Revolt in Italy: ‘62-’78

Italy’s “Creeping May”

Background - General

• Italy no stranger to revolutionary struggle:– Biennio Rosso (1919-1920)

• Post-war Italy ‘underdeveloped’

• PCI & Social compromise

• Post ’58 election victory for centre-left led to major disillusion

Background - General• Major characteristics of period:– ‘Hot Autumn’: mass strike wave ’68-’70 outside

parties and unions

– Overlapping university & factory radicalization: many ‘worker-students’ and revolutionary groups

– Transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism: End of the ‘mass worker’ in Europe

– Development of new form & content of struggles

Student movement

Workers movement

Fragment ‘La classe operaia va in paradiso’

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)Early ‘60s:

• Massive strikes in Turin region, enormous influx of southern migrants during ‘50s and early ‘60s

• Young, unused to factory discipline, unafraid of managers and unfamiliar with unions, ie.: new ‘social’ class composition

• Success of any large Turin strike depended on FIAT workforce (93,000 workers!) -> the typical ‘mass worker’.

– Recent record very poor until national walkout in ’62 by metalworkers (60,000 supportive FIAT workers).

– After two weeks -> unions made deal with bosses which angered the workers who marched to union HQ -> massive battles with police lasting 3 days throughout Turin.

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)Mid ’60s:

• Technological advances and economical boom -> increased mechanization, very high levels of employment peaking around ’68, decrease of real wages, intensified production

• Affecting mainly young unskilled workers, increased piece-work & influence among foremen, ie.: new ‘technical’ class composition

• Social/hierarchical structure of work reflected technical structure

• Unions took even less interest in new workers then in ‘core’ ones -> new struggles developed outside unions -> resulted in radically different consciousness

• Negative correlation between degree of unionization and militancy in struggles

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)• Opening up of universities -> many new young workers in a radicalizing

environment, they shared this perspective in the factories (worker-students).

• Typical was the slogan of some radical workers: ‘Vogliamo Tutto!’ compared with conservatism of union officials demanding reduction of living cost.

• Repression of student struggles coincided with repression of strikes -> struggles linked up objectively & subjectively

• Struggles started to address wider issues: factory discipline, working conditions, etc. Decreasing identification with workplace, willingness to destroy the factory itself, first signs of the ‘revolt against work’

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)• Dissatisfied elements in PCI tried to ‘start from

scratch’: Quaderni Rossi (‘61-’66) lay framework for ‘operaismo’

• Many revolutionary groups (including ‘partitinos’ such as PO, AO, LC) sprang from this ‘operaismo’ current.

• Large strikewave in the north (‘68) showed huge influence of partitinos & weak position of unions

• Notable influence of May ‘68, critique of PCF/PCI & unions

• Workers largely put faith in self-controlled base-organisations whilst many student organisations did not break with Leninism

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)

• Development of CUB at Pirelli in Milan -> autonomous & intersectoral. Followed by spread of CUBs throughout northern industrial triangle

• CUB was associated with ‘autoriduzione’ ie.: reducing productive output

• Escalation of strike wave -> linked demands: reduced wage differentials, improved working conditions, increased pay for southerners (who received 1/3rd less pay), supportive strikes launched in the South

• Unrest flared up at FIAT too: many wildcat strikes from CUBs. Unions tried to adopt strikes through one-day ‘token strike’ and march -> massive streetfighting, weeks of mass assemblies & strikes, unions bypassed

Workers movement (‘62 – ’68)• Summing up (‘62 – ’68):

• Main demands: greater production bonuses, revised piece rates with secondary demands for wider issues (discipline, conditions, etc.)

• Demands firmly within wage-relation, essentially reformist

• But: development of autonomous struggle, increasing militancy

• Decreasing identification with workplace, increasing refusal of negotiation, even first signs of ‘revolt against work’ & refusal of demands

• Development of ‘operaismo’

Workers movement (‘69 – ’70)End ‘60s: Hot Autumn:

• Advanced and combative workers’ movement had been formed from ‘62-’68 already

• Large strike-offensive hit FIAT in spring ’69 described as ‘continuous guerrilla’ of sabotage, rioting and strikes

• Housing demonstration in july ‘69 erupted in street battles and riots with residents and workers attacking police stations and municipal buildings, breaking away from trade union march

• Struggle radicalised: “The thing which brought us together was our discovery that work was the only enemy, the only sickness .. . the discovery that we all had the same needs and the same necessities.”

Workers movement (‘69 – ’70)• ‘Hiccup’ Strikes also broke out at Pirelli in Milan with 11k workers involved (blue-

collar, technicians, youth apprentices, etc.) leading to lock-out and eventual city-wide struggle with road-blocks joined by 1000s of students

Workers movement (‘69 – ’70)• Antagonism against ‘foremen’ increased, ‘red handkerchief squads’ were formed by workers which settled

scores

• Symbolized the struggle against factory discipline

• CUB, ‘worker-student groups’ and partitinos increased influence during hot autumn

• Mass meetings during working hours -> intersectorial. Open discussion, were decision making platforms (as opposed to the unions) used recallable delegates.

• Struggle spread through northern ‘triangle’ but unions also regained influence (‘by riding the tiger’) -> channeled towards national contract (40 hours work week, increased pay for apprentices, etc.)

Workers movement (‘69 – ’70)Recuperation in the workplaces:• Simultaneous rise of ‘workplace councils’ (NOT workers’ councils!) associated with unions -> ideology

of ‘self-management’ and ‘workplace democracy’ -> this was opposed by revolutionary groups for acting as stopper on struggle

• Interaction social movements & institutions led to institutionalization

• Situation was treated too much like ‘exception’, preperations were made for ‘retour a la normale’

• Recuperation through delegates (lists made up by unions or delegates drawn within unions)

• Delegates reduced to function of organizers, used only in moment of mobilization which was channeled through ritual, march and speech

• Delegates structure was official basis for reorganization of CGIL (recallable, bottom-up, etc.)

• Unions restructured this to mean factory orgs were set up by union officials and made them compatible with union structures & function!

Workers movement (‘69 – ’70)Recuperation in the ‘social factory’:• Unions regaining control -> started to spread their tentacles outside of factory: ie. schools,

neighborhoods, etc.

• Unions wished to extend influence but tried to cleanse movements of their autonomous character and confrontational character (autoreduction, clashes, etc.)

• Mass tentant’s & squatters’ movement was problem (ie. non-traditional ‘core workers’)

• Unions tried to set up organisations acting as lawyers and negotiators for individual tentants, separating them from a movement, opposed actual squatting

• Students & Workers of hot autumn were brought together in reading & educational groups -> which started to participate in educational schemes of the unions -> recuperating them by adjusting schemes towards capitalist utility -> intellectuals became new union princes

• This process not fully directed or institutionalization alone: also saw eclipse of the mass worker, rise in unemployment, something completed with the death of programmatism towards end of the ‘70s

Workers movement - Conclusion• Militant struggles of the ‘60s and early ‘70s saw great material gains for the Italian working

class but failed as a pre-revolutionary wave

• Introduced new forms of struggle, initially developed autonomous and collective decision making

• Even more important: cycle of struggles in this period saw 100.000s of workers breaking with the unions and reformism (if only for a certain period before being recuperated)

• Struggles also showed recuperation of autonomous, delegates-structures is perfectly possible

• Struggles also greatly influenced (and were influenced by) the later developments of the global economy with the shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism and the eventual decomposition of the ‘mass worker’.

• Struggles, though signifying ‘revolt against work’, eventually ran up against limit of acting as a class

Autonomia

Fragment ‘Lavorare con Lentezza’

Autonomia

Autonomia• ‘70s saw increasing restructuring (moving away from Fordism) as well as entering

of period of crisis. Unemployment rose, many youth were precarious & skilled in ‘art of getting by’

• New generation of high-school & university youth entered political scene -> signalled new movement

• Nascent counter-cultural movement developed through lens of political struggle, what developed into the American ‘hippies’ or the UK ‘punks’ were the ‘proletarian youth’ in Italy

• Inspired by legacy of post-’68 & hot autumn

• Life outside of ‘workplace’ became politicized, struggle to ‘reappropriate free time’ mixed with the nascent ‘revolt against work’ of the hot autumn

Autonomia

• Various groups dissolved, split or merged within what was to become ‘Autonomia’

• Crisis of ‘partitinos’ due to changing nature of struggle, feminist critique from within, etc.

• Autonomia (The area of autonomy) was more movement than ‘organisation’: consisted of various collectives, squats, groups, journals, campaigns, sabotage cells

• In Marxist terms identifiable with ‘party in the historical sense’. Influence of operaismo remained but criticized from within, (re)discovery of more anarchist, council communist & situationist ideas

AutonomiaRise of feminism:• Criticism directed at patriarchy, ‘reproductive sphere’,

authoritarianism, division of labor, gender roles, the nuclear family, sexuality, etc.

• Criticism directed as well to patriarchal reproduction inside ‘the movement’: ie. women assigned to cooking or secretarial duties, spousal violence,

• Wages for housework campaign: problematic demands but helped spread critique to reproductive sphere (housing, affective labor, transport, etc.)

• Very large campaigns in favor of abortion, divorce & against sexual violence emerged

• Hospitals occupied & ‘illegal’ abortions were carried out by sympathetic nurses & docters. (Abortions then still punishable by 5 years prison!)

• Some feminist cells took heavy action: torched brothels, beat back heroin pushers, shot rapists, etc.

Autonomia‘Take over the city’:• Influence of counter-cultural magazines (Erba Voglio, Re Nudo) with huge

readership base

• Radical critique of ‘personal politics’ of “generation of ‘68” mirroring situationist critique of ‘self-sacrificing militant’

• ‘Revolution of daily life’ had more appeal than ‘build the party, sell the paper’

• Mid ‘70s saw this youth organizing into ‘proletarian youth circles’ & collectives

• Autonomy went further then ‘autonomy from the unions & parties’ to self-managed spaces, events, festivals, etc.: cumulated in ‘take over the city’ campaign

• Spread of various rebellious practices: squatting, autoriduzione, free radio, mass confrontations with the state

Autonomia• Squatting meant formation of new social

relationships, different ways of living & struggling were experimented with

• 1000s of buildings squatted by 1976, many of them in neighborhoods which often went on rent-strikes

• Building occupations, ie.: free “peoples’ clinic”, emergence of social centres

• Fragment ‘mio fratello è figlio unico’

Autonomia

• Autoriduzione meant mass fare dodging, rent strikes, refusal to pay electric & gas bills, ‘proletarian shopping’, etc. seeking to reappropriate social wealth collectively

• Unions tried to latch on to movement by becoming bargaining partners in area of consumption

• Free (pirate) radio was new development: no censorship, direct contact with callers, self-managed

Autonomia• Main characteristic of language of ‘autonomia’ was irony. Mocking, subversion &

detournement of established political slogans or discourse (comparable to ‘memes’), example: ‘Indiani Metropoli’, pranks by Radio Alice

• Autonomia described as ‘tribe of moles’, talk of ‘two societies’, ie.: ‘silent riot’, Luciano Lama (CGIL) incident, refusal of workers’ identity, ‘diffuse guerrilla’

Autonomia• Peak: movement of ’77 (spread of autonomi & proletarian youth circles throughout

country, inside slums & universities)

• Mass student demonstration against new university reforms (involving 10.000s) on 11 march saw police kill Francesco Lo Russo (of LC) in Bologna

• Demonstrators shot back & massive riots erupted, police driven from streets of Bologna for 3 days, shops looted & goods redistributed, buildings occupied, etc.

Autonomia

• Struggles ran out of steam/reached their limits

• Fordist compromise (wages increasing with production in wake of WWII) ran up against limit of rate of profit, period of restructuring masked as ‘neoliberalism’, decomposition/atomization of class, outsourcing, financialization, etc.

• Movement splintered: retreat into personal lives, academy, reformism, addiction or towards vanguardist armed groups (Brigatte Rosse, Prima Linea, etc.)