The title of our editorial is none other than the first sentence of the
play "Richard III" by W. Shakespeare. We have cited it because it wellexpresses the phases of deep crisis from which new hopes for recovery
can also arise. ---- We do not believe it is appropriate to continue to
discuss the various "Europeanist squares" and the relative consensus
reaped with them, as we believe that it is more useful for clarity to
start a reflection on the war with which the European Union (EU)
desperately tries to insert itself into the imperialist competition for
control of the world market. The world balances are regulated by
bilateral relations where the USA and Russia intend to divide the fate
of Ukraine within the scope of their respective power interests from
which the EU is excluded: in Palestine and Syria for the USA, in Ukraine
for Russia. The US is pursuing, on the one hand, a policy of appeasement
towards Russia in order to loosen, even temporarily, its union with
China and, on the other, a line of open aggression towards its European
allies, taking advantage of their internal divisions to sharpen them in
order to reduce them under control, thus tending to recover resources in
an anti-Chinese function. It is therefore not the case to linger in
misleading historical comparisons that fear apocalyptic scenarios to
mask the current arms race that the EU intends to conduct state by
state. We refer to the data: with the war in Ukraine, the EU has
increased military spending by 52% to the total advantage of the war
industry with a substantial consensus of the government parties and
almost all of the opposition parties. As far as Italy is concerned, the
League and the 5 Star Movement voted against for different reasons,
while the PD was divided between a vote in favor of rearmament and a
useless abstention, albeit masked by all those tendencies that identify
in the return to the most authentic intentions of the "European fathers"
or to the most integral founding values of the constitution, the good
keys to open all the doors barred by the crisis if not, even, to refound
a parliamentary left now in an identity crisis and completely
subservient to the interests of capital. It is not then a question of
enunciating a heritage of freedom but, more objectively, of placing it
within the historical and class contexts in which it developed,
understanding and making others understand, that the best intentions of
the European bourgeoisies must be counterposed with concrete objectives
for the intransigent defense of the interests of our class. From this
point of view, the easily stated constitutional guarantees do not serve
to guarantee those rights that the bourgeoisie itself has widely and
consciously contradicted, creating throughout its history an unjust
social system based on exploitation and war (two world wars fought in
little more than a quarter of a century) always placing the needs of
profit and social division before those of liberation from want, freedom
and the emancipation of the subaltern classes. Therefore, in defending
the concepts of freedom, peace, equality and work, we do not refer to
the constitutional provision but to the history of our class which can
boast concrete conquests, also in terms of freedom. These concepts have
been defended in practice by the world proletariat precisely because
they are an integral part of the conquests that have qualified its paths
to emancipation. They are failing precisely because the social,
cultural, organizational and class fabric that supported them and that
had made them possible by supporting those drives towards the progress
of the subaltern classes and their strengthening has collapsed. The
European bourgeoisie has not resolved its contradictions and remains
divided in the face of other, much more aggressive, imperialist powers.
Not even the prospect of a European army seems credible given the
absence of the political unity necessary for the take-off of such an
ambitious project. Having failed to establish a European power role
capable of meeting the needs imposed by imperialist competition, the
weaknesses that allow the re-emergence of the never-dormant balance of
power between the continental imperialist structures remain and grow,
with Germany, the third world power, grappling with a profound
production crisis that it intends to overcome by launching the recent
constitutional reform that allows the state and local authorities to go
into debt to finance rearmament and public investments (education,
health, transport, various infrastructures, environment, etc.), for a
total of approximately 1,000 billion euros. The aim is to attract above
all US investors who are abandoning Trump and heading towards Europe,
attracted by the announced arms race and by the consideration that the
European financial market is in strong growth, driven precisely by the
arms industry. In such a context, Germany is a candidate to also attract
investors willing to purchase its own public debt securities, avoiding
paying high interest rates, thus entering into competition with the
public debt securities of other European countries, which could
therefore be severely damaged by a spread in strong growth, also
considering that Germany will replicate its obstacles to the possibility
of the ECB to purchase part of the public debt securities of other EU
countries. Moreover, the increased role of England, which, although
outside the EU, is applying to be its active interlocutor in the context
of a rearmament that includes a challenging and unlikely united military
presence in Ukraine, is further proof that there are economic and
political forces at work in Europe that are anything but inclined
towards unity, also considering that the only country capable of
rearming itself, thus reconverting its production structure, strongly
prejudiced by the closure of the Chinese market and US duties, without
frontally attacking welfare, is precisely Germany, which is applying
again for the role of "European locomotive", however in a national
perspective that will certainly influence the near and distant future of
the EU. Very schematically, in Italy we are witnessing a continuous
reduction in public spending and a growth in the value of military
industry stocks that will be further strengthened by the increase
allowed by the recent "ReArm Europe" for military spending expected up
to 1.5% of GDP. For Italy, this possibility means another 40 billion in
expenses that will produce further cuts to essential services that are
already under severe attack. This trend, now already underway, will
determine an increase in private insurance policies and a further rush
by savers to the most profitable investments in the war industry
according to a trend facilitated by the EU country by country to take
possession of the private capital of savers, which lies immobilized in
the banks. Finally, a reference cannot be missed to the recent
parliamentary ramblings of the Prime Minister in reference to the
"Ventotene Manifesto". Without going into the merits of its contents,
which are totally decontextualized by both the government majority and
the opposition (the Manifesto was written in confinement in the midst of
the World War, in 1941, and subsequently, the same Manifesto, together
with its most qualifying social contents, as well as federalism, will
have no practical influence on the development of the origins of the EU
and its prospects), it must be said that Meloni, with her statements,
intended to divert attention from the not inconsiderable internal
divisions within the government majority regarding "ReArm Europe" (which
the League voted no to), to buy just a little more time while waiting
for what to do: a way of getting by to mask an evident impotence. This
Europe can only be fought because it was created to unify European
imperialism and the failure of this project is producing an arms race
conducted state by state in the exclusive interest of the respective
bourgeoisies, the military industry, financial capital and militarism,
where the costs of these dramatic intentions will then fall on the
living conditions of the European subaltern classes. But by way of
conclusion we would like to finally underline a coincidence that is
significant for us and completely omitted, but which is particularly
close to our hearts: the date of the controversial and overvalued
demonstration of March 15th called by Michele Serra was then followed by
the date of the 18th, where 154 years have passed since, in 1871, the
women and men of the proletariat of Paris rose up and established their
commune, which in its luminous and brief example took the name of the
"Paris Commune". The Parisian proletariat abolished the army, the
police, the state bureaucracy, thus liquidating the state; the wage
differences between women and men were overcome within the framework of
a substantial equality between manual and intellectual work; education
and culture were freed from the interference of the church and became
public, as instruments of emancipation of the oppressed classes; common
goods were managed in the collective interest. That is, an economic and
social system was built that was certainly not perfect as it was full of
contradictions, but controlled from below by the subaltern classes that,
in a self-management perspective, did not delegate powers to capital and
its state institutions that were instead liquidated. The Paris Commune
was bloodily suppressed by a bourgeoisie that had seen its economic and
social hegemony expropriated: the repression was ferocious precisely to
send a warning to the subaltern classes fighting for their own
emancipation. These are not celebrations or memories, but more precisely
fixed points: a century and a half has passed since that event that
showed the world proletariat the way to its own emancipation, in a path
full of victories but also bloody defeats that indicate with great
clarity that "the emancipation of workers will be the work of the
workers themselves", without delegating powers to capital, the
bourgeoisie and its institutions. This does not exempt the need for
concrete objectives that instead must be clearly stated in order to be
concretely achievable. Believing that we can confront imperialism and
its wars state by state is illusory, so the first practical step is to
begin building that process of international unity of the working
classes that will culminate in a strong European union, which is
certainly an ambitious objective, but is the only one capable of
opposing capitalism and the barbarism it produces.
In the spirit of the "Paris Commune" long live the international unity
of the proletariat.
Libertarian Alternative/FdCA
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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