From a Victory for Inter-classism to a New Season of Class Struggles

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Author : Federazione Dei Comunisti Anarchici

Text :

The right’s class project

Over these past 5 years it has become clear that the right-wing coalition that governed Italy after 2001 was not proof of the virtuous existence of a system of alternating governments in a bourgeois democracy. It was the expression of a class project aimed at restoring capitalist, authoritarian and clerical-fascist command in this country. A devastating and socially well-rooted project which operated on four main aspects:

This class project became so rapid and destructive during the 5-year period from 2001 to 2006, that it went far beyond the neo-liberal guidelines laid down by the center-left coalition from 1996 to 2001, even going far beyond the limits of structural compatibility that Italian capitalism could withstand, faced with the collapse in internal demand, zero growth and the abandoning of any public support policy for Italian capitalism. Instead, we witnessed the growth of the personal wealth of government members and their supporters in the elite. The class opposition was too weak to stand up to the attack, despite the tremendous efforts of grassroots social and labor movements. The bourgeois elements who opposed the Berlusconi project were too opportunist to stave off the destruction of the social and productive fabric, which has now reached critical levels.

The Union’s inter-class strategy

It was therefore necessary to build a wide alliance based on the old inter-class ideology, allowing the Christian Democratic spirit to find a place within the Union:[1]

Now that Prodi and the Union have technically won the elections, the inter-class strategy will be used in order to:

However, in its work to re-define the capitalist and institutional command, the true nature of the winning inter-class alliance must reveal itself:

The prospects for the opposition movements

This situation of clearing the fog constitutes the basis for new possibilities and new openings for the grassroots social and labor movements and for revolutionary political organizations; for a new re-polarization of the movements of class opposition. The road is open to ensure that the technical defeat of the right in the April 9–10 elections does not end up as the final act of all those movements which sprang up in Italy after 2001. The many grassroots movements who, thanks to their capacity for self-organization and self-management, have been leading players in the anti-capitalist struggles (workers’ and labor struggles, ecologist and environmental struggles, pacifist and anti-militarist struggles, migrants’ and anti-State repression struggles, feminist, secularist and anti-clerical struggles) now have the chance to demonstrate and re-affirm their autonomy and their ideas.

In fact, it is just as important now to continue fighting both against these authoritarian tendencies which, though beaten at the ballot box, have by no means been eliminated as a political danger to society, and against the damage caused by the negative values of the right combined with the negative values of neo-liberalism (individualism, competition, arrogance, corruption, ignorance, injustice, the deregulation of civil life, the increasing precariousness of individual lives, and so on). Given the Union’s need for social peace and class collaboration now that it has won, it is even more important that we promote and practice the collective values of freedom in solidarity, through the defense and use of self-organization, through the demand for and protection of the individual and collective rights of people, workers, migrants. These movements and this experience of struggle are now facing a future where their autonomy is threatened. Having realized that elections are not and never have been a way to carry out any sort of structural change in the political and economic set-up, we must promote an awareness of the need to launch a renewed social opposition against the Union government too.

The role of anarchist communists

For anarchist communists and the revolutionary, libertarian left in general, it is vital that we act in order that the contradictions within the inter-class alliance can become evident and counteract the phase of class collaboration that is in danger of emerging. We must promote the political capacity to express self-organization and conflict of all those with an interest in struggling and federate in order to carry out a radical change within society towards self-management and equality.

[1] The “Union” is a coalition of the following parties: Democratici di Sinistra (DS), Democrazia e Libertà — La Margherita, Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC), Federazione dei Verdi, Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI), Socialisti Democratici Italiani, Popolari Unione Democratici per l’Europa, Movimento dei Repubblicani Europei, Italia dei Valori.

[2] Italian industrial employers’ federation.

(Source: Retrieved on 29th October 2021 from www.anarkismo.net.)

From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.

Chronology :

January 15, 2022 : From a Victory for Inter-classism to a New Season of Class Struggles -- Added.

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