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Italy An anti-capitalist left, incompatible with war and neoliberalism, in the light of the demise of Rifondazione Salvatore Cannavò, speech to the December 2007 assembly of Sinistra Critica ( original at International Viewpoint )
An anti-capitalist left, incompatible with war and neoliberalism, in the light of the demise of Rifondazione
Salvatore Cannavò, speech to the December 2007 assembly of Sinistra Critica ( original at International Viewpoint )
I must acknowledge that I feel a certain emotion in introducing the debates of this assembly, which, de facto, represents the first national congress of Sinistra critica (Critical Left). We have come a long way together, since we presented the motion [[1. The Critical Left was constituted as a tendency within the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC, also called Rifondazione) by presenting a motion at the party congress of March 2005]] to the congress of the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC). We have built a collective, a reciprocal confidence, and common reflexes. And we have also produced political facts - I think especially of June 9 [[2. The reference is to the demonstration against President Bush’s visit to Italy on June 9, 2007]] against Bush. We have built a collective practice of democracy and reciprocal listening.
Ten months have passed since Franco Turigliatto was expelled from the PRC. It was a great founding event that brought many of us together. During these months we have discussed how to maintain our project, how to connect the different tempos of each, how to transform anger or disappointment into a proposition which is appropriate for all and to all. And we are here. We have decided to convene a conference, with delegates, and not a meeting, for which there would have also been time. But during these three days we will privilege reflection and political work.
Because we are founding a project in a very difficult context. We do not look behind and we take up the challenge, but we should not tell ourselves stories and let us not hide the difficulty of the enterprise.
The current phase unfolds under the sign of the closure of the political cycle. Of a short political cycle, that of the Prodi government, but above all of a long political cycle, which emerged from the preceding Italian crisis in 1991-1992. It was the end of an Italian bipolarity incapable of realising its priority: guaranteeing a governability so as to be able to manage the social conflict and allow Italy to compete globally in the midst of a crisis of consensus which endangered the whole of the system. Contrary to the lamentations of Montezemolo [[3. Luca di Montezemolo, president of the employers' federation Confindustria]], according to which the country has not been governed for at least twelve years, it should be stressed that Italy was since then governed while following a descending line of neoliberalism, administered in variable doses according to who was in government. But wages, social rights, access to health or wellbeing all followed a downward curve, at the behest of a foundering Stock Exchange, whereas precariousness grew uninterruptedly. And that has continued under the mixture of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, characterizing both the first and the second Berlusconi government, but also the first and the second Prodi government.
What do they tell us, the fatalities at work, as in Turin? What do they tell us, the millions in precarious work? And these Rumanian workers who line up on the roads at the end of the day so as to be able to work, if only for a few hours? What else, if not the degradation of working conditions while profits grow?
During these fifteen years Italy sought to adapt to the international competition, increasingly explicit and pitiless, based on trade wars and wars full stop. It has tried to preserve its shares of power and to get specific “bases”. For example by sending soldiers - now a steady ten thousand - to the various theatres of crisis, to count in the diplomatic game. Therefore Italy withdrew its soldiers from Iraq, in order to move them to Lebanon, something which carries more weight politically, and it is as for this reason it does not intend to withdraw them from Afghanistan, which the Left knew perfectly when signing the agreements!
But the majoritarian bipolarity, which was used to carry out this international insertion, is no longer enough more. Because in spite of economic and military “successes” it was not able to preserve consensus. Social conflict increased during the years of the Berlusconi government and it was not diluted during the years of the centre-left, while disillusionment was multiplied. Italian society, the modern proletariat, are still more divided and fragmented, atomized and demoralized. Precariousness is at the centre of this condition and it is increasingly visible.
And if the bourgeoisie has increased its profits and its political strength, it is not at its best: it is experiencing a phase of uncertainty, sees some of its sectors impoverished and is frightened by an ever worsening world scenario.
It needs a stable and at the same time less rigid, more malleable system. The ideal from its point of view would be a Grand Coalition, as in Germany. This will be probably be the obligatory path, but such a grand coalition, which constitutes a response during a time of increased difficulties, is already in crisis in Germany, with an SPD pressed on its left and a CDU which aspires to regain for itself alone the centre of the political scene. Even there, the formula does not guarantee social consensus, because society is much more intolerant and foreign to the political framework that what one imagines. Neoliberalism wants to develop instruments enabling it to impose its choices. It is not by chance that it greeted with much enthusiasm the birth of the Democratic Party (PD), the new party of the European-oriented Italian bourgeoisie [[4. The Democratic Party (Partito democratico, PD) was founded on October 14, 2007 by the fusion of the centre-left and centre parties, in particular the Left Democrats, (DS) descended from the old Communist Party)]]. It wants to develop this initiative because its recipes do not function anymore and do not convince any more. There is a crisis of consensus.
That they are not unable any more to convince was something we saw in recent years through the great international mobilization which stressed the theme of opposition to neoliberalism - often with a “latent anti-capitalism” (I promise that this will be the only positive quotation from Bertinotti!) - which founded the bases of an anti-systemic movement. And if today the dynamics seem to regress - even if in their international dimension things are much more mobile - it seems to us that this criticism opened rifts from which a positive energy still flows.
A part of this criticism has even nourished the so-called anti-politics, which is a major element of Italian reality, not only a worrying signal, but a real social phenomenon that nobody wants seriously to analyze, in the hope – which is an illusion - that electoral reform will make the anomalies disappear and will restore normality. However a profound analysis is necessary and the phenomenon requires a serious attitude.
We do not propose to espouse the theses of Grillo [[5. Beppe Grillo is an Italian comedian]], a masterpiece of disinterest and reactionary spirit, but if by anti-political we understand the rejection of the politics of the apparatuses and of class divisions, the rejection of these new notables who always offer the same neoliberal soup, then as we are against such a politics, we are ready to take up a bit of this anti-politics ourselves. A bit; i.e. the part which corresponds to a criticism of politics, a class criticism of indirect democracy and a radical opposition to the mechanisms of privatization of the economy and the politics which go with it.
The rebuilding of an anti-capitalist force, precisely “anti”, will necessarily pass by the recuperation of these bodies, also through the forms of rebellion and upheaval of the “politically correct”: a force which will be really outside of the two poles, outside of the compatibilities and outside of the mechanisms and rituals of the politics of the palace!
To build it, it is necessary to rely on the movement, the movements and the conflicts.
It is clear that the global justice movement is no longer that which organised the demonstration in Genoa [in July 2001] - the moment of its birth. Many fights and many conflicts persist, but they are today much more localised and also much more diffuse. They have a radical dynamic and very high potential for participation. It is enough to look at Vicenza or Val di Susa [[6. A mass movement, No Dal Molin, is opposed to the expansion of the US military base at Vicenza and in the Val di Susa in the Alps there is a mobilization of the majority of the population against the construction of high speed railway line (the movement No Tav).]]. It is there that an active response to the crisis of politics resides.
It is axiomatic that we do not leave these realities isolated, just as it is important that they do not turn in on themselves.
An ever present objective always current is to reinforce links and stable relations, at least at the level of the communication, to strengthen the “pacts”, so that they really play the part of subject and are not reduced solely to the political groups. The latter should not however be demonised insofar as they help to carry out tasks (but not when they aim only at their own development or if they try to institutionalize the movement).
The movement must preserve its autonomy like a relic. And, obviously, develop its radicalism and rank and file unity, by realising that today the first is the condition of the second and not the opposite. The opposite of this is the will to impose unity from above, founded on the institutional policy of the left which tries to build an impossible bridge between the “struggle” and the “government”.
The diary is already fixed: * Vicenza and the war: All to Vicenza on December 15, but also the day of mobilization of the pact against the war on January 26; * precariousness: October 20 [[7. A big demonstration against precariousness was held on October 20, 2007]] showed the possibility for mobilization. The million “no” votes in the referendum [[8. On precarious work.]] did not affect Parliament but shoul