WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #170: Class struggle and executive crisis (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Apparently distant, but contiguous events characterize this phase of the social

conflict: the class struggle in France linked to the battle over pension reform
and the ongoing struggle in Israel to defend the constitutional institutions of
the state.[1]Both the question of pensions in France that the constitutional
modification of the state order with consequent violation of the rule of law were
faced with a coup de main which led to the approval of a law that aroused popular
upheaval not only on the merits but also for the modalities with the which has
been approved. ---- While the match in Israel seems to have been resolved with
the at least momentary suspension of the application of the law, while awaiting
its hoped-for and possible withdrawal in France, the executive categorically
refuses to negotiate with the trade unions, has the provision confirmed by a
Council prone to the demands of the executive and responds negatively to the
growing popular demand for disapplication of the law, even after 12 national
general strikes and a mobilization that has seen millions and millions of
citizens take to the streets, as well as unleashing the strongest social
opposition that the country has known in recent years. Proof of this is that - as
shown by a recent survey in which the country's working men and women took part -
905 of them disapprove of the measure.
What happened in Israel clearly tells us that when the popular movement and the
mobilization are strong and determined, it is possible to force the power to
withdraw from its decisions, however authoritarian it may be and as long as it is
based on electoral consensus, and that its action can be disavowed by street
mobilization, when the infringement of the fundamental rights of citizenship and
of the rules of coexistence becomes such as to undermine the constitutional pact
on which being together is based. In other words, what happened in Israel makes
it clear that it is possible for an approved law to be disapplied for clear
political expediency and constitutional compatibility reasons following a
decision by the same executive power that had imposed it.
If needed, the Israeli extreme case tells the French that disregarding the law is
possible. Proof of this conviction is demonstrated by the large number of people
who took part in the 12 general strikes in France, repeatedly called by the trade
unions and certainly not isolated because they were accompanied by midweek
strikes and mobilizations which punctuated the news of these weeks for the span
of full four months; nor does it seem to end when it is happening even if,
obviously, participation has been subject to declines in participation, caused by
the fatigue of the strikers and the social and economic cost of the mobilisation.
The demonstrators tried to remedy all this by changing the methods of struggle
and resorting to actions that we could call guerrilla warfare. There were
numerous episodes of picketing, decided and determined, of street demonstrations
which often degenerated into actions that caused damage to private property.
Looting activities, when not only the destruction of goods, leaving the garbage
of the cities uncollected, were some of the extreme manifestations of struggle
that testify to the depth of the discomfort caused by the provision. All this
happens because what is called into question are not only the material living
conditions of the population, but also the reduction of life prospects and above
all of the quality of life of all male and female workers, In other words, a
pension system structured by categories is replaced by another based on general
rules that are the same for everyone, forgetting that there is no better way to
discriminate and practice inequality than to adopt general and common rules for
specific situations different.
In other words, there is no doubt that the social protest developed in France,
also thanks to the union initiative, represents a revival of the class struggle,
it is a response to the crisis of the representation of the institutions. In
fact, voting (voters are in constant decline) is replaced by direct action and
the first person defense of one's rights, without delegating this task to anyone.
This turning point represents a novelty that does not occur only in France, but
in all European politics, as it allows the masses to reappear in the first person
in the social conflict by claiming their role, determined to affirm it at all
costs, ready to fight in defense of their own class positions and interests.
Unions, workers and citizens insistently ask Macron to withdraw the provision, to
suspend its effectiveness despite the fact that the Constitutional Council, a
body subservient to the executive, has sanctioned the constitutionality of the
provision, also ruling on the anomalous procedure through which the provision is
been adopted and in fact imposed on Parliament and on the request - refused - to
submit the law to a popular referendum.

And now

The executive is counting on time for the protest to subside. He is well aware
that the tide has changed in France since 2005 and that the social struggle has
always lost: by resisting the protests, the government and the bosses have
ensured that the measures adopted to resize the welfare state, services, rights,
achievements at work remain in force and unfold their effects and therefore hopes
that this time too the conflict will be resolved in the same way.
In our opinion - but it is also what we hope - he underestimated the effects of
the mobilization on the whole territory of the country from the cities to the
suburbs. It does not take into account the fact that in other countries too a
cycle of very hard struggles has started which has at its center the protection
of public services, health care and schools in particular, and the pressing
request for wage increases by the various categories who demand higher salaries
high (the British doctors are asking for a 35% increase in wages) to deal with an
inflation that, excluding the cost of energy, grows on all consumer goods,
eroding purchasing power.
It is also for this reason that the French unions can respond to the Government "
Ce n'est qu'un debut continuans le combat", strengthened by the fact that these
mobilizations have brought young and less young people closer to the social
struggle, also because the conditions of social unease and exploitation have
reached unbearable levels and trust in institutions has disappeared. A
disaffection for voting and for sharing trust in the institutions which, for now,
has not been followed by any mobilization of the streets in Italy.

[1]Involving the Jewish state in a political analysis requires from us anarchist
communists a specific discourse of clarification on the origin, nature and
characteristics of the Jewish state in relation to the Palestinian question as
well as the necessity that concerns the entire left called to come to terms with
one's own contradictions. This need concerns anarchism very closely since the
libertarian component within Judaism and its contribution in the elaboration and
conception of the solution to the Jewish question has been of fundamental
importance and in some cases has had a decisive role in the choices made from
that movement of struggle that led to the establishment of the State of Israel,
as well as the failure of the socialist and interreligious hypothesis of its own
nature as a state that characterized it at its origins. On the subject we propose
to intervene specifically in a forthcoming article relating to Israel, the nature
of the Israeli state and the Palestinian question.

The editorial staff

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/04/18/lotta-di-classe-e-crisi-degli-esecutivi/
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