Il Partito Comunista 410

At the recent climate summit between April 22 and 23, which was supposedly wanted by the new US President Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping also spoke with a speech that put harmony between man and nature and “green development” in the first place. To this end, Xi Jinping confirmed the commitment, already expressed in previous months, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (China currently produces the largest amount, 28% of global emissions), and to achieve “climate neutrality” in 2060, i.e. zero net carbon dioxide emissions, when the carbon dioxide produced does not exceed that which can be absorbed, for example by forests and oceans.

To achieve this goal, China would focus on three factors: intensification of energy production from renewable sources, a sector in which China holds important world records; increase in the volume of forests on the national territory; and above all reduction in the production of pollutants, and therefore progressive reduction in the use of coal. However, China is highly dependent on coal, so much so that it consumes about half of the world’s total. Coal meets between 56 and 58% of the country’s energy consumption and two-thirds of electricity production.

In addition, China has financed projects using coal abroad, from Pakistan to Serbia, for an investment of 474 million dollars in 2020. Not even the economic and pandemic crisis has marked a reversal in China’s use of coal, even last year production returned to the records of 2015: according to official data, as much as 3.84 billion tons were extracted. The reason is, in part, due to a sort of trade war with Australia, which exports a lot of coal to China. Beijing has blocked these imports, and increased domestic production, in retaliation for Australia’s positions on major disputes involving China: alleged Chinese origin of the pandemic, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, 5G etc.

So the overall picture of China’s energy needs suggests that we won’t see any “major leaps forward” on the path to reducing coal consumption any time soon. It is Beijing’s own leaders who predict a peak in coal use in 2030, but without quantifying it. Despite the statements of principle on the “harmony between man and nature”, despite the claim of wanting to base the economy on “a sustainable model”, despite the long future plans to use “alternative sources”, a golden decade for coal in China is opening. Even the latest Chinese five-year plan, although painted green as is obligatory everywhere, does not set limits to coal.

On the other hand, neither could it, since, in a context of increasingly fierce commercial rivalry between capitals, reducing dependence on coal would put its economy at a disadvantage. The “energy question” thus becomes a weapon in the inter-imperialist clash. The war between competing capitalisms is hidden in an apparent clash between “defenders of the environment”, of the “climate”. This fake “defense of nature” sounds like this: Western capitalisms accuse China of being the main responsible for emissions and push for strong reductions; China responds that it is the old capitalisms, dragged for centuries before China in the industrial revolution, that are the real culprits of the current critical situation.

These “ecological” skirmishes can only be explained in the context of rivalries between states and the crisis of their economies. Specifically, bourgeois China, which arrived a century late to industrial development, feeds its factories, today’s power plants, with coal, as did the old capitalisms. The weapon of environmental defense is, therefore, wielded by Western capitalists only to harness the young Chinese industry.

For three centuries of world history, Western capitalism has imposed itself on the backward Asian economies by flooding their markets with its goods. “The low prices of its goods are the heavy artillery with which it flattens all the Chinese walls”, says the Manifesto of ’48, masterfully outlining the ineluctable extension of capitalism to the whole world. But capital cannot develop in a uniform way, the different world areas follow different development trends. This results in the modification of relations between countries. The current state of world capitalism presents a reversed situation compared to 1848, today are the Chinese goods that traveling to the West are overwhelming modern “walls”.

In the commercial war between countries competing on the world market, the climate and environmental issue is used to justify the imposition of barriers against the goods of rivals. This is the case of the European Union’s announced “carbon tax” aimed at hitting imported goods, in particular from China. Capitalism cannot preserve nature because it cannot stop the immense production of goods, mostly useless, that determine its rapacity in dispossessing the planet.

It is not a question of producing in a “different”, “sustainable” way, but of proceeding to the destruction of the capitalist mode of production. Obviously this perspective is rejected by the Chinese false communists. Under the red, which serves to cover the capitalist exploitation of the proletariat, they have discovered the usefulness of green, of ecologism, the ideology of capitalistically mature societies that, faced with the historical condemnation to destruction, take refuge in the possibility of a “different” capitalism.

But capitalism cannot be reformed, as the petty-bourgeois democrats delude themselves. Ecologism, like all bourgeois ideologies, mystifies the reality of capitalism to convince of its eternity. Ecologism is the ideology of an opulent and proprietary society, the expression of the bourgeoisie, the middle classes and the working class aristocracy. It is clear that from this future, modern, prosperous and harmonious, of high consumption and “eco” lifestyle, are excluded the Chinese proletarians, exploited and with starvation wages, crowded in unhealthy metropolis and forced to live in hovels of a few square meters.

These promises of reconciliation between man and nature can never be realized in capitalism. The “green” ideology, coupled with the propaganda of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, serves to perpetuate the capitalist hell and ensure the domination of capital.

On Friday, June 18, there was a national strike of logistics workers joined by virtually all the grassroots unions in the sector: SI COBAS, ADL COBAS, USB, CUB, SOL COBAS, and SLAI COBAS, for the Class Union.

An unexpected and important fact, because it tends to overcome one of the main reasons for conflict between the two major unions – SI COBAS and USB – which in logistics had come to clash very strongly.

SI COBAS, USB, and ADL COBAS have also published a common communiqué for the strike, and in the warehouses where both SI COBAS and USB are present, the workers of the two unions picketed together, with their respective flags.

The leaders of these grassroots unions, therefore, who have always rejected, with various instrumental justifications, the trade union indication of our party in favor of the unity of action of trade unions and workers, have found themselves following it and making it their own, contradicting their previous position.

The leaflet of our party, drafted and distributed for the strike and published below, gave particular emphasis and prominence to this important novelty, although we are certainly not unaware of how fragile this unity of action is and how occasional recourse to it is not enough to restore strength to class unionism and the workers’ movement.

It was a step in the direction of the necessary unity of action of militant unionism, to be practiced permanently at the various levels of union action, corporate, territorial, categorical, general.

But this is not to say that the current leadership of the major base unions, which have conducted – for years and until yesterday – the political struggle in the union field with the opportunistic method of dividing the strike actions, have abandoned this practice permanently. At the first opportunity, they will adduce justifications to return to their previous conduct. In addition to the seriousness of the situation described in the leaflet, the pressure from below of the workers who are members of their organizations has perhaps brought them to the field of unity of action at this juncture. In any case, it is only on this force from below that one can count on to permanently impose the class line of unity of action in every union body.

* * *

On the morning of the national logistics strike, at the Lidl logistics warehouse in Biandrate, the provincial coordinator of SI COBAS, Adil Belakhdim, was run over and killed by a young 26 year old boss who drove his truck through the picket line.

The young man is being investigated not for voluntary manslaughter but for road homicide, an indictment routinely assigned in every road accident in which there are victims, which seems to indicate an intention to hit him with a minimum possible penalty.

This fact, together with that of the acquittal, a year ago, of the truck driver who ran over and killed Abd El Salam, an USB worker, in September 2016 during a picket at Gls in Piacenza, would indicate a kind of impunity to other bosses, bosses or scabs who wanted to emulate the gesture of the murderer of Adil Belakhdim.

Similar episodes are very frequent during pickets for strikes in logistics. After years of hard struggles – many lost, many won – which, as an overall result, have marked an improvement in working conditions and a strengthening of grassroots unionism in the category, the bosses seem to have been given a kind of pass to discourage workers from engaging in these methods of struggle, even by means of road accidents. This tool is in addition to police charges, judicial measures, and the maneuvers of the regime’s trade unionism to assist companies in replacing combative workers with other unorganized workers, as is happening at Fedex TNT.

On Wednesday, June 30, in Pontecurone (Alessandria), a manager drove his truck into a group of striking workers in front of the company at Miliardo Yida, injuring one.

* * *

The day after the national logistics strike, Saturday, June 19, SI COBAS had already scheduled a national demonstration in Rome.

This is the practice, highly questionable, put in place for three years now by the leadership of the SI COBAS: national strike of logistics on Friday, national demonstration in the capital the next day. This is with the aim, pursued by this leadership, to give greater “political” content to the union mobilization.

This choice has several negative effects:

– Workers are required to expend more energy, having to first participate in the pickets and then bear the journey to Rome, the demonstration and the return trip; this has negative effects on both the participation in the pickets and in the demonstration itself. After the first successful national demonstration in Rome on February 24, 2018, subsequent demonstrations have had much lower participation, even prior to the pandemic;

– Organizing the demonstration in Rome implies a greater financial burden for the union, which has to rent the buses; a burden doubled with the pandemic, since the buses have to be filled to only half their capacity;

– With this decision are abandoned local city demonstrations, which took place the same day of the strike, with a much broader participation of workers and, at least in part, the union with workers of other unions, which instead have always deserted the demonstrations convened by the SI COBAS in Rome, precisely because of their political characterization; all, without exception, even ADL COBAS that has always participated in strikes together with the SI COBAS.

The demonstration on Saturday, June 19 was attended by about 1,700 people. Successful, then, but not as successful as we had wished, in the just hope of a greater presence in reaction to the murder of the unionist of the previous day, at least from Rome and the surrounding area.

Of the other grassroots unions, the one with the largest presence was USB, with about one hundred militants, including those of the political leadership group and the student organization it controls.

It now becomes clear how decades of political opportunism of the false workers’ parties (PCI and subsequent wreckage) and of collaborationism of the trade unions of the regime (CGIL, CISL, UIL) have thrown the workers into individualism, into indifference, a condition from which it is not at all easy to get out.

The role of trade unions – trade unions, opposition class union currents, company trade union representatives – is crucial in every phase of the class struggle, even more so in this condition: in trying to set up a mobilization, their involvement is necessary and it is not enough to appeal only to workers or, generically, to conflictual unionism, as has been done so far by the leadership of SI COBAS, including through the Assembly of Combative Workers.

On this level, the reaction of the trade unions to the murder of the SI COBAS unionist was appreciable. Many RSUs and RSAs (bodies representing workers to the employers, respectively of all unions in a firm and individual unions) have called strikes – of a couple of hours – in solidarity and denunciation, both of the basic unions and FIOM, who have called for a regional strike of all metalworkers in Emilia Romagna.

A general strike was called by the various quarters of militant unionism, both from the grassroots unions and from the CGIL internal opposition group “Reconquistiamo tutto,” in response to the release of laoyffs, the liberalization of contracts, the attempt to include the logistics sector in the law forbidding strikes in essential public services, and the murder of Adil.

These positive reactions, however, have remained scattered, and have not been channeled into a single general mobilization. The leadership of the SI COBAS would have had the opportunity, given its position in the affair, to undertake such an initiative and ask all the grassroots unions and opposition groups within CGIL to react with a unified mobilization. It did not do so, and on Tuesday, June 22, called alone a 4‑hour national logistics strike for Thursday, June 24. It then called for a demonstration for the following Saturday in Novara, which saw a similar participation to the one in Rome, but with the almost total absence of the rest of the militant unionists.

Therefore, the step forward towards unity of action, taken with the strike of June 18, was not followed in the days immediately following by another in the same direction, despite the relatively favorable situation. A good opportunity was lost. The national general strike need not necessarily have been called. We could have called for a new unified national strike of logistics for the entire day; or a general strike in the province of Novara, even if it was only for 4 hours; or a public, formal and official invitation to all the organizations of unionism in conflict to a national demonstration in the Piedmontese city. Or resort to all three possibilities, making the strike in logistics coincide with the one in the province of Novara.

On June 28 in Rome, however, a meeting was held, convened on the initiative of the leadership of the SI COBAS, between representatives of militant unionism, that is, the grassroots unions and “Reconquistiamo tutto”, aimed at organizing a general strike for October.

Therefore, unlike what happened in past years, we have overcome the divisive practice with which some organizations were previously excluded from such meetings (USB, Confederazione COBAS, CGIL opposition, etc.) and the leaders of SI COBAS, which excluded the formal involvement of all bodies of trade unionism conflict in the preparation of mobilizations – denigrating this path as a useless “sum of acronyms” – have backtracked and implicity admitted the correctness of our union address.

June 18
A United National Strike of Logistics Workers
For the unitary strike of rank-and-file trade unions in logistics!
For the establishment of the United Class Union Front!

The national strike of logistics workers initially called by SI Cobas received the support of most of the rank-and-file trade unions: ADL Cobas, USB, Cub Trasporti, Slai Cobas for the Class Union, AL Cobas, Sol Cobas.

This unitary support for the strike is an extremely important and positive fact because it breaks with years of deleterious conflict between rank-and-file unions – for the sole benefit of the employers and the regime unionism of CGIL, CISL and UIL – which had its most serious manifestation in the rivalry between SI Cobas and the USB.

The unitary support of the militant trade union organizations for a strike is not the fulfillment of the unity of struggle of the workers. But it creates the most favorable condition for this objective to be achieved in the most complete way, so that the widest mass of proletarians, including those who are in the regime unions or who are not unionized, also join the struggle.

It is therefore misleading to contrast the unity of the rank-and-file unions in calling the strike with unity in the struggle of the workers, diminishing the former as a mere sum of acronyms, useless for the purpose of the latter: the workers’ struggle is powerless if it is not organized!

The current unitary action of rank-and-file unionism is the result of the bosses’ aggression on several fronts: the beatings by police officers and thugs hired by the company during the fight against the closure of the FedEx‑TNT warehouse in Piacenza; the judicial proceedings initiated by the Piacenza and Genoa prosecutors against trade union militants of SI Cobas and USB; with the announcement of layoffs starting from 30 June (hundreds of layoffs are already being announced at FCA in Melfi and other facilities); the liberalization of subcontracting; the project to include logistics in the anti‑strike regulations of the Guarantee Commission to hit the sector where strikes have been most numerous and hardest-fought in the last 10 years; the relaunch of the concertation between the government and CGIL, CISL and UIL; and finally the attack last Wednesday at the SI Cobas encampment at Texprint in Prato.

The gravity of the situation has pushed the leadership of the rank-and-file unions to this united action. This is an extremely positive fact in itself, but also because it shows how this unity of action strengthens the workers’ struggle. It must therefore become a permanent practice, and also be expanded to all of militant unionism, including the class opposition within the CGIL, and which ultimately leads to the formation of a united class union front.

The causes that have hitherto prevented us from moving in this direction have not been overcome. They continue in the opportunism of the union leaders, who pursue a political united front, which is necessarily detrimental to the united class union front. This unified strike in logistics should be considered a victory that is not definitively achieved, but rather is fragile and revocable at any time by the current leadership groups.

It is equally deceptive to confuse the union with a political party. It is true that every trade union struggle has a political significance, and that as the economic struggle of the working class grows stronger it assumes a more and more political value. But the union is not a party and must not be inserted into political fronts. This effort is one of the causes that hinders the unified actions of the major rank-and-file unions, first of all SI Cobas and USB, with their respective leaders committed to using the trade unions as tools of support for their competing political fronts.

It is up to the workers and the rank-and-file trade union militants to fight, so that we continue to march in the direction of the united class union front, making permanent the unity of action of rank-and-file unionism, as a necessary tool to obtain the widest unity of the workers’ struggle.

The resumption of a strong workers’ movement on the level of economic struggle is the condition for the reconstruction of the link between the workers and the authentic revolutionary party. This party rejects any political fronts (inexorably affected by opportunism) and, certainly not by chance, indicates now that the only way to respond adequately to the bosses’ offensive is to constitute the united class union front.

The Murder of a SI Cobas Militant: The Perpetrator is the Bourgeois Regime!

This morning in Novara, Italy, on the day of the first national strike of rank-and-file unions in logistics, a truck driver rammed through the picket line at the Lidl grocery warehouse. The driver struck and killed Adil Belakhdim, provincial coordinator of the SI Cobas union in Novara.

There have been dozens of similar episodes in these years of strikes in logistics, the sector in which workers’ combativity is highest. Fortunately, most of them happen without serious consequences, but this was not the case on September 14, 2016 at GLS in Piacenza, when Abd El Salam, a worker with the USB union, was hit and killed during a picket.

However, this new tragedy, the death of this new martyr of the workers’ struggle, was not unexpected, but was preceded by a series of political events that have prepared the way for it.

Since 2010, strikes and pickets by logistics workers have managed to obtain important economic and regulatory improvements in many warehouses. In recent years, the employers and their state regime have gone on the counter-offensive, unable to bear this proletarian force in such a crucial sector of national and international capitalism, and fearing the extension of struggles and rank-and-file unionism into other categories.

With the “security” decrees passed by the old government of the Lega party and the Five Star Movement, the penalties for roadblocks have become very heavy, and the police obviously treat a picket in front of a factory gate just like a roadblock. These denunciations and sanctions are attempts to break the strength of the rank-and-file unions in logistics, the workers’ struggle, and to revoke the gains they have obtained. The later Democratic Party‑Five Star government has partially modified the “security” decrees, but not the part that is used by force against workers’ pickets.

Covered by the trumpet blast of “national reconstruction” propaganda from the new government, companies and law enforcement agencies seem in recent months to enjoy their authorization to carry out any wickedness against striking workers.

In Genoa, the prosecutor ordered a search of the homes, telephones, and workplace lockers of port workers’ delegates from the USB, after the workers chose them over candidates from the CGIL regime union. In Piacenza, the prosecutor placed two local leaders of SI Cobas under arrest following the clashes that took place at FedEx‑TNT, after the police attacked the picket on February 1.

An admirable fight by SI Cobas has been underway for two months in all the FedEx‑TNT warehouses in Italy, after the company decided to close the Piacenza warehouse with the sole, blatant purpose of breaking the strength of SI Cobas and getting rid of 280 unionized workers (some of whom were also with the USB). On several occasions, the company has deployed groups of private guards to help the police break the pickets. On the night of June 9 in Tavazzano, Lombardy, dozens of these thugs, along with some scabs, attacked the picket line with improvised clubs, rocks, and broken bottles, seriously injuring a worker.

On June 17, at the Texprint facility in Prato, the boss and some of his henchmen attacked 3 workers who had remained to keep up the strikers’ camp, while their comrades had gone to support a strike in another textile company in the Prato area.

In this context, the Guarantees Commission has indicated a clear desire to include logistics within the framework of its anti‑strike rules.

Against all this, rank-and-file unionism has finally been able to act together in today’s unitary strike. And in this climate of hatred against the exploited who strike, preventing the “national rebirth” (which, of course, is nothing other than the rebirth of employers’ profits), a boss felt authorized to crash through a picket line and kill a worker.

The workers must not collaborate with the bosses and their political regime, because nothing will ever really be granted to them, except deceit and hypocrisy. From the infamous actions of the bourgeois class it is only necessary to draw greater conviction of the need to organize ourselves to fight, because only force will defend our class. Today’s unitary strike is a step along this path. The assassination of Adil Belakhdim requires an equally unified response, involving not only the rank-and-file unions but also the class opposition within the CGIL, and, on a higher level, the entire working class.