In Italy, the movement against the war in Gaza has been channeled into the trade unions. This has been one of the factors in its strengthening and has led to a first partial but positive development: from an interclassist opinion movement to working-class action against the war. It was a first step in this direction, but a decisive one, in terms of a national general strike.

The importance of this social alignment against the war lies in two aspects. The first is that workers have been called upon and identified as the subject of the struggle against growing warmongering throughout the world. Of course, only we communists know that only the international revolution of the working class can stop imperialist war, while workers may believe that a peaceful strike is sufficient to achieve this goal. But it is a step in the right direction, and the party finally had the opportunity to explain to the striking workers how war can be confronted.

It was a political strike. Everything is politics, but war is the maximum point of convergence and fusion between the immediate, basic, economic needs and problems of workers, in short, their trade union demands, and a political demand. This is all the more true as war draws nearer.

While all the anti-communists, when it comes to the conflict in Gaza, have argued that there is no need to bother with such a distant problem, the strike has shaken the internationalist instinct of the working class, which is convinced that this is not the case.

The second reason of great importance in this mobilization against the war in Gaza is that it was initiated by grassroots trade unionism  not out of a vain recognition of primogeniture, but in recognition of a chain of social actions and reactions of considerable general and permanent importance. This also confirms the predicted dynamics and the consequent trade union policy of our party, and only our party.

The grassroots unions have gathered the indignation of the workers and their concern about the war, and have managed to respond to it.

The CGIL, on the other hand, had never even considered the possibility of resorting to strike action. Thus, something that had never happened before occurred: the largest union of the regime had to follow in the footsteps of the grassroots unions. First, it tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the strike called by USB, CUB, SGB, and ADL for Monday, September 22. This had been announced in Genoa on Thursday, September 11, during an evening meeting at the Port Authority Club, attended by about 600 workers and broadcast live on the Unione Sindacale di Base web channel.

On September 16, the CGIL decided to call a general strike, but one working day earlier, on the 19th! Moreover, as it did not fall within the notice period imposed by the anti-strike law, wanted by CGIL, CISL, and UIL (Law 146 of 1990), all categories affected by the law were excluded from this “separate and competing” strike! As a result, many CGIL members and delegates were furious with the leadership for clearly dividing and sabotaging the struggle promoted by the grassroots unions, and just as many went on strike on the 22nd instead of the 19th. Teachers were the category that most participated in the strike.

This event, historic for the trade union movement in Italy in recent decades, is bound to mark a strengthening of the grassroots unions, especially the USB, and a weakening of the CGIL. This is also true when looking at the young people who are not yet workers, who filled the demonstrations and who will join unions in the future. Now, in the meantime, they know that there is a union that is more combative than the CGIL.

In response to the slap in the face it received and in an attempt to remedy its shameful conduct towards its rank and file, which was in favor of mobilization, the CGIL decided to call a second general strike, this time together with the USB and other grassroots unions! This too is unprecedented in the Italian trade union movement since the first grassroots unions were formed in 1980.

It has happened—unfortunately rarely due to the well-known sectarianism of the grassroots union leaderships—that they have joined general strikes promoted by the CGIL. A positive example was the general strike on November 29 last year, which most grassroots unions joined. The USB leadership was the only one not to do so and to call a strike on December 13, on its own.

The joint strike between grassroots unions and the CGIL on October 3 is a precedent to be used in future union battles. It must not become an exception linked to the issue of genocide in Gaza. Within the grassroots unions, we must fight to ensure that this path is pursued in future struggles, starting in the coming weeks. Certainly, many workers who are members of the CGIL want to continue in this direction. Putting the CGIL leadership to the test on the terrain of united action will mean opening up the discussion within this union, bringing its structure into conflict with the combative part of its base, and unmasking those leaders of minority areas and factions who are ready to sacrifice crucial decisions for the class-based trade union movement in order to maintain their leadership positions in that union.

Unity in the struggles of the grassroots unions and between them and the CGIL:
     - would strengthen the strikes;
     - would allow grassroots unions, where the CGIL is likely to call for strikes of a few hours, divided by region and territory, to relaunch with longer and more united strikes, exposing the CGIL once again to the risk of finding itself playing catch-up;
     - would bring workers still affiliated with the CGIL into greater contact with militant unionism;
     - it could not fail to call into question trade union unity with the CISL and UIL, the cornerstone of regime trade unionism for over 70 years;
     - to the extent that the workers’ struggle is strengthened, it would lead to the split of the CGIL and the birth of a large class-based trade union in Italy, dealing a deadly blow to collaborationist and regime trade unionism.

These are therefore events with potentially important consequences, resulting from the intervention of grassroots unions in the movement against the war and genocide in Gaza. They confirm at least two fundamental trade union policies of the International Communist Party:
     1) In Italy, the class-based union will be reborn outside and against the regime unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL, UGL);
     2) The unity of action of militant trade unionism – in a united class-based trade union front that includes grassroots unions and militant minorities within CGIL – in joint strikes is the best way to accelerate the process of rebirth of the class-based union.

In addition to the above, there are two other important consequences of the intervention of grassroots unions in the movement against the war in Gaza:
     1) Two general strikes took place – with minority participation but which shook the capitalist economy and brought hundreds of thousands of workers onto the streets in over 70 cities – in the space of just 11 days: this has never happened since the end of World War II;
     2) The second mobilization, on October 3, took place in violation of the anti-strike law: CGIL and USB appealed to a reactionary clause of this law, which allows for exceptions in cases of “danger to the constitutional order,” thereby confirming their anti-communism. And the strike went ahead despite the ruling against it by the Guarantee Commission, which obviously did not accept the interpretation of the two union leaders, which was clearly specious. If sanctions are imposed on the unions and workers, what will the CGIL and grassroots unions do? Will they respond with a strike? This is also a dangerous precedent for regime unionism and employers, and a lesson for workers: if you are sufficiently united, in the face of a mass movement, there is no law that can stop the strike!

Excerpts from the Leaflets We Distributed at the Demonstrations on August 30, September 22, October 3, and October 4

Two years of war have caused outrage and anger to grow around the world over the massacre, which has risen to the level of genocide, of the population of the Gaza Strip. More and more people finally feel the need to act collectively against this barbarism and to show that indifference, individualism, and resignation—fueled by capitalism—are not irrevocable.

In Italy, a very important step forward in this direction has been taken by the grassroots unions – with the USB dockworkers of Genoa leading the way – who have called a general strike, elevating a vast movement of opinion to a struggle of the working class.

This is fundamental because the war in Gaza has shown that in capitalism, only the balance of power counts, not opinions, even if expressed by millions of people.

It is not by appealing to institutions and international law that we can hope to put an end to this and other conflicts, because the subjects to whom we appeal, the bourgeois states, are the real instigators of wars: both when they are directly involved and when they act by proxy.

Wars under capitalism are not caused by the evil or madness of this or that head of state—Hitler, Saddam, Putin, Trump, Netanyahu—nor by particularly reactionary ideologies—Nazism, radical Islam, religious Zionism—but always by the enormous capitalist economic interests protected by bourgeois states.

Capitalism needs war to survive the economic crisis of overproduction, which devours it like a cancer, and to keep the working class oppressed, whose living conditions worsen every day due to the effects of the crisis being dumped on its shoulders. This is why conflicts are multiplying, all states are rearming and pushing towards a third world war.

In Gaza and Israel, people are dying not for Zionism or Islamism but for capitalism! Israel is a vassal state of the US, just as Hamas is a vassal state of the regional and world powers that pretend to support the Palestinians—Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and behind them China—only to compete for markets and regional and world domination, in a web of interests in which the proletarians of Palestine and the entire area are crushed. This is true in the Middle East as it is throughout the world.

The feelings that the genocide in Gaza triggers must not prevent us from seeing that this is not a distortion of capitalism but a barbarity that is part of its march towards war. Even the states in Europe have launched their rearmament plan and promise to more than double their military spending to 5% of GDP, taking resources away from health, education, pensions, and wages. Gaza is the future that awaits workers around the world if they do not organize and fight back effectively!

War can only be stopped by a force greater than capitalism. Only the working class in all countries has this force. The strike against war is therefore not only an expression of opinion but above all a concrete act of the working class against it. Faced with the demand for new sacrifices for rearmament and war, the proletariat responds with a strike.

Striking today against the genocide in Gaza and against the war machine advancing throughout the world means fighting in defense of wages, working conditions, and social spending, which all bourgeois parties, both right and left, want to cut. And when workers fight for their own interests as an exploited social class, even if they are unaware of it, they are fighting against war! It is not a question of “convincing” the ruling class, but of bending it with the force of strikes and class struggle. A strike movement against the war that is advancing throughout the world and that must necessarily become international.

The general strike on September 22 was called by the grassroots unions (USB, CUB, SGB, ADL). UIL and CISL have made it clear that they are not interested. The CGIL, which had never declared its intention to resort to a strike against the war in Gaza, hastily proclaimed one for September 19, when it became clear that the one on the 22nd was likely to be successful. This shameless act of sabotage against the grassroots unions’ strike confirms that the CGIL is a regime union, tied hand and foot to the ruling class and its political regime, and that a genuine class union can only be reborn outside and against it!

Faced with the success of the strike on the 22nd and the protests of many members, the CGIL leadership tried to remedy the situation with a sensational rectification of its conduct and by calling a general strike on October 3rd together with the grassroots unions! This is an extremely positive development because it strengthens and radicalizes the strike.

In all countries, the working class must fight against regime unionism, which ties the fate of workers to that of the company and national capitalism – which they call “homeland” or “country” – in order to build genuine class unions.

In Germany, the largest trade union confederation, the DGB, supports the rearmament plan. In the US, the largest union in the automotive sector – the UAW – supports the US bourgeoisie’s tariff policy. Even in Israel, where for months hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets every week to protest against the war and numerous reservists have refused to be called up, it will not be possible to stop the war wanted by the Israeli bourgeois regime until the movement rises up in a general struggle of the working class. But to do this, the control of the regime’s Histadrut union over the workers must be broken, as it opposed the general strike against the war and the teachers’ strike against wage cuts as a result of the war economy.

Against the war in Gaza, against all wars, we must fight within the unions to agitate for an international general strike against imperialist war, pointing the way to international unity of all workers, including Israelis and Palestinians! Only this international solidarity and struggle of the working class will emancipate the Palestinians, like all national minorities, from the infamous, almost century-long oppression to which they are subjected.

It is not only in Gaza that the barbarity of war is evident: even more victims have been caused by the civil war in Syria from 2011 to 2018 and the famine in Sudan. What makes the destruction of Gaza special today is that on one side of the front it is being carried out by a democratic state – the “only democracy in the Middle East,” as it claims – supported by the “greatest democracy in the world,” i.e., the US, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and other democracies, starting with Germany and Italy. The war in Gaza has shown that democracies carry out massacres and wars just like authoritarian regimes. This is because they are all bourgeois, capitalist regimes: the form of government – democratic, authoritarian, theocratic – has value only insofar as it is more or less useful for maintaining control over the working class.

Striking today against the war in Gaza is the first step in preventing war when it comes to our doorstep in the near future and becomes global. Then we will need a real and strong class-based union capable of organizing strikes that bring national capitalism to its knees for days. This will mean clashing in every country with its own bourgeois state and its repression. Imperialist war between capitalist states can only be stopped by class struggle, that is, by revolution!
     - Against imperialist wars!
     - For class war!
     - For communist revolution!