International Bulletin January 2024

The International Bulletin of the Rete dei Comunisti enters its third year of activity.

When we decided to give life to this instrument, we were thinking of the need to have a greater connection with communists outside our country, which still remains the main terrain of our action, aiming to reconstruct a discussion, a point of view, a coherent practice among us. This need remains intact, as a requirement of the historical phase that directly engages with the disengagement from the Eurocentric ‘point of view’, laying solid foundations for internationalist work, and certainly this is a path that does not end in the short term.

Starting with this issue, we have decided to take an annual numbering that allows for a focus not so much on time but rather on the current political campaigns, on the activity and analysis that we build piece by piece.

At the heart of this issue, straddling the old and the new year, is obviously the issue of Palestinian resistance against the cycle of neo-colonial oppression that for decades has strangled any possibility of emancipation for the Palestinian people and the Middle Eastern peoples as a whole. The dastardly multiplication of war fronts throughout the Middle East we have been witnessing in recent weeks clearly shows us how our imperialism is in crisis of oxygen and legitimacy. There are no longer carrots, but only sticks to distribute around the world; but the world seems much better equipped to resist, and to shrug off, Western bludgeoning. In this new historical condition, in which what used to be Western overpower can no longer dominate unchallenged, lies the terrain for our action today and especially tomorrow.

After two interventions with respect to our fight against Israel in our latitudes, we felt it was essential to give an update on the democratic struggle over the LIPs (popular initiative laws), whose signature collection, which opened in May, was also carried out by our comrades and is coming to a victorious conclusion. Likewise, an update on the Italian ‘social thermometer’, taking as an example the successful transport strike called by USB last December, a day that the government tried in every way to stop but which, thanks to the determination of the union comrades, turned out to be a good one.

We could not fail to give, in this issue, a final international farewell to Riadh, our ‘fedayn’. The comrade who left us was a fighting trade unionist of the first magnitude, but also an all-round communist and an important member of our organisation.

In closing, we recall the forthcoming release of the book on the proceedings of the Forum ‘The Garden and the Jungle’, held in Rome last March. Presentations in Italy will begin very soon, but we obviously do not rule out the possibility of an international presentation and discussion.