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ITALY 1911-1921:
THE RED YEARS and the Origins of Italian Communism Gwyn Williams begins: "I have written this book in the hope that it will be of service to the British working-class and marxist movements. " Such a modest but bold hope the reader to expect something rather encourages different from the usual piece of research, laboriously detailed and cautiously argued, providing mainly food for further pieces of research. You expect a book that not only tells the story vividly, but also expains it, allowing you to use it. Williams book does neither of these. The Italian Communist Party developed out of the impact of the Russian Revolution on a working class "In September 1920 seething with revolutionary energy.
the working class of Italy had, in effect, gained control of he state, of society, of factories, plants and enterprises.. n essence the working class had already conquered or virtually conquered, but there was no erganization capable of definitively consolidating this victory and so the working class found itself hurled back", Trotsky told the 4th Congress of the Communist International. The organization-the Communist Party-grew out of that defeat, but too late-already the star of fascism was The story is set mainly in Turin. Turin in the early 20th century was not only Italy's industrial centre but the home of some of the most advanced and fast-growing Europe-cars, typewriters, chemicals, rubber, electricity. Massive enterprises owned by the families that still dominate Italian capitalism-Agnelli (Fiat), Olivetti etc-and "from birth enmeshed in banks and insurance consortia, finance capital, and the state" created a proletarian city. In 1918, with the working population doubled since 1914, 150,000 out of 185,587 wage earners were factory workers, most of them skilled in a city of half a million. Meanwhile in parts of the South there was 90% illiteracy and the people "locked into the traditional and immobile society of the vast estates, the latifundia, with their big villages fúll of wretched tenants and clusters of landless labourers trapped in under-employment and insecurity. The Socialist Party (PSI) had its headquarters not in Turin but in Milan, the commercial and financial capital where the working class was more fragmented. With the help of Gramsei's often blistering attacks on the Party, Williams conveys a clear picture of the PSI. It emerged, during the slump and repression of the 1890's out of struggles of industrial and rural workers, mainly in the North. Its membership, around 1914, was 70% working class but the leadership was overwhelmingly middle class. This contradiction is reflected in the political history of the Party. By 1914 the collaborationist leadership of Turati and Treves had been renlaced by the "maximalists" who, Marxist in words, reformist in action, were to betray the revolutionary movements of April and September 1920. Gramsci rightly accused the PSI of joining Zimmerwald and the Third International without understanding what it was doing. Proletarian Order. Antonio Gramisci, Factory Councils By Gwyn A Williams Pluto Press (paperback f2.70) LAMS:
PROLETARIAN ORDER Antonio Gramscl Factory Councils and the Origins of Communism in Italy 1911-1924 The bulk of the book is taken up with the factory council movement that began in Turin in the summer of 1919 and led the April and September actions.
The councils had almost the effects on Italian communism of the Paris Commune on Marx and Engels.
Directly stimulated by Gramsci and his journal L'Ordine Nuovo the old internal commissions (shop stewards' committees) were transformed into miniature soviets, mobilising the training unorganised, educating and the workers towards the control of production and from there society. Engineering factories in Turin began it, but within a few months there were councils in most large plants in the area and most of the North was seizing the idea. By April 1920 the employers had had enough. At the first meeting of the reorganised Italian CBI (Confindustria), Olivetti attacked 'dual power' and showed himself fully aware of the revolutionary potential uf the factory councils. A lock-out of Turin engineering workers followed. The whole of the Turin working class came out on strike in response: "For 11 days the life of the city and province remained completely paralysed....There were absolutely no blacklegs" wrote Mario Montagnana, an engineering worker. At its height, 500,000 workers were out, 4 million people involved. Sympathy action was taken in Florence, Pisa, Genoa, etc. And while the Milan Avanti, the PSI newspaper, refused to print the Turin strike bulletin, Gramsci and the "ordinovisti" took the lead, built links with the rural workers and through their control of the Turin section of the PSI and of the trades council strove to extend the strike and get the PSI to call workshop commissars and the factory councils, the interest not only of a local category but of the whole communist proletariat of Italy." Only too aware of the revolutionary implications of a general strike, the PSI's national council passed a resolution which, rich in maximalist rhetoric, called for more time communist principle and prepare a "proletarian arme::
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force . The strike ended not in total defeat but with a weakening of the council movement: the trade union confederation (CGL)-to the right of the PSI,and fiercely hostile to the councils—negotiated the settlement which reduced the councils to shadow organisations.
The occupation of the factories in September can be seen as a more desperate effort, in which the Turin workers showed a more revolutionary consciousness but were more isolated and more decisively defeated by reformism. A second lock-out by the engineering bosses over a 40% wage increase sparked off immediate occupations (work-ins), this time following the example of Milan. "Between 1st and 4th September, the occupations rolled forward through Italy, not only in the industrial heartland around Milan, Turin and Genoa, but in Rome, Florence, Naples, Palermo, in a forest of red black flags and a fanfare of workers' bands" Elsewhere it was mostly sydicalists who led the occupations but in Turin the factory councils rose up and "co-ordinated through the "camera' (trades council) committees and directed by the electionist communists (Togliatti) PSI section were moving rapidly towards Gramsci's 'urban soviet' in an atmosphere of high communist purpose." At Fiat Centro the council created special commissariats to handle defence, transport and raw materials; it appointed and armed red guards. Arms were being manufactured in almost every engineering factory. Other industries followed suit and from the South came news of takeovers of estates by peasants.
Industrialists and the press screamed in hysterical panic especially when the PSl and CGL leaders resolved if the dispute was not settled, to direct the struggle towards "collective management and the socialization of the means of production. " Meanwhile Giolitti (the prime minister) —like DeGaulle in May 1968—sat tight. When Agnelli demanded that troops be sent in, Giolitti "blandly offered to bombard Fiat with artillery and a spavined Agnelli collapsed" . The Government would not move, biding its time, the bosses were impotent, the reformists were left to wreck the movement.
"You don't make a revolution by first calling a convention to decide whether there is going to be a revolution or not," said a delegate at the meeting which did precisely that. But beforehand, the CL and PSI leaders had met again, in Milan on 10th September; the CGL handed over all responsibility for the revolution to the socialists and submitted their resignations. As the Comintern was later told, "When the comrades who led the CGL submitted their resignations, the party could neither replace them nor hope to replace them" '. 'We could not accept so grave responsibility, said Gennari to the socialist congress" — "Because you were afraid" cried a voice. The national council of the CGL then voted for an economic struggle. A victory over the bosses - wage increases, paid holidays, and a workers' participation scheme blessed by Giolitti. In Turin the occupations continued till more concessions were squeezed out of the bosses. Agnelli was so demoralised that he offered to
into a workers' co-operative. But the revolutionary movement was defeated, the militants isolated, the reformist strengthened. The bosses poured money into the fascist gangs whose offensive boomed
from November, kicking out socialist town councils, wrecking union buildings, murdering militants. Unemployment soared. In January 1921 the long-awaited split between Communists and reformists took place at the PSI's congress, but the new Communist Party of Italy took only 40,000, leaving the retormists with a large majority, while nearly half the members of the "old PSJ failed to renew their membership of either party in 1921" Williams does not draw the conclusion but it is inescapable: the failure to translate the occupations into a national movement, to challenge the state, to defeat the bosses politically as well as economically paved the way for Mussolini.
How then does"Proletarian Order" fail? First—this is a warning— it is very difficult to read. Williams' style is dry, abstract and academic, sometimes over-rich and occasionally incomprehensible. But this style comes out of the approach and method of the book. Williams has attempted, in only 308, pages, to describe the working class movement of the "red two years" . 1919—1920, to analyse Gramsci's writings and to chart the formation of the Communist Party. But far too much of the book is spent on the development of Gramsci's thought, with only the odd glance at what the working class was doing. A book that can only be of use to the British labour movement should convey precisely the development of the conditions, the mood, level of conciousness of the workers, so that the movements they started, the ideas they took up can be understood in their proper context. All sorts of questions are unanswered-How did the factory councils operate in particular factories? What exactly was the relationship between the intellectuals of L'Ordine Nuovo and workers? How did the communists intervene from day to day, politically, in the Occupation? How did the militants of the Occupation respond to the new CP? The organisation of the book also reflects an empirical, academic, non-Marxist approach. Every new development is dealt with first through Gramsci's articles then polemics and developments in the PSI and finally he deals with the economic situation and the workers' actions. Thus we are told that unemployment rose sixfold that the fascist gangs were becoming a mass movement, that the socialists made huge gains in the November elections after a detailed account of preparations within the PSI congress at which the Communists split. Economic and, even more important, international developments are never more than sketchy.
If you use the index carefully a lot of information and some good analyses of the labour movement in Italy then can be gleaned, but as a whole it is disappointing. On the eve of the elections in Italy when Italy's present-day reformists, the CP may be forced into office if not power, it is more important than ever for us to gain an understanding of the revolutionary opportunity of the red two years and why it was defeated. Williams' remark, "the precise temper of the insurrectionary masses remains elusive..." avoids the whole issue.
Also published by Pluto Press: The occupation Factories: Italy 1920 by Paolo Spriano (£2.00)
Catherine Burns