The youth are protesting—angrily, even violently—but the intolerance stemming from marginalization and crisis must be fought by the working class within the context of the anti-capitalist class struggle.

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The youth are protesting—angrily, even violently—but the intolerance stemming from marginalization and crisis must be fought by the working class within the context of the anti-capitalist class struggle

In Italy, France, and Spain, the democratic and constitutional order has been disrupted by recent protests. For reasons ranging from the housing crisis in Spain to the rising cost of living in Italy, not to mention the disastrous state of education in France, public squares have quickly filled with hundreds of thousands of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, often following in the wake of the initial momentum sparked by students. Has the time perhaps come to rush to the barricades of 1871 and wage a head-on battle against the bourgeoisie? Some have harbored illusions about this, especially when observing scenes of urban guerrilla warfare in Milan, Turin, and Bologna, where police charges were met with a hail of cobblestones and widespread looting of stores.

It is necessary to clarify a few points regarding this “youth” movement, while reaffirming certain fundamental points of general political principle that revolutionary Marxism—restored to its correct foundations—raises in its analysis of the situation in which we find ourselves.

The student protests (and those by young people in general) of recent days cannot change—despite the “revolutionary” hopes being voiced in the streets—the fundamental reality: the lack of financial resources for education, as well as for healthcare, the economic crisis, the general living conditions of the working class, and all the other problems that compound these and stem from the capitalist mode of production upon which the entire modern industrial society is based. Admittedly, social-democratic, reformist, or “humanitarian” policies ”—such as those proposed by the Scandinavian governments—may temporarily alleviate the crisis in one area or another, but the set of problems that are at the root of the anxiety and the often spontaneous mobilization of young people is an inevitable product of the capitalist economy, the true underlying structure upon which the entire culture, politics, and even official science are based. The destruction of capitalism and its replacement with a new economic system (Marxist socialism) are in reality not possible without an armed insurrection and the establishment of the proletarian state—which amounts to the class dictatorship of the proletariat—endowed with all the necessary instruments at its disposal by its very nature, against the bourgeoisie, that is, the currently ruling class. The student and youth protests of recent weeks—and not only in Italy—are a world apart from, and in a certain sense opposed to, the prelude to the proletariat’s class struggle, which will mark the great historical goal of destroying the rotten bourgeois society and the beginning of the social and economic transformation of human society toward socialism and full-fledged communism, the society of the species, which by its very nature is anti-mercantilist and anti-individualist, and therefore anti-capitalist. That said, the “young people” might counter that, in several incidents over the past few days, they have demonstrated their willingness to respond with violence to the often brutal and systematic police repression of protest demonstrations.

First of all, it should be emphasized that violence in the streets has in fact been contained—often limited to specific sectors of the demonstrations—and that under no circumstances has this violence taken on a class character in the strict sense (the looting of shoe stores is not a bread riot, much less the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917). Second, and more generally, it is worth reaffirming—as we have already emphasized during a far more tense period in the “student” struggle—that: “university students and others do not constitute a genuine class, any more than all the social strata that flock behind them […]; whereas the working class, for its part, is indeed a genuine class, which a gang of pimps is now stripping bare in order to prostitute it and offer it on the market” (1). The overthrow of the bourgeois state, the destruction of its instruments, or their necessary use to ensure the triumph of the revolution are historical tasks entrusted solely to the proletariat, as Karl Marx eloquently illustrated in one sentence: “History is the judge; its executioner is the proletariat” (2). No matter how courageous the students may be in their struggle against heinous repression, and no matter how well-founded their demands regarding the disastrous state of our educational system may actually be, this cannot erase the basic historical realities of the society in which we live.

The heterogeneous makeup of those gathering in the squares today—we even sometimes see 12-year-old children participating and getting arrested!—combined with the ambiguity of the strikes organized by unions of all kinds, as in the case of the truck drivers in the south, means that the struggle currently unfolding in Italian cities has no distinct class character. The demands themselves remain of a general nature that allows for no concrete progress for the proletarian class under current conditions. The very objective of the demonstrations is unclear: it is not a demand for confrontation against the state and the “elites”—who do not strictly identify with any particular class—but rather images of the luxury shops in the historic centers of Italy’s major cities. However satisfying it may be (perhaps understandably) to smash the window of a store that no ordinary proletarian will ever be able to enter, this does not in itself constitute a socially class-based act, much less a “revolutionary” one, nor does it offer any possibility of victory for the street movement against a state that maintains order in an organized manner and with increasingly repressive instruments, preparing instead for the imminent general war and the repression of the proletarian movement, whose class awakening it fears!

Mutatis mutandis, the scenario playing out in Europe is not far removed from the hopes that young people in many countries around the world place in the “revolts” of Gen Z. While, on the one hand, it is true that the crisis conditions perceived by young people—who one might therefore be tempted to view as the radical vanguard of the struggle against the existing system—are the result of capitalism as a mode of production, in the most consistent application of all its policies, including war; on the other hand, it must be remembered that young people come from all social classes and that, often, they demonstrate greater militancy in the streets, stemming more from a natural and sporadic inclination than from an actual disposition for struggle. We have elaborated elsewhere, from a Marxist perspective, on the need to return to a class struggle grounded in correct historical and political premises—which are certainly not those of a generic anger directed against an unspecified “system” (3).

These “riots” in Italy mainly served as a pretext for the government to resort to the bourgeoisie’s various repressive tools, without, however, going so far as to fire live ammunition as in July 1960 in Reggio Emilia, or committing the massacre at the Díaz School in Genoa in July 2001. First, demonize the protests as if they were organized by “antagonistic” groups and troublemakers willing to do anything, by providing the regime’s journalists with photos and videos of clashes with law enforcement officers under attack (as had already been done in the case of Turin a few months ago). Next, as happened in France and Spain, to immediately denounce non-existent so-called “Russian interference,” as Defense Minister Crosetto was quick to do when he spoke of “hybrid warfare.” The collaborationist unions, for their part, wasted no time in declaring a “general” strike… for November, so that the streets would have time to calm down, employers could anticipate potential measures to avoid being harmed by the strike, and the government could preemptively prepare its law enforcement agencies for the possibility of violent demonstrations by protesters… Furthermore, government directives to act with the utmost rigor, using batons and tear gas against all protesters—whether peaceful or not—because, after all, you never know who might suddenly start undermining “public order.” Indeed, the Rocco Code can always come in handy, regardless of the government’s political leanings, because for our deeply democratic republic, when necessary, fascism has also done some good things. And if it sometimes needs to be updated as necessary, then it is appropriate to intervene—as has just happened—through an emergency decree. Clearly, the seven security decrees enacted so far by this government over the past four years were not enough, and perhaps even this latest one will not be enough…

This new decree reaffirmed the presumption of guilt for minors under the age of 18 (who, in any case, starting at age 14, can be charged with offenses applicable to adults) and extended to them the measure of “pretrial detention” previously approved for adults. Nordio also referred to “the increase in capacity at juvenile detention centers” (4), already anticipating the effects of these measures. The Penal Code has been amended to include the new offense of “violent participation in public demonstrations,” punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Finally, Operation “Safe Streets” and 500 paratroopers from the Folgore Brigade have been deployed in Milan to crack down on young people and children who continue to protest. Ultimately, thanks to the measures adopted, the government is ensuring that, regardless of the outcome of these protests, the Italian state’s instruments of repression will now be far more effective—even against groups that, until now, enjoyed relative protection, such as minors under the age of 18.

Moreover, it should come as no surprise that this opportunity was exploited in this way: the bourgeoisie is preparing by every means to unleash war between states once again, sooner or later, and in the meantime, it must also prepare the instruments of repression against the proletarian movement, which could regain its class orientation at the most critical moment. For the government, it is also a matter of preparing to deal with spontaneous forms of organization such as those of the “self-organized,” which stray dangerously beyond the bounds of institutional trade union or political organization and are therefore much more difficult to anticipate and suppress.

In conclusion, we must therefore interpret the uncompromising response of the government and the bourgeoisie as a whole to the demonstrations of recent days—marked by repression and the use of exceptional measures—not as a strange, unexpected, and ill-considered reaction by a government nearing the end of its term, but as a trial run for the future response to the proletarian movement.

Young people, students, but above all the working class, must learn the lessons of recent events by ignoring the calls for order issued by collaborationist unions and bourgeois parties, and instead preparing to fight tomorrow on a different battlefield—not that of interclassism, which is ambiguous, confusing, and disorienting, but that of the class struggle, above all through an independent class organization and with the same determination, based on class demands. Of such a struggle: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (5).

(1) “A Brief Note on Students and Authentic Left-Wing Marxism,” in Il Programma Comunista, No. 8, May 1–15, 1968, p. 2.

(2) K. Marx, “Speech at anniversary of the People’s Paper”, in The People’s Paper, April 19, 1856.

(3) The title is also revealing and helps guide the reader: “Gen Z Protests : it is not the “youth” that will overthrow capitalism, but the proletariat united behind its class party,” available at www.pcint.org.

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