Subject: RE: Re: AUT: RE: tute bianchi
From: "pmargin-AT-froggy.com.au" <pmargin-AT-froggy.com.au>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:23:18 -0500




Ben wrote:

Hey Steve, I don't understand this autonomist/Rifondazione alignment at all
-- I'm not familiar with the whole scene, anyway. Could you give a little
background? (Aren't Rifondazione kinda Stalinists?)

_____

I guess the first thing is that we're talking only about one part of the autonomist movement - "ex-autonomists", as Casarini and others have described themselves. To my mind, their turn towards the institutional left around 1996 was premised in part on the need to find allies in the face of the Lega Nord's rise - not sure if anyone sees it that way though.

As for Rifondazione - I wouldn't describe it as a stalinist outfit, even if it has stalinists in it (although many - maybe most - of them left in the 1997 split). Rifondazione seems more a hodge-podge of different tendencies, from various 'lefts' and 'centres' of the old PCI, through to the remnants of the post-1968 far left (eg the majority of Democrazia Proletaria, which in turn regrouped many of the old Avanguardia Operaia, PDUP, Manifesto etc, and a great array of trotskyist groups). And there are a lot of ex-1970s autonomists in Rifondazione as well, from what I can gather.

The consequence is that, on issues like workplace organising, Rifondazione can easily go off in different directions, all at once. It has members in the CGIL (main left union) - at the delegate level as well as amongst functionaries (Bertinotti himself is a former union leader); but also members in most or all of the alternative unions and COBAS ...

A member of the Melbourne IWW is in Rifondazione - he's a great comrade.

But as always I'd like to hear the views and experiences of others on this.

Steve

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