A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: The main road - " Verum velle parum est" * - Hell is full of good wills - Carmine Valente (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the debate and in the development of the center-left parties and with 
greater emphasis in the development of the largest trade union 
organization, the CGIL, the defense of the Constitution was taken on as 
a central element of the opposition to the center-right government of 
Giorgia Meloni. A call that is not new in Italian political dialectics 
which develops hand in hand with the call to anti-fascism and to an 
amarcord of times, situations and men from other eras.
Yet this supporting structure of democracy appears insufficient to 
counteract the drift that the latest electoral rounds have recorded, 
bringing to the leadership of the country the party that has its roots 
in that past that the Constitution and Resistance should have erased.

Faced with this observation, we could say, as we often feel, that it is 
the consequence of an exasperated individualism and a stubborn influence 
and conditioning of the media.

Such reasoning does not actually take us a step forward in understanding 
the social phenomena that have developed in recent decades, remaining on 
the terrain of simple observation. The how, the why, the 
responsibilities, the errors, are not analyzed and the idea is to 
counteract the right-wing drift with an appeal to the "sacred union" of 
all the heterogeneous forces that in various ways oppose the Government 
team.

How many times in recent years have we heard trade union leaders at all 
levels regretting that workers do not participate, do not strike, do not 
show solidarity, and these considerations were not and are not posed to 
ask ourselves why, "how come", but they sound as a tired absolving 
reminder of the ineffectiveness of one's action.

How many times have we heard that young people have no ideals, that they 
are closed in their daily hedonism, that they have neither a past nor a 
future. And from time to time the faults are identified in the absence 
of the family, in the lax school, in the lack of discipline.

Social evolution or involution, the balance of power between classes, 
feelings of solidarity or selfishness, the radicality of the new 
generations, chauvinism and racism, rampant misogyny, all this in the 
absence of a critical and self-criticism of the past and in the absence 
of an elaboration of memory that links the past to the present into one 
makes all of this appear to be an inexplicable phenomenon, events that 
generate themselves and which therefore relieve us of any responsibility.

The real country is absent from all this.

Yet the data on youth unemployment, the data on precarious work, the 
evidence of a job which, stripped of all rights, increasingly takes the 
form of a new slavery, would be enough.

Yet it would be enough to remember decades and decades of exaltation of 
what in the 80s of the last century was defined as yuppism, that is, 
that figure of a rampant young male who had as his sole purpose in life 
work to make money and squander it to satisfy his own unbridled 
egocentrism in luxury purchases and frequenting fashionable clubs.

Every desire for radical transformation of the existing was branded as 
utopianism and political infantilism. To the courage of an action that 
aimed at a society of free and equal people, the only choice that could 
break the system of rampant corruption and disarticulate the mix between 
state power and mafia power, the only one that could give meaning to 
work as a constitutive element of people's dignity and not just fatigue 
and submission, the only choice that could open a process in which 
gender differences and sexual inclinations could develop freely without 
exclusions, judgments, prejudices and violence; compromise was preferred 
to courage. The protection of wages was opposed by the need for 
sacrifices and subordination to the company and capital.

A process of expansion of democracy was contrasted with decisionism.

Concertation, consociativism, clientelism and recommendation were put 
before conflict.

The current situation is based on these facts.

Although Italy is the eighth world economic power and the tenth world 
military power, public bodies such as Istat or private bodies such as 
Censis and Caritas record significant phenomena of poverty and social 
hardship.

The "Values" then, if they are unable to give concrete answers to daily 
life, appear sterile and often experienced by young people and not only 
by them as empty rhetoric; the substance of these "Values" disappears 
and meaningless words remain.

The numbers, in their coldness, give us a reality which, if assumed, 
could and should move consciences much more concretely than generic appeals.

Istat records around two million families in absolute poverty (1), or 
5.6 million people, in percentage terms 10% of the overall population. A 
constantly worsening situation given that in 2005 3.3% of the resident 
population in Italy found themselves in these conditions.

To confirm this fact which shows how the wealth produced is unable to 
counteract the strong social hardship, there is the expatriation 
situation which keeps Italy a country of emigrants. A statement which, 
if associated with the incessant propaganda on the "invasion" of 
migrants, may appear exaggerated, but once again the data tells the 
harsh reality of a country incapable of guaranteeing a future for many 
of its citizens and in particular for the new generations.

CENSIS tells us that Italians currently emigrating, as shown in the AIRE 
register (Registry of Italians Resident Abroad), are 5.9 million, while 
immigrants in Italy reach 5 million. In the last year alone, 82,014 
Italians expatriated, of which 36,125 were between 18-34 years old, 
young people who also expatriate with their family and their minors, 
reaching approximately 50,000 people, i.e. 60% of expatriations concern 
young people.

We could list many other data to tell of a country that struggles to 
provide responses to emergencies which, over the years, go from 
occasional episodes to structural problems generating daily suffering.

The same is true for healthcare where we are witnessing a progressive 
retreat of the public fence or for the environmental situation where the 
feared disasters are not postponed to a hypothetical future, but are 
already making their effects felt today like the damage of air pollution 
which, as is happening these days, it condemns entire cities to lock 
themselves at home to avoid dangerous respiratory diseases.

If the things described so far are part of a problematic situation, the 
reference to the Constitution as Deus ex machina   appears completely 
ineffective. Ineffective because the fundamental law of the State, by 
the will of the "Constituents" has only a procedural value of direction 
and its articles cannot immediately assume binding value.

Of course, having articles of the Constitution that affirm fundamental 
concepts in defense of the dignity of the person such as article 3 (2) 
which in particular in the second paragraph states that it is the duty 
of the Republic to remove obstacles of a social and economic nature 
which in fact limit freedom and The equality of citizens is important, 
but over 80 years after its formulation this principle has failed to 
translate into current practice, but not only that, its potential scope 
of reference and direction has been completely canceled by the 
constitutional amendment of the art. 81, Monti Government 2012, with 
which the balanced budget was introduced. (3) A modification which, by 
providing for the balance between income and expenditure year by year, 
limits the possibility of economic interventions aimed at achieving 
balance in an entire economic cycle, one of the key elements of 
Keynesian economics. That is, a path has been precluded which, although 
not moving outside the context of the capitalist economy, in the long 
history of recurring crises of capital has managed to provide answers, 
albeit partial, to the working masses.

Many other articles would deserve reflection and a comparison between 
the statement and current reality, think of art. 32 in reference to 
health (4) which already expresses a contradiction in the statement 
because while the right to health is proclaimed for every individual it 
is stated that treatment must be free only for the indigent, a concept 
which was partly superseded by law 833 which in the second paragraph of 
article 3 states that the levels of healthcare services, established by 
law by the State, must, in any case, be guaranteed to all citizens. But 
both the constitutional provisions and law 833/78 in today's reality 
appear to be unattainable chimeras if, according to ISTAT, in 2020, 7% 
of the population renounced necessary healthcare services because they 
were considered too expensive or because waiting lists were too long. (5)

The same as in the art. 36 (6), so often referred to in the trade union 
debate which indicates fair pay as the means to guarantee a free and 
dignified existence, clearly clashes with the spread of situations of 
poverty even in the context of employment relationships.

And today in a situation which sees the world moving rapidly towards a 
war of global dimensions, the rejection of war which should be 
sanctioned by Article 11 of the Constitution is reduced to a pale veil 
behind which the war is supported, nourished and often it's done.

The statement of the president emeritus of the Consulta Cesare Mirabelli 
is emblematic and clarifying , clearing the field of the possibility of 
invoking what was put in black and white by our founding fathers, to 
stop the sending of defense material to Ukraine: «What is written in the 
article 11 has the character of a general statement - explains Mirabelli 
- and must be read as the repudiation of the war of aggression or 
understood as an instrument for resolving international disputes. But 
according to the Charter, war exists. It can be decided by Parliament 
and proclaimed by the President of the Republic."(7)

It is not the purpose of this short article to examine the scope of the 
constitutional provisions, but rather simply to underline that the main 
road to follow in trying to counteract a dangerous right-wing drift in 
our country necessarily involves the reversal of the balance of power 
between capital and work, from the ability to start mobilizations that 
impose a distribution of wealth in favor of the less well-off classes, 
essentially giving centrality to living conditions and the satisfaction 
of needs.

We must start again from here and not from the nostalgic memory that 
dominates the network made up of quotes and aphorisms of men who are 
responsible for these decades of ideological disarmament of the working 
class and of illusion in the chimeras of class concertation and 
collaboration.

It is these "leaders" who, thanks to their influence on the workers' 
movement, have "slowed down" and extinguished the social conflict.

The historical compromise, national salvation, the pact between 
producers, represent the harbingers of the current situation. The 
solution is not in the past. Not in the "leaders" of the Italian left 
who from Nenni, Togliatti, Craxi to Berlinguer worked to disperse every 
trace of a classist approach in favor of a national idea, not in the 
trade union leaders from Lama to Trentin who suffered the egalitarian 
wave of 60s and 70s, but they worked to break class solidarity by 
debasing wage demands and sponsoring the myth of professionalism.

Nor do we think that the revival of a "statist communism" as it was 
achieved over the last century can today represent a useful point of 
reference that can be taken as a model for a rebirth of an idea of a new 
society founded on solidarity and not on exploitation, on freedom and 
not on submission.

Capital and the state apparatus that supports it have proven to be more 
flexible and capable of adapting to new productive and social conditions 
than the old theorists of the workers' movement, both Marxist and 
anarchist, thought and than we ourselves thought. youthful years we thought.

The progressive role of the bourgeoisie that Marx, not without reason, 
identified, has disappeared and the tumultuous development of capitalism 
coexists both in the so-called democratic regimes, the capitalist West, 
but also with obscurantist regimes such as the Arab countries or in 
dictatorial regimes such as China.

We need to start again from here. The lessons of the past provide us 
with some analytical tools, give us a road paved with good intentions, 
but transformed into just as many tragic errors, leave us as a legacy 
moments of exhilarating construction of a possible new society which, 
however, lasted too short and were limited to specific areas. limited 
territories, this is the baggage to work with. Baggage that if it 
becomes Manichaeism and nostalgia turns into ballast that nails us to 
the mere function of pathetic testimony.

" In seeking the impossible, man has always realized and known the 
possible, and those who have wisely limited themselves to what seemed 
possible have never advanced a single step." (8)

This phrase by Bakunin, taken up in the French May of 1968, in the 
slogan "We are realists, we ask for the impossible" precisely because it 
escapes a rational approach better than many analyses, helps us to 
understand what is necessary today to develop a true process of social 
transformation . Today, talking about the overthrow of present reality 
in order to create a society in which human activity can self-determine 
and in which equality and individual and collective freedom is 
guaranteed is unrealistic, even utopian. But a real analysis of the 
existing shows us that only a radical change of the existing can put an 
end to the current misery. What appears impossible is the only path to 
real change.

*Ovid "Metamorphoses"

Note

1) Families and  people who cannot afford the minimum expenses to lead 
an acceptable life are considered to be in absolute poverty .

https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/289724

2) 
https://www.senato.it/associazione/la-costruttura/principi-fondamentali/article-3

3) 
https://www.senato.it/associazione/la-costruttura/parte-ii/titolo-i/sezione-ii/article-81

4) 
https://www.senato.it/associazione/la-costruttura/parte-i/titolo-ii/article-32

5) h 
ttps://www.collettiva.it/speciali/insieme-per-la-coposizione/quattro-milioni-di-italiani-rinunciano-alle-cure-m5d05bcs

6) 
https://www.senato.it/associazione/la-costruttura/parte-i/titolo-iii/article-36

7) 
https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/perche-l-oncino-armi-kiev-e-linea-la-coposizione-italiana-AEH7dxKB

8) from Philosophical considerations on the divine ghost, the real world 
and man. M. Bakunin. Translation by Edy Zarro, La Baronata, Lugano 2000

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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