A
REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PROJECT IN THIS NEW HISTORICAL PHASE
MOTIONS
FOR THE V PRC CONGRESS
Voted
by the minority of the National Political Committee
INTRODUCTION
- SYNTHESIS
World
capitalism increasingly lays the blame for its crisis on the general
condition of humanity, threatening a true historical regression of
civilisation. The renewal of wars that has marked the last decade -
first in Iraq, then in the Balkans, now in Afghanistan - is both the
material and the symbolic reflection of this. The representation of
the so-called capitalistic "globalisation" as the coming of
a "new capitalism" able to overcome its historical
contradictions has been belied by reality.
Not
only has the crisis that has marked world economy for a quarter of a
century not been overcome, but it has re-emerged today in the classic
form of a recession. The contradictions between the capitalist blocs
have not melted away into an indistinct, homogeneous
"empire", but rather they have been sharpened after the
collapse of the USSR and under the spur of the crisis. The
contradiction between capital and labour, far from being overcome or
reduced, has re-emerged as the central issue in the crisis and the new
global capitalist competition.
The
very increase in militarism and the progression of the war in course -
with its regressive effects on democratic freedoms and social
conquests - is inseparable from the general context of the capitalist
crisis. Far from being a conflict between two ideological "fundamentalist
beliefs" (the Market and Terror), it is an imperialist war
against oppressed peoples: it aims to control the Middle East and
Central Asia; it hopes to intimidate national liberation movements (starting
from the Palestinians); it aims to block economic recession by a
large-scale reinvestment in defence spending; and it answers the
American imperialist interest in counter-balancing European economic
growth with the re-launching of its own, undisputed military hegemony.
On
another level, the political developments and the dynamics of capital
in the 90s were devastating for the environment. All the historical
problems have become even more widespread, and new emergencies have
emerged on a global scale. Faced with all this, both ethical-cultural
theories and green reformism have been seen to be inadequate and
powerless: no new development model will be possible without a new
production model, without overthrowing capitalism.
In
short, ten years after the collapse of the USSR, the capitalist
reconstruction of world unity has by no means meant a peaceful, more
stable world, but a worsening of the international crisis.
This
general picture of crisis and regression has revealed once again the
utopian nature of all reforming projects.
The
idea of "reforming governments" that support workers, of a
possible "fair" capitalism held in check by the rules of a
"progressive civil society", and of a pacifist reform of the
world order, founded on a re-evaluation of the UN in line with the
Gandhian vision of "non-violence", represent more than ever
an impotent illusion. This is not a concrete way to build a new world,
but means accepting with resignation today's world, even while
nurturing dreams.
The
V Congress of our party is, therefore, called on to renew and contrast
every reforming utopia, assuming a new strategic aim that is openly
anti-capitalist and revolutionary.
Another
world is possible. It is called Socialism. Its name must not be evoked
alone, but a general programme must be proposed as the only real
answer to the crisis facing humanity.
Only
the abolition of private property, starting from the two hundred
multinationals that today dominate the world economy; only a
democratically-planned world economy, freed from the dominion of
profit, and only the conquest of political power by the subordinate
classes as the decisive lever for transition can create the conditions
for a new "development model". This model will feature new
relations between individuals and peoples, a new relationship between
humans and the environment, and control over the directions and
applications of science in order to work for the quality of life as
the new frontier of progress. Thus, the recovery and analysis of the
original programme of communism and the October revolution as the
scenario for the liberation of mankind, free from the Stalinist
bureaucratic heritage, is the primary duty for communists and our
party. It must be employed as the compass for a new strategic
formulation that leads the immediate objectives of each battle and
each movement back to the need for social revolution.
Moreover,
the very start of a renewed class struggle and the world mass
movements (what in the party we have called "the thaw") -
symptoms after twenty years of the dominant politics' hegemony -
represents an extraordinary opportunity to re-launch the socialist
future in the younger generations: as a revolutionary answer in the
heart of the grass-roots movements to their social, environmental,
democratic demands, their demands for peace that are all incompatible,
in their deepest demands, with the current bourgeois order. So, it is
not a question of abandoning the mystical rhetoric of the grass-roots
movements, nor of losing the centrality of class, but rather, it is a
question of leading the precious anti-liberal sentiments of the new
generation to a clear vision of an anti-capitalist class. The only
vision that can offer the grass-roots movements themselves a future;
foster a mobilisation against imperialism and war free from pacifist
illusions; place the reference to the working class and the world of
work in its new composition and extension as the centre of an
alternative historical bloc. Consequently, a struggle in the
grass-roots movements for the hegemony of class is needed: not a
bureaucratic self-formulation but an open, loyal struggle for the
socialist future against those neo-reforming cultures that lead the
grass-roots movements themselves into a blind alley of defeat. The
complex job of re-founding a revolutionary, communist international
movement that takes on the battle for an anti-capitalist hegemony on a
world scale is a basic need for communists today more than ever before.
But
this new strategic formulation implies a great shift in policy and
choices at national level. Within the new Italian political scenario,
the renewal of the dynamics of grass-roots movements in the working
class and the young, and the vertical crisis and liberal policy shift
in the D. S. (Democratic Left) have created the conditions for a
strong and necessary re-launching of our party as the only possible
alternative political reference point for vast sectors of workers and
the young. But this would imply a new, fundamental direction for the
RCP. For ten years, our party has rejected the idea of building an
autonomous class pole to follow the line of "conditioning"
of the DS apparatus and its coalitions (a progressive, centre-left
pole) on the basis of a "programme of reform" both of the
government and the opposition, on a national and local level. It must
be admitted honestly that this line has substantially failed. Indeed,
it has not obtained any results, neither from the point of the view of
building up the RCP and its electoral influence, nor above all from
the point of view of the interests and prospects of the working class,
whom the Centre-Left and the DS apparatus, pawns of the interests of
the bourgeoisie during the preceding government, have condemned to
social and political defeat. On the contrary, the only effect of this
line of Centre-Left "contamination" has been the RCP's
involvement during half of the Ulivo coalition government in
supporting anti-working class and anti-popular policies (temporary
work in Treu's reform package, privatisation, cuts in social
expenditure) which are totally opposed to the social principles of our
party.
The
future proposed for a "plural left-wing government" after
Berlusconi on the basis of a "reforming programme" would not
only remove any balance but also re-propose the failed policy of the
last ten years. This is made explicit in the pre-congress document
voted by the majority wing of the party at the CPN in October that
affirms: "(…) this does not mean that a plural left cannot be
constructed in Italy and in Europe, able to propose the idea of
conquering the majority of consensus and candidature for government in
order to carry out a reforming programme, but it means that to achieve
this it is necessary to follow different routes from the traditional
one of a unitary policy, in the first place so that the novelty and
the rupture of the grass-roots movements breaks into the whole area of
the left parties and their relationships." This idea does not
only retain the reference to the negative experience of Jospin's
gauche plurielle, but it proposes it again with a DS apparatus, who
for the most part have broken with the function of social democracy
itself. Taking on this idea as the final way out for the grass-roots
movements would mean contradicting the anti-capitalist potential of
the grass-roots movements themselves and subordinating them to an
agreement with the liberals.
Therefore,
the V Congress rejects this political prospect on the basis of a
fundamental change in perspective: the construction of the RCP around
the line of an autonomous anti-capitalist class pole which is
alternative both to the reactionary Centre Right and the liberal
Centre Left. This political line would imply, first of all, coherence
in the political collocation of our party as an opposition force.
There can only be contradictions between the social reasons expressed
by the RCP and its institutional political collocation. This is as
true in the future at a national level as it is at a local level,
where we should reject the collaboration with Centre Left councils in
the Regions and the cities, where we are in practice silenced by
policies and interests that are totally extraneous to the interests of
the workers. But, generally speaking, this proposal of a autonomous
pole of class is directed to the working-class movement and mass
grass-roots movements. The experience of the last government has
demonstrated the social and political disaster for millions of workers
which lies in the collaboration of the working-class movement with the
political and social force of the middle-class Centre. "Breaking
with the Centre" is not, therefore, an abstract concept: it uses
class experience to claim the autonomy of the working class against
the interests of the other classes and their representatives. In
short, only the independent mobilisation of workers and grassroots
movements on an anti-capitalist basis can defend their reasons and
open the way for a true alternative.
This
need for autonomy is even more relevant today. Faced with the
right-wing parties and Berlusconi, all forms of alliance with the
Centre have failed. Only the great independent mobilisation of the
working class in 1994 managed to bring the Berlusconi government to
its knees and pave the way for its fall. Our party must build on the
memory of this experience in the masses and use it as the reference
point for its own actions.
The
new Berlusconi government has a stronger social and institutional base
than in 1994, but this is precisely why its eventual stabilisation
would lead to greater reactionary risk, as has been seen since Genoa.
Therefore, the RCP cannot continue with its institutional opposition
while trusting in the spontaneity of the grassroots movements. Its
duty is to propose a future for the working-class movement and
actively build this political future. In this sense, the V Congress of
the RCP must aim to bring down the Berlusconi-Bossi-Fini government in
favour of a class alternative as the basis for the unitary
mobilisation of the working-class movement and the grass-roots
movements and all the political and union tendencies that they are
based on. Only a true social eruption turned against the bosses and
the right-wing government can truly break up the Italian political
scenario and lay down the conditions for a class alternative.
As
a consequence, we propose a general discussion around the proposals
for a significant wage increase for all dependent workers, a
guaranteed minimum salary for all categories, a real guaranteed salary
for the unemployed and young people looking for their first employment,
the abolition of the new precarious, temporary employment laws (viz.
"Treu package" and the most recent laws introduced by the
Berlusconi government) with open-ended contracts for all short-term
workers and the generalised reduction in working hours. This proposal
for mobilisation can and must be advanced by our party in all
workplaces, in all union organisations, nationally, and to the
anti-globalisation movement, supporting the internal trends of the
movement that already push for a direct struggle side by side with the
workers. It is this unitary re-composition in the struggle of the new
generation, from the working class and from the anti-globalisation
movement, that can foster a social eruption against the government of
the right and the dominant classes. Directing the work of the mass of
the party in this direction, extending the framework of our demands to
every social sector affected by the dominant politics (viz.
Immigration and Education), linking this framework of immediate
demands to a more general programme of a rupture with capitalist
ownership and the State, and developing in every grassroots movement
an anti-capitalist conscience - these are the necessary duties of the
communist opposition for a class alternative.
And
in this field, our party cannot theorise the principle of a silent
adjustment to the grassroots movements, trusting passively in their
choices: it must elaborate the capacity to propose political choices -
on both the small and large scale - working towards an anti-capitalist
future. The forms of struggle, starting from the necessary defence of
the right to public demonstration, against every temptation to retreat;
the questions linked to the defence of peaceful, mass demonstration
against violent aggression, wherever it comes from; and the forms of
organisation of grassroots movements and their democratic development,
currently at the heart of the anti-globalisation movement, are all
areas in which our party cannot stay silent in the name of an
unconditional complicity with the hegemonic direction of the
grassroots movements. It must put forward proposals, of course in line
with the interests of the interlocutors and the concreteness of the
problems, but always inspired by a single, fundamental criterion: the
development of an autonomous force in the subordinate classes and
grassroots movements in the direction of an alternative society and
power. As Rosa Luxemburg affirmed: " the conquest of political
power remains our final aim and our final aim remains the heart of our
struggle. The working class must not take on the view "the final
aim isn't important, but the movement is everything". No, on the
contrary, the movement as such, unless in relation with the final aim,
the movement as an end in itself, is nothing, but it is the final aim
that is everything." (1898).
Therefore,
the logic proposed by the majority leadership of the RCP must be
turned upside down. Of course, the party has, as its priority, the
need to participate fully in the grassroots movements without a
doctrinal separation or rather with the maximum concentration of its
force. But it needs this as a party, that is as a specific collective,
anti-capitalist, revolutionary project that requires specific
structuring, specific instruments that can organise the collective
battle for that project with the grassroots movements, starting from
the working class. And it is also the widest development of the
internal democracy of the party, a decisive condition for the
collective elaboration and the very formation of its managers. In this
sense, the vanguard function of the party, not as a bureaucratic
imposition but as a programmed project to develop consensus and
hegemony, is the very condition for its rooting and the reinforcement
of its organisation.
A
CRISIS OF HUMANITY
The
last ten years, since the historic turning point marked by the
collapse of the USSR, have wholly belied the liberal prophecies that
followed. World capitalism increasingly lays the blame for its crisis
on the general condition of humanity, threatening a true historical
regression of civilisation. The renewal of wars that has stained the
last decade - first in Iraq, then in the Balkans, now in Afghanistan -
with the death and destruction they have brought, is both the material
and the symbolic reflection of this.
The
continuing capitalist economic crisis, the repeated reverses suffered
by the working-class movement in the 80s and 90s and the lack of a
State counter-balance, however distorted, to the power of imperialism
after the collapse of the USSR, together with the vast processes of
capitalist restoration that have, in different ways, affected vast
areas of the world, have all contributed to the reverses in the living
and working conditions of the majority of the world's population.
In
imperialist countries in every continent (the USA, Europe, Japan), the
drop in salaries, the degradation of work and the progressive
dismantling of social protection all reflect a far-reaching attack on
the previously achieved levels of social security. In the countries
where capitalism has been restored (Russia and Eastern Europe) or is
in the process of being restored (China), the reintroduction of the
dominion of market forces has led to the destruction of every form of
social protection, causing a dramatic drop in the quality of life for
millions of men and women. In the bloc of dependant countries, entire
continents, starting from Africa and much of Latin America, have borne
the brunt of further falls in the conditions of the masses while their
colonial dependence on imperialism has deepened. Generally speaking,
the whole dimension of life is now subject to a widespread regressive
trend, marked by the striking increase in degradation, intolerance,
and irrationalism. The renewal of war, which has studded the decade,
is the eloquent reflection of this dramatic regression. Even only
twenty years ago, the idea of a war in the heart of Europe seemed
merely a fanciful danger. Twenty years on, not only has war returned
literally to the continent, with its terrible burden of death and
destruction (the Balkans), but the very concept has gradually become
justified again in the collective imagination of the masses. And today
the powerful re-launching of international militarism led by the
Anglo-American alliance, spurred on by the imperialist war in
Afghanistan and the re-arming of Germany and Japan, are also symbolic
signs of the historic turning-point in our time.
On
another level, year by year, the symptoms and the consequences of a
planetary environmental crisis become ever more dramatic: it is a dire
confirmation of the incapacity of the current social order to function
without destroying the environment. And the social consequences of
this crisis tend more and more to combine with the consequences of the
political and social crisis devastating many countries in the
so-called Third World, causing true "humanitarian catastrophes"
and forcing growing numbers of men and women to emigrate in a
desperate "flight for survival".
For
the first time since the Second World War, in every corner of the
world, the future that lies in wait for new generations is no longer
progress, but a forewarning of new regression. Nor is this an
exceptional scenario. On the contrary, if we analyse the situation in
the long-term, we can see capitalism has returned to the historic
normality of its decline. What has, rather, been superseded is the
exceptional post-war historical parenthesis that had appeared to be
the norm in the eyes of several generations.
A
CAPITALIST CRISIS AND "GLOBALISATION"
The
theories that emerged in the 90s of a "new capitalism", able
to supersede its historic contradictions, have been belied by reality.
The capitalist economic crisis now renders a Marxist interpretation of
"globalisation" more relevant than ever, outside any "apology"
of capital.
In
the 90s - in the context of the collapse of the USSR, the backsliding
of the working-class movement, US economic prosperity and vast
technological innovation - the dominant representation of the world
situation as "globalisation" has asserted itself, often
interpreted as a "new capitalism" that is structurally
different from "traditional" capitalism and hence able to
supersede its historic contradictions. From a liberal stance, the myth
of globalisation has been grasped as the sign of a new age of
prosperity. From the opposing standpoint of much alternative critical
thought, it has been seen as the coming of a new absolutist dominion.
In both cases, new capitalism has been presented as the dawn of a new
empire and evidence of the failure or irrelevance of the Marxist
interpretation.
These
ideological positions have inverted the real situation in many ways,
while events have disproved them. The international capitalist economy
has experienced a long wave of crisis for a quarter of a century,
marked by the historic ending of the forward spur of the post-war
period and the fact that stagnation has prevailed. The fall in the
average rate of profit on a world-scale is a clear reflection of this.
Since 1989-91, the collapse of the URSS and the processes of
capitalist restoration that have come about in Eastern Europe, as well
as the emerging restorationist tendencies that have developed in other
non-capitalist countries (China) have certainly represented a process
of capitalist recomposition of world unity. But this re-conquest - be
it total or a trend - of much of the planet has not meant the historic
re-launching of a capitalist economy. Eastern Europe, rather than an
indicator of a new international economic development, is largely an
underdeveloped semi-colony: the huge concentration of social poverty
and the consequent low level of consumption are a brake on the
expansion of the capitalist market. At the same time, the great
reduction in the room for manoeuvre of the dependent countries,
following the collapse of the USSR, has meant the area is more
directly affected by world stagnation. In this way, the
under-consumption of the Third World, driven by the fall or collapse
in raw materials, is a further factor in this stagnation. All in all,
despite the expansion of the capitalist market, the importance of
international trade in the world economy is equal to that in 1914. As
a result, despite the vaunted new processes of the international
decentration of production, the multinationals still concentrate the
bulk of their investments within the borders of the leading States and
their own regional markets rather than in an undifferentiated world.
Thus, economic globalisation has, in essence, concerned not real
production but the financial economy, where it has truly reached a
historically new level: but it is just this abnormal expansion of
financial parasitism - which confirms even beyond his own predictions
Lenin's analysis of imperialism - that reflects the crisis in the
average rate of profit from production. Just as at the beginning of
the 20th century, far from being the measure of capitalist prosperity,
the parasitism of the rentier is born from the crisis of stagnation
and its aggravation. The great concentration of technological
innovation (the ITC revolution) and the diffusion of new ways of
organising labour (so-called Toyotism) can be understood in this
context. As in other historical periods (such as the spread of Fordism
in the 20s and 30s), intense technological innovation and new
experiments in productive organisation did not come about from the
prosperity of capitalism but rather from its crisis: as an attempt to
re-launch profits through increased productivity and the opening up of
new markets that would stimulate the economy. But, contrary to the
bourgeois optimism of the 90s, the ITC revolution and its
technological applications, however relevant, have not exercised the
same force of economic stimulus as, in another context, the railways
of the last century or the car in the 1950s. Not only have they failed
to guarantee a way out from stagnation, but, after a certain point,
they have paradoxically helped to aggravate it: the current grave
crisis in the new economy in the heart of American capitalism is
precisely the classic expression of overproduction whose more general
recessive effects are directly proportional to the intensity of
preceding economic growth in the sector. The theory of a "new
capitalism" able to supersede the economic cycle could not have
been more emphatically belied.
IMPERIALISM
Today
imperialism is more than ever before the dominant framework of the
world. The theories that it would be superseded in an indistinct
globalisation have not found any confirmation in the real world.
Applying the Marxist analysis of imperialism to imperialism today,
with its deep-seated contradictions and in the context of the current
international instability, is the crucial condition for an
understanding of future tendencies.
In
the 90s, in significant intellectual areas of the "critical
left" and in our party's leadership, emerged the idea that the
very category of imperialism would be superseded by the model of a
global, homogeneous, uniform "empire", exclusively dominated
by North America, in which the roles and functions of the old national
States would fade away. This led to the idea of Europe as a simple
subordinate compartment of the empire and thus the consequent demand
for its autonomy on a "social and democratic" basis. On the
one hand, this general concept is based on a profound incomprehension
of the complexity of the contemporary world; on the other, ignoring
the imperialist character of Europe, it seriously disorientates the
very political action of communists.
Far
from recomposing inter-capitalist contradictions, the collapse of the
USSR from 89 to 91 has to some extent set them loose, in the context
of a strikingly new scenario. The huge processes of capitalist
restoration in Eastern Europe and, in an incomplete form, in China,
the new balance of power in relation to the dependent nations and the
need to redefine totally the geostrategic balance and zones of
influence have inevitably fanned the new world competition between the
leading capitalist States. And the terrain for this competition lies
entirely within the historic framework of imperialism: it concerns the
control of their potential markets, investment and export of capital,
the control of raw materials and a low-cost workforce, the levels of
the monopolist concentration of financial capital and the
political-military control of strategic areas.
The
superiority today of US imperialism is objectively indisputable, in
terms of its concentration of financial capital and military force,
since the collapse of the USSR strengthened traditional American
supremacy and its criminal action in the world. But Europe is much
more than a mere dependent area. On the contrary, both the vast
capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and the
unconnected decline of Japan have fanned a true development of
European imperialism as an economic pole in competition with the USA.
The very constitution of the European Union since 1992, far from being
a simple fact of "undemocratic, liberal" institutional
engineering. has represented the strategic attempt, not without
contradictions, to guarantee European imperialism a unifying political
framework that is equal to its new ambitions. The huge increase the
levels of European monopolist concentration in strategic sectors
(banking, insurance, telecommunications, defence industries) that the
Maastricht framework has encouraged, the European economic hegemony
(in particular German and Italian) in the Balkan peninsula and Eastern
Europe, the new signs of European imperialism in Arab nations and the
Middle-East (viz. Iraq and Iran) and much of Latin America, and the
onset of a European militarism with the development of a common
defence policy all attest, when taken together, to a new, stronger
European position in the world balance of powers.
The
striking development of the war-mongering initiatives of US
imperialism in the 90s (in Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan) was and
is an attempt to counter Europe's military ascent with its own
military hegemony and to limit the EU's room for manoeuvre. On the
other hand, the European participation in military action under
American hegemony did not represent a mere act of
"servility", but the desire to participate in the division
of the colonial spoils, establishing a priori the best possible
conditions for its own imperialist interests. Therefore, even the
apparent unity of action of imperialist nations masks, as always,
their competition. And the different capitalist national States, far
from being united by an indistinct globalisation, represent the
crucial instruments - political, diplomatic, military and also
economic - of the different competing imperialist middle-classes.
In
addition, it is the very framework of the new inter-capitalist
contradictions that spurs on the emergence of new regional powers or
new ambitions. British imperialism is trying to profit from the
contradictions between the USA and the EU by placing itself as the
lynchpin of military-diplomatic relations between the two poles in
order to strengthen its position. Putin's bourgeois Russia has
occupied the void left by the USA-EU competition to re-launch its own
international strategic position. In its turn, the Chinese bureaucracy
aims to capitalise on Japan's decline to invest its own exceptional
economic power in a hegemonic design on much of Asia within a project
of internal capitalist restoration that, still incomplete, poses
serious incognitos on the future social and political stability of the
country.
In
conclusion, the whole international capitalist frameworks bears all
the hallmarks not of a homogeneous "unipolar" uniformity,
but of a growing potential instability.
WAR
The
renewal of war in the 90s has an imperialist nature and goal. It does
not reflect a generic "fundamentalism of the global market"
opposed to a "fundamentalism of terror". It reflects the
large-scale re-launching of capitalism's colonial policies, set loose
after the collapse of the USSR, driven by the international economic
crisis and fanned by the very contradictions between the different
capitalist blocs. Today, the war against Afghanistan is totally
coherent, in the light of this picture. Therefore, the fight against
war "for peace" must be taken up by communists as the
struggle of the anticapitalist masses beyond a mere pacifist goal. We
must not give any support to the pro-imperialist role of the UN nor
must we accept that imperialism has any "right of international
policing".
After
the collapse of the USSR, the use of war has become a crucial
instrument for the definition of the new imperialist world order. The
wars on Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan reflect the new power of
imperialism and the new instability of the world. Paradoxically, the
use of the criminal forces of imperialism is both its response to the
imperialist crisis of hegemony and an indication of its inability to
control a stable order and the new world balance of power.
The
events of 11th September in America and what then happened must be
seen in this general framework, and analysed according to Marxist
methodology, not according to an imprecise impressionism or an
abstract pacifism. The terrorist attack on New York, and in general
pan-Islamic terrorism do not merely reflect an ideological principle
("the fundamentalism of terror"), but they represent a
distorted, unacceptable response to capitalist barbarism, in
particular the criminal repression of the peoples of the Middle-East,
namely the Arab nation and the Palestinian people. The extent of this
barbarism and its crimes all over the world are infinitely greater
than the worst act of terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism has
historically been opposed to the social and democratic aspirations of
oppressed peoples and the Arab nation. Consequently, in the context of
post-war world order, it has repeatedly been sustained by the colonial
powers in order to block internal liberation movements and
lay-democratic tendencies in the dependent countries. After the
collapse of the USSR, the West no longer had any use for Islamic
fundamentalism that became an objective factor of destabilisation. At
the same time, the growing social and political desperation in large
sectors of the oppressed masses, together with the more organic
subordination to the imperialism of the Arab bourgeois regimes, has
unfortunately in effect distorted and transformed fundamentalism into
widespread revolt.
The
roots of the leading states' military reaction to the events of 11th
September lie here. As in '91 against Iraq, as in '98 against Serbia,
the war against Afghanistan does not represent an abstract
"fundamentalism of the market" or a "mistaken
response" to terrorism. On the contrary, it represents the will
to reaffirm the imperialist grip on the world, against all possible
factors of ungovernability. Hence the attempt to utilise the terrorist
acts of 11th September and their huge emotional effect as an
opportunity to re-launch imperialist interests in strategic areas of
the planet.
The
concrete goals of the operation are varied:
a)
To consolidate and extend direct control over the Middle-East and
Central Asia, a crucial area for a stable international order;
b)
To intimidate liberation movements in the dependent countries;
c)
To attack the world-wide working-class movement, including that in the
West, using the pretext of war to carry out massive restructuring (and
mass sackings), attack social rights and attempt to disperse the
international renewal of the class struggle in grass-roots movements;
d)
To combat economic recession by increasing military spending.
In
this framework of shared imperialist goals (upheld by the Russian
bourgeoisie and the Chinese bureaucrats for their own interests), the
shifting sands of international contradictions are confirmed: between
American and European imperialism, between British and continental
European imperialism, between the frontline of European imperialism
(Germany, France and Britain) and Italian imperialism, between Putin's
new Russia and the contradictory US and European interests, and
between China's new aims and imperialist expansion in central Asia. In
short, once again there is no single clear picture of a unipolar
globalisation but, on the contrary, a snapshot of new world
instability subject to the weight of national or regional interests.
In
this general picture, the PRC must redefine its political line in the
light of war. Our party's opposition to military intervention in
Serbia in the past and Afghanistan now should not be underestimated.
Yet this pacifist approach must be abandoned in favour of a
categorical fight against imperialism. The appeals to the UN,
"international law", and alternative "international
police action" have all been and are deeply mistaken. The UN has
sustained and covered up all through the 90s the worst piracy of
imperialism by promoting the abominable, genocidal anti-Iraq embargo.
It does not represent, nor can it represent a so-called international
sovereignty, even in a distorted form. In a class-based society, and
especially in the era of imperialism, there has never been, nor can
there ever be, a neutral international law, above all class interests
and all State interests. International law is only a legal
justification for the interests of the leading states. And the only
right that the leading states exercise and claim is the right to
destroy through terror all forms of resistance to their own rule over
the world.
As
a consequence, communists must develop the fight against war within
the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist class struggle side by side
with the attacked oppressed peoples. There can be no
"international police-force" to use "against
terrorism": the only international police-force against the
barbarism of capitalism is the international revolutionary perspective
of the oppressed masses. And that is the only true alternative
response to terrorist fundamentalism.
THE
UTOPIA OF REFORMISM
The
idea of the social and humanitarian reform of capitalism, which has
always failed in the past, is today more utopian than ever. The idea
of "reforming governments" that in Italy, as in Europe or
world-wide, might carry out anti-liberal reforms within capitalism is
more than ever not merely an illusion, but a trap for the lower
classes and the grass-roots movements. The support that the PRC gave
to the French "gauche plurielle" government has proved to be
a grave error. In this period of history a strategic rupture with
reformism becomes the cornerstone for a revolutionary communist
refoundation.
The
current international situation confirms more than ever before that
the space for historic reformism has been exhausted. The experience of
the last two centuries has confirmed the original position of Marx and
revolutionary Marxism against any reforming or "governative"
illusion, belying wholly and radically the strategic turning-point
marked by Stalinism in the international communist movement from the
30s in the perspective of the so-called "reforming
governments" or "progressive democracy". Even when
exceptional conditions of economic prosperity and great mass movements
have led to reforming governments, they have always been opponents of
the workers, without exception: their reforming concessions, when
snatched by the pressure of the masses, were only made in order to
contain the more radical impulses of the movements and protect
bourgeois society. Therefore, far from representing a transitional
phase in a socialist perspective, reforming governments have often
paved the way for reactionary policies or the dramatic reverses in the
working-class movement. This was the case in the reforming governments
at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century
(Giolittism) as well as the reforming governments of the "popular
front" in the 30s (viz. France and Spain). This was the case in
the reforming governments in Europe in the early 70s (viz. Portugal).
Yet
more than ever before, the governist illusion is belied at its roots
by the lack of a reformist space. The capitalist crisis and the
collapse of the USSR have together eroded the material presuppositions
for the reforming concessions in the West which had matured in the
post-war years. The governing classes are acting everywhere to
re-acquire - with interest - all that they had conceded in the past.
The bourgeois governments - whether centre-right, centre-left or
social-democratic - are everywhere carrying out the very same
anti-popular policies of restrictions and sacrifices for the masses.
Everywhere, even if in different forms and to different extents, the
old reformist parties of the working-class movement are taking on
board liberal ideas and attitudes, breaking with their very own
tradition. Everywhere, the eventual presence of "communist
parties" in government does not only fail to change government
strategy in the slightest, but it makes these very parties equally
responsible for the counter-reforming policies, exposing them to the
deterioration of their relations with the masses.
In
particular, the grave error made by our party in supporting the Jospin
government in France must be honestly recognised. The analysis given
in the IV Congress of PRC in support of the "French anomaly"
has been belied by the facts. In the same way, our party newspaper's
praise for the French law for a 35-hour working week and more in
general the repeated praise for the Jospin government ("A turn to
the left in France", "A socialist in Europe"…) have
been belied. In fact, the Jospin government has protected and
continues to protect the organic interests of French imperialism both
at home (with a record number of privatisations and a policy of job
flexibility in the clear interest of the bosses) and in foreign policy
(active participation in military intervention in the Balkans and
Afghanistan). Far from representing an anti-liberal alternative, it is
a counter-reforming government, based on a tempered liberalism: this
explains both the growing social protest against government policy and
the dramatic crisis in the FCP that, albeit critically, supports these
policies. Taking the French plural left as an example is even more
paradoxical considering the fact that the only left-wing party that is
growing in Europe today is the extreme left in France which opposes
the plural left government.
Therefore,
it is the very depth of the capitalist crisis and the historic
turning-point of our time that proposes a strategic rupture with
reformism as the cornerstone for a true communist refoundation. Not
only would this recover the original position of Marxism and a true
break with the Stalinist legacy, but it would be the impelling
response to the barbarism of capitalism today, and the regression of
civilisation which its crisis has dragged us into.
THE
RELEVANCE OF SOCIALISM
The
international re-launching of a socialist, revolutionary perspective,
in its entirety, must be the central tenet of our refoundation: up
until now we have avoided the issue. "Another world is
possible": not a reform of capital but an alternative system,
namely socialism. It does not respond to an "ideological"
request nor does it concern solely the identity of communists; on the
contrary, it responds to the general interest of the working classes,
the oppressed peoples and the great majority of humanity.
The
crisis of both capitalism and reformism has re-launched the historic
relevance of a socialist perspective as the only way out of the crisis
facing humanity. In the framework of a capitalist crisis and the rule
of imperialism, all the decisive questions that concern the condition
of humankind and our future will not only remain unanswered, but they
are bound to be exacerbated. On the contrary, in the grip of the
crisis, all the needs and the demands for emancipation and liberation
will clash even more with bourgeois ownership and the bourgeois nature
of the State.
The
most elementary social demands (the defence of salaries, job
protection, employment, the defence of social protection) clash
everywhere, every day, with their imperious opposites - profit and
global competition. The national claims of oppressed peoples, starting
from the Palestinian people, clash even more, after the collapse of
the USSR, with the monopoly of the imperialist control of the world
and its closer alignment with the national bourgeoisie of the
dependent countries. Environmental demands are frustrated by the
growing assimilation of nature to the capitalist market and the
ruthless slashing of costs brought about by the crisis. The
anti-militarist demands for peace clash more than ever with capital's
winds of war, the new colonial race and the military Keynesian
policies of the imperialist States. Fundamental democratic demands
themselves clash with the restrictions on freedom, the new xenophobic
tendencies and the involution of law caused by the social crisis and
war-mongering intoxication. In every area and in every direction,
objectively speaking, today all the requests of progress demand a new
world order, a new organisation of human society, freed from
capitalism and all that goes with it. It is not a question of asking
capital to be social, democratic, environmental or pacifist. It is a
question of taking up each class, democratic, environmental or
pacifist challenge to capital in order to overthrow it.
"Another
world is possible". Not a reform of capital, which is utopian and
impossible, but socialism: the abolition of capitalist ownership, the
acquisition of the means of production, communication and exchange as
social ownership, and the organisation of a democratically-planned
world economy in which the development model may be redefined
according to the quality of life, social needs and relations with the
environment and between peoples. Nothing could be more irrational than
an economic system in which the increase in poverty (recession and
unemployment) is determined by an excess of produced wealth
(overproduction). Nothing could be more hypocritical than singing the
praises of an international "democracy" where a handful of
two hundred multinationals squabbling over the control of the world
economy hold an unbridled and uncontrollable power in their hands.
Only a socialist revolution can abolish these true monstrosities.
The
ever more impetuous development in science and technology (ITC,
biotechnology) demonstrates the impelling need for a new social world
order. Subject to private ownership and the imperatives of profit,
technological and scientific innovations, the potential source of new
prospects and progress, are paradoxically changed into the instrument
of new subordination and new colonialism (viz. patents). Moreover, the
very orientation of scientific and technological research and its
management and funding are increasingly subject to the law of
financial capital and the managing boards of large companies, and so
subordinate to capitalism. Only a democratically-planned economy can,
therefore, mark a historic turning-point in the relationship between
humankind and science. Only by abolishing private ownership and
affirming the social control of producers and consumers on "what
and how to produce and who for", in every country and world-wide,
will it be possible to free the extraordinary potential of science for
the future of humankind. In short, the abolition of private ownership
and the market ethos - that is the core of Marx and Engel's Manifesto
- inevitably remains a cornerstone of the communist perspective.
It
is true, of course, that the reproposition of this general programme
does not exhaust the task of communist refoundation. Indeed, the
Marxist programme must be continually developed and enriched as a
result of the historic changes and the great experiences of the
working-class movements of this century. But it is the modernising and
updating of the programme that presupposes first of all its recovery
and redemption from the profound distortions it has suffered.
THE
CRUX OF POWER
A
democratically-planned economy presupposes and requires the conquest
of political power by the lower classes. Failure to consider the
question of power, how to attain it and the revolutionary rupture with
the bourgeois State, means losing sight of the socialist perspective
and the very idea of revolution, however much rhetoric is employed. In
this sense, the PRC is called on to abandon the Gandhian rallying cry
of "non-violence" as its cultural reference-point.
In
the last decade, several "neo-reformist" political-cultural
trends have tried to theorise the superseding of national States and
their power as the corollary of "new capitalism". This has
led to the explicit abandonment of the very idea of political power
and its attainment (viz. Revelli) in the name of the more or less
contemporary use of old "co-operativist" theories as the
lever for "another possible society". In truth, not only do
these theories fail to develop Marxism, they regress to a naïve
pre-Marxism, subordinate in practice to liberal policies themselves
(viz. the role of the tertiary sector as a frequent surrogate for
public services and where a flexible workforce is now concentrated).
Instead,
the nature and crisis of contemporary capitalism and imperialism
render more than ever the idea of the State and power as the crucial,
strategic crux. Against the ideological hypocrisy of liberalism, the
national States and their bourgeois governments are and remain a
crucial pillar for profit: both in the active promotion of policies of
flexibility, privatisation, and cuts in salaries and welfare, and in
the abnormal expansion of financial support given to capital in crisis
as can be seen even more clearly today in recent American economic
policy. But, above all, the renewal of militarism and the
anti-democratic restrictive and repressive policies on public order -
linked to the crisis in social consensus - reveal more than ever the
true nature of the bourgeois State: that is "a body of men in
arms" (Engels), the holder of the monopoly of violence against
the oppressed peoples of the world and the lower classes in the
imperialist metropolises. The experience of Genoa was a clear case in
point, as are the politics of terror waged by imperialism in times of
war as in times "of peace".
No
new social order, no socialism, could affirm itself in the shadow of
the ruling apparatus of the bourgeois State. Nor is it imaginable that
this apparatus could be an instrument for the lower classes in the
transition to a society of free and equal individuals. On the
contrary, rupture with the state apparatus and its overthrow are the
necessary condition for a process of social liberation. In this sense,
the rupture with the bourgeois state apparatus is the cornerstone of
the very concept of revolution. And vice-versa, the evocation of
revolution outside the strategic call for a revolutionary rupture with
the State is only a "fiery but empty phrase", void of any
real meaning.
The
PRC is, therefore, called to move on from the Gandhian rallying cry of
"non-violence" as its cultural reference-point. In the first
place, this reference, coherently applied, would break with the
history of the class struggle itself, as the universal lever for
progress, and in particular with the two centuries of struggle by the
working class and oppressed peoples against capitalism and
imperialism. In world history, the lower classes' exercise of force
has often been an irreplaceable recourse in their defence or struggle
for elementary democratic freedoms, union rights, social conquests and
national self-determination. Comparing the violence of the ruling
classes to that of the lower classes, in the name of an indistinct,
generalised rejection of "violence", would mean closing
ranks in a metaphysical pacifism. But above all the metaphysics of
"non-violence" constitute a rupture with the very
perspective of revolution. The apparatus of the bourgeois State has
always opposed, and will always oppose, with all the means at its
disposal, the prospect of the emancipation of the lower classes. And
this is all the more true in the era of imperialism, with the
re-launching of militarism and the ever more widespread repressive
trends (viz. Genoa). Therefore, the question of force remains, in all
its complexity, inscribed in the strategic perspective of revolution.
The idea of eluding it through the philosophical call for
"non-violence" would mean proposing yet again those old,
reformist illusions for which the masses and communists themselves
have in past paid a heavy price, as in Chile in 1973. Naturally, our
condemnation of the theory and practice of terrorism is loud and
clear, just as, on a different level, we condemn all nihilist,
destructive, violent culture and practices (Black Block). But we do
not do so from a pacifist standpoint, and even less from any
identification with the State or its repressive action, but from a
revolutionary stance: a political stance intended to develop, in the
class struggle, the deep consciousness of the strategic need for
revolution as a mass process, and for this very reason, irreducibly
contrary to any form of action that re-enforces the State, damaging
grass-roots movements and distorting the very identity of the
revolutionary perspective in the perception of the majority of workers
and young people.
THE
OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND BUREAUCRATIC DEGENERATION
The
recovery of the programme of the October Revolution is a crucial
condition for refoundation. What failed in the USSR was not State
economic planning but the bureaucratic management of the planned
economy. What failed in the USSR was not the power of the workers but
the bureaucratic caste that destroyed it.
Communist
refoundation must recover fully the original programme of the October
Revolution.
What
failed in the USSR was by no means State economic planning in the
place of a capitalist market ethos. On the contrary, the expropriation
from the bourgeoisie and the concentration of the tools of production
in the hands of the State guaranteed the population great social
achievements that are not by accident today in the sights of the
capitalist restoration. The World Bank - a source above suspicion -
has now declared "The planning led to striking results: growth in
production, industrialisation, basic education, healthcare, housing
and work for the whole population … In the planned system, the
COMECON countries were societies with a high level of education …
Even in China, the levels of education were, and still are,
exceptional when compared with developing countries ... In the USSR
and COMECON countries, firms were urged to employ the maximum number
of people, and so a lack of workforce was much more common than
unemployment…"
What
failed was the bureaucratic management of the planned economy that
progressively expropriated the workers and their democratic organisms
from any function of management and control to the advantage of a
privileged, parasitic social élite. This social élite concluded its
historic parabola transforming itself into the agent of capitalist
restoration and, therefore, into a new exploiting bourgeois class.
This process has confirmed the validity of the Marxist analysis of the
degeneration of the USSR, summarised by Trotsky in 1938: "There
are two alternative political forecasts: either bureaucracy, becoming
ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the working-class
State, will destroy the new forms of ownership and push the Nation
towards capitalism, or the working class will crush the bureaucracy
and pave the way for socialism." (Transition Programme).
And
even more, what failed in the USSR was not the conquest of political
power, the break-up of the bourgeois state machine, or the power of
the soviet. Rather, the revolutionary superseding of the false
bourgeois democracy and the construction of a new, higher democracy
represented not only an extraordinary historic experience but also a
crucial theoretical and practical reference point for the emergence of
the communist movement of this century. What failed, on the contrary,
was the power of a bureaucracy that step by step dismantled the
democracy of the soviet and the party, transforming the dictatorship
of the proletariat into the dictatorship of bureaucracy over the
proletariat. Its brutal crimes against the workers and communists in
the USSR and the international communist movement did not represent an
abstract pathology of "power" as such, but the brutal means
of defence used by bureaucratic privilege against the original
programme of the October revolution. As a consequence, removing the
very category of the revolutionary conquest of political power in the
name of a "rupture with Stalinism" would mean,
paradoxically, celebrating in reality its posthumous victory.
Instead,
we must learn from the experience of the URSS, and re-launch the
initial programme of Lenin and Trotsky and, in Italy, Gramsci: that is
to combine the abolition of bourgeois ownership with the construction
of a new power, a democracy of councils. A democracy that redefines
the nature and subject of power, supersedes the scission between the
masses and the institutions, abolishes the privileges of elected
representatives and sanctions the permanent revocability of the
latter. A democracy that can supersede and remove that network of
legal and illegal power, blatant or hidden, that remains at the heart
of every bourgeois democracy as an instrument of permanent
intimidation against the workers. Finally, a democracy that is higher
because it supersedes and removes the bureaucratic separatism of the
bourgeois State and because it combines the respect for political
pluralism with the public nature of ownership. In short, it is
necessary to move on from the failure of Stalinism not in the
direction of a reformist-pacifist "left socialism" but in
the opposite direction of a revolutionary communist refoundation.
THE
STRATEGIC PRE-EMINENCE OF THE WORKING CLASS
The
working class and the world of work, in its new composition and
extension, represent the centre of a socialist perspective. The crisis
in the hegemony of liberalism and the emergence of a young generation
of workers indicate the current "thaw" and renewal of the
class struggle that confirms and re-launches the huge potential of the
working-class movement. In its turn, the working class can carry out
the historic role of a "general class" only by a
recomposition of its demands for emancipation and liberation on an
anticapitalist basis.
In
the last decade in particular, and in general in the last twenty
years, in the context of advanced capitalism, the ruling international
circles have launched a vast political-cultural assault intended to
affirm the structural crisis or the "disappearance" of the
working class. Not only international social-democracy, but also wide
political and intellectual spheres of the "critical left"
itself have accepted and proposed, in different forms, this myth. Even
our party, that has rightly rejected the final conclusions of this
approach, has not developed an adequate counter-attack against it.
The
world situation radically belies this dominant propaganda. Far from
registering the disappearance or down-sizing of the working class, the
world scenario is marked by a vast process of proletarization that
increases, on the whole, the social mass of dependant workers while
modifying its composition. In imperialist countries, the drop in the
numbers of the industrial working class, affected by a vast capitalist
assault, is combined with the process of proletarization of vast
sectors employed in education, service industries, transport,
insurance, banking and communications, as well as growing sectors of
the young unemployed or those in casual employment. Para-subordinate
employment, formally self-employed work, is in itself in reality an
expression of casual work paid by the hour. In dependent countries,
however, the same international process of productive decentralisation
has determined a huge concentration of the industrial working class,
often subject to the most classic mechanisms of Taylorist
exploitation. On the whole, therefore, the industrial working class is
undoubtedly a growing force on a world scale.
The
theory of the marginalisation of the class struggle and the crisis in
the role of the working class is equally unfounded. The contradiction
between capital and work has now permeated more than ever all fields
of contemporary capitalist society. On the one hand, the capitalist
crisis has spurred the dominant classes to continue their savage
assault against labour, irrespective of any variation in the economic
cycle. On the other hand, the world of work, that has suffered
repeated defeats and lost terrain dramatically in the 80s and 90s,
still has a huge potential for battle: none of the principal defeats
suffered in the last twenty years was determined in itself by the
so-called "structural crisis of the working class", but was
rather the responsibility of its political and trade-union
bureaucracies. It is true that each defeat, with the lost terrain
socially and the consequent demoralisation, affected the balance of
power and often indirectly the social proletarian composition. But it
was not this that determined it, but rather it was in large part
determined by it. The class struggle, within the contradiction between
capital and work, remains, therefore, more than ever the central axis
for the formation, dissolution and recomposition of social blocs and
the balance of power in each capitalist country and internationally.
In
addition, in the face of every defeatist prophecy (viz. Marco
Revelli), the trend of the renewal of the class movement in different
forms today marks much of the world picture. During the 90s, even in a
context that was on the whole negative, the working class mobilisation
that had developed in capitalist Europe (Italy '94 and France '95) and
in Asia (Korea '95) indicated the potential of the concentrated mass
social action of the working-class movements, belying completely the
sociological theories of much "post-Fordist" analysis.
Today, the emergence of a new working-class generation on an
international scale has gone hand in hand with a more visible,
diffused renewal of the workers' struggle. The "thaw" is a
world phenomenon and has a deep material basis: the growing crisis in
the hegemony of the liberalist policies, after twenty years, for the
majority of the world population. The governing classes have increased
their power over the workers for twenty years and their dominion over
society, but at the price of social consensus. Their power has grown;
their hegemony has shrunk. And today the crisis of the hegemony of the
international bourgeoisie has fomented a new reaction, the struggle
that has found its natural stimulus among young workers. Millions of
young workers no longer resign themselves to a worse future than their
parents'. And capital in crisis has nothing to offer them but a
further deterioration in working and living conditions. This
contradiction will profoundly mark the next historic phase. The
re-launching and extension of class mobilisation, beyond contingent
unpredictable dynamics and possible temporary ebbs, will tend to
pervade the international scenario.
The
re-launching of a socialist, revolutionary future can and must find
its fundamental roots in this renewal of the international
working-class movement as the central actor in an anticapitalist
alternative.
This
does not mean, nor must it mean, a "working-class -
trade-unionist" retreat. The international working-class movement
can become the central stimulus of a revolutionary alternative only if
it does not limit itself to a mere trade-union or factory-based
action, but recomposes all the individuals and the groupings
world-wide with the same demands for emancipation and liberation on an
anticapitalist basis.
In
this light, the so-called theories of "poly-centrism"
(embraced by the PRC itself) that assimilate the contradictions
between capital and work into an indistinct set of other
contradictions (environmental, peace, gender…) invert the real
strategic crux. It is not a question of trying to assimilate
"environmental culture", "gender culture" and the
"peace culture", all too often in their neo-reformist
ideological expressions, to the "culture of class". On the
contrary, it is a question of developing an anticapitalist, class
hegemony in the fields of the environment, peace and women's
liberation in the process of a unifying recomposition for an
alternative system.
THE
ANTI-GLOBALISATION MOVEMENT
The
emergence of a younger generation in the terrain of the struggle (the
anti-globalisation movement) shows more than ever the relevance of the
re-launching of a revolutionary historic perspective. Convincing the
young of the socialist future is a difficult but crucial task of
Rifondazione.
The
emergence and growth of the world-wide anti-globalisation movement
cannot be separated from the renewal of the class struggle. It
reflects the same crisis of the hegemony of liberalism that has fanned
the renewal of social conflict, just as it reflects the re-awakening
of large sectors of young people that marks a turning-point in the
mobilisation of workers. The social composition of the movement itself
is often marked by the striking presence of the young in casual
employment.
But
the importance of the anti-globalisation movement must not only be
seen from the symptom it reflects but from the consequences it
produces. The massive mobilisations against the international
capitalist leaders during the Seattle, Prague, Nice and Genoa summits
have shown the working classes of the whole world, with a great
symbolic force, that the dominant policies can be contested, and that
a growing mass of young people have rejected them. This fact has
favoured a large, widespread consensus around the movement and a clear
growth in the critical anti-liberalist sensitivity of wide sectors of
the masses; an objective encouragement for the renewal of the
working-class struggle in many countries. Moreover, in several
countries, the anti-globalisation mobilisations have seen, in
different forms, the direct participation of class sectors and their
union and/or political organisations. More in general, the
anti-globalisation movement has capitalised on and channelled all the
issues to be contested in the current world order (social, democratic,
environmental, peace) into a larger picture, on the one hand
reflecting and on the other spurring on a widespread change in the
public perception of capitalism. The anticapitalist potential of this
movement, however latent, is therefore highly significant.
However,
restricting ourselves merely to praising the anti-globalisation
movement or even promoting its spontaneity as a cult, as our party in
fact does today, is a grave error. Indeed, the future policy of the
movement is and will be crucial, in terms of the programme that will
prevail, the consequent political choices and the mark of social
hegemony that they reflect.
A
great part of the current hegemonic thinking in the international
anti-globalisation movement is neo-reformist. It is not a question of
"condemning it" but rather of understanding the
historic/social roots and the profoundly negative effect it could have
on the movement itself.
In
the context of the reverses in the working-class movement in the 80s
and 90s, and in a historic context marked both by the crisis in the
hegemony of liberalism and the crisis of credibility of
"socialism" (in its inherited historic form), a great
ferment of "critical" capitalist but not anticapitalist
ideas has emerged: ideas and "programmes" intended to find
another possible world within capitalism but not alternative to it.
These political ideas are not homogeneous but are rather marked by
profound differences: they include trends that openly collaborate with
world capitalist forces and institutions within the logic of a
critical pressure on their work; neo-Keynesian tendencies promoting an
anti-speculative rationalisation of capital (viz. the leaders of
ATTAC); tendencies based on tertiary sector experience and the
recovery of historic co-operative ideas (neo-Proudhonian); or
anarchic/rebellious tendencies that result in a sort of
"neo-Luddite" behaviour (Black block). But what they hold in
common is either the illusory search for an "equitable,
fair" capitalism or the claim for their own antagonistic space
within capitalism: in either case, they deny both the socialist
perspective and the pre-eminence of the contradiction between capital
and work as the lever for a social alternative. In this sense, these
ideas threaten to deviate the latent anti-capitalism of the movement
and the anti-liberalist sentiments of millions of young people towards
a future that is both utopian and subordinate, objectively blocking
the development of a political consciousness in the movement and the
convergence of its struggle with that of the international working
class and the liberation movements of oppressed peoples.
Communists
must take the lead in the anti-globalisation movement, participating
actively in constructing it and its structures, and share the
sentiments of the anti-liberalist masses, seizing their extraordinary
potential: any hint of disengagement, of doctrinal self-sufficiency in
the movement must be openly opposed. The fight against the reformist
positions for an alternative hegemony is the very reason for the
presence of communists in the movement. Hegemony is neither
ideological preaching nor bureaucratic imposition: hegemony is the
open fight for the conquest of the politics and the ideals of the
movement in an anticapitalist programme; to link all the fundamental
issues the movement expresses, in its daily experience (social,
environmental, democratic, peace) to a socialist future; to lead as a
consequence all the fundamental demands of the movement to a strategic
encounter with the working class. The affirmation of an anticapitalist
hegemony of the working class, as the central subject of an
alternative historic bloc on a world scale in the anti-globalisation
movement, is now more than ever an impelling necessity for the
movement itself. The new scenario of imperialist war confronts the
movement with a taxing task that requires a quantum leap in political
consciousness and direction. The clash between imperialism and the
oppressed peoples will tend to worsen. Internal class conflict will
tend to become increasingly bitter. The movement cannot live by
symbolic initiatives, intellectual criticism of world injustice and
theoretical, utopian or minimal recipes alone, without risking the
tailing off of its support. Nor can it trust in a general practice of
"disobedience". This page of the movement's history has,
anyway, now been closed. A clear choice in social organisation and
strategic direction in every country and on a world scale is needed. A
critique of liberalism without openly taking the part of the workers
and their struggles cannot be enough. A critique of the dominant
powers of the world without taking the part of the dominated peoples
cannot be enough. In every field, the alternative between reformist
and anticapitalist options, pacifism and anti-imperialism, will be
forced by events to be crucial in the debate in the movement.
Communists
can and must work on a more arduous but more advanced terrain so that
the young develop a revolutionary political and class awareness. The
construction of an international revolutionary trend in the
anti-globalisation movement is more than ever before an impelling
necessity.
CAPITAL
AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION
The
political developments and the dynamics of capital in the 90s were
devastating for the environment. All the old problems became even more
widespread while new emergencies have arisen on a global scale.
Environmental questions and social questions are ever more
intertwined. Faced with all this, both ethical-cultural approaches and
green reformism have proved inadequate and powerless. The construction
of an effective environmental movement requires widening its social
base and a programme of clear anticapitalist objectives: in the final
analysis, a new development model will not be possible without a new
production model nor without overturning capitalism. This is the
strategic approach that communists must bring as their contribution to
the movement.
Capitalism
is neither willing nor able to find a solution for environmental
problems; on the contrary, environmental devastation is today an
intrinsic part of the logic of profit and the free market. During the
90s environmental problems and crises multiplied as the involution of
political and social conditions and the worsening of environmental
conditions became ever more intertwined. The truth is that the
objective dynamics of capitalist production methods - increasingly
less held in check by the social and political limits that in the
preceding decades had led to the growth of environmental movements and
the adoption of a series of actions for environmental protection -
have led to the spread and worsening of historic problems (pollution,
poisonous factory emissions, devastation of the territory, the
development of high-risk technologies, the degradation of the natural
and historic habitats, etc) and the creation of new emergencies on an
ever increasing, potentially global scale (the problem of waste, the
ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, deforestation, the impoverishing
of bio-diversity, etc).
The
working-class defeats and the search for the lowest possible
production costs have, in fact, resulted in the abandonment of
measures for environmental protection and health prevention, the
exploitation of resources and land in the most destructive way
possible and a general inattention to social limits and environmental
compatibility. The liberalisation of trade tends to generalise an
unbridled, unlimited exploitation of environmental resources,
threatening local systems of regulation. With the privatisation of
services, the logic of profit has appropriated natural, commonly-held
resources such as water and raw materials while scientific and
technological progress have been monopolised through patents, thereby
ousting all democratic controls and all concerns for social order (the
examples of GMOs and anti-aids drugs are emblematic). Alimentary
safety itself has become a democratic problem not only in Third World
countries, where it has always been the product of imperialist
exploitation, but even in advanced countries ("mad cow"
disease) where it is the result of the uncontrolled production that
dominates the agro-alimentary sector under the impetus of
competitiveness and profit.
On
the other hand, the international balance of power allows
multinationals, through the choices of Imperialist governments, to
impose their will in the negotiations for international agreements on
environmental issues (viz. the attitude of the US government over the
Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions). Consequently, the
irrational exploitation and destruction of the forests, the
impoverishing of biological resources, desertification, climatic
changes and the increasingly frequent "natural catastrophes"
that derive from these changes all remain without effective responses.
The future of humanity can be increasingly identified in the
alternative "socialism or barbarism" as the trend towards
barbarism is without doubt hastened by the progressive degradation of
the planet's capacity to sustain human development.
Faced
with these developments, in which social and environmental questions
are increasingly intertwined, both merely ethical-cultural approaches
and traditional green reformist politics are ever more inadequate and
powerless. The environmental movements must now tackle a two-fold
challenge: on the one hand, the need to widen and unify their own
social base, integrating the needs and demands of the different groups
that are victims of the destructive tendencies of capital; on the
other, the need to formulate clear objectives for their struggle and a
credible perspective. This is possible only in an anticapitalist
light: indeed, a new development model could not be possible, in the
final analysis, without a new "production method", or rather
without overturning capitalism. This is even truer when considering
the intrinsic international nature of environmental problems. And this
is the strategic approach that communists must bring as their
contribution to the action and construction of the movement.
On
another level, the environmental question poses a challenge and a duty
to Rifondazione Communista: the need to bring its own theoretic
instruments and concept of socialism up-to-date. However, even here,
we do not start from square one. Concerning the former, the recovery
of Marxism's original thinking on the capitalism-nature relationship
is a necessary passage to develop adequate instruments to deal with
the current environmental issues and for a positive discussion with
the critical contributions of ecological thought. On the other hand,
it is important to rediscover and re-interpret the exceptional
experience of Soviet power in the early years when, thanks to Lenin's
farsightedness, a true "ecological spring" developed in the
USSR. Ecological legislation was approved, an independent popular
movement for nature protection developed and environmental
sustainability introduced as one of the restrictions on economic
planning. This extraordinary, anticipatory experience was first
interrupted and then quashed by the Stalinist repression at the
beginning of the 30s, but it remains a living proof that neither
Marxist inspiration nor the end of socialism, but their Stalinist
negation, is responsible for the failure of so-called "real
socialism", in environmental terms and the removal of the
environmental issue from the communist movement's agenda for many
years.
A
TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME
The
recomposition of an alternative social bloc involves drawing up a
system of demands and a method able to link the immediate objectives
of our action to the unifying perspective of an anticapitalist
alternative. This means abandoning the neo-reforming concepts that, in
different ways, propose yet again the traditional separation between a
"minimal programme" (immediate objectives) and the
"maximal programme" (socialism) that was so dear to the II
International at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th
century and to combat which the communist movement emerged.
The
current turning-point has made the traditional separation between a
minimal and maximal programme of the working-class movement totally
unthinkable. Within the capitalist crisis, each immediate objective,
each real mass movement tends to clash with its limited compatibility
with capital. At the same time, the political consciousness of the
masses and their movements, all the more after the defeats suffered,
is much less than the objective implications of their needs. This
basic contradiction makes the communist conception relevant once again
in the transition programme: a programme that is able to create a
bridge between the current consciousness of the masses and the need
for an anticapitalist rupture.
The
transitional programme cannot merely be limited to an academic, rigid
scheme. On the contrary, by its very nature, it requires a flexible
structure that would allow it to relate to the concrete dynamics of
the class struggle. But at its heart must lie its methodology: namely,
the return to revolutionary goals in daily politics, in every social,
territorial or union setting, irrespective of any sectorial, local or
trade-unionist logic. This is why a transition programme cannot be
compatible with capitalism: on the contrary, it is based on the
supposition that the general needs of the masses are, in this period
of crisis, incompatible with the capitalist structure of society.
Today,
the deepening of the world capitalist crisis, the world-wide
re-awakening of a widespread class awareness and the emergence of the
anti-globalisation movement all determine a new framework of reference
for a transitional programme, not as an abstract academic exercise but
as a response to the new levels of social conflict and the new demands
made by millions of young people.
On
the crucial issue of the class struggle, the deepening of the
capitalist crisis needs, objectively speaking, a higher level in
response, both in relation to the international unification of the
struggles and the international working-class movement's programme of
action.
The
traditional, so-called defensive, demands to protect salaries, jobs
and welfare naturally now more than ever retain all their immediate
pre-eminence. But they require a unifying framework for a communist
perspective that openly challenges the capitalist bases of social
regression and indicate a comprehensive alternative. To give some
examples:
a)
the international assault on employment, in all its historic
significance, makes our goal to reduce working hours for the entire
working class internationally, outside any logic of negotiation on
flexibility and entirely financed by profit, even more relevant. This
does not mean reducing the issue of the working week to a mere
trade-union demand or, worse, leaving it in the hands of presumably
"reforming" bourgeois governments, but instead we should
adopt it as a general anticapitalist goal. "The work that there
is should be re-distributed among all until all the unemployed have
found a job": this demand for a sliding scale in working hours
would be the precursor of a socialist organisation of the economy
based on this elementary rational principle that capitalist
irrationality ignores. Therefore, it must be set forward forcefully as
a "popular" example of a alternative system in the new
generation of the international working class.
b)
The precariousness of work world-wide, as the strategic axis of the
capitalist assault, demands a general, international answer. A merely
defensive attestation, category by category, country by country, a
logic of negotiation or barter, such as work for welfare, represents
merely a different way of accepting the rules laid down by the
adversary. Communists must, on the other hand, present a unified set
of demands in every country: the abolition of all laws for casual
labour and discrimination in employment, on the basis of the universal
principle "an equal salary for equal labour", a guaranteed
minimum salary in all categories for all workers, regardless of
national, sectorial or company barriers; a guaranteed salary for the
unemployed and young people looking for their first job, outside any
exchange for "minimum" (i.e. casual) work. This set of
demands would not only indicate the possible terrain for a strategic
recomposition of workers and the unemployed, but would at the same
time clash head on with the structural policies of international
capitalism in crisis, taking on more than ever an objective,
anticapitalist significance.
c)
The closure of firms and the relative laying-off of the workforce, the
natural result of the capitalist crisis and the restructuring
processes induced by global competition, is a crucial problem for the
orientation of the working class movement. Isolated episodes of
resistance, or worse, the union bureaucracy logic of a negotiated
"shock-absorbed" selling-off of jobs, one by one, plant by
plant, sector by sector, has gone hand in hand with the reverses in
the working-class movement, the snatching-back of union conquests and
the loss of union power in various countries over these years. The
international unification of resistance around a possible unitary aim
in every country is crucial. This could be nationalisation, without
indemnity and under the control of the workers threatened by lay-offs.
In France, in the Danone factories, significant numbers of the young
working class have proclaimed in mass demonstrations this elementary
demand: "lay off the bosses". Communists can and must seize
this and use it as an emblematic case that links the concrete,
dramatic question of the defence of jobs to challenging capitalist
ownership.
More
in general, this transitional method can and must respond from a
class-based standpoint to the set of emerging demands coming from the
new movements and the younger generation, always referring back to the
crucial question of ownership and power. For example:
1.
the demand for healthcare, food safety, environmental renewal and
quality has been expressed by the international anti-globalisation
movement and has been widely sustained by workers and consumers in
general. However, the hegemonic leadership of the movement's programme
for the very problems they denounce still lies within a reforming
logic: campaigns for public education for "humanitarian
behaviour", no-logo campaigns, boycotts or "critical
consumption". The common element in all these proposals, although
they include a positive criticism of profit, is the strategic
avoidance of the crux of ownership and the class struggle. And this
condemns them to a strategic blind alley in stark contrast with their
apparent tangibility or the media attention they attract. Naomi Klein
herself explicitly admits this impasse with great intellectual honesty
(viz. No Logo). Therefore, communists must focus the level of analysis
and direction in the movements, directing the issues onto the terrain
of anticapitalist objectives. For example:
a)
making the accounts of food and pharmaceutical industries public, so
that thecommercial, industrial and financial secrecy that hides profit
speculation from the public is abolished.
b)
nationalising pharmaceutical, food and polluting industries without
indemnity and under social control, starting from the huge monopolies
in these respective sectors, so that health and food, the basic
necessities for life, are brought under public control.
c)
The abolition of patents, since patents are the sequestration of
discoveries that are useful or decisive for everyone by the few for
profit. Their abolition is the crucial condition for social control
and use of science.
2)
The anti-militarist demand for peace will be increasingly strengthened
by the predictable course of world events. On this terrain too, the
pacifist approach of the hegemonic leadership of the movement, as well
as removing an anti-imperialist approach and guaranteeing the UN's
role, has avoided all programme tenets that link the demand for peace
to the fight to bring down the capitalist interests that push for war.
Instead, communists must adopt the opposite approach. Today, the war
industry and its increasing level of capitalist concentration (the
USA, Europe, Japan) is driven both by the renewal of imperialism and
by the re-adoption of military Keynesian policies to counter the
crisis. In the wider mobilisation against the war, therefore, it is
necessary to openly discuss the question of the military industry and
the interests of war taking on board the following demands:
a)
making the accounts of war industries and activities connected to war
speculation public since the public has the right to see and
understand the cynical profit-making of so many "patriotic"
capitalists thanks to the humanitarian bombing of the poor.
b)
nationalising military industries without indemnity and under social
control, because it is a fundamental condition of social hygiene as
well as providing for their possible conversion to civilian production
with full guarantees for the employment of the workers in these
industries.
3)
The fight against the poverty of the so-called Third-World countries
is one of the most debated and widely-held tenets of the
anti-globalisation movement world-wide. But a significant group of the
leading intellectuals in the movement hold a reductive vision of the
problem and, above all, suggest deviating solutions. These include
regressive pre-capitalist solutions which, independently of their
dubious realism, would end up worsening the conditions of the masses
(e.g. Latouche's neo-protectionist solutions), vain solutions which
might be integrated or are in part subordinate to the capitalist
economy (e.g. fair trade and fair banking) or political solutions for
negotiated compromises with imperialism (such as Jubilee 2000's
support for debt re-negotiation). Communists, while building up a deep
understanding of the sensitivities of millions of young people
fighting against poverty, can and must oppose these false, vain
solutions, suggesting precise transitional demands within a general
perspective of the socialist re-organisation of the world economy:
a)
the real, total abolition of the foreign debt of the dependent
nations: because if debt is a noose around the neck of these
countries, its re-negotiation would be a second noose, thanks to the
barter of debt reduction and certainty of repayment, debt reduction
and the cession of strategic share packages (as Susan George herself
had to admit)
b)
the expropriation of the 200 multinational giants who manage the world
economy, the direct agents and greatest beneficiaries of the politics
of international theft and pillage, to be placed under the control of
workers and consumers. There can be no escape from poverty, no new
sustainable economic world model, without abolishing the immense power
of these giants. A large-scale campaign to make their accounts public,
their bank accounts transparent and nationalise their goods should be
encouraged from country to country.
WOMEN'S
LIBERATION
Rifondazione
can and must take on board the central issue of women's liberation
within the communist perspective, opposing any economically-defined
analysis or reduction and any idealistic drift.
Against
any economically-defined analysis or reduction, Rifondazione must
openly recognise the specific nature of female oppression, that
exacerbates class exploitation for proletarian women. This oppression,
through domestic slavery, is organically functional to capitalist
reproduction.
At
the same time, Rifondazione must criticise and reject the idealistic
theories today present in a significant part of feminist thinking that
interpret female oppression as due to the male imposition of their own
symbolic code on women. This theory, that sets aside the (complex)
historic origin of female oppression and attributes its roots to
biology alone, often reduces women's liberation to a symbolic,
cultural revolution (the re-appropriation of their own, removed
language) separating it in fact from any social content and taking it
away from the concrete terrain of conflict.
On
the contrary, the re-launching of a women's lib perspective is
inseparable from the class-based interpretation of the contemporary
world. The intertwined crisis of capitalism and reformism is doubly
violent in its effects on the conditions of women. In imperialist
countries, mass unemployment, casual labour, flexibility and the
privatisation of services affect first of all the female population.
In Eastern Europe, now undergoing the brutal introduction of market
laws, there has been a dramatic fall in women's living conditions. In
the countries in the so-called Third and Fourth World, the war and
misery caused and fomented by the neo-colonial policies of the West
and exacerbated by the religious fundamentalism of theocratic regimes
(Iran and Afghanistan) make women's conditions literally unbearable
and inhuman. Immigrant women world-wide are in particular the weakest
link in the chain of female oppression. The reverses suffered by the
working-class movement have everywhere brought with them the loss of
women's social and democratic rights that had been snatched in the
preceding phase of progress. And this has exasperated and worsened
female oppression specifically. It is no accident that today, while
the dismantling of the welfare state proceeds, the ideology of the
family that exalts the "natural" female vocation for caring
has been promoted so vehemently, in order to place yet again the
weight of the ill, old and disabled on women's shoulders to lighten
the burden on public spending and business. These are the many reasons
why the turning-point at the end of the century has again revealed the
close link between women's liberation and an anticapitalist
alternative. The renewal of a strong women's liberation movement
internationally that links democratic and gender demands to the fight
against social oppression is a crucial component for the re-launching
of a socialist perspective. At the same time, only a socialist
perspective that breaks capital's dominion over the world, can create
the necessary conditions, not self-sufficient, for an effective
liberation of women from their specific oppression. Therefore, women's
liberation and the class struggle are inseparable in the light of a
revolutionary perspective.
Therefore
Rifondazione has a two-fold task: to develop a consciousness of the
necessity of women's liberation in the working class, contrary to all
manifestations of prejudice, and to develop an awareness of the
pre-eminence of the class struggle in the women's movement and the
working-class movement as the strategic cornerstone for their own
liberation, promoting in this light the greatest possible zeal in
women's daily struggle for the defence and widening of their social
and gender rights.
A
COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
Rifondazione
Communista is more than ever an international necessity: as the
refoundation of a communist International based on a revolutionary
Marxist programme that is able to bring together all the revolutionary
organisations and currents of the anti-imperialist, working-class
movement in the world.
The
deepening of the social and political world crisis, the historical
relevance of the socialist perspective as the only real, progressive
response and the great difference between the anticapitalist potential
that lies in the renewal of the movements and the limits of their
political consciousness all make the prospect of refounding the
revolutionary communist International even more crucial. It is the
indispensable instrument for an alternative policy line, for the
development of the political consciousness of the masses and the
anticapitalist recomposition of the vanguard.
The
Marxist movement has always been conceived as an international
movement not only in its strategic perspective but also in an
organisational sense. It was the very international nature of the
communist programme that defined the international nature of the
communist party. Marx and Engels' Manifesto, in 1848, was drawn up as
an international platform for an international association of workers
(the League of Communists). The international nature of the party was
then reaffirmed by the 1st International (1864-1876) and the 2nd
International (founded 1889). The reforming drift of the latter,
culminating in the majority's support for the war (1914) was opposed
by the International's revolutionary left (led by Lenin, Trotsky,
Luxemburg and Liebnecht) who, in 1915, launched the prospect of a new
revolutionary International: the Third Communist International that
would be formally constituted after the victory of the Russian
revolution (greeted by Lenin as the "beginning of world
revolution").
Stalinism
broke radically with the international tradition of revolutionary
Marxism, its programme and consequently its organisation. Starting
from a new, anti-Marxist theory of "socialism in a single
country" - the ideological expression of the interests of a new
social bureaucratic clique - Stalinism led the International first to
collaborate with the "progressive bourgeoisie" government
and class (the "popular fronts"), then to its formal
dissolution in 1943. The representation of Stalinism as a sort of
dogmatic Marxist fundamentalism - the prevalent representation in the
current majority of the PRC - is therefore, even in this sense, the
exact opposite of historical truth.
Today
there can be no true, deep rupture from Stalinism without returning to
the perspective of the communist international as the world party for
the working class. The refusal to adopt this perspective, even as the
terrain for discussion, has represented and still represents a grave
error in the governing majority of PRC. This is the case whether the
refusal comes from a "camp" theory, that considers the
inter-state "anti-imperialist" alliance between Russia,
China and India as the axis for its international perspective, a view
that is completely without any class basis and has been radically
belied by the current war; or whether the refusal comes - as is the
case for the most part - from the superimposition of the old position
of left-wing social democracy ("the reforming governments")
and the ideas of the anti-Leninist "new left", in order to
combine their enthusiasm for the movements with support for the Jospin
government.
In
truth, only a strategic, programmatic change of direction in the PRC
could recover this international perspective that is an undeniable,
fundamental part of Refoundation. The international we are working for
must be a wide, democratic grouping with clear political tenets. As
Lenin affirmed: "without a revolutionary theory there is no
revolutionary movement". A communist international, therefore,
can only be based on the theory and programme of revolutionary
Marxism, developed historically by the great theorists of Marxism:
Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Luxemburg and, in Italy, Gramsci. These
positions must obviously be continually brought up to date on the
basis of the evolution of events, but as Gramsci declared " on
their own tenets" and not against them
The
difficulty in refounding a revolutionary International on a wider
basis has been shown by the experience of the past decades. But this
difficulty must not be seen as an obstacle but rather a stimulus for
this prospect, especially in this new historical context that is
emerging, so complex but so rich with new potential. After the
collapse of the USSR the political representatives of the
working-class movement regrouped dramatically. The old policy of the
working-class, anti-imperialistic movement had gone bankrupt,
documented once again by the tragedy of war. The growing rebellion of
the lower classes and the young world-wide against the current
international order makes a revolutionary reference point even more
necessary. The global party of the working class and its vanguard can
and must oppose "global capital".
The
PRC must therefore put forward a proposal for organised discussion
aimed at an international grouping as soon as possible, on the basis
above, among the organisations and revolutionary currents in the world
working-class, anti-imperialistic movement.
ITALIAN
IMPERIALISM
Italian
capitalism is imperialist in character. In the nineties, the
transition to the Second Republic and full participation in European
imperialism led to an enlargement of its material basis and a more
marked international presence.
For
a long time, Italian capitalism has not been a "ragamuffin
capitalism" but has participated in the group of dominant
countries internationally, and so in the carving-up of raw materials,
zones of influence and areas of dominion. In this picture, since 1992,
the pressure from the international capitalist crisis, the collapse of
the URSS and the development of the imperialist European pole had a
decisive effect on the crises of the First Republic. On the one hand,
the international capitalist crisis and the re-emergence of the
anti-imperialist contradictions led Italian imperialism to tackle the
structural burden of its "delays" and
"distortions". On the other hand, the collapse of the USSR
has dispelled the true historical basis for the bourgeois
discrimination against the old PCI leaders, allowing access to
government. Therefore, financial capital has been able to distance
itself from its old political representatives in the First Republic
and begin a far-reaching regrouping of its own political and
institutional structures.
Economically
speaking, the great bourgeoisie has greatly consolidated its material
basis in the last decade. The process of the privatisation of
strategic sectors of the economy, such as banking, energy and
telecommunications, and the restructuring and concentration of the
credit system have worked together to reinforce the basis of financial
capitalism and the specific importance of the great monopolies, the
principal beneficiaries of privatisation. As the European "single
currency" comes into force, Italian imperialism has a strikingly
increased structural importance which, not by chance, corresponds to
its growing attention for foreign policy.
Simultaneously,
the Italian bourgeoisie has had to tackle the problem of the social
impact of policies that are the consequence of its further imperialist
leap forward. The material impoverishment and splintering of huge
class sectors, the dynamics of the "proletarianisation" of
the lower strata in the lower middle class and the fall in living
conditions in vast areas in the South of Italy all make up the
potential critical mass of a dangerous social explosion in the eyes of
the bourgeoisie. In addition, the divide within the lower-middle and
middle classes in the context of European integration, above all in
the North East where a separatist, corporatist, wealthy clique has
emerged, has produced new contradictory groups even within the same
dominant social bloc.
THE
NINETIES AND THE CENTRE-LEFT
The
centre-left has not only represented the bad policy of the
"Italian Left" but it has represented the political
expression of Italian imperialism and its strategic investment in the
nineties. The series of centre-left governments have waged the
heaviest social assault on the lower classes of the last thirty years,
thereby paving the way for Berlusconi's victory. The coalition with
the bourgeois centre has thus condemned the working-class movement to
a heavy social and political defeat.
In
the nineties, within the bipolar choice, the centre-left became the
privileged point of reference for the great capitalist families in
order to ensure the peaceful subordination of the working-class
movement in relation to the crisis and European integration. The
politicians of the centre-left, even if in different parties, had
already been the essential reference point for the Italian bourgeoisie
in 1992 and 1993 when Amato and Ciampi began the Italian
"transition". The defeat of the progressive pole and the
victory of the right in 1994 represented a moment of contradiction
that led the bourgeoisie to play the Berlusconi card for a short time.
But even in that brief arc of time, financial capital's relationship
with the right was of instrumental use alone, not a strategic
reference. It was the strategic defeat of the first Berlusconi
government - which had proved incapable of managing either a stable
policy of agreement-seeking or winning a decisive battle against the
workers -that attracted bourgeois investment to the centre-left again:
in the Prodi government, in the D'Alema government, and in the Amato
government. Therefore, the centre-left has not represented solely the
"bad" policy of the working-class movement and the
"Italian left" but the political expression of the great
bourgeoisie. In its turn, the DS apparatus, as the pillar of the
centre-left, has been a decisive part of the bourgeois design in the
nineties, as the means of a subordinate enlistment of a significant
part of the working masses in the centre-left.
It
is mistaken to state simply that "the centre-left has
failed". From the bourgeois point of view, the centre-left
governments have all represented excellent boards of directors. Both
in terms of an economic policy designed to sustain large manufacturing
industries (purchasing incentives, money for scrap) and in terms of
their structural and strategic interests nationally and
internationally (casual, temporary labour, privatisation) but even
more so in maintaining an extraordinary social harmony. At the same
time the organic unity of the bourgeois policies of the centre left
has progressively mined its political and social base. Politically
speaking, it is the liberal evolution of DS social democracy and the
growing ramification of its direct relations with the elite that have
progressively sharpened the internal power-struggle between the DS
apparatus and the traditional bourgeois centre represented by the
Ulivo. The struggle for the hegemony of a new "democratic
party" as the main representative for the Italian bourgeoisie has
been an element of fundamental instability for the coalition.
Above
all, on a social level, central-left policies have progressively
dispersed their rank and file support. The bloc of the great
bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy of the organised working-class
movement have proved incapable of hegemony in Italian society. On the
one hand, it has opened up room for rebellion in organised sectors of
the lower-middle and middle industrial classes against the so-called
privileges of the large companies and the particular favours granted
to them by the Ulivo governments and the CGIL bureaucracy. On the
other hand, the deeply de-motivated rank and file supporters of the
centre-left, mainly dependent workers, have responded with political
passivity, often distancing themselves from the centre-left or
rejecting it.
The
victory of the Polo delle Libertà on 13th May was, therefore, its
capitalisation of the crisis of the progressive, centre-left Pole's
policies and its social bloc over the last decade. This is the real
reason for Berlusconi's victory, and the new political season ahead
repeats an old lesson, recurring all through the events of the
twentieth century and the history of the Italian working-class
movement: any collaboration with the bourgeois centre will mean defeat
for the workers, either from a social or union stance, or in more
general political terms. It is a fact: the alliance with the centre
that was to have "beaten the right" paved the way for its
victory. This is the lesson for the decade. It is a lesson that
charges the ruling apparatus of the DS and the unions with their
responsibility as the true organisers of the defeat. But it is a
lesson that inevitably calls into question, on a different level, the
political course of our party over the last ten years.
ON
PRC POLICY
The
long cycle of PRC policy, marked by the conditioning, pervasion and
contamination first by the "progressive pole" and then by
the centre-left, has been unsuccessful, both in terms of the general
interest of the working-class movement and in terms of building our
party. It is the proof of the failure of reformist politics nationally
and the measure of the need to change direction.
After
ten years of history, this critical appraisal can no longer be
avoided. Our party, from its very foundation, has certainly been an
important obstacle to the regressive processes in the early nineties
and a valuable factor for the political regrouping of the vanguard
forces. Our party has successfully resisted the repeated attempts at
institutional smothering that followed in the nineties (especially by
the leaders of the DS and Centre-left). The PRC still represents, in
the current political panorama, the natural, valuable reference point
for the dynamics of the movements of workers and the young, which
would be otherwise aimless or without more consistent, credible
references.
But
a serious, honest appraisal cannot stop at this. A communist party
cannot be an end in itself, but must be a class instrument to achieve
a project for an alternative hegemony. And the results of ten years'
deliberate political direction are inevitably to blame. For ten years,
in different ways and contexts, the ruling majority in the PRC has
consistently rejected building up the party as an alternative
strategic force, opting for a "reforming" policy of pressure
and conditioning by the DS apparatus and the political line-up of the
bourgeois alternation (first the progressive pole, then the
Centre-left).
This
policy has not been linear but has seen abrupt, hasty changes in its
parliamentary allegiances over this period (from opposition to
government majority and from government majority to opposition). But
it has maintained this basic strategic course. Indeed, each time our
position as the opposition to government was intended to pave the way,
yet again, for a (potential or real) regrouping with the line-up of
the alternation government. This was the case during the formation of
the progressive pole in spring 94 around a common electoral government
programme. This was the case in 95-96 in the abrupt passage from our
radical opposition to the Dini government to the formation of a
majority government with Prodi and Dini. This was the case after the
rupture with the Prodi government. First there was an attempt to
re-form the old majority government after a hoped-for phase of
"decantation"; then, after the unexpected failure of that
attempt (and the headlong clash with the D'Alema government over the
Balkans war), 14 (out of 15) regional government agreements were
stipulated for the administrative elections in 1999, which was clearly
intended to then be projected on a national scale but was destroyed by
the Centre-left's clamorous defeat. Even after the by now inevitable
failure of this regrouping policy, opting for
"non-belligerence" towards the Centre-left in the political
elections and the increased collaboration with the Ulivo in local
government have sanctioned in different ways the basic continuity of
this strategy.
This
strategy has been seen to be deeply mistaken. Upheld in the name of a
principle of "realism" and "the concreteness" of
the possible results, it has not produced any real or concrete
results. All attempts to "contaminate" and reform the
progressive pole and then the Centre-left, whether in government or
opposition, have been belied by the liberal shift in the DS and the
fundamental relationship between the Centre-left and the Italian
bourgeoisie. And, what is more, these attempts have had the opposite
effect - in a dramatic passage, our party shares responsibility, for
more than half of the preceding government term, for the adoption of
anti-popular policies, with grave effects not only on the material
conditions of the workers but also on the evolution of class relations
(a dramatic drop in strike hours and the stabilisation of social
harmony). Moreover, our continuing collaboration in local government
in the Regions and cities has shown yet again, on a different level,
our continuing political agreement on privatisation, the reduction in
social spending and flexible policies which totally contradict our
national role as the opposition.
The
chosen line has also failed to lead to a growth in our party
membership. Formally defended as a way to widen electoral consensus
and the social rooting of the PRC, this line has failed to achieve
either objective. After ten years, the party's electoral consensus is
objectively less than that at its foundation. These are indeed
difficult years, but this fact must be interpreted in the context of a
historical passage that has seen the drifting and crisis in the DS,
the explosion of crisis in its political and organisational structure.
The PRC has not taken advantage of the vacuum to the left of the DS.
The extraordinary leaps forward in 93 as the "heart of the
opposition" in the working-class cities of Turin and Milan, the
measure of our great potential, were successively destroyed by the
wavering policies of the following years. And the fact that we have
failed to develop an alternative hegemony of the lower classes has not
represented solely our party's failure, but a fact that is loaded with
grave consequences for the all Italian society, as the victory of the
Centre-right has proved.
ON
THE "PLURAL LEFT GOVERNMENT"
The
prospect of a plural left government based on a reforming programme as
a post-Berlusconi solution does not only fail to recognise the need
for a critical appraisal of the past ten years, but it proposes yet
again, in essence, the very same policy. Pursuing it from the
standpoint of the movements would not only fail to change its nature,
but would profoundly damage the movements themselves and their future
policy.
The
strategic proposal for the plural left government represents a
profound error and holds great risks for our party. After having
pursued unsuccessfully for the last ten years the
"contamination" first of the progressive pole and then the
Centre-left, we cannot propose yet again, as though nothing had
happened, the same basic line; otherwise we would end up following a
path we have already been down and that has already failed. Not only
in Italy, but all over the world. At national level, the plural left
had already been experienced by our party during the progressive
Pole's bloc in 94 (DS, Greens, Orlando's Rete, and PRC). Its official
programme (viz. Liberazione, 4/2/94) proclaimed, within "the
competition for the government of the country", "Italy's
authoritative, solid presence in international markets and
internationally" and the appeal "to those forces in the
business world that take to heart the social, civil and democratic
growth of Italy". On this basis, it proposed "combining
social equity and the logic of efficiency and the market ethos"
in order to "promote privatisation where appropriate", to
carry out "the recovery of the deficit which will imply
austerity" albeit with "the guarantee that any sacrifice
will be shared fairly". Berlusconi's electoral victory blocked
the experimentation of this governmental programme, keeping the PRC in
opposition until 1996. But that programme reflected and reflects the
only possible character of a plural left government with the DS
apparatus; namely, that would subordinate the interests of the
working-class movement to the needs of Italian capitalism.
At
an international level, the current experience of a plural left
government in France (PS-PCF-Greens) has been and is unequivocal. If
in the first French plural left government (81-83) under Mitterand
austerity and workers' sacrifices went hand in hand with the formal
language of the reforming tradition, in Jospin's government austerity
and sacrifice have gone hand in hand with a (tempered) liberal
language of privatisation and flexibility. It is yet more proof that,
in the current picture of the capitalist crisis and global
competition, a "plural left" government does not differ, in
essence, from an ordinary liberal bourgeois government. This is
another reason why our cry for an "Italian Mitterand" after
the last political elections, and praise for the Jospin government
(that "contests the entire logic of flexibility and introduces
directly into the economy the parameter of the defence of workers'
interests" as the PRC secretary declared in a front-page
editorial on 29/9/99) have represented a grave error that our party
must come to terms with. Above all, the prospect of a plural left
government in Italy today would have an even more regressive nature
than in France or compared to the Progressive Pole in 94. Unlike
Jospin's party, the DS apparatus, by a large majority, has broken with
the role and function of social democracy to present itself as the
direct representative of the Italian bourgeoisie, in open competition
with the Margherita and, on the other side, with Forza Italia. A
"plural left" coalition in Italy would therefore be, in
fact, the re-proposal of a centre-left.
The
pursuit of the prospect of a reforming plural left government as an
outlet for the grassroots movements and their
"contaminating" action does not make this project any
better. On the contrary, in many respects, it makes it worse. Instead
of directing the work of the masses towards the autonomy of the
movements from the liberal bourgeois centre, it uses the movements as
a lever to put pressure on the DS apparatus and the Ulivo. Instead of
freeing the movement and movements from any illusion of being able to
contaminate the liberals, it promotes this very illusion in the
movement. It is the exact opposite of an autonomous class-based
politics. Above all, it damages profoundly the movement and its future
as none of the fundamental tenets of mass movements, whether
working-class or anti-global, could find any satisfaction in a
bourgeois plural left government.
For
all these reasons, this prospect must be openly and explicitly
rejected by our party's V Congress.
AN
AUTONOMOUS CLASS POLE
The
V PRC Congress must adopt the development of the working-class
movement's independence from any bourgeois force as the new strategic
axis of party policy. This means the strategic autonomy from any old
or new force in the bourgeois centre (Centre-left or liberal DS
apparatus), rupture with any hypothesis of a government of alternation
with these forces and the adoption of the perspective of an
anticapitalist class alternative as the strategic outlet for mass
opposition and the recomposition of the struggles in the new
historical bloc.
Our
party's political experience over the last ten years, a class analysis
of the political situation and the re-emergence of mass movements all
demand a fundamental political change of direction: a change that will
adopt as its basic axis the autonomy of the working-class movement and
mass movements from any bourgeois force and thus claim an autonomous
class pole, openly opposed to the ruling classes and their alternating
governments (Centre-right and Centre-left). The politics of the
autonomous class pole do not concern solely the certainty and clarity
of the autonomous strategic position of our party as the opposition to
the two alternating bourgeois poles, which is, however, a necessary
condition. It concerns above all a proposal for the masses that
recovers an elementary principle of Marxism: the counter-position of
the workers' interests and those of all the individuals and groups in
an alternative social bloc against the ruling classes' interests, and
all their political representation in relation to the perspective of
social revolution. The rupture with the "Centre" in any of
its expressions, whether old or new, must therefore not only be a
binding principle for the PRC but a fundamental demand of communists
in the movements. In this way we would avoid building up sectarian
compartments but we could indicate the terrain for a wider unity
within the autonomy of the working-class and mass movements in the
fight against the bourgeoisie for an anticapitalist alternative.
The
proposal for an alternative, autonomous class pole is even more
relevant after the long season of the Centre-left: millions of workers
were subordinated to the Ulivo when it became the chosen channel to
represent the Italian bourgeoisie. Millions of workers have
experienced first hand the social and political failure of this
collaboration with the bourgeoisie. The demand for a rupture with the
Centre can therefore use this actual experience and pave the way for
the young generations that are now lifting up their heads again.
Furthermore, each day shows even more clearly the organic relationship
between the Ulivo and the ruling classes, even after the success of
the centre-right government. The bipartisan policy towards Berlusconi,
commissioned by the elites in Italian society, the demand for a
"more liberalist" policy than the government's on strategic
terrain for capitalist accumulation (viz. privatisation), the vote in
favour of the imperialist war in Afghanistan together with the
adoption of the FIAT Minister Ruggiero as their privileged
interlocutor (viz. the Airbus affair) do not represent
"errors" or "strategic divergence" with the
communists. They all represent the material base of interests in which
the Centre-left has now planted its roots. This material base has not
changed with their passage "to the opposition" but has on
the contrary remained the irremovable anchor for the bourgeois
perspective that is "the opposition's" goal. This is the
reason why the rupture with the centre-left is a permanent, impelling
class necessity for the working-class movement and mass movements.
THE
DS IN CRISIS AND ADRIFT
The
DS bureaucratic apparatus, traditionally the agent for the ruling
classes in the working-class movement, has, for the most part, now
broken with its social-democratic function and role to begin the
mutation of the party into a liberal bourgeois force that directly
represents the elite in society. This evolution reinforces the need
for an autonomous class pole in alternative to any hypothesis of a
plural left. The vertical crisis in the DS that has gone hand in hand
with this evolution has created a new space for the autonomous
development of the communist party and an alternative hegemony.
The
DS is now going through the deepest crisis in its political history.
This crisis is not due to the extent of its electoral defeat or the
failure of its first government experience. It comes from the fact
that defeat struck at the most delicate point in the historical
mutation of the DS: from a social-democratic party, the instrument to
control the working-class movement on behalf of the bourgeoisie, to a
liberal, bourgeois democratic party that is the direct representative
of the elite in society.
The
DS's prolonged experience of government in the nineties was the
indicator of this process of mutation. Against the background of the
crisis in the First Republic, the crisis in the central political
representation of the Italian bourgeoisie and capital's strategic
investment in the Centre-left, the bureaucratic DS apparatus has
multiplied, at every level, its material relations with the ruling
classes since 1995. A large majority of the ruling bureaucracy of the
party has therefore progressively taken on board its transformation
into the central political representative force of Italian capital
(with a base in the masses) as its strategic objective. The congress
of Lingotto has symbolically crowned this new liberal prospect. And
the rupture with its social-democratic function is not merely a purely
political-cultural fact, but has gone hand in hand with relevant
changes in the material constitution of the party and its relation
with the mass organisations, with the dynamics of the class struggle
and with its territorial base of rank and file members. This does not
mean the disappearance of every trace of social democracy (present in
the active framework of the working-class movement, its relations with
the union apparatus, and the presence of social-democratic tendencies
within the DS apparatus itself, such as Socialism 2000 and the Left
DS). It means that the social-democratic presence and function,
however important, are no longer the centre of gravity for the party
nor the material basis for DS relations with the bourgeoisie. The open
contrast between the DS apparatus and CGIL bureaucracy, the
substantial marginality of the DS's role in the dynamics of the new
class movements (metal-mechanic workers) and youth movements
(anti-global) are a reflection of this rupture. Fassino and D'Alema's
sweeping victory at the congress, among the party's bureaucracy,
especially after passing to the opposition, shows how profound this
rupture has been. Moreover, all the current policy direction of the DS
apparatus, from the declaration in support of the NATO war to the
opening up to Confindustria (Confederation of Italian Business) on the
liberalisation of redundancies is proof not only of the prospect of an
alternation of government but of the search and desire to maintain
material relations with the bourgeoisie: a sort of shadow committee
for bourgeois affairs waiting in the wings. Therefore, the description
of the DS as "moderate left", which in the past seemed
improper, is more than ever totally erroneous.
Yet
if the rupture with social democracy has been clear-cut, the DS's
final destination is uncertain. The loss of an outlet in government,
the emergence of a new, threatening competitor for the bourgeois
centre (the Margherita) and the internal lacerations in the liberal
apparatus of the party have all placed new obstacles in the path of
the continuity of a liberal bourgeois project. The reassembling of the
industrial bloc around the Berlusconi government is a further factor
in the crisis of D'Alema's project. All this has not led to a
rejection of the project (difficult to reverse thanks to its deep
roots in the party) but it certainly exposes it to a higher risk of
failure among the bourgeoisie. In the meanwhile, the tenacious pursuit
of this policy increases its distance from the old social base and
rank and file members of the DS.
The
DS's drift towards bourgeois liberalism and the vertical crisis that
has accompanied it are a measure of the need for a policy of an
autonomous class pole and a new historical space where it can be
constructed. Large sectors of the masses are today dramatically
experiencing not only the betrayal of their own policy lines but the
crisis and dissolution of their traditional political representation.
The very renewal of the working-class and youth movements, while it
involves growing numbers in the left, accentuates the political
confusion and redoubles new demands for points of reference. Our party
can and must respond to these demands by opening up to the masses,
with the proposal of an autonomous class pole. This would offer an
alternative reference point in this crisis of representation for the
working-class movement, providing wide sectors of the masses with a
way out from the crisis: namely, the break with the DS liberal
apparatus and the Ulivo in order to fight autonomously against the
Berlusconi government and the Italian bourgeoisie. In this sense the
demand for an autonomous class pole on anticapitalist terrain
represents a tool for the construction of an alternative communist
hegemony among the lower classes and their movements.
THE
PRC AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The
development of a policy for an autonomous class pole and an
alternative social bloc requires clarity and coherence in the PRC as
the opposition, even at local level. Therefore, we must stop the
collaboration between the PRC and the Centre-left in local government,
starting from the Regions and the large cities. This change of
direction is even more relevant given the Ulivo's support for the war
and the development of a liberalist institutional federalism.
During
the last ten years, our party has promoted and consistently followed
the policy of collaborating with Centre-left governments in local
administrations. On the one hand, this policy has proved unsuccessful
in "beating the right", as the failure of many Ulivo-PRC
coalitions showed in the administrative elections on 16 April 2000
(such as the Lazio Region). On the other hand, and more importantly,
it has made the PRC co-responsible for the agreement and local
implementation of liberalist policies that are in open contradiction
with the social tenets of our party. The new policy of an autonomous
anticapitalist class pole would therefore require a profound change in
our local policy.
At
local level, the Centre-left is no different from the national
Centre-left: policy programmes, social references and governmental
methods are inevitably the same. On the contrary, in the nineties the
Ulivo local administrations have often been "in the
vanguard" in the experimentation of liberalist policies. The
victory of the Berlusconi government with the passage of the Ulivo to
the "opposition" has not changed the local policies of the
Centre-left in the slightest. Indeed, the Ulivo's attempt to gain
credit with the bourgeoisie again nationally also involves using its
local administrations, often held up as models of managerial
efficiency compared to the presumed uncertainties of the Pole (viz.
privatisation). More generally speaking, local administrations have
become more than ever before an important instrument for the
consolidation or renewal of relations between the Ulivo and the elite
in Italian society.
The
development of a liberalist institutional federalism, begun by the
Ulivo and further exacerbated by the new Berlusconi government, also
reinforces and extends the liberalist tendencies of local
administrations. The old theory of the distinction between national
and local politics (which had always been unfounded) has now been
demolished completely. The transfer of decision-making power
concerning the so-called welfare state to regional government will
make the regional Centre-left governments the new agents for national
agreement with the right-wing national government and at the same time
an even greater experimental precursor of the national alternation of
government. In addition, the large number of Ulivo local governments
that support the war, together with the Pole, is the final, even more
shocking proof of the basic homogeneity of bourgeois liberalism,
whether at national or local level.
Our
party is called on to change its policy here, too. More than ever
before, the PRC cannot adopt a central role in the opposition to the
war declaring that "nothing will be as it was before" but
continue to support "as before" regional governments that
support the war. The PRC cannot adopt a central role in the no-global
movement declaring that after Genoa nothing will be as before, but
then continue to support as before those councils that oppose or block
the movement's demands (starting from the city council in Genoa). A
coherent general line is needed: communists must be part of the
opposition in local government in the Regions and the large cities,
too.
Obviously,
the situation is different - albeit exceptional today - where the
communists are an essential part of local councils that are really
trying to create an anticapitalist alternative: here, opposition to
the national government strictly linked to class interests and outside
any false institutional neutrality becomes fundamental.
REPUDIATING
THE BERLUSCONI GOVERNMENT
The
Berlusconi government is a reactionary government that is trying to
resolve its contradictions in a new, general attack on the
working-class movement. Our party's opposition to the
Berlusconi-Bossi-Fini government cannot be an ordinary opposition, but
it can and must openly work to repudiate it on the wave of massive,
working-class, popular mobilisation. The objective of repudiating the
government must not be an end in itself but a lever for the
anticapitalist class alternative.
The
Polo delle Libertà's government differs from the first Berlusconi
government ('94). Politically, Forza Italia has greatly strengthened
its position in the coalition, forged a more stable relationship with
the Northern League and come to a wide-reaching agreement with
homogeneous local authorities. In social terms, unlike in '94, it is
supported by big business that, although having supported the
Centre-left during the previous government, and having worked to
re-confirm the Ulivo in office, chose to invest in the new Berlusconi
government after the election result through the direct participation
of its own exponents (Ruggiero). Big business was well aware of the
greater force of the new government and thus seized the opportunity to
use it, but clearly desired to place it under the control of one of
their own faithful. On its part, the government is trying to reconcile
the business and personal interests of the Fininvest empire and the
corrupt environment of capital while representing the general interest
of the bourgeoisie.
The
new government's programme is, objectively speaking, reactionary: it
extends and develops in a concentrated form all the government
policies of the preceding legislature both in social and institutional
terms. As far as foreign policy is concerned, a closer collaboration
with American policy lies uneasily with the continuity of its
strategic position in European imperialism (embraced in particular by
FIAT and its minister Ruggiero).
The
direction of this general programme has not yet been completely
defined, but it oscillates between a policy of agreement-seeking with
the working-class organisations and attempts to sink them completely.
However, an objective contradiction weighs heavily on the government:
on the one hand, the political need to bankroll a bloc of wide-ranging
but contradictory and expensive interests, and on the other, the need
to do so within the European stability pact and in the light of the
international economic crisis. This contradiction fans the growing
tensions in the Berlusconi social bloc (as between Industry and the
Confederation of Italian Trade over fiscal policy). But this is the
very reason why the government is going down the slippery slope of
social conflict with the opposing bloc: only a lunge against dependent
workers can contain the centrifugal forces of the dominant bloc and
increase the margins for mediation within it. Moreover, the
subordinate paralysis of the CGIL and the crisis and complicity of the
Centre-left encourage this social offensive. And the international
context of war, with its possible diversionary effects, has provided
the government with an opportunity to anticipate its attack. It is not
by chance that they have plunged into a headlong attack on the pension
system, health and school, culminating in the assault on article 18 of
the Statute of Workers. This is likely to be combined with new
antidemocratic, restrictive policies in the field of union rights and
public order. AN's open championing of the most reactionary impulses
of the State's restrictive apparatus, which emerged from the events in
Genoa, is the measure and anticipation of a deep-seated tendency that
is encouraged by the composition of the new government. In conclusion,
the more stable the new government, the more its political and social
contradictions will move "to the right".
The
objective of repudiating the Belusconi government therefore responds
to a general interest of the working-class movement and all the
alternative social bloc. It responds to the common interest in freeing
us from an objectively reactionary threat. Adopting this rallying cry
does not mean cherishing illusions or making predictions. The greater
force of the second Berlusconi government, the damage already done to
the working-class movement during the preceding legislature and
international dynamics all tend to favour the continuation of this
government. However, a communist party must determine the level and
goals of its opposition irrespective of the difficulty of the task
ahead. It can and must adopt the needs of the working-class movement
as the basis for reference and act to stimulate a counter-tendency.
Furthermore, despite the difficulties in our path, there is certainly
room to build up a radical, mass opposition to the right-wing
government. Despite its more-consolidated position, the Berlusconi
government did not gain power on the wave of increased consensus in
Italian society, but in the context of a fall in right-wing coalition
support with respect to the elections of '94 and '96. At the same
time, despite the damage done, signs of renewal in the working-class
movement have recently appeared, not least the huge mobilisation of
the metal-mechanic workers and the action of a new working-class
generation. And this renewal of class awareness, even though still
fragile, in turn unites with the development of the anti-globalisation
movement - prevalently of young people - that has emerged as a mass
movement in Italy more than in other European countries. In addition,
in particular after the events in Genoa, a certain active,
antigovernment sensibility has developed among large sectors of the
left in support of the anti-globalisation movement, spurred on by a
sincere concern for democracy (viz. the demonstrations on 24th July).
All these factors do not automatically incite mass opposition to this
government, but they are a measure of a potential counteroffensive,
supported by a wider social and political base, to its reactionary
programme. Our party's task is to gather and develop all these
potential supporters and regroup them around a unifying programme and
a single goal.
Therefore,
more than ever before, we cannot merely close ranks in the routine of
parliamentary opposition combined with praise for the spontaneity of
the grass-roots movements. But, within the experience of the
movements, we must promote the conditions for a concentrated social
explosion against the ruling classes and their government. Only a
concentrated social eruption can overturn the relations between the
classes and pave the way for an anticapitalist alternative. And only
an anticapitalist alternative can truly respond to the fundamental
tenets of the lower classes and their struggle. The demand to
repudiate the Berlusconi government can and must be part of the
anticapitalist prospect and one of the levers to achieve it. This is
the reason why it must be discussed openly within the movements,
without "politicist" distortion but also without
self-censure, in an active relationship with the objective dynamics of
their struggles.
A
CLASS OPPOSITION TO BERLUSCONI AND THE GENERAL DISPUTE
The
working class and the world of work are the core of the opposition to
Berlusconi and the lever for a possible repudiation of his government.
But this is only possible on condition that a true, independent class
aggregation, in alternative to the liberal centre-left, is recomposed
in this struggle, on the terrain of a general, unifying dispute.
The
experience of the nineties has proved a valuable lesson for communists
and the Italian working-class movement. Only the working-class
movement, with its concentrated class action, was able to stop
Berlusconi's rise, split his social bloc and lay down the conditions
for his fall: this was the experience of autumn '94. This lesson must
be recalled in the minds of the masses and adopted to steer our new
policy against the second government of the right-wing parties.
The
recomposition of a unitary working-class movement does not only have a
union significance but also a more general political one. Therefore,
the creation of a unifying general dispute for workers and the
unemployed can and must be the immediate orientation for our party's
contribution in a new independent class action. This means selecting a
unified set of demands to develop general and radical mass opposition
and unify the alternative social bloc. The proposal for a general
dispute of workers and the unemployed, in the perspective of a general
strike against the government and the bosses, is more necessary now
than ever before.
The
demand for a general, substantial salary increase for all dependent
workers is more than ever in direct contrast to the assault on social
dialogue waged by the government. The call to abolish the "Treu
Package" and all casual labour (starting from employing casual
workers on open-ended contracts) clashes head on with the strategic
policy of crushing dependent workers. The demand for a minimum
guaranteed salary for all categories (quantifiable as 1000 Euro net,
and a reference point for workers' pensions) for all dependent workers
contrasts even more than before with the policy of regional
differentiation in salaries so dear to liberalist federalism. The
demand for the recognition and extension of union rights to all
subordinate workers, regardless of their type of contract or the size
of firm, collides head on with the shared programme of Confindustria
and the government, illustrated by the attack on article 18 of the
Statute of Workers. The demand for a true guaranteed salary for the
unemployed and young people looking for their first employment
(quantifiable as 80% of the minimum inter-category salary or the
contractual salary previously earned), financed in the first place by
the abolition of public funding for private firms, rejecting the logic
of any compromise with "minimum" labour (i.e. casual
labour), contrasts with the increase in the use of casual labour and
indicates an arm of resistance against the economic blackmail of
unemployment or exploitation. The general reduction in the working
week at the same salary without flexibility or annualisation, and the
abolition of overtime can be the only strategy for an effective fight
against mass unemployment. The demand for the progressive taxation of
high incomes, profits and patrimonies ("let them pay who have
never paid") to fund increased, improved welfare spending
(starting from health and education) can and must counter the
government line of the de-taxation of profit paid for by the
destruction of the welfare state.
This
platform of immediate demands must not be considered exhaustive or a
substitute for the specific demands of sectors or movements. But it
should be adopted as a unifying platform for the mass of communists:
in the movements, at local level and in mass organisations. Its
function is to play on the reactionary platform of the bosses and
government in order to counter-propose a radical alternative class
platform. And to play on an alternative class platform to unite all
sectors and fragments of the subordinate masses around a class
alternative: beyond a mere union logic and against the current
splintering of the masses.
In
this framework and on this terrain, the PRC must advance the general
proposal of a single class front against the Berlusconi government and
the bosses. Its rationale is simple: if the government now regroups
around itself the bourgeois unity of action, the workers must create a
greater unity of action against the government and the vested
interests that support it. This means promoting greater unity in the
workers' struggle, irrespective of political or union differences,
favouring wherever possible the convergence of action in a common
programme. More in general, an appeal should be made to all those
forces and tendencies within the working-class movement that could
converge around an independent class programme, in an open break with
the bourgeois forces of the centre. If the subordination of the
working-class movement to the bourgeois centre has laid the grounds
for Berlusconi's victory over five years, only the rupture with the
bourgeois centre can allow the working-class movement to repudiate
Berlusconi. The pressing need for unity of action in the working-class
movement against the government must thus openly counter any proposal
to create a front with bourgeois forces. The struggle for class
hegemony in the opposition to the government of the right as an
alternative to the bourgeois centre-left precisely defines the new
battleground for communists.
UNION
REFOUNDATION
An
organised class struggle must be developed in the CGIL and
non-confederate trade unions in the perspective of the
"Constitution of a mass, democratic, confederate, unitary,
class-based union". At the same time, we must fight to develop a
structure for mass self-organisation (co-ordinating committees of
delegates, fight and strike committees and councils).
There
must be a profound change of direction in our union policy. First of
all, it is essential that we condemn unequivocally union bureaucracy,
the true agent of the ruling classes within the working-class
movement. Confederate union leaders' policy of agreement-seeking,
principally the CGIL, does not merely represent a "mistaken
policy" however serious. It reflects the profound nature of the
bureaucratic union apparatus: "a political clique" and its
corresponding structure, whose action allows the rule of capital to
continue.
The
first task for our party is therefore to abandon the policy that has
been followed so far: "to move the CGIL to the left". On the
contrary, the PRC is called on to openly repudiate the union
movement's bureaucracy as a new axis of its own union policy, first of
all, condemning the "unreformability" of its structure.
This
does not preclude communists playing a role in traditional
organisations, chiefly in the CGIL. But it certainly implies the
complete abandonment of any attempt to bring pressure to bear on the
managing bureaucracy and the development of an open class-based
opposition able to challenge the "rules" of the union
apparatus and become an autonomous reference point for all workers.
Even the emergence of partial contradictions inside the apparatus and
the needs imposed by the presence of a centre-right government do not
change this general picture. Sabbatini and the FIOM bureaucracy, who
have too easily become a reference point and a privileged interlocutor
for the current party majority, do not represent a strategic
counter-opposition to Cofferati's policy of class collaboration (also
expressed over the war). His most recent statements are only the
tactical expression of an inescapable self-defence of the
social-democratic bureaucracy against an assault that aims to
drastically reduce the role of agreement-seeking. Indeed,
agreement-seeking has been reconfirmed as the strategic axis of the
CGIL bureaucracy in relation to the government's current offensive.
Just as for the majority group in the Commisiones Obreras in Spain,
Cofferati's aim is to create a framework for agreement-seeking and
social dialogue with the centre-right government: the only problem is
that Berlusconi is not Aznar and so this objective is much less
practicable.
The
constitution of a new area in the CGIL - Work and Society: a change of
tack - is certainly positive, because it supersedes the former split
essentially caused by the praxis of our party, not based on
political-union policy but on the need to have a sector that is a
"faithful" supporter of party policy in particular at the
time when it was part of the centre-left majority government (it is
not by chance that the conditions for the re-unification of the
left-wing union areas have materialised since our break with the Prodi
government). However, this is only positive in terms of organisation.
Indeed, there is no analysis of the incapacity of the
"Alternative Union" movement or the "Communist CGIL
area" to represent a class-based opposition to the
collaborationist policy of the CGIL majority. This incapacity is
reconfirmed by the betrayal of the anti-government movement
represented by the "half-hearted strikes" in December 2001.
Showing all its reformist limits, Work and Society, instead of
opposing the decisions of the bureaucracy head on, accepted them for
the most part.
Therefore,
it is necessary to develop a coherent class area, based on communist
militants but open to the aggregation of other independent sectors,
that can present itself as a candidate for the hegemony of the left of
the confederation and is based on an anticapitalist programme of
action in open opposition to the union leaders.
At
the same time, the PRC must constantly forge a link between the
refounded CGIL left and the communists who should develop their action
in extra-confederate union movements: this union activity is, of
course, a more advanced framework of action in the field of
political-union objectives, but on a different basis it is also
subject to practical limits beyond its control, such as the chronic
tendency to splinter. In this picture, the battle for the unification
of extra-confederate union activity must be developed as a central
question in the next phase by its militant communist members.
The
PRC must not deceive itself that it can supersede the current
scattering of militant communists in the different unions "by
decree" and this situation has been "legitimised" both
by the objective complexity of the union question and the concrete
nature of Italian unions. Only the development of the class struggle
and the experience of the anti-bureaucratic struggle will change this
in the future. The PRC can and must, on the other hand, immediately
indicate the general orientation for proposals and the basis for its
programme to unite the militant communist union members whether they
are in the confederate unions or the extra-confederate ones.
The
general orientation of the V Congress is the proposal for a
"Constitution of a mass, democratic, confederate, unitary,
class-based union".
With
this directive, communists must address all workers to achieve unity
on a wider basis in a unitary union confederation, based on the
democracy of workers and the defence of their autonomous interests,
breaking away from the current union bureaucracies. This means
advancing the prospect of unity from the bottom, starting from unitary
assemblies of members (and non-members) in the workplace. The
structure could vary in relation to the concrete development of the
situation. But it must adopt as its crux the communist struggle for
the hegemony of the politically active masses, and those active in the
unions, outside the logic of creating a ghetto on a purely union basis
or the logic of subordination to the current union apparatus. In this
perspective of common work, a co-ordinating committee of militant
communist trade unionists, whatever union they belong to, is needed.
This co-ordinating committee must exist from now to unify our union
debate at local level and in different sectors.
At
the same time, on the basis of the proposal of this
"constitution", we must work for the unitary grouping of a
larger sector, beyond militant communists, creating in the workplace
wherever possible "committees for union refoundation" which
would involve active trade unionists from different areas and aim to
become the point of reference for anti-bureaucratic action against the
bosses.
It
is equally important that PRC works to re-launch the movement of the
RSU (workplace based union representation) delegates. A permanent
co-ordinating committee of the broad left among the elected members of
the RSU on an immediate class programme could be, in fact, an
important instrument for the anti-bureaucratic struggle and the
development of mass movements. From this point of view, the unitary
initiative of class-based trade unionism that first emerged
significantly in the meeting of the trade union delegates on 1
December 2001 in Bologna must be fully supported, and will continue in
the assembly on 11 January 2002 in Milan.
Finally,
however crucial the struggle in the trade union organisations,
communists must avoid any type of formalism. In particular, as the
struggle is intensifying, it is crucial to work to promote the
self-organisation of the masses, both in the form of fight committees,
and in the higher form of democratically elected and controlled
structures (strike committees, councils). In the final analysis, it is
within these structures rather than the trade union organisations that
the communist battle for the conquest of a class majority will be
played out.
INTERVENTION
IN THE ANTI-GLOBALISATION MOVEMENT IN ITALY
The
anti-globalisation movement in Italy has attained a true mass
dimension and holds significant anticapitalist potential. But its
convergence with the working-class struggle is crucial if its demands
are to be met. We must work so that the working class adopts the
demands of the anti-globalisation movement within a class-based
programme. We must work so that the anti-globalisation movement opens
up to the working-class movement in the context of the central
conflict between capital and work. This is today an impelling
necessity in the battle for a communist hegemony in the recomposition
of an anticapitalist social bloc. But it requires a battle within the
movement against the prevalent positions in its current leadership.
The
anti-globalisation movement now plays a very important part in the
Italian scenario. More than in other European countries, it has really
embraced the masses, in particular the young, as shown by the huge
demonstration in Genoa; it has involved real sectors of the vanguard
of the working-class and its union representatives and it has
exercised a notable political impact on the whole national situation.
More in general, it has generated widespread popular sympathy, an
indirect effect of the crisis of liberalism's hegemony in wide sectors
of the masses. Therefore, the movement reveals a precious potential
for further expansion that the events of war have not prejudiced.
But
it is this reality and potential that underline the unresolved
problems in the movement's political direction. The disproportion
between the general lack of political awareness in the movement and
the public level of conflict with the state apparatus and the
government, documented by the events in Genoa, the disparity between
the fundamental anti-liberalist critical impulse and the level of
conflict imposed by the aggravating of the imperialist war in
Afghanistan all represent an objectively dangerous compromise, in part
inevitably due to the inexperience of the young generation and in part
magnified by the pacifist-reformist mind-set of the majority of the
movement's leaders.
Our
party, thanks to its general presence in the movement, can and must
work to supersede this contradiction, in the interest of the movement
and its basic tenets. We must not see our role as purely institutional
representation of the movement's demands nor as the mediator between
the movement and the institutions; still less as a mere glue for the
unity of the movement in the sense of a political-diplomatic bloc made
up of the associations its leadership represents. It must combine a
loyal action for the daily construction of the mass anti-globalisation
movement with an open battle for the political line of the movement
itself. This battle must be aimed at developing the political
awareness of the movement on anticapitalist and anti-imperialist
terrain (see motions…), its autonomy and counter-position to the
centre-right and centre-left and its convergence with the
working-class struggle for an alternative social bloc, an open fight
for an alternative hegemony.
Intervention
in the movements implies first of all clear responsibility for
proposals concerning the forms for the struggle and the organisation
of the movement. In this context, we must oppose all positions that in
practice propose a sort of cloistered withdrawal or a retreat in the
level of mobilisation, that have emerged cyclically (for example,
following Genoa, before the Naples demonstration against NATO, or in
relation to the demonstration in Rome on 10 November). On the
contrary, peaceful mass demonstrations must be made the crux of the
struggle, necessary for aggregation, political impact and the
visibility and polarisation of the movement's motivations. In this
framework, the problem of self-defence from any type of aggression
during the demonstrations must be seriously discussed in order to
protect the peaceful, mass character of the demonstrations themselves
(viz. internal organisation for public order). Furthermore, the
question of the national democratic organisation of the movement must
be discussed - as it has expanded so greatly , it can no longer be
based only on a pact of the different associations, but it must now
involve the activists democratically, who are at the moment without
any decision-making power, in defining the movement's options and its
representatives at all levels: otherwise, there would be a crisis of
democracy, shirking of choices and lack of representation in
decisions.
On
a political level, its unity with the working class struggle, in open
opposition to the bosses and the Berlusconi government, must be
developed. This is not a question of simply representing our class
"sensibility" within the colourful mosaic of the movement.
This means fighting to win the majority of the movement over to a
class perspective as the condition for achieving its demands and as
the grounds for enhancing its potential impact.
In
the present framework, the anti-globalisation movement, already
benefiting from much sympathy and support from vast sectors of
society, could really be transformed into the detonator for a social
explosion, but only on condition that a new direction and a new
proposal emerge from the movement. Contact with the workers cannot
merely be reduced to the sum of good relations with the union
representatives, nor as pressure on Cofferati or merely registering
FIOM support for the GSF (however important that may be). But it can
and must become a public proposal for common action, based on a
platform of simple, unified proposals, that can establish a common
terrain with the social demands of the wider masses and so, in its
unity, can challenge the trade unions, making them aware of their
responsibilities. In this sense, the proposal for a general dispute
for workers and the unemployed must be openly adopted not only among
the workers but also in the anti-globalisation movement in order to
indicate a possible common terrain for a unitary, concentrated fight.
The very prospect of a general strike against the bosses and the
government would be an extraordinary occasion for the invaluable
convergence between workers and the young in the dynamics of a rupture
with the bourgeoisie.
The
struggle for class-based hegemony in the antiglobalisation movement
implies constant political action for its autonomy from the bourgeois
centre-left in order to become an alternative. The DS apparatus and
the forces of the Ulivo are trying to condition the movement from the
outside in the attempt to reduce it to a subordinate factor in a
future liberal alternation. What happened during the Perugia-Assissi
march, through the platform of the so-called Peace Table, can be
clearly positioned in this basic strategy, that has found an outlet
and interlocutors among the movement's leaders or a weak, defensive
reaction. The PRC can and must oppose all DS or centre-left
intervention in the movement with all its force. It can do so only by
reconsidering deeply its current and future position. This does not
mean allowing the liberals in the centre-left to contaminate the
movement in the logic of a plural left. This means developing a policy
of autonomy and breaking with the centre-left and DS apparatus in the
movement. This does not mean papering over the contradictions between
the movement and the Ulivo, or theorising a policy of non-interference
(as during the Perugia march): on the contrary, it means analysing
them. We must combine the greatest possible openness towards the
workers and the young, outside any minority view or mind-set, with the
constant explanation that the differences between the movement's
demands and the liberal tenets of bourgeois society and its barbarism
are irreconcilable. In this picture, the vote of the DS apparatus and
the Ulivo in support of the imperialist war against the Afghan people
must be publicly held up as the unequivocal, final proof of this. More
in general, the fight for an anticapitalist and anti-imperialist
hegemony in the anti-globalisation movement represents the central
terrain for the defence and development of its autonomy.
EDUCATION
Education
is a key element in the assault of the ruling-classes. But it is also
a strategic area for the recomposition of an alternative social bloc.
The
Berlusconi government is trying to achieve a quantum leap in
reactionary policies against state education. In this case too they
have inherited the policies originally developed by the centre-left
government (such as the D'Alema government's policy on education
parity between state and private schools), extending and radicalising
them against all those who work in education and students, and against
the social interests of the lower classes. State education has been
assaulted, first of all, by the new cuts in the Budget, directly
shunted to investment in war (5 thousand billion lire); by the
programmed reduction in spending on school personnel over the next
five years, linked to a net reduction in employment in this sector; by
the extension of the "financial autonomy" linked to the cuts
in public funding; and by the programmed reduction of high-school
education from five to four years, combined with creating parity
between job training, grammar schools and professional institutes in
the interests of business. At the same time, the right-wing government
has become the direct representative of private schools' interests, in
full harmony with the Vatican, as the articulation of its own social
bloc. The policy of school vouchers now tends to be generalised at
local level thanks to regional governments. Regional federalism, in a
full-scale assault on the State's exclusive competence on educational
matters, is now trying to break in by "privatising" state
schools and the complementary policy of favouring private, business
and religious schools.
This
assault on state education, combined with a similar policy for
university education, is destined, however, to meet with growing
social resistance. Education is the terrain on which the liberalist
policies, even in their general upward trend, have had the most
difficulty in obtaining majority social consensus. Today, in the new
phase opened up by the more general crisis in liberalist policies,
education can be confirmed as one of the possible vital areas for
resistance and counter-attack. The renewal of the teachers' struggle
in recent years (after a long period of stasis after 87-88) reveals
the counter-tendency now in progress, even more significant
considering the splintering in the trade union movement. At the same
time, the emergence of a new generation in the conflict has been
reflected in the renewal of student movements and especially the
maturing of clear politicisation within these movements. The frequent
intertwining of student movements and the anti-globalisation movement
has been an indication of this.
Even
more than before, communists must consider education a priority for
the recomposition of an alternative, anticapitalist bloc. Therefore,
our party must not limit its action to supporting the development of
these movements against reactionary education policies, however
invaluable and necessary. It must combine its participation in the
active construction of the movement with the adoption of proposals for
the recomposition of a unitary fight and the development of a future
perspective.
First
of all, a unitary platform of mobilisation must be drawn up to
encourage the recomposition of teachers and students in this struggle,
linking the immediate demands to a more complex alternative
class-based programme. Demands for salary increases in the education
sector, a cut in the maximum number of students per class and classes
per teachers, the modernisation of school-buildings and the extension
of state education (starting from nursery education) and its service
in relation to the adult population, immigrants and the old must all
be linked to the primary objectives of abolishing all forms of direct
or indirect funding (even at local level, whether centre-left or
centre-right) for private and religious schools, in the perspective of
re-affirming all education as "state and free" and the
demand for the progressive taxation of the great patrimonies, incomes
and profits as the source for education funding. So the fight against
the dismantling of the collegial organisms - promoted by the
Berlusconi government - must be developed, not in the name of a
conservative, defensive logic, but in the name of a proposal for the
social control of public education based on the participation of
teachers, students and all the school population as an alternative to
the control of businesses and their interests.
At
the same time, communists must put forward a proposal for the
unification of the current student movements in a democratic
self-organising structure. The atomising of the movement and jobs,
without a unified platform or a democratic framework to ensure a true
representation of the different positions and proposals, would only
lead to defeat. What is more, it would smooth the way, as experience
has shown, for the leaders of the Uds and the regression of the
movement. Instead, we should learn from the French students, and
propose that each school assembly in the occupied schools elect
democratically its delegates, who would be constantly replaceable, and
that the co-ordinating groups of delegates at the various levels, up
to national level, form the democratic structure for the definition of
the movement's demands. Only in this way could the weight of the
different positions, organisations and areas be measured by their
effective level of democratic representation. Only in this way could a
national dispute be developed between the movement and the government.
Only in this way could the forms of the struggle and their continuity
be finalised for clear, representative, verifiable objectives.
THE
SOUTHERN QUESTION
The
masses in the South of Italy are a crucial strategic ally of the
working class in its anticapitalist perspective and a determining
force in this perspective. The Southern question is once again the
crux of national life and one of the terrains where social and
democratic questions meet.
The
history of the eighties has already confirmed the continuity of the
social and economic marginalisation of the South within the
international and national division of work. The change in the
nineties and the inauguration of the II Republic has precipitated the
situation in the South: the cut in welfare spending, the liberalist
design of federalism and the spreading flexibility in employment (viz.
the emblematic area contracts in Manfredonia, Crotone and
Castellamare) must be set in a social context that has already been
lacerated by a notable de-industrialisation and the further growth in
mass unemployment, in particular youth unemployment. The entry into
Europe with Maastricht has consolidated and accentuated these basic
trends, confirming yet again that the growing marginality of the
southern economy, far from being the expression of backwardness and
"delay", is the consequence of a real integration in the
modern capitalist market and a laboratory for experimenting with
advanced forms of exploitation.
Moreover,
the further decline of the South has produced a polarisation of wealth
and internal class conflict. On the one hand, there is an emerging
Southern bourgeoisie linked to construction, service industries and
tourism, the amoral protagonist of rash speculation in the abandoned
industrial areas, multiplying capital through income mechanisms. On
the other hand, there is the heavy fall in the industrial working
class that has gone hand in hand with a wider impoverishment marked by
the growing weight of unemployment, casual seasonal employment, the
degrading of state employment and the exploitation of female labour.
In
this picture, organised crime finds its natural outlet in society. It
is woven intrinsically with the Southern bourgeoisie in a complex
relationship: on the one hand, it exercises a widespread protection
racket, substituting to a great extent state taxes and thereby in
contradiction with the general interests of the national bourgeoisie,
while on the other it guarantees social protection and bank loans
(even using State funds). In addition, organised crime acts as a job
centre for unemployed youth and so, paradoxically, as a social shock
absorber, especially in a phase when the bourgeois State, historically
a tax-collector and policeman, now denies even welfare assistance. In
this picture, no court sentence, legal initiative or solemn
proclamation of the fight against the Mafia can uproot organised crime
from society, objectively incorporated in the governing social bloc.
The
new right-wing government has become a factor in the worsening of the
Southern condition. The policies of a savage flexibility in employment
and the assault on social conquests fall more heavily on the material
conditions of wide sectors of young people and women in the South. At
the same time, a new bout of much-vaunted government investment in
"great public works" aims to reinforce the speculative
business bloc with the open involvement of criminal capital, damaging
the environment and employment itself (viz. the bridge over the
Straits of Messina).
The
platform for the general dispute of workers and the unemployed
therefore has a crucial significance for the masses in the South. The
demands for a guaranteed wage for the unemployed and young people
looking for their first job, the transformation of temporary contracts
into permanent ones, the abolition of the "Treu Package" of
reforms and the laws on employment flexibility must be taken on board
more than ever as the common terrain for the unification of the
alternative social bloc in the South and as an arena for the
recomposition of a class hegemony. In this sense, they must be
directed to a more general anticapitalist programme based on a vast
plan for the re-birth and general development of the South and the
need for a radical fight to support it by all the working-class
movement, in open rupture with the agreement-seeking policies adopted
by the unions until now.
We
must organise fight committees that involve wherever possible workers,
the unemployed, casual labour, migrants and students to support
employment strategies that run counter to the current dominant trends,
including also the objective of nationalising industries that lay off,
evade taxes and welfare contributions, and exploit low-paid workers
(with inadequate safety measures, low salaries, scarce specialisation
and part-time work etc). We must demand the elimination of bourgeois
class privilege as the social policy for the South. The abolition of
bank, commercial and financial secrecy is the only condition for the
fight against tax elusion and evasion. The imposition of a tax on
ordinary and extraordinary patrimonies, a strongly progressive
taxation on profit and high incomes and the abolition of public
funding for private businesses - true State assistance that takes tens
of thousands of billions from the public Treasury - are all essential.
In
conclusion, the historic bloc of the working classes and the Southern
masses, based on the workers and the unemployed, must oppose the
ruling historic bloc of the Northern bourgeoisie and the Southern
bourgeoisie, including its criminal part on the basis of an
anticapitalist programme. And this class bloc is the only way to
transform the southern question into a decisive lever for an
anticapitalist alternative.
FOR
A MASS WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
The
PRC can and must work for the development of a mass women's movement
on the terrain of the recomposition of the anticapitalist, class
opposition.
In
the seventies, the rise of the Italian working class opened up the way
for the development of the women's movement. And, in turn, the women's
struggle erupted dramatically on the stage of political debate, and
Italian culture and society, spreading among the masses and obtaining
important results, even if limited, from the point of view of custom
and law (see maternity laws, L. 194/78).
In
the eighties, the reverses of the working-class movement have dragged
with them a more general involution of democratic sensibility and mass
consciousness and so a reverse of the women's movement. But above all,
in this context, cultural theories developed in the women's movement
that became progressively detached from social and class tenets,
denying the capital/work contradiction and taking on an intellectual,
elitist character. The idealist theories now present in a significant
part of feminist thought - that lead female oppression back to a
biological root and a symbolic masculine code - came to light in that
social, cultural climate.
Today
the renewal in the working-class movement, the crisis in the hegemony
of liberalist policies and the emergence of a new generation have
created new space for the possible re-launching of a mass women's
movement able to involve the most oppressed and exploited sectors of
the female population. And more than ever the PRC must work in this
direction and reject the elitist expressions of feminist thought.
The
social policies of the centre-left government have assailed the
material living conditions of millions of women (Law 40/98 Prodi
government, Bassanini Law in '97 in support of subsidiarity,
regrettably supported by PRC votes). Today, the Berlusconi government
on the one hand gives force to the arrogance of the worst Catholic
fundamentalism (viz. the attack on Law 194) and on the other grafts
the re-launching of the "centrality of the family" onto a
further dismantling of the welfare State. Through fiscal detractions
and laughable child benefits the family, that is the mother, is
spurred on to take on those tasks of care and nurture that were part
of the Welfare State. The privatisation of heath-care and nurseries is
going in the same direction. Women are forced to suffer two-fold the
burden of care for those at risk in this society (the old, the
terminally ill, HIV sufferers, the disabled). And in the meantime they
are the first victims of the attack on jobs (sackings) and the squeeze
on salaries. The oppression of millions of women on many fronts has
increasingly a recognisable, unequivocal social content.
A
class action intended to regroup the greatest mass opposition,
starting from women, must be constructed on this terrain. The fight
against privatisation and against the assault on the welfare state;
the fight for workers' rights and a guaranteed salary for the
unemployed; the fight for the right to a guaranteed, free public
health service; the fight for nurseries and against the closure of
family planning clinics can involve the most oppressed sectors of the
female population in the front line. But it is essential that the
working-class movement takes all this on board as the terrain for
hegemony and recomposition. And the PRC must represent these demands
in the working-class movement (against any attempt at
agreement-seeking) and as the arena for the development of a mass
women's movement.
PRC
has the task of monitoring all women's struggles, taking root in them,
and working to extend and unify them. But it must build a real
connection between immediate objectives and the anticapitalist
perspective, in a transitional logic. And therefore all women's
struggles can only lead to the more general process of emancipation of
the working class for an alternative society and alternative power.
INTERVENTION
ON IMMIGRATION
The
phenomenon of immigration - one of the most blatant examples of the
inequality and imbalance resulting from capitalistic development - is
used by the ruling class to divide and weaken the working class. The
task of the communists in the fight for immigrants' social and
political rights and against xenophobia and racism is an integral part
of the fight to recompose the unity of class and the construction of
an alternative social bloc.
Migration
is one of clearest effects of the contradictions of capitalistic
development and today of war and environmental catastrophes. Italy has
experienced for some time the growing presence of workers coming from
East Europe and the Third World that the ruling class aims to use as a
low-paid workforce with few demands. The closure of the frontiers,
programmed flows and police controls are the salient points of
immigration policies adopted in the last decade and shared by both
centre-left and centre-right, differentiated only by their choice of
words.
Far
from controlling the phenomenon, this repressive policy exasperates
the already difficult living conditions of migrants, creates the
so-called clandestine immigrants, contributes to the distorted
perception of immigration as a criminal phenomenon and fosters
xenophobia and racist prejudice. Moreover, the condition of being
clandestine, the blackmail of expulsion and the threat of xenophobia
make immigrants ready to accept any job on any condition, thereby
making them a factor in the weakening and division of the working
class. Faced with the novelty of immigration, the response of the
working-class movements has been subordinate to the dominant political
tendencies, limited at best to generic humanitarian acts. Even the
PRC, in the context of its support for the Prodi government, bears
responsibility for the Turco-Napolitano law that made our country
conform with the restrictive legislation of Schengen and introduced
concentration camps and deportation for "irregular"
immigrants.
Communists
must be aware that migratory phenomena are a challenge for the
recomposition of the unity of the working class and the construction
of an alternative social bloc. The PRC must be the "tribune of
the people", in defence of immigrant workers, according to
Leninist directives, giving a voice to those that have no voice
because they are the most oppressed. On the one hand, we must work for
unity between foreign and Italian workers; on the other, we must fight
resolutely against xenophobia and racism to construct mass, unitary
response to xenophobic aggression.
First
of all, we must demand the respect for refugee rights, the closure of
the so-called temporary camps, the regularisation of all the
immigrants present on the national territory, the abolition of the
police procedures for residency and work permits, and the putting into
effect of concrete socio-cultural and material measures for their
entry and integration. But our final objective must be the abolition
of all restrictions on entry and full political, social and
citizenship rights for all those who come to our country seeking
better living conditions. At the same time, we must act so that
foreign workers can escape from illegal employment, low salaries and
exploitation, working for their unionisation and full integration in
the working-class movement and its organisations.
In
this general context, priority must be given to the greatest possible
mobilisation against the Bossi-Fini law and the further reactionary
hardening that this represents (annulment of the right to refugee
status, introduction of clandestine immigration as a criminal offence,
condemnation of migrant workers to a life-long flexibility subordinate
to business interests). All this requires, more than before, the
direct adoption of the defence of foreign workers' rights by all the
working-class movement as an integral part of their platform against
the government in order to repudiate it.
THE
PROGRAMME FOR A CLASS ALTERNATIVE
The
PRC is and must be in the front line in the opposition to liberalist
policies. But this must not be limited to a purely defensive action,
although this is a priority. It is, instead, essential that wherever
possible our defence of the welfare state and workers' rights is
linked to an anticapitalist programme against the crisis, namely an
alternative class-based solution. The question of ownership and power
cannot only be empty words: it must be the crux of the party programme
as the central thread of communist action in the working class.
In
recent years, our party has adopted a perspective of capitalist
society reform towards a non-liberalist development model. Any
immediate demand, from a tax on BOT (investment) or a 35 hour working
week, to workers' rights, has been referred back to a reform programme
indicated as the realistic grounds for an alternative society that is
"possible" today and a "plural left" government
that might follow it. The demand for the "Tobin Tax" for a
"social Europe" is a clear example of this line.
This
line, in spite of its presumed realism, has been shown to be
profoundly utopian. Imagining a general reformist solution that is at
the same time compatible with capitalism and progressive means
pursuing a utopia in current historical conditions. The experiences of
the '90s clearly prove this. On the government's part, whether Prodi
or Jospin, the programme of possible reform has been turned on its
head into a counter-reform programme resulting in the heavy communist
co-responsibility for the liberalist policies of capital. On the
opposition's part, the same programme, systematically proposed as the
terrain for discussion with the ruling political forces and the
liberal DS apparatus, has not even been listened to. Continuing to
follow this line means raising neo-reforming illusions among the
workers that communists, as such, must combat.
The
programmatic line of class action must, therefore, be turned upside
down. Communists cannot adopt so-called "tangible and
possible" objectives as their perspective. Instead, they must
construct their own policy on the clear, repeated logic that no
serious social progress can be achieved or consolidated without
discussing, in the final instance, the relations of property and
power. This does not mean, as is obvious, renouncing our immediate,
elementary demands that should be structured and re-grouped in a
precise proposal (general dispute). It means explaining on the basis
of the workers' practical experience, that any reform or eventual
partial conquest, any eventual defence of past conquests, can be
achieved only as a by-product of a general conflict with capitalist
society and its governments (of whatever colour). And only a rupture
with the capitalist relations, only a workers' government based on
their organised force, can hatch a real alternative society.
This
is the real reason why any "compatible" policy line,
apparently concrete, is on the contrary concretely abstract. We must
identify on every terrain a system of demands that on the one hand
accords with the specific concreteness of the class struggle and on
the other prefigures a general anticapitalist outcome, free of any
reformist illusions.
The
defence of the social conquests of the working-class movement from
these assaults, and the development and extension of social rights as
universal rights represent our essential programme demands. But to
achieve them, we must not only fight for the abolition of the
liberalist counter-reforms already carried out, but also a
re-allocation of welfare spending of the new, immense resources. It is
unrealistic to imagine that the re-negotiation of the stability pact
within an imperialist Europe can solve the problem. On the other hand,
we must propose the "liberation" of at least three hundred
billion lire through the elimination of unacceptable bourgeois
privileges:
-
the abolition of financial, commercial and banking secrecy as the only
concrete condition for the real fight against fiscal evasion and
elusion;
-
an ordinary and extraordinary capital tax on the very wealthy;
-
a large increase in taxation on high profits and incomes that have
grown thanks to government policies over the last years;
-
the abolition of public funding for private business - true state
assistance for capital that costs the Treasury tens of thousands of
billions;
-
the unilateral abolition of the public debt with full guarantees for
small savers;
These
demands represent the real, possible instruments to finance a new
social policy for the working masses, the unemployed, the young,
pensioners and the renaissance of the South.
At
the same time, especially in this age of crises and huge capitalist
concentration, any serious redistribution of wealth clashes with
bourgeois ownership. Any design of a new development model that
answers the needs of the workers, the unemployed, the poor in the
South means questioning the ownership of strategic sectors of the
economy in the framework of a basic alternative for society, of
alternative power.
In
this sense, the V Congress must urge the PRC to develop a coherent
anticapitalist campaign, not in ideological terms but based on the
experience of the masses. For example, the food pollution by the huge
alimentary industries, protected by the European Commission,
necessitates worker and consumer control of production and the
abolition of commercial secrecy as a guarantee of social self-defence.
The oil industry's speculation over petrol prices requires their
accounts to be made public under the control of consumers and society.
The repeated, chronic scandals in the pharmaceutical industry,
damaging health and life-threatening, render necessary the
nationalisation of the industry without indemnity under social
control. Any criminal action of profit against the majority of society
must be linked to the impelling need for an anticapitalist response as
the only, fundamental solution.
At
the same time, the question of ownership must be posed in the dynamics
of the movements' struggle with simple, pure spontaneity, without
being modified. In the peace movement, within a more general
anti-imperialist line, the demand for the expropriation of the defence
industry without indemnity and under worker control must be adopted.
In the environmentalist movement, the private ownership of polluting
industries must be called into question as the vital condition for a
real re-conversion. More in general, the question of private ownership
has been objectively posed by the resistance movements as part of
their strategy to defend jobs in today's crisis and re-structuring of
industry. The demand for the nationalisation of industry in crisis,
without indemnity and under worker control, can become an element for
unity on a strategically crucial front even if it is unstructured and
fragmented.
Moreover,
workers must understand that the nationalisation we propose has
nothing to do with the traditional "cathedrals in the
desert" of nationalised industry. Indeed, communists fight for
nationalisation without indemnity (with the necessary guarantees for
small savers) because this indemnity has already been "paid
for" by the workers' exploitation and public funding. They fight
so that under new nationalisation the workers and public will have the
instruments to control it in a self-organised, democratic, mass
council. They fight against any illusion of a mixed economy and the
democratisation of capitalism, linking the demand for nationalisation
to the perspective of an alternative system.
THE
ROLE OF THE CHURCH AND THE ANTICLERICAL BATTLE
The
communist opposition must recover a coherent proposal on the social
terrain of democratic demands. With a new campaign for the abolition
of the Agreement between the State and Church, we must change the
policy we have so far adopted towards the papacy and the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The
PRC must start a widespread political campaign for the abolition of
the State-Church Agreement, changing the contradictory, confused
positions that have been held until now with respect to the Catholic
Church. The guarantee repeatedly given to a presumed papal
"anti-capitalism" in the logic of a common
"approval" has been a grave error for our party.
The
Vatican still represents, as it always has, a bulwark of the existing
order. The material links between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and
capitalist property in banking, property and land constitute the
material basis for this conservative function. The formal position of
the "openness" of the Church towards social issues or
anti-globalisation, and its criticism of the absolutism of profit do
indeed represent a real anti-capitalism, but they are part of a more
general ideological anti-materialism or an open
"competition" with and fight against Marxism for the minds
of the oppressed masses. Furthermore, the fundamentalist nature of
ecclesiastical institutions has always been expressed in the
reactionary position of the papacy on civil rights, women's right to
choose, homosexual and lesbian rights and education. In particular,
women's crucial fight in defence of law 194 (re. Abortion) has found
its declared enemy in the Church apparatus.
The
political convergence between ecclesiastical interests and the
Berlusconi government on many grounds has significantly increased the
importance of our fight against ecclesiastical hierarchies. Of course,
the PRC is not and must not be an "ideological" party:
Marxism must be conceived of as a programme for transformation, not a
creed. The conquest of sectors of the Catholic masses to a socialist
perspective is an important aspect of the revolutionary strategy,
especially in a context that now sees every Catholic group of young
people present in the anti-globalisation movement. But this is exactly
what impels us to expose, once and for all, the stark contradictions
between the progressive needs of those sectors and the reactionary
nature of the Church, based on the class struggle and the battle for
democratic demands.
In
this picture, today, on the back of the open conflict over private
schooling and women's freedom, the demand for the abolition of the
Agreement and the end of the material and symbolic privileges it
confers on the Church has become very significant.
THE
NATURE OF THE PARTY
The
proposal to "supersede the vanguard function" of the party,
in favour of its "contamination" by grass roots movements,
represents a grave risk for the PRC and could damage the movements
themselves. The analysis of the last decade of party experience and
the inception of a strategic and political change of direction reveal
the need for the real construction of the communist party as the
central instrument in the fight for an anticapitalist hegemony.
The
very nature of the party, its function and its forms of organisation
and life cannot be separated from the programme that the party follows
and the character of its policies. On the contrary, programme and
party policy inevitably share the same stamp. During its 10 year
history, in the context of the institutional and political choices and
the abandonment of a strategic anticapitalist project, our party has
progressively succumbed to a series of largely recognisable
pathologies: the cyclical scission of the party's institutional
representation, at various levels; a scarce involvement of the
militant members in the definition and discussion of the options,
insufficient transparency in the political discussion within the
party, in the eyes of the members; and the lack of a robust network of
cadres, which have all contributed to the deep, lasting crisis in its
social class rooting. In other words, our party has defended its own
existence but in many ways it has not built anything up. It has become
an important venue for aggregation, an instrument for mobilisation and
an institutional political presence, but it has not developed a
collective party life or any real impact on the dynamics of the class
struggle. The need for a change of direction derives from this
analysis, in order to make up for lost time and work for the
construction of a party and hence new policies: the policies of an
anticapitalist alternative and the corresponding hegemony of the
movements. These are the only policies that can really motivate,
beyond a mere call to arms, a culture of organisation, training,
militancy and social rooting…
Instead,
the proposal that is now put forward is exactly the opposite. On the
one hand it confirms the continuity of a strategic political line
nationally and locally, while on the other it proposes a greater
dilution of the party in the movements within a renewed direct attack,
greater than ever before, on the very concept of "hegemony".
The thesis that the "vanguard" function of the party should
now be "definitively superseded", the concept of "equal
dignity" between the party institutions and the movement and the
explicit criticism of the very concepts of "circles" and
"federations", opting instead for the
"contamination" of the movement, all make up a deeply
negative tendency. Instead of finally developing the party's hegemony
in the movements, for the first time the principle of the hegemony of
the movements over the party has been theorised. And so the invitation
to open up to the movements, in itself extremely important, is
transformed into the risk of our dissolution into the movement itself
or the transformation of our own structures into indistinct parts of
the movement. The paradoxical outcome would not be the strengthening
of the party but the contrary: the dispersion of its forces and a
further uprooting to the damage both of the party and the movement
itself.
THE
PARTY, HEGEMONY, THE MOVEMENT
We
must build the PRC as a communist party in the Leninist Gramscian
sense of an intellectual collective, fighting for the anticapitalist
hegemony of the working class and mass movements. Recovering and
putting into effect the Leninist concept of the party is crucial for
the real construction of the PRC, especially in this season of the
renewal of the movements. Outside or against the Gramscian culture of
hegemony, any defence of the "party form" is reduced to
weak, empty rhetoric.
The
class struggle and mass movements are the central lever for socialist
change. This means that the task of promoting, extending and
developing movements for this struggle and the deep rooting in the
movements and their dynamics are the basic tasks of a communist party.
Anything acting outside the mass movements, any attempt to distance
ourselves - however it may be motivated - does not represent the
"defence" of the party but, on the contrary, a compromise on
the anticapitalist project that is the very basis of the communist
party. Therefore, this type of action must be strongly opposed
culturally and politically within the PRC.
But
our participation in the movements at the deepest level must be
adopted as the lever for a battle for hegemony, not as the flag for
its removal. In the Leninist and Gramscian sense - in antithesis to
the theoretical and practical line of Stalinism - "hegemony"
does not mean "administrative control", the call for the
party's "primacy" within the movements. On the contrary, it
means a loyal, free, ideal political struggle to lead the movements to
a revolutionary perspective, in open opposition to the reformist,
bureaucratic cultural and political tendencies. In the absence of this
struggle the raison d'etre for a communist party would be lost, and
the basic tenets of the movements themselves would be compromised. The
experience of the 20th century demonstrates that the greatest, most
radical mass movements, without a conscious revolutionary line and
under the hegemony of reformist forces, are destined to failure and
defeat. The old revisionist theory of the late 19th century, according
to which "the movement is everything, the end is nothing"
(Bernstein), has been radically belied by history. It cannot be
re-proposed, in any form, as the "new" principle for
communist refoundation.
The
theory that the Leninist and Gramscian conception of hegemony has now
been superseded since it was based on the old separation between
"pre-political movements" and "doctrine" (instead
of the latent anti-capitalism of the current movements) radically
misinterprets both the past and the present. The representation of the
movements as an apolitical mass and the party as "doctrine"
distorts the Marxist conception of both movements and the party. Any
movement of the lower classes, even if limited, has its political
potential: it moves new impulses and ideas, develops the experience of
the protagonists and enriches their awareness. In this sense, every
movement reveals its "latent anti-capitalism". The decisive
function of the party is not to impose doctrine on the apolitical
movements, but to use as a lever the progressive sentiments deep
inside the movement and the active dynamics of the struggle that
accompany these sentiments so that the latent anti-capitalism of the
movements may become anticapitalist political awareness. This quantum
leap in consciousness will not come about "spontaneously".
Our party must work tenaciously and methodically, because the
communist party alone holds the historical memory of the lessons of
the class struggle that no contingent movement can possess. Only the
communist party can fight in a concentrated, organised way to free the
movements from the control of the old apparatus of the neo-reformist
cultural influences that dug their grave. The Party's vanguard
function as a "intellectual collective" has its real roots
in this decisive task.
Moreover,
far from being superseded, the Leninist concept of the party is even
more relevant today. In a situation marked by the renewal of the
movements in the new generation and the long historical gap between
revolutionary Marxism and the young, the function of the party is even
more crucial if this consciousness is to be developed, to bring a
general political vision to the movements and to apply a Marxist
reading and interpretation of events. At the same time, the
splintering in the working class, under the weight of the last twenty
years, which has often been seen as a sign of the "sunset"
of the party, proves more than ever its central function. It is a
factor for a counter-tendency, for the social recomposition of an
alternative bloc and in this a hegemony of the anticapitalist class.
In turn, just as the party is the crucial instrument for hegemony,
only the policy of hegemony can be the cornerstone of a communist
party. Outside or against the Leninist and Gramscian conception of
hegemony, any defence of the "party form", however sincere,
is reduced to mere empty words.
REFORM
OF THE PRC, NOT ITS DILUTION IN THE MOVEMENT
Just
because it brings the anticapitalist, revolutionary project to the
movements, the party cannot dilute its own structures in the movement.
On the contrary, it must defend and develop them as the specific
instruments for mass action. This requires a far-reaching reform of
the present constitution of the PRC.
A
communist party, as an "intellectual collective" needs
primarily to develop its own organisation, autonomously, as the
instrument for action in the class struggle. The theory that there is
"equal dignity" between the party and the grass roots
movements within the logic of a reciprocal osmosis and a reciprocal
"contamination" is deeply regressive. It dissolves an
objective diversity of functions and structures into abstract
equivalent values. It is not a question of undermining the sovereign
autonomy of the movements and their structures, which should be
respected and defended. Nor is it a question of denying what the
movement's experience can bring to the party, which should be enriched
by all real relations with the masses. On the contrary, it means
taking the communist revolutionary project into the heart of the
movement and its autonomous structures, within the active
participation of their construction. Therefore, the organisation of
the communist party, its autonomous development and its organised
rooting must be absolutely distinct from the movement. Without the
collective assimilation and understanding of this relationship between
the vanguard organisation and mass action, the PRC is destined to
waver, in its real life, between an institutional separation from the
movements and the political dissolution of its real role in favour of
a naïve identification with the movements. And it often combines both
these aspects. The adoption of the policy of an anticapitalist
hegemony within the movements requires in turn the far-reaching reform
of our party. First of all, the concept of a party that is able to
provide an institutional presence but is not
"institutionalist" must be affirmed. That is to say, a party
that does not opt for vote-grabbing policies, but asks for votes for
its policies; a party that does not subordinate its mass actions to
its institutional representation but subordinates its representation
to mass action, developing social opposition and the recomposition of
an anticapitalist bloc. The mass nature of the party lies, first of
all, in its daily projection towards the conquest of the lower
classes. This requires a social rooting in the workplace and on the
territory, the development and training of militants and cadres and a
constant, vigilant control of its institutional representatives who
must be considered the party's representatives in the institutions and
not the institutions' representatives in the party. To this end, the
party and its organisms, at all levels, must be encouraged to
formulate verifiable, concrete projects for the social rooting and the
vitality of the structure, outside any mere projection of image, or
race to meet the election deadline.
PARTY
DEMOCRACY
This
far-reaching political reform of our conception and construction of
the party requires an equally far-reaching reform of its democracy as
the decisive terrain for communist refoundation.
We
need to make all comrades "the landlords" in the common
party, to encourage not marginalise our young comrades, and enhance
not suffocate the spirit of initiative and independent judgement that
is essential for a vital party. Above all, we must let all the
militants participate in decision-making at the various levels of the
party because democratically-defined policies are those that gain most
support in practice while options imposed from above, even when
shared, do not mobilise energies and initiative.
At
the same time, each comrade's right to follow the debates, decisions
and different positions in the party and to contribute wholeheartedly
(and not with vague impressions gathered from a hostile press) must be
defended. In this sense, an instrument for internal national debate is
necessary, with minutes and acts from the directive organisms,
starting from the national Committee, and ample space for
contributions from the federations, circles, individuals or groups of
militants. At the same time, Liberazione must be open for comment from
all the party and respect its democratic life without any political
interference from the journalists or editors.
Furthermore,
it is necessary that the training of comrades - that must be taken on
board as a crucial issue in the party - is conceived as the real
development of internal democracy, because only the development of
awareness, competence and preparation can reinforce the autonomy of
judgement and so the real freedom of evaluation.
In
general, we need a party of free and equal individuals who make the
constant struggle against bureaucracy and discrimination in the party
the new code for its actual construction. Therefore, the faculty of
initiative in the circles without any bureaucratic control from the
federation must be re-established, and the role and nature of the
current regional executives greatly revised. The right of the
federations to designate their electoral candidates at the different
levels must be re-established and affirmed, against any imposition
from above in the party.
Finally,
our party must combine the necessary unity of external action -
fundamental in the battle for hegemony - with the wider freedom of
internal discussion and full respect for minority rights (starting
from the possibility of becoming in turn the majority). Only full
internal democracy and real (not formal) equal dignity between all the
positions can lead to the conception and practice of a party of free
and equal individuals and above all can legitimise our unity in
external action as the absolute, deep-rooted principle of all the
party. In this sense, any prejudice or discrimination against
political components of the party must be abandoned at all levels with
respect to its institutional representation and its executive
structures.
In
addition, our experience has shown that the real risk for the unity of
the party does not lie in the free, loyal discussion of different
political opinions, but in silent bureaucratic manoeuvring, a clannish
spirit and the logic of bureaucratic fractions and factions that until
a few moments before had perhaps proclaimed the need for a unanimity
of vote and the "discipline" of the party.
YOUNG
COMMUNISTS
Young
communists have great potential for growth in this phase. But the
battle to build political hegemony among the young on an alternative
revolutionary project requires strengthening the organisation of the
Young Communists and above all their alternative political character,
outside any hypothesis of dilution in the abstract
"antagonist" areas present in the movements (viz. the
"white boilersuits" in the no-global movement).
The
V Congress of Rifondazione Communista must pay particular attention to
the question of the young who have taken on a strategic role in the
class struggle in Italy. The young - workers, students, or unemployed
- have suffered more than any other group from ten years of
neo-liberalist policies that the successive governments have
undertaken. In some areas of the country, in particular the South, the
cohorts of unemployed are to a great extent made up of young men and
women. For many, the only alternative to their current social
condition is to accept illicit employment, usually underpaid and often
in sectors controlled by organised crime. The situation of those who
manage to find more or less regular employment is less tragic, but no
less difficult. Recently, especially after the so-called "Treu
Package" became law, unfortunately approved by our party too, we
have seen a-typical employment develop (training contracts,
apprenticeship, co-ordinated collaboration, VAT-registered employment
etc) which in reality has become the "typical" way for the
young to enter the world of work. These forms of employment have had
extremely high social costs: they have meant low salaries, an increase
in workload, less union and contractual protection and the lack of
respect for health and safety conditions in factories and offices
(accounting for the enormous number of deaths and injuries in the
workplace). In short, there is now a situation of perennial
precariousness that leads to economic blackmail by the bosses. In
education, we have seen a systematic attack on state education, to the
advantage of private schools, started by the Ulivo ministers
Berlinguer and De Mauro and now brought to its logical conclusion by
minister Moratti. The plan to create parity between public and private
schools that would provide regional and state funding for the latter
and billions in cuts in state schooling, the creation of a single
register for state and private school teachers (the latter employed on
the basis of their loyalty to the ideology of the private schools -
mostly religious), the institution of the headmaster-manager, and the
investments business has made in the universities in order to
determine the didactic choices, all make the class character of
education in Italy clearer than ever before. The reactionary campaigns
that have been launched in recent years concerning sexual freedom
(homophobia, the hypothesis of limiting the right to abortion, etc)
and the fight against drug use, particularly addressed to the young,
can be added to all this. If this is the situation that the young are
forced to endure, it is no wonder that they play a front-line role in
the mobilisation that has marked the "thawing" of class
conflict. In this context, therefore, our party and its youth
organisation must adopt a political programme for intervention within
these movements to develop the fight for hegemony.
As
capitalism increasingly demonstrates its incapacity to guarantee a
future for the new generations, then an organisation that fights to
overturn it and create a socialist class alternative can answer the
legitimate aspirations of the young and earn their trust politically.
Therefore, a policy that, starting from the actual levels of
consciousness present in the movements, links them to the need for a
more general fight against capitalism is essential. It must be
explained that only in the perspective of a change of system can their
aspirations for an adequate salary, stable employment and a school
that is not subject to the diktat of capital be satisfied. On the
contrary, the recent choice, made by the current leaders of the Young
Communists, to create a political, organisation bloc with the
"white boilersuits" (Casarini) and the No Global Network
(Caruso) in order to create an area of "social disobedience"
must be rejected. Obviously, the possibility of making tactical
alliances with certain groups is not in discussion. But there is the
risk that as a result, beyond their subjective will, the action for
the construction of a young organisation for refoundation as the
driving force and potential hegemonic element in the mobilisation
might take a back seat, especially in a phase in which the membership
in our youth organisation is growing and full investment here is
necessary. Above all, this choice means the Young Communists'
structures run the risk of a subordinate dilution in an aggregation
with confused political tenets - a mixture of generic
"antagonism" and an anti-party, reformist involvement in the
movements - that would, in practice, make "disobedience" a
hurdle and not one of the stages in the plan for constructing a
communist hegemony among the young generations. Therefore, for all
these reasons, a political change of direction is needed in the Party
and in the Young Communists, who will tackle these issues in their
next national Conference.
Marco
Ferrando, Ivana Aglietti, Claudio Bellotti, Vito Bisceglie, Anna
Ceprano, Franco Grisolia, Luigi Izzo, Matteo Malerba, Francesco Ricci
and Michele Terra (PRC National Political Committee)