The FAI was founded in Carrara in 1945 both by comrades who had gone through experience such as occupation of factories, antifascist struggle, exile, imprisonment, internment, Spanish Revolution and by younger activists who had grown up with the partisan Resistance where the rising generation met the old one.

Nowadays there are fewer members of FAI than there were in 1945, nevertheless it is one of the most important reality of the Italian anarchism : individuals, groups, local federations are present both in large towns and in small villages. Moreover, in the last few years we have registered a slow but constant increase of FAI supporters: a clear sign of the vitality of a community which has been able to assert itself as a reference point to those who recognise themselves in a social and promoter anarchism : an anarchism which cares about for coherence between means and issues and which aims at building a future society through the struggles of oppressed and exploited peoples.

The FAI is an organisation of synthesis and in the recent congress in Spezzano Albanese it has confirmed the effectiveness of such an organising pattern in order "to allow the comrades to debate a platform where the single opinion of the supporters can be heard and respected. The decisions are binding to those who accept them, as is usual in the anarchic method".

For this reason the FAI sets itself as "a true living organisation without a centre which issues arrangements to surrounding areas, an organisation meant as a collective laboratory where each structure and individual acts as a centre and as a surrounding area at the same time with the aim to analyse, work out, communicate, build and practise the revolutionary anarchical program all together. The purpose is to start building a new society here and now, that is to say from inside the trade-union, cultural, alternative. self-organised, self-managed ranks, a new society founded on the goals of participation that social anarchism will be able to enact in present-day society."

In a political and social framework, certainly not in favour of an anarchical perspective, the action of federate anarchists aims at becoming more and more urgent and incisive, straining towards a radical change of society and constant presence in social struggle.

In these years, every time the anarchists have imposed an active presence, they have got some positive even if limited results. The anarchist contribution to the birth and the growth of the base trade unionism has been remarkable. The commitment to self-management has developed stronger and more lasting networks amongst those who are developing anarchical experiences outside the logic of capitalism and government, in different fields, in order to contrast the neo-social-democratic trends. Openly opposing local institutions, the territorial extra-institutional organisations of co-operation have proved it is possible to establish associations of citizens able to oppose environmental decay, to protect public hea1th, to promote social solidarity. Anti-clerica1 activity is still evident thanks to the anarchists in an age when a11 party factions attribute moral supremacy to the Church. Anarchists have always struggled coherently against military service, war and military installations.

The anarchist magazine "Umanita Nova" has become a reference mark for those who, even if they don't strictly refer to anarchism, still possess anarchical sensibility. It has irreplaceable linking function inside the anarchical movement and is an important instrument to publicise our ideas.