The PdAC organizes a two-day discussion about the working class organization and its perspectives.
Saturday and Sunday, 6th and 7th of last September, it took place in Rimini the Annual National Meeting of the Party of Communist Alternative (PdAC), in a room crowded with comrades from all over Italy, with a large percentage of workers and youth.
A significant delegation of comrades from other IWL-FI’s sections attended the meeting as special guests: two Brazilian comrades from PSTU, a CorrienteRoja’s leader (Spain), comrades from Belgium and from Switzerland.
An important moment for education
The main theme was internationalism, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the First International, the International Workers Association (1864). And indeed the Saturday was dedicated to resuming the practice of internationalism, a practice which had been broken by the Stalinism and all those political currents that put an end to the working class struggle within a country, in order to keep it powerless.
To open the meeting, Matteo Bavassano’s speech recalled that the importance of the theory and the education for revolutionaries are not merely an intellectual banality, but an important tool to guide our actual practice, our daily activity. The Communist Alternative work in defense of the working class against the attacks of capital and the intervention we make in demonstrations, in the schools and in the workplaces, in the streets and squares of the country have this very purpose. To Marxism, the theory and the education are indispensable and the theory, in particular, helps us to understand the world we want to transform, the system we want to destroy. Bavassano also recalled that the scenario in which we fight today is characterized by a huge economic and social crisis, the revelatory character of which is that the contradiction of capitalism is insoluble within the system itself.
Next Adriano Lotito, Francesco Ricci and Valerio Tower made their speeches. Lotito spoke of the history and the contents of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Marx in 1848, which still stands extraordinarily relevant nowadays, and gave an overview of the principles and concepts of Marx and Engels.
Ricci spoke about the history of the First International, preceded by the League of the Righteous and the League of the Communists, disproving some myths widespread among leftist historians and highlighting the political battle that Marx carried out over the course of his entire life to stake the revolutionary program out of other currents within the working class movement. A fact which shows how groundless is the image of a Marx, scholar and economist, isolated from the political and organizational activity.
The last to speak was Valerio Torre, who made instead a leap to the present: the construction of the IWL-FI in the present struggles, as from the battle that throughout the second half of the twentieth century saw the Argentine leader Nahuel Moreno keep and protect the theoretical heritage of Trotsky, either from the Stalinism attacks or from the revisionists trends within the Trotskyist movement.
At the end a portion of time was dedicated to the debates when several comrades made interventions to raise issues and make their contributions. Saturday evening was concluded with a social hour when the comrades, in a festive mood, could have fun and chat while drinking an ice cold beer.
A round table discussion on the struggles
On the next day it was held a round table on the struggles, an important moment with participants and representatives of the major struggles going on today in Italy and with the long-awaited contribution of the leader of the Brazilian PSTU, João Ricardo Ayala, who spoke about the stately popular demonstrations that took place in Brazil, as from June 2013 and that, with ups and downs, still go on today. Ayala also spoke of the central role that Conlutas plays in these struggles and the PSTU, today one of the main political force at the forefront of the mass mobilization in Brazil. CSP-Conlutas is an important rank and file trade unions federation in Latin America, in which the comrades of PSTU play leading roles.
Among the other attendants: Aldo Milani, Si.Cobas national coordinator, the fighting trade union that carries forward very radical struggles within the logistics sector. Milani attendance was important because currently Si.Cobas assembles in fact some of the most combative sectors of the working class in Italy. Bernard, fighting worker of Dielle, from Si.Cobas; Fabio D’Alessandro, an activist of the committee No Muos in Niscemi; Luigi Sala, activist of the fighting No Austerity Coordination; Patricia Cammarata, PdAC leader and who led the civil servants struggle in the city of Vicenza. Other important attendants were two comrades from Si.Cobas, Napules and Kadija, who have carried out a strong fight against Yoox, not only to improve working conditions but also against sexist bullies from the bosses.
To finish, it were read greetings from the workers in struggle of Natuzzi (Puglia) and from the comrades of LSP, People’s League of Senegal, the first African section of IWL-FI, who could not attend on both days due to visa bureaucratic problems.
Building the revolutionary party
At the end of these two nice and busy days, Fabiana Stefanoni noted the difficulty but, at the same time, stressed the tremendous need of building a revolutionary party, a fighting party of the working class. She also denounced straightforwardly, those who chose to go ahead through other paths, betraying the interests of the working class in order to get material privileges. A practice widespread also in trade unions, recalling that uniting the fighting trade unionism serves to oppose the maneuvers of the Renzi government that threatens to turn into law the agreement on trade union representation, which would put an end to the freedom and to the trade union democracy.
Building up the revolutionary party in the struggles today is an emergency if we are to provide a future to the next generations, if we want to get rid of a system that has never offered anything to humanity and that, on the contrary, fosters the war, the racism and the male chauvinism. The militants from PdAC prepare themselves in the struggles in order to strengthen them and extend them, and currently to build up an international revolutionary leadership.
Finally, we quote the words of Trotsky, reminding one of his speeches that sums up well the meaning of these two days: “Come to the Fourth International. We promise you neither privilege nor career, nor certainty of victory, only the sacrifice of your days in a constant and tough fight. Only one thing we can promise you: if we are defeated, it will only after having fought. If we win we will build a new world together!”
