Freedom Road Socialist Organization condemns the Italian authorities for the raids on the homes of members of CARC (Committees of Support for Resistance – for Communism) Party. It is an attack on the democratic rights of Italian revolutionaries, who we stand in solidarity with.

On April 21, Italy’s political police searched the homes of six comrades associated with the CARC Party, five in Naples and one in Florence. Three of the homes raided were those of members of the CARC Party’s National Executive Committee: Paolo Babini, Igor Papaleo and Marco Coppola. The government is lying and trying to put the tag of “terrorism” on them.

Members of FRSO know about repression firsthand, and we stand with those who are experiencing repression. The decline of imperialism is accelerating, and the capitalists are using repression to preserve the existing order of things. They will certainly fail.

The Italian working class has a proud history of struggle that is an inspiration to workers everywhere. We are confident that the CARC Party will defeat these attacks.

End the repression against the CARC Party!

Long live international solidarity!

#FRSO #International #CARC #Italy #PoliticalRepression

At the invitation of the Comitati di Appoggio alla Resistenza per il Comunismo (CARC), Michela Martinazzi of the Central Committee of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization delivered the following speech to a national meeting against NATO, held in Italy, December 8.

Good morning from New York comrades,

On behalf of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I extend warm greetings and solidarity to the participants and organizers of this important gathering. The violent involvement of NATO is felt throughout the world. As communists, we have a special task to oppose U.S. monopoly capitalism, the wars that it brings, and its tools like NATO. We’re honored that you invited us to take part in this meeting to fight NATO on a global scale. And we’re ready to continue the fight alongside you!

The downward spiral of imperialism

Imperialism is steadily spiraling towards its end. The decline picks up speed with each new world event that stresses the antagonisms between the war-mongering class and those who foot the bill.

Post World War II, the U.S. built a web of economic institutions where Wall Street and Washington DC were at the center. That original web is long gone, and in its place is a world economy that is breaking and fragmenting. With each new break, the decline of U.S. imperialism is picking up speed, and the Trump presidency will accelerate its downfall.

A symptom of declining imperialism is the sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions. These can take on both political and military scopes. For example, Trump campaigned that Ukraine is primarily a concern for Europe and that the U.S. should no longer concern itself with the issue. If Trump is true to his word, the policy shift will force European imperialist powers, mainly Germany, to bolster Ukraine while putting stress on NATO.

As the power of the U.S. economy shrinks, Trump relies on threats of tariffs to recover a semblance of power. He ran on the promise of tariffs on all Chinese-imported products. While the U.S. working class will be the ones who shoulder the burden of this trade war, Trump continues to barrel forward in de-linking the U.S. economy from the People’s Republic of China.

With each misstep on behalf of the imperial powers, we’re seeing a clearer definition in the developing spheres of influence and domination. The U.S. has a smaller role to play, while the other two centers of monopoly capitalism – Japan and the European Union – are also taking up smaller shares of the world GDP.

Anti-imperialism in the 21st century

As we see the steady decline of U.S. imperialism, and, broadly, the decline of imperialism around the world, we see the inverse, as the people rise up against it. As the U.S. monopoly capitalist class stumbles, the people continue their march to victory.

People around the world are facing economic hardships as the warmongers steadily beat the drums of war. United States military spending went from $366 billion under Bush to $1,109 billion, or more than $1 trillion, under Biden. In the last two decades, this budget destabilized Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; funded attempted coups in Bolivia and Venezuela; supplies weapons to reactionary governments in the Philippines and Ukraine. and spearheads the genocide of Palestine.

The people are tired of their tax dollars funding war

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, we’ve seen the anti-war movement have its highs and lows, but the overall trend has been to fight against imperialist wars.

The pandemic in 2020 sharpened many contradictions and it culminated in the George Floyd rebellion. This laid the groundwork for a new generation of organizers to not only question the ruling class but gain confidence in the power of protest. The landscape of the movement completely changed after that summer.

The same people who took to the streets for the George Floyd rebellion, were some of the same ones who joined the protests in 2023 for Palestine – some of the largest protests for Palestine we’ve seen in the West.

As inflation rose, jobs were lost, and debts were left unpaid, everyday people continued to question why the government continued to spend money on war rather than people’s needs. Worsening conditions only deepened the antagonism between the interests of the working class and the ruling class.

When the heroic Palestinian resistance carried out the Al-Aqsa Flood, the same generation that the George Floyd rebellion revolutionized, took to the streets in the millions. Politicians who cried for Israel could not gather the same support they were used to just a few years back.

FRSO released a statement on October 9th where we said:

“Those of us who stand in solidarity with Palestine have our work cut out for us. The Zionist regime is carrying out horrific crimes – including indiscriminate bombings in Gaza that have destroyed homes, schools and health care facilities. Their logic is genocidal. We need to act fast.

Demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine should be organized everywhere. The role of the U.S. needs to be highlighted. U.S. weapons are killing people. Biden wants to send Israel more weapons. Not one U.S. dollar should be funding the occupation of Palestine.

In the days ahead, lots of politicians are going to be saying “stand with Israel.” They will lie and cry. Do the opposite. This is time to stand with Palestine. Time is on the side of the oppressed. And a new stage of the freedom struggle has arrived.”

The people of the world understand that the imperialist rulers are selling out their livelihoods for profits and domination. They see it embodied in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The U.S. alone has sent $17.9 billion since October 2023.

And that’s why the people cannot stand by as Israel carries out a genocide. That’s why millions have been marching, boycotting, and organizing since October 7.

We’re entering a new era of the anti-war movement, and as communists we must seize it!

Organizing against the war

The forces organizing for Palestine are the same forces that will be ready to organize against NATO. Our role is to cultivate a campaign against NATO forces that harnesses the raw revolutionary passion of this new generation of activists.

When the protest against the NATO summit took place in Washington DC this past summer, I was happy to see that the majority of attendees were people my age and younger. Broad calls against war are gaining popularity amongst all progressive people. The question of “Why are we sending money overseas?” is on everyone’s mind.

However, to sustain a strong anti-war movement, we must have strong organizations to support it. It requires an understanding of meeting the masses where they’re at and bringing their demands forward through the lens of Marxism.

The great Chairman Mao Tse Tung said in his speech A Talk to the Editorial Staff of the Shansi-Suiyuan Daily, “If we tried to go on the offensive when the masses are not yet awakened, that would be adventurism. If we insisted on leading the masses to do anything against their will, we would certainly fail. If we did not advance when the masses demand to advance, that would be Right opportunism.”

Our organization is growing quickly. We’re taking up the demands of the people in the belly of the beast, and channeling them into campaigns. Relying on sloganeering to build our movements will only result in burning out the revolutionary fire of the people. As Marxist-Leninists, we must deliver tangible victories to the people as we face the many-headed monster that is imperialism.

To grow the fight against NATO, let us find the demands of the people and show them who the true enemy is: NATO and the monopoly capitalist class!

The road ahead

We have a challenge ahead of us. We’ve seen the election of right-wing populists throughout the world. We also face politicians that parade around progressive slogans, but actively work against the needs of the people. These figureheads are enemies of progress, justice and freedom.

But while we have many enemies, we have even more allies. As we’ve seen in the last year, millions are ready for change. Millions are marching against a rotten system that has only delivered death and misery. Millions are ready to fight towards a better future!

Our role as communists is to unite all that we can against tyranny. Our task is revolution, and we’re armed with the tools of Marxism-Leninism. The road ahead may be filled with challenges, but we’re well equipped to face them!

Down with NATO!

Down with imperialism!

Long live international solidarity!

#International #Italy #CARC #NATO #AntiWarMovement #FRSO #Statement #RevolutionaryTheory

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Italian Marxist- Leninist organization Fronte Popolare.

“Health is first and foremost, but without money no masses are sung”: so, we read on one of the many banners laid out during the spontaneous protest marches in Naples in these hours. The contrast between health and work, between physical well-being and economic well-being is a choice that in a real democracy we should not even imagine to make. Yet this is the choice put in front of us, in the South as well as in the North, throughout the all country. While the North – and especially the Milan metropolitan area – tend to maintain a modest semblance of widespread economic well-being, the same is not true in the large cities of the South. Naples is the third largest city in Italy and perhaps the most important in the whole South. And it is here that the expected anger of those who have to choose between health and work erupts.

The easy para-journalistic theory of the conspiracy by the mafia does not hold this time. Above all, artisans and self-employed people are mobilized, crushed by an economic crisis that has been going on for over ten years and that worsened in the hot months of the first wave of the covid. If we superimpose the structural character of the crisis of the South on top of this emergency, it is easy to expect the radicalization, in some ways violent, of the riot. And the detestable and instrumental participation of fascist organizations, which generally do not gather a large consensus in the south of the country, does not explain this radicalization.

Beside the shop keepers take to the street all the others, including the sub proletariat. And that someone has taken advantage of this to perform “criminal” acts, this does not explain even a little bit the participation extended to the many sectors in crisis of the catering and artisans. That is, of that micro-enterprise, the backbone of the real economy of our country, which actually produces a good part of the national wealth. The rent, the salaries, the ruthless competition of the web big companies (Amazon in the lead, which since the beginning of the pandemic has seen their earnings grow exponentially), the incessant and depressing bureaucracy: all these factors have concurred in progressively pushing the small business owners out from the middle class. Over time, the proletarization of that middle class in which shop keepers and artisans were inserted has become increasingly evident. For this reason, they are protesting against the announced curfew ordered by the Campania Region of Vincenzo De Luca, who in the precedent days was the first among the Presidents of the Regions to review the model of the school in attendance developed by the government. Already the day after the riots, De Luca finally put in standby the plan for a full lock down of the region. He claims now that such provision is unfeasible without the support of the central government.

It should not scandalize the violence of the masses, but the choice we have come to have to make: health or work. In the wake of the age-old Taranto issue – where we still have to bargain between having a meal on the table and trying to survive the harmful fumes of ILVA, so we have to choose whether to risk “catching” the coronavirus or not to reach the end of the month. The issue of the covid, throughout Italy and with greater vigor in the tormented South, has simply opened up a whole series of pots in which, for too long, has wallowed in the great business bourgeoisie, colluded with the crookedness, which has shared among itself the cake of health care, transport, services.

We must say once and for all that the problem is not “curfew yes or no”, the problem is which social and economic system we have built up until now and which, instead, we must start to imagine right now. The State must regain ownership of all strategic sectors: centralize decisions on health care, which should be 100% public; have a public transport infrastructure plan in line with the population density of each area of the country; provide when necessary concrete economic aid to the most vulnerable sectors of the population. Finally, the State should identify and strike the organized crime with the violence necessary to re-establish the sacrosanct concept that a citizen will never again have to borrow money from usurers – as many shop-owners are often forced to do. Restore the essential principle: health and work are not and must never again be opposed.

#Italy #Europe #PeoplesStruggles #COVID19 #FrontePopolare

Fight Back! interviews Guido Salza, the head of the International Relations Department of the Italian communist organization Fronte Popolare.

Fight Back!: How are the working people of Italy being impacted by the pandemic?

Guido Salza: A clear picture of the dynamics of the infection are not yet apparent. However, it is likely that the working class is paying the highest price. Similar to what happened in China, COVID has spread very fast in the most industrial areas of our country. The more concentrated the production and population are (as it is in Lombardia, Piemonte, Veneto and Emilia Romagna), the more troublesome the epidemic has been.

Indeed, the virus probably reached the northwest of Italy travelling in business class. But its transmission has soon been very fast among people who every day utilize public transportations or share working places. Remote work is not feasible for manual jobs.

There are other issues that make us believe the poorest are paying the most. For instance, the Italian economic system is characterized by a very high share of informal jobs and workers without papers, who now are left without income.

Moreover, the lockdown is forcing poor people to stay inside their modest houses, where social distancing is just impossible. COVID dramatically hits workers in the health system, and more than 10% of infected people are among nurses, doctors and other jobs in hospitals.

Neoliberal policies during the last 20 years have compromised the Italian public health system. We see the collapse of hospitals even in the wealthiest part of the country. The high mortality of COVID in Italy is due to multiple factors; however, many deaths could likely have been avoided with a more reliable public health system. The removal of the public health management from local and regional authorities and privatization has jeopardized the central state's action in the emergency.

Fight Back!: Are the big factories and large workplaces still functioning? If so, how are workers resisting?

Salza: The Italian government has secured the cessation of 'unnecessary' economic activities and signed a protocol for workplaces with the main unions and the employers' organization Confindustria. The protocol regulates the safety measures to be taken in workplaces and command the closure of those firms that cannot comply. However, many workers do not think their firms' role is 'necessary', or they do not feel safe in the workplaces. We have witnessed several wildcat strikes. Although grassroot and confederal unions see with favor (or at least do not deprecate) strikes, workers mobilize mostly spontaneously. They demand the government or the employers 'protect them' from the infection but, unfortunately, the strikes lack of any political horizon.

Big firms are under the public lens, but it is crucial to realize that small firms characterize Italian capitalism. These small firms are likely to pay the highest price in terms of job losses and workers are very concerned about a prolonged lockdown.

Fight Back!: How does your organization view the government's response to the pandemic?

Salza: The actual parliament’s majority arises from an agreement between the populist Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party. After years of public attacks against the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement has been forced to such arrangement by the defection of the far-right party Lega, when Salvini, Lega’s leader, called for general elections while Lega was leading the polls. Many Five Star Movement supporters look negatively at the new alliance with the Democratic Party, one of the main parties responsible of the neoliberal policies in the last 20 years of Italian history. Many think the Five Star Movement has gone so far only to protect their seats in Parliament. Both Democrats and the Five Star Movement are hence quite discredited in the public's eyes.

The prime minister has started to be seen as making a power play – becoming a 'man of power.' He is ruling through emergency measures. Being asked for ID by military and police in the streets is now becoming the daily routine. We are facing is a democratic emergency, in which the collective role of parliament is severely restricted, and the state leaves to military forces the control of its people.

We, of course, agree with the lockdown, as it is the most effective way, we have to stop COVID's spreading. The Italian government has been early in favour of lockdown, while many other countries were rejecting this idea, trying to gain from the situation economically. Yet, it is also likely that an even earlier economic and social lockdown would have avoided the present situation in Italy. This is particularly true for some highly industrial areas of Lombardia, in which deaths are now four or five times higher than in comparable periods of time.

That the situation was not to be underestimated in some areas of Lombardy was clear from February 23. Many hospitals were closed due to the contagion of some nurses and doctors. On March 5 the National Institute for Health recommended the establishment of a red zone in the most affected municipalities in the province of Bergamo (near Milan). The government, however, decided not to enact that course of action. Now there is a continuous finger-pointing between municipalities, regions and national government.

The government’s hesitation in imposing limits on economic activity has been even more evident in its latest intervention, which has been suddenly modified during the weekend so as to comply with large employers' requests.

Regarding the health system, the government has not been able to convincingly cope with the emergency. The provision of masks and other necessary personal protective equipment for health workers has been extremely scarce.

The hybrid nature of 'Protezione Civile,' the organism that is in charge of the emergency, characterized by fuzzy governance between state, region and local authorities, does not help.

The government now reckons we must mobilize an enormous amount of public money to cope with the actual health emergency, which soon will turn into a profound social and economic crisis. This is especially true in the most deprived areas of the country (as Southern Italy), as we start to see people forced to steal food to live.

Public spending has been a taboo for almost 30 years in Italy, and the government will find many oppositions to increasing public spending. Once more, we denounce the reactionary role of the European Union. The German-capital-led Nordic countries are the fierce adversary of any form of European solidarity. As a matter of facts, our people have received help from China and Cuba and even Russia, while our European 'partners' were calling us 'lazy,' looking for an excuse to not going to work – as one of the UK government's advisors has recently stated.

The Italian government is adopting the first emergency economic measures, which would be part of a bigger intervention plan. The aim is to establish credit channels and guarantees to shore up the economy against imminent collapse. However, the problem is not only whether or not to finance the economic and social categories affected by the crisis. With an alarming gap between rich and poor in our country, the question is who is asked for the money. In other words, it is a question of who has to pay the bill.

Fight Back!: What is your organization doing in response to this crisis?

Salza: Since day one, we have been calling our comrades to strictly comply with the social distancing measures, emphasising our individual responsibility in the collective effort to slow down the numbers of COVID’s infection.

Our National Health System, our economy and our society face unprecedented pressure from the post-war period to the present. The effort being made by the whole country to put itself in a position to cope with the emergency should not only not be underestimated, but is indeed a proof of the vitality of Italian society that we should be proud of.

As communists, we feel, now more than ever, the responsibility to play a leading role. This means first of all participating in the collective effort to face the emergency and overcome it.

Our militant community is at the forefront in helping to spread awareness of individual responsibility in making the containment measures ordered by the authorities effective and in scrupulously following the hygienic instructions necessary to avoid contagion. Each and every one of us feels the responsibility of participating in the prevention and discouragement of irrational behaviour which, by contravening the measures imposed by the moment, opens the way to irrational whose dangerousness multiplies that of infection.

But this is not stopping us from producing political campaigns to promote a democratic and socialist exit out of the present health and social crisis.

The pandemic is calling for a renewed role of the state in the management of economic life. The ideology of the invisible hand is showing itself a lie once again. It is becoming clear that the only way out is to (by far) improve the actual level of public spending. This is true also for multinational organizations as the EU, which now is slowly realising that they must relax debt policies to let countries spend, and they must also plan a continental intervention to back the economy of the eurozone.

As Fronte Popolare, we are campaigning for a full re-publicization of the Italian health system, and to drastically raise the public spending of our country.

We are working on a national and European campaign with other radical left and communist organizations to ask for a European tax. We ask for the quarantine of capital!

The principle of the free movement of capital, which allows this legalized theft against the peoples of Europe, was enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty as one of the most sacred cornerstones of the Union and then borrowed from the subsequent Lisbon Treaty. This is an absolute principle, which applies in relations between member states and between them and third countries.

We think the free movement of capital within the EU should be stopped immediately. States should tax dividends and big capital to the extent they need to finance income and living standards support for workers, small traders, owners of craft businesses and VAT numbers, pensioners, unemployed and small and medium-sized enterprises. We are proposing a real manoeuvre of expropriation in the name of responsibility and social solidarity.

But that is not enough, because a lot of capital has already moved, over decades, along the routes of European fiscal dumping. We, therefore, need to establish uniform solidarity taxation in all EU member states, whose resources must be channelled into the coffers of an ad hoc European institution (along the lines of the one proposed by the supporters of the so-called Coronabond).

The governments involved must participate with equal dignity. Resources must be fairly distributed, according to criteria of proportionality with the population and the volume of the economic damage suffered by each country. Funds' destination must be restricted to support the real economy, the income and standard of living of the working classes, and the safeguarding of productive activities and employment.

To this end, we propose that a rate of 80% should be set at which to tax annuities, capital and share dividends, modulating the taxation mechanism to safeguard the investments of small savers.

This is not, for our part, a form of recognition of the current European Union. On the contrary, it is a step towards establishing more significant margins of fairness and justice on our continent. The goal is to recover what has been taken away from the peoples of Europe. This is a necessary step to lead our continent out of the nightmare of neo-liberalism and the Maastricht logic and to establish, starting from the needs of the emergency, new forms of international cooperation and solidarity between nations.

There is another vital issue our organization Fronte Popolare is trying to raise: the workers' control of production. As Marxists, we believe all social wealth is produced by labour – both the wages and the profit of employers, as well as the budget of the state. Everything depends on the vitality of the productive factory, which in turn depends on human activity. The virtual economy, the speculative bubbles, the myth of overcoming work through automation, are fragile constructs when the fundamentals of the real economy are at stake and the unbreakable link between work and the satisfaction of social needs comes into play.

Unfortunately, even if we narrow down the list of categories that must continue to work despite the health emergency, they will always count millions of workers.

Hence, it is the only workers who can guarantee themselves, exercising a power of control to protect health and safety in the workplace. The state must legally recognize this power. No other solution is given.

To protect those who guarantee supply in the COVID emergency, we demand the workers' representatives be entitled with control powers, defined by law, which include functions of the reorganization of production activities and the possibility of sanctions against non-compliant employers on behalf of the state. This function should be coordinated at the central and local level by committees made up of representatives of the competent ministry and trade union associations and exercised under defined guidelines that guarantee an unambiguous operational framework and avoid abuse, protecting production and supply.

We say this explicitly: we put on the table an issue that has to do with real power and the very nature of production relations.

#Italy #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #Coronavirus #FrontePopolare

Joint declaration of the Popular Front, the Italian Communist Party and the collective of “La Città Futura”

Italy, like many other countries, is facing a severe health emergency in these weeks. Many people are in deadly danger and suffering from coronavirus infection. Others are in isolation in their homes, waiting for a complete recovery. There have been hundreds of deaths so far. We wish to express our warmth and closeness to the families and communities affected.

We address our sincerest thanks to all those who work in health care facilities as elsewhere. Every day they expose themselves and commit themselves to protect public health and the functioning of services to the citizens. We extend our sincere solidarity to the many who continue to work in the current challenging conditions.

Our National Health System, our economy and our society face unprecedented pressure from the post-war period to the present. We shall not underestimate the commitment by the whole country to cope with the emergency: it is indeed a proof of the vitality of the Italian society that we shall be proud of.

As communists, we carry now more than ever the responsibility to play a leading role, which means primarily to participate in the collective effort to face the emergency and overcome it.

Our militant community is at the forefront in helping to spread awareness of individual responsibility; in making the containment measures ordered by the authorities effective; and in carefully following the hygienic instructions necessary to avoid the further spread of the contagion. Each one of us feels the responsibility of participating in the prevention, and we must discourage any irrational behavior. The non-compliance to the measures opens the way to dangerous mass psychosis that multiplies the infection.

In recent decades, communists have been among the very few to fight against cutbacks in public health care. We have called to fight against the model of 'differentiated autonomy', which promotes a de facto privatization by fostering 'subsidiarity' with local and regional authorities. The events of these days dramatically show the validity of our concerns. Two dramatic examples are the institutional disorder created by Regions-State overlapping competences, and the rush to mobilize the best energies of the country to recover the lost ground in the medical garrison of the territory.

#Italy #CapitalismAndEconomy #Europe #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #Coronavirus #ItalianCommunistParty #LaCittàFutura

The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing 92 million workers in the 5 continents, condemns the criminal practices of the construction companies, that are disclosed, once again, after the consequences and the dead, which a powerless earthquake left behind in the island of Ischia, Italy.

According to experts, an earthquake of less than 4 degrees on the richter scale, should not in any circumstances, cause such a disaster. The local responsible person for the organization of environment protection, T. Matzara, said that there is a very big construction activity in the island and a lot of houses appear in just a few weeks. Also he denounced that on numerous occasions, the constructions was totally illegal and the likelihood of collapse was “absolutely predictable”. The Napoli chief prosecutor, T. Menilotis, spoke of serious phenomena such as illegal and arbitrary building projects, and the prosecution is considering launching an investigation into multiple homicide, negligently.

The WFTU, expresses its sincere condolences to the families and relatives of the victims. Once again, conscious crime has been made against innocent victims for the sake of profit. These are the tragic effects of a system that is based on the capitalists wealth increasing instead of the quality of people’s living conditions. We call on the international class-oriented trade union movement to strengthen the militant struggle for the implementation of adequate protection measures in every aspect of people’s lives.

The Secretariat

#IschiaItaly #Ischia #Europe #earthquake #WFTU #Italy