The Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici supports all initiatives in defence of the public ownership of water. Our members participated in the referendum campaign promoted by the Forum Acqua Bene Comune which gathered 1,400,000 signatures thanks to the dedication of thousands of ordinary citizens.

We are aware that the management of collective resources and goods by publicly-run bodies generally produces bad management of resources, as a result of the inevitable ignorance on the part of the state bureaucratic apparatus of the needs and wishes of local communities. We are also aware that this translates into social difficulties, especially for the poorer levels of the population.

However, we are aware too that the management of collective resources by free-market capitalism only produces even worse conditions in the material life of the working class and the poorest elements of society, since these resources then become simply a way to create profit for capitalist businesses.

Private management turns inalienable collective resources such as water into just another commodity to be traded in the capitalist market, and therefore subject to the laws of profit and to the speculative caprices of that market, which forces private competitors to keep the cost-benefit ratio as low as possible. This translates into dearer, lower-quality services for citizens.

For these reasons, members of the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici will be participating in the various initiatives by the national forum in defence of public water in their local areas on 4th December, in the knowledge that autonomous self-management of vital resources throughout the territory, by means of direct control by local bodies of producers, is not only possible but necessary if we do not wish to see the environment in which we live definitively and irreversibly ruined by the greed for profit of capitalist oligarchies, or left to deteriorate under state bureaucratism.

National Secretariat

