alternative

Which concrete proposals?
by Cosimo Scarinzi

Thoughts out loud how to stop the crisis..

Wednesday, September 27 there was, at the headquarters of the Federation of Piedmont Cub, a presentation of the book "The dream in the hands - Turin 1909 / 1922. Passions and revolutionary struggles in the memories of Maurizio Garino. "An important book that I consider particularly useful to labor activists now engaged in a strenuous effort to contrast the political and governmental employers and have a strong need to reflect on the fact that the movement class at his high tackles the central problem of the social organization: the contradiction between dominant and dominated, and the construction of an autonomous practice of struggle and organization to avoid the obvious that the past experience of the labor movement have given in completely different contexts than at present. We know it and what it tells us nothing significant.
And, not surprisingly, the discussion focused on their own limits, understood literally and not as an excuse for the abandonment of the collective dispute immediately, the trade union struggle and the need for a perspective of radical break with the existing. This discussion led me to reflect on what is being debated in an area of ​​militants belonging to different political union in these weeks. I refer in particular to the document "We must stop them - 5 proposals for a common front against the government one of the banks.” http://sites.google.com/site/appellodobbiamofermarli/home which are held on local and national assemblies..

The platform of the cinquepuntisti

We carry large excerpts:

1. Do not pay the debt. We must strike at the bottom of financial speculation and the power transfer. It should stop the abyss of interest on debt with a real moratorium. Major banks should be nationalized, at no cost to citizens, taxes should be imposed on the major assets and financial transactions ..... You have to fight against tax evasion at the bottom, hitting every taboo, from the elimination of tax havens, from Monaco to San Marino. Stringent constraints should be placed on public choices and strategies of multinational.

2. Drastic cut in military spending and end to all war mission. From Libya to Afghanistan. All public expenditure saved in military spending should be paid to fund public education at various levels. Policy of peace and acceptance, openness to all the Mediterranean countries, political and economic support to revolutions in North Africa and the Palestinian people's struggle for independence, against the occupation. A new foreign policy that promotes democracy and civic and social development.

3. Justice and rights throughout the world of work. Abolition of all laws on temporary employment, permanent contract at the reaffirmation of the universal protection and guaranteed by a mandatory national contract. Full equal rights for migrant labor, which must obtain the right to vote and citizenship. Blocking relocations and layoffs, government intervention in companies in crisis, to promote self-management experiences of workers. Equal pay, let's take a drastic cut in bonus millionaires super-salaries and managers, gold pensions. The remuneration of the managers could not be more than ten times the minimum wage. Indexing of wages. Generalized reduction of working time, setting up a social income financed with a share of the tax asset and the fight against tax evasion. Reconstruction of a public pension system that covers the world of work with adequate pensions.

4. ... We need to start from the commons to build a different model of development, ecologically compatible. We need a plan for the work based on thousands of small works, as an alternative to large works, to be, from the Val di Susa to the bridge over the Strait, cancel them. The main infrastructure and key assets will be exempted from the market and back in public hands. Not only water, therefore, but also the energy, network, services and essential goods. Special plan for financing the welfare state, to guarantee all citizens the home, health, retirement, adequate instruction.

5. A revolution for democracy. We must begin by the end of the fight against corruption and all the privileges of caste, to regain the right to decide and take part in affirming and extending the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. All property derived from corruption and crime should be confiscated by the state and managed socially. The costs of the political system should be drastically cut down: the financing of political parties, the civil service spread, the salaries of parliamentarians and senior bureaucrats. All the money saved will be donated to the financing of public education and research. .... You need a law on union democracy .... which guarantees workers the right to a free representation in the workplace and to vote on contracts and agreements. Development of self-democratic and popular in all spheres of public life.

Obviously, at least for me, some of these proposals are fully shared, frankly no other, but I'm interested in the first place to grasp the overall logic. In essence it is proposed:

• public control of state / economy affecting in particular the financial speculative capital. A strong social democracy in other words, since the expropriation of the expropriators is not taken into account, and sustainable economy and bent to the collective interests of society, social-democratic model of ecological change in the above;

• Cutting this demand with "socialist" intertwines the less "traditional" for a radical democratization of society, which incorporates, quite obviously, the themes of "anti-caste" that characterize a series of new cultural, political and social movements;

• finally claim a robust system of rights for the working-class and cutting military spending, if we want more classic themes of the radical left and the grassroots unions.

A non-original political

A program like this is obviously influenced by the framework of the international crisis: Iceland, Greece, Spain, Portugal etc.. and the drift of the institutional left which proposes an alternative.
At first reading, I admit that the consideration that came to mind is the very obvious: too much and too little. As the motion platform, and it seemed implausible as a political program too moderate.
At a more thoughtful reflection, I must say that I remained of the same idea but my attention has shifted to the political project behind the proposal, on the one hand, and political issues to which it refers, on the other.
From the first point of view, it is all too obvious that this is a classic attempt to bring together the fields of "left left", in obvious difficulty of a platform that modernized to some extent its traditional culture. I suspect a political wing, but has little, as they say, we'll see.

From the second point of view, it seems to me that the need for the promoters of the move is to go beyond the immediate struggles, fragmented and difficult for today to propose a kind of unifying the minimum program.
In other words, there is, shared, need to give a general perspective to the struggles of today but the risk of entrusting it all to a campaign of opinion that other delegates to the possible implementation of what is being proposed. A form of "division of labor" between movements and, indeed in short supply, institutions.

The necessity of the action

In this regard, a companion and friend writes to me:

“Campaigners for the freezing of the debt at least an effort at synthesis have done, the major limitation is that they are all requests that should be implemented by a political subject (fantasy).
How realistic is it that a mobilization of people able to trigger the processes desired?
So, hypothetical hypothetical, unrealistic unrealistic, I would say that we should play another land, which also is specific trade union. If ten points of GDP have moved to a quarter of a century, from labor to capital, we request that this wealth subtracted back to workers. And we also have to explain to workers that the international crisis is the crisis for billions of human beings and the dream of Scrooge from 'Scrooge for a few international pirates who designed over time, with the complicity of an increasingly subjected to political finance, a monstrous machine. ....
This core "raw" (claim of right to work and a decent income) I think it can be developed and translated into effective slogans, avoiding, if we turn to those who work, both technical and useless lamentations. And reminding us that today ask for a wage increase has the same scope as subversive than asking the freezing of the debt, but has the advantage of touching the immediate interests of workers.”

I seem to grasp the point, if a trade union campaign and unifying policy is practiced must be such as to focus the action of female and male workers, the unemployed and the unemployed.
Override to override, I would choose the one that puts all of us faced with the need for action and does not delegate to anyone its realization. This, of course, without forgetting that the background remains the problem of problems, namely the expropriation of the expropriators that, at least in my opinion, is not practicable in installments (banks today, tomorrow?).
But, as they say, a matter of time

Cosimo Scarinzi