25th April: Resistance and Class Struggle!

The Resistance of 1943-45 was not the only Resistance. The Resistance was also the long struggle against Nazism and Fascism that involved millions of people. Fascism and nazism were, in the words of Luigi Fabbri in 1922, the "preventive counter-revolution" designed to crush the mass movements against the capitalist structure which had received a boost in the years following the First World War, in that long battle that anarchists call the "class struggle". The most authoritarian regimes have always been in the service of economic forces which wage war on the emancipating struggles of the workers. They are a tool of capitalist domination. And this is something which was fully understood by all those who, united in struggle, fought in the resistance.

Anarchist Communists do not forget those who struggled against the terrible fascist and nazi dictatorships. In these days of celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Liberation, we remember those who fought and those who died, men and women fired by a libertarian spirit who engaged in the armed and unarmed Resistance for the true Liberation of Italy and Europe from Nazi-Fascism. The Liberation of Italy was the work of the people who rebelled against Nazi-Fascist domination, but who were stopped from bringing it to its completion and realizing a complete change in society by the occupying forces, by the political forces who were their allies and by the "democratic" compromises made by the Communist Party.

Today though, while we remember the struggles of the last century against the forces of reaction, struggles which the Resistance was an important part of, we are witnessing a new growth in Nazi and Fascist groups, hiding behind their business suits the desire to fight all those who hold dear the values of the Resistance, who even demand "parity" of recognition between the partisans and the "repubblichini", the fascist supporters of Mussolini's Italian Social Republic. The dead cannot speak, but we can speak for them and it is up to us to declare that they will not succeed.

Let it also be clearly understood by those who continue to call themselves "the left" but who were often the very ones who allowed the fascists to open up offices. Just a few days ago, the mayor of Pontedera closed down the offices of Forza Nuova for reasons of public order. The presence of fascist forces was inadmissible, he claimed. But who was it who allowed them to turn themselves into a regular party?

Today, just as yesterday, in order to defeat the plans of the reactionaries, we must:

• take up the internationalist, anti-capitalist struggle for the unity of the workers, Italian or otherwise, for the protection of individual freedoms in all areas, for the respect of all people of all social condition or origin;
• struggle united against the presence of all those forces who are inspired by fascist ideology until such times as they are defeated for ever;
• promote a class opposition which accepts no compromises and which demands and practises those values of opposition to the capitalist system for which men and women have sacrificed their lives;
• take up the tradition of the Resistance, which in practice means the class struggle for the realization of a world of free and equal people.

On the 25th April 1945, the men and women who marched through the streets still had in their eyes the vision of the brutalities of the fascist and nazi regimes they had so bitterly fought; but in their hearts they had the hope of a totally different world, where economic freedom and respect for the rights of all would be the basis of a new society.

Their struggle, our struggle, goes on.

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici

25 April 2005