A-Infos (en) Italy, FdCA Council of Delegates statement: The Third Republic... news? [it]

THE THIRD REPUBLIC: NEWS? ----- The short-lived Prodi government made 
practically no difference to the country's economic and social situation, the 
result of five years of pillage by the "House of Freedom" [1] government from 
2001 to 2006. In its 20 months of existence, its priorities of balancing the 
books and bringing the country into line with European policy were held to be 
more important than any policy, no matter how weak, of redistributing wealth to 
the employed or any policy that would lead to an increase in social rights and 
civil liberties. Part of the responsibility for this policy line goes to those 
parties with the "Union" [2] that later went on to set up the "Rainbow Left" [3] 
coalition. Their annihilation in the elections speaks for itself. The Democratic 
Party now dominates the political scene and has become electorally stable. The 
Italian right has confirmed its hold over the country, though the international 
economic situation that threatens recession should prove to
  be a brake on its designs. The employers' federation, Confindustria, is 
heartened by the government's stability and will now seek once and for all to 
put an end to national labour contracts, knowing that it can count on compliant 
unions like the CISL, the UIL and even part of the CGIL.


Social struggles, capital and the State

Anarchist Communists believe it is worth repeating on occasions such as this in 
the aftermath of these elections, that it is only by developing the struggles in 
the workplace, in schools and in the community can the social classes who today 
are exploited and impoverished by neo-liberal policies succeed in keeping the 
bosses and capital at bay. But victory or defeat in the struggles does not 
depend on how many seats the Left has in Parliament, but on to what extent the 
struggles (in the form of organized, political and mass struggles) can defend 
and preserve a great enough environment of political freedom to move, in order 
to ensure those basic freedoms which can allow the exploited classes' opposition 
to grow and develop.

Every day, outside the newly-elected Parliament, the daily social conflict goes 
on, grassroots bodies organize and struggle in the workplaces and in the 
community, opposing the social and cultural degradation forced on us by 
neo-liberalism and repressive, security-obsessed policies. Today's Parliament, 
just like yesterday's, represents much less than social conflict and is 
increasingly just a meeting-place for political parties to rubber-stamp the 
policies of the bosses. Governments and parliaments have never been neutral; 
they are places where economic and military power, the power of social control 
and the power over the media are all concentrated in order to enable the 
exploitation to continue. So the conditions that are necessary to resist this 
devastating attack can never be built in the corridors of power.


The situation in Italy and internationally

The anarchist communist political organization does not base its analysis of 
election results on principles but on the more concrete plane of real dynamics; 
thus, in order to fully understand what is happening in Italy today, it must be 
seen in the light of what is happening elsewhere in the world.

In areas where capitalism is strong and developed, particularly in Europe, the 
national forms of bourgeois democracy have by now become outdated structures of 
dominion, since the processes of globalization increasingly require the 
strengthening of supra-national decision-making centres and the management of 
economic resources on a macro-regional level. Everything that globalization has 
done over the last 15 years (the concentration of power and of wealth, the 
creation of vast, continental commercial areas, the new division of labour 
within these areas with migratory fluxes, massive processes for the expulsion of 
manpower, the planned creation of poor areas, areas surrounding military 
conflict zones, etc.) confirms the need for social opposition to be carried out 
strategically, on an extra-parliamentary and international level.
This does not mean that national government policies no longer exist or that 
they cannot be fought and defeated by social opposition. It means that if it 
seeks to be successful, this opposition must develop outside and in contrast to 
bourgeois parliamentary institutions and on an international level.

The traditional anarchist communist call to fight capital and the State 
(capital's political face) is thus still a valid call. We must always favour the 
extra-institutional terrain because only thus can there be the direct 
involvement of the masses in the struggle and only thus can their political 
consciousness develop.


So is this the Third Republic?

The parties that won the elections of 13-14 April are the victors in a clash 
that is entirely an internal affair within the Italian bourgeoisie. It is a 
clash into which they have dragged classes and sectors of the people whose 
interests and history have nothing to do with the bourgeoisie, and whose support 
was won by means of political and ideological propaganda which hoodwinked them 
into believing that the bourgeoisie and the workers share common interests. The 
institutional Left was massacred and paid dearly for the ambiguity of the 
inter-class alliances of recent years. While the disappearance of the 
institutional Left from Parliament may be considered a defeat for the cultural 
climate in Italy and the resulting vacuum may be cause for worry, as may the 
fact that even such a weak guarantor of democratic rights such as this has now 
disappeared, the effects will be felt less in the ability of the grassroots to 
mobilize and more in the Rainbow Left's
  claim to represent the movements and in its role as mediator with the 
institutions. The political class that led it has not survived the ostracism 
that it all too easily accepted from the Democratic Party.

And although the DP was defeated (no surprises there), it has been confirmed as 
a powerful centrist political force of the sort that is needed to turn Italy 
into a country that can better respond to the demands of the global markets. 
While it is a minority in Parliament, it does also represent certain social 
sectors and interests that coincide with the People of Freedom, which in turn 
will thus have to take the DP into consideration.

Berlusconi is back in government (without ever really leaving) much strengthened 
by the providential success of the Lega Nord, even in the factories. Yes, the 
factories, where the culture of solidarity and collective class interests has 
been washed away by individualism and by desperation for immediate gains, where 
the proposal for wage ceilings and fiscal federalism is presented to the workers 
as an inter-class form of geography-based redistribution of income.

The political circus is preparing itself for a farce where all that is at stake 
is a continuation of the current power set-up, with the non-secondary effect of 
turning the political-institutional game in this country into simply a copy of 
that in the other European countries, sucking all the life out of the Italian 
workers' movement, a movement that has up to now been one of the most vital and 
radical, constructive and original.

As for us, faced with a road that has been clearly marked out for some time 
(going from Berlusconi to Berlusconi), we feel strengthened and surer than ever 
of the need to dedicate all our energies to the class struggle, to the defence 
of the workers (including precarious and immigrant workers), to the 
reconstruction of their organizations, ready to defend our freedom for political 
action, even though we know this freedom will soon face new limits.

Our objective remains that of strengthening class unity with all those whose 
political and social activity is aimed at promoting, stimulating and motivating 
all forms of self-organization, seeking to unify the various struggles, to build 
networks and multiple poles of collective resistance and solidarity in the wider 
battle against Capital and the State.

Council of Delegates
FEDERAZIONE dei COMUNISTI ANARCHICI

27 April 2008


Notes:

1. Casa delle Libertà, centre-right coalition made up of Forza Italia, Alleanza 
Nazionale, Lega Nord, and various other christian-democratic, republican, 
social-democratic and neo-fascist parties. The coalition regrouped under the new 
name the "People of Freedom" (Popolo della Libertà - PdL) for the recent 
elections. It is planned to transform the PdL into a single party later in the year.
2. Unione, centre-left coalition made up of Democratici di Sinistra (DS), 
Democrazia è Libertà, Rifondazione Comunista (PRC), Federazione dei Verdi (Verdi 
), Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI) and various other social-democratic, 
radical and christian-democratic parties. The centrist majority of the Union 
merged into the new Democratic Party before the recent elections.
3. La Sinistra - L'Arcobaleno, left-wing coalition consisting of PRC, PdCI, 
Verdi and Sinstra Democratica (split from DS).

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