2. 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
3. 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
7. 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.
8. 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
9. 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’
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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’
13. 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.”
14. 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
15. 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.)
16. 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!
17. 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
18. 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
21. 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
22. 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
23. Autonomia
Rise 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.
24. 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
25. 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’
26. 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
27. 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’
28. 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.
29. 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.)
