mediterranean convened in Genoa to discuss joint action to stop the genocide in Gaza. The meeting took place at a time when, across Europe, workers and young people are in the mood for open struggle against the barbaric massacre of the Palestinian people, and are blaming their own ruling classes for complicity in the genocide.

The general strike against the genocide in Gaza on 22 September represented a huge outburst of mass anger which has profound implications beyond the borders of Italy. The idea that mass direct action is needed to stop Israel’s murderous assault on the Palestinians now dominates. At the same time, the Italian mass protest can also be seen as part of a ‘Red September’ of mass uprisings, revolutions and insurrections across the world.

The demonstrations and strike on 22 September marked a decisive turning point for the Palestine movement in Italy. All the anger and disgust accumulated in the face of the increasingly ferocious actions of the state of Israel, all the indignation at the complicity and revolting hypocrisy of the Italian and western governments, finally poured out in demonstrations that spread throughout the country.

A broad movement against the massacre in Gaza and in defence of the Palestinian people is taking shape in Italy. It is a shake-up of the stagnant Italian political scene that we greet with enthusiasm, and one that the Partito Comunista Rivoluzionario will continue to invest its energies in. This movement will spread because it expresses a deep-seated sentiment in society, a visceral exasperation at the horrors we are witnessing live from Palestine. Up to this point, this sentiment has lacked a channel for expression. Now, it has finally exploded.

This year’s 25 April celebration, marking eighty years since Italy’s liberation from fascism, was one of the most well-attended in recent times, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets across Italy. In town squares across the country, we saw Palestinian flags, overwhelming enthusiasm, and young people and workers eager to discuss how to change the situation.

From 11 to 13 April, the First Congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) in Italy was held in Cervia. Exactly one year earlier, the political organisation Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione decided to establish itself as a party and raise the flag of revolutionary communism, calling together all young people and workers ready to do battle against the capitalist system. A year later, the exciting growth of the party's forces and the tumultuous development of events on a global scale offer the best confirmation of the courageous choice we made and the political perspectives on which we base our action.

Today, Netflix has released a new series, The Leopard, based on the 1958 book of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which follows the last days of a dying Sicilian prince in the time of Italian reunification. We publish below a review of that 1958 classic by Stan Laight. [Note: the following review contains spoilers.]

On 23 November, more than 500 comrades from across Italy filled the rooms of the Frentani Congress Centre in Rome for the launch of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR). This meeting was the culmination of a months-long political campaign, stretching from Trento to Messina; but, above all, it represented a new beginning and an appeal to anyone who wants to mobilise against inequality, war and the innumerable forms of oppression engendered by the capitalist system.

We are very excited to announce the release of the Italian edition of History of Philosophy, a Marxist Perspective, by our editor-in-chief, Alan Woods. We congratulate our Italian comrades on producing this translation, which has made this important text accessible to an entirely new audience. 

I wrote this article in early 1977, (it was published in the Militant, issue 349, 1 April 1977) when the leaders of the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, were supporting a minority Christian Democrat government, which was carrying out austerity measures. In October 1976, that government announced its programme, immediately unleashing a wave of spontaneous strikes across Italy. The PCI leaders used their huge authority among workers to pull them back and accept the “sacrifices” as necessary measures to “get the economy back on its feet”. This moment represented a major betrayal of the Italian working class, which was to mark the beginning of the end of the wave of class struggle

From 12 to 14 April, Marina di Massa was flooded with the revolutionary enthusiasm of hundreds of militant communists, gathered for the National Congress of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione (SCR), the Italian section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). This congress marked a historic turning point in the struggle for communism in Italy. During the discussion, the comrades of SCR decided to launch a campaign to build a Revolutionary Communist Party in Italy, which will officially be founded in the autumn and will form an integral part of the Revolutionary Communist International.