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The "events of Genoa" are too widely known for it to be
necessary to summarize and recall them here. In the streets
of the city, on the bodies of the tens of thousands of people
who flocked to "demonstrate against the powerful of the
earth", a tragic performance was played out, an angry pre-scripted
event, which resulted in one young man murdered, hundreds
of people wounded and arrested, and above all in the usual
ballet of lamentations and blame, indignation and cynicism.
The whole affair, from the demonstrations against globalization
to their brutal repression by the police and the aftermath,
runs the risk of drowning a real and ongoing problem (how
to struggle against capitalism) in yet another democratic,
reformist, recriminatory and moralistic swamp, and thus
of not taking a single step toward even a remotely class-based
perspective: rather, to take a number of steps backward.
Whoever wishes, therefore, to really draw, seriously and
lucidly, some non-episodic lessons from the "events of Genoa",
will necessarily have to do so by beginning from some general
considerations. Let us look at them, while also referring
the reader, for further amplification and context, to the
substantial article on the "no-global movement" which will
be put on the web in due time.
1.
The state is not an organ above the different parts of society,
a severe but just father who concerns himself impartially
with the good of all. On the contrary- -and Marxism has
always said so in theory and demonstrated it in facts--the
state is a product of the division of society into classes
and cannot be anything else but an instrument of the rule
(and of the maintenance of this rule) of the class in power:
n this instance, in the capitalist system, an instrument
of the bourgeoisie, the social expression of capital as
a world economic power. The bourgeois state is precisely
at the service of the general interests of capital, both
on the national and international level (and thus with all
the contradictions this implies): independently of the puppets
(real and authentic zombies) who are in this or that government,
at this or that moment.
To think and (still worse!) to make others think that the
bourgeois state can and should represent the "collectivity",
the "citizens" (and that if it does not, this is only because
a handful of scoundrels and rogues have taken it over and
subordinated it to their own will) is tantamount to nourishing
a disastrous illusion. To proclaim that the state must be
"torn from the control of the multinationals" or of "corporative
interests", and "restored to its role as guardian of the
collectivity" comes down to playing a role of mystification,
of theoretical-political disarmament, of open deception
and betrayal.
2.
With its "special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc." (Lenin,
State and Revolution),this state is thus the organ of domination
of the ruling bourgeois class. As such, it has been and
will always be the open enemy of revolution and communism,
as it is moreover the enemy of any partial struggle for
the defense of the conditions of life and work of the exploited
masses (the example of the steel workers roughed up in Genoa
well before the G8 has been quickly forgotten by everyone,
and this should be food for thought.) To complain because
the state has exercised its real repressive role means not
even minimally understanding what the state is, and the
nature of the regime which emerged victorious from the second
world massacre. It thus means to promote, and to accept,
the theoretical and practical impossibility of resisting
and fighting it. With the G8 of Genoa, the Italian bourgeoisie
readily seized the occasion for some big military maneuvers,
and for testing men and equipment, strategies and logistics,
thus showing once again a) that it sees (with a perception
developed through the experience of several centuries) the
deepening and the spread of economic crisis as prefiguring
critical times of growing social tensions b) that it must
thus prepare itself, making it clear how it intends to respond,
i.e. with violence and repression. In fact, the main force
to which this message is addressed is the proletariat in
its future struggles, against which open bourgeois violence
alternates with democratic clap-trap to defend the survival
and the impersonal rule of capital, and only secondarily
the middle classes, who today are protesting against their
increasingly precarious situation, and who have to be rechanneled
into more modest aspirations. The Italian bourgeoisie has
also shown that it knows how to use the insipid and irresponsible
character of the so-called "antagonistic movements" (movements
of a spontaneous nature which, it is worth mentioning, have
a long and dark tradition of sending into the fray forces
politically and organizationally defenseless) to divide,
fragment, intimidate, repress and paralyze.
3.
"Police state"? "Chilean situation"? The bourgeois state
constitutes its apparatus of control and repression in order
to always maintain a level of potential violence in its
confrontations with the working class, with the aim of unleashing
it openly when doing so suits its needs. Whoever today blathers
about "democratic police" is a cretin and a faithful servant
of the bourgeoisie. For more than half a century, we internationalist
communists have been arguing that the regime which emerged
victorious from the second world massacre, behind its democratic
facade, inherited from Nazism and fascism the latter's profound
economic, social and political substance: concentration
of state powers, centralization of economic life with the
direct intervention of the state for the preservation of
capitalist interests, the growing militarization of social
life, the integration of unions into the state, the constitution
of big clientelisticl lobbies, the media-driven creation
of consensus, etc. And we have defined this regime as an
"armored democracy". Democrats, Stalinists, reformists,
and spontaneists of all kinds, while throwing themselves
into dismantling, piece by piece, even the memory of what
Marxism, class struggle, revolutionary politics, and communism
are, have found nothing better to do than to laugh at our
"old and outmoded" analysis. Except, that is, when overwhelmed
by the blows of police clubs, the streams of jeeps and a
dead demonstrator, they shed crocodile tears over "desecrated
democracy". These people, whether they today call themselves
the Rifondazione Comunista or "tute bianche", Genoa Social
Forum or Black Bloc, or find their affinities in the folkloric
rainbow of colored (or colorless?) names and symbols, or
are on the payroll of bourgeois institutions which pretend
to fight, or are motivated by sterile and existential rebellion,
are directly co-responsible for the disaster of collective
experiences such as the "anti-G8 demonstration in Genoa",
a disaster which can only nourish frustration and a sense
of impotence, or set off a chain reaction of adventurist
efforts: all of them, however, having in common the refusal
of a revolutionary perspective (and thus of preparation
for it).
4.
It is obvious that the "no-global" movement, or whatever
one wishes to call it (in this race entirely turned upon
itself to name something that has no substance), in addition
to offering no real response to capitalist cannibalism and
rot, is totally vulnerable to every kind of provocation,
aggression, and infiltration: precisely because of its indefinite,
fluid, "ecumenical" character, its non-existent political
and programmatic dimensions, and its eclectic, spontaneist,
improvised nature. But the problem is not only that of provocateurs
and infiltrators: the problem is that the "no-global" movement
is completely without any theoretical-political discourse
and thus places its trust in that "ethical mass participation"
which only leads to disastrous defeats. In light of the
verbal contorsions of the operetta revolutionaries who were
playing at being "hard" leaders of the movement, and who
then squawked that "the police did not stick to the agreements",
the "events of Genoa" at least serve as a reminder that
revolutionary politics, in none of its forms, from the anonymous
work of theoretical preparation to propaganda and proselytism,
from the strike to the picket line, from the blockage of
production to the large demonstration, without forgetting
for a moment the seizure of power and the establishment
of the proletarian dictatorship, that none of this is a
country outing, nor a trip to the beach with a guitar and
a bottle of beer, nor a "street rave" for reconnecting with
old friends and for being able to say "I was there", and
finally not the latest occasion for acting out one's own
nihilist and individual rage. Today, in order to struggle
consequently against the regime of capital in all its forms,
something more is necessary than some eruption of urban
guerrilla warfare here or there in the world, or the bleating
call for "alternative spaces", or the vague and misguided
"globalization from below" which is nothing more than a
sinister reformism dressed up with Christian-tinged appeals
to good will. To this end, the necessities of today are
revolutionary preparation, the destruction of every bourgeois
and petty bourgeois myth (from pacifism to democracy, from
ecologism to the "social state", etc.), the reaffirmation
of integral Marxist theory against all the attacks launched
by the ideology of capital and the Stalinist counter-revolution,
which has destroyed every tradition of international proletarian
struggle, and finally the spread on a world scale of the
international communist party. And what will be necessary
tomorrow is the world revolution and the dictatorship of
the proletariat, led by its party.
5.
"Globalization" is not a perverse process set in motion
in recent years by a handful of selfish interests (individuals,
companies, states) which are daily trampling on "collective
rights", to be opposed by assembling a large, formless march
every once in a while, or by wrecking a MacDonald's, or
destroying a field owned by Monsanto, or by smashing the
windows of a bank (preferably an American one). What is
improperly called "globalization" is the process through
which, since the beginning and with different velocities
and intensities according to the phase, capital tends to
penetrate into every corner of the world--an individuated
process, one described by Marxism since the era of the Communist
Manifesto, an "old" book from 150 years ago which some people
would do well to re-read. What we have been seeing for a
quarter of a century is the intensification of this process,
under the pressure of a structural economic crisis erupting
as a consequence of the closing of the expansive cycle of
the capitalist economy, which in turn was made possible
by the enormous destruction of commodities (objects, infrastructure
and human beings), caused by the second imperialist massacre.
To react to a crisis of such a scale, capital knows only
a few methods, each of which is destined in turn to deepen
the crisis: the intensification of commercial competition
and control of markets, sources of raw materials, of commercial
circuits (=sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalries); the
introduction of ever-more sophisticated technologies (=expulsion
of manpower with the growth of unemployment, contraction
of the living labor which produces surplus-value and thus
profit); proletarianization of ever-greater sectors of the
world population to secure more tractable and cheaper manpower
(=great migratory flows, growing social tensions, destruction
of centuries-old balances in large areas of the planet,
increase in the uncertainty of material conditions of life).
And behind all this, when all this no longer suffices, the
final solution: a new world-wide massacre which destroys
everything that has been produced in excess (commodities
and human beings), as happened already with the First and
Second World Wars. This is a life-or-death necessity for
capital, and not the result of individual egoisms or bloody
wickedness: it is thus only by breaking this infernal cycle
once and for all that it will be possible to prevent capital
from destroying the human species.
6.
From this point of view, it is obvious that neither the
bleating ethical pacifism of hands in the air (an exemplary
sign of surrender) nor the anarchoid rebellion of the window-breakers
(with their absolute and unabashed lack of structure and
political program), are an answer. The only answer is the
return in force, after decades of devastating counter- revolution
(carried out by Stalinism, fascism and democracy) of the
international working class: not because it is "genetically
revolutionary", as some ingenuous soul would have it, but
because it has the potential power to block the vital arteries
of capitalism, to strike at the point where surplus-value
is produced, and thus to seriously threaten bourgeois power.
And this return is prepared, abetted and rendered possible
day after day: with a constant labor of clarification, of
organization, of leadership, struggling against all those
reformist, legalistic and democratic positions which divert
the working class from its path, which involve it in perspectives
which are not its own, which tie it to the rotten cadaver
(but one still unfortunately on its feet) of the capitalist
economy, of its state, of its nation. While the economic
crisis is laying the foundations, eroding reserves and guarantees,
illusions and convictions, this return is being prepared
with patience and seriousness, lucidity and consciousness,
and at the same time with that passion and ardor which characterized
generations and generations of revolutionary communists:
without sliding back into the phantasms of spontaneism,
subjectivism and rebelliousness, of "everything and now",
of the "concrete here and now", but working for a tomorrow
which can only have its roots in today, for a today which
has meaning only when projected in a tomorrow, no matter
how distant.
This can and must be done. But it can be done only by returning
to revolutionary Marxism: with the hard but bracing work
of revolutionary preparation, of propaganda and proselytism,
of spreading communist theory and program, of continuous
specific struggle against all the openly enemy or, worse,
deceptively friendly ideologies, of the education of new
revolutionary generations destined for days more luminous
than today, of guiding and steering proletarian struggles
throughout the world in an openly anti-capitalist direction,
of the international grounding of the class party, solid
in its organization and its doctine.
This may seem a distant prospect; in reality, it is the
only possible one, and the only realistic one, if we wish
to avoid other, and much worse, disasters.
Note
The "tute bianche" are those wearing entirely white clothes
and identifying themselves with the “community centers”
movement, formerly “workers’ autonomy”.
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