8th National Congress

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici

Fano, 31 October/1 November 2010

Introductory report by the National Secretariat

 

This Congress, in these premises with this name

Dearest comrades, it is with some emotion that I, on behalf of the National Secretariat, welcome all the FdCA members here today, despite the difficult times we are going through. I also extend a warn hand of welcome to the many observers and other guests who have joined us. I am also delighted to be able to bring you the greetings messages on the occasion of this Congress which have reached us from our sister organizations all over the world, in particular from the Workers Solidarity Alliance (USA/Canada), Common Cause (Ontario, Canada), Estrategia Libertaria (Chile), the Unión Socialista Libertaria (Peru), the Union Communiste Libertaire (Québec, Canada), the Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (Switzerland), Liberty & Solidarity (UK) and from several individuals, amongst whom our Israeli comrade Ilan Shalif.

This is the 8th Congress that the FdCA has held in its 24-year history and only yesterday, we celebrated the opening of these very premises, which we have been able to obtain thanks to our dear late comrade, Franco Salomone, after whom the centre has been named. This will be a place where his political memory will be enhanced, together with that of class-struggle anarchism in general, thanks to the huge number of documents that he and others gathered over the course of the past 40 years.

But this Centre will also seek to be a place where the anarchist communists of the 21st century can base their organization and their activities, both locally and nationally. It will be a workplace for our politics of rebuilding the anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian left, so that it can re-discover the reasons for its existence in the daily grassroots work among the masses, without the need to follow sirens or shortcuts that relegate the struggles to second place behind the electoral struggle, consigning the movements and those who participate in them to the parties chasing for their percentage in the fixed game of electoralism.

Twenty-four years and still obstinate and contrary

The theoretical and programmatic bases that inspired the life of comrade Salomone are the same as those that have guided the FdCA's political work over the years and are still a valid, characteristic and particular point of reference, on the political level more so than on the level of identity.

I am referring to the need for a coherent, responsible political organization. To the need for its members to be a natural part of the mass bodies, the trade unions, the movements, where they can be a driving force, a source of ideas, organizers from below of the collective force of struggle and solidarity.

I am referring to the need for an internationalist outlook in both our political action and our trade union struggles.

I am referring to the need for us to be politically active in the struggles, a recognized and recognizable component, that can overcome the shyness that comes from being a small minority and is able to act as a leavening agent for anti-bureaucratical, anti-hierarchical organization, hostile both to all forms of opportunism of a post-Leninist origin and to all forms of fanciful spontaneism or sectarian ideologism.

I am referring, lastly, to the need for anarchist communists to be able to observe the changing situation and know how to update and widen the horizons of our struggle and political work.

For these reasons, this Congress too will deal with analysis of the current economic phase. It will accept the challenge thrown down during this first decade of the 21st century regarding policies concerning the environment and common goods, the profound restructuring that is going on in the world of labour, political action in our neighbourhoods alongside and within the various movements and the many grassroots initiatives that are trying to oppose the almighty power of capitalism, be it economic, ideological or moral.

Outside of these points of reference, political action and militancy is by no means impossible for anarchists and libertarians.

But - and experience and history have shown us this - it would be like floating on a lake with no definite destination, identifying with a tradition but failing to think about an heir to pass it on to, matching one's political wits with others in the indistinct confines of virtual forums or syncretic political groups.

Instead it is thanks to the theoretical and programmatic bases I mentioned earlier, and to the many militants who have made it possible, that we are now in our 24th year of existence. That's quite a respectable age for a political organization which, despite being a tiny minority of the revolutionary left, has played an extremely active part in initiatives, campaigns and daily social and union work over the years, making it a point of reference both in the areas where we are present and in the national mobilizations we have participated in. This is the organization that Franco Salomone eventually joined, shortly before he fell ill, demonstrating - as he had so often done throughout his life - that political intelligence of his which allowed him to view the FdCA as a realistic choice, after decades of efforts to build an anarchist communist political organization.

Ours is an organization that was historically produced once the lessons of the 1970's were learnt, and in its quarter century of life has passed some important stages:

None of this would have been possible, nor lasted so long, nor led to a new generation of anarchist communist militants, if the FdCA - both in the political and personal relations of its members and in its political practice - had not been home to two fundamental aspects: the concept and practice of unity, and the concept and practice of solidarity.

These concepts are even stronger than the much-criticized concept of "collective responsibility", and are so well-rooted in the fabric of the organization and in our dealings with others that we can say they have become the heart, the image and the mind of our political life, healing every wound.

It is this unity and solidarity, felt by all our members, young and old alike, that has become our individual and collective strength, when we are called on to enter the political arena to build, defend and re-build the fabric of militancy and social opposition in our everyday struggles, in the movements and in our daily lives.

The division bell

I would not need to go on for so long about unity and solidarity if it were not for the fact that for several years now we are all extremely worried about the signs of division spreading through the economy, through the world of labour, through our neighbourhoods and which can be seen in the rapid rise and even more rapid fall of the movements.

These are times when the division bell is ringing, seeking to break up what was once united. To smash what was whole. To disconnect what was in tune. To confuse what was once clear. To pulverize collective interests. To feudalize the places where we live our lives, dividing us into so many backyards where everyone is his or her own master. To shred the political and personal dimension of social commitment and activist work.

The political ideas and arguments that we will be hearing and debating today - and then adopting - will not hide this context we find ourselves in, a context that has become an important element of the climate we have to breathe, so much so that it has put the sense of our political activity and social work to the harshest of tests.

This is the social dimension we find ourselves acting in and where we will have to put our strategy and our choices to the test.

The changing faces of capitalism

Capitalism does not die. It regenerates itself. And while it is doing this, it cannot be afraid of its historical, immediate enemy. For this reason it needs to break up the producing class.

This time around, the attack goes well beyond the classic processes of restructuring the points of production. This time around, the attack is against the whole social structure of life where the old enemy - the proletariat - forms.

Thus, fed by the capitalist crisis of the past 3 years (which has been brewing for at least the last decade, though), division is creating international chasms and erecting national, or even regional, fences.

After the certainties of Keynesism and monetarism, there is no longer a shared model of development - nor is one being sought - and having finished singing the praises of globalization, international capitalism is now finding apparent unity in unloading (thanks to that very globalization) its financial crisis onto the real economies of entire continents and single States.

But the traditional imperialist division into centres and peripheries has for some time now been giving way to a different division consisting of neuronal centres of concentrated wealth and production surrounded by wastelands of impoverishment, spawning emigration and dumping.

This already compromised scenario has now been targeted for the past three years by the capitalist attack, in the forms of impoverishment and war, of inter-imperialist conflict and various forms of nationalism. Having put aside its historical-geographical differences, capitalism is using this crisis to cancel from entire countries any sort of organized workers' movement.

To remove all guarantees to workers from labour legislation.

To drain considerable resources from direct, indirect and deferred wages, resources that are needed to finance the crisis.

To return the working class and its future generations to a state of further submission to the interests of companies and the market.

As for States, whether they are in the hands of bureaucracies under the liberal or statist Right or Lib-Lab, post-social democrats, they are all quietly surrendering their autonomy of action in the area of economic policy. In the meantime, capitalism's international institutions - led by the G20 - and the European Union are sparing no effort to come up with anti-crisis measures... measures that were the cause of the crisis in the first place! The European Union in particular is pouncing on the opportunity provided by the Greek crisis in order to re-define itself and reconstruct its economic-financial hierarchies, with Germany at the head.

In every country, and even more so in Italy, wages seem to have gone from being an independent variable to mere reimbursement for individual services provided, linked to the successes and failures of the company in question. Welfare seems to have gone from being a national economic policy (social protection, assistance and promotion by means of public services) to merely being one more item of expenditure on a balance sheet. Collective bargaining agreements seem to have gone from being an instrument for the defence and conquest of collective interests to a mere individual pact for a single service provided over a limited period of time.

And this falling point paradoxically become a point of hop for the growing number of casualized workers in both the public and private sectors, fed by redundancies and staff cuts in the public administration.

The real level of unemployment estimated by the Bank of Italy is 11%.

The case of FIAT is both emblematic and paradigmatic of this attack. Here, the division has reached international level, with employees effectively spread out between Poland, Serbia and Italy, and even the different plants within the same country are divided.

Active and redundant workers are subjected to strong pressure to contribute towards ensuring that the company remains in their particular area (whatever the cost), saving their own jobs or those of related industries, the stability of their families, the reflected wealth of the area, the needs of local administrations and political lobbies of whatever sort, not forgetting union lobbies, almost always CISL or UIL-based, but at times even CGIL.

The working class on a local level is being forced to lend a hand to deal with a crisis that it did not create.

The seven shades of unionism

In order to deal with (and maybe even prolong) this crisis, capitalism needs a trade union movement that is in tune with the needs of the various company boards and CEOs. And there is no shortage of pretenders to the throne.

It would almost be laughable, except for the fact that by making these agreements, pacts and contracts, these candidates are legitimizing an attack whose results are to set labour rights back, restrict the workers' freedom to organize and tie the workers' hands during bargaining.

What could be called "market unionism" would appear to be a further regression from the type of unionism which came to the defence of the so-called "Italian system" during the days of the crisis in the early 1990s. Today, however, it is defending single companies within a particular segment of the market, which could mean the defence of the economy of one town, one province or one district. And to hell with the others. And that's how division is sown. From the USA to the EU, there is no shortage of examples of this sort of unionism.

It is a sort of administrative unionism, which in Italy consists of bilateral bodies, pension funds, exceptions to agreements and the need for a terrifying social calm. The perverse objective of this sort of unionism is to unilaterally modify industrial relations, in an attempt to stop other forms of unionism from participating in bargaining and being able to represent workers - be they moderates like the CGIL or more conflictual, like the FIOM of recent years and the grassroots unions. But division is also finding its way into the bureaucracies of the CGIL - still hoping for a return to its leading role as the administrative union of the workforce - and the FIOM, which is bravely (for the times) willing to underline the contradiction within the CGIL itself and within industrial relations in general, both on the level of rights and on that of bargaining.

Born from previous divisions in more innocent days, grassroots syndicalism is unable to produce anything that can even give it the appearance of an outsider in the Italian union panorama. Unlike other European countries such as Spain or France, Italy's grassroots unions cannot even come together to agree on the need for a joint strike or demonstration. And sooner or later this division will prove fatal.

The workers are disoriented and can just look on. The pension age was raised without even a single protest. In France, however...

NIMBY or YIMBY?

Left in the hands of greedy local administrations for far too long, responsibility for our communities has slowly but surely - over the past two decades - been taken over by national and international capitalism, attracted by the chance of extracting value from the land, rivers, seas, coasts, towns and villages, countryside and the infrastructure required by productive sectors.

It has been necessary to induce local bodies into introducing profound changes to their administrative policies in order to begin the process of privatizing what was once under municipal control, externalizing services and a whole range of other benefits to companies including the ceding of control over common goods such as water, gas, transport, refuse and energy production.

The illusion of financial advantage for local bodies soon became a nightmare consisting of debts run up with banks and cuts to State contributions to local administrations as a result of the crisis. The answer, naturally, was a rise in local taxation.

In the meantime, each individual territory had become the terrain for conquest and exploitation by capitalism. Often to the advantage of criminal interests mixed with political and institutional interests. The environmental impact of the capitalist presence in the form of factories, energy-production plants, refuse disposal plants and shopping centres led to an explosion of reaction by local residents seeking to protect their environment, with coalitions forming on the basis of common interests - NIMBY!

Today, capitalism seems to have changed its strategy: individual areas are being offered "benefits" in the form of activities to be implemented which will bring jobs and wealth for all. But with no guarantees for the environment, no guarantees for the duration of these activities. Nonetheless, it leads to competition between territories and division among people to win what is being offered - YIMBY!

But our communities are also seeing the spread of a new cause for division, based on ethnicity, race and gender, seeking to play on prejudices of blood, land of origin, clericalism and intolerance. The economic crisis only sharpens these processes and the speed of their spread is inversely proportionate to the sluggishness of efforts to engage in acts of solidarity and cooperation.

Centrifugal movements

The lack of unity of action within the movements is something which we are periodically forced to recognize. In this particular phase, the movements are not uniting in a joint thrust (as was the case during the period of anti-globalization demonstrations 10-15 years ago) due to difficulties in bringing them together and moving their attention from the local to the national level. But it is also due to the difficulties in facing up to larger questions such as secularism, opposition to war and nuclear energy, countering repressive, anti-democratic legislation, denouncing the violence against the Palestinian people.

It would seem that emergencies at local level are absorbing a majority of activists. Even social centre activists have been concentrating almost exclusively on local problems for the past couple of years. Could it be that the federalism so vaunted by the Lega Nord is already more deeply rooted than the current state of legislation would have us believe?

The ex-parliamentary Left too is continuing to suffer from division, to the extent that over the space of just a few years it has pulverized the fabric of militants and activists with whom we have so often worked in the past, both in our trade unions and in the social struggles. This too has had a deleterious effect on the actions and unity of the movements. These comrades, no longer supported by their party-father, yet still active in some way, merit our attention, as victims of the prevailing discord.

Then there is the anti-Berlusconi movement, whose latest personification is the "Purple People" [popolo viola] movement. It is difficult to say if anti-Berlusconism alone can unify large sectors of the population and struggle for change.

The Left we want

We are not strong enough on our own to prop up the walls and fight the lack of unity and solidarity among the opposition forces. At the same time, no other element of the anarchist movement, the revolutionary left or the general world of activism has the strength - by itself - to stand up and combat to this lack of unity and solidarity. And there lies the question: do we really want to stand up and combat this ruinous deficit for the present and the future of an anti-capitalist, revolutionary opposition movement in Italy?

The oft-repeated vision of the father-party which can re-unify revolutionaries is something that just does not work, and never has. Indeed, all too often it has led the other way.

The attractive vision of an eternal present, which has burnt its bridges with the past and sees itself alone in the midst of empire, part of a disobedient multitude with no future plan, is still being put forward by large sectors of the world of social centres, often proud of their self-sufficiency.

The unity and solidarity that are disappearing from our workplaces, from among the ranks of our unions, from our struggles in our neighbourhoods, from demonstrations and strikes, can only be recovered and spread through long, careful work in every situation that demands the presence, the political intelligence, the ability to unite not divide, to develop solidarity not competition, on the part of revolutionary activists.

There is not now, nor do we envisage in the near future, a strong resurgence in the struggles - and they never come about out of the blue... the so-called popular masses do not have some magical power of revolt. So, we cannot stand gazing out of our windows waiting for the phoenix or the arrival of Godot.

This current moment requires us to act in order to maintain our position and strengthen our resistance. And yet, we know that there will anyway be struggles, as they are naturally the effect of the profound contradictions within capitalist society between the exploiters and the exploited, dominators and dominated.

The Left that we want is this: a Left that can act in the struggles in such a way that they spread, but always knowing that the strength of these struggles lies at the grassroots level, and in being united and solid. The struggles must be an opportunity to promote the awareness that libertarian methods - anti-bureaucratic, anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian - go hand in hand with united and uniting demands, that must be progressively stronger.

The Left that we want is one which encourages open spaces for participation in the town and cities, workshops for political and cultural debates and creativity, that universe of grassroots bodies and selfless political organizations that promote self-organization and self-management.

The Left that we want is one where networks, coordinations and forums which favour and aim to promote - by means of shared political, cultural and economic objectives - organizations and associations who fight for the same goals, against the common enemy or danger (be it neo-fascism, racism, homophobia or pollution, privatization or imperialist wars).

The Left that we want is one which is open to debate and counter-information among trade union activists, whatever their beliefs and irrespective of which union they belong to.

The Left that we want is one that can federate the various struggles and movements, open spaces and networks, movements with demands and movements in favour of a global social alternative, and all those experiences of solid, social exchange and experiments in self-management. Places where direct democracy can flourish and spread. Popular assemblies. In full autonomy, with full control exercised by the grassroots. For the construction of a plural, alternative society from below, based on libertarian federalism.

Our horizon - the libertarian alternative

That is the Left that we want, so it is also the Left that we are working towards and will continue to work towards. Every day. Wherever we are.

The libertarian alternative is our goal. The spread of libertarian political practices and libertarian relations is our method. The gradual realization of ideas and objectives which can be an alternative to Capitalism and the State, is our platform.

For for this, the FdCA cannot but look to the first concentric ring in which we find ourselves due to our birth, history and tradition. The anarchist movement. In Italy and internationally. Because the presence and action of anarchists in that Left made up of popular assemblies and federated struggles is a decisive and fundamental factor if it is to be successful. Whether it is presence and action in order to orient ideas, or as a catalyst for unity and solidarity, or ensuring grassroots responsibility and representation, or acting as a bulwark against hierarchical tendencies and opportunism.

So it is necessary for anarchist organizations to find a way to come together, without sectarianism or prejudice, to find common objectives and launch campaigns that can give social anarchism back its voice and its visibility so it can leave behind the political and strategic crisis that has paralysed it, confining it to a corner of history and society, to the great delight of our many detractors.

We need to win back the ethical significance and political value of the watchwords of anarchism, words which have become horrendous genetically-modified organism in the hands of opportunists and ignoramuses of all shades.

This is what the FdCA seeks to do to wherever it is present, and in some cases (such as here in the Marches) the results are plain for all to see and take advantage of.

This is what the FdCA seeks to do at international level, by participating in the Anarkismo.net project together with other anarchist communist organizations, in the European Anarkismo conference, in international solidarity projects, amongst which we should note our recent contribution to the publication of a Chilean book on the history of May Day in Latin America, our support for the joint struggles of the Israeli initiative Anarchists Against the Wall with the Palestinian villagers of the West Bank against the occupation and Zionist settler colonialism.

This is what the FdCA seeks to do in opening centres such as this one, the Centro di Documentazione Franco Salomone, which is open to scientific research and cooperation with other regional, national and international centres and archives.

But the project of a libertarian, federated Left made up of struggles and movements, the project for the rebirth of anarchism in Italy, all require the FdCA to consolidate and root itself politically and organizationally throughout the country, through its network of members, its press and propaganda, its political proposals, its typically responsible presence in the world of labour and in the neighbourhoods.

This is what we will be working on this weekend, comrades, and I wish all of us a successful Congress.

This report is the final act of the National Secretariat, which now stands down. We thanks the whole Federation for its cooperation over the last four years of our mandate, and we send this Congress our best wishes for every success.

For unity and solidarity among anarchist communists!

Long live the FdCA!

Donato Romito
on behalf of the National Secretariat

Fano, 31 October 2010