In the Italian reality, the objective of making reliable and possible a communist project must consider the social and productive modifications happened during the lest twenty years inside the society and the working class

Over the lest three years of political inquiry, we have been trying to work out the ‘general hypothesis’.

We have determined it moving from the effects of internationalisation, financialisation and concentration of the capitalist economy — that is imperialism’s effects within the Italian society.

Italian integration in the world economy — particularly toward the European area — as long as the transformations of the production cycle, are outlining a scenario of social relationships that strengthen the capitalist power within the productive relations and harshly boost social polarisation

That makes it very complex and urgent to find a new social antagonist coalition able to modify the productive relations

During the lest years we have coped with a number of politic positions, very rooted in the left and also among communists, all of them swinging among the mythology of a social realty which is greatly changed, a tendency to politicism. that reduces class struggle to a solely institutional, electoral and suprastructural dimension, and a neo-Keynesian sociology that — in its hurry to find a new paradigm — accepts theses by bourgeois scholars regarding ‘the end of labour’. globalisation. Post-Fordism. the possible out market economies of the non-profit sector.

We consider necessary to try to combine the objective analysis of the current Italian class reality with the need of a debate on possible struggles, consistent forms of organisation, and social interlocutors, to renew a dynamic and credible communist project.

These need and awareness gave birth to the Forum of Communists and the project of class inquiry. Inquiry as instrument of politic struggle and initiative, to gather militant and intellectual resources of communists.

The Italian position in the new international division of labour in the lest twenty years is a relevant element for the purposes of both politic struggle and class inquiry

In Italy — therefore one of the ‘imperial metropolis’ — the new labour organisation (‘lean production’) is growing and carrying a particular emphasis on the final phase of a value chain now internationally arranged (by ‘world-wide filieres of production’, according to our definition). Now in Italy, due to an increasing and violent productive delocalisation, factorial assemble, advertise and commercialise processed or semi-finished products provided by Romania, Albania, Morocco, China.

In our study on delocalisation of Italian firms in the Balkans, and by using some data on the dynamics of Italian multinationals, this process has been proved rather precisely (see L'Italie s'e desta).

2. Changes in the composition of Italian working class

(Source: ISTAT, Central Institute of Statistic)

Workers and value added in the Italian manufacturing industry

(thousand of units/billion of current liras)

Workers and value added in the Italian service industry

(thousand of units/billion of current liras)

(Source: General Report on the Italian Economic Situation, 1996.)

The reduction of manufacturing workers and increase of workers in the public and private services to enterprises (computing and communication technicians, contract craftsmen, highly skilled workers, commercial agents, but also workers of less qualified services) are by now a process which has gained a hold upon Italy as well as the other imperial metropolis.

As we highlighted several times, it is mistaken to believe the working class disappeared. Actually it has been relocated in a semi-peripheral area represented by Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, two areas close by the ‘imperial citadel’ and ever more integrated with it.

The assembly fines moved from the industrial triangle and Italian manufacturing districts to new industrial suburbs in the Balkans and the Maghreb.

Further wage differentiation, ‘territorial pacts’ among enterprises, local authorities, institutional trace unions and government in Southern Italy; ‘area contracts’ in Calabria, Puglia, Campania, Sicily, and deregulation in the Italian labour market; all these processes are going to deepen the relocation of the working class.

As the European economic integration progresses, Southern Italy is turning into a ‘free zone’ aimed at attracting national an international investment. A zone with low wages, high flexibility and weakened rights to form a union; a zone openly competing with workers of other low wage areas (Eastern Europe, Asia, South America and the Maghreb).

Inside these structural modifications, we have to begin to identify both class sectors that could drive the re-composition process toward a social antagonist coalition and major sources of contradiction and conflict. This becomes, therefore, a ground for communist inquiry, debate and politic action.

An understanding of which class sectors are going to expand or decline is fundamental to adjust our project and form of organisation.

Where the worker at the assembly fine (the mass-worker) has been the heart of class conflict during the Fordist era, the flexible accumulation era is leading new figures of production and strategic services to stand out. A kind of ‘multi-task worker’, very flexible, highly or enough educated, able to change labour duties accomplishing a wide range of functions, lacking in any real knowledge about the process he is involved in, and devoid of any wage, trace union and social security guarantees. The prospective shown by all international institutes of the financial capital (OCDE, IMF, G7 and European Commission) are rather explicit about low wages and high flexibility as characteristic of the only possible job in the future. This process changes the concept of ‘unemployment’ and extends to all the manpower the role of ‘industrial reserve army’, a Marxist category still extremely relevant.

Moving from the reality of class contradictions, we must detect where the quantity of contradictions can become quality of politic and class antagonism.

5. The function of the State

The State, as social mediator, agent of economic regulation, manager of the welfare state, has been argued against by the neo-liberalist dogma. State's functions are currently adjusting back to its role of ‘business committee’ of the bourgeoisie, with the precise task to transfer wealth and resources from popular sectors to enterprises, from earned income to financial rent. Through privatisation, cuts to social expenditure, increase of the services rates (transports, communications, energy), and use of fiscal instruments, the State steals money from the working class granting it to enterprises, the big financial capital and the 24% of ricin people that are the top of the Italian society. This change of function is meaningfully crunching also that middle class (including many service workers and civil servant too) developed during the welfare state era. As a result, class polarisation is strengthening in the Italian society and the social-democratic theses based on the middle class centrality are made obsolete.

But when the society grows polarised and affluent classes are shrinking and concentrating, it also grows the need to have a State more and more compulsory towards workers and popular sectors. It is not accidental that the only sectors of the public expenditure not affected by cuts gather cops and prisons (Carabinier) and police forces, customs officers, Ministry of Justice). Moreover, also in the public and local administration is increasing the number of officers to control, inspect and repress.

The fiscal instruments assumes a clear class character becoming the main factor of the anti-popular transfer of wealth.

6. The new class composition

According to the picture we have just drawn, it is necessary to find landmarks for the class inquiry and put to test the true State of things.

The growth of contingent labour and the fragmentation of labour market have strongly weakened the working class we knew as leading part in the struggles of the ‘Hot Autumn’ and the withstanding struggles of the '80 (employment, wage indexation, pensions). Then, it is necessary to investigate the situation of different class segments produced by the social fragmentation of the lest decade to find inside and among them the new unifying elements.

For this reason we spotted some peculiar sectors to stars the inquiry: a) the increase of the irregular workers inside the so called ‘informal economy’ goes on along with the legalisation of the unofficial work by means of ‘temporary labour’ or ‘area contracts’ in Southern Italy. In the future, the increase of employment and the decrease of wages will be based on the above mechanisms. It means that the increase of the ‘industrial reserve army’ inside the metropolis and newly industrialised peripheries is and will be overwhelming in the next decades.

b) The workers of network services (communications, energy and transports) are in the middle of an intensive restructuring process, which runs parallel with the modification of the State role and the privatisations of these strategic services. It could mean reduction of wage, a new labour organisation, and the end of the condition of ‘worker aristocracy’ for most service workers. A similar process is involving civil servants, whose functions, in a lot of faces, will get very close to those of services to enterprises.

c) A lot of public services provided by the welfare State are dismantling to be entrusted to the so called third sector. The third sector is the ideological and economic compromise among financial capital, League of Co-operatives, catholic enterprises and ‘professional’ volunteers. Tens of thousands of workers will be employed in the so called ‘non profit’ area, with jobs highly temporary, underpaid, and dependent on bosses will.

d) Self-employment for manufacturing and services industries is under the attack of a quick verticalization of control and concentration of production. This is due to both its weak financial autonomy and the fiscal pressure. Self-employment is converting more and more in a job subordinate to the enterprises demand (with a high self-exploitation) and less and less in a form of <<independent employment>>. According to this reality and tendency, the Confindustria presented a project to legitimate the <<co-ordinated worker>>. It means a worker independent with regard to the fiscal and welfare masters and guarantees, while subordinate when dealing with production relations.

(percentage on the global employment)

(Source: 1997 Anticipatory and programmatic relation of the Italian government)

e) Financialisation of the economy, concentration, Euro currency, new fiscal arrangements, and competition in low wage areas (Eastern Europe, Third World and Southern Italy too) are bringing about a crisis for the small and medium firms of the industrial districts (particularly in the North East) that characterised the Italian pattern in the '90s.

f) The workers of the old industrial triangle (north-western regions) came first when the restructuring process hit the working class, deeply modifying the social situation in Italy. The shrinking of traditional industriel sectors radically changed the features of industrial areas, such as Genoa or Milan. In Italy, by now, there exist few big factories still working, which gather around the auto sector either in the South or in the North of the country.