Giorgio Cremaschi

"And when little socialist Cuba, which has suffered one hundredth of the deaths of Lombardy despite sixty years of blockade [embargo against Cuba], will have its own public vaccine, which will join those of China and Russia, it will be even clearer that the advocates of liberal (i.e. greedy) capitalism are not only complicit in its barbarism, but also in its stupidity."

"[On his letter of resignation from the PDS] Cremaschi could have sent it one, two, three years ago. I'm sorry he left, but he used to come to meetings and tell us how wonderful Rifondazione was..."

"(About Cesare Romiti) He was never a right-wing man. He was a man of the centre-left elite. The liberal turn in both the trade union leadership and the left had its architect in him. Prodi, D'Alema and company are disciples, not enemies, of Romiti. In the US and Great Britain, it was the classic right wing that brought about the liberal restoration, while in Italy it arose from within a section of the left, the so-called reformist or improvementist wing."

"With Franco Marini as secretary of the CISL, we were at opposite ends of the trade union spectrum. He was to the right of Carniti, while I challenged Trentin from the left. [...] Franco Marini represented that part of the CISL that had undergone radicalisation in the 1970s and, with the capitalist restoration of the 1980s, had gradually regained control of the organisation, progressively marginalising Carniti's followers and normalising the FIM, the metalworkers' union, in particular. He was a true Christian Democrat, not particularly left-wing within the party, indeed quite unpopular with De Mita and Martinazzoli's wing. But he was also the expression of a popular, mass idea of trade unionism and politics that has nothing to do with what is happening today. This is why, in today's politics, he could have ended up almost on the far left. Not because he had changed, he was always the same, but because the whole political spectrum had shifted to the right, towards business and the market."

"The reasons why I returned my Cgil membership card after 44 years are simple and brutal. I now feel completely alienated from what this organisation really is, and I am in no position to bring about change. [...] The bureaucratic body of the CGIL is more resigned than the workers faced with the blackmail of the market and businesses. How can it communicate courage if it does not possess it? Of course, there are many comrades who do not give up, who do their duty, who take risks, but the backbone of the organisation is going in another direction, dominated by the fear of losing its residual institutional role, and when there are opportunities to turn the tables, it looks the other way."

"In reality, nothing shows the criminal stupidity of capitalism like the Covid pandemic and the vaccine debacle. The decision not to close factories and all large businesses, and to call mandatory work without access to education, culture, entertainment and socialising in person a lockdown, was presented mainly by the far right as a health dictatorship. In reality, it is the dictatorship of big business and GDP over healthcare and health. Unlike China and all those countries that closed down seriously when and where necessary, Europe and the United States closed late and only halfway, thus causing a massacre. This has not even prevented an economic crisis, as evidenced by the most capitalist of Italy's regions, Lombardy, with its thirty, perhaps forty thousand deaths, while disaster looms for entire sectors. And now there is recovery in China, but not in Europe."

"If there is a moment when capitalist greed has shown not only its infamous immorality but also its inefficiency, it is precisely now."

"British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that his country's (relative) success with vaccines is the result of capitalist greed. Of course, he immediately corrected himself and apologised, just as he did a year ago when he said that his people had to prepare to lose their loved ones and accept it. In reality, now as then, Johnson brutally revealed what the ruling classes do without saying, hiding behind hypocritical statements to the contrary. Liberal (i.e. greedy) capitalism in Europe and the United States has already claimed more than 1.5 million lives, sacrificing all its older generations to business and profit in a generational and social eugenics that continues here with vaccines."

"Interviewer': You wrote on Twitter: ‘Rest in peace, Cesare Romiti. But if we had won in October 1980 instead of him and Agnelli, Italy would be a better country today.’ Would you like to expand on that? Cremaschi: Together with Romiti, I would like to remember the hundreds of workers who sadly committed suicide during the 1980s due to discrimination and redundancy. Our defeat and Romiti's victory represented a turning point for Italy to become what it is today: a liberal country where the market and businesses reign supreme, and where workers are constantly crushed in the name of profit. Romiti's success was a restoration, like that of Thatcher in Great Britain and Reagan in the United States."