ITALY: A LAND FIT FOR DEMOLISHING

 

The Italian government and Italian capital are busy demolishing what was born from anti-fascist resistance and from the social battles of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It is apparently as a result of their desperation, fully conscious as it may be, to turn Italy into a mega-corporation under the control of the new right and its new boss, Baron Berlusconi.

 During the time of the 3 centre-left governments from 1996 to 2001, it was known as the “modernization” of the country in order to turn Italy into a “normal” country. They were to be 5 years of crazed “reforms” (sic!) of all of what was good in the social organization of the country, not to mention the fundamental labour rights, “reformed” with the connivance of the traditional unions, Cgil, Cisl and Uil. Today’s centre-right governing coalition is continuing this job of dismantling and deconstruction but with greater attention being paid, both to the big picture of progressive privatizations of the public aspects of social life, and in the processes of the subordination of the Italian and migrant proletariat to the interests of capital. 

IS YOUR ECONOMY GOING DOWN THE DRAIN? WELL THEN, SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!

This is the slogan which the government is using in order to affront the present situation at the limits of recession: growth for 2002 is 0.4% and the forecast for 2003 is possibly 1.4%; the debt is at 110.3%; wages have increased by 2.3% while official inflation is at +2.8% (though REAL inflation is at 3.5%). Given the situation, public-sector pay increases are fixed at just 1.4%; the government has approved a law on total labour flexibility and is about to pass another on the freedom to dismiss and on the pension system. This attack on wages, employment and social security is on a vast scale. 

At the same time it looks on contentedly while the whole country is prey to devastating de-industrialization. The crisis in the industrial sector (with Fiat at the head), the food sector (Cirio), and telecommunications (Marconi) is affecting thousands of workers, with repercussions also in related industries. The Fiat crisis in particular is affecting the entire country from north to south, and the agreement between the company and the government of 5th December provides for unrelenting re-sizing with the initial loss of 8,100 factory jobs and the future prospect of turning factory workers into nurses, supermarket check-out staff, security guards and cleaning staff for shopping centres! The progressive withdrawal of Fiat from a strategic sector such as the automobile sector can only have extremely worrying effects on industrial employment in Italy. And its partner, General Motors, does not promise much better, either. 

THE STATE LOOKS AFTER YOU FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE, … BUT YOU ARE THE ONES WHO PAY!

Theories on the “light” State are interpreted just as coherently, if not more so, by the centre-right government than by the centre-left colleagues. The 2003 Budget provides for a series of cuts in public spending, particulary savage in the areas of education (all levels), research, local government agencies (regarding the health service, social services etc.). On the other hand, it provides for tax benefits for individual workers who it is thought can help to slow down the increasing costs of social services or who can obtain these services elsewhere, on the market. Those things which were entitlements (education, assistance, health, pensions etc.) become opportunities available at a market price. So we get the situation where there are cuts in the provision of teachers for the disabled, whose families then have to turn to private structures in order to obtain assistance (most of which structures are in the hands of the Catholic church, naturally. Many of the services provided by local agencies (transport, assistance to the disabled, the old, migrants etc.) will cost more and may be farmed out to private (Catholic) agencies ... at market prices, of course. In the wake of the privatization of public utilities along comes the next step in the subversive plan, a step which is dear to the hearts of the centre-left too. It is called subsidiarity, and provides for public institutions to intervene in social matters only when, wait for it, the private sector is not or cannot dealing with it! How? By financing the private sector, of course! 

The close connection between this strategy and the law on devolution which provides for the transfer of powers in the fields of education, health and local policing to the various regions, definitively destroys the equality of rights, the very concept of collective interests, the very dimension of proletarian unity on a national level, by atomizing everything into single needy individuals and single personal interests rather than at a level of class. 

Furthermore, the insistence with which Italian capitalists demand an end to the days of collective national work contracts to clear the way for separate company contracts or individual contracts, rounds off the scene in a country which risks collapse and the annihilating of social rights and liberties. 

THE CGIL KNOCKS ONCE ... BUT NOT TWICE!

Following the big general strike of the "base" unions in February 2002, the CGIL got a bit of a jolt. Its tactics suddenly became more radical, it placed itself in firm opposition to the government and it came out in defence of Article 18 of the Workers' Statute (1971) which protects workers from unfair dismissal and which the government wants to abolish. Not one, but two general strikes made the workers once more hopeful about the CGIL, after many years of disappointment. They even sacrificed the unity with the CISL and UIL, who both signed the "Pact for Italy" with the government, thereby authorizing greater flexibility in the jobs market, with exceptions on Article 18 in exchange for tax promises. It is above all the FIOM (CGIL industrial workers) which is dragging Italy's biggest union along with it, having abandoned the tactic of partnership in industrial areas. The renewed combativity of the CGIL on a national level can be traced to a series of political factors, including:

The CGIL, therefore, is not shifting its strategic axis towards a more radical, anti-capitalist approach to syndicalism – it is standing against the present government in order to regain, to reconquer its central role in co-determining the country’s socio-economic choices. It should be remembered that this role of the CGIL (together with the CISL and UIL) played a large part during the ‘90s in the need for the formation and the expansion of grassroots unions in Italy, not to mention the somewhat hurried accusation of “state union” made by certain commentators, anarchist and otherwise. It goes without saying that the CGIL’s potential force is still impressive and goes beyond the power of its capacity to attract sectors of the social opposition (social centres, the “disobedient” etc.) with the capability of overshadowing other contributions to the struggle against the government. CGIL speak with forked tongue, though. Its massive national opposition to the government is not backed up with coherent action when it comes to agreeing contracts, and it is here that it re-discovers its unity with the CISL and UIL, signing agreements like in the days of “partnership”. Serious as they may be, they are actions which are destined to remain in the shadows of the the social opposition movement, except for the base unions. 

THE BASE UNIONS

The Cobas Confederation, RdB/CUB, CIB Unicobas, SLAI Cobas, S.in.Cobas, and USI are the most important of the base unions on the basis of the sector, company or town where they grew from. They operate both in the public and private sectors and are generally excluded from discussions on the creation of new national labour contracts, although they have had some excellent results in union elections in the workplace. Their contribution to the union opposition movement is more global – they are opposed to the modifications to Art.18, but also to the decentralized agreements that the CGIL-CISL-UIL trio continue to make. On 18th October they organized separate marches to those of the CGIL on the occasion of the General Strike, and won considerable support with their slogan “United on the day, but separate in our objectives”. A certain inclination for squabbling as a result of rivalry between the various base unions has meant that they fail to cooperate on much else than unitary demonstrations, so even though the CGIL is criticized for its ambiguity, the base unions, on the other hand, do not offer a solid alternative which would have a wide, unified presence. It should be said that life is made harder for the base unions by the obstacles to union representation that are put in their way by the CGIL-CISL-UIL. The base unions, however, have by now reached the position of being real protagonists in the union and social struggles in those places where they are strongest. The general strike for the schools and public sectors called by the RdB/CUB, Cobas Confederation and CIB Unicobas on 6th December was joined by 25% of the workers in those sectors and brought 50,000 people onto the streets of Rome. 

AGAINST WAR, AGAINST REPRESSION

Union struggles are closely intertwined with social struggles. From the struggles of migrants for rights  to peace demonstrations culminating on 9th November in Florence to demonstrations against repression, the opposition movement is growing both in size and in popular participation. The arrests of activists in both Cosenza and Genoa brought a reply not only from militants, but from the 2 towns themselves. The State is afraid of this growth in struggle and also of the links between the social and union struggles. Repression is being used as a weapon of intimidation to frighten and foster insecurity, above all in the South where discontent is high. The magistracy apparently wishes to pin the movement down to the days in Genoa in 2001, by forcing it to reconstruct the events and declare that Giuliani was not killed for reasons of legitimate defence, but was murdered and that the incidents were provoked by the police and carabinieri. And this strange game of arrest-release-more arrests-drop charges makes one think that the magistracy has “gone mad” and that it needs to be reformed: and that is exactly what the government wants and the centre-left with it! 

ANARCHIST COMMUNISTS

There are 3 opposition currents to the Berlusconi government and the Confindustria (industrial employers confederation) which find a meeting point in situations of largescale mobilizations. One is the so-called “girotondini” movement (led by film director Nanni Moretti) which view the laws approved by the government (in favour of Berlusconi’s own interests) as a serious attack on democracy and legality. The second comes from the struggles for social rights and liberties which tend to concentrate more directly on the contradictions within neo-liberalism and the creation of social spaces where a new solidarity can be organized. The third current is that of the labour struggles which have served to bring the question of labour back to the centre of social conflict. We believe that, albeit on different levels, all three serve to create a situation of widespread opposition to the centre-right government and to the choices of the bosses. In particular, our role is more important with the social and union struggles where the presence and in fact the spread of libertarian practices provide a guarantee of coherence between the objectives and the methods we use to reach them. In fact, the FdCA favours elements of unity in order to federate groups and individuals which have common interests and objectives. For this reason, in the case of war our policy will be the creation of anti-war committees, characterized by anti-militarism and by the rejection of all nationalism. The fight for the creation of social spaces for the spread of an alternative culture, of non-religious solidarity and of self-organization is one area where anarchist communists are active. But above all, in the struggles of the workers and in their unions we aim for the spread of radical syndicalism with a characteristic platform and an unmistakable practice. A platform based on unshakable rights as regards wages, hours, health and union freedom; a practice which is unmistakable because it is libertarian, based on the greatest union democracy. To work towards libertarian, class-struggle radical syndicalism, we are establishing co-ordinated groups of workers,  irrespective of the union they belong to and we support the unity of all workers in the workplace and throughout the country. 

Donato Romito for F.d.C.A.

2003