The working class in Italy is rising up against the U.S.-backed Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is there, taking part in the struggle, giving political leadership where possible, and drawing leadership from the heartbeat of the growing, militant, internationalist movement led by dockworkers. On October 4th, PL’ers in Rome handed out multiple CHALLENGES and made crucial connections. This came a day after workers shut down every industry in a mass, one day general strike, a backlash against Israeli forces intercept the Global Sumud Flotilla, a convoy of dozens of ships with crews from 40 countries that was attempting to deliver aid to the desperate inhabitants of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of defiant protesters have marched in Milan, Florence, Turin, Genoa, Rome, and more than 60 other cities. All transportation and nonessential public services were shut down. Workers took to the streets across the country, denouncing the Israeli bosses’ endless bloodshed in Palestine. When these workers eventually take up the red flag with their class brothers and sisters in every country, they will have the power to permanently end this genocide and bring communism to the world!
Let’s block everything!
The October 3 strike follows another general strike on September 22nd, after Italian dockworkers shut down all trade between the European Union (EU) and Israel when Benjamin Netanyahu’s baby killers attacked the flotilla on September 8th (Truthout, 9/30). “Blocchiamo tutto!” (“Let’s block everything!”) became a war cry chanted throughout Italy in massive rallies against the genocidal war in Gaza. More generally, however, the slogan echoes the words of the militant dockworkers throughout the Mediterranean basin—from Piraeus to Genoa, from Marseille to Ravenna, from Tangier to Livorno—who have for several months been preventing the shipping of war materiel to Israel. The international movement among dockworkers, led largely by Italy’s second most powerful trade union coalition, Unione sindicale di base (USB), is being consolidated in a new organization called the Autonomous Dockworkers Union.
Internationalism is key
Opponents of the Gazan genocide throughout the world are taking inspiration from these recent events. Demonstrations have taken place not just across Europe but in Asia, the Middle East, Tunis, Sydney, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Tripoli, and Chicago, among other places. It will take workers uniting across cultures and continents to seize the means of production for our class! In the face of rising inter imperialist rivalry among the leading world empires, continually dividing ourselves among race, gender, sex and borders will be the death knell to any real fightback.
Strikes good schools for communism
Though they will never create a global workers’ state, strikes are a good building ground for communist ideas. Strikes can help build class consciousness, as workers are led to realize their interests are intertwined with one another, and not the ruling class. When multiple industries go on strike simultaneously, the bosses panic!
Specifically, dockworkers, like those in the Mediterranean basin, are positioned to inhibit—in fact stop—the bosses’ pursuit of imperialist war because of their pivotal place in the capitalist world economy.
The dockworkers’ decision to strike around explicitly internationalist political demands, rather than around the bread-and-butter issues usually at stake in Italy’s frequent strikes by public-sector workers, makes clear the connection between the imperialist war on Palestine and the declining living standards of Italy’s working-class population. This is true especially now, since millions of euros are being diverted from Italy’s already-strained educational and medical public institutions to invest in a massive expenditure on rearmament. As NATO becomes more militaristic and the world moves closer and closer to war on a global scale, the dockworkers’ refusal to ship death-dealing weaponry becomes more important in economic and political significance.
Only we can liberate ourselves!
The dockworkers’ movement points the way toward the possibility—indeed the necessity—of worldwide communist revolution. If the global working class does not organize itself to abolish capitalism and establish an egalitarian society, all bets are off for the survival of most life on the planet. This possibility can be realized, however, only if class-conscious workers of all lands form a single, unified party that is dedicated to anti-imperialist class struggle and the creation of a communist world. PLP aspires to be that party. We need to root ourselves more deeply in the working class of Italy and build a base for international working-class revolution.
Reformist roadblocks ahead
This will not be easy. There is a commendable tradition in Italy of antifascism and worker militancy going back to World War II and before. To this day, people often sing the antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao.” But there is also a history of violent fascist repression and racist colonial invasion. Moreover, there is an ignoble history of gradual reformist retreat from the theory and practice of communism on the part of the PCI (Partito comunista italiano) that has left the working class cynical about the prospects for dislodging the power of capital and the capitalist state. Indeed, Italian workers have been to a degree inoculated against the idea of communism.
All the same, the union leading the current dockworkers’ movement, USB, founded in 2010, has no obvious ties to the old PCI or any of its revisionist spin-offs. Perhaps the inoculation is losing potency. We need to engage in discussion with members of USB: look for future reports in CHALLENGE. We have a world to win.
