70th Council of
Delegates of the FdCA
Cremona, 28 September 2008
CSA Kavarna in Via Maffi 2
Final Document
Rebuilding criticism and the anti-capitalist struggle and rooting it in the social fabric and the community
As usual, the combined action of the States and international capitalism is helping to spread insecurity and poverty among the working classes, instability and terror among the peoples of the world, striking in such a way as to induce a state of perennial crisis that one aim only - impeding any sort of reorganization on the part of the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist opposition and the development of any project for liberation and solidarity at national or international level.
The state of war, which moves armies wherever imperialist interests conflict (as for example in the Caucasus recently), brings death and destruction to people have been turned into the enemies of other people because of raw materials and energy corridors over which these people have absolutely no power of decision and from which they receive absolutely no benefit, other than a nationalistic call from their State president or elite to go and vote and delegate to them their vain hopes for well-being.
The financial earthquakes that are bringing down historic citadels of Capitalism, branching out to banking and financial institutions throughout the world, is bringing impoverishment and misery to tens of millions of workers who have been bled dry by banks and lending institutions over whom they have absolutely no power of decision and from whom they will not receive one penny back of their savings or small investments, other than the intervention of the State which is designed, not to protect our small-time savings, but the actual system that these savings have been feeding (for example, the Federal Reserve which, while mortgages were being handed out left, right and centre and the prices of real estate were getting out of control, instead of putting on the brakes it continued to reduce interest rates to as low as 1%, out of fear that the mortgage and house markets would suffer and the cat be let out of the bag)!
Thus, the State is by no means the saviour who protects us from the evils of capitalism (having guaranteed capitalism's rapaciousness and greed). Instead it will provide the capitalist institutions with a guarantee of monetary liquidity, by taking the money from its coffers (that is to say from our pockets, or at least of those of us who actually pay taxes). Neo-liberalism, as we know, has always counted on State intervention - on the privatization of the "public jewels" or their flotation on the exchange - just as it always counts on loans in order to sustain the metamorphosis of investment banks into commercial banks, thus enabled to get their hands on their clients' money!
And the Italian State - as can be seen from things like the privatization of Telecom, the theft of workers' severance pay by diverting it into pension funds[1], and the sell-off of Alitalia and its workers - has invariably showed that it is on the side of financial capital. Its decisions remove any sort of control from below, with workers losing any ability to control and make decisions regarding their jobs, wages or pensions.
The combined forces of the right-wing government and the bosses are freezing industrial relations and smothering all social opposition to the current economic and social policies with repression.
Italy is facing a notable deterioration in the levels of democracy in the country, which can be seen, both at an institutional and social level, from:
the concentration of power in the Executive, with a consequent tendency towards authoritarianism, through the use of Executive Orders and de-legification;
the decline in the legislative powers of the Parliament, which has become a ratifying body for the government's actions and for the decisions made in the backrooms of power by the Executive and the various economic oligarchies working in collusion and connivance in order to promote the interests of various sectors of the Italian bourgeoisie;
the current use of Parliament against the judiciary;
the destruction of any representation of minorities in favour of the homogenization of bourgeois interests.
This situation has in effect served to marginalize the strategy of parliamentarianism as a means of emancipation the working classes. It has also clearly rendered pointless any attempt by the workers to represent their interest by means of the electoral and/or governmental path.
Power is being exercised on two different levels: the central State power - which has to direct compatibility with Maastricht and the contradictions that derive therefrom - and the increasing administrative power. The latter orients the economic, financial and occupational structure of services over vast areas such as whole regions or macroregions, both through the use of direct EU financing and by devolving social services to the private sector from local administration (social assistance, water, waste disposal, schools, public transport, etc.). It is a situation that effectively impedes or debilitates the ability of people to organize themselves and participate in grassroots social struggles to demand change or to pressurize the administration from below with alternative proposals.
The deterioration of democracy and participation also hits the world of labour through:
changes to the existing structure and to the renewal of contracts without the involvement of the workers;
the marginalization of minorities within the CGIL;
the marginalization of grassroots labour opposition.
The reform of the collective bargaining system imposed by the employers' federation, Confindustria, aims to accelerate these processes by working towards full union cooperation with businesses, and to effectively de-contractualize thousands of workers in small and medium enterprises, where unions do not have a presence.
In return for keeping control over contract-making at the highest level only, without grassroots consultation and for accepting the end of collective agreements, the unions are being offered bilateral structures[2] where their role will be to co-manage the workforce, just enough to guarantee the survival of the union bureaucracies. The sanctions for anyone who breaks the rules imposed by the Confindustria's plan are designed to ensure the end to what autonomy remains within the labour organizations and to any grassroots action within the workplace.
But the deterioration in democracy can also be seen in the reduced opportunities for popular participation due to the implementation of:
racist policies aimed at persecuting and criminalizing immigrants;
authoritarian policies designed to resolve environmental contradictions and to manage communities with force, both locally (waste disposal, quarries, etc.) and on a large scale (military bases, nuclear power and energy in general);
policies to reduce income and induce people into debt which serves to be able to blackmail the working class, forcing it to seek individual solutions (increased productivity, double-jobbing, overtime, post-pension work) despite the havoc being wreaked on national work contracts and the opportunities for union struggles;
destructive policies in the public and social sphere, from schools to transport, from healthcare to pensions.
The resurgence of fascism also contributes to the reduction of democratic spaces by striking and criminalizing all ethnic, gender and political minorities.
Lastly, the attack on ethical liberties is a direct attack on self-determination in the fields of reproduction, relationships, medical treatment and individual behaviour.
Faced with the fiction of institutional democracy, with the fencing in of union democracy, with a sense of passive democracy in society, we must respond with the promotion of grassroots democracy from below and direct democracy throughout the country, by:
the defence and creation of collective, self-managed grassroots spaces, where people can debate and decide for themselves the things that concern their communities and workplaces;
politically-speaking, building relations between organizations, militants and activists, on the basis of self-organization, of reciprocal legitimization and equality of relations, in order to contribute to the development of political and social opposition in the community to legislative, administrative and economic policies that support neo-liberalism. To that end, it is necessary to establish the possibilities for unifying struggle; we need to build anti-fascist, anti-racist and anti-sexist networks; coalitions and grassroots associations that can encourage popular and class-struggle activist participation, increased radicalism, and increased grassroots involvement in the community;
where unions are concerned, supporting a process of aggregation of the internal opposition within the CGIL, starting from the workplace, from delegates and from workplace union reps;
supporting the processes of the widest possible aggregation of the forces of grassroots syndicalism, starting from the workplace and the community;
building self-managed bodies within the community for debate and elaboration, for counter-information and labour mobilization, irrespective of the unions to which those involved belong;
defending the National Collective Labour Contract (collective agreements), ensuring it remains closely linked to all de-centralized agreements, guaranteeing the possibility for democracy and worker decision-making in the workplace.
For frontline action by the exploited and oppressed, and autonomy for the immediate interests of the working classes:
re-construct anti-capitalist ideas, criticism and struggle and root them within society and the community;
accumulate, educate and federate potentially revolutionary initiatives, towards a project for a solid, communist, self-managed and libertarian society.
Council of Delegates
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici28 September 2008
Notes:
1. Both the "Fonchim" fund for chemicals industry workers and the "Cometa" fund for metalworkers have Lehman Brothers bonds in their portfolios to a total of €3,650,000 and €3,850,000 respectively, and even though this only makes up for 0.2%-0.1% of the total, any more failures would no doubt cause serious damage.
2. Joint, bilateral bodies made up of trade unions and employers' associations, whose role is to manage workers, worker training and re-training, employment services, mobility, etc.