Alessio Azzarà | Popular Resistance (Italy)
I bring heartfelt greetings from Resistenza Popolare. We thank the Korean comrades for inviting us, it is an honor to be here today. We tried to be present at this meeting, despite the difficulties, because we are well aware of the fundamental importance of anti-imperialism, especially in our days.
It is important not only because imperialism, a cancer of the earth to be eradicated, is the main enemy of the peoples of the whole world, but also because, as we have seen in Italy, in Europe and in the world, the horrors of imperialist wars are there for all to see, shaking the consciences of people who until today had had little to do with politics and public demonstrations of dissent.
Anti-imperialism, in all its declinations, can be the main thread―although obviously not the only one―that can bind political organizations both at the international and national level. It is the watershed to understand which organizations, whether they call themselves communist or not, can be our allies in the fight against the regime of the bourgeois elites.
I include non-communist organizations because in Italy, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, many non- politicized people have understood that in our country politics no longer counts for anything: it is subservient to large financial groups and multinationals. For us Italian communists this is a very important historical moment to be able to try to be the vanguard and convey the generalized malaise of the Italian people.
Even if they lack a complex analysis of society, these political organizations were born with the aim of fighting against these supranational powers. Some disappeared with Covid, some others tried with little success to insert themselves into the mesh of bourgeois institutions. What has certainly remained intact is the malaise of the people who live off their work, who day after day see their social rights torn to pieces. The right to housing, to healthcare, to education. In short, the right to a dignified life. Unfortunately, there are still many people who, deceived by bourgeois propaganda, see communism as something to be afraid of. Communism is even presented in school textbooks as a totalitarianism similar to National Socialism.
Even social democracy brands it as an illiberal dictatorship, and in popular common sense the idea is widespread that socialism is linked to an illiberal regime that creates poverty. like, if not worse, the current neoliberal one.
Faced with the collapse of real socialism, the residual Western communist movement has rapidly degenerated, sacrificing on the altar not only Stalin and Mao, but also Lenin and Engels, remaining attached to Marx alone and at most starting the rediscovery of other heterodox socialist and Marxist currents. The abandonment of Leninism has fueled the inability to contain the neoliberal offensive, resulting in a “second restoration” on which the current “liberal” or, if you prefer, “capitalist”, “bourgeois” totalitarianism has been erected: a regime capable of perpetuating itself thanks to the almost total control exercised by a narrow transnational bourgeois elite not only over economic and political structures, but also over cultural ones―including the main media circuits and school and academic education, which go on to forge even more indoctrinated and arrogant graduates. This regime continues to exist in the West in the ideological sphere despite the objective crisis of confidence in the current ruling groups. According to a 2021 CENSIS report, more than 50% of Italians are convinced that there is a global caste of superpowers that controls everything, that multinationals are responsible for everything that happens, and that there is a “deep state”, not fully democratic, in the hands of a group of powerful people made up of politicians, high-ranking bureaucrats and businessmen. However, this widespread awareness of the elitist nature of the current regime has not been accompanied by a revival of social-communist paradigms.
35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, communists in the West have not yet managed to realize a modern proposal for a possible socialism for the West. Not only that, but they have often regressed on many issues, including first and foremost the analysis of international issues and imperialism, where too many blather about “opposing imperialisms” and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the developments of the Chinese Communist Party and “Eastern Marxism”; others accuse those who defend real socialism of being “Stalinist” or “red-brown”, explaining that its demonization is the consequence of an effective battle of ideas conducted by the bourgeoisie. Let’s be clear: the answer to our problems does not come from the uncritical praise of twentieth-century communism, nor from the mere recovery of Marxism-Leninism, but it is certainly essential to sweep away the mass of mud that has been thrown by the bourgeoisie and left- wing critics on these systems and paradigms. Finding a balanced balance of these experiences without being subservient to bourgeois thought is the first necessary step to throw out the dirty water and save the baby.
What happened with the pandemic is also happening with the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. There are too many horrors perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel for them to go unnoticed. We are aware of the organic link between Zionist imperialism and the US-led Western one. And the security laws that criminalize those who protest in the streets and squares are not enough. More and more people are joining the cry for help of these oppressed peoples, who have become the symbol in the West of resistance to the barbarity of NATO and its allies. We cannot allow all this to continue.
In addition to recovering a strong theory, which starts from a Marxist-Leninist system updated to the current phase, we are working on the reunification of the communist forces present in our country. In Italy the “diaspora” of the communists, divided today into a dozen groups of medium size and often fighting among themselves, has sterilized the possibility of building a single political vanguard recognized by the people.
To seize this moment, first of all we must succeed in the enterprise of reuniting the communists, or at least the Marxist-Leninists, under a single organization, a single Party. As long as we are divided, we will not be credible in the eyes of those who, in Italy, still believe in our symbol. Western culture is individualistic, and these individualistic dynamics are unfortunately also found among those who call themselves communists. Too often we witness opportunism aimed at defending one’s own little garden, dogmatism and infantilism
that have nothing communist. On the other hand, in an individualistic society, the first work that a communist should do is on himself, as Gramsci also said. We must work to get out of fragmentation and unite like fingers in a single fist to break the chains and cages of NATO imperialism and its servants.
UNITE, STRENGTHEN, EXPAND. These three are the tasks that we are giving ourselves in our organization, Resistenza Popolare.
Unfortunately, even today there are different positions within the communist panorama in Italy and Europe on which countries and governments should be defined as imperialist. As far as we are concerned, we know well which countries deserve this name: NATO countries, led by the USA, and its allies.
We must work so that those who still support the thesis of opposing imperialisms, those who see China and Russia as imperialist countries, understand that this position is not correct, as well as being counterproductive. As Lenin said: “Whoever is not on one side or the other of the barricade, is the barricade.”
We must ensure that the communist movement in Italy emerges from dogmatism, idealism, purism, from the eternal wait for someone or something that will magically bring communism in Italy back to the glories of the old post-war Italian Communist Party.
We have had a national table for several months together with three other communist organizations: the Movimento per la Rinascita Comunista, Patria Socialista and Costituente Comunista. We are building relationships and deepening dialogue with the Rete dei Comunisti, and we are working on the attempt to refound a single communist party open to those who share our analysis on international issues, clarifying that our line can only pass through unconditional support for the anti-imperialist struggles of the world proletariat. Our objective at the moment is to build an effective communist movement adequate to the fight against the social-imperialist organizations, those that we call “the left of NATO”. In aligning ourselves with the struggle against Western imperialism we will find the most advanced synthesis to rebuild the Party and a more conscious mass anti-imperialist front.
This is the project we are working on in Italy, in the knowledge that a new world is possible, it already exists and even if it is not our ideal world, and it is not yet free from contradictions, like all human phenomena, it is certainly a step forward compared to the world we are in now. A multipolar world is possible, indeed, it is already here. We must fight the internal enemy, form a new ruling class and be ready when the time is right.
Comrades, may the wind of history carry away the ashes of the old world and push us towards new, more serene horizons! Onward to victory!
