The stupid attacks on Landini after the referendum: those who criticize him do not know Marx

Seen in the light of normal political rationality, Landini 's was simply a gamble. His key word, "revolt," as well as the most suspect evocation, "the road," provokes a kind of late-Sorellian hallucination in those whose minds are always glued to the canons of a bygone era. But, in a disordered era, classical political reason is everywhere too fragmented to be of any help. Its codes, only apparently sober and persuasive, repeat themselves like incomprehensible dialects. Acting and evaluating things on the basis of exploded forms is, yes, an act of unrealism.

In a dream world populated by friendly parties, with a defined ideology and solid social roots, innervated by perfectly functioning representative structures, led by authoritative ruling classes expressed in the conflictual dynamics of society, the appeal to heaven of the secretary of the CGIL should be dismissed as an indication of an incurable minority spirit, which leaves nothing behind but the dull noise of the beating. It is a pity, however, that such a system, the fruit of usable citizenship rights and productive modes of antagonism with companies, has not existed for years and nothing justifies a perpetual hymn to moderation. Acronyms, actors, symbols, languages ​​with a remote mobilizing capacity are reduced to pure simulacra. It is known that Marx did not like premature insubordination, and yet, when the movement took off, he certainly did not back down.

Banning any complaints about the predictable outcome of an early activist outburst, he wrote a very instructive page on the meaning of the announced retreats: “ It would be very convenient to make universal history, if one accepted battle only on the condition of an infallibly favorable outcome. On the other hand, this history would be of a very mystical nature if 'coincidences' had no part in it. These coincidences are naturally part of the general course of evolution and are in turn compensated by others. But the acceleration and slowdown depend very much on these 'coincidences' among which also figures the 'coincidence' of the character of the people who are at the head of the movement from the beginning ”. It was clear that the referendum would expose the organization to a clash that would have anything but an “ infallibly favorable” outcome. Throwing down the gauntlet ten years after the approval of the Jobs Act, and therefore without the tactical advantage of radicalization on a burning issue, entrusted the clash to “ coincidence” . If we add to the inconvenience of a friction cooled by time that the only subjects who could potentially benefit from the ballot box, migrant workers, did not have the right to vote, we can understand the full difficulty of winning a dispute whose developments are determined by "chance".

The government's urging to desert the booths by force then made it impossible to reach the quorum. So is there nothing left to do but attack the "character of the people at the head of the movement" , who culpably slipped into a trap? Not at all. The fact that the validity of the consultation had become a distant mirage gave an even more significant political value to the decision of almost 15 million citizens (the participation of young people is significant) to defy the boycott by showing up anyway at the polling stations that the executive, steeped in the culture of " paper games" , considered alien territory. A plebiscite in reverse was celebrated in the polling stations . Although aware of taking part in a rite destined to nullity, millions of voters still considered it useful to have their certificate stamped. By handing over their personal details in a sort of mass filing that classified them among the disobedient, they intended to emphasize that they were not afraid of contravening the order to stay at home given by the power, the same one that churns out threatening security decrees and supports Netanyahu's eastern operations. The apolitical Landini has disturbed quotas of abstainers and chronically disappointed, mostly inhabitants of the suburbs, who have induced the right to throw away its flimsy social mask.

The union, through questions about workers' living conditions, has to some extent overcome the constant limit of a left anchored to the "reflective middle class" : the one accustomed to the television chatter of a Gramellini, to the complete works of a Cazzullo, to the conformism of the typical commentator of the La7 talk shows. By bringing back into the public sphere the ugly, dirty and bad who perhaps do not collapse on the chairs of the Republic of ideas (the usual ones: endless war in the name of Western ideals, " regime chance" ), the Cgil has shown that the bottleneck for the recovery of representation is still open. Therefore it is reductive to file June 8 as a mere chronicle of an unrealistic flight forward that culminated in an obvious retreat. It was not a further piece of the now irreversible crisis of democracy. On the contrary, a counter-hegemony test has emerged – embryonic as it may be – to which thirty percent of voters have responded in an encouraging way. With the willingness to commit, a sign of confidence in the resumption of collective action has emerged. Does the dirty word “revolt” scare you? Never mind, in a phase of nascent movement metaphors cannot be kind.

FROM

Michael Prospero