Fight against the attempt to outlaw Communism and Communists in Italy (part 2)

From

Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC); Association for Proletarian Solidarity (ASP); and

Struggling Workers Union (SLL);

The mobilization against the trial for “Cop Hunt” is an integral part of the fight against the abuses of law enforcement officials and of the campaigns for making Carabinieri, policemen and customs officers on service to carry a different serial number that distinguishes and identifies each one of them.

What happens in Italy is part of army manoeuvres to outlaw Communism and Communists. In the EU, after the approval of the Directive Lindblad in 2006 that equates Communism to Nazism, communist parties in various countries have been outlawed (Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) or are near to be outlawed (Czech Republic and Moldova). In Poland and Hungary communist symbols have been banned and, finally, in December 2010 it was presented the proposal to prosecute the defense of communism.

In this context, in what sense and why has the persecution of the caravan of (n)PCI a special place?

For about 30 years the Authorities seek to prevent and certainly hinder its work systematically.

The first judiciary proceeding dates back to 1981, it was followed by seven more with the same charge (subversive association with terrorist intent, 270 bis item) and often against the same persons. Proceedings were always accompanied by raids, arrests, seizure of material, stalking, intimidation against supporters and contributors, defamatory press campaigns. These proceedings ended so far with nonsuit judgments.

The only logical explanation of such painstaking “attention” is that an authoritative part of the bourgeoisie thinks that the caravan of (n)PCI is a threat to its power. That is to say, analysis, strategy and the plan it proposed are those required to make advance working class and masses’ struggle to “finish the work that first Italian Communist Party interrupted: to make Italy a socialist country, and so contribute to the world proletarian revolution “(Founding Declaration of (n)PCI - October 2004).

For several decades (n)PCI’s caravan has been the main driver of the new birth of the conscious and organized communist movement in our country. It has not merely proclaimed that we need to rebuild the Communist Party, that we need a perspective, an alternative to capitalism, a project, that we must take stock of the 70s and of the past experience of the communist movement. It did it. It rebuilt the Communist Party. It took stock of the successes achieved by the Italian and international communist movement in the last century, and pointed out the errors and limitations that prevented it from establishing socialism in any of the imperialist countries in the last century. Those errors and limitations led to the prevalence in it of the modern revisionists, to the reversal of the trend, the regression and degeneration, the weakening until the dissolution of most of the communist parties, the collapse of most of first socialist countries and the others, anyway, to abandon the role of the red base of the world proletarian revolution and change side. On this basis, (n) PCI, in its Manifesto Program,

- has exposed the communist world conception; in order to not tail events, to not undergo them, to not be surprised and thrown off by them, the Communists have to own and use the science of revolution (the communist world conception): “to get rid of the mentality instilled by the bourgeoisie and the clergy, to assimilate the communist world conception is an essential aspect of becoming Communists. The Communists are distinguished from others who are intolerant of the present course of things as Communists themselves are and that to some extent even fight against it as Communists themselves do, because they have a more advanced understanding of the conditions, forms and results of the ongoing struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie to establish socialism“;

- it indicated the prospect, the alternative to the chaos of the crisis: to establish socialism. “It is not a task of little account, but it is possible. It is the only way to overcome the current agonizing and dangerous state in which the bourgeoisie has brought us. In order to be completely fulfilled, this task will require the whole of humanity to transform, to reach a level of civilization higher than the present. It will lead men and women to practice en masse those spiritual (intellectual and creative) activities and develop those moral characteristics (initiative, accountability, participation in social life) from which the ruling classes have always excluded the mass of the population (...) and so they do still today with thousand tricks and thousand means of corruption, escapism and coercion.“;

- it outlined the strategy for achieving this goal: the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War (PRPW) whose central aspect is the creation of the new people’s power, formed by the organized forces of the working class and of the other classes of the popular masses gathered around the communist party. It is a power that opposes imperialist bourgeoisie’s power and grows up to overtake and eliminate it. PRPW means then to build the communist party, to gather the revolutionary forces of society around the communist party, to raise their ideological, political and organizational level, to mobilize them according to a plan, to develop a series of initiatives that weaken imperialist bourgeoisie’s power and strengthen the new people’s power, to eliminate the state of the imperialist bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat;

- it has developed a General Plan of Work (GPW) for the first phase of PRPW indicating four fronts of struggle in which to develop the organization and mobilization of the masses to build up the revolutionary forces.

First front: resistance to repression, fight against repression and the development of solidarity.

Second Front: mobilization of the masses to intervene in bourgeois political struggle.

Third Front: mobilization of the masses in union claims to defend without reservations and to extend the conquests wrested from the bourgeoisie.

Fourth Front: mobilization of the masses to build the economic, social and cultural means and organizations autonomous from the bourgeoisie (“people’s homes”, social centers, cooperatives, cultural clubs, mutual aid funds, sports and recreation associations, etc..) and directly useful to meet their needs.

ASP, P-CARC and SLL are organizations that seek to operate according to the line indicated by (n)PCI respectively in first, second and third of the four fronts of the GPW.

The general crisis worsened in autumn 2008, that is to say it entered its acute and terminal phase. The communist movement (and the communist party) had not yet achieved an adequate degree of consolidation and strengthening and the new situation has somewhat changed the conditions under which it takes place the first phase of the revolutionary people’s war. So, the (n)PCI launched the line of People’s Bloc Government (PBG): an emergency government formed by popular and workers organizations and composed of persons who already have their confidence and decided to transpose into law the measures that popular and workers organizations adopt in any particular occasion for facing the crisis, even if they go against the interests of bosses, bankers and the Vatican and the dictates of the international community. He also indicated the conditions that must be created to establish the GBP: 1. To propagandize the need for an emergency people’s government, to convince workers and popular organizations that only constituting an emergency government each one of them can achieve his goal, 2. to multiply the number of workers and popular organizations, encouraging their birth in every company, in every town, in every field, 3. to drive workers and popular organizations to coordinate themselves on local, provincial, regional and national level, to form networks on a territorial basis and on the base of purpose and scope of operations, 4. to make the country ungovernable by the bosses and their Authorities with initiatives carried out by the popular masses.

In recent years the Italian authorities have opened one judiciary proceeding after another against the (n)PCI’s caravan. They have tried to do scorched earth around it, they pursued public organizations that are inspired by its conception and line, they involved the French authorities and those of other countries, they arrested its leaders and members.

They failed: the activity of (n)PCI has continued because Communists have resisted all forms of repression and organized themselves in order to continue their work: the most recent and important steps were the foundation of the (new) Italian Communist Party (October 2004), the publication of its Manifesto Program (Spring 2008), the celebration of its First Congress (early 2010).

Thanks to the continuity of its work, that is to say to its resistance to repression, the (n) PCI is able to use in its favor the same judiciary proceedings: 1. to promote proletarian solidarity; 2. to expose and mobilize against violations of the laws that, to some extent, protect the interests of the people against the arbitrariness of the bosses, the clergy and their Authorities and to defend the Constitution in what it states in defense and promotion of the rights and interests of the popular masses, statements coming  from the balance of power dictated by the victory of the communist movement against Nazism, 3. to enlarge the contradictions that these violations also create within the ruling class itself.

Now the Authorities aim to outlaw the (n)PCI and the organizations that recognize and cooperate with its plan to make Italy a socialist country, to make its judges declare them “terrorist organizations” and then automatically apply the procedures set by national and international “anti-terrorism” (detention of suspects without judicial proceedings, deprivation of liberty and civil rights by the decision of police several abuses and harassments).

This is the center around which they are rotating many other proceedings against members, associates and supporters of CARC Party, ASP and SLL. They are about 42, against 180 people (in many cases the same people are involved in multiple proceedings at once) and with charges ranging from seditious meeting to resisting a public officer, the “extortion of better job contracts” to “private violence “(as the courts call the pickets to prevent the closure and decommissioning of a hospital!). They are proceedings opened where CARC Party, ASP and SLL have become centers of organization and mobilization of the popular masses of people to nip in the bud the trials of fascism (Tuscany), to defend and build useful and decent jobs for all and to break into the theater of bourgeois politics (Naples).

This series of proceedings might suggest that the bourgeoisie and its Authorities are strong. It is actually a force only apparent. Their situation is precarious.

The methods they have so far used to contain the communist movement and ensure a degree of collaboration or at least of indifference of a significant part of the masses are collapsing. Under the pressure of the crisis, the economic concessions the popular masses tore from the bourgeoisie have disappeared; the participation in elections in the wake of the bourgeois parties and the mass organizations of the regime are upset by the measures pro-governance (threshold barrier, anti-union measures, etc..), by the lawlessness of the Authorities and the development of reactionary mobilization, diversion and poisoning are suspended, the selectivity of repression concentrated against the Communists is shaken by the spread of militarization (in the areas where people defends the environment, in the “red areas” systematically erected to defend the palaces of power, the ban on marches), the limitations of the freedoms and rights of persons (confinement, obligations, prohibitions imposed to football supporters), illegal detention of immigrants, special prison treatment (41 a item).

The Authority of the ruling class always operate more openly and frequently in violation of the spirit and often of the letter of the laws and of the Constitution in force (war missions, denial of political asylum and of the most basic civil rights to immigrants, freedom of political action for old and new fascists, creation of “strategic and military zones”, restrictions and bans on demonstrations, attempts to gag the non aligned press, limitation to the right to strike, increasing barriers to free organization of trade unions, refusal to implement the outcome of the referendum of last June against the privatization of the water, constitution of bourgeois governments without elections, expansion of activities covered by state secrecy, etc..). But they have not radically changed the laws and the Constitution. They are creating the conditions for doing it, everything pushes them in that direction, but they have not yet done it .