Tribute to Ruggero Mantovani, historical leader, founder of the Communist Alternative Party (PdAC), Italy.
On April 13th, Ruggero Mantovani, historical leader and founder of the PdAC, passed away, at the short age of 52, after three years of a hard disease we has hardly fighting against, as a Trotskist, until the last moments of consciousness.
Revolutionary until the end
Despite a serious tumor that first disfigured his face, and at the very end had extended to his lungs, Ruggero did not stop for one minute the construction of the party, his entire life party. The last conscious though he had, before the end, was the PdAC and the IWL-FI, the battle for the reconstruction of the revolutionary party and the International.
Despite being alredy too weak, he wanted to participate of the last PdAC Congress, where, even with difficulty to talk, he spoke with great clearness, full of revolutionary enthusiasm: the same enthusiasm the strong disease could not break. He was happy and touched to see many and different new young and workers cadres among the ranks of his party.
A few days before his death, when his right hand did not work anymore, he dedicated his last energies to redact an article on Gramsci, published in our website (www.litci.org).
His life for the revolution
Ruggero was one of those Brecht defined as “indispensable”: those comrades who fight during their entire life. He started young, in the 70’s, in non-parliamentary left-wing organizations. He affiliated to Rifondazione Comunista, contributing to the construction of the minority inside it, from where AMR (Marxist Revolutionary Association – Communist Project) comes from. As part of AMR, he untiringly defended an intransigent struggle for the construction of a Bolshevik party, centralized, against all forms of parliamentary or unionist opportunism. Because of this he became a convicted leader, together with other comrades, of the split, in AMR first and in Rifundazione Comunista later on, which in 2007 gave origin to the PdAC, the Communist Alternative Party, Italian section of the IWL-FI.
Member of the Central Committee of the PdAC, for years he played the role of responsible for the Education, taking care, specifically, of the prompt reconstruction of Antonio Gramsci’s thought, and the reevaluation of the history of the Italian working movement of 1900, from a revolutionary, Marxist point of view.
Always with the working class!
In Latina, his born town, Ruggero had been municipal councillor, for years, by Rifudazione Comunista. Then he presented as candidate for Major, by the PdAC. Very well known and loved, he was not limited to the political electoral activity: he always made great personal efforts, as a labour lawyer and union activist, to defend the workers exposed to asbestos, cheering them up with pendency and legal causes to get for them at least an economic compensation
He was always intransigently aligned with the workers, next to them, what caused him the staunch hate of the bourgeois institutions, which accused him of scam against the multimillionaire and corrupt INPS institute [National Institute of Social Security], because he won a cause for the workers exposed to asbestos and their families. Despite the calumnies orchestrated by the bourgeois institutions, despite the strong repression he suffered, and despite he was already sick of his lungs, Ruggero did not accept any blackmail, and continued, until the end, defending the reasons of the workers hit by the violence of the capitalist system; violence that assumes one of its most brutal faces in deaths by asbestos.
We will also fight for him!
We express all our solidarity to Antonella Rossi, comrade of our party and Ruggero’s life partner. She was always next to him during these years, supporting him in what was his main life reason: continuing, as possible, the revolutionary militancy. We are also next to Ruggero’s relatives and many, many friends, comrades, helpers who, like us, knew very well his great human qualities, much beyond politics.
We think the best way to remember Ruggero is to continue the struggle for the construction of the Trotskist Party and International with determination. We will make daily efforts to strengthen the PdAC and the IWL-FI: this is what Ruggero fought for until his last breath.
COMRADE RUGGERO: PRESENT! UNTIL SOCIALISM!
