In front of the “judges of the proletariat” we admit our sin: yes, we are getting involved with parts of the Ukrainian society actively resisting the invasion. We have received several insults via social media for this choice, some of which are definitely sexist: “Nazi little bitches”, “PD (Democratic Party) little bitches”, “let’s denazify Làbas” (Làbas is one of the social centers in Bologna, we call it municipio sociale). This is the outburst, the anger and the grudge that emerges against those who, unlike them, can’t claim having got it all figured out. On top of these kind of insults, ”Z“ have been drawn on our walls during the night. All of this didn’t get past the single acts of provocation, but the real political crux is expressed by some articles written by leftist organizations, ready to easily gather consensus among those who see the world in a linear, dogmatic, conspirationist way, dismissing any initiative that questions the resistance in Ukraine and violates the comfort zones of either one of the conflicting sides as a ”renewed propaganda offensive”.
Let this be an opportunity to do some politics.
Làbas, and just like us anyone who dares to stray away from the footsteps of those who assurge to hold the “Communist truth”, receives excommunication – this is our heretical tradition that returns. The real problem is that it is not us who no longer respond to those dogmas, but it is the society, the “material conditions”, that have changed. It would be easier to tell about a bipolar world, in which the class struggle develops only within a single nation, without migrants, with a struggle of white people led by the male working class. Some still hope that the capital-labor conflict is as such, possible only inside the industries, without aknowledging the current level of automation, or that from the countryside people migrate to the city without passing through digital and physical borders, and that this conflict of 150 years ago will guide every population on Earth to revolution through these linear stages of development, and that internationalism will happen at that point, only among the nations that have reached “communism”.
We refuse today the “Western” progress on its extractive, polluting, discriminating, racist and colonialist aspects, just like in most of the regimes in the world, and not just because it is Americanist. On the contrary, to us it seems that capitalism works better without democracy, and that USA themselves will need to solve a pretty huge problem in the forthcoming elections.
The war in Ukraine, which has been going on for 8 years now, but which Putin has decided to expand by creating escalation, takes place in a world that Is different from the two-opposing-blocks scenario. It takes place after two years of a pandemic, in a world where the topico is not the future of humanity, but wheather humanity will still have a future after 2050. It takes place – not randomly – after European countries have pooled their debt for the first time ever, launching a huge development plan, surely contradictory and problematic, but that until February the 23rd, 2022, could still have represented a potential field of advanced conflict for the struggles on work, climate, gender and reproduction. Now a war has been started against us, a war that is nothing more than the “continuation of politics with other means”, a war not against the EU, but against European citizens (and not only!) where Ukraine represents the sacrificial lamb and the general warning.
What we take is not a blind stand for or against Ukraine. We are not here to defend the sovereignty of a national state, even if the attacked usually moves our sympathies more – do you remember Hungary in 1956? The development of this war shows us that those who are gloating are not the 40 million Ukrainian citizens, but Stoltenberg, right in the face of the increasingly serious crisis of the EU. That’s something else altogether than Ukrainian sovereignty.
But how can we blame the Ukrainians for their request for support, or the Finns and Swedish for their request to join NATO? Will this have geopolitical consequences? Sure. Would a peaceful interposition have been interesting? Sure. But we cannot blame the Ukrainian society for everything that happens, does not happen or could have happened. We’ll see, things change quickly, but if Putin’s goal was to stop NATO expansion, in just two months he achieved the exact opposite. Well done Vladimirovic!
Every time we mention the topic of european sovereignty, common defence, common debt, common welfare (European income and minimum wage), renewable energetic autonomy, there are internal and external enemies who move concretely against these hypotheses.
The real political issue, then, is that we disagree with those who attack us on the topic of Europe. Save us the lessons, please. There are those who wave slogans such as “eurostop”: it always seemed to us a position that makes the struggles crawl backwards. For us, the dead in the Mediterranean and the waves of hatred inside the EU countries have always marched in the same direction as Putin, and it is useless to hide that certain positions have opened spaces to tankies sneaking their way in italian politics.
Le Pen, Salvini, Meloni, Orban, Afd are on Trump’s and Putin’s side, and that is, precisely, against Europe. For us, resisting this has never been ” humanitarianism and goodheartism” and has never meant accepting the existing conditions of power. Our struggle, from the borders to the cities, is for something greater that we call europe, something about we’re not willing to make a single step back.
The fight against capitalism is only possible on the whole european soil. We must fight for a project that overcomes once and for all the EU with its game of crossed vetoes, and for a euro-Mediterranean political space where what power calls sovereignty becomes, for us, a great battleground for a democratic, feminist, ecological confederalism, for a new encounter between democratic processes, resistance and sharing of rights, from south to North, for the european Republic!
And from this point of view, how do we discuss the topic of defending ourselves from war in a technological and ecological space free from NATO, for peace, and with the chance of territorial self- defense from colonial and armed aggressions? Open questions, but the common ground is Europe. We cannot fall back to nationalism with the weapons rush, and peace cannot be an abstract ideal in a world polluted by atomic weapons – even global disarmament can be achieved starting from one of global cores of political force, europe being one of them. The same goes for Eni and for all the companies ready to do dirty national interests. It must be said that the embargo on Russian oil and gas is right, because otherwise the ecological problem will be once again dealt with once this other crisis will be solved. All of this must be prevented and we must fight a europe-wide fight. Also for welfare, work and income, the minimum condition is europe, which is formed from the refusal of exploited social work, for liberated social work. This field of intersecting struggles in Europe is what we call european matriottism.
Therefore, the point is in making a post-national and openly feminist and ecologist european constituent. An opportunity with which we can emerge from the crisis on a leftist perspective, an opportunity to defeat the nationalisms inside and outside Europe.
We are eretic crazy dreamers. Still better than judging from above.
We want to find allies in every corner of the continent, from Lisbon to Kiev, from London to Cairo, from Moscow to Istanbul, and to do so we need to know not only what we are fighting against, but also what we are fighting for, now that the material confrontation has taken place in its worst brutality.
Since September 2021, we have started walking a path to move as political organizations in the new era (beyond the human) and since the invasion of Ukraine we have never stopped questioning ourselves collectively, in order not to fall into easy fronts (for a European matriotism).
For these reasons we decided to move and meet with different realities, including Operation Solidarity (Interview) and other realities that we’ve met in several cities of the euro-mediterrean political space.
Some left-wing commentators claim that Operation Solidarity or other Ukrainian networks and organizations supporting popular self-organization and self-defense are politically marginal pieces, which will not change the political balance, and which – they are certain about it – will bow down to the Nazis after the war – they seem almost to wish for it, with a macabre taste for superiority . Others say ” strange race this one of the’ anarchists for Zelenskij”, using categories that fully associate with this sense of superiority and that completely nullifies the subjectivity of the ones undergoing the aggression.
We will be unclean for left orthodoxy, but these are the reasons that pushed us to go to Ukraine to learn about certain realities and express true international solidarity with those who are fighting fascism, internally and externally. The invasion all the way to Kiev and the bombings on all Ukrainian territory have mobilized almost all of Ukrainian society, and their agenda right now is to resist and not succumb to the aggressor. Like it or not this is the situation, and as marginal as the political realities of the “left” are, this is the ground on which they are obliged to stand in order not to disappear.
The time will come when prospects will be able to be discussed without the blackmail of bombs, while we here begin to do so by freeing ourselves from ambiguity. We begin to fight nationalisms without delegating the entire burden of humanity to Ukraine. Europeanism is an option if it manifests itself in real struggles, otherwise it is an opinion that will remain slave of military servitude that by saying neither this and neither that, will find itself overwhelmed by this, that and that again.
There are two fields, especially for social movements: for europe or against europe. Those who attack us have already made their choice, while we are working on the second option.
Municipi Sociali di Bologna
