Contribution to the 15^th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the internationalcommunist movement".
Brussels, 5- 7 May 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Partito Comunista Unificato d'Italia

First of all, thanks to the Workers’ Party of Belgium for organizing these annual meetings.

Italy is facing a deep economical and political crisis. Salaries, pensions, TFR (that is the salary sums given at the end of working life), as well as the rights of the workers, are under attack, while social services are weakened by shortage of staff and cuts in investments. The large masses are poorer because many Italian capitalists move their industries abroad, while international companies do their shopping in the most developed areas in our country (five hundred multinationals in Lombardy only) and close industries bringing technological knowledge abroad.

Both centre-right and centre-left coalitions do not give a political answer to this, they have no program for going out of this crisis and give a future to the people, and try to repress any critical participation of the masses. As a matter of fact, it was the centre-left government in 1992 that shortened workers’ income, hit the right to strike, introduced temporary work for the young and started privatization of public industries and services.

This situation favours globalization led by US imperialists, aimed at attacking the rights conquered by the workers in Europe and in Italy, to impose their social model, and aimed at enforcing free circulation of capitals and goods – while they keep control on strategic energy supply (oil, nuclear power, etc).

Capitalists try to de-industrialize our country and change it into a logistic centre. They want to make their decisions alone, limiting state powers and imposing their choice on the workers.

Lowering salaries and shutdown of factories led to struggles that contrasted the anti-strike law (transport workers, FIAT at Melfi). These were episodes, not a general mass movement, but they indicated the right way of action.

Our party is making efforts to organize an answer not simply defensive. We are involving groups of workers that have different political and trade-union experiences, to create unity among workers’ struggles and coagulate forces and heads, in order to outline alternatives to centre-right and centre-left policies against the people.

We want to keep industry within our country, raise the purchasing power of the masses and equilibrate the fiscal burden now mainly striking workers’ income, increase employment instead of precarious work, support programs for housing, education and social services. To this end, we need public investments to keep factories within the country, we need to stop privatization of public sector, to sanction companies that close factories in Italy and open them abroad (where salaries and workers’ rights are lower) or that abuse of public financing, as FIAT that must pay back state contributions for innovation programs that were never respected, or must become public.

We need to develop innovation and new productive sectors (for example in sustainable and renewable sources of energy), in order to create "national champions" contributing to European development. The mass of consumers and public services users must be protagonist in productive choices and control of public financing.

We think that crisis is not yet at its worst, so we must be prepared to build a political line that gives our people and our youth a perspective for the future. The problems of Italian masses can be solved only together with all the European peoples.

The vote of French people against European constitution favours the struggle for unity of European peoples. We need to change political relations within each European Union country and among them, we need to create new relations with the countries out of Europe on the basis of mutual respect. We are conscious that this can be achieved only within a common project of European workers and peoples.

Let us struggle for the withdrawal of all troops of NATO and of single national states outside their own countries.

Thanks for your attention.