In memory of comrade Mauro

We recently learned of the death after a long illness of Mauro Stefanini, one of the oldest and most dedicated militants of Battaglia Comunista, and himself the son of an old militant of the Italian left. We are publishing here extracts from the letter of solidarity which the ICC sent to the militants of the IBRP and from the letter of thanks written in reply by a militant of the IBRP in the name of his organisation.

ICC letter

Comrades,

It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of comrade Mauro…his vivacity and warmth always made a great impression on the militants of our organisation who knew him personally.

But there are two other reasons why his death has had a particular effect on us.

In the first place, we feel the death of Mauro as a loss for the working class. Obviously, his personal qualities, notably his abilities as a writer and speaker, are part of this. But what is more important for us is his militant commitment and dedication, which he kept up even when his illness was getting the better of him.

In the second place, we don’t forget that Mauro was the son of Luciano, a member of the Italian Fraction for whom our comrade MC had considerable regard, for his devotion but also for his political lucidity, since he was one of the first within the Fraction to fully understand the implications of the historic period opened by the First World War for the fundamental question of the nature of the trade unions.

One of the consequences of the terrible counter-revolution which descended on the working class after the failure of the world revolution was the near-disappearance of a once very lively tradition of the workers’ movement of the past: the fact that many children of militants (like Marx’s daughters, the son of Wilhelm Liebknecht and many others) took up the torch from their parents and thus kept up the continuity of proletarian combat between the generations. Mauro was one of the rare ones to carry on this tradition and this is an extra element of our sympathy for him…

This is why, comrades of the IBRP, you can believe in the absolute sincerity of our solidarity and our communist greetings.

The ICC.

IBRP response

Comrades,

In the name of the IBRP, I would like to thank you for the expression of your solidarity following the very major loss of our comrade Mauro. As you say, this death is a very painful one for us. With his gifts of humanity, passion and devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Mauro was a comrade of rare quality. We could even say that his communist being was ‘written’ in his genes: not only because he came from a family which gave so much to the cause of communism, but above all because his spirit instinctively rebelled against the least manifestation of oppression and injustice. It will not be easy to fill the political void that he leaves behind and it will be impossible to fill the human void… In thanking you again, we send you our communist greetings.