Italy
Communist Platform
The failure of the Berlusconi Government took place in the midst of the turmoil of Italian finance. His majority collapsed under the weight of two main factors.
a) The manoeuvres of the international financial oligarchy and the ruling group in Italy, which needed to avoid infection from the debt crisis by adopting anti-popular measures faster and deeper; therefore they had to dump Berlusconi, who was now considered unreliable and too weak.
(b)) The capacity of resistance of the working class and popular masses who, in the struggles developed over the last two years, have prevented the consolidation of a reactionary regime, split the social bloc around Berlusconi, and made the consensus of the majority of the government fall to the minimum.
The workers movement and its struggles have made an important contribution to the fall of Berlusconi, but they were not decisive, confirming Marx’s famous slogan: ‘Either the proletariat is revolutionary or it is not.’
This is because of its weaknesses and political, ideological and organisational limitations, as well as the grave responsibility of the reformists who, worried about the consequences, used all means to head off the decisive push of the working class,. The last gift to Berlusconi was to clear the road for the packet of urgent economic measures, another chapter of social plunder.
The end of the Berlusconi government is an important political step, which we welcome with satisfaction, but it is not the end of Berlusconism, that is, the predominance of neo-liberal politics.
We must not have any illusions, much less stop mobilising ourselves, because the picture that is before our eyes is worrisome.
First, we must observe that, while the country is under the commissariat of the EU-ECB-IMF, the government and parliament are under commissariats of ‘King George’ Napolitano who, making himself interpreter of the diktat of the financial oligarchy, imposed the times and means for the solution of the governmental crisis and of the parliamentary discussion to approve the economic measures.
Although in an emergency situation, it foreshadows the passage to a presidential republic, a symptom of a further authoritarian involution of the bourgeois system.
With the expected appointment of Monti, Italy is moving closer to the formation of a government of almost all the bourgeois parties of the right and ‘left’, which will form a single party of capital when it comes to saving the ruling class from mortal danger or defending its fundamental interests.
The ‘emergency’ government that is being formed under the pressure of the ‘financial markets’ will be as anti-popular, if not more so, than that of Berlusconi. It is born under the sign of the clear hegemony of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
The pedigree of the neo-liberal Monti is clear: for years, he was EU Commissioner (appointed by Berlusconi and D’Alema), European President of the Trilateral Commission, member of the Bilderberg Group, consultant to the investment bank Goldman Sachs, centres of imperialist power.
The new Senator for Life is a representative of the financial oligarchy, responsible for and beneficiary of the crisis. Unlike Berlusconi, he supports the overall strategic, comprehensive and long-term interests of financial capitalism.
His programme is the letter of Trichet and Draghi, the increase in competitiveness at all costs (that is, the increased exploitation of the workers), the attack on the rights and interests of the working masses, the increase in the working age, cuts to pensions, privatisation and easier layoffs.
The gradual liquidation of democratic freedoms, as well as the reduction of national sovereignty and the economic colonisation, will continue. All this in the name of ‘government of globalisation and the crisis’ and behind the screen of the ‘social market economy’.
Internationally, the executive in preparation will continue to accept the leadership of US imperialism, to manage its relationship with the other European powers, thus perpetuating the role of Italy as a geo-strategic springboard and vassal country for aggression along the crisis zone from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.
The government that the imperialist bourgeoisie wants to impose will have the support of the reformists, of the centrist parties linked to the Vatican and of most of the reactionaries of the PdL (the fall of their ‘knight’ accelerates their internal discords). But it will not have support among the working masses, and this will be its weak point.
In this situation, the reformist and social-democratic leaders are confirmed in their role of props of capitalism, which in the course of the crisis are moving increasingly to the right. They conceal from the masses the class character of the government by calling it a ‘technical’ one. The role of regulation and control of the struggles that the PD and the top levels of the CGIL will play (they spoke in favour of emergency government of Monti) will be crucial. However, this will open up the deepest contradictions in the rank and file and in the union.
The change of horses will not resolve the crisis, which is one of world capitalism and the entire ruling class. None of the economic, political, social, environmental or cultural problems that affect the working masses and the youth will be resolved. On the contrary, the working and living conditions of the majority of society will be worsened.
Behind the decline of Italian capitalism, behind the structural problems, which come from far away and affect the working masses, there is the whole bourgeois drive to defend its privileges and its ineptitude towards its own ruin.
In this situation we reaffirm the necessity of the policy of the proletarian united front. We need unity, but not unity with collaborators and opportunists. The only valid policy to put in order and prepare the counter-offensive is to promote the welding together and reorganisation of the forces of the class into a single anti-capitalist front, which expresses a programme of uncompromising defence of the interests of the exploited and supports their organisations such as the workers and peoples Committees.
On this basis there will be built a broad popular front, to unite around the proletariat the social classes and strata oppressed by the financial oligarchy.
We must push forward a policy of united front against neo-liberalism and social-liberalism, to not pay for the debt and the crisis, against military expenditures and the politics of war, for the withdrawal from the EU and NATO.
The building of the front is primarily a process of political unity of the working class and the popular masses, forged in the struggle against the reactionary policy of the bourgeoisie, to place the crisis back on the heads of the capitalists, of the rich, of the parasites.
This fight for political unity must be conducted in meetings, in discussions with the different forces of the left and class unionism, but especially in joint struggles against any bourgeois government, on the basis of the political needs that we share.
This confirms the vital need to work for an alternative policy of revolutionary rupture with this policy and the system that produces it.
The government that we need to fight for is a government of the workers and all other exploited working masses. A government that expropriates the capitalist monopolies, seizes the wealth of the parasites, socialises the main means of production and exchange, supports the control and oversight by the working class, demolishes the oppressive bourgeois machine and gives the workers the rights and freedoms that they are entitled to. A government that serves the struggle of the proletariat to strike the bourgeoisie, to hasten its final defeat.
The interests of the working class are for a revolutionary way out of the crisis. Italy will be reborn, it will be a free and prosperous country, respected and admired; it will make its contribution to the economic and social reconstruction of the world, only with socialism.
But without the Communist Party, one cannot achieve the transition of workers and all the exploited to revolutionary positions; one cannot lead the struggle towards a new society.
To look to the future means therefore to focus attention on the function of the Communist Party, indispensable tool for leading the process of emancipation and liberation of the exploited and oppressed masses.
The reconstruction of a vanguard political organisation of the working class requires the active and direct commitment today of the sincere communists and the best elements of the proletariat.
Let us work together to push forward this process, breaking once and for all with opportunism and unifying ourselves on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles and proletarian internationalism!
November 11, 2011
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