64^th Council of Delegates of the FdCA

Florence, 28^th January 2007

FdCA branch premises - Via G.P. Orsini 44

Final Document

1. The appearance of a "normal" country

Following the approval of the 2007 Budget the centre-left government appears to be more stable and therefore better able to overcome certain internal contradictions and face the coming challenges:

• pension reform and the success of its plans to put workers' severance pay into funds;

• labour contract reform;

• flexibility as a cure for precarity;

• assimilation and regularization of the new Eastern European immigrant workforce and "model" temporary detention centres (CPTs) for migrants;

• completion of "European" infrastructural work (TAV, various corridors, etc.);

• new national energy plan (gas/regasification, etc.);

• confirmation of Italian military presence abroad;

• plan to liberalize and privatize strategic sectors;

• liberalization plans in commercial services as a laughable form of support for demand.

After its adventures in government, the parliamentary opposition of the centre-right seems to be in a phase of re-organization in the light of the UDC (Union of Christian and Centrist Democrats) distancing itself from the coalition and the dangerous nostalgia of the Northern League movement. However, their objective of fiscal federalism is still within reach.

The industrialists' federation, Confindustria, is more than satisfied with the 2007 Budget and will be working with the government on the task of contract reform (preference for de-centralized contracts with gradual abandoning of national labour contracts) and a return to control over working hours and rhythms as a condition for wage talks.

With the entry into government of a large part of the political forces and union class who were previously active in the opposition to Berlusconi, the movements have lost a good deal of momentum and social opposition has been somewhat diminished. There remain - for now at least - only sporadic outbursts within the labour movement and on the social level, such as the FIOM (engineering workers' union, part of the CGIL), the 28 April Network (opposition within the CGIL union federation), some grassroots unions, attempts to reorganize opposition on questions such as energy/environment, secularism, immigrants, precarity and neo-fascism.

2. FdCA tactics for 2007

In light of the situation, the difficult task for anarchist communists is:

1. to represent an organizational and political reference point for the many grassroots militants who remain isolated and disoriented as a result of the withering of the movements and the recruiting to Prodi's increasingly neo-liberal stance of that sector of the political and labour world that until recently opposed the liberalism of the centre-right;

2. to promote at community level political initiatives both as FdCA and as part of grassroots associations, networks and alliances of political, labour and social forces in areas such as labour struggles, secularism, the environment/energy, immigration, anti-militarism and anti-fascism.

3. Syndicalism

• Support the creation of committees in the battle for the protection of state pensions, against pension reform, acting on a double level of technical counter-information in the workplace and the search for ways to restore national insurance schemes.

• Support for committees and initiatives against precarity.

• Support for the current policies of the FIOM and the 28 April Network.

• Support for attempts to create a more united grassroots syndicalism (such as the recent creation of the SdL-Workers' Union) and dialogue within and between categories.

4. Secularism

Given the recent rise in clerical intrusion into the lives of people, it is necessary to support the initiatives of movements, committees and individuals in order to protect the individual's rights to choose one's partner and to make a living will.

5. Environment/energy

• Denouncing of and counter-information on the liberalization processes currently under way in strategic sectors of the country (transport, energy, public resources, etc) with serious repercussions on the territory.

• Support for movements and community committees in their demands for the right to information on and participation in strategic decisions (energy, infrastructural works, mega plants) in such a way as to be able not only to federate the struggles, but also come up with credible alternative strategies to the current model of managing the territory, often for the financial benefit of the few with the externalization of environmental costs and the privatization of profits.

6. Immigration

• Action aimed at debunking and denouncing the strategy of "good immigration" by means of agencies and sponsors on the one hand and the maintaining or re-conversion of CPTs (immigrant detention centres) as a model form of "civil" confinement.

• Support for the creation of mixed migrant-Italian bodies within the community in order to provide a means of exchange and work on joint social projects with regard to rights and freedom.

7. Anti-Militarism

• Support the struggles and mobilizations of committees and movements against the militarization of the community and for the closure of military bases in Italy.

• Support the campaigns and mobilizations for the withdrawal of Italian military missions abroad and for the de-militarization of all territories that are the victim of wars.

8. Anti-Fascism

In light of the re-organization and spread of neo-fascist and neo-nazi political forces in various parts of the country, the FdCA will promote and join mass anti-fascist networks and alliances:

• to re-organize the popular anti-fascist fabric of the country, both on a cultural level and a political level;

• to denounce any concessions on the part of the State's institutions, central or otherwise, to these new forms of neo-nazism and neo-fascism.

9. Libertarian practices and politics

Whenever they join struggles and mobilizations, movements and their organizational structures, the FdCA and its members promote:

• libertarian practices aimed at achieving a horizontal and autonomous decision-making process rooted at the grassroots level;

• libertarian politics aimed at spreading and achieving alternative objectives to the policies of neo-liberals and authoritarians which reduce our living space, impoverishing our work and our culture, as well as developing forms of reorganization and self-organization of our needs, seeking the greatest possible amount of freedom and equality.

 

FdCA Council of Delegates
Florence, 28th January 2007