document Marco Ferrando.
The CLP was the only party left to raise publicly, in the same general election campaign, the demand for nationalization of banks.
when we raise this issue, just 10 months ago, we met a general reaction of disbelief, skepticism and even derision. And not only in bourgeois liberal circles, naturally. But in the same left and its staffs. The objection bourgeois, yet imbued with hypocrisy "liberal, they accuse us of intolerance" statism. " The staffs of the Left (PRC-PDCI-SC) mocked, with enough of our "abstract ideological propaganda, which do not deal with reality." .. And in fact "reality" of those days saw all the grim rate a gift of € 10 billion to banks (tax wedge between 2006 and cut IRES 2007), just to please a Prodi government and boasted that the PD support of the main bankers. The slogan of nationalization of banks could play only moon in the ears of their world.
have passed since then only 10 months. And in the wake of the great crisis of international capitalism, the ideological vocabulary of the entire world is turned upside down. The theme of the nationalization of the banks comes overwhelmingly dominant in the public debate. Many of the old bourgeois liberalism champions find themselves suddenly statist, and I welcome to the 'public intervention in the banking system. While the staffs of the left totally bewildered and politically to pieces, like a broken record repeating the old rosary "anti-neoliberal" tag along with the risk of fraud to the nationalization of bourgeois incapable, as now, di una propria proposta indipendente all’altezza della crisi.
LIBERISMO E STATALISMO. IL LINGUAGGIO DELLA CONFUSIONE
La riscoperta ideologica, dal versante borghese, del tema “nazionalizzazioni”, dopo 20 anni di ubriacatura liberista, è tuttaltro che irrilevante. In un certo senso è la misura indiretta della profondità della crisi capitalistica. Il combinarsi della crisi finanziaria e bancaria con la recessione internazionale, e la straordinaria rapidità della dinamica della crisi, hanno scosso profondamente la borghesia mondiale, ponendola di fronte a compiti nuovi, su un terreno largamente inesplorato dalle sue ultime generazioni.
La svolta borghese non è not be represented as a transition "from statism to liberalism", if not the screen distorted ideology. Should dispel the smoke to highlight the reality of ideology. In reality, the bourgeoisie has never been "liberal" in the past, has not become "socialist" today. The bourgeoisie always defended, as now, in various forms and with different instruments, its system of oppression and exploitation. Was the so-called "liberal", the imperialist powers have played a central role in financial market liberalization, privatization in the banking industry and service, in breaking the tax burden on profits, the dismantling of social protections for workers, employees to countries imposing the removal of all protection of their domestic market (while erect trade barriers to protect their market from the products of those countries). The "liberal" against the workers and oppressed peoples was only the ideological mantle of state policies of capitalism within a new global competition between states. Conversely, in the new statist phase that is being opened, any state intervention in capitalist not only has nothing "socialist" or "progressive", but it serves to protect the capitalist market from the effects of his ruinous global crisis. Within a new framework for relations world marked by American decline and the breakdown of old balances. The "state" language, or even the flirt with the "socialism" ("we are all socialists" headline New Sweek) shall not cover more ideological policies of the salvation of the workers against capitalism and all its social victims.
nationalization Borghese: the nationalization of losses
The question "nationalization" is placed in this framework. Clearance of the term bourgeois "forbidden" is combined with the reversal of sign of its significance. The nationalization of which they speak in different ways, Obama and Merkel, and Sarkozy Berlusconi, Zapatero and Brown not expropriate banks but socialize their losses, for the exclusive benefit of their profits and their revival. And at the expense of workers and taxpayers.
In all parts of the world, the big banks capitalist, actors in the twenty-year financial robbery, have two problems: getting rid of toxic assets and reducing the ratio between debt and equity. The states and capitalist governments of all stripes are scrambling to solve these problems.
forms of their activity are very different between them.
The state can pay public funds to private banks, or through the intervention of the central bank, or through the purchase of bank bonds (Such as Bond Tremonti). A practice of which have benefited so far dozens of major banks around the world (but to no avail ..)
The state may make public funds available to banks in the form of government guarantee of deposits of savers in order to prevent the withdrawal of deposits and support the value of bank shares on the Stock Exchange, then the assets of the bankers. And 'what he has done in part by the Berlusconi government in the decrees of October (but bank shares continued to fall).
The state can buy the toxic assets of banks (accumulated filth with speculation and fraud without borders) and deposit them in one (or more) so-called "Bad bank" in order to clean up banks and revive the market speculator. And 'what is planning the government praised Obama, in an operation estimated to be over 1 trillion public is what Brown assumed the government with an investment of 500 billion, and which do not exclude the German and Italian. And 'the operation was made in Italy with Banco di Napoli in the mid 90s. And the operation is both more expensive and more cynical: the State bears the social cost to taxpayers of speculation to save the speculators.
The state can finally get with public money holdings of banks in crisis, in order to enlarge their assets and save them from bankruptcy: and may do so with the acquisition of minority shares and shares without voting rights is achieved in particular cases the majority of the shares and therefore public scrutiny (as they did with the Northern Bank in GB). They are also expensive operations for public resources, and have a time limit: the State heals the bank with public money and then sell it to private speculators, when the storm has passed, for the benefit of their profits. (E 'the operation done by the Swedish Government 79). Except that now the storm is not normal, is a worldwide phenomenon, and public resources are scarce beyond a certain threshold.
are, as we see, operations of different scales on a rugged terrain and often experimental, marked by the international recession in the real economy, the default risk of various Eastern European countries, the explosive contradictions among the various capitalist countries. And yet what is the common feature of these different solutions? Saving capitalism from the capitalists and their bankruptcy, with resources stolen from wages, to social protection, public services. Subtract additional resources to those who have always paid for everyone who not only did not pay anything, but it is the responsible, recognized by all, the great crak: the banker and capitalist. Call this "nationalization" is just the measure of hypocrisy bourgeois. And 'the eternal attempt-as Marx said, to pass off the interest' of particular interest to the bourgeoisie.
THE LEFT: THE VOTE TO privatization endorsement of nationalization BORGHESI
Because this affects the aphasia of the Italian left in front of this scenario. All the Italian and European reformism has removed several decades the term "nationalization", even in its reformist twist. In the battle inside the PRC, the demand for nationalization of banks, advanced doggedly for 15 years from the revolutionary left of that party (future PCL), was assumed as the emblem of the 'extremism ideological "to be fought, and not only by reformist elites, but by the same leaders of the Left Critique. "It makes sense to claim only what is immediately achievable," they explained to us all for years, with a pedantic air, against the demand for nationalization. Save to vote, once the government (or in its majority), the privatization of the middle class .. (some "ottenibilissime" without effort).
Now that the reality of the capitalist crisis has passed their limited imagination, now that the bourgeois circles themselves evoke the "nationalization", what do the reformist and centrist leaders? Are queued "critical" to the current fashion, and endorse "critically" the "nationalization" of the bourgeoisie. The economic policy of the new Obama administration is greeted with rapturous admiration from Italian reformism: the stratospheric its payments to large companies and banks have been taken as an example of government intervention in the economy and turning "anti-neoliberal." Even Berlusconi's populist evocation of nationalization has been hailed as a "good idea" by Paolo Ferrero and as "a common demand" from the PDCI, perhaps with irony, but with little sense of the ridiculous. The proposed text of the PRC is "to acquire shares of public ownership" of banks, and to allocate public resources to the business "only in exchange for commitments of employment" (see Super Deals of the party in the February 13 strike FIOM). But why should we spend public money (ie taxpayers' workers) to support the bank's assets, in addition to minority status? For these measures do not need Ferrero, just Brown or Merkel. And what value would the improbable "commitments" of the capitalists and workers, compared with the gift of new material billion euro Ferrero Diliberto and are willing to give them to the queue of all bourgeois politicians? The case of General Motors or Fiat Pegeout or the same are not sufficiently eloquent? . Tanti impegni, tanti soldi pubblici intascati, tanti licenziamenti.
Ma c’è di più: la burocrazia dirigente della CGIL ha sentito il bisogno di dichiarare pubblicamente la propria preoccupazione per l’”autonomia” degli istituti di credito minacciati dall’invadenza “statalista”del governo. Si è schierata con Bankitalia e i banchieri speculatori contro l’invocazione prefettizia di Tremonti. Il che significa che il principale sindacato italiano, nel momento stesso della sua opposizione a Berlusconi è riuscito, in un colpo solo, a difendere i banchieri e a prendere sul serio il Cavaliere, avallando le sue mistificazioni populiste. Come ci si può meravigliare se, nonostante la crisi, il governo continua a raccogliere il ( tragico) consenso di un settore significativo dello stesso mondo del lavoro?
La verità è che la borghesia, a suo modo, si mostra infinitamente più radicale, nel suo stesso linguaggio e propaganda, di chi dovrebbe combatterla. E che una cultura riformista e centrista, impregnata di realismo minimalista e di adattamento alle vecchie regole del gioco, si trova totalmente spiazzata dalla più grande crisi capitalista degli ultimi 80 anni, e dalla stessa disinvoltura della svolta ideologica borghese.
L’ESPROPRIO DELLE BANCHE, QUALE UNICA VERA NAZIONALIZZAZIONE
Questa stessa crisi è invece un’eccezionale occasione historic for the intervention of revolutionary communists. And the question of the "nationalization of banks" is paradigmatic in this regard.
For a middle class forced to contradict, in the most resounding throughout the ideological iperliberista post89; forced on the defensive for the first time - in the cultural field, the great crisis of capitalism, forced to ennoble, reluctantly, the same issue of nationalization , can not be answered with the old union and minimal approach, nor with the cultural paraphernalia "anti-neoliberal", if not at the price of a new subordination. We can and we must respond by opposing an alternative system, which returns the demand for nationalization its meaning anti-capitalist and revolutionary.
is to leverage the new ideological language of the bourgeoisie to turn them against it. To the rescue of the banks at taxpayers 'expense should be contrasted with the rescue of banks at the expense of taxpayers, not a penny to the banks, the banks are nationalized, without compensation for large shareholders, and under the control of the workers and popular (because the' compensation if they are already paid with decades of fraud, theft, mortgage loan sharks ..), while the state will ensure full (unlike the current bankers) the small savings, and public resources so saved will be invested in wages, protections social, public services, social wiped out all the entries for twenty years in any financial pressure on banks. A large public bank, under social control, with elected leaders and irrevocable, paid with the salary of an average worker, it will be a powerful tool to reorganize the foundations of the whole economy and society.
As you can see, there is no question of an abstract approach and incomprehensible. On the contrary, all the immediate demands of workers in the face of crisis, all the claims of defense work, the employment of temporary workers, extension of the right to layoff the entire workforce, with 80% of wages, real benefits for tutti i disoccupati, di difesa ed estensione dei servizi pubblici e delle opere di pubblica utilità ( casa, scuola, sanità..), riconducono all’interrogativo naturale: chi paga?.E non c’è risposta possibile a questo interrogativo senza chiamare in causa l’immensa mole di risorse pubbliche oggi destinate alla borghesia e in primo luogo alle banche. A sua volta non è possibile privare le banche di quelle risorse, senza una loro nazionalizzazione-esproprio sotto controllo operaio e popolare. Per questo la tematica delle nazionalizzazioni può e deve acquisire, nella crisi, un carattere popolare.
IL GOVERNO DEI LAVORATORI, QUALE UNICA VERA SOLUZIONE
La prospettiva del governo workers is implied organically, the demand for nationalization. The CLP does not ask Berlusconi, like do not you ask Prodi to expropriate the bankers. All the propaganda and agitation on the demand for nationalization has a meaning exactly the opposite: to reduce the need for a workers government and people, able to free society from the crisis of capitalism and junk political and moral leaders of his classes. Of each color.
This is the decisive point and discriminating. All those who left, speaks today of nationalization (after voting yesterday privatization) without putting the prospect of a government worker and popular, they do so, propaganda, subalterna e ingannevole. Continuano a illudere i lavoratori, in forme nuove, su un possibile capitalismo “sociale” e “riformato”, e su una funzione neutrale dello Stato. Per di più alla coda dell’emergente statalismo borghese, e di fronte alla catastrofe capitalistica.
La nostra proposta è opposta. La rivendicazione della nazionalizzazione delle banche, senza indennizzo, e sotto controllo dei lavoratori, è apertamente contrapposta allo statalismo della borghesia perchè vuole liberare i lavoratori da ogni vecchia illusione riformista : rivendica l’esproprio del cuore stesso del capitale finanziario, delle sue proprietà, del suo potere ; afferma l’istanza di un potere nuovo and autonomous (the "workers' control), opened an alternative to the business committee of the bourgeois state, its bureaucracy, its official. If the minister Tremonti recalls the prefectural control over private banks (with the approval of Di Pietro), to ask them to give more money to the capitalists, the PCL provides workers' control on a single public bank, to give more money to the majority society. Only a workers' government, which overthrew the rule of the capitalists, can realize this measure.
Marco Ferrando.
