This international bulletin of the Rete dei Comunisti contains texts relating to the organisation’s activity from the ‘resumption’ of the political year in September 2024 until January 2025. The specific activity of the Rete dei Comunisti within the various ‘fronts’ and areas of work can certainly not be summarised in an explanatory introduction, and the texts we propose are certainly not exhaustive of the political work done in recent months.
[Rete dei Comunisti, Cambiare Rotta, O.S.A.] A large delegation of the Rete dei Comunisti, Cambiare Rotta – Communist Youth Organisation, and OSA (Opposizione Studentesca d’Alternativa) has been invited and will participate from 9 to 11 January in Caracas in the ‘Festival Mundial Internacional Antifascista por un Nuevo Mundo’. This Festival is the fruit of a proposal formulated in November during the ‘Congreso Mundial de la Juventud y Estudiantes Antifascistas’, which also brought together in Caracas more than a thousand young people from around seventy countries, including our delegation.
[Rete dei Comunisti / Cambiare Rotta – Organizzazione giovanile comunista / OSA (Opposizione Studentesca d’Alternativa)] The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) has called a general and ‘generalised’ strike for Friday 13 December, which we strongly support. At the heart of USB’s demands is a legitimate opposition to the policies of this government that impact, both in terms of social guarantees and trade union-political freedoms, the general condition of workers in this country; workers who have already been exhausted by at least two decades of wage deflation policies, restriction of trade union rights and absolute disregard for their health and safety conditions, as unfortunately certified by the constant slaughter of workers and the increase in ‘occupational’ diseases.
[Rete dei Comunisti / Cambiare Rotta / OSA] As the Rete dei Comunisti, Cambiare Rotta (Communist Youth Organisation), and OSA (Opposition Students’ Alternative) we are fully satisfied with both the success of the unitary march on November 30th in Rome and Milan, and the organisational meeting of the members of the assembly of November 9th, held in Rome on December 1st, which set itself the goal of moving “towards a national anti-Zionist and anti-colonialist network for Palestine”. These initiatives were two important moments to which we made our contribution in the wake of the action, reflection, and unitary cooperation that we have been pursuing for some time with other socio-political forces on the basis of clarity of positions and shared goals.
Session 1 Before the Second World War: The Assault on Heaven The period following the October Revolution until the defeat of the Nazi-fascists was an extremely harsh one marked by millions of deaths in wars and revolutions, but it affirmed on the world stage the birth of a new political and class force that changed the outlook for all Humanity in that century. Today, the propaganda of the regime and the ideological apparatus of the bourgeois state want to tarnish that achievement and that merit; instead, it is the duty of communist, socialist and even democratic forces to claim that outcome that has prevented us from overflowing again into the climate of war, even nuclear war, in which we find ourselves today for some fifty years.
[Rete dei Comunisti in International Bulletin July 2024] On 18 and 19 May, the national Forum of Cambiare Rotta and OSA took place in Rome, a two-day discussion with intellectuals, academics, political and social realities on the need to imagine an all-round alternative for the world of public education in the face of the rubble of the neoliberal model of school, university and research. An appointment that, in the wake of the revival of the university movement through the academic boycott of Israel, demonstrated the ability of the youth structures of the Rete dei Comunisti to have an adequate reading of the current historical phase and a possibility of hegemony over broader sectors of society.
[Rete dei Comunisti in International Bulletin July 2024] For Unione Sindacale di base (USB), too, the months from the beginning of the year to the end of April were marked by numerous events and episodes of class conflict and mobilisations of solidarity with Palestine against the occupation and genocide perpetrated by the Zionist government of Netanyahu, in which the USB structures participated together with the movement in support of the resistance of that people and against the Meloni government, in which participation in the national demonstration on 1 June in Rome represented a strong commitment.
[Rete dei Comunisti in International Bulletin July 2024] A first step in the construction of political and social opposition to the Meloni government. A procession of at least 10,000 people against the Meloni government crossed the streets and squares of the capital, starting from Piazza Vittorio and arriving at Porta Pia. It was an important first step of coagulation at a national level of a political and social opposition against the current executive, its pro-Atlanticist war policy, its economic choices in the direction of austerity, its racist tendencies and its attacks on civil rights, especially against women.
OVERVIEW May 1st 2024, between international solidarity and class conflict For a new public education in a new society Report from the OSA and Cambiare Rotta Forum The first of June procession in Rome A first step in the construction of political and social opposition to the Meloni government
[Rete dei Comunisti] Was 20th century socialism and the international communist movement a failure or just a defeat? In the light of the overall regression and the war that the capitalist mode of production is once again unleashing on humanity, can the instances of emancipation and civilisation represented by the socialist experiences of the last century once again represent an antidote and an alternative? This and this is what we intend to discuss in a forum that we as Rete dei Comunisti are working on for next autumn and to which we ask you to contribute. We have lived through these three decades with the incompleteness of a reflection – often more removed than begun – on twentieth-century communism, but as Rete dei Comunisti we have never lost sight of it.