Italy: General strike needed to oust Berlusconi
1 February, London

As Silvio Berlusconi settled down to his Christmas panettone and vin santo in his luxurious Sardinian villa even the man who has modestly described himself as "the best political leader in Europe and in the world" must have wondered if his luck was about to turn. Rumblings of discontent were audible from all sections of Italian society, but especially the working class.

Workers the whole length of the peninsular started organising protests and strikes against insulting pay offers and widespread job losses. Coupled with continuing union opposition to privatisation, the invoking by President Ciampi of Berlusconi's constitutional veto on further consolidation of his control of the media and the reopening of a corruption case against him may give the Prime Minister new wrinkles that even his plastic surgeon will have difficulty in removing.

Berlusconi has always ruled under the shadow of a dark and evil smelling cloud of corruption, but he has always managed to escape from these charges using novel and varied measures that accurately reflect the hopeless, undemocratic nature of the modern day Italian constitution and the whole parliamentary and judicial system.

Most recently, lawyers in Milan successfully prosecuted the premier's ex-lawyer and defence minister, Cesare Previti on a series of bribery and corruption charges. Previti was actually due to become Justice Minister before his arrest. Berlusconi's partners in crime were sentenced to between five and 11 years. He decided it was high time that he resurrect Italy's famed immunity law to protect himself from prosecution.

On 17 June last year he appeared in court on bribery and tax fraud charges but the issue was allowed to go no further as two days later government deputies in the Lower House forced through a law giving immunity to Italy's top five public officials. The Prime Minister cynically shrugged off the ensuing furore by saying, "One citizen is equal to another [in the eyes of the law] but perhaps this one is slightly more equal than the rest, given [he has] the responsibility of governing the country."

However, in recent weeks Berlusconi has found that in his hurried attempts to push through the law, he overlooked key legal and constitutional questions that could cost him dearly. The immunity law was abolished in the 1990s to, publicly at least, "purge" the Italian establishment of corrupt politicians and businessmen. Since it is a constitutional issue, its reintroduction requires it to pass through both houses with a larger than normal majority. Therefore on 13 January, the Constitutional Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional and, as a result, the trial against Berlusconi could be reopened.

Berlusconi reacted predictably, calling the repealing of the act a "savage aggression on the constitutional rules of our democracy" and repeating his supporters' claims that he is the victim of a plot by communist judges - particularly since the trial will begin during the run up to the European elections.

Unfortunately, in what will undoubtedly become another Hutton-style parliamentary pantomime, it seems that he will be absolved of all charges (as usual). There is little hope, therefore, that judicial manoeuvres will break Berlusconi's grip on the Italian establishment, especially since his domination of the media allows for unimpeded access of his propaganda to 90 per cent of Italians. This has enabled him to get away with demagogic measures which benefit him personally. The abolition of inheritance tax, one of his first measures on coming to office, was a case in point. It pleased all those who voted for him but, with Berlusconi being the richest man in Italy, it pleased his family best of all.

He has passed laws that have given his own companies huge tax write-offs and, although last month President Ciampi refused to sign a bill that would have further relaxed limits on media ownership as well as protect one of the Berlusconi family's TV stations, which under the present law is threatened by closure, the irrepressible one bounced back. He got his cabinet to issue a decree providing Mediaset channel Rete 4 with the cover required to continue operating.

As for the controversial bill, known as Legge Gasparri, which would allow Berlusconi not only to consolidate his TV interests but expand his interests in print, the president will be obliged to sign it if the Italian parliament approves it a second time.

Even his notorious gaffes, which are seemingly entertaining for the general public, are often done to divert attention from unpopular issues or decrees that his government wants to introduce.

However, opposition in Italy is growing and recent months have seen Berlusconi faced with waves of strikes and actions by workers in many industries. Most recently, a series of wildcat strikes by transport workers and airport staff have led to many urban centres being paralysed following the rejection of a below inflation-related pay offer that three of the country's largest unions - CGIL, CISL and UIL - accepted on 20 December 2003.

Four other major unions (Cobas, CUB, RdB and Sult) have supported the strike that has seen workers force their way into some locked-out transport depots in order to hold stormy mass assemblies and counter the employers' requirements that salary demands would be met only if the unions agreed to "increased productivity, less breaks and more obedience from workers."

Italy has a series of laws designed to prevent strike action by public sector workers, since they are deemed to be essential services at peak times.

Nevertheless, the transport workers decided that the situation was serious enough to ignore the "fasce orarie protette" (protected time bands) and effectively bring the country to a standstill. They launched a series of co-ordinated strikes. The government did not immediately invoke the law, waiting for the expected passenger backlash to give them a better pretext. They were bitterly disappointed when several local social forums organised consumer boycotts and the proceeds from non-sold tickets were channelled as benefits to the workers.

This, despite a witch hunt by the Berlusconi mass media trying to create a Thatcherite anti-strike culture. The transport workers strike has also assumed a wider role, insofar as it is seen as a cause for discontent that applies to Italian workers across the board, many of whom have seen their salaries frozen and their labour rights eroded. As Paolo Sabatini of SinCobas stated, "we don't want the transport workers' situation to act as a paradigm for everyone else."

The three main union federations had mounted no resistance, effectively accepting the government's terms. But now in a sign that smacks of desperation as union affiliates have been leaving the main unions, CGIL has backtracked and announced that it will hold a referendum on the 31 January where members will vote on the contested agreement.

However with an estimated 85 per cent of transport workers adhering to the recent strikes, local councils and employers have been desperately trying to sign localised agreements and effectively pull that carpet out from under the feet of the strikers. Such a move which would also signal the end of the "National Contract" pay structure that sees a uniform salary agreed between the main unions and the government.

In addition local government officials have begun to urge state forces to take the names of the strikers in a scare-mongering tactic that is designed to make the unions and opposition think back to the repressive decade of the 1970s. These moves make the 24 hour strike on the 30 January all the more crucial as a large show of strength by the workers will back the employers into a corner and strengthen the unions' position.

The transport strike comes after a whole period of protests by Italian workers. From the Fiat strike in late 2002 to the series of one day "general strikes" last autumn on the back of Berlusconi's pension reforms, the scene has been set for a major stoppage by workers nationally that would really cripple the Berlusconi administration and send a massively positive message to unions, activists and the movement in general all over Europe.

This, coupled with the meltdowns that have brought about the collapse of both Parmalat and the IT group Finmatica (two directors have been questioned regarding over •300 million debt) shows the Italian state to be in serious crisis, and presents the opportunity for organisation, protest and the formation of a true workers party that can seize the initiative in the capitalist state's moment of weakness.

However, as the moment for decisive action comes, Rifondazione Comunista (PRC), led by Fausto Bertinotti, is failing to take up the challenge once again. As ever, he refuses to give any lead to the Italian masses to generalise the sectional conflict of trade unionists with the Italian bourgeoisie. Last year he talked about the tactic of the general strike. But, when spontaneous, repeated mass strikes posed the tactic in the concrete, Bertinotti sent the working class off on the wild goose chase of a referendum, thus demobilising the strikes just when they should have escalated.

In fact, despite his left rhetoric, which he can lay on by the trowel load, Bertinotti is always on the look-out for an electoral or parliamentary way out of any serious crisis. This is because he subscribes to the old post-war Communist Party (PCI) strategy, developed by Palmiro Togliatti. Recently Bertinotti has described it as aimed at achieving "a state [within which] you can produce a series of modifications, even small ones, but ones that have a direct impact on the nature of power and its [current] lack of neutrality".
The "lack of neutrality" of the present state is because it is a capitalist state - serving the bourgeoisie as an engine of war against the workers. That a man who calls himself a Marxist and a Leninist "forgets" this little matter is frankly incredible. This class character cannot be "modified" away: it must be smashed by the class struggle, a struggle for power.

Bertinotti zig-zags backwards and forwards between post-modernist Zapatista nonsense about mass mobilisations to build up workers' and popular power, rather than striving for state power. He gingerly floats the re-formation of the Olive Tree coalition as a "realistic" alternative to Berlusconi's neo-liberal domination. This popular frontist strategy will lead to nothing more than the strengthening of the bourgeoisie's grip on Italy - the further erosion of the workers' social and democratic gains and the fragmentation and defeat of the workers' struggles.

It demonstrates a total refusal to learn the lessons of history: most recently those of the late 1990s, but also those of the 1970s and of course 1919-20, the biennio rosso. The Italian workers - the most militant and best organised at workplace and local community level in Europe - need a radically different strategy. It is to develop a counter-offensive against Berlusconi via an all out indefinite general strike. This can drive from power not only Berlusconi but whole vicious and corrupt ruling class. It can install an anticapitalist workers' and small farmers' government and ignite a European.