Over the last year, the construction of a European imperialist focus financed through the destruction of workers' wages has increasingly proved to be the origin of conditions for social upheaval, which has spread unrest amongst the bourgeoisie of our continent. Recently, shortly before the Strasbourg elections for parliamentary renewal, one of the main Italian news and political weeklies, L'Espresso , published a poll forecasting class clashes throughout the 25 EU countries, and urged the future European Commission to prioritize the "stopping" of the wave of working-class struggles which sprang into being last year. Following is a summary of the most significant events.
Trade union struggle in Europe
In the fall of 2003, the English postal workers go on a weeks-long strike against the privatization and looting of the Royal Post by the Blair government, which includes a series of actions of intimidation against the union, to the point of leading the union to consider quitting the Labour Party altogether. The strike brings so much havoc to the country that a proposal arises suggesting that milkmen should deliver the mail along with the milk.
In Southern Italy, a whole region, Basilicata, rises up to prevent the dumping of nuclear waste requested by Berlusconi; railroad blockades and street pickets stop all transit of goods, with the exception of drugs and food for the inhabitants. The government is forced to nip its bill in the bud. A wave of "wildcat strikes" in local public transportation, in some cases announced for an indefinite period, takes place during December and January demanding the renewal of the national transportation collective agreement- tens of cities are paralyzed for whole days. A savage press campaign is initiated against the strikers, who are accused of bringing unrest amongst the citizens, and Francisco Rutelli, a center-left leader, states that "wildcat" strikes bring instability and pave the way for international terrorism. Simultaneously, the workers of the national airline Alitalia come onto the scene, threatened by thousands of redundancies. Rome airport is occupied and all air traffic is ground to a stop. The popular solidarity forces the consumer associations which had initially backed the slander campaign to express their support for the struggle. The government's intervention, accusing pilots of cutting off a public service, as well as that of some local administrations, which fund a raise in the salaries of pilots of their cities, and, chiefly, the rounding off of a shameful agreement by the majority unions (CGIL-CISL-UIL) prevent an out-and-out rebellion. Rifondazione Comunista itself, even supporting the workers' struggle, instead of favoring the coordination and generalization of the struggle, suggests confining the union agreement to a referendum, which is a way of institutionalizing and thence neutralizing the social clash. Only some small left-wing unions, and a group of comrades from Progetto Comunista who belong to the national leadership of the CGIL make a point of the continuation of the struggle by calling for an indefinite general strike.
Some months afterwards, the workers of Sata de Melfi (Fiat Group), the acme of exploitation in Southern Italy, march to the battlefield by denouncing the endless shifts and the military-like discipline they're subject to, and demanding the same wages as the rest of Fiat's workers. After a 21-day strike, which stops production in most domestic Fiat plants, an agreement is reached which, this time, includes salary rises, less working hours and better working conditions. In the ensuing election for union representatives, Fiom-CGIL, a Melfi-based metallurgical union founded by a Progetto Comunista comrade obtains a trouncing victory, managing to get 70 percent of the votes.
In the following fall, dockworkers opposing the privatizations fostered by Zapatero's government in Spain and Basque Country lead violent struggles against the police, who shoot plastic bullets, injuring some of them.
In Germany, it's the car industry workers that come out onto the streets: First off, it's Opel workers in Bochum, who go on a 10-day strike; then it's Volkswagen workers. Here, again, the bourgeoisie is favored by the intervention of the metal workers union, IG-Metall, which, instead of pursuing the struggle, signs an agreement which trades accepting the freezing of salaries and the extension of working hours in exchange for the defense of job security.
In France, the academic world puts up a fight, with strikes, demonstrations and the occupation of thousands of institutions. However, it is in Italy where a true working class explosion has been taking place since last November. In this case, class struggle is led by the workers of tens of small and medium scale industries, many of which are outsourcers of big formerly state-run factories, which have been fostering reorganization or relocation processes, leaving thousands of workers jobless. Dozens of centers of struggle appear on all sides, reaching high levels of radicalization in some cases. Railway stations are occupied and tollbooths are blockaded. In a small Southern village, a group of workers who hadn't been paid their wages -many of them for a long time- broke into a mall to seize food. Local solidarity was so widespread that even the local bishop was forced to express his support.
The Struggles Lack a Revolutionary Leadership
From this general outline, Europe could be thought to be going through a pre-revolutionary stage; however, we are far away from that, for the time being. The structural weakness of these struggles lies partly in their atomization. Despite this real explosion of working class struggles, which includes some very radical manifestations, such as certain road blockades and long lasting strikes, the struggles risk ending up in the blind alley of company-level negotiations. From a political approach, no organization considers seriously the question of constituting a unified workers' front, which could seriously tackle the problems of industrial development, privatization and relocations, in short, the working class question. In Italy, for instance, the center-left has lately devoted itself not only to criticizing Berlusconi's finance act as it goes against his electoral promise of lowering taxes (for the rich), and demanding lower taxes for companies instead of families (certainly, this must imply social welfare cuts), but also to asking the government to comply with the European stability agreement (a public spending adjustment measure with cuts under 3 percent of the GNP.) Not a single word has been said about the section of the act which stipulates the destruction of the income reserve fund, which has always been one of the main social buffers for overproduction crises. Rifondazione Comunista seems to be too concerned about its "programmatic disputes" with Prodi and its possible entrance into the government, in the likely event of a defeat of Berluscoli in the 2006 elections. The CGIL, the main left-wing union, with five million members, is leading the struggles towards more atomization and wearing down, as it prepares itself to either manage a radicalization of opposition, in case Prodi wins, or a lukewarm support for a "friendly" government. The above mentioned public transportation agreement is added to Alitalia's attack, which is moving non-stop towards a process of balcanization and privatization, with the resulting dismissal of thousands of workers. Nevertheless, the left-wing sector of the CGIL (Lavoro Societá-Cambiare Rotta) is bent on backing the majority sector and giving Guglielmo Epifani, Sergio Cofferati's right-wing successor, the Secretary General chair. The rank-and-file unions, tiny class-struggle unionist organizations, are too small for this widespread working class movement and often prioritize their conflicts among themselves and against the CGIL over the true task of unifying all the class-struggle unionism and the workers' struggles.
Progetto Comunista and the Working Class Question
Progetto Comunista has expressed for years the need to build a comprehensive struggle among the workers based on a unifying program, focusing on the demand for raises in wages and salaries, social improvements, a progressive scale of wages and the nationalization under workers' control free of compensation of all the companies in crisis. In the last year, we have striven for the continuity and unification of the struggle in some big conflicts, from the transportation workers' strike to the Alitalia conflict, in Melfi; where we attempted to organize a coordination of union delegates which would lead the mobilization, denounced the compromising role of the center-left and the majority sector of the CGIL, and raised the banner of an indefinite general strike to overturn the right-wing government. In Genoa, we control the Fincantieri Rifondazione Comunista cell; in Melfi, we control the Sata/Fiat cell; in Rome we have formed a Progetto Comunista nucleus in Alitalia. Anyway, we know we have a huge task ahead, and we're conscious of the limitations of our position within a party which cannot and does not want to consider the workers' movement as the leading subject of the transition. This issue is going to be dealt with in the coming PRC national congress, which will be focused on the alliance of the government and the center-left, and where we are going to do our best to impose our class-struggle orientation, stressing the fact that Bertinotti's "turn" to a center-left coalition government is pushing the party away from those movements that had supported our stance in the last congress and showing that such a turn is a hindrance to the construction of a revolutionary leadership for the social upheaval of our country. In the same way, by entering the European Left, a social democrat force (open to Catholic socialism and progressive liberals!) which blocks all mass action, and acting as spokesman of the European liberal left, the PRC really does not favor any unification of the clashes that are arising throughout Europe, but rather tends to void them and redirect them to the mill of liberal policies.
In any case, the explosion of a growing number of struggles, anywhere in the world, is always a chance for revolutionary Marxists, we will also try to make the most of it!