Evictions, expulsions, paralyzing weapons, racism, and homophobia. Every day, the coalition government of the League and the Five Star Movement does something to generate an answer from the social movement and a struggle against its policies. With certain satisfaction, we may say the movement is responding very well. After the closing of the Italian ports to immigrants and the Diciotti [1] case, the first significant demonstrations began against Salvini and his repressive policies.
By: Matteo Bavassano – PdAC, Italy
The task of the revolutionary movement is to take this outrage against the government and ensure that it does not remain isolated, but to join the struggles of the workers. To attempt to end the “honey moon” between the workers and the government, which begins to show its defects…
The worker and petty bourgeois sectors were the most affected by the economic crisis. Their expectations provided the parliamentary bases necessary to create the Conte-Salvini-Di Maio administration. Despite this, the specific actions of these first months of governments have not taken into account the actual interests of the social sectors that supported the Five Star Movement and the League in the past March 4 elections. This government has no restrains to attack them when the employers’ interests are at stake.
The Ilva case [2] is true proof of what promises to be the working method of this government. When they may lie about the actual problems of the workers (wage defense, employment, rights), socially elected scapegoats are systematically attacked (which are immigrants today, tomorrow who knows…). On the other hand, when they seek to sustain the faith in the electoral promises of defending the Italian workers, the government does not hesitate in defending… Italian and foreign employers!
“Actual Grillism”
After years of speaking as some sort of bourgeois speaking “grillos” (grass hoppers), not because of their good advice, but because they behaved as know-it-all, uptight men with all the solutions in their pockets, when the “Grillistas” reached office they are demonstrating their political inconsequence. Of course, all this was widely foreseeable, not only due to the performance of the Five Star administration of the past years (from the “pioneer” Parma di Pizzarott, to the Rome of Virginia Raggi), but through a Marxist analysis of their program. Sweet-talk based on hopes, illusions and typically petty bourgeois fears set together with the art of obtaining the greatest quantity of possible votes. Not by chance, the issue of immigration is not mentioned, so to avoid rejection of the poor who believe immigrants steel the work of Italians. The “citizenship expense” is not an innocent choice of words for a low unemployment economic aid. We could go on and on with these types of examples. The program of the Five Stars has melted away like snow in the sun before the need of the Grillist political class to reach office at any cost. They have thrown away their program to adopt a different one: the completely bourgeois program of Salvini’s League.
The Ministry of Repression
Although repression by police apparatus is constant in any bourgeois democracy, to speak of a Minister of the Interior led by Salvini has a sour Orwellian taste. The Prime Minister is deliberately acting so that those who voted for them are deceived. Salvini is working to gain the hatred on behalf of a sector of the population. From the history of the Diciotti immigrants, actually imprisoned for no reason, challenging the most basic human rights of the XIX century, to the strict evictions of occupied housings, to unconditional defense of violent criminals living within police forces of our country – murderers of Stefano Cucchi and Federico Aldrovandi, just to mention the best-known crime cases. Despite this, the League continues to grow in the polls. Today, it is the first party in the country, including the M5s [Five Star Movement], which is losing ground due to its complete political and programmatic inconsequence. Facing the facts, the workers who believed with “Grillism” they would obtain change, must re-think their opinion. The votes on Five Star led the way to Salvini.
True Change will come from the Struggle of the Workers
As we always say, the struggle of the workers and the masses oppressed by capitalism will actually change things. Only workers in struggle may force the government not to sign unfavorable agreements like the Ilva, or not to sell the enterprises, as it may be posed in the Alitalia conflict. Only the reactivation of struggles may overcome the economic plans of the government, which beyond colorful words, seek to attack the workers to guarantee the profit of the employers.
Therefore, we wish to speak to all workers and all organizations of our class. We make a call to finally begin a way of struggle joining to oppose the anti-worker measures of the government. We must act now, or we risk not having time!
[1] Diciotti is a military boat of the Italian Coast Guard that last August, after five days of blockage in Catania, landed with 138 immigrants, which motivated the Italian justice to open an investigation against the League leader, Matteo Salvini. T.N.
[2] Ilva is an Italian steel industry that works with steel production and transformation. Due to the environmental impact that it causes with its emissions, both in Taranto and Geneva, it has had penal prosecutions due to contamination. There are chemical and epidemiological reports that state its responsibility in intentional disasters, food poisoning, intentional omission of precautions of labor accidents, damage to public goods, spills of dangerous substances and atmospheric contamination. These pollutant substances act as carriers of dangerous gases derived from coke cranes that emit benzo (a) pireno and dioxins, and continuum exposal to these pollutants of the atmosphere emitted by the steel industry causes degenerative phenomenon in the human organism. These are expressed in sicknesses and death. T.N.
Article published in Progetto Comunista, 9/25/2018. Available in https://www.alternativacomunista.it/content/view/2603/1/
A Government of Change or a Government of Repression?
