Trump declares peace in Gaza, general strike in Italy, French government collapses

This week, after two years of genocide in Gaza, Trump struck a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But who benefits? And will it last?

Meanwhile, the Palestine solidarity movement continues to escalate in Europe. Italy has shown the way forward with a general strike which has inspired activists across the continent. In France, yet another government has collapsed.

In this week's episode of Against the Stream, Fred Weston and Hamid Alizadeh take stock of this whirlwind of events, explain where things are leading, and point out the tasks for revolutionary communists today.

Against the Stream is the current affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. It airs weekly on YouTube on Thursdays at 6pm London time.

Transcript

Hamid
It's been another long week in politics.

Over the weekend, millions of people throughout Europe came out in solidarity with Gaza. Spearheading this movement was the Italian working class, which staged a powerful general strike, followed by millions taking to the streets.

Meanwhile, another government in France has collapsed only hours after being formed, and we'll be talking about all of these on today's show.

But first, we'll start with the breaking news of a ceasefire agreement having been reached between the United States, Israel and Hamas, an agreement that's supposed to be followed by a more comprehensive peace agreement.

Now the first question we have to ask in this situation is this: who benefits from this peace and will it last?

My name is Hamid Alizadeh. I'm here today with Fred Weston, and this is Against the Stream,

Fred. There's this agreement. The details of it are not clear as of the time of this particular recording.

But what we know so far is that an agreement has been reached for a ceasefire. This is not the full agreement that Trump presented, the 20-point agreement, but it involves an immediate ceasefire as soon as the agreement has been signed, followed by the release of the Hamas-held Israeli hostages and their bodies, as well as the release of 250 Palestinian lifetime prisoners and 1700 Palestinian prisoners who've been jailed since the war started.

Now, that's supposed to be the first stage of a deal that would then go on towards a more long term peace that we can talk about. But it's clear that this is not the full peace. Now the second part of the peace is that a technocratic administration will be imposed on Gaza, led by Donald Trump and Tony Blair, the most peaceful, peace-loving, Guardians of Peace ever known to mankind.

And Hamas will withdraw from, basically will cede control over Gaza. In the original agreement it said that it would demilitarise. We'll talk about that.

And the people who will then start patrolling Gaza, in effect, with armed forces, will be Islamic regimes such as Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and others. It's not clear yet which ones these will be. What's, what's your immediate reaction to to this deal?

Fred
Well, first of all, I would compare what Trump has done with, you know, if you hold a gun to somebody's head and say, hand over everything you have, otherwise, I'm going to shoot. What choice do you have?

This is not an agreement between equal partners on equal conditions. What he offered was, you either accept the deal or it's total obliteration, total massacre. This is the guy that's seeking the Nobel Peace Prize. If they give it to him, it will add to the mockery of the whole thing over the years.

But what seems likely is that at least phase one of this deal will be kept to. It will be signed up, and there'll be a ceasefire. Now, what we have to remember is there have been many, many ceasefires over the decades. All wars end eventually in one way or another: either with the victory of one or the other, or stalemate, a temporary peace.

But unless the underlying problems are sorted, nothing has been solved. What you've done is a temporary peace, which obviously... I'm sure that a lot of the Palestinian people, ordinary people in Gaza, will be relieved at the idea that soon the bombs will stop dropping on them. They won't have to worry where they're sleeping, where they're going. But it won't change the living conditions which have been created.

Hamid
Yes, and also I would say, what are they getting?

The idea of a Palestinian homeland is further away than any time before. Yes, what they're getting is a committee that's going to manage their affairs.

Fred
Donald Trump is going to be at the head of that committee

Hamid
Yes. And this is a committee that doesn't have any relation to the Palestinian people, it's foreigners. It's an occupation. Is a colonial force, almost you can compare it to. I would rather compare it to a prison board. That's kind of what it is.

And then they will be guarded and forced to accept the dictates of this committee by foreign troops as well. So the Palestinians are not getting anything from this.

Fred
They're not getting self government. They're not getting a Palestinian state. In actual fact, Gaza and the West Bank have been separated for a long time, and Netanyahu always worked to keep it like that. Because anything, anything that got close to looking like a territory that could be given to the Palestinians to govern themselves had to be avoided. He always did that. In fact, he was happy to have Hamas governing Gaza in opposition to the administration in the West Bank.

But this is simply a ceasefire, and then an outside force comes in. I was looking at the deal, and the one of the points refers to even Palestinians who will be trained as police, security forces, excluding Hamas, obviously. That reminds me a little bit of the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has a police force. But it's to police the Palestinians for Israel. This will be the same thing, with the added element that it would be a foreign force under the control of the imperialists, Americans and others. Tony Blair. Tony Blair, the man who took us into the Iraq war in Britain is a joke. But he's probably going to be doing good business that guy.

But it's going to be a people who will be governed by others, not by themselves. This is not giving the Palestinians what they desire. All they're doing is a temporary respite. That's what's happening.

Yeah. And then you have the Palestinians. I mean the state of, the condition of the Palestinian, the Gazan population. Officially, 67,000 people killed. I'm sure the figure is much higher.

There's a lot more.

Hamid
160,000 people injured. That's 10% of the population, more than 10% of the population. In reality, it's a lot more.

Fred
What that doesn't include is people who have died as a consequence of the war, not being killed directly by bombing or shooting. But people who have died because the hospitals are destroyed, the ambulances can't get to them. Or, you know, imagine having dialysis. You're going to die.

Hamid
Sanitation destroyed. Clean drinking water, destroyed. Electricity, destroyed. Food, destroyed. 98% of cropland, according to some report, needs rehabilitation. That's just another way of saying it's completely unusable. It's probably filled with explosives and chemicals, and it will take forever to clean up. 90% of schools have been destroyed. All universities have been destroyed, hospitals, doctors, clinics. All the basic conditions of civilized life has been completely destroyed.

Now in the deal, it says that, oh, there will be a reconstruction and so on. But we all know that that is a long way from from from ever happening.

The vast majority of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. Almost all buildings have been damaged. Most of them have been completely destroyed, uninhabitable. Which means what? Which means in the best scenario, according to this plan, you will have a Palestinian population for decades, of millions of people, being forced to live in tents and barracks, makeshift whatever, with none of the fundamental pillars of having a civilized life. And they'll be reduced to barbarism. That's what's going to be in store for them.

So that is what the Palestinians are getting from this. And of course, I've been following a few journalists, and they said there's a sense of relief, in a way, because at least there's no more bombs falling for now. But it doesn't really solve anything for the Palestinians. The condition of the Palestinian people, and in particular those in Gaza, has never been as bad as it is today. And there's no end in sight for this. There's no perspective for an improvement of this.

But I think the another pertinent question to ask is, what has changed in the past two years for this peace to come now? Right? And I think a lot of people will ask themselves this, why was this piece not achieved while Biden was was president? Why wasn't he forcing this onto Netanyahu? And what did Netanyahu do? He said he would bring back the hostages. That's what he promised to the majority of the population. Then he promised his right wing allies that he would annex Gaza, and he promised that he would destroy Hamas. None of that has happened. None of that has happened.

And if anything, Gaza is left more ungovernable and more unstable than ever before. Although right now maybe there's a temporary peace. So the question is, what changed?

Fred
I think what changed is not what was possible. They could have made a deal anytime. Obviously, what has changed is Israel has pushed the world situation to the limit. I remember when I was looking into this, when I wrote some articles at the beginning of the this conflict, one thing that struck me was this idea that the Israeli regime, historically, whenever it's entered a war... This is not the first time we've had Gaza bombed. It's not the first time we've had a war. There have been many. And over history, if you look at it, the Israeli regime has used wars as a means of expanding its control.

The big ones, 1967 when they expelled 400,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and started the process of colonization. And you can see amongst themselves, the Zionists know: 'We want all of Palestine'. That's the aim, this ridiculous idea, 'God gave it to us. It belongs to us.' But they also understood there's a limit beyond which you can't push: what the Western powers can tolerate at home. And they always said you push it to the limit. Once that limit is broken, you got to step back, consolidate what you've achieved and wait for the next opportunity. That's what they've done throughout history.

What has happened here is because of the dramatic events of the seventh of October, which in effect gave Netanyahu, internally inside Israel, the excuse to go on on massive bombing campaign and destruction of Gaza, raising it as a threat to Israel, etc. And the West all came out, if you remember, the 'right of Israel to defend itself'.

Well, that has worn down over time. The masses of ordinary working people across Europe and across the world have been seeing the scenes of children being shot in the neck, starving babies, the whole place bombed to bits, all the killings, etc. It has reached the point where the ordinary, decent, working class people couldn't take it anymore, and it was reaching the limit.

And yet the governments of Western Europe continued with this idea, the right to defend itself, the right to defend itself. And people start saying, What do you mean? The right to defend themselves. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. The proportion... It just is so disproportionate, and the Palestinians basically became a focal point for ordinary workers across the world, and the governments have started to feel that pressure.

In turn, even that symbolic recognition of the Palestinian state. We know that the material basis for it doesn't exist. But it was an attempt to say to Netanyahu, please, please, put an end. Pull back. We can't take the pressure that's building up at home. That's what's changed. And the limit was reached, and we started to see these huge mobilisations, which are actually beginning to affect the politics in these countries.

So Netanyahu pushing his interests... TThere's the interest of the whole Zionist ruling class, which we know what it is. But he also has his particular interests. You know, we all know he's facing court trials, all the rest of it. And he needed to keep the war going. So there's an element of his interests being pushed to the limit.

And other things that changed: he bombed Doha. That is like crossing a red line for the Arab regimes. You know, the Arab regimes are all too willing to cooperate and to normalise relations. And Trump has been trying to achieve that with the Saudis and the others. For him to have bombed was to push them to the point where they had to say to Trump, 'No more. We're not having this again. This guy has gone beyond the limit. You've got to do something.'

What's interesting is that they openly said, either you stop this guy, or we are going to have to turn to Russia and China. Now that is shows you how Netanyahu has pushed it to the absolute limit. I.e. in effect, he was starting to threaten the interests of US imperialism, i.e., by putting pressure on these Arab regimes. Because imagine the people in the Arab regimes watching their governments, cooperating all the time, collaborating. And then this happens.

Now for Trump, I think that was a that was an alarm bell for him too. It's like, here he is. Here's the guy who's trying to reestablish the influence and the power of the US, which has been in relative decline. And in a key region like the Middle East, he starts to see the regimes which he wants on board as allies starting to use this language because of Netanyahu.

Trump stepped in, and he said to Netanyahu, so far and no further. And he's even given military guarantees to Qatar now, you know. Reciprocal deals that if they get attacked... That's sending in the message to Netanyahu, 'Don't you dare do that again, because it's upsetting my interest in the region.'

It's like the big bully telling the little bully, listen, you're going a bit too far. We got common interests here, but you are threatening our interests, and you got to step back. That's what Trump has done with Netanyahu.

Hamid
I think that sums it up very well. It's got nothing to do with peace. I mean, Donald Trump does want the Nobel Peace Prize. He's very intent on that. He is a narcissist, but it's not about peace. It's about their fundamental interests. As you said, they've been politically undermined

In the US, there was massive support for Israel over the years. It's all evaporated. In the MAGA movement itself, there's a violent reaction against Israel and against Trump's association with Netanyahu. By the way, also against his attacks on Iran and so on.

So he's beginning to feel it in the US and then this Doha bombing pushes the Gulf regimes towards China. So it's the interest of the ruling class that's coming into conflict.

Fred
As you say, he's an able maneuver, Netanyahu. And he thought that with this Qatar thing he was carrying out a clever maneuver, yeah? But what we say is clever maneuverers eventually run out of maneuvers. And this is what has happened. He's played his cards, and he's now like, standing there. Where do I go next?

Hamid
Well, we'll see. I mean, there's huge support for this deal now. Public opinion everywhere, including in in Israel, where Netanyahu is incredibly unpopular. Vast majority of Israelis want Netanyahu to go. That's one of the reasons why he doesn't want to stop these wars, because as he's in government, firstly, he'll maintain power, which is absolutely important for him. Secondly, he'll stay out of jail, although now they try to fix deals to pardon him and all of these things. But for Netanyahu, this is not a victory. And by the way, personally, I still reserve... I want to see what happens, because this guy has got many tricks up in his sleeves.

But he's been put in his place, clearly, by Trump. And obviously that raises a question as to why couldn't the liberals do it? Because Netanyahu wasn't imposing on their interests as much. That was essentially why. But for Netanyahu, this is a setback. This is a defeat, essentially. And for Israel we're not saying this is a victory for the Palestinians and the Palestinian cause, but it is a defeat for Israel in that it didn't achieve any of it's war aims. And it was it was forced to climb down, right, for many different reasons.

The Arab regimes, as you said, they would love to have collaboration with Israel. But as long as this was going on, it was destabilising the regimes in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt. Masses of people there, working class, poor people in support of the Palestinians, wanting their governments to do something. In Jordan, there was big movements for Jordan to enter the war against Israel.

And then obviously, when they attacked Doha, this pushed them towards the Chinese so they put the screws on, and they want to end this so that they can get back to business, which is what they really want.

Now, the last element here is Hamas. And I think, I think that.... we talked about it this morning. Jorge, co-host here on the show, made the point very correctly that there is probably a big mood for peace in the Palestine. Well, we know that. We know that there is a big mood to end the bombing and so on. They want an end to this horrible state of things.

But there must also be a questioning, what did we achieve? You did seventh of October, but what did you actually achieve? And I think that does put a pressure on Hamas and on them having to do something, in essence.

But what will they gain out of this deal? That's the question. I think that's the last question we'll deal with here. The deal requires for them to demilitarize, which means giving up all of their weapons. That means committing suicide. That essentially means we're going to surrender, and we're going to assume that Israel is going to stick to it's words, because Israelis are such honest and trustworthy people. Sorry, not Israelis. The Israeli government, Israeli regime. We're going to take their word that we're going to give up all our weapons, we're going to give up all our hostages, all our leverage, and then they're just going to accept a peace with us.

Obviously, that's not going to happen. So I think there is a conflict inside of Hamas. A lot of people, in particular on the ground, saying, We can't accept this deal. This is a complete surrender. But what do you think? Where do you think this is going to end from us?

Fred
Well, I'm not in Gaza on the ground. I have read some reports that show that the leadership of Hamas in exile is the most open to a deal. The historical commanders that have survived internally also seem to be inclined that way. But the younger recruits, you know, thousands of Hamas fighters have been killed, but thousands have replaced them. So there is going to be a layer there that feels very resentful after all this destruction.

And the whole struggle of the Palestinian people, what is it for? To achieve statehood. They are a people without a state, without a place they can call their homeland, without the rights of genuine citizenship in this part of the world. That desire is never going to go away until it's actually achieved. Until the Palestinians achieve a homeland or a country where they can say we are full citizens with full democratic rights in our historical homeland, until they achieve that, this is going to be a festering wound in the Middle East.

Trump is not going to solve the underlying problems that led to this. Oh, he can make a deal. He can promise reconstruction, which would take decades. The lives of these people have been dramatically changed.

93% have been displaced. A home for a Palestinian today is a decent tent and a plot of land where you can keep it and not have to keep moving it. Because that's what's been happening. They've been moving up and down, left and right, to the sea, away from the sea, to the north, back south. A people that has been displaced under constant bombing. It's absolute hell on earth, what has been created for the Palestinians. Obviously, they want that to end.

But once that has ended, the desire of this people to have their rights recognized is not going to go away. The struggle will continue. It has continued for decades. They suffered the Nakba. They suffered the '67 war and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. They were given this apparent semblance of self administration in the Palestinian Authority, which was an absolute shambles, and it was false from beginning to end and see how that has ended.

So whatever they achieve now is not going to be a solution to the underlying problem. It will keep coming back so long as imperialism has its interests, so long as the Zionist ruling class has its interests, so long as Arab regimes like the one in Qatar, like the one in Saudi Arabia...

So long as these people remain in power, the Palestinians will actually be a nuisance for them. They want to normalize things. They can't normalize too far, because their own people would rebel against them, because they recognize the Palestinians as brothers and sisters, who have their rights and you're doing nothing for them. And it would actually, in the coming period, connect with the actual growing internal problems in all these countries, the economic, social problems, which are creating ferment and an explosive situation.

So it's all connecting up. The problem is not going to go away, and phase one is being signed. Nobody can guarantee whether two and three will actually be carried out.

Hamid
Yeah. I mean, you can get rid of Hamas, but we said from the beginning that Hamas is not an organization as such. It's an idea. It's a reflection of a movement against oppression. I mean, we talk about the desire for a homeland, but even if we disregard that, it's just a desire not to be oppressed. That will be enough to force a resistance movement amongst the Palestinians, who are going to be suffering under terrible conditions. As you say, guarded by Arab troops.

Fred
Just one little point when you were saying that. The old leadership of the Palestinians, PLO, Fatah, etc, they eventually agreed to the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority. They agreed to become the police force for the Israelis of the Palestinians. In the process, they've been exposed. In Gaza, Hamas took over as a consequence of that exactly, and in the West Bank, they're discredited.

Now Hamas. We'll see how it goes. I mean, they're obviously in big difficulties. If they accept concessions, which means de facto giving up on the struggle, just as the Palestinian Authority conceded influence to Hamas, Hamas can concede influence to somebody else. Somebody else can appear on the scene, somebody who will say, we are continuing the struggle of the Palestinians in one way or another. That will keep coming back.

Hamid
Exactly. I think that's a good point to end it here. This is obviously a topic that we have and will continue to follow.

Now. We've had an incredibly explosive, almost, situation in Europe over the past weekend. We had a national student strike in Spain, 2 million people on the streets. There's been another partial general strike called on the 15th, all in support for Gaza, by the way. In the Netherlands, 250,000 people on the streets, which is big for the Netherlands. There's a big shift in public opinion. Huge protest all over all over Europe: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland and many other places.

The the head of this, you can say, was in Italy, where we saw a thunderclap, I would almost say, of the Italian working class coming onto the scene. This was an unprecedented event.

We've seen a series of movements, we followed it over the past month or so, in solidarity with Gaza. Semi-general strikes and so on. And on Thursday night, we saw when the flotilla, the aid flotilla, was intercepted. Last Thursday night, intercepted by Israel. We saw spontaneous mass protests erupting all over Italy. That was Wednesday night, sorry.

Throughout Thursday we saw again huge protests everywhere with people blocking train stations, blocking ports and so on and so forth. Then on Friday, we saw a massive general strike, called by the CGIL and the USP. CGIL is the biggest trade union federation. The USP is the smallest one, probably.

And millions of people on strike in support... This is unprecedented! A political general strike in solidarity with Gaza. And then you saw over the weekend, in particular, on Saturday, again, up to 2 million people on the streets. 1 million man march in Rome.

We've seen a rising movement of direct action, people blocking, as I said, train stations and so on. But also, more importantly, ports with dock workers and activists blocking the Israeli bound ships from loading and docking and so on and so forth.

The idea of blocking shipments to Israel is beginning slowly to spread. It's becoming more and more widespread. It was a dock workers union, all-European-wide dock workers meeting in Genoa which put this forward. Niklas, another co host here, was saying yesterday that in Sweden, actually, some of the dock workers have been doing this already for a year.

So this is gaining ground, and it has completely changed everything. But this is not just in relation to Gaza. This is a broader thing. And there's a there's a change of mood, isn't there?

Fred
Yes, yes, there's a huge change of mood. Italy has dramatically changed as a result of Gaza. But it's not just Gaza. It's the connection of the butchery, the tremendous oppression of the Palestinian people that millions of people in Italy have reacted to. But it's connected also to the problems in Italy.

We've said it, Gaza has been like a catalyst which has brought to the surface all the contradictions in Italian society. I could give you some facts to show you what the situation is in Italy, before we go back to this question.

Italy is the country in Europe which has actually seen not just a fall in wages because of inflation, an actual nominal decline in wages over the last 20 or 30 years. And since 2008 real wages have gone down by 9%. That's the real scenario that you have in Italy.

Now add to that the cumulative inflation of the period 2021, to 2023, of 18% and you actually have statistics which show 30% of households in Italy have actually reduced the quantity or the quality of the food when they do their grocery shopping every week. And even those that haven't reduced the quantity will reduce the quality because of the falling purchasing power, the falling wages.

But on top of that, the general situation in Italy. The debt, which is close to 140% of GDP, 3 trillion euros. Productivity is stagnant. Investment is stagnant. Wages are way behind the rest of Europe and the economy has been, in effect, stagnant. Zero to one percent growth. Almost nothing. The age of retirement has been increased.

Some figures I was looking at is that the number of people who've given up, for instance, on a minor operation they might need, or even serious operations, because the waiting list is literally years. Unemployment has been creeping up. Youth unemployment is over 20%

The social economic conditions in Italy are intolerable for the masses. All they have is now two or three decades of constant pressure, constant whittling away of the real value of wages, living conditions, health care, education. All of this has been building up and building up and building up.

And at the same time as this is happening, they're being told, you got to accept more sacrifices in order to spend billions on increasing military spending. In effect, permanent austerity. No future, no prospect of any improvement for the forthcoming future. And especially the youth can see that.

These are the conditions in which this recent event took place. That's what we have to look at and understand. I was making the comparison, I was reading about Vesuvius recently, the volcano. And one report said, you know, it's been dormant since 1944 and hasn't erupted since. But it said it's not if it will ever erupt. It's just a question of when. It will inevitably erupt and when it does, because of the long period of there's been dormant, it will be one hell of an eruption.

I was thinking that actually describes the whole of the Italian situation. It's been not completely dormant. Obviously, there's always been events. But relatively calm in spite of all these worsening conditions. And there was a mood up until not so long ago, of 'when is anything going to move? When is when it's things...'

We as Marxists have every confidence. I used to hear people saying, 'Oh, when Italians can ever do anything?' I think: they will move. They will move. History shows that and it's being prepared. And here we have it.

Hamid
And I mean, not just here we have it. This is an incredible event, because the level... You know, when you talk with people on the left, often you get this cynical 'Consciousness is so backward, and people can't see as far as you do, and they haven't read this and that. And people are uneducated.' This is what we always hear, 'Oh, the working class is uneducated.'

But here you have millions of people striking, going on a political general strike for international solidarity. That is a very high level of consciousness which shows that consciousness is a reflection of conditions and not a reflection of who manages to deceive you, or educate you in the right way, or input the right ideas into your mind. Not that education is unimportant, but it's reality that educates the working class every single day.

I remember when I was a kid, when I was a young teenager. I'm still young. People would say, you know, 'You can have a revolution, but not an international one', right? Now, here we have a situation...

First of all, this is happening in a context where there's mass revolutionary movements and very big movements all over the world. At the moment Indonesia, Morocco, Madagascar, Philippines, now Italy, Spain and so on. Not only that, but then here you have in Italy, a very advanced international class solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

Now, I think the paradox has revealed here, which, again, the left could never explain. We're talking about the broad left, right. This wasn't supposed to happen, was it? Because not only were we told that the people will not come out and strike or whatever for other people, but we're told that Italy is fascist and there is a right wing reactionary mood. Italian people have voted in Meloni, who's far right, her party is linked to the fascists and the people who are hailing and doing the fascist salute and so on.

How can how can we explain this? On the one hand, you have a general strike with millions of people on the streets, on a very high level of consciousness. On the other hand, in the sphere of politics, you have a right wing party, a bourgeois, populist, racist party with racist demagogy. By the way, that's also been attacking and cutting for the past years, but we'll get to that. How do we explain this? Where's the left?

Fred
Well, yeah, where is the left? The word left in Italy, amongst the millions of ordinary working people, among for many of them, has lost the meaning it once had, because what is being presented as the left are, in effect, bourgeois politicians.

In Italy you have the center left and the center right. You see there's no such thing as the left and the right. Everything has to be close to the center. All about moderation. So you have these alternating center left and center right coalitions.

Now I was looking at who's governed Italy for the past 30 years or so.

Hamid
27 years, I think.

Fred
Yeah, I was looking at who governed Italy before Meloni came in. Because the victory of Meloni was a sudden change, obviously, because she had 4%. Somebody who had 4% three years ago is now the prime minister of Italy. That's a sudden change. How did that happen?

Well, in the previous 27 years before Meloni came to power, for a majority of those years, I think about two thirds of that period, Italy was governed either by left or center left coalitions or by technocratic governments, which the left supported in one way or another.

So this left is tainted with all the policies of the past 30 or more years. All the austerity that's been carried out. I went and looked up an interesting study by two professors. I've got it here. I wanted to quote it, if you give me a minute. It's by two professors at the Lewis University in Rome. It's a private university in Rome, the Department of Political Science.

And it's about privatization in Italy. And it explains how I mean, there were privatizations previously, but the actual big push for privatization began in the 90s. And these professors study what happened after more or less 1992. There's a lot I could go into about that period, but there's no time here.

But what's interesting from this study is that he shows that once the program of privatization was launched... and interestingly, there were two technocratic governments. There's been many, but there were two. One was the Ciampi government and the Dini government. These two governments. Champi was the ex-governor of the Bank of Italy. Dini was the ex-governor of the Bank of Italy. Italy has had a lot of these technocratic governments. Draghi, more recently, was the ex-governor of the European Central Bank.

The Italian bourgeoisie has actually placed the men of finance capital in the key position of Prime Minister governing over the country and running the process of privatization, austerity, attacks, attacks on pensions. The Dini pension reform all those years ago, which had the impact of reducing the size of people's pensions. More recently, they've increased the age of retirement.

It's been constant, constant pressure for 30 years. This report actually says that once the process started in the 90s. Every time there was a change, let's say a shift from the center left to the center right and back again, there was never an interruption of this program. Both fronts, both center left and center right, carried out this program incessantly for 30 years.

But what it does highlight, it actually says, at one point, I want to find it. They asked the question, let's see if I can find it.

Who made the most cuts?

Yeah, no. It says. Here it is. The question, "Are Italian privatizations right wing or left wing?" Interesting question. The conclusion he comes to is neither, because both of them... but these professors do say that they both carried on the same program, but far more was achieved by the center left in terms of privatization than the center right. The center left parties, the ex Communist Party which transformed first into the PDS and now the Democratic Party, in different coalitions contributed massively to privatizing the huge public sector that existed.

And he says, there's no fundamental difference. That's what we have to understand. When we look at the political situation in Italy, and you ask yourself, why isn't the left strong? Why can't it win? Why did it lose the election? Well, the reason is to be found in this.

In the eyes of millions of Italian workers, the center left, or the left, La Sinistra , is responsible for cutting my pension. Is responsible for increasing the age of retirement. It's responsible for a lot of the cuts in health care, education reforms, which is financing private schools. All of this is the reality that millions of Italian workers have faced. That explains the political scenario.

There's something else I wanted to show, if I can. This is a graph which shows the participation in elections over the past, well, 70 years. If you look at 1976 more than 93% of Italians participated in elections. In the last election, in 2022 there was a record of less than 64% participated in elections. The biggest party in Italy is actually the party of the people that say, I can't see any difference between the others and I'm not going to vote.

Now we've said this before. That means that, in effect, both center left and center right in these conditions, when they win the elections, win the elections with the support of a minority of the population. No government can claim to actually represent the Italian people.

I've said it before, I'm not going to go into all the figures. I could put this in an article. But the Meloni government, it was the right wing coalition around Meloni, only got the support of about a quarter of the population in the elections of 2022.

And this has continued. It's continuing. On Sunday, for example, there were elections in Calabria, and the same thing happened. Or actually worse, only 43% went to vote. The right wing are happy. They're like 'Ah, yes, the people support us.' They're all happy because they won I think 57%. But of 43! It's more or less one quarter of the electorate that backs them directly, right?

That means the overwhelming majority do not feel represented by these governments, and the reason for that is the alienation of millions of workers and youth in Italy from the political establishment.

I was looking at one figure that showed that trust in the political parties is below 20%.

Hamid
In fact, it's 19% and trust in parliament is at 31%.

Fred
That's right.

Hamid
I think this is the thing, you know. When people say, 'Oh, why do people vote for Meloni?' There's this kind of cynical dismiss of 'Oh people are just stupid. They're idiots. They vote for Meloni.' Well, Meloni, when she was elected led the only party that had not participated in all of these vicious attacks.

Some people call her far right. What is more far right about her than there was about all of these things?

When we talk about cuts to health care, we talk about deep cuts, you know, the cost of living crisis. Isn't that taking people's lives away? Isn't that causing them to die earlier? We've seen that. There's been a pressure on life expectancy amongst working class and poor people all over the West, and Italy is no exception.

Fred
On this, I've spoken to some people on the left in Italy, the so called left, people who sort of will vote for the Democratic Party or even members of it. And they treat the population as if it's the people that are stupid. 'How can they keep voting this way? How can they vote?' And they even say 'They're voting for the far right.' This is not the far right. This is the right wing, conservative wing of Italian politics, carrying out the interests of the ruling class.

As I said before, when the center left were in they were carrying out the interests of the same class. In the eyes of millions of people... You can't go to millions of Italian workers and say, 'You got to vote for me, the center left, because otherwise the right wing will come in.' That's the argument.

Hamid
That's what they've done for years!

Fred
So basically, you've got to vote in favor of increasing your age of retirement, cutting pensions, cutting wages, massive cuts to healthcare, huge queues, years to wait for an operation, if you're young no future, no jobs prospects. This is what I'm offering you, but you've got to keep voting for me, because I stopped the right? Well, it doesn't work.

And Meloni comes in and promises, obviously, to sort things out. And because she's not being tested, that was before 2022... I mean, she was a junior minister in previous governments, but her party was in opposition when Draghi was governing, and she benefited from the disillusionment with that government and was able to win.

Now, should we be blaming the people for not understanding? Or should we be saying to these so called left leaders, shouldn't you be looking at your program, your policies and the way you've behaved over the last 30 years?

There's an old saying, you know, if the government doesn't like the people, it can replace the people. It doesn't work like that. What's happening is there's a huge alienation, a separation from the mass of ordinary people and the political establishment.

Hamid
And I will say one thing for all of those who say, 'Oh, no, we can't be too radical, because the working class doesn't want... Look at the workers. They just want to vote for racists.' These are the arguments that we hear.

Well, actually, what happened here? What happened in Italy here was you have on the ground a huge seething anger amongst the working class that's not being reflected. It's finding a small, distorted reflection when Meloni was elected. Now, now her popularity is tanking as well.

By the way, this is the future of America. This is the future of Trump and all of these people.

Fred
At some point

Hamid
But this anger is not getting an outlet. The old parties, the old so called traditional leaders, are playing the same games again and again. Which is why, when you have a local election the day after these million man marches, there's no change, because people don't see an alternative in the traditional, established leaders of the working class.

But there's one thing, which is in this situation, you have a small trade union federation, which was for years on the far, kind of obscure fringe, although they do have a couple of 100,000 members.

But it's a very small federation who came out for whatever reason and put forward the radical demand of a general strike, right? And they carried it out, and they had a huge response. And they they tapped into this mood, which was spreading at that time from France to Italy, with the block everything movement in France. Then it started moving to Italy. They tapped into that.

And this put the head of the CGIL, the main trade union federation, on the spot. They needed to react, so they called for a general strike. This general strike was called by this tiny union of 250,000 people. The CGIL has 5.1 million members, although half of those are pensioners, but still two and a half million workers.

And they had to come out. They tacked left. They spoke with the left rhetoric, and they were attacked by the government, and they they stood up and they had to defend this.

By the way, these are people who haven't done anything for years, right? We're not just making this up. For years. They've been playing along with this whole charade that you talked about. But as soon as they opened their mouths, they had this huge echo, which just gives you...

This is, by the way, only a glimpse of the enormous pressures that exists in the Italian society. This is just the first. If they had continued this, if there was a sustained campaign to build on this movement towards a general strike, to overthrow, connecting this with questions of austerity and living standards, and nationalizing everything that's been privatized, nationalizing the commanding heights of the economy.

If this was connected to a strong working class program they could have... this would have been the start of a revolutionary movement, which is the mood that exists latently everywhere, but which is not being reflected by the traditional leaders.

And obviously, then it finds distorted ways of expressing itself. Meloni was one of them, but as you said, Meloni has now been tested for three years, and she's not delivered.

We don't know what's going to happen. You say there might be a new coalition of the Five Star Movement and the PD (Democratic Party), and so we don't know what's going to happen.

But the idea that you can just deceive people into voting for you... there's is a limit to that. Yeah, you can deceive people. When there's no clear alternative you can come out with lies and say it's all the fault of the immigrants and this and that.

But sooner or later, if you can't feed people. If the bread that people are relying on gets less and less and less, they will react. And this is what we see in Italy.

Fred
Yeah. Well, look. The public debt in Italy is so big, it's becoming unsustainable for the capitalist class. 3 trillion euros and something like close to 140% of GDP, and it keeps going up.

Paradoxically, 30 years of privatizations. If you read those professors, who are bourgeois by the way, they list how much they got for this and how much they got for that by selling it. They sold all the, as you say, the crown jewels, the family jewelry, you know. And they still are in debt. And the debt has actually increased despite of all of that, because there is the massive interest to pay on it.

But you see, whoever comes to the government in a country like Italy is then presented with the figures by the serious bourgeois, and they say, 'This is the debt. This is the situation we're in. This is the International scenario. You must cut. What you can. You got to cut.'

The center left did that. Meloni came in. She continues. She made a big noise against Draghi, and then everybody says she's carrying on with Draghi's policy, the same policy. As he said, 30 years, center left, center right, but no changes.

Because even if you're a left party, or even the Democratic Party, which is difficult to call it left anyway, and you come to government, if your starting point is that everything has to be done within the confines of the capitalist system. Everything has to be done within the finances of the state, the structure of the capitalist economy, the banking system, finance capital, the European Union, International. You got to play the according to the rules of the system. And those rules are, the debt has to be reduced.

Therefore whoever comes in the program is there. You got to carry on, as we saw before. Meloni is doing that now.

But you see Meloni shows one thing, a party of 4% can suddenly. Boom. Govern the country, basically. A very sharp turn in the situation in a certain negative sense.

On the other side, on the left, we have a certain parallel. The USB is a small trade union force, right? There's been a very hostile relationship between the USB and the CGIL for years. The USB is a kind of more radical left union.

They issued a call that had a massive echo. Why? Because millions of people were just waiting for that kind of call to be issued. And that forced the CGIL to shift its ground join a strike with the USB, which is unprecedented.

But what I'd like to add to this is once the CGIL called the strike, you see the power of the old organizations in terms of support, millions of people joined.

Now, what you were saying before about, you know, when we talk about the prospects of socialism and international socialism and world revolution, for years it could seem that you were talking about something unrealistic. 'It's impractical. It's utopian. How can that be?'

Well, what's happened in Italy is a consequence of the events in Gaza. Two countries, very different and yet connected. What has happened in Italy had an immediate impact on Spain. What's happening in Italy was also the effect of the situation in France. Historically, France and Italy have very often influenced each other. Politically, even the working classes. May '68 had a huge impact on the Italian working class, and they had their hot autumn in 1969.

Today, we're seeing how it's even more internationalized, the whole situation. What's happening in Italy is being observed by workers and youth around the world. The potential for a repeat to this kind of movement is there. Why?

Because the conditions I listed earlier on about Italy... we could sit down and discuss Spain. We could discuss France, we could discuss Germany, and you'd find the same kind of thing. Inflation, real wages down, cuts, healthcare system in decline, everything. The welfare system is being destroyed. The privatizations have been taking place. Everybody's suffering the same conditions. Therefore, a spark can ignite a fire in a situation like this.

Hamid
I think that's a good ending to this segment.

Fred
There is, there is one little thing I wanted to add, if I can, which is, I just wanted to show you how sometimes the intelligent bourgeois reach the same conclusions as the Marxists.

Hamid
Oh, yes.

Fred
But from a different class point of view. What for us is a positive development, for them is a negative development. But they see the same phenomenon. I've got here a quote from a paper. It's called Folio. It's a right wing journal, and it was looking at this movement that we had in the last few days in Italy, the mass movement.

It's interesting. They're looking at it. And this guy asks the question. He says, 'You could ask yourself, What more beautiful scenario than to see tens of thousands of young people coming onto the streets to put an end to a terrible war. This should be a marvelous thing.'

But he says, 'Hmm, I'm going to explain to you why I don't think that's the case.' And he actually points out that what's happened here is that the Gaza question and the Palestinian cause has been connected, He calls it, with 'all the social struggles in Italy are being connected up.'

And he talks about a new generation of young people politicized. And he says, this is how he concludes the article, 'The novelty in the situation is the birth of a political generation that has learned to connect the struggle of', he calls it the 'global Israel', 'with all the local struggles.'

And he ends up, 'and this is not good news.' This is a bourgeois saying the youth, this new generation, becoming politicized and connecting up the international situation, with all the problems at home in Italy into one. Is bad news.

What it means is this: whatever happens in Palestine next... they make a deal, there might be a temporary pause, let's say, in the conflict.

What has happened is, what has been brought to the surface is this generation which has no future and is becoming politicized, and what the movement in Italy has shown to the youth and to the workers is their own power. That's that's the most important element we have to understand.

You know, you can be an individual and think, 'Oh, I'm angry, but I'm just in a minority. Nobody's interested, nobody cares.' And yet it's actually millions of people thinking like that. And what happens in this movement brings it all out, and all these individuals suddenly look around and realize

Hamid
We're not alone.

Fred
We're millions. Now that is a leap in consciousness, which means we can achieve our goals. We can fight. You can expect the next period to see greater instability and greater class conflict in Italy and in other countries.

Hamid
Makes me think of one of my favorite series 'Succession'. There's two billionaires talking with each other, and one of them says to the other, 'You know, in Ancient Rome, they were considering giving all the slaves, similar tunics, but they decided not to do that, because if they could see how many they were they would rise up and overthrow them.'

And that is the situation. That we have, on the one hand, a tiny group of parasites ruling the destinies of billions of people, and on the other hand, billions of people who create all of the wealth in the world and make the society run, who are at their mercy. And if they only knew the power that they possess, they could change everything.

Now, speaking of the parasitic clique at the top: France, where Italy is spearheading the class struggle in Europe at the moment, the French ruling class must be spearheading the meltdown of the ruling classes, because... Just the last brief segment.

We've seen Sébastien Lecornu resign over the past week, the fourth Prime Minister in less than a year. His government stood for existed for 800 and some minutes, as far as I understand, less than a day.

As of the moment of this recording, they're trying to cobble together a caretaker government, or some sort of a government, because they need to pass a budget by next week. Otherwise, last year's budget will just roll over, and the question of the debt, the question of the deficit, will continue, will get we get even worse.

France, like many other countries, is in a similar situation than Italy. Three and a half trillion euros of debt, 115% of GDP. The yearly deficit is 6 to 7% now. Interest rates are going up. By the way, the fall of this government has pushed interest rates even further up, because who wants to buy French debt, when they are looking at this shit show.

And then you have the working class which is, similar to Italy, increasingly restive. We've had the 'block everything' movement which started in France, about a month ago, hundreds of thousands of people, but a grassroot initiative, basically not called by any traditional organization. We've dealt with this before. There's been a general strike, a day of action called by the unions.

And what Lecornu was faced with was a government that was a poison chalice. You know, no one wanted to be near it, because everyone knew that it's not going to happen.

They need to pass a budget, which includes severe cuts. And no one wants to do that, because everyone knows that elections are coming. And as soon as elections come, whoever voted for that budget is gonna lose.

And so they can't agree. This is the situation. Here you have a situation where an economic crisis is leading to increasing pressure from below, the working class is beginning to move, the youth beginning to move. And that disrupting the working of the whole political system. What are your comments on this so far?

Fred
Well, it's interesting. First of all, the slogan of the Italians, 'blockiamo tutto' is a direct translation 'Bloquons tout' that came from the French. You see how they influence each other. Same situation produces similar phenomena.

But if we look at France, France is the second economic power of the European Union after Germany. Italy's number three. Listen, we speaking about number two and number three here in the European Union. The instability of these two countries. Spain and the others, are not far behind.

But what's happening in France is the French bourgeoisie is under enormous pressure to act, to get its act together, basically. You've wasted time. They have carried out attacks, but they've not gone as far as, say, the German bourgeois did previously.

The French ruling class cannot afford to continue like this, because they are facing a serious financial crisis. That's what's happening. To stay in the world market, they've got to attack the cost of labor. That's what it comes down to. And the cost of labor is not just the direct wages. There's the social wage. As we were saying about Italy, it's pensions, it's health care, all the social benefits of a welfare state combined with the real wages. This is the combined, you could say, wages of the working class.

They've got a massively cut. They got a problem. The French working class has a tradition. It actually goes right back to the French Revolution. You know, I think in the French consciousness, there is this element: when things get really bad, you just cut people's heads off at the top. They got rid of the king...

Hamid
Just to say, legal disclaimer, we don't suggest that.

Fred
I'm not suggesting that. But I'm saying that that's their history. And it's not just the French Revolution. It's 1830, 1848, the Paris Commune. You know, the first attempt of any working class in history to actually take power and change society was the French working class. And then there's the 30s and and May '68, a powerful movement. It's in the consciousness, and it can recede, but it keeps coming back when a critical moment is reached. And we're facing one of those moments.

Now, the problem they've got, they don't have a majority in parliament for any. Either the left or the right. The center ground is being squeezed. The problem of forming this government is that nobody wants to commit suicide before the elections, i.e., nobody wants to be involved in the severe cuts.

Because what they're saying is, look, I read a comment. 'There is a majority in the French Parliament, and it's the majority of those who don't want to go to elections', because if they go to elections, and they don't know how it's going to turn out, and they also agree we have to vote this budget before the end of the year.

This is a critical situation they're in. They cannot find a majority. Now LePen, her party has more than once expressed the availability of governing the country, but doesn't want to take the blame. They clearly want to go to elections at some point and massively win, like Meloni won in Italy.

There's a wing around that Macron who doesn't want to give up on that front and is desperately holding on. He does not represent, I mean, he has never represented a majority of the French people. At the most, he got 20, 25% and that will have gone even further down now. So the center is really being squeezed.

Then you have the socialists and others, who would... They've done it before. They've governed and they've carried out austerity, but to do it again now would be the final act of political suicide. So there's an impasse that's been created.

But I've heard all the comments comparing France today to France of the Fourth Republic, of the 1950s. The instability. One government coming in, another one going out. The ungovernability of the country. Back then, they found a strong man, which was de Gaulle in '58.

But how did de Gaulle's administration end? It took a decade. Now, remember, it was a decade in the conditions of an unprecedented economic boom, which allowed them a certain stability. But even in those conditions, the political solution to the instability of the 50s eventually led to May '68, one of the biggest movements of the working class we've ever seen in history. 10 million workers on strike occupying the factories. That is how that crisis eventually ended.

Today, the crisis is far deeper. There's no economic boom that can give them the stability. This process is going to be clearly far faster than what we saw in the 50s and 60s. What's being prepared is a new type of May '68 and it's going to be in France, it's going to be in Italy, it's going to be in Spain. But today it's also going to be in Holland, in Denmark, in Sweden, in Germany, in Britain. It's coming.

We are entering a period of extreme instability, and we are going to see sharp swings to the right followed by also sharp swings to the left. There's going to be both, and they're all going to be put to the test. That's what's going to happen. This is going to clarify in the minds of millions of people the impossibility of running this system in the interest of the working class. It opens up big possibilities for the ideas of genuine revolutionary communism. That is what we got to understand.

Hamid
Yeah. I mean, we always say that a revolution doesn't start from the bottom. Revolution starts from the top on the basis of enormous social and economic pressures you see a division at the top in the run up to a revolutionary situation. And what Lenin explained is that the ruling class ceases to be able to rule the way it used to.

And what you have in France, and what you have in one country after another, in fact, in Europe... the situation in France and Italy are not unique, as you said. They are the same everywhere, maybe with slightly different tempos and cadences, but essentially the same.

What you have is a ruling class and a dominant elite, you can say, that's lost control over their own system. You have for decades the Socialist Party and the Republicans in France, just like in Italy, you had bourgeois organizations that were relatively dependable for the capitalists to run the system, to make the necessary cuts, to do the necessary privatizations, this and that. But after decades of austerity, after decades of attacks, they've been destroyed. The Socialist Party is a shadow of itself. The Republicans are almost disappearing.

And at the same time, you've had the rise of two other political forces. You have on the right, the populists, Le Pen, and on the left, you have Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise.

But here you have Macron, personally. He's also an egocentrist. I mean, just like all of them, I guess. But he has a personal ambition, but also it kind of aligns with the ambition of the elite, of the establishment, you can say, the political representatives of the dominant wing of the ruling class, who want to maintain power at any cost. And that is a part of this whole crisis, which is why they haven't...

The party with the biggest number of votes, biggest share of the votes in parliament in the elections, was Le Pen's party. The party was the biggest number of MPs because of all sorts of maneuverings and so on. It ended up being the left, Mélenchon's organization. The traditional right was the smallest coalition, but Macron refuses to let any of the others actually build a coalition and actually take a premiership.

And this is obviously a part of this whole thing. And now you see a situation where the whole system is falling apart, but he's desperate to maintain it. And there's many strong interests in favor of maintaining power in Macron's hands. He refuses to call new parliamentary elections. He refuses to call new presidential elections. So he's ruling with a mandate of almost zero. The vast majority of people want him to leave his position, call new elections and everything. Refusing to do so.

Why? Because what would be at stake? It would be the whole EU project. It would be the whole Ukraine project, again, an international cause which is affecting consciousness. The question of militarization, the question of austerity, all of these things would come under a question mark. There would be a huge question mark over them, and the ruling class cannot accept that. It needs to proceed.

So you have a situation where there's total chaos. As you say, it's ungovernable. The top central clique refuses to give up power. There are wings that say we need to slash really hard. That's the Republicans, you know. One of the reasons they didn't want to join the government was that Lefebvre was a part of it. He was one of those people who has been leading the debt bonanza. So no, we need cuts. They say we need cuts.

And then you had the other the socialists who were saying, 'Oh, well, we need to have a wealth tax, and essentially, we need to be careful of how much we cut, because otherwise we raise the ire of the working class.'

There's crisscrosses of divisions and disunity and conflict right at the top, which means that they can't govern and all of that, obviously, the French working class can see.

And that situation is spreading to one country after another. In fact, the majority of these countries are relying now on scaremongering. 'The Russians are coming, so hence we need to militarize, therefore, obviously we also need to cut and therefore you also need to keep us in power.' This is tricks, deceptions.

But all things have a limit, don't they? Everything has a limit. And sooner or later, we're going to see major explosions, which are going to dwarf the one we saw in Italy, by the way. This is just the beginning.

Europe is now at the center of the crisis, and also moving fast to be the center of the class struggle. Revolutions are on the agenda in Europe as well, at the same time as everywhere else.

Fred
You know, I often quote, that in the 10, 15, years previous to the French Revolution, the big question was the debt. And the big question was, who is going to pay for that debt?

And the ruling classes, the aristocracy, the clergy, the monarchy, none of them were prepared to pay. So they wanted the poor people at the bottom, the peasants and the urban poor to pay. And there were struggles that lasted for several years, ups and downs. We know how it ended. The solution was the French Revolution.

Today, the question of the debt is the key question. Who is going to pay? Is going to be the working class, or is it going to be the ruling class? They have the power. They want the workers to pay. The workers are showing repeatedly they're not prepared to accept this any longer, and they're beginning to move. That's what the scenario is about.

And if you want to reconnect everything together, the terrible suffering of the people in Gaza is part of this world crisis of the system. If the workers of Italy, of France, of Spain and other countries can overthrow this rotten system, and the governments which supported the Zionists who did that to the to the Palestinians.

Overthrowing the ruling classes here would be an enormous help to the people of Palestine, because it would mean the end of the Zionist elite as well. And it would be the beginning also of the Arab revolution. And you can see the outlines of it, and within that, we can solve the problem of the Palestinians.

Hamid
Exactly. I think that's a perfect place to end. For all of you out there who've joined us today, thank you very much. Don't forget to like and share our material to your friends, families, co workers, anyone you think would be interested. And also don't forget to look at our reading guide, where we will share material in related relation to the themes that we discuss on the topic. That's it for today. We'll be back again Thursday, 6pm UK time next week.

Trump declares peace in Gaza, general strike in Italy, French government collapses

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