A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA: Alternativa Libertaria: AL Referendum Sheet (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"Better to take a single step with all your companions on the real path 
of life than to remain isolated and travel hundreds of leagues in the 
abstract" --- (Carlo Cafiero. April 1882). ---- On June 8 and 9, 
consultations will take place on the referendum question proposed by the 
Più Europa party, together with other civil society associations, on the 
modification of the law relating to the acquisition of citizenship, 
together with the four questions on work, proposed by the CGIL. (see 
factsheet) ----In this phase of heavy defeat of the workers' movement, 
which has now been going on for about two generations, the reasons for 
the referendum questions are real as they reflect some immediate needs 
of the working class, therefore we believe that we cannot avoid their 
support and militant commitment to reaching the quorum and for the 
victory of the YES.

Nonetheless, we would like to reiterate that the referendum strategy 
represents a poor substitute for a real mobilization that the union 
leadership group deliberately does not pursue, despite the willingness 
still shown in the streets and in the workplace, as on the occasion of 
the general strike of November 29th of last year, which was not followed 
by any general mobilization.

We have already criticized this choice by the union's management group 
since its announcement, as it was elaborated and defined exclusively by 
the very restricted national management group and not the result of a 
collective and choral discussion in all the organizational bodies of the 
organization, even if formally management, such as the provincial 
regional General Assemblies, as well as in those of the individual 
categories.

Even less so the fruit of social dynamics in which the referendum 
hypothesis could represent an attempt to broaden the struggle front to 
larger sectors of the organised workers' movement.

Referendums, which can only cancel a text of law, without adding 
anything, are aimed at all citizens, not just workers, and this is a 
first distinction that is far from marginal: hundreds of thousands of 
immigrant workers without citizenship, those who die on construction 
sites, in the agricultural lands of Foggia or in the charming Tuscany 
for the tomato harvest and who are the main victims of the laws that 
they would like to repeal, will not have access to the ballot boxes. 
Instead, those who take advantage of those same laws to exploit them 
will be able to and will vote.

Furthermore, to validate the referendum response, which is not at all a 
given for the five YES votes indicated by the promoters, a quorum of 
half of the entire electorate is required. This means that at least 26 
million people will have to go to vote, otherwise the referendum will be 
thrown away and the political defeat will be accompanied by significant 
economic damage, as no reimbursements are foreseen.

In these conditions, the keys to the referendum machine are in the hands 
of the main media, the bosses, the parliamentary parties and the 
government itself, which had already made its intention to boycott known 
by holding the referendum vote in the first days of June, on June 8 and 
9, the date of the second round of the administrative elections that 
will take place at the end of May, therefore with schools closed and 
when notoriously very small percentages of voters will go to the polls 
for the run-offs. This position is further confirmed by the government 
forces, Fratelli d'Italia, Forza Italia and the League, who are jointly 
supporting the indication of abstentionism.

But regardless of the government position and the majority parties, the 
referendums have created lacerations in the so-called opposition, 
starting clearly with Renzi's party, Italia Viva, director and promoter 
of the Jobs Act with his government in 2015, as well as in Calenda's 
other "boss" party , Azione, which firmly sides against the four 
questions called by the CGIL and partly in favor of the question on 
citizenship, as well as in the Democratic Party itself, despite the 
positioning for the YES of the secretary Elly Schlein, where the faction 
of the same President of the Party, Stefano Bonaccini, also sides 
against the four referendum questions of the CGIL and in favor only of 
the fifth, the one on citizenship, adding "Jesuitically" not to abstain, 
but to want to go and vote and reject the ballot paper for the other 
four questions.

Even on the strictly trade union front, the CISL, now the fifth column 
of the government, is staunchly lining up for a NO to all the referendum 
questions on work, increasingly revealing its corporate and collateral 
vocation to the government forces.

In this context, it would be necessary, within the CGIL itself, to have 
a healthy and frank self-criticism of the various past and present 
leadership groups that, alongside the so-called progressive and 
left-wing forces, have constantly weakened the solidarity fabric of the 
workers' movement and with it the normative and salary conditions, 
therefore social, of the working masses and of the new generations, 
chasing and proposing the continuous mediation between the interests of 
the employers and the government.

The constant call for "concertation" , for "national unity" , as well as 
for an ever so vague and dangerous "codetermination" has determined that 
heavy isolation and weakening of the organised workers' movement which 
characterises the current historical phase.

In fact, it was precisely the governments led by the PD or supported by 
it that inflicted the heaviest blows on the working class in terms of 
labor and pension legislation: from the Fornero law with the Monti 
government, to the dismantling of Article 18 and the introduction of the 
Jobs Act itself by the Renzi government, then secretary of the 
Democratic Party, which today, with a 10-year delay, they would like to 
cancel.

The referendum strategy therefore does not represent that barrier to 
defeat and above all it cannot represent the path to the recomposition 
of that social block composed of workers, new generations, pensioners 
and women, in order to resume the struggles and class conflict to 
re-determine the balance of power necessary to reverse the current 
decline in the social conditions of the working masses and the future of 
the new generations, just as it will not be able to stop and defeat that 
process of cultural involution that continues to penalize women by 
re-proposing a misogynistic and patriarchal culture.

After the general strike of November 29, no joint initiative was taken, 
once again leaving the individual categories isolated. The struggle of 
metalworkers for higher wages and a real reduction in working hours was 
not extended to other categories, such as school workers who are still 
waiting for a contract renewal, or to the public sector workers where, 
even though the CGIL did not sign the CCNL hastily signed by the 
autonomous unions in the company of the CISL, the government 
nevertheless closed a contract that does not even recover half of the 
real inflation accrued in recent years.

The positive slogan of "social revolt" that the CGIL leadership group 
indicates cannot pass through a referendum vote launched in the absence 
of struggles and protagonism of workers and youth.

It is enough to recall the results of other referendum battles to 
understand that the abrogative referendums on labor issues have turned 
out to be losers. One above all that on the Scala Mobile of June 1985 
against the rule that provided for the cut of the three points of Scala 
Mobile that the government of Bettino Craxi in February of the previous 
year had issued.

The former Italian Communist Party, which had only overtaken the 
Christian Democrats in the European elections in June of the previous 
year, obtaining 33% (against the DC's 30%), expressed its support for 
the repeal of the law, in addition to that large galaxy of militants, 
circles, and organised political groups still present on the 
extra-parliamentary left, born and rooted in the 1970s.

With a turnout of 77.9% the result was 45.7% in favor of repealing the 
law against 54.3%; those against and the law, therefore, remained. In 
those years the workers' movement had already suffered several defeats, 
the greatest being that of FIAT, which with the same political stupidity 
as today did not want to generalize, ultimately losing in a disastrous 
and disorderly manner. Today the real risk with the possible loss or 
failure to reach the quorum is that of a boomerang for the fate of the 
workers' movement and for the CGIL itself which cannot but come out of 
it further weakened.

Starting from the central and peripheral leadership groups of the CGIL 
and its intermediate cadres, there is currently no serious reflection on 
the opportunity of a "plan B" so that, if defeat were to manifest 
itself, this would inevitably take on a further meaning of adhesion, 
even if tacit, to the government's proposals, laying the foundations for 
an inevitable drift of the working class towards the nationalist and 
xenophobic formations typical of the most reactionary right.

The basic issue that should be well understood is that global economic 
competitiveness has been at paroxysmal levels for over twenty years now 
and the margins for general improvement in the living conditions of the 
working masses are increasingly limited.

Economic reality no longer offers support for redistributive policies, 
whether reformist or Keynesian. The project of a capitalism with a human 
face, supported for obvious reasons by the international bourgeoisie and 
adopted by the same political organizations that historically referred 
to the heritage and history of social democracy or to the Euro-communist 
fantasies, which miserably collapsed the day after their very 
definition, has miserably failed.

The rearmament plan envisaged by the European Union, although not yet 
defined in its real essence, indicates that the will and necessity of 
the European bourgeoisies do not lie in the development of social 
policies in favor of the populations, through greater investments and 
improvements in health and healthcare, in prevention and education, in 
better social conditions for the working masses, but in increasing those 
expenses for armaments in an attempt to recompose that macabre balance 
of deterrence with other imperialist poles such as the USA, Russia and 
China, in a wicked race towards a third world war.

Today for the working classes there is redistribution of poverty, 
socialization of losses, the negotiated decrease of the purchasing power 
of wages, wars. Continuing to claim a strategy of concertation with the 
employer and government counterpart, continuing and claiming a 
collaboration that has in fact weakened the workers' movement, proposing 
only a referendum line, therefore not classist, represents the 
continuation of this disastrous decline in the living conditions of the 
working masses.

The right strategy is to resume class battles in the workplace, in 
schools and in the territories for the unity of the working masses, of 
the weakest and most subordinate social classes which, to climb back up 
the slope of the serious defeat suffered, can only rely on their own 
united and organized strength, on the development of the class struggle, 
on the real advancement of a united "social revolt" that knows how to 
mobilize around itself sectors and classes such as the young generations 
and women and not the chimerical political ballot boxes, much less 
referendums.

Let us commit ourselves to the victory of YES in the five referendums so 
as not to further widen the defeat and to rebuild that class unity which 
is essential for future struggles.

We direct our militant contribution to such a project, to a society of 
free and equal producers.

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