Dear comrades,

 

Welcome to the 6th Plenary Session of the 5th Central Committee of the PMLI. A particular welcome to Comrades Enrico Chiavacci and Alessandro Frezza, as invitees, two great red flags who have received an important task by the Central Committee last 7 November, Centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Given all they have given to our dear party so far, I am sure that they will be up to it. Both are distinguished by their proletarian revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist integrity and for the considerable, qualified and exemplary political, organizational, mass, united front and journalistic work they do with sacrifice, absolute loyalty to the cause, with critic and self-critic spirit, in observance of democratic centralism and teamwork, alien to any individualistic attitude. With them at important leading and fighting posts, the Party has become stronger and can look at its future with more trust.

 

A warm and good-wishing welcome to invited comrades who are co-founders of the PMLI, and unfortunately suffer from bad health. We are close to them and we support them in their battle for life. We still need of their precious contributions, their great Marxist-Leninist political experience and their brilliant example for a long time to come.

 

Our sorrowful and anti-capitalist memory goes to the massacre of six workers from Modena by police forces under Christian-Democrats Scelba and De Gasperi, the 68th anniversary of which occurred five days ago.

 

This is the sixth time that the Central Committee holds a plenary meeting of its current term after the 5th National Congress of the PMLI, held almost ten years ago, in December 2008.

 

It can be useful to our memory to say that during the first plenary session the members of the 5th Political Bureau and of the future General Secretariat were elected, the central organization was formed, the political director and members of the Central Editorial Board of “Il Bolscevico”, the members of the Florence Provincial Committee and the members of the technical secretariat of the CC and the PB were appointed.

 

During the second and third plenary sessions, we focused on our tasks towards workers and trade unions and towards the youth respectively, thanks to the decisive contributions by Comrades Emanuele Sala and Federico Picerni, thus setting our work on the two main fronts the whole Party should focus on, as decided by the 5th Congress.

 

During the fourth plenary session, on 5 April 2014, we had the first thorough discussion on the overall situation of the Party after the last congress, in addition to deciding the Party’s political line on the European and local elections of that year. In this session we also critically and self-critically summed up the experience of the Vital Activity, formerly the main source of funding for the Party, that we were painfully forced to close as conditions to continue it were no longer there. This was a bitter lesson that we should never forget in case similar activities will be opened by central or local organizations.

 

Regarding the overall situation of the PMLI, we analyzed the contradictions arisen in the Party after the 5th Congress, particularly in the Political Bureau. Two contradictions among the people were positively dealt with, although one of them later developed in an antagonist contradiction which was no longer possible to handle. The antagonist contradictions ended shortly thereafter with the person who had brought it up leaving the Party and unilaterally proclaiming himself a sympathizer of the Party.

 

The contradiction in the Central Committee ended with the shameful escape of two ambitious and arrogant members from Lumbardy, after they were exposed and defeated.

 

We also examined contradictions with three grass-roots members, who are not in the Party any more, and with a Cell.

 

Going deep into these contradictions, we gathered a good amount of experience on how to handle the different types of contradiction, separating those among the people from the antagonistic ones, making a wise use of criticism and self-criticism in a dialectical way and according the level of political conscience, experience and Party militancy seniority of the person in the contradiction, observing democratic centralism, always following the unity-criticism-unity principle, educating and not isolating those who are wrong, waiting for new developments to verify who is right and who is wrong.

 

The session exalted some brilliant successes of the Party, such as the re-establishment of the Youth Commission of the CC after 14 years, thanks to the exemplary duet Federico and Alessandro; the new start of work in trade unions by the Mass Work Commission of the CC thanks to the qualified activity of Comrade Andrea Cammilli; the opening of the new central headquarters of the PMLI and “Il Bolscevico”; the continuation of “Il Bolscevico” on the Party’s website after the painfully but forced suspension of its paper version for financial problems, thanks to the efforts of its political director, its determined “Red Pens”, its generous and good graphics, technicians, photographers, draft editors, comrades who produce it weekly.

 

Last but not least, the session shed light on the three problems still open then and, unfortunately, also now. We are talking about the financial problem, the problem of enlarging the group of comrades working at the Center, and the problem of Party expansion at local levels. We are going to talk about these problems later on.

 

During the fifth plenary session we discussed “The International Situation and the Anti-imperialist Struggle of the PMLI”, and it was called by the Communiqué of the Session “a milestone in the history of the PMLI”, as it was the very first plenary session focused on foreign policy in the history of all the Party central committees. Among other things, we clarified the situation concerning the Islamic State and pointed out that we needed to support it in its struggle against imperialism, even if we do not share its ideology, its strategy and certain struggling methods, such as terrorist attacks on innocent, blameless civilians.

 

Comrade Erne’s report was called in the above-said communiqué “a red, well-documented, dialectic, congress-type report, that draws an absolutely clear and plain picture of the changed international situation, goes deep into all the most complex contradictions and aspects, and sets the foreign policy of the PMLI as a result, anchoring it to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought, proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialism”.

 

Comrade Erne truly deserves the highest praise and the warmest thanks by the whole Party for this precious and fundamental contribution to the foreign policy of the PMLI. It is absolutely useful rereading it in order to clear our ideas, to apply it and to support it in the struggle against wrong and opportunistic ideas of phony Communists, “ultra-Leftists”, anarchists and Trotskyists. It is also useful reading carefully the articles on “Il Bolscevico” written by comrades who extraordinarily deal with foreign policy issues, who drew inspiration from that report.

 

The Political Bureau has decided that Comrade Erne will relaunch and bring up to date the anti-imperialist line of the PMLI with the speech he is going to deliver at the next Commemoration of Mao on behalf of the Central Committee. We are certain he will not let us down. We wish him the best.

 

The sixth plenary session of the 5th CC of the PMLI, as you already know, is tasked with discussing the following item: “The Situation of the PMLI, its problems and the struggle against capitalism, for socialism”. As conditions to hold the 6th National Congress of the PMLI are not present yet, and unfortunately are getting farther in time, we need to avail ourselves of this session to go deep on this theme, which is of direct influence on the present and the future of the PMLI.

 

Let us do it open-heartedly, without holding back. Let us tell each other everything we need to, asking ourselves if each of us does his or her duty to the full. Let us be aboveboard, use criticism and self-criticism, express ourselves on what is said in the report.

 

If there are good things in it, they should be approved and supported. If there are wrong things in it, they should be criticized and turned down. Anyway, the conclusion of the majority is binding and it must be observed and carried out by all members of the CC, as dictated by democratic centralism.

 

THE CURRENT STATE OF THE PMLI

 

Our Party is going through a very delicate moment in its history. We must be aware of it, adopt the correct spirit and attitude, thoroughly discuss the issue and take all necessary measures to overcome this moment and acquire more consciousness, clarity and coherence in our politico-organizational Long March on the path of the October towards united, red and socialist Italy.

 

The main reason behind this new situation of the Party is represented by the fact that, as already said, we have not been able to overcome the three old problems: the financial problem, the problem of enlarging the central working group, the problem of Party expansion at local level.

 

The financial problem, unfortunately, cannot be solved completely as we cannot start any indirect activity of entrepreneurial or commercial nature, nor launch public subscription campaigns for fiscal reasons. We can currently count only on monthly membership fees by Party members and on voluntary donations by sympathizers, which are barely enough to cover the daily expenses of the Party Center.

 

We need more money, but we cannot have them from middle-level and grass-roots Party organizations, as they are already bleeding to support their own political work. Only a handful of them, that we thank warmly, can periodically send economic aid to the Center. The only possibility is that CC members who pay fees lower than 50 euros may raise them as much as possible, or give extraordinary contributions from time to time.

 

To better understand how serious our financial situation is, suffice it to know that if the high fees paid by some comrades were suddenly to cease, we would no longer be able to pay for the rent of our central headquarters.

 

The problem of enlarging the central working group has further deepened as we can no longer count on the daily work of an essential female comrade, who has been forced to start a professional job.

 

Comrades currently working at the Center spare no effort to meet all our needs, but their number is not sufficient, and age and health problems are having an heavy weight on them. It is therefore necessary that some members of the CC move to Florence as quickly as possible on their own. We particularly count on Comrade Aurelio, when and if he will be able to find a job in Florence. As we can no longer use the resources that were provided by the Vital Activity, Comrade Denis’ transfer, programmed a long time ago, has unfortunately failed.

 

The problem of local expansion would actually be quite easy to handle, but this is not the case, as the Party’s political, organizational, mass and united front lines are not applied, or applied partially, mechanically, without a previous study, or a program and a strategy. We are aware of no middle-level or local Party organization that has put into practice our concrete instruction to “sit around a table and discuss the three elements of the slogan ‘study, concentrate on priorities, expand’ and decide what to do for every one of them, taking into account the concrete situation where we are working, the forces we can use, and the principle ‘more quality, less quantity’.”

 

This highlights a serious contradiction between the acceptance of the Party’s line and concrete instructions on the one hand and the failure to apply them on the other. It is therefore necessary for middle-level and local Party organizations to immediately sit around a table and do what we just said. The political line of the PMLI should not be a weapon to admire, but a fighting weapon for the 21st century. However, if we do not use it or misuse it, it is useless and it can produce no victory.

 

We must bring the Party line among the masses, mainly working in our workplaces, schools and universities and in trade unions, students’, social, women’s, environmentalist movements and so on. These are the places and the movements were the masses acquire their orientation, where the clash between ideas and proposals occur, where we can find strength and allies so that these movements can adopt a more advanced political stance, albeit respecting their nature, goals and objectives. At least as long as the current political and social situation does not change.

 

Handing out leaflets and propaganda stalls are very useful to make ourselves known, to spread the Party’s line and to have a direct contact with the masses, but our action in workplaces, schools, universities and mass movements can be much more useful and productive.

 

Of course, it is not necessary for us to enter every mass movements, if we do not have the necessary strength to do so. We must make some choices, putting our work in trade unions and among students above everything else, although we should also give prominence to work among women, given the existence of such an important movement as Non una di meno [Ni una de menos, Transl. Note], that the Women Commission of the CC and “Il Bolscevico” are following closely. It is noteworthy that this commission held a plenary meeting near the end of last year to study the movement’s “Feminist Plan Against Male Violence On Women and Gender Violence.”

 

The Party teaches us that in order to be successful within movements we must thoroughly know the Party’s general mass line as well as its specific line for each sector, not to mention our united front policy. The latter is very important to have a correct tactical attitude and not to fall prey of tailism or “leftism.” Unity and struggle must be the marks of our work within mass movements.

 

From the Great Revolt of Sixty-Eight, of which this year we are marking the 50th anniversary, the Party has gained a great deal of experience in the struggle against right and “left” revisionists, reformists and political swindlers, no matter what mask they wore. Two examples of this were reminded by Comrade Patrizia Pierattini in her recent article “When I Stood Against Rossanda and Chiaromonte.”

 

We must maintain and pass on to new PMLI members the spirit, the fighting resolve, the courage and the initiative of the first pioneers of the PMLI when publicly facing and exposing phony Communists. We should not to it with the impetus and tactical inexperience we had then, of course, but with the right tactics got ripe over time, which are useful to make ourselves known to the masses and win them over. We should not blur contradictions, smooth the rough hedges off or make concessions to allies, adversaries or class enemies. One thing is proletarian revolutionary tactics, one other thing is reformist and bourgeois opportunist tacticism.

 

In recent years we have been able to carry out important mass united front experiences in Ischia, Rufina, Biella, Emilia-Romagna and Varese. Concerned Party organizations should critically and self-critically sum them up in order to improve their work and make it fully coherent with Party line.

 

In order to properly accomplish this task, so essential for the Party’s local expansion, we absolutely must improve the militancy level and the quality of middle-level and grass-roots Party organizations. This is possible only if we raise our political culture studying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought according to individual and collective needs and tasks, if we have a correct conception of the Party, if we have a thorough knowledge of the Party’s general and sectorial line and if we practice it both individually and collectively, if we observe democratic centralism, if we practice criticism and self-criticism, if we guarantee the continuation of personal and collective political work, if we carry a correct inner Party life, if we respect even the smallest instructions of the Party, if we study the reality where we work in, and finally, if we put the interests of the Party, of the cause and of the proletariat above our personal interests.

 

If even just one of these elements is missing, we are only half-hearted Marxist-Leninists, our Party organizations are like crippled and unable to do a genuine Marxist-Leninist job, and cannot give a real contribution to the Party’s expansion and development as a result.

 

Party members and organizations can either carry on and improve, or go back and vanish if they do not improve. Failure to improve is precisely the reason why some candidate members of the Party have given up and withdrawn their membership application, and why some Party organizations in strategic cities in central and southern Italy have fallen into inactivity or half-activity.

 

Those who have improved, on the contrary, have produced good results. We want to highlight the touching case of Comrade Sesto Schembri, who has doubled his effort to make up for the temporary reduction of forces of the “Stalin” Cell of the Catania province he leads. He deserves our praise.

 

Of course, we members of the Central Committee must also improve our Marxist-Leninist militancy. We should actually be the first and most resolute to do so, observing strictly the above-said instructions. Given our tasks and our general responsibilities at the leadership of the Party, we need this more than comrades at grass-roots levels.

 

We must particularly improve our serious and thorough study of the problems we deal with as representatives of the Party or as editors of our press, and therefore we should look for genuine sources to make correct and irrefutable analyses. We should take example from Comrade Enrico Chiavacci, who is systematically studying a pile of books and dossiers concerning his political tasks involving the environment, climate and nature. We should compete among ourselves to become full, unshakable, incorruptible Marxist-Leninists who are totally loyal to the cause of the PMLI, of the proletariat and of socialism, who are exemplary Marxist-Leninists leaders our Party members can be proud of.

 

Marxist-Leninist militancy is, as we have verified in these 40 living years of the PMLI as well as during the previous 10 years of preparation, is so hard and demanding such behaviors and community unseen in any other party, that even some anti-capitalists and revolutionaries may have a hard time in accepting it.

 

Some time ago, a supporter of socialism asked us if he could be accepted in the PMLI despite his view opposite to the Party’s position on the Islamic State. After examining the case, the Political Bureau decided that it is possible to be members of the PMLI even with some differing opinions on certain points of the Party’s line, as long as person applying for Party membership accepts the Party’s Statute, General Program, and tactical abstention at general elections and strategical abstention at European elections, and provided that he or she writes in his membership application form: I guarantee my full commitment to democratic centralism by not supporting in public my personal position concerning ..., my point of disagreement. I hope the CC shall ratify this important decision.

 

Last September a contradiction broke out between the Center and the Ischia Island Organization regarding the merger of the island’s municipalities into one municipality. Our local Party organization was among the promoters of this merger. The Party is contrary to the united municipality and therefore it asked our organization to withdraw its support to it and to leave the heterogeneous movement in favor of it. The organization does not agree but it will respect the decision according to democratic centralism. We should emphasize its correct attitude in handling this contradiction, also providing us with all the information and documents we needed to evaluate the situation in a precise, timely and loyal way.

 

As it is well known, the government and regime parties want to reduce as much as possible the almost 8,000 municipalities currently existing in Italy. According to Civati, one of the most leftist leaders of “Liberi e uguali”, just 1,000 “strategically-oriented” municipalities would be enough.

 

Our Party is contrary to the reduction and merger of municipalities in general, as we believe this restricts bourgeois democracy and makes it more difficult for local masses to supervise their governments and elected officials. Only in exceptional cases, for example due to the depopulation of small municipalities, or in other particular situations, the Party may agree.

 

The PMLI does not fear contradictions, which are inevitable, as they contribute to go deeper into problems and benefit the ideological, political and organizational growth of the Party, its members and its organizations. This is true as long as democratic centralism is observed by everyone, no matter the result of the contradiction, as this is the only way to safeguard the revolutionary unity and action of the PMLI. Only if Marxist-Leninists lose the Party’s leadership and it turns into a reformist party, democratic centralism is no longer valid, and revolutionary unity with it.

 

In the last two years, the number of Party members has dwindled, but the Party has grown much stronger and more influential on the political, ideological, propagandistic and journalistic fields, confirming that it has the head of a Red Giant. This is shown by the huge amount of materials we could produce to expose the new Duce Renzi’s constitutional counter-reform and in favor of the ‘NO’ vote at the related referendum on 4 December 2016, as well as to expose the Gentiloni cabinet as the copy of Renzi’s.

 

This is also shown by our activities, alone or with others, to mark the Centennial of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It was a huge effort considering the strength, means and resources we could use. The first activity was our homage to Lenin in the Russian cities where he was born and died, thanks to the valorous and generous comrade Erne on behalf of the CC, with the technical and organizational aid of Vladimir, a Party friend. Then we had the strong and influential document of the CC titled “Long Live the Great October Socialist Revolution”, debates, propaganda activities, and finally the publication on “Il Bolscevico” of the highly important “History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks),” with extraordinary photos and posters from that time.

 

Through “Il Bolscevico”, we taught a lesson to “La Repubblica,” a loathsome newspaper of the “centre-Left”, to “Il Sole 24 Ore,” the industrialists’ paper, and to the Trotskyist “Il Manifesto,” that used this opportunity to spew out insults at Stalin and at the first historical experience of socialism. We threw a terrible blow at the hack writer and falsifier Ezio Mauro, who could not defended himself in front of the comrades he faced at Teatro Puccini in Florence where he was, after he was given a leaflet with the “Il Bolscevico” article exposing his lies.

 

It would have been simply great if the show “Tagadà,” hosted by Tiziana Panella, had shown the clarifying interview to Comrade Denis Branzanti on the October Revolution, that was made in front Lenin’s bust in Cavriago, but it was blocked, clearly by someone from upstairs. This only confirms that media of the regime want to hide the existence of the PMLI from the masses, even when we express our solidarity with them, as it happened recently in the case of “La Repubblica,” assaulted by the neo-Nazi group Forza Nuova. We wish Comrade Branzanti and all comrades from Emilia-Romagna a good memorial rally for Lenin in Cavriago next Sunday for his 94th death anniversary. We highly support and appreciate them.

 

In these three and somehow historic battles, that also saw new cadres of the PMLI in action, the CC and the Political Bureau were supported and aided by middle-level and grass-roots Party organizations, local comrades and active sympathizers who did everything they could to bring the Party’s voice to the masses. Our most heartfelt thanks and warmest applause to them.

 

The growing strength and influence of the PMLI are also shown by the standpoints we have taken with the documents on the regional election in Sicily, on the referendum on the autonomy of Lombardy and Veneto, and on the LGBTQI movement.

 

“Il Bolscevico,” conducted with the highest political and journalistic commitment and with the highest Marxist-Leninist coherence, has given a central contribution to all these Party battles, mainly thanks to the responsible director Comrade Monica Martenghi and the editor-in-chief Comrade Loris Sottoscritti, to the precious editor Comrade Alessandro Casalini, and, more recently, to the high quality of articles written by Comrades Aurelio Cento, Andrea Cammilli and Enrico Chiavacci—a remarkable red trio who deserve to be promoted to the Central Editorial Board—and collaborators from Rome and Calabria.

 

Our Party is one of the few genuinely Marxist-Leninist parties in the world. This makes us responsible also towards parties from other countries that are looking at us with attention and sympathy, and that are inspired and encouraged by us.

 

Currently at least 300 parties in the world call themselves Communist. 103 of them from 77 countries, including China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, and PRC, PCI and PC from Italy, take part in the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties established in 1998 at the initiative of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). The latter, a member of the parliaments of Greece and the European Union, and formerly a supporter of Khrushchev and Brezhnev against Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, is the godfather of the arch-swindler Rizzo’s PC, beloved by bourgeois media.

 

28 parties from 25 countries, including Russia and Turkey, most of which take part in these international meetings, are also members of the Initiative of Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe, established in October 2013 at the initiative of the KKE. The PC is its secretariat member.

 

50 parties from 42 countries, including the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Panama and, formerly, the CARC, are members of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), established in October 2010 under the hegemony of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, led then by Stefan Engel and currently by his wife. Previously the majority of these parties were members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, established in the early 1980s by the CP of the Philippines, led by José Maria Sison, together with the above-said German party. The conference disbanded years later.

 

24 parties from 24 countries, including Italy’s Communist Platform, are members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations established on 1 August 1994.

 

19 “Maoist” parties from 14 countries, including two Italian groups, were part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, established in 1984 by the CP of Peru. This party and other “Maoist” groups consider its founder Gonzalo, who has been in jail since 1992 for leading the people’s war that we have not heard anything of for years, as the sixth teacher of the international proletariat. Since 2007 we have heard nothing of this group, split into different trends. One of these, of which an Italian group is a member, still publishes “Maoist Road” and holds that the strategy of people’s war is valid for imperialist countries as well.

 

There exists also a Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia, established in 2001 by 11 parties from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

 

The most influential among the parties who support Mao Thought is the CP of the Philippines, established in 1968 by Sison, which has been leading a people’s war since 1969 to establish a people’s democracy in the Philippines, as a step towards socialism. During these years the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, under the party’s leadership, as unilaterally proclaimed ceasefire multiple times and has taken part in peace and national reconciliation talks, which have always been interrupted by Filipino governments. On last 24 November, the most recent talks to date were broken by Duterte, president of the Philippines, as denounced by Sison, chief political consultant of the Front, in a statement.

 

Sison is also the founder and leader of the International League of People’s Struggles, one of the three organizations that promoted the Amsterdam international conference to celebrate the Centennial of the October Revolution. As it is known, the PMLI was invited. However, the message by the International Relations Commission of our Party Central Committee was not read, nor distributed among its participants, whereas four so-called Marxist-Leninist groups from Italy were allowed to speak in a total of six speeches.

 

As we have seen, the world is populated by many parties calling themselves Communists. But how many of them deserve this title? In our opinion, the ruling parties of the self-styled socialist countries do not. What about the others? This is a big question mark. We have no doubts about the CP (ML) of Panama, with which we share a strong ideological and political agreement, a brotherly relationship and a full class, revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist and proletarian internationalist cooperation.

 

Anyways, we are open to any foreign party wishing to talk with the PMLI. We are prepared to unity of action on questions of common interest with Italian parties holding the red flag with the hammer and sickle. However, no one will take our attention away from the struggle against capitalism and for socialism, that we consider the highest contribution we can give to genuinely Communist parties all over the world, who are carrying out the same struggle as ours.

 

THE STRUGGLE OF THE PMLI

 

157 have elapsed since the Italian Unifcation but capitalism has not been able to solve our country’s two main economic and social problems – social inequality and the South-North gap. It will never be able to do so as it is in its nature to focus on getting capitalists, stakeholders, bakers, managers, high officials of the judiciary, the military and the police, high-level state bureaucrats richer, and on developing areas with the highest strength and amount of economy, finance, industry, agriculture and services.

 

Figures are irrefutable and they speak clearly. The 17 richest Italians own the same wealth as 18 million people. One Italian out of three, i.e. 18,136,663 people, is poor or risking poverty. 46.9% of them live in the South and Islands. 13 million Italians have totally or partly given up medical care, and 580 thousand among them cannot afford medicines. Almost half of Italian families struggle to make ends meet. Many families, mostly in the South, cannot send their children to kindergartens for lack of money. More than 4 million people are homeless. Unemployed Italians are 3,077,347. Inactive people, i.e. those who do not work and are not looking for a job, are 13,468,000. Young people from 15 to 29 who do not work or study – the so-called NEETs – are 3,323,000. One young person out of three is unemployed. 11,374,619 people receive poor pensions. The youth risks to have no pension at all. Working people at the age of 20 in 2016 will be able to retire no earlier than when they are 71 years old. Eight workers out of ten are precarious, as precarious work has risen of 4.8%. Almost 4 million workers have a temporary contract. The average monthly salary for workers is 1.327 euros, that is 28.593 per year, whereas a manager earns 6,5 million euros. Women workers earn up to 30% less than men. Women are undervalued, discriminated, forced to the double exploitation of professional work and housework, and are subject to male violence, as a woman is killed by her ex husband or boyfriend every three days. Rather than decreasing, as it would be necessary, working hours are increasing, particularly in logistics, up to 12 hours. More than three workers every day are killed by incidents on the workplace. Unregistered job and illegal direct hiring of workers reign. The old and the disabled are virtually a family responsibility. Migrants do not enjoy the same rights as the Italians, and unconditioned Italian citizenship is not recognized for those who are born in Italy. LGBTQI people do not have all civil rights. The South, where all these evils are doubled, is prey to Mafias, bogged in under-development with third-level class infrastructures, health and social services, has become a huge dumping territory and nuclear refuse depot, while polluted by ILVA, Bagnoli, Priolo, Terrigno, Sarno river, and the “land of fire” [a vast area in Southern Italy heavily polluted by huge amounts of refuse, which are sometimes illegally set on fire, Transl.]. More and more young people move to Northern Italy or abroad looking for a job.

 

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, while boasting for the new contract in the “central function” department of civil service, that we consider to be unacceptable, said that “Italy deserves trust.” How can he say that, when Italy’s small business association speaks of “century stagnation” and lack of growth for Italy?

 

Italian capitalism produces not only social and territorial inequalities, but also wars and Fascism, regardless of the Right- or “Left”-wing government taking care of its interests and business. Just think of the 1999 aggression against the Yugoslav Federation carried out by renegade D’Alema’s government with the support of then-existing “Communist” party led by Diliberto and Rizzo.

 

In order to sit at the victors’ table and share the profits, it took part in two world wars sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of youth, workers and peasants. Always indulged by House Savoia monarchs, it even created its own empire with the colonies of Eritrea in 1890, Somalia in 1905, Libya in 1912, Ethiopia in 1936 and Albania in 1939.

 

After the founding of the Republic, it kept on taking part in imperialist wars for the division of the world and the plunder of raw materials and resources of African and Middle-Eastern countries. In 2011 it took part in the military aggression against Libya. Currently its military is in the first line in wars in Europe, Africa and Asia against the Islamic State and immigration. The last act was the dispatch of soldiers to Niger even before that the parliament could give its consent.

 

The Gentiloni cabinet, with the active support of Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti, is more warmongering than Right-wing cabinets, as it is adapting the defence model to new needs of Italian capitalism, pushing so that the imperialist European Union adopts its own military, voting against nuclear disarmament, condemning the nuclear rearming of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, designing the Rome “Pentagon.” Currently Mattarella and Gentiloni’s Italy is present with its military in 24 countries over three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) with 35 missions involving roughly 6,500 soldiers, costing more than one thousand billion euros every year.

 

Italian capitalism also means fascism. In the past it produced the twenty-year fascist dictatorship of Mussolini, and in the recent decades the neo-fascist regime according to the plan of Gelli’s P2 Masonry lodge, put into practice by Craxi and Berlusconi’s cabinets. Renzi cabinet wanted to complete it with the 4 December referendum, but it was rejected en masse by the voting people, thanks to the crucial participation of those who usually do not vote.

 

Renzi however has not given up to his goal, and is already at work for his comeback. At the last gathering of his supporters at the Leopolda hall in Florence he said: “We have lost that bid, but I would do it again any moment, because our position was just.” He was echoed by Minister Carlo Calenda of Economic Development who said in an interview on 27 December to “Corriere della Sera”: “We have lost the challenge of building a stronger and more efficient system. I think this is an essential tangle in such an uncertain international environment. National security is put at risk by a system slowing down the execution of decisions, favoring case-by-case handling of situations and making us the republic of appeals to administrative courts and local fiefdoms. The next legislature will have to put this at the core of its activity, although the referendum made a taboo of it. Maybe the correct path to involve the masses would be a Constituent Assembly.” And he went on: “This is the only way to usher in the Third Republic in an orderly fashion instead of suffering a chaotic dismemberment of the Second Republic. We need a body to handle the different drives emerged at the constitutional referendum and at autonomy referendums in Lombardy and Veneto. A body to put an end to the chaos of temporary electoral laws, to redesign the relation between the executive and legislative powers, to build an efficient democracy, which is typical of every Western country.”

 

With this in mind and following this fascist project, behind the mask of “efficient democracy,” the Gentiloni cabinet has not dared to outlaw neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups despite they have gone beyond every limit with their raids against a refugee-aiding association in Como and “La Repubblica” headquarters; the government has abstained at the UN vote against Nazism supported by 125 countries; President of the Republic Mattarella, after an agreement with Gentiloni, Foreign Minister Alfano and Defence Minister Pinotti, has returned to Italy in secret and in night-time the body of the fascist king Vittorio Emanuele III; that Interior Minister Minniti, the new Scelba [from the name of a notorious interior minister in the 1950s who was known for his repression of workers’ struggles, Transl.], appointed Gilberto Caldarozzi as the executive vice director of the Anti-Mafia Directorate despite him being condemned by the Supreme Court of Cassation for his involvement in the massacre against protestors who were sleeping at the Diaz school in Genoa during the 2001 protests against G8. Suppressing struggling masses, imposing a vote of confidence on the government during the vote of fundamental laws, including the electoral law, the abolition of the referendum on highly temporary jobs, the restricting measures against the media, the enlargement of the judicial police’s authority, the removal of rights of the defence side in case of phone tapping for security reasons, and the act to impose urban “respectability” by forcibly removing homeless people and migrants are all forms of fascism.

 

Italian capitalism, just like capitalism in every other country, will never be able to change its nature, political line and relation with the masses, otherwise it will self-destruct. It should be overthrown to get rid of imperialist wars, fascism, social and territorial inequalities. We will need time to gather the necessary strength and alliances. We will acquire this strength only if we take daily care of immediate material problems of the masses, if we can convince them about the righteousness of our strategic proposal for socialism, if we carry out a correct and broad united front policy.

 

Social rights should be on the top of our demands, in the following order: labor, housing, healthcare, pensions, education.

 

Labor for us means permanent, full salary, full time jobs, with union protection, for all the unemployed, workers and migrants, for agricultural workers, including hired hands in large and medium companies, for all young women and men after their studies. We reject any form of basic income. Struggling for labor also means abolishing the balanced budget article in the Constitution, norms of the recent labor market reform, laws legalizing temporary jobs, the law limiting the right to strike in essential public services, as well as abolishing working precarity, any form of unpaid or low-paid labor, jobs on demand, temporary jobs, temporary contracts, part-time jobs, traineeships, piecework pay for delivery persons, illegal forms of direct hiring. We want for all temporary workers in the public administration to be given permanent jobs. Women and men should receive equal pay, as well as migrants. We demand a restoration of the sliding scale wage system, a permit to work for non-graduated teachers, a substantial increase in wages, teachers and school administration personnel’s wages to be raised to European standards. We struggle to reject the legalization of basic income, to defend the right to strike and the national contract against company-based welfare, individual contracts and the 2014 agreement limiting union representatives in companies. We demand a law allowing workers to freely choose their unions, to elect and to be elected as workers’ representatives without the need for their union to have signed agreements, and we demand the restoration of norms forbidding ungrounded layoffs, extending it to small-scale companies. Everyone should work less without any change in their wage, the working time should be reduced to 32 hours per week. Housekeepers with no income and unable to find a job should receive unemployment aid.

 

We should start campaigns on labor involving the unemployed and the youth. We should become the standard-bearer of labor.

 

Housing for us means achieving the right to housing for all, meeting the housing needs of the population through the reuse and renovation of old buildings, the use of vacant houses and the building of new popular houses for affordable rents for all, including migrants and Rom people, the commitment for municipal administrations to cover for rents of the needy, the ban on evictions without other housing options, especially for young couples, elderly individuals, families with disabled members, low-income families, poor migrants. A tax should be paid by owners of mansions, rich houses and multiple houses.

 

Healthcare for us means public, universal and free healthcare above all, ran through the direct participation of health workers and medical personnel as well as local people’s masses. It also means turning all health and private facilities, with or without authorization, including pharmacies, into public structures under the National Health Service, nationalizing the pharmaceutical industry, abolishing the possibility for hospital doctors to work as private doctors in or outside public health facilities, temporary jobs for a sufficient number of nurses, doctors, physio-therapists and community health assistants to cover for the needs of and improve national health facilities. Small hospitals and first aid points should not be closed, health tickets should be abolished.

 

Healthcare for us also means women’s right to healthcare, gender medicine, self-managed public clinics in all cities, right for everyone, including unmarried and gay couples and single individuals, to have free access to artificial insemination and to surrogacy in public facilities, freedom for biogenetic research and experimentation on embryos and fetuses to fight sterility, safeguarding the health of women giving birth and the newborn, ban on “conscientious objection” by doctors against abortion, freedom of abortion for underage girls in public facilities also without the consent of their parents or of a judge, new medicines and biotechnologies available to all, free anti-cancer drugs, right to euthanasia, full and free public assistance for the disabled, measures to guarantee workplace safety.

 

Pensions for us mean abolishing related counter-reformations of the last decades, a public, universal, united and well-allocated pension system, retirement age at 60 for men and 55 for women, basic pension after 5 years of social contributions, seniority pension after 35 working years, basic pension not inferior to 1 million euros, widow’s benefit and orphan’s benefit, eliminating all privileges for pensions of members of parliament, ministries, presidents of regions and provinces, mayors, members of municipal administrations, high state bureaucrats and high-level public administration officials, high managers of public and private companies, establishing a safety pension for young people, overcoming the gender gap, considering caring work for pensions.

 

Education for us means above all public, secular, and free schools and university, ran by students in the majority, abolishing all recent school “reforms” and the law forcing students to undertake working periods for free, all the laws adjusting school cycles in a privatizing way. We are against the autonomy of schools and turning them into a sort of companies with principals working as managers, against making private schools a “public service,” against public funds in any form to private schools and their students. We are for new unitary school ruling bodies where students are the majority, with representatives of teachers and administrative personnel as minorities, for the right of students to strike, to get to the streets and to organize public assemblies and conferences, for compulsory schooling up to the age of 18, for abolishing entrance fees as well as Catholic religion classes in every school, for abolishing limited enrolment in universities and any other limit to enter and continue studies, for abolishing university fees and lab dues, for the safety of school buildings, against national standard tests.

 

In order to defend and advance social rights, our work in labor unions is essential. We must carry out this work not only in our workplaces, but also in the CGIL [Italy’s main labor union with a reformist leadership, Transl.] and only exceptionally in “rank-and-file unions” if they are supported by the majority of workers. Our work must be based on the PMLI’s strategy for a unified union of workers and the retired.

 

This proposal is not easy to accept, also because it requires the disbandment of all currently-existing unions. We must gradually create the conditions for this proposal through a persevering and adequate organizational work through the Union Class Trend, composed of members and supporters of the PMLI, that may be extended to anti-capitalists and anti-fascists who agree with our union strategy, even if they do not fully agree with our ideology and our proposal for socialism.

 

However, we are no longer alone in supporting the need for one unified union. Some forces working in unions, such as “Still Marching,” are moving towards this proposal. In their recent call “Workers of The Whole World Unite” they wrote: “For now we promote a unitary action programme for unions, but our final goal is one class democratic union.” Probably they are only thinking of unifying “rank-and-file unions,” but this is beneficial to creating a climate favoring our propaganda for one unified union.

 

THE PATH TO CHANGE

 

The PMLI wants to change Italy. All the other parties want the same. Where is the difference then? The difference is in the fact that bourgeois parties want to change certain effects of capitalism, while the PMLI wants to remove the causes of those effects – capitalism itself.

 

In the world today there are bourgeois-democrat philosophers, economists and politicians who, when facing inequalities, wars, migrations, climate and environmental disasters, claim that capitalism is outdated. But their solutions, Keynesian in their essence, opposed to neo-liberal ones denying any role for the state in the economy, cannot go beyond capitalism. They only produce a different model of capitalism where exploitation of man by man, classes and bourgeois economy, power and state remain.

 

In fact, capitalism is historically outdated, as it is in its final phase – imperialism, as Lenin explained. It should be destroyed through proletarian revolution. However, the Trotskyist newspaper “Il Manifesto” does not agree, and it shields capitalism through the pen of the old swindler Piero Bevilacqua, according to whom “today anti-capitalism does not include any insurrectional project. There are no more Winter Palaces to attack.”

 

The core problem is that Italian proletariat does not have a revolutionary conscience yet to develop class struggle to the direction of an attack against our Winter Palace, i.e. capitalism. It is still living in a pre-Marxist stage, as a class-in-itself and not as a class-for-itself. The proletariat has no responsibility for this. Revisionists, on the contrary, should be blamed, as they have removed any Communist conscience, have de-ideologized it, weakened it and corrupted it with reformism, electoralism, parliamentarism, constitutionalism, governmentism and pacificism. This is why we are focusing our efforts, especially with the most recent memorial meetings for Mao and other activities, to make it assume its consciousness as a revolutionary class with the historic task to overthrow capitalism, seize political power and establish socialism. Marx and Engels could do so at global level, Lenin, Stalin and Mao did the same in their own countries and beyond, why should we fail to do so in our own country? We will, undoubtedly, if we can give the PMLI a body as a red giant, that is our medium-term strategic target.

 

As the Document of the Central Committee for the Centennial of the Great October Socialist Revolution says, “we are still living in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Therefore, we should act accordingly. The fourth industrial revolution ongoing does not change this fact. It is, on the contrary, a confirmation for is and it creates better objective conditions for proletarian revolution.”

 

The previous three industrial revolutions could not stop class struggle, which was intensified to the point that socialism was extended to one third of the world. The fourth industrial revolution will have no better results as class struggle can suffer setbacks, like in Italy at the current moment, but eventually it regains its vigor and develops more and more. Robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet, exalted by Grillo, the boss of the Five-Star Movement, in his new year peroration, can do nothing against class struggle. No algorithm, no mathematic formula can erase classes and class conflicts, and proletarian revolution as a result.

 

Facts clearly show that nothing and no-one can prevent the clash in capitalism between two antagonist classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie knows this out of direct experience, and this is why it does everything in its power to soften this clash or to keep it within its own system.

 

In elections, for example, it always finds a Left-wing cover-up in order not to lose its grip on power and to prevent the proletariat and Left-wing masses from breaking away from electoralism, parliamentarism and bourgeois institutions. This is the case of the next general election, together with the regional elections in Lombardy and Lazio, on 4 March, because Renzi’s Democratic Party has lost control of a huge part of Left-wing voters, who have been abandoning the elections since when the Italian Communist Party, where most of the Democratic Party members come from, accepted a government pact with the Christian Democracy and its Right-wing leader Andreotti. In this moment, the hegemony crisis of the bourgeois ruling class is softened by three relatively important lists who place themselves on the left to the Democratic Party in order to grab Left-wing non-voters and reconcile them with bourgeois institutions and capitalism.

These there lists carry the names of Free and Equal, led by renegades Bersani and D’Alema and covered by the former magistrate Grasso; Power to the People; and People’s List led by Ingroia and Chiesa. All of them base their programmes on the Constitution, the supreme law of capitalism that prevents the proletariat and its party from seizing political power and establishing socialism in a pacific and parliamentarian way. Some articles of the Constitution may be used to expand bourgeois democracy, to defend the masses’ rights and freedom, and to oppose military interventions abroad, but generally it cannot be the programme and strategy of the revolutionary proletariat and the PMLI.

 

As far as the development of class struggle and the acquisition of revolutionary conscience by the proletariat and the new generations are concerned, the most politically dangerous one is Power to the People, as it is better equipped to bring most resolute and fighting Left-wing non-voters back to bourgeois institutions, as they may be attracted by the name of the list, signaling a change in political power, by its political and social demands, similar to our demands on certain points, by its movementism, assembly-based democracy, electoral positions, slogans for “people’s control” of institutions.

 

Power to the People – and not to the proletariat – is essentially anarchist and Left reformist. It was officially created by an initiative by the occupied social center “Je sò pazzo” from Naples, and it includes the Communist Refoundation Party, which is perhaps its true leader, the re-established Italian Communist Party, the Network of Communists, Cremaschi’s Eurostop movement, Turigliatto’s Anti-capitalist Left, a number of occupied social centers and movements throughout Italy, and lately the CARC party, which claims to be heir to so-called “Red Brigades” and follower of Gramsci’s thought. The USB rank-and-file union, No TAV, No TAP, No Muos movements support it. Its supporters from abroad are France Insoumise, Unidos Podemas and Palestinian organizations.

 

Other forces working among Left-wing non-voters are the “List for a Revolutionary Left,” made up of the Trotskyist groups Workers’ Communist Party and Left Class Revolution, and Rizzo’s Communist Party, which has not lost its old electoral and parliamentarian vice.

 

Abstention in general is the common enemy of every party of the regime. It is seen so also by the Five-Star Movement, whose policies are more leaning to the Right than the Left. Last 30 December, it was reformed on a presidential and authoritarian basis, tailor-made for the aspiring prime minister Luigi di Maio, who wants to win the sympathy of Right-wing and Left-wing non-voters, without which he will hardly get enough votes to form his cabinet. President Sergio Mattarella also joined the anti-abstention campaign, which reminds of “Civic Committees” established by the Vatican and the Christian Democracy in the past. In his new year address he said: “I hope for a vast participation in the election and that no one gives up their right to take part in choosing the destiny of the country. I have faith in the participation of young people who were born in 1999 and are voting for the first time.” At the same time, Di Maio claims for the Five-Star Movement the role of “last defence against abstention.” It really seems like we are back to old “Civic Committees” established by the Vatican and the Christian Democracy to scare voters and persuade them to go to vote.

 

For this election, Right and “Left” parliamentarian forces, unfortunately joined by groups and movements that supported non-vote for a long period, have gathered like never before to stop the spontaneous tendency to non-vote. In recent regional elections in Sicily, non-vote was 55.3%, and it was 27.5% at the last general election in 2013, the highest on record.

 

This will make our campaign for non-vote harder than ever. We must carry it out in every workplace, every school and university, and every city where our Party is present to spread our slogans, above all: “Only socialism can save Italy and give power to the proletariat.” These two key concepts are a clear discrimination between those who support socialism and the proletariat on the one hand, and those who stand with capitalism and the bourgeoisie on the other. We count on the weekly, if not daily, or at least bi-weekly, activity of our grass-roots comrades and sympathizers, and of those who want to help us in this difficult battle to maintain the already high level of non-vote at the last general election, and hopefully increase it. We are aware that we are going to find no room in mass-media, so we must rely only on our own strength, handing out the highest possible number of leaflets, as never before, and holding propaganda stands. The stake is very high. From now to 3 March we should concentrate on abstentionist propaganda, as the one and only political task of grass-roots organizations. We should carefully study the Electoral Document of the Central Committee, both individually and collectively, and involving our supporters. We should form Marxist-Leninist Abstention Propaganda Teams. For this reason, Party meetings on the slogan “Study, concentrate on priorities, expand” should be postponed to after the election.

 

According to the Five-Star Movement, “giving the Italians a better quality of life is our compass,” as its ambitious candidate Di Maio has said. This is too little, and it can be done also by a Right-wing party. The PMLI wants to radically change Italy for what concerns its economy, institutions, judiciary, education, culture, arts, moral, life-style in order to give the Italian people a life without exploitation, oppression, unemployment, poverty, inequality and wars. Our compass therefore cannot be anything but socialism. Chapter 10 of the PMLI General Programme and the Report of the Political Bureau to the 3rd Party National Congress contain our outline of socialism. We should bear this outline in mind and spread it to the masses through our propaganda, especially during the electoral campaign, and with articles on “Il Bolscevico”. We need to do this in order to let the proletariat and the masses know clearly what the content of our proposed society is.

 

To achieve socialism and proletarian seizure of power, we should carry on to the end the struggle against capitalism, no matter the cost, the hardships and the tests that awaiting in class struggle. This is the historic mission we took upon us at the Foundation Congress of the PMLI. This is the burden that history has loaded on our shoulders. This is what the proletariat needs to seize political power. This is what the youth need to have a bright future.

 

In four months, on Fifth May, it will be the 200th birth anniversary of Marx. It should be our duty to hold a big public celebration hosted by the Central Committee, but currently we are unable to do so. This highly important anniversary will not pass unobserved, however. The Press and Propaganda Commission is already at work to produce a DVD on Marx’s life and work. A posted and a special issue of “Il Bolscevico” dedicated to Marx will also be produced. We also invite our Party’s grass-roots organizations to organize, on their own or with other supporters of Marx, to celebrate Marx publicly on Fifth May. They should at least organize a propaganda stand or hand out related leaflets.

 

Marx’s exceptional and exemplary revolutionary life should inspire our general political commitment as well as our particular commitment to solve the problems the Party is facing at the moment. Our revolutionary duties are different than those of Marx, but our commitment to fulfill them should not be inferior to his. As Marx did, we should never let any personal, family, professional and political problem overcome us, we should always put the interests of our cause above our personal interests, and give the best of ourselves to our dear Party.

 

170 years ago the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” was published, as a great ideological, political and historic revolutionary masterpiece by Marx and Engels. Its last words are a powerful call to arms that the PMLI has been shouting since its birth against Italy’s bourgeois ruling class: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

 

Long live Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao!

 

Long live the 5th Central Committee of the PMLI!

 

Forward with strength and faith on the path of the October to united, red and socialist Italy!

With the Teachers and the PMLI, united, focused on our revolutionary tasks, improving ourselves, solving current problems and helping each other, we shall win!