Much has been said about the referendums of June 8th and 9th, the four
questions on work and the fifth on citizenship. On the left, as usual,there has been a profusion of admirable analyses of the defeat-which,
however, always come after the fact-and equally admirable scrambling to
avoid admitting that, with a turnout of 30.6%, nearly 20 percentage
points below the quorum, one can only call it a disaster. However, we
don't intend to mock "comrades who make mistakes" here; there have
already been numerous such comments, and given the importance of the
main issue, we don't feel like beating them up further. The question we
will try to answer is this: why, if work is so central to people's
lives, is it so much less so when it comes to fighting to improve their
conditions, at best, or voting to pretend to change some aspect of them,
at worst? Let's start with the latest ISTAT data. In June, more than 24
million people were employed in Italy, with an employment rate reaching
62.5% and a sharper increase among those aged 50-64 and in the South.
Beyond the numbers, we live in an era where work is the only horizon
granted by capitalism for survival. If you don't work, you can't live,
or at best, you can survive. Those who can afford not to work do so only
because they enjoy an income. This is the most concrete embodiment of
Margaret Thatcher's "there is no alternative," the most extreme and
brutal synthesis of neoliberalism that we still carry within us 40 years
later. Yet, despite this, or perhaps precisely because of this, we
experience work as an inevitable condemnation, as something natural,
even fulfilling. The labor mantra still dominates. Those who kiss the
ass of those in power, those who sacrifice their existence for a few
hours of unpaid overtime, those who pretend to believe it, those who
claim to have turned their passions into a profession and perhaps even
believe it, win and rise in status. Those who don't lend themselves to
these mechanisms are marginalized, sidelined, forced to settle for a
minimum wage and, if things go well, can only rejoice in knowing how to
avoid work. In Italy, these more general reflections are accompanied by
a stubborn labor hegemony on several fronts. First, the institutional
system has pandered to economic desires and has made work largely
precarious and impoverished. With wages frozen for 30 years, the share
of people who, despite working, remain poor or become poorer is steadily
increasing. The latest estimates put this figure at around 10.5%, but
the number is likely much higher due to the Catholic/bourgeois
reluctance to admit they are poor and in need of help. Responsibility
for this lies with all parties and unions (at least among the confederal
unions; the discussion regarding grassroots unions is more complex),
which therefore cannot afford to be surprised by their own lack of
credibility. First, the Treu package, which introduced temporary work;
then the Biagi law, which expanded the use of temporary workers across
all sectors; then the Jobs Act, which further flexibilized and
permanently eliminated Article 18 of the Workers' Statute, which
prohibited dismissals without just cause; and then the ongoing support
for businesses (EUR50 billion in 2025 alone) and the simultaneous
removal of a large portion of contractual guarantees and welfare
benefits; and so much more. So much so that when he was still President
of the European Central Bank, the ineffable Mario Draghi said that
"Italy is continuing with reforms, it's on autopilot." And autopilot
remains an effective definition for summarizing the apparent lack of
impact on improving working conditions for all. We often work out of
inertia, and end up forgetting the daily exploitation. Notice this: more
and more people hate their jobs or their colleagues, but the so-called
"major resignations" phenomenon that characterized the Covid years, at
least in journalistic and sociological accounts, has already subsided.
This absence has been further fueled by the industrial decline of recent
years: on the one hand, large companies are choosing the path of
financialization, abandoning any ambition for investment, development,
and innovation; on the other, the shift in employment priorities from
agriculture and industry to services and tourism has led to a further
fragmentation of the working classes, now crushed by a Darwinian
individualism where even struggles, when they arise, struggle to break
out of the narrow confines of sectoralization.
It's no coincidence that the strongest workers' struggle in recent
years, that of the workers of the former GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio
(near Florence), has created widespread belonging and solidarity around
words like "convergence." If this broadly summarizes the starting
conditions for the June referendums, it's no surprise that those who
deserted the polls were precisely those who work, and even more so the
exploited. Given that the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour)
will never be able to escape the crisis as long as it continues to
pursue concerted action as its primary, if not sole, tool of
mobilization, the question remains how to multiply and extend workplace
struggles. Certainly, the dominant narrative about work, espoused even
by exploited workers, needs to be overturned: entrepreneurs as heroes,
young people who reject slavery as spoiled, and state subsidies to
companies as a way to create jobs. But this isn't enough. Beyond
avoiding the deception of voting and institutional support-after all,
didn't the world's most beautiful Constitution state in its first
article, as early as 1947, that Italy is a Republic founded on work?-we
need to promote a new model of work that counters the abstractness of
certain Marxist theories with the concreteness of anarchist practices.
Starting with the rejection of work, moving toward self-production and
self-management.
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten