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Two years ago, at the time of Barack Obama’s investiture as President of the United States, we wrote – to sum up briefly – that only a sucker could believe such a position would serve any interests other than those of big capital, with all the inevitable internal contradictions that it generates [1].    Two years have gone by and we all know the economic and social situation in the United States: soaring unemployment, the same trend in the public debt, production mechanisms jammed, commercial war all over the international chess board, clear and growing protectionist trends, industrial policies that heavily penalize the working class (at GM, the unions have accepted drastic salary cuts), an overall sense of discomfort and disillusion… Right in the middle, generous, billion-dollar transfusions for banks and corporations in the (vain) attempt to save the former and re-launch the latter; a health reform that is laughable in its pathetic attempt to stick a miserable patch (in favour of a petit bourgeoisie on the way to becoming proletariat) over one of the most macroscopic black holes in US capitalism; a war (in Afghanistan) that is continuing and another (in Iraq) that seems to be everlasting, which together keep military spending up and fuel the state of  fear and alarm; growing pressure on a mixed and already hard put to proletariat, though “privileged” compared to other sectors of international proletarians; and after this… words… words… words, immersed in the syrup that is so pleasing to the various “lefts” in the various countries, from re-varnished social-democrats to “extra-parliamentaries” wagging their tails and begging to return as “parliamentaries”.

Proletarians, comrades,

remember the struggle of the immigrant proletarians in Rosarno (Southern Italy), their self-determination against exploitation, against the indifference and hostility that surrounded them?  They challenged a world that was oppressing them, consisting of work-gang leaders and police, bosses and union organizations, which constantly kept them separated from the rest of the proletariat for fear that a spontaneous alliance might be formed against the existing social order.  They had residence permits, they didn’t need to apply for them in order to work, so this was not what they were claiming or fighting for: they were fighting the deplorable and inhuman treatment they received and to defend themselves from their horrendous living and working conditions.  During their struggle it was clear to them that in a capitalist regime, whether you have a residence permit or not, there can be no life worth living unless this regime is fought against until it is destroyed.

From the FIAT plant in Pomigliano (Italy) to the General Motors one in Indianapolis (USA), and back, with the blessings of mr. Marchionne and president Obama! At the General Motors plant in Indianapolis, the United Auto Workers (UAW), one of GM’s main shareholders, have signed an agreement for the sale of the plant (employing some 650 workers) to the J. D. Norman firm. Among other things, the agreement includes a 50% wage cut (wages p/hour to drop from $29 to $14). End of September, after a series of negotiations accompanied by real intimidations against the workers, the agreement was voted down, 457 against 96. At this point, J. D. Norman declare they have no more intention to buy the plant; on their part, GM and UAW try to use the menace to divide the workers of other local situations: they press for imposing wage reductions and plan real retaliations (for instance, making more difficult any transfer of the Indianapolis workers to other plants of the same GM group). The workers organize a fighting committee (the GM Stamping Rank-and-File Committee) and are now trying to extend their fight beyond the Indianapolis GM plant – in the attempt to involve both the Flint GM workers and the Indianapolis Ford ones, and the local population of cities and towns which in their majority revolve around such big plants. UAW have declared that first and foremost comes “global competitiveness”: the workers become aware of the fact that they have to fight both the bosses and the union. We will trace the developments: meanwhile, hurrah for the fighting US workers! our wish is that their fight be gritty and unyielding and that it may attract other militant sectors of a proletariat who, in the past, was the protagonist of glorious battles.

A tiny earthenware vase

In terms of world reality, what does the enterprise-Greece representeconomically?  A small thing indeed.  And in the European Union?  Only 2.5% of total GNP: a small earthenware vase in the midst of massive iron containers.What real difference is there in “her” crisis compared to that of America, Europe, Japan?  None: it is the daughter of the same global crisis of capitalism. And it is her very economic insignificance that is leading Greece to bankruptcy, and not the scandal of faking the accounts with the help of Goldman Sachs, the bank that is today under investigation for having caused (so they say) the crash of home mortgages in the USA: Greece is too small not to go bankrupt. To this we should add the concern of petit bourgeois pro-Europe feeling: the entire framework, so to speak, of the monetary Union is said to be unravelling, alas, under the blows of the crisis... Whether Greece leaves the monetary Union, or whether Germany leaves to re-establish a new and more solid monetary agreement, as is being whispered on many sides, meaning that everything ends up by being temporarily patched up before its final annulment, by restructuring of the debt or some other expedient, as in Argentina, the dynamics of the economic crisis will run on through their transit stations towards an inevitable political crisis between countries.