Genoa and After:
by Marco Ferrando
This note is to introduce some elements of reflection on the events of Genoa: on its political importance and on the problems that beset the movement and
our own intervention.
The political impact of the days of Genoa has been and is remarkable. The Berlusconi government comes out badly from the circumstance of G8. The same Berlusconi and above all his FIAT minister Renato Ruggiero had sought in his time a channel of "dialogue" with the GSF with the aim of guaranteeing a peaceful governability of the G8 event and a consequent success of image of the Executive on the domestic and international plane. The dynamics of the events have had, according to all evidence, an opposite direction. Among the numerous factors that have competed in this result, central has been the behavior of a broad part of the repressive apparatus of the state. Feeling itself objectively covered by the new government of the right, directly protected and encouraged by the National Alliance and by the SAP [right wing police trades union - CCE], driven by its own internal contradictions and institutional rivalry, the military apparatus unleashed in Genoa has precipitated the entire situation in a frontal clash with the movement. The assassination of Carlo Giuliani, the squadist action conducted on the night of July 21 in the premises of the GSF, the experience of the mass arrests, beatings, sequestrations and tortures, what emerges from the same testimonies of these days, is an unequivocal sign. From a Marxist point of view we could say that it is the confirmation of the "superiority" of the state as the center of real power (that is of organized strength), as regards any government. The government, beginning from Berlusconi and Scaiola, has naturally come to the defense of the police and Carabinieri. But its image is deeply shaken. The chamber of resonance furnished by important sectors of the bourgeois press to the denunciations and testimonies of the police brutalities strikes vast sectors of public opinion. The international reactions do likewise. And the reactivation of masses of the "people of the left" to support the demonstrations of Genoa and against the government seem to break the atmosphere of passive disorientation that followed the defeat of May 13. In conclusion: if Berlusconi had tried to defuse the fuse of Genoa, that fuse is somehow exploded in his hands.
At the same time, the events of Genoa strike the Democratic Left (DS) deeply increasing of late, on all accounts, its vertical crisis. The various clans of the leading bureaucracy in flight have sought laboriously a part in a comedy in relationship with the movement, with an eye turned to the imminent congress. But the result has been grotesque, in the same public perception. The upstaging of Cofferatì (secretary of the Italian trades union confederation CGIL - CE) by D'Alema, with the first announcement of the adhesion of the DS to the demonstrations - realized for purely congressional demands - gave a heavy blow to the credibility of the liberal Democratic Left apparatus by those strong powers of Italian society that it engages as its own reference (to every advantage of the competition of the Margherita). Speculatively, the sudden "counter-order comrades" following, paradoxically, the assassination of Giuliani, counteroposed the apparatus of the party to meaningful sectors of its young and militant base: and the police repression against the demonstration of the 21st strengthened a feeling in these sectors of "abandonment" and "betrayal" even provoking frontal confrontations against liberal DS leaders in numerous parts of the Unity (v. Tuscany). In conclusion, the antiglobalsiation movement does not only objectively radicalize in the DS the alternative between the liberal option and social democratic option but it furnishes to the internal clash a new, live scenerio and direct reference, that complicates all the games on all the sides. Thus, if from the D'Alema and Fassino side the results are radically clear, from the other the estrangement of Cofferati and of the majority of the CGIL from the movement reduces the potentialities of internal political capitalization of the events of Genoa by part of the social democratic tendencies of the apparatus. In conclusion: the DS agony gets worse even going into a coma; and increasing sectors of the traditional DS social establishment feels deprived of all reference just at the moment in which it receives the attention of the movement and it is reactivated against Berlusconi.
The movement emerges with great stature from the days of Genoa. But the propagandist triumphalism of Agnoletto and Bertinotti appears totally out place. The demonstrations of Genoa have certainly confirmed the mass dimension of the antiglobalisation movement and above all the entry of a young generation on the scene of the mobilization. It is a fact of large relevance. Moreover the demonstrations have revealed the diffused signals of popular sympathy that surrounds the movement, on the background of a deep crisis of consensus of liberal politics and, after the police exploits, of a more general democratic worry: the big success of the demonstrations that took place in all Italy on Tuesday 24 July, with the unitary recomposition of
different generations of the "people of the left" and with a vast presence of young people and the youth show a precious potential for further expansion of the movement in action and for its ability of "contamination." This is a central datum of the actual political situation. But just this reality and potentiality underlines the unresolved problems of the orientation of the movement. I don't speak about the strategic and programmatic orientation, that represents obviously the central and, in the last analysis, conclusive ground. I speak about the same political orientation of the leadership of the movement in relationship to the new scenerio of clashes that has resolved: in the awareness, as always, of the deep connection between horizontal strategic and political choices. The disproportion between the backward general level of diffused politicalconsciousness of the movement and the elevated level of the clashes with the apparatus of the state and the very government has constituted undoubtedly a profound element of the demonstrations of Genoa. Naturally, in a certain measure, this contradiction was inevitable because it was unresolved in the inexperience of the younger generations. But the orientation of the leadership of the GSF is not only not aimed to overcome it but it contributes in fact to increase it, with deeply negative relapses.
1) The configuration of the GSF as purely a sum "inter-group" of associations,
out[side?] of a national democratic organization and of the masses of the movement, has constituted a serious obstacle to the exercise of a real leadership of the movement on the same ground of the indications of the streets, with heavy effects of disorientation and confusion.
2) The metaphysics of "non violence" has induced the GSF to reject any real structure of wide and real self-defence of the movement, leaving a mass of young people (and less young people) in the power of the police aggression and of the same raids of the "black block" and causing a diffused feeling of frustration and impotence.
3) More generally, on the political plane, during the days of Genoa there has not emerged from the GSF a unifying proposal of demands and of struggle, addressed to the whole of labour with a view to the autumn, capable of relaunching on a broad basis of the social recomposition a radical opposition to the government of the right. In other terms, even the raising of the level of the clashes has put in evidence, as a litmus paper, the negative reflexes of the reformist-pacifist culture of the leadership of the movement.
The PRC, in turn, has been totally adapted, in the most subordinate way, to the leadership of the GSF. After presenting itself as a candidate, in the first phase, for political-institutional mediator between government and movement, accepting publicly the Frattini [a minister in Berlusconi's government - CCE] proposal of a
negotiating political table between Berlusconi and GSF, Fausto Bertinotti has finished with the theorizing of a total identification of the PRC with the movement. Transforming the correct principle of the deep insertion of the PRC inside the movement into the principle of passive and enthusiastic celebration of all that the leadership of the movement expresses. In reality, the leading group of the PRC operates on more levels than are woven. On the one hand, the antiglobalisation
movement, and in its institutional representation, searches for the lever of the raising of the perspective of the "plural left," that remains its central strategic objective. On the other, for the internal line of the movement, to strenghten a political-diplomatic bloc with all the central components of the GSF, strongly making use of the weight of the PRC in the movement but avoiding posing any political problem. A prejudicial renouncement that Vittorio Agnoletto has publicly recognized, thanking it. In fact this logic removes at the root the same matter of hegemony, with political damage not only, and not so much, for the party, but for the very movement that has been deprived of alternative indications just in the moment in which the experience of Genoa and the rising clashes muliplies, internally, demands for clarity and for perspective.
This general situation broadens the spaces and the importance of our intervention in the movement, but it underlines the actual limits also of our presence in it. We in Genoa have started an important attempt at the construction of an organized presence of a "revolutionary tendency" on the inside of the antiglobalisation movement, with the diffusion of almost ten thousand copies of the Appeal published also in the newspaper of the area and with a public presentation. At the same time, our presence in the demonstrations, with a banner of Communist Project, has constituted, in that context, a useful element of political visibility. But it is recognized with clarity that our organized work in the movement has everything to build and requires a leap of investment diffused of our strengths. The sooner the signatories campaign of the Appeal is readied the sooner there will be a framework of national co-ordination of the work. But above all, a general development of our insertion in the movement and its structures is essential, situation by situation. Each real branch of Communist Project will individualize, in the economy of the available strengths, what comrades invest in the initiative and in the life of the movement, obviously in the ambit of a more general work of social rooting. So much more in a phase in which, after the events of Genoa, the dynamics of extension of the movement and of multiplication of its initiatives are revealed, that will continue probably until the national demonstration of November 10. The main point is the comprehension of the political importance of our insertion: we are facing an occasion of precious intervention in a new generation that could signify, with its irruption on the ground, a beginning of a turn of the national situation and that above all could offer a decisive context for the development of revolutionary Marxism in Italy (and not only Italy). And besides it is evident that the new context of the movement and its debate will inter-weave deeply with the same confrontation inside the PRC on the eve of its 5th Congress: each position of reference conquered in the movement can therefore change into a strengthening of our battle in the PRC.
In this framework, within the strategic and programmatic implantation that is at the base of the Appeal, I believe it is important to advance indications and proposals in relationship to the problems that the movement lives through after Genoa and that is at the center today of its internal confrontation.
1) After the police aggression against the demonstrations and the experience of the
"black block," the theme of self-defence can and must be posed, with equilibrium but with determination, beginning from the more comprehensible levels for the movement. The proposal of a structure of true marshalling of the movement is a concern of extreme importance. The concept is posed, I believe, in simple terms. The movement has the right to protect its own demonstrations, its character, and who participates there, from each form of aggression, from wherever it comes: be it from the state, that has shown that it did not stop itself in front of the symbolic exhibition of "non violence," but that on the contrary has seen cynically, in the defenseless character of the demonstrations, an easy target and at low cost for its own aggression; be it from the marginal violent and vandalistic binges that have been seen in the diffused absence of organised structures of self-defence of the movement, a space of a devasting political incursion. Only by readying a strong and united system of marshalling, under the control of the movement, is it possible to remove from whomever demonstrates the feeling of abandonment and of panic, to every advantage of the same mass character of the demonstrations. I indicate that the preventative defence opposed by the GSF and particularly by Bertinotti against the same theme of marshalling, is based on arguments as inconsistent as "ideological". To oppose the concept of "legal," "journalistic," defence and of the defence of "opinion" (naturally sacrosanct) to the material organization of self-defence (see the recent interview of the secretary in "Liberation") is like saying it is OK to be massacred in order to exhibit a good reasonable image: there is enough to make one doubt the persuasive effectiveness of this message, and even from the mass point of view. Really, at the bottom of such matters, there is in the last analysis the ideological dogma of pacifism in counterposition to the revolutionary perspective of the conquest of political power: but that is just why the proposal of marshalling, within the concept of the democratic right of mass self-defence, becomes, beyond its limit, the allusory metaphor of another strategic horizon.
2) The problem of the "black block," as debated in the movement after Genoa, inter-weaves with these considerations. And at the same time raises some matters of method and of priniciples. Meanwhile, on the plane of the analysis, each rough simplification of the phenomenon has to be avoided. We have observed in these days the diffused representation of the black block as a kind of battalion of disguised police and, at the same time, the demand addressed to the state of repression against the "black block." Apart from the paradoxical contradiction between analysis and proposal, I believe both are deeply wrong. The "black block" as an international phenomenon is the expression of a primitive rebellion, deprived of ideological glue (in this it is different ifrom anarchism, such as Autonomia Operaia in the 70s) and so much more than a political proposal. It is an expression of pure "refusal" as such demarcated physiologically from spurious elements, exposed to police external infiltrations, but capable of attraction in marginal sectors of rebellious youth. The "black block" is to be fought? Undoubtedly, and in the most radical terms, because the political damage that it causes to the movement is directly proportional to the political use made of it as an instrument by the dominant forces. But it is fought for what it is: a deviant phenomenon, but real, from which we are obliged above all to try to remove sectors of disorientated young people and from which to protect the movement and its demonstrations. That is why each proposal of entrusting the problem to the repression of the bourgeois state, which is the enemy of class, is rejected. In first place for an elementary reason of principle: which excludes every form of bloc with the bourgeoisie and with its repressive apparatus against sectors of subordinate classes as disorientated and confused. But also for reasons of political opportunity. Addresses made to the apparatus of the dominant classes against marginal binges signifies in fact contributing to strengthening its ability for rebellious fascination by youth sectors. And more, it is a question of an appeal with a boomerang effect for the same movement: because it means offering the state the pretext of solutions and tools that would be used against the whole movement (more rigid controls to the frontiers, blanket searches of the demonstrators, etc.).
3) The expansion of the movement poses everywhere the problem of its organizational forms. We in this sense could propose, in more direct terms, a hypothesis of democratic construction and of mass movement that indicates a leap ahead as regards the actual situation. The GSF has been constituted, as has been noted, as an inter-associative framework. That means that the unity of the movement becomes entrusted to the search of mediation between the vertices of the
components, while the mass of the activists and of the subjects of the movement, deprived of all decision-making power, receives so to speak the resultant of the relationships between components. This organizational form based, moreover, on the
philosophical principle of the "organization as network" against the "centralist" principle can uphold, and even has at times its propulsive function, in the phase of the gestation of the movement: when the question of the original confluence of diverse organisational expressions is dominant and when the level of confrontation with the bourgeoisie was prevalently mediated and, in each case, much more backward. But now the stabilization of the movement, the big development of the mass base, the entry into it of young forces (and not so young) not belonging to any organization, component or network, the more direct confrontation with the dominant classes, poses a new matter, and a time for efficiency and for democracy. The two are in fact required through their correlation. The first is that of a unified leadership of the movement that at various levels overcomes the form of a pure framework of mediation, often paralysing, between vertices of associations, and instead of
responsibility of agile indications, could engage choices and initiatives that correspond to the necessities and to the times of the adversarial initiatives. The second demand, arising from the first, is that of the full exploitation of the democratic powers of each activist of the movement: not only in the discussion but in the definition of the spokespeople, of the co-ordinators, of the structures of the leadership of the movement that can and must be subjected, at the various levels, to the democratic criterion of election, of control, of revocability. Naturally this type of proposal could take the form, with adaptability, of different articulations: also that of a combination of structures of co-ordination democratically elected with forms of parity representation of different realities and associations. But essentially, in each case, it is to introduce the concept of council democracy in relationship to the demands of the movement.
4) On the directly political plane it is necessary to re-propose forcefully in the movement the ground of the meeting with the working class and of the recomposition of an alternative social bloc. It is not a matter simply of a correct general petition: it is a matter today of a decisive demand of the movement and at the same time of a big opportunity. In the face of the offensive of the government and of the state, and of the campaign of criminalisation, the strongest defense of the movement remains in its capacity for multiplying breaches and relationships with vast masses of the subordinate classes. The passing of autumn presents, in this respect, a big opportunity. The metalworkers will be back at work in September, within a circumstance that will see a storm, also from that side, of a new generation. At the same time, new contractual returns are outstanding, also in sectors of big relevance like the schools. But above all a government that emerges weakened from the test of Genoa will be calling upon the Italian bosses (and the European bankers ) to launch a line of heavy attack on the conditions of life of big masses. In this framework, the antiglobalisation movement, already strong from a diffused sympathy in vast sectors of the society, can really transform itself into the detonator of a social explosion: but on the condition that from the movement emerges a new leadership and a new proposal. The meeting with the workers cannot reduce itself to a sum of good relationships with the representatives of the trades unions of of the class, neither to an action of pressure on Cofferati or to the simple self-satisfied recording of the adhesion of the FIOM to the days of Genoa (though that certainly is important). But it must translate itself into a public proposal of common action, based on a base of simple and united demands, that appear clear and legible to million of workers, that know how to establish a relationship of being atuned to the social questions of vast masses and that just for this challenges to unity of action the same trades union organizations, posing each in front of their own responsibility. In this framework, the proposal of the "expulsion of the Berlusconi government, for a class alternative" can and must be posed in a more direct way to the inside of the movement. The theme is not easy in the face of a diffused distrust, in the movement, toward the language of class politics. But after the experience of Genoa a new space is created, within a possible dynamic of politicisation of youth sectors. And the watchword: "Away with the government of the murders" (or similar) could conquer a broader space for being heard and for our impact.
27 July 2001