“... we seek greater perceptiveness, more responsibility, more decisiveness in order to achieve effective coordination when it is required, in order that agitation is not continually put off when possible, in order that general strikes are not always excluded when the grassroots demands them.
In a word, what we seek is greter faith in the abilities of the working class in struggle”.
(Declaration by the Anarchist Current for Union Defense, 4^th Congress of the CGIL, 1956)

Following careful analysis of the current economic and political situation in Italy, of the grave crisis of overproduction which the capitalist world is going through, of its serious repercussions in the social sphere, such as the phenomenal rise in unemployment and casual labor, the reduction in the less well-off classes’ buying power together with the attack on their living conditions, and even the usual wars waged as part of the international competition between old and new powers, worsened by the increase in the migration patterns of the workforce and, today, by the dramatic evolution of conflicts in the regions of North Africa for the conquest of new territories destined for economic exploitation, the anarchist communists and libertarian communists active within the CGIL have decided to direct their efforts towards the establishment of their own regular national union coordination.

This decision arises from the awareness that in Italy the CGIL today has maintained almost intact its organizational strength, even with the all-too-evident contradictions that exist, and it is thus still one of the most valuable points of contact and interaction with the working class.

We anarchist/libertarian communist activists with the CGIL are aware of the difficulties that the CGIL itself has in its daily action, but we are equally aware that it still has the power to be a useful instrument for defending the workers, but only if it avoids every attempt at social partnership, even those purportedly in the name of “national salvation and responsibility”.

An even more urgent objective is to set up a solid current of class-struggle opposition within the CGIL, particularly given the existence of a moderate pole which looks to the Democratic Party (PD — Partito Democratico) and which is seeking to create an irreconcilable fracture within the CGIL in order to definitively eliminate all internal opposition, isolate the combative nature of certain components (FIOM) by favoring the corporative trend embarked on by the CISL and the UIL, in order to guarantee for itself the chance to act as a transmission-belt union, also in the light of a more general political change.

The contribution of anarchist/libertarian communists active within the CGIL will thus, in this phase, have to pay closer attention to the content of the union decisions to be made rather than to the organizational repositioning of leading groups, in the awareness that a union organization surrounded on all sides by the crisis could become the place where the various political elements come to a clash, and that the class-struggle opposition must start on the basis of intransigent defense of the workers’ interests if it is to play a positive role.

In coordinating themselves, the anarchist/libertarian comrades within the CGIL are not seeking to set up political groupings or new programmatic areas in order to demand places in the apparatus, but to lend strength to their trade-union and political action aimed at reconstructing a class-struggle opposition within the CGIL. That is what is needed today if we are to defend the interests of the workers and the lower classes.

• We commit ourselves to the creation of a stable coordination in order to deal more completely with the matters which have arisen during this conference.

• The comrades from Livorno are hereby delegated the task of publicizing the documents of this conference by way of an online bulletin to be called “Difesa Sindacale” (Union Defense), of developing this bulletin, to call regular meetings if necessary and to publish and distribute the various written contributions that may emerge either from any committees which may be set up or from individual comrades.

We commit ourselves to supporting and contributing to the successful outcome of the General Strike to be held on 6 May 2011, called by the CGIL, and to enlarging it to a full, day-long strike, seeking to promote participation in the strike among wider sectors of the class other than regularly-employed workers (i.e. migrants, students, the unemployed). Through this we hope to be able to lay the basis to rebuild a vast front of struggle and solidarity which can overturn the power relations that exist today.

We declare our internationalist position against all imperialist military intervention such as the one currently taking place in Libya, whose only aim is to redefine the inter-capitalist balance between the nations and has nothing to do with the just demands for greater democracy and better living conditions on the part of the exploited masses which we have seen in the various mobilizations in North Africa.

(Source: Retrieved on 29^th October 2021 from www.anarkismo.net.)