28.03.2002

Fighting for another world

Once again, Europe points to our common future. First we had the 'counter-conference' demonstrations in Barcelona over the weekend of March 14-15, which saw up to 500,000 protesting under the key slogan, 'Against corporate Europe - another world is possible'. Then this Saturday we had the absolutely massive demonstration in Italy - with as many as three million people marching through the streets of Rome, which was enveloped in a sea of red flags. March 23 will go down in the history books as the largest political rally seen in post-World War II Italy. The reasons for this unprecedented display of militancy are not hard to find. Resentment and anger against the Berlusconi government is building up. Silvio Berlusconi's billion-dollar media empire has grown to monstrous proportions. He now controls, either directly or indirectly, nearly 90% of the Italian television, print and electronic media - and, as the old saying goes, the appetite grows with the eating (move over, Citizen Kane?). Unsurprisingly, such a flagrantly anti-democratic state of affairs is provoking profound opposition. More pertinent still is the government's wholesale assault on the rights and conditions of the working class - in particular the legal protection enshrined in Italy's "creaking" labour laws, as the BBC likes to put it. Concretely, this is taking the form of a planned 'reform' of article 18 of the Workers Statute, which represented the high water mark for the trade unions in the 1970s. Under this statute, workers who can prove they were unjustly fired can get their old jobs back. The changes proposed by Berlusconi and his cohorts would mean that in future workers would have to settle for a single cash pay-off settlement, as yet undetermined. There are also the savage attacks on pension rights. Naturally, the Italian bosses say that provisions like article 18 'strangle' companies by effectively granting lifetime jobs to employees - and thus undermine the efficiency of Italian capital. You cannot, under normal circumstances, make a good profit and look after the rights of workers, argue Berlusconi and his supporters. Who could disagree with such a prognosis? Of course, the vision of Italy and Europe as a whole offered up by Berlusconi coincides neatly with Tony Blair's - no wonder they have been getting so chummy. They speak the same language: profits, enterprise, efficiency, modernisation, reform ... As the Financial Times reported, the Barcelona conference, no doubt under particular pressure from the 'two Bs', committed the EU to improving 'labour mobility' through "more flexible" pension and healthcare arrangements and to creating more jobs through "reform of tax and benefit systems and reduced incentives for early retirement" (March 18). This is essentially a reconfirmation of the stated aims and ethos set down by the EU bureaucrats in Lisbon two years ago - that is, for the EU to set itself the goal of becoming "the world's most competitive economy" by 2010. We all know what this means. Faced with these attacks, the Italian working class is in fighting mood - hence Saturday's impressive turnout and the union agitation for a general strike (now scheduled for April 13). The demonstration eloquently highlighted the fact that Berlusconi is going to face an uphill struggle in pushing through his promised 'liberalisation' of the labour market. However, the millions who converged on the centre of Rome at the weekend were fearful of another prospect, in addition to mass unemployment and increasing financial hardship - that of Italy being plunged into a cycle of individual terrorism and political violence, of a return to the 1970s and the anni di piombo (years of lead). These anxieties were triggered off by the killing on Tuesday night of Marco Biagi - a professor of economics and consultant to the Italian labour minister, Roberto Maroni. Described respectively as "a student of British trade unions" and an "Italian Blairite" (The Observer March 24), Biagi had campaigned for employment 'reforms' and was reported to be one of the authors of a joint document on European labour market reform agreed last month by Berlusconi and Blair. Not a friend of the workers, you can say with some confidence. Biagi's murder was claimed by the New Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combative Communist Party. They are widely believed to be an offshoot from the original Red Brigades, founded in 1971 from the ashes of the Metropolitan Political Collective - and the discovery on a wall near Biagi's home of a (very amateurish looking) five-pointed star, the Red Brigades' 'trademark', supposedly served to confirm the link. The Brigades became headline news in the 1970s for their campaign of kidnappings and assassinations, with their very first targets in June 1974 being two neo-fascists from the Italian Social Movement. Their notoriety reached its peak in 1978 when they kidnapped and murdered the former prime minister, Aldo Moro. Police sources quoted in the mainstream Italian press say that the Biagi killing was almost certainly carried out by the same people who assassinated the senior labour ministry adviser, Massimo D'Antona, in 1999. The New Red Brigades issued a 26-page manifesto on the internet. In it, the authors state that Biagi had been "executed" because he sought to "exploit the workers". The manifesto fulminates against the "imperialist world order" and praises the September 11 attackers for their "effective terrorism". With the killing of Biagi, it continues, "the Red Brigades want to move forward the class struggle". Ironically, the Biagi killing may indeed have helped to "move forward the class struggle" - but perhaps not in the way the New Red Brigades intended. Hence the call by the unions for a two-hour general strike to protest at the killing and the 'peace demonstration' at the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna on Wednesday. Then the mammoth demonstration on Saturday, which saw masses of demonstrators wearing white aprons inscribed with the words, 'Against terrorism, for democracy and rights'. Sergio Cofferati, the head of the largest union in Italy, the historically 'official communist' CGIL, made an impassioned speech, saying that "the defeat of terrorism was the task of all democrats. We are aware that the madness of terrorism always seeks to strike against symbols, and in the symbolism the attack on the politics of social cohesion is clear." Indeed, definitely not in accordance with the wishes of the New Red Brigades, Cofferati began his speech with a warm tribute to Biagi - even though opposition to the sort of 'reforms' pioneered by the professor formed the main raison d'être of the demonstration. The sentiments expressed by Cofferati were echoed by other speakers from the unions, moderate left and 'official communism'. Maybe this makes them all possible assassination targets for the New Red Brigades. As for the government, they were naturally grief-stricken. Tearfully, the interior minister, Claudia Scajola, warbled: "The killers were trying to undermine democracy. This cowardly and bestial killing of a man who nurtured his ideas with nobility and courage has hit the whole country." After he heard about the Biagi murder, Berlusconi invited union leaders to resume dialogue with the government and employers in order "to lower tension". What a hypocritical stance for him to take. Berlusconi has frequently raised the spectre of terrorism to try to denigrate and criminalise those who do not share his views. Hence the opposition parties are "communists" - full stop. The judiciary are mere "persecutors" - ie, do not automatically accede to every whim and fancy of the Berlusconi government. Dissident or radical intellectuals and anti-capitalist protestors have been compared to the September 11 attackers and denounced as 'enemies of civilisation'. Somewhat forgetting the new party line for a minute, Carlo Taormina, a former junior interior minister, accused Cofferati, and the "communist left" of being "objectively responsible" for Biagi's murder. You can expect such accusations to escalate over the coming period - especially if there is another assassination à la Biagi. Following the obvious success of the demonstration, there is much excited talk about a possible social democratic revival. Clearly, some sections of the bourgeoisie are uneasy with the bellicose and confrontational nature of Berlusconi and his government - it threatens to polarise society along stark class lines and thus destabilise Italy society in general. So maybe it is time to promote the 'moderate left' in order to avert any really deep-seated democratic and revolutionary change. Hence the praise heaped on Cofferati, who organised the Saturday event. According to Curzio Maltese of the Rome daily, La Republica, the rally "could revolutionise the balance of forces between the centre-right government and opposition. Cofferati offered a different idea of reformism, faithful to the values and the historic identity of the left, but with its antennae well grounded in society and a capacity to dialogue with everyone" (March 24). Massimo D'Alema, chairman of the former 'official communist' Left Democrats, was also full of hope for the social democratic future: "The centre-left has worked through its grief over our defeat; we are now more united and stronger. It's clear that the logic of a frontal clash will lead the government to defeat and that a policy of striking against the unions has no hope of success." Last weekend gave us a glimpse of the potential power of the Italian working class. Armed with a genuine communist programme - and an inspiring vision of the future society - the workers could sweep aside the Berlusconi government and really make the Italian ruling class as a whole start sweating. The danger is that the masses could succumb to the sweet-sounding reformist words of the left union bureaucrats and the centre-left politicians. We have also been given an object lesson in the futility and ultimately reactionary nature of individualistic terrorist campaigns carried out by small and isolated groups of fanatics. The ideas and actions of the 'pro-September 11ers' in the New Red Brigades for the Construction of a Combative Communist Party can only give succour to the forces of reaction - whether governmental or fascistic. Eddie Ford