the internationalist

In the metropolises of the States of older capitalism as well as in those of younger capitalism and in the peripheries of the whole capitalist world, the economic, living and working conditions of wage workers (and, subordinately, of the declining half classes and the proletarianized masses) continue to worsen, with generalized and constant increases in the cost of basic necessities, including housing, gas and electricity.

Everywhere, the restructuring of economic enterprises (multinationals, individually- or family-owned, cooperatives, state-owned, nationalized or of any other "business name"), induced by the irrepressible crisis of overproduction, generates more and more unemployment and precarious workers, and increasingly forces women back into the home, in underpaid work for the family, together with a more and more unsustainable increase in working hours and pace of work – the first and only cause of the growing number of homicides, serious traumatic injuries and illnesses in the workplace.

On 13 October last in Teheran, Masha Amini, a twenty-two-year-old girl from Iranian Kurdistan was arrested by the religious police for “improper use” of the veil.  Three days later the girl died of the blows she had received at the police station.  As is well known, Masha’s death was the spark that ignited the explosion of the contradictions which had been brewing in Iranian society for some time, giving rise to a wave of harsh protests that is still far from being placated.  The State replied with a viciously violent campaign of repression:  attacks on demonstrations, arrests and imprisonment, shots fired into the crowds and cold-blooded murders (even of a child).  The demonstrators are mainly young girls who were soon supported by their peers and by adults of both genders.   They were also joined, with determined strikes, by the Iranian proletariat who had been in a state of unrest for some time, such as the workers from the Damavand petrochemical complex in Assalouyeh, the Abadan and Kangan refineries, the Kian Tire tyre factory in Teheran and tractor factories (it is estimated that there have been around 2000-3000 strikes yearly in the country over the past few years), as well as other plants and workplaces around the country… The anger that had long been seething over the daily oppression of young proletarian women (or those destined to join their ranks), obliged by unemployment to turn to domestic and care work due to the long economic-social world crisis – oppression totally functional to the need for control and suppression by the State, the armed wing of capitalism – this anger finally exploded, becoming the spark that lit a fire spreading to other sectors of society. 

Comrades and proletarian sisters!

One year on from the return to normal of the health emergency grafted onto the economic crisis which is so far from being solved (and impossible to solve!), the fanfares of bourgeois ideology and practice no longer have the courage to blather that nothing will ever be the same as before! At home, at work, in local neighbourhoods, your (our) living conditions are merely getting worse. Although in the world of work you are made use of mostly in the lower paid and socially less acknowledged jobs, you continue to suffer mass lay-offs, only to be imprisoned in the underpaid or even unpaid work of domestic care and health assistance, suffering further reductions in income with the excuse of part-time (none other than a cut in salary for the same work concentrated into fewer hours) or smart work (an updated and technically modernised form of self exploitation in home working) as well as reductions in hours. And you continue to be the last to be employed.

This is a watershed moment. The economic, social and political crisis has converged with war to make for a situation steeped in uncertainty. Any attempt to decipher the complex web of factors leading to the new scenarios and pinpoint – albeit approximately – the trajectory of events in terms of their inevitably catastrophic outcomes, is fraught with difficulty. After the Second World War, the “Italian” Communist Left made a valuable contribution to the restoration of the staples of revolutionary Marxism and, to help us find our way, we may turn to some of their keys of understanding. One of these touches upon the historical trajectory of the “aggression against Europe”, which was elaborated upon in a 1949 article of the same name, and published in what was then our theoretical organ, Prometeo. The article contained an assessment of the differing relative importance of Russian and American imperialisms.