ROME, August 5—“Italians first! “Immigrants, go home!” The racist movements we see around the world—from Myanmar to Hungary to the U.S.—flourishes in Italy. At the same time, workers are fighting back. At the forefront of this fight are African migrant workers.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of la Lega, Italy’s most overtly anti-immigrant political party, refuses to allow boatloads of African refugees rescued at sea onto Italy’s shores. In the last two months alone, 850 have died in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. “No sooner had Salvini been sworn in than he was proclaiming his eagerness to kick out the 500,000-600,000 immigrants who are reckoned to be living without authorisation in Italy” (The Economist, 6/7).
The need for proletarian internationalism is urgent. The need for revolutionary, proletarian internationalism is urgent. We must fight to welcome refugees and immigrants wherever we are. We must organize to better the working and living conditions of all workers. But really, the whole damn capitalist system has to go!
Sixty percent of Italians elected the coalition of the Lega and the Five Star Movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo and led by Luigi di Maio. Although some cracks are appearing in this coalition—the Five Star Movement pretends to distance itself from the Lega’s blatant racism—together the two parties control the “populista’, or “populist” government.
Since citizenship in Italy is determined by blood rather than soil, the populists want benefits restricted to native Italians only. This political line is blatantly anti-immigrant and racist. But the proposed 15 percent flat tax rate would benefit only the rich, while sharply reducing revenues for working-class education and healthcare.
Rulers scapegoat immigrants
The Lega-Five Star coalition is a ruling-class strategy to control an increasingly alienated working class by scapegoating immigrants as the source of its problems. The pensions of Italian workers have been cut to the bone. Immigrants serve as super-exploited labor and as scapegoats to bolster the racism that divides the working class.
Thus, immigrant workers, many from sub-Saharan Africa, labor in the fields of southern Italy for three euros (about $4) an hour under slave-like conditions, or toil as precarious labor in the northern factories.
In fact the director of Italian Social Security said the system would collapse without the taxes paid by immigrant workers, most of whom will never receive a pension.
Racist murder of organizer,
Soumaila Sacko
Just two days after the installation of the new government, a 29-year-old Malian organizer of agricultural workers, Soumaila Sacko, was murdered. This sparked a strike and large union-led protests throughout the country (The Local It, 6/4).
He had lived in a tent city of San Fernando in Reggio Calabria, an encampment at least 3,000 of migrant workers— primarily from Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and the Ivory Coast—who pick fruits and vegetables for abysmal wages. They are deprived of electricity, running water, and proper toilets.
The protesters correctly pointed out that this is nothing new. “In 2010, migrant workers staged a revolt against the conditions after three labourers were injured in a [racist] street shooting as they returned from the fields. Hundreds of migrants were expelled from an area nearby in what some commentators called ethnic cleansing” (Al Jazeera, 6/27).
Capitalism in global crisis
The bosses’ attacks on workers lays bare the instability of global capitalism. The top owners of European capital want the European Union (EU) to survive.
For six decades, the EU has enabled capital, goods, services, and labor to flow across borders. This created an economic bloc conjoining the interests of the capitalists in different European nations. Yet these bankers and industrialists also benefit from the divisive nationalist movement, enabling them to keep wages low and cut public expenditures. European capitalists need the EU at the same time that they need the nationalist movements opposed to the EU. As Marx pointed out in Das Kapital 150 years ago, capitalism creates contradictions that it cannot resolve.
Fascism or communism?
How will the Italian working class respond to rising fascism? History provides no clear guidelines. Benito Mussolini was first to usher in fascism in 1920s-1930s led by. But the anti-fascist movement was strong throughout World War II; in the late 1940s, Italy had the continent’s largest and most militant Communist Party.
To this day, communist songs—“Bella Ciao,” “Bandiera Rossa,” and the “Internationale”—are sung at protests against the current right-wing trend. But the old Communist movement, led by the PCI (Partita Comunista Italiana) strangled itself with its commitment to work within electoral politics.
The capitalist crisis is global, but workers often think nationally—which means their response can be easily misdirected in the direction of racist, xenophobic “populismo.”
Only revolutionary proletarian internationalism can meet the needs of the workers of Italy—and of the world. There is a desperate need for PLP, in Italy and everywhere, to organize the class struggle and lead the communist transformation of society.