1st C.N.L.A.

CONVEGNO NAZIONALE dei LAVORATORI ANARCHICI

(National Convention of Anarchist Workers)

Bologna, 11-15 August 1973

 

(final motion signed by organizations listed below)

 

The 1st National Convention of Anarchist Workers, held in Bologna from 11-15 August '73, following a exhaustive and thorough discussion of the general political and economic situation, believes it is in a position to give the following general indications:

With regard to the unanimously-accepted sense of the class struggle and therefore of the revolutionary role of the class of the exploited, a class which holds no instrument of power, the proletariat, we believe it is necessary for action to be carried out at the same time by a specific anarchist communist organization and by a mass proletarian organization so as to achieve the unity, autonomy, class consciousness and internationalism that are required in order to build anarchist communism.

The relationship between these two organizations is characterized by a constant process of dialectic exchange of revolutionary ideas from the latter to the former and from the former to the latter.

The specific organization has the following features: it has a single theory and strategy, it has homogeneous and non-contradictory tactics, it is made up of militants who are fully responsible towards it for their political actions, not on the basis of individual concepts.

The autonomous, proletarian mass organization is the strategic objective that the proletariat gives itself, with the aim of developing and achieving the social revolution through it, together with the specific organization.

In order to achieve the strategic objective of building the autonomous proletarian organization, the groups represented at the Convention, while rejecting any non-constructive, aprioristic attacks on the parties of the official and non-official left and on the trade union organizations, attacks which lead to politically cynical and reactionary positions, reaffirm their strong basic opposition to the reformist, oligarchic positions of these organizations; we pledge to promote and build nuclei of militant anarchist workers around which wider nuclei of workers can gather and, by providing a link between these, to lay the basis for the building of autonomous, mass bodies in every area of the class struggle, though accepting that, in certain local situations, autonomous struggles are best promoted by acting, for tactical reasons and according to need, within the existing trade union structures, so as to evidence the contradictions between the grassroots and the leadership.

The Convention therefore decides to work together in order to:

  1. create a national coordination centre with the following duties:
    1. to publish an internal anarcho-syndicalist bulletin containing reports and material for debate regarding the various struggles and the general debate within the movement;
    2. to organize the next CNLA;
    3. to establish international contacts;
  2. strengthen the existing union consultation office in Liguria and promote the creation of other similar offices around the country;
  3. create study groups where possible, to investigate points of unity for the whole proletariat in the following areas: healthcare, housing, education, social insurance and pensions, service industry, public services, transport, the question of Southern Italy and underdevelopment, employment and the organization of labour. Their reports to be published in the Internal Bulletin. 

The Convention recognizes as its basic strategic objective the building of class unity for the entire proletariat. 

The Convention hereby mandates member groups to contact other anarchist and libertarian groups and organizations not present and encourage them to join and to contribute both to the Internal Bulletin and to the next convention.

Each participating group will forward to the national coordinating centre a detailed report on the activities carried out by the contacted group; the centre will in turn circulate the report to all participating groups, who will then decide whether or not to accept the new group.

The Convention invites the whole anarchist movement to give its full support to the initiatives that the Convention promotes.

During the Convention, telegrams of solidarity were sent to comrade Marini (nominated honorary chairman of the Convention) and to the French workers at the Lip factory [1]; a message of solidarity was also sent to all prisoners who struggle in jail.

Bologna, 15 August 1973

 

(Originally published in "Bollettino del 1° CNLA", 1973; then in "Il Movimento Anarchico in Italia dal 1945 ai giorni nostri", a brochure produced by the Political Growth Committee of the O.R.A. - Bari, 1980; later published in Adriana Dadà, "L'anarchismo in Italia: fra movimento e partito - Storia e documenti dell'anarchismo italiano", Teti editore, Milan, 1984)

 

Translator's note:

1. The Lip factory in Besançon, France, was the subject of a workers' occupation and takeover in 1973, one of the earliest 20th-century western European experiments with workers' self-management.