Before we examine the configuration of the draft bill presented by Hon. Giolitti to the Chamber of Deputies, or the possibilities which it opens up, it is essential to establish the viewpoint from which the communists approach discussion of the problem.

For the communists, tackling the problem of control means tackling the greatest problem of the present historical period; it means tackling the problem of workers’ power over the means of production, and hence that of conquering state power. From this point of view, the presentation of a draft bill, its approval, and its execution within the framework of the bourgeois state, are events of secondary importance. Workers’ power has, and can only have, its raison d´être and its source within the working class itself; in the political capacity of the working class; in the real power that the working class possesses, as an indispensable and irreplaceable factor of production and as an organization of political and military force. Any law in this respect which emanates from bourgeois power has just one significance and just one value: it means that in reality, and not just in words, the terrain of the class struggle has changed. And insofar as the bourgeoisie is compelled to make concessions and create new juridical institutions on the new terrain, it has the real value of demonstrating an organic weakness of the ruling class.

To admit that entrepreneurial power in industry can be subjected to limitations, and that industrial autocracy can become ‘democracy’ even of a formal kind, means to admit that the bourgeoisie has now effectively fallen from its historical position as the leading class and is effectively incapable of guaranteeing the popular masses their conditions of existence and development. In order to shed at least a part of its responsibilities and to create an alibi for itself, the bourgeoisie allows itself to be ‘con- trolled’ and pretends to let itself be placed under supervision. It would certainly be very useful, for the purposes of bourgeois self-preservation, if a guarantor like the proletariat were to take upon itself to testify before the great mass of the population that nobody should be held responsible for the present economic ruin, but that everyone’s duty is to suffer patiently and work tenaciously, while waiting for the present cracks to be repaired and for a new edifice to be built upon the present ruins.

The field of control is thus the field upon which bourgeoisie and proletariat struggle for class leadership over the great mass of the population. The field of control is thus the basis upon which the working class, when it has won the trust and consent of the great mass of the population, can construct its state, organize its governmental institutions with the participation of all the op- pressed and exploited classes, and initiate the positive work of organizing the new economic and social system. Through the fight for control – which does not take place in Parliament, but is a revolutionary mass struggle and a propaganda and organizational activity of the historic party of the working class, the Communist Party – the working class must acquire, both spiritually and as an organization, awareness of its autonomy and historic personality. This is why the first phase of the struggle will present itself as the fight for a specific form of organization. This form of organization can only be the Factory Council, and the nationally centralized system of Factory Councils. The outcome of the struggle must be the constitution of a National Council of the working class, to be elected at all levels – from the Factory Councils to the City Councils and the National Council – by methods and according to a procedure determined by the working class itself, and not by the national Parliament or by bourgeois power. This struggle must be waged in such a way as to show the great mass of the population that all the existential problems of the present historical period– the problems of bread, housing, light, clothes – can be resolved only when all economic power, and hence all political power, has passed into the hands of the working class. In other words, it must be waged in such a way as to organize all the popular forces in revolt against the capitalist regime around the working class, so that the latter really becomes the leading class and guides all the productive forces to emancipate themselves by realizing the communist programme. This struggle must equip the working class to select the most able and energetic elements from its own ranks and make them into its new industrial leaders, its new guides in the work of economic reconstruction.

From this point of view, the draft bill presented to the Chamber of Deputies by Hon. Giolitti represents merely a means for agitation and propaganda. It must be studied by the communists in this light; for them, not only is it not a final goal, it is not even a point of departure or a launching-pad. 

During the month of September, 1920, a widespread occupation of Italian factories by their workforces took place, which originated in the auto factories, steel mills and machine tool plants of the metal sector but spread out into many other industries — cotton mills and hosiery firms, lignite mines, tire factories, breweries and distilleries, and steamships and warehouses in the port towns. But this was not a sit-down strike; the workers continued production with their own in-plant organization. And railway workers, in open defiance of the management of the state-owned railways, shunted freight cars between the factories to enable production to continue. At its height about 600,000 workers were involved.

This movement blew up out of a conventional trade union struggle over wages. But the wage demands were only the official occasion for the fight; the real aspirations and desires that motivated the workers involved in this struggle go much deeper.(1)

Amongst the bulk of the Italian populace at the end of World War I, whether workers in factories in the big northern cities, wage laborers on commercial farms in the northern valleys, or peasant farmers in the southern part of the country, there was a moof ancy, that maybe now was the time when there would be a qualitative improvement in their lives, after the upheavals and deprivation of the war years.

However, a growing aspiration for workers control, and for social transformation in an anti-capitalist direction, ran head on into the growing bureaucratization of official Italian trade-unionism.

The main trade union federation in Italy was the General Confederation of Labor (CGL), officially aligned with the Italian Socialist Party(2). Ludovico D'Aragona, and other leaders of the CGL, looked to the British Labor Party as their model, where a professional trade union and parliamentary leadership presided over gradual reforms and an accepted institutional existence within the prevailing capitalist society.

Unlike the United States, where unionism did not become entrenched in the big industrial enterprises until the '30s, in Italy the unions affiliated to the CGL had already achieved contracts with major companies like Pirelli and Fiat before World War I. A professional union hierarchy had emerged, as permanent "representatives" of workers in regular bargaining with employers.

The process of union bureaucratization, and an increasing gap between the leadership and the rank-and-file, was accelerated by the First World War. During the war Italian industry was subjected to a kind of industrial feudalism with workers tied to their jobs under threat of imprisonment.

A system of joint labor/management grievance committees were imposed by the government — essentially a system of compulsory arbitration to settle disputes over wages and safety. In order to not be completely frozen out, the union officials participated on these committees. But the unions were unable to defend their members in cases of management discipline such as firings.

The war government of Vittorio Orlando also set up a high-level joint labor/management commission to draft proposals for reconstruction of Italy after the war. Participation of CGL leaders — such as Bruno Buozzi, head of the Italian Federation of Metalurgical Workers (FIOM) — on this commission amounted to collaboration with the plans and goals of the business class.

This increasing collaboration with the war government generated distrust among the rank and file. Even before the war-time austerity bore down on working people, participation in the war was not popular in the working class communities of northern Italy. Opposition to the war was especially intense in the big industrial city of Turin, center of Italy's auto industry. In reaction to Italy's entry into the world war in 1915, there was a two-day general strike against the war on May 17-18, which led to prolonged and bloody clashes with the police.

When the Socialist Party's parliamentary representatives voted against the war budget in 1915, their action reflected this deep-seated anti-war feeling among their working class constituency.

But the collaboration of the labor leadership with the war government and the institutions of wartime labor discipline had the effect of sowing doubts about that leadership in the minds of many workers.

One of the first indications of the widening gap between leaders and the rank and file in the CGL unions was the opposition of rank and file activists to the national FIOM contract in March of 1919. In the months immediately after the war, the industrial firms were willing to grant concessions to labor organizations in order to avoid disruption of their efforts to quickly convert from production of arms to civilian production. This situation led to a massive strike wave as workers took advantage of this situation.

The employers were particularly willing to grant concessions on pay and hours in exchange for greater control over the labor process. This is precisely what the FIOM officials agreed to, reflecting the bureaucratization of the FIOM, whose top officials did not have to work under the conditions of the contracts. In exchange for a wage increase and the eight-hour day, restrictions were imposed on rapid strike action and the in-plant organizations of the workers were not permitted to be active during working hours. The workers also had to work a full day on Saturdays instead of half-days as before. At the next FIOM congress this contract faced blistering criticism from the Turin delegates.

The growing conflict between the rank and file and the institutional leaders of the Italian labor movement led to the emergence of new organizations, of a more grassroots character. This took two main forms: (1) The movement for shop stewards' councils, independent of the established trade union hierarchy, built up by the rank and file activists of the CGL unions, mainly in Turin; and (2) the emergence and growth of a dissident union, the Unione Sindacale Italiana (Italian Syndicalist Union — USI).

The USI had originated from an anarchist-inspired rank and file opposition within the CGL unions. With the growth of professional trade union hierarchies and an increasing orientation of official trade unionism to electoral politics, the reaction of the anarchists was the development of dissident rank-and-file groups — called "committees for direct action," beginning around 1908.

By the time of the Modena Congress of Direct Action Committees in 1912, there were 90,000 participants in these committees. It was decided at that congress that the movement for a more militant, non-bureaucratic workers movement had sufficient mass support to launch a new labor organization, and thus the USI was born. By 1914 the USI had grown to 150,000 members.

The USI had low dues and no hierarchical, professional trade union leadership like the CGL; it was based on horizontal links between militant associations of workers in the various workplaces. The main focus was the unity of the local unions from the different sectors in particular communities but the USI did have a major national federation in the metal sector, which grew to 30,000 members in 1920.

USI's method of organization was mobilization of workers around direct action, and it believed that a social transformation could be achieved through "an expropriating general strike" - essentially a generalized "active strike" in which workers continue production under their own control. The USI was the Italian counterpart of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in this country.(3)

As the war was coming to an end the experience of the British shop stewards' movement was beginning to register in Turin, through reports in the local leftwing press. Though the British shop stewards' movement provided the original model for the development of new shop organization in Turin, the concepts were modified by workers to meet the needs of the Italian situation. A campaign for a new form of shop organization developed through countless smallgroup discussions, in local "socialist circles", workers' education centers, and in workplaces.

A group of Socialist Party activists, including Palmiro Togliatti, Antonio Gramsci(4), and Umberto Terracini, set up a magazine, L'Ordine Nuovo, to popularize ideas of grassroots shop organization and to serve as a forum for workers to discuss what form such organization should take to meet the needs of their situation. Though the magazine's founders were active in the Socialist Party, anarchists also participated; the magazine was independent, it had an open-ended, non-party character. This made the magazine well-suited to a movement dedicated to developing a heightened unity in the workforce. (Gramsci's attitude towards anarcho-syndicalism is discussed below.)

To understand the new type of organization that was evolved, it is necessary to consider the problems that rank-and-file activists were trying to solve:

• Lack of Rank-and-File Participation. The typical in-plant organization existing at that time in the FIOM, and other CGL unions as well, was the "internal commission" (equivalent to a shop committee in this country). In the early union contracts these were ad hoc committees set up to deal with grievances but eventually they became permanent bodies for representing the local plant workforce in dealing with management. The Turin rank-and-file activists criticized the existing internal commissions as essentially a union oligarchy, making decisions without the participation of the mass of workers.
• Divisions between Union Members and Non-members. Though the unions had been entrenched in contract bargaining with employers for some time, union membership was always voluntary - at times the union membership were even a minority who had to mobilize the rest of the workforce as struggles emerged. A problem that confronted the workplace activists was that of involving the non-union workers in a developing unity of the workforce. This was an important difference from the situation confronted by the British shop stewards' movement, where British craft unions typically had closed shop contracts.
• Divisions by Craft and Ideology. The voluntary nature of union membership had also facilitated the rise of dissident unions, such as the USI(5), often reflecting ideological divisions among workers. Other divisions in the workforce in the factories in Turin were that between the blue collar workers and white collar workers, and between the machine operators, who typically belonged to the FIOM, and the skilled technicians, who had their own craft union. It was perceived that the unity of the workforce could best be achieved by a form of organization that was independent of any of the existing trade unions.

The first of the new shop stewards' organizations was developed at a Fiat plant at the end of August, 1919, and quickly spread to to other plants in Turin throughout September and October. The new organizations were built initially without any authorization from the CGL unions.

The new organization was directly based in the group of people who work together in a particular workshop or department. Typically there would be a shop steward elected for each group of 15 or 20 or so people. The elections of the shop stewards took place right in the workplace, during working hours. The shop steward was expected to reflect the will of his co-workers who had elected him, and was subject to immediate recall if his co-workers so desired. The assembly of all the shop stewards in a given plant then elected the "internal commission" for that facility. But this new internal commission was now directly, constantly responsible to the body of shop stewards, which was called the "factory council."

On October 20th, an assembly of all the shop stewards from nearly 20 plants in the auto and metal-working sector set up a "Study Committee for Factory Councils" to develop a specific program that would embody the conclusions that the movement had been working towards. The movement was now driving towards re-organization of the local union organization of FIOM in Turin and this was discussed at another assembly of shop stewards from over 30 plants, representing 50,000 workers, which took place on October 31st. This assembly adopted a program prepared by the "Study Committee," which was the outgrowth of the countless discussions amongst the workforce(6). The program called for re-election of shop stewards every six months, and required them to "hold frequent referenda on social and technical questions and to call frequent meetings to..." consult with the people who elected them before making decisions.

Throughout 1919 the USI had been calling for a "revolutionary united front" between the workers of the CGL, USI and the independent rail and maritime transport unions. The USI envisioned a unity that could overcome the major ideological division within the Italian working class, that is, the division between supporters of the Socialist Party and those sympathetic to the anarchists(7). The shop stewards' program responded positively to this initiative, clearly giving USI members equal right to be elected as shop stewards alongside members of the FIOM. The Turin movement thus interpreted the idea of a "united front" in terms of the unity of the workforce comprised in the shop councils.

At an assembly on Oct. 31st, the the shop stewards resolved on a program for re-structuring the local union, which carried the day despite the vehement objections of the union officials. Control of the local FIOM organization now passed to the assembly of all the metal industry shop stewards in Turin who acquired the right to elect the local union executive. Although the Socialist Party was the political organization with the predominant support among FIOM members, Maurizio Garino, an anarcho-syndicalist who was a member of the Turin Libertarian Group, was elected the new secretary of the Turin section of FIOM because of his staunch support for the new movement for rank-and-file workers' democracy.

The new movement in Turin did not view the shop councils as merely a means of reforming the union movement, however. The Shop Stewards Program, adopted on Oct. 31st, stated that their purpose was "to set in train in Italy a practical exercise in the realization of communist society."

The shop councils were seen as both the vehicle of social transformation as well as the basic units of control by working people in a future socialized economy precisely because they united the whole workforce in a highly democratic manner. The Shop Stewards Program saw the councils as having "the potential objective of preparing men, organizations and ideas, in a continuous pre-revolutionary control operation, so that they are ready to replace employer authority in the enterprise and impose a new discipline on social life."(8)

Because of the widespread rank and file distrust of the union officials, and the need to develop unity with workers who were not members of the CGL unions, the Turin workplace activists insisted upon the independence of the shop councils from the CGL trade unions. Nonetheless, they did not reject the CGL unions entirely.

Instead, the Shop Stewards Program took the position that the trade unions and the councils had different functions. The trade unions had been built up in struggles with the employers and represented certain gains that had been made in such areas as wages and hours within the present system. The trade unions are essentially workers' collective marketing organizations within a society where workers must sell their ability to work. The unions, therefore, need to be supported until such time that the workforce is in a position to go beyond the existing compromises with the employers and completely replace the competitive, private enterprise economy.

However, the councils need to be independent of the unions because the unions, as shown by their bureaucratic structures, are committed to maintaining the existing compromises with the employers. The bureaucratic trade unions, as Antonio Gramsci put it, "tend to universalize and perpetuate [the] legality" codified in these compromises. The shop councils, precisely because they are not a professional bureaucracy external to the workers themselves, "tends to annihilate [this legality] at any moment, tends continuously to lead towards greater workers industrial power...tends to universalize every rebellion."(9)

Although the Turin section of the Socialist Party was playing a major role in the new shop council movement, in cooperation with anarcho-syndicalists such as the Turin Libertarian Group, the main activists and leaders of the Socialist Party outside of Turin were solidly opposed to the new movement for two reasons:

• They saw this movement as undermining the existing trade union structures and leaders who they regarded as an essential basis of their party's political fortunes.
• They were opposed to any interpretation of workers power in society in terms of mass organizations in workplaces instead of the direct rule of the Socialist Party.

Giacinto Serrati, the most influential leader of the Socialist Party, held that the rule of the working class was to consist of the rule of the Socialist Party(10). The Turin socialists who were active in the shop council movement saw the councils, not the party, as the future organizations through which the working class could exercise power in society. Though most of them saw an important role for the Socialist Party in achieving socialism, they did not believe that the Socialist Party could embody working class rule because, as a voluntary political association based on a particular ideology, it was not sufficiently all-embracing and was not rooted in the natural communities of workers that develop in the production process.

The rise of the shop council movement reflected rank and file dissatisfaction with the existing trade unions and so the CGL was under pressure to respond in some way, especially given the voluntary nature of union membership and the competition from the rapidly growing dissident union movement organized in the USI.

The CGL unions responded with proposals for reforms of the internal commission, but with the vote for shop stewards limited to only CGL union members. One proposal would have one shop steward for every 300 or 400 union members - which would make the shop stewards less responsive to their constituents. The new internal commissions would not embody a unity with non-CGL workers, such as USI groups, and would be under the control of the CGL union.

The proposals for union-controlled councils were preferred by the bulk of the Socialist Party and CGL union activists outside of Turin and was thus able to predominate within the CGL unions in the rest of the country. The result was to entrench the division in the working class between those sympathetic to the Socialist Party and those more inclined to a libertarian approach, as embodied in the USI movement.

The Russian revolution had only just occurred and the Bolsheviks had tremendous prestige within the Italian socialist movement at this time. Indeed, the Italian Socialist Party had voted to affiliate to the Communist International in March of 1919. Serrati, and the other Socialist Party leaders, were able to bring the prestige of the Soviet Communist leadership to bear against the Turin council movement and the developing movement for workers control of industry.

Nicolai Ljubarsky, the representative of the Communist International in Italy, pointed out that the factory committees that had arisen in the Russian revolution in 1917 were the Russian counterpart of the Turin councils and these committees had eventually been subordinated to the trade unions in Russia and had not become an organ of workers management of industry or a basis of political rule of the working class(11). In effect, the prestige of the Russian Communists was being used to bolster the position of the Italian trade union bureaucracy.

Nonetheless, on December 14-15, at a meeting of the Turin area Labor Chamber (Camera del Lavoro) - the official Turin-area central labor council - the proponents of the shop council system were able to win endorsement of the council program for the whole Turin labor movement. By the time of the first re-election of shop stewards in February of 1920, it was estimated that over 150,000 workers in the Turin area were organized in the new council system.(12)

The Turin council movement evoked an immediate and positive response from the libertarian wing of the labor movement. I've already pointed out the involvement of anarcho- syndicalists in Turin, such as the Turin Libertarian Group, within the shop council movement. In early 1920 the dissident libertarian union, the USI, held its own congress at Parma and the Turin council program was the major topic. Enea Matta, a Turin socialist active on the "Study Committee for Factory Councils," which had written up the draft Shop Stewards Program, was a guest speaker.

Alibrando Giovanetti, the secretary of the USI metal workers union, urged support for the Turin councils because they represented anti-bureaucratic direct action, aimed at the control of industry, and could be the cells of revolutionary industrial unions, a potential "One Big Union" of the workforce.

Veteran anarchist activist Errico Malatesta expressed reservations but also supported the councils as a form of direct worker activity that was guaranteed to generalize rebelliousness among the workforce. The USI adopted the new shop council organization as its own and the anarchist daily Umanita Nova and Guerra di Classe, the paper of the USI, soon became as fervent in beating the drum for the shop councils as L'Ordine Nuovo and the Turin socialists.(13)

The explosive growth of the USI outside of Turin reflected the inability of the CGL unions to embody the militancy and aspirations for workers control that were increasingly widespread among workers in northern Italy. The USI grew from 300,000 members in 1919 to a peak of 800,000 members by the time of the occupation of the factories in Sept. of 1920.

The anarcho-syndicalists in Turin were not as motivated to build a separate USI organization in Turin because of their support for the shop council movement, despite its development within the ambit of the CGL unions. The supported the shop council movement for several reasons:

• It embodied the sort of grassroots, democratic organization and mass participation that they believed in;
• It was openly friendly to the libertarian wing of the labor movement and aimed at developing a democratic united front of rank and file workers despite the predominance of Socialist Party activists; and
• It was a movement that had adopted the same goal as the anarcho-syndicalists, that is, workers self-management of industry as part of an integral socialization of the economy.

As I mentioned earlier, the March, 1919, national contract of FIOM had provided that the internal commissions were banned from the shopfloor, restricted to non-working hours. This means that the activities of the shop stewards' movement in Turin — such as stopping work to hold shop steward elections - were in violation of the contract. The movement was essentially being maintained through mass insubordination.

The showdown with the employers arrived in April, when a general assembly of shop stewards at Fiat called for sit-in strikes to protest the dismissal of several shop stewards. In response the employers declared a lockout, which affected 80,000 workers. The government of Francesco Nitti supported the lockout with a mass show of force, as troops occupied the factories. When the shop stewards movement decided to surrender on the immediate issues in dispute after two weeks on strike, the employers responded with a demand that the shop stewards councils be limited to non-working hours, in accordance with the FIOM national contract.

This would have gutted the shop councils and the Turin labor movement responded with a massive general strike in defense of the shop councils. The strike spread throughout the region of Piedmont and involved 500,000 workers. The streetcars, railways, public services and many commercial establishments were shut down in addition to the entire manufacturing industry of the region.

The farm workers in the countryside around Turin were also involved in a struggle over the defense of their labor exchanges and the Turin movement adopted these organizations as part of the same movement, spreading the strike movement to agriculture.

The Turin movement then sent delegates to a meeting of the National Council of the Socialist Party in order to push for extending the general strike throughout the country. However, the Socialist Party and CGL union leaders were not particularly enthusiastic about the Turin council movement and refused to offer any support.

The main topic on the agenda of this meeting was the Socialist Party's efforts to work out a concept of "workers' councils" or "soviets," in order to respond to the popularity of these ideas, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. The scheme discussed by the party envisaged "soviets" — local revolutionary governing bodies — based, not on industrial or workplace groupings, but on neighborhood or geographic districts. The whole project was to be run by committees of the Socialist Party who would create these "councils."(14) These ideas remained entirely academic, however, as no effort was ever made by the PSI to carry this out.

Commenting bitterly on this performance of the party leaders, Antonio Gramsci said: "They went on chattering about soviets and councils while in Piedmont and Turin half a million workers starved to defend the councils that already exist."

With the opposition of the CGL and Socialist Party leaders, the only support to the Turin general strike came from unions that were mainly under anarcho-syndicalist influence, such as the independent railway and the maritime workers unions. The railway workers in Pisa and Florence refused to transport troops who were being sent to Turin. There were strikes all around Genoa, among dock workers and in workplaces where the USI was a major influence.

Eventually the CGL leadership settled the strike on terms that accepted the employers' main demand for limiting the shop stewards' councils to non-working hours. Though the councils were now much reduced in activity and shopfloor presence, they would yet see a resurgence of their position during the September factory occupations.

Despite the setback suffered by the council movement in Turin, the movement for workers control and new, grassroots organization continued to grow throughout 1920, as measured, for example, in the rapid growth of the USI. New independent shop councils emerged during this period in Milan - Italy's biggest city and main commercial center — mainly through the efforts of the USI.

The growing competition from the USI put the CGL leadership under considerable pressure to adapt to methods and tactics that would reflect the increasingly militant mood. The FIOM grew to 160,000 members during this period but the USI metal workers union also had enrolled 30,000. From January to September, 1920, the cost of living increased by one-third. It was in this inflationary context that the FIOM decided on a demand for a 40% wage increase at its congress in May of 1920. At the same time, the employers were trying to exploit their victory over the shop council movement in April to take a more hardline stance, and there were numerous firings of activists.

The employers feared that a recession was on the horizon and were intransigent against a wage increase. The FIOM decided on a go-slow as a tactic to make them change their tune. The USI metal workers, meeting at La Spezia on Aug. 17th, did not approve of the go-slow, since they felt it was an ineffective weapon. Instead, they called for both unions to occupy the factories:

"The expropriation of the factories by the metal workers must be simultaneous and speedy and must be defended by all necessary measures. We are determined, furthermore, to call the workers of other industries into battle."(15)

Nonetheless, the USI agreed, for the moment, to go along with the go-slow so as "not to divide the working class."

As a concession to militant opinion, FIOM agreed that if any employer responded to the go-slow with a lockout, the workers should occupy the factory, by battering in the gates, if necessary.

The go-slow was widely observed and its effect can be judged from the fact that only 27 vehicles were produced daily at the Fiat-Centro plant during August compared to 67 vehicles on a normal day.

However, towards the end of August the go-slow was tending to develop into a sit-down strike and on Aug. 30th work came to a halt at the Romeo plant in Milan. This plant was part of the Ansaldo conglomerate, who took the most intransigent position against the unions. This company was run by the Perrone brothers - ultra-nationalist "robber barons" who had built up their empire on massive profits during the war; they eventually became the first big business group to fund Mussolini's fascist movement.

When the Romeo management locked out their 2,000 workers on Aug. 30th, the Milan section of FIOM responded by immediately occupying 300 factories in the Milan area. The leadership of FIOM responded by praising the Milan membership but asking workers in other cities to continue the go-slow. However, on the night of August 31st the employers' federation in the metal industries ordered a general lockout throughout Italy.

Lynn Williams describes what then took place in these words:

"Between the 1st and 4th of September metal workers occupied factories throughout the Italian peninsula...the occupations rolled forward not only in the industrial heartland around Milan, Turin and Genoa but in Rome, Florence, Naples and Palermo, in a forest of red and black flags and a fanfare of workers bands... Within three days 400,000 workers were in occupation. As the movement spread to other sectors, the total rose to over half a million. Everyone was stunned by the response."(16)

In Turin the shop councils emerged from the background to run the occupation. Typically mass assemblies were held to decide what to do. Production was continued, but now with the shop councils taking over responsibility. Committees were elected to handle transport, raw materials, defense. Guards were selected and armed.

Expressing the euphoria of the moment, Antonio Gramsci addressed a factory assembly in Turin in these words: "The social hierarchies are broken. Historic values are overthrown. The classes" that had been mere instruments of others "are become directing classes... Today...the workers themselves must build the first historic cell of the proletarian revolution which thrusts through the general crisis with the irresistable power of a force of nature."(17)

Speaking at another factory meeting, Gramsci stated that the concrete problems of running factories in isolation would lead to the formation of a city-wide workers' council, with its own military force — a potential replacement for the city government authority. In practice, however, the coordination of the occupations for example, sales of product — was typically achieved through the Labor Chamber (city-wide central labor councils). Individual factories were forbidden from selling the products of their work since production was deemed to be "for the benefit of the collectivity."

In the shops where the USI was dominant, such as the metal-working job-shop industry around Genoa, the factories were also run through the factory councils. Outside of Turin and the USI strongholds, the CGL union hierarchy was more dominant. There, councils also emerged to run the occupation but under union control.

The tendency was for the occupation movement to extend beyond the metal sector where it originated. For example, in Turin the Michelin plant and other rubber firms were occupied as were the footwear plants, the tannery, textile mills, four wool plants, four hosiery firms, and the artifical silk plant. In Milan, the Pirelli tire plant was taken over, as were the Campari distillery, the Italia brewery, and the Hutchinson rubber plant(18). By the middle of September nearly 600,000 workers were occupying and running their factories through their factory councils.

Most of the extensions of the occupation outside of the metal industry, other than those in Turin, were carried out by unions under anarcho-syndicalist influence, such as the takeover of ships by the independent maritime union or occupations of mines, commercial farms and other enterprises carried out by USI.

USI's persistent call throughout the occupation, as its membership neared 800,000, was for the extension of the occupation to all industries, and for its transformation into an "expropriating general strike," that is, making the occupation permanent through the creation of a new economic order under workers management.

Perhaps the most important extension of the occupation that took place was the action of the railway workers union. As the rail union moved into a position of support for the occupation throughout the country, the workers on the Italian State Railways began switching freight cars to the factory sidings, providing fuel and raw materials and transport connections between the various factories under occupation. This action was essential in enabling the workers to continue production.

At this point the liberal government of Giovanni Giolitti began to prepare plans for the militarization of the railways. Nonetheless, Giolitti's main strategy for defusing the crisis was to pursue a policy of strict government non-intervention while backing the position of the CGL leaders, who wanted to end the struggle in a compromise with the employers. In response to employer requests for government military intervention, Giolitti told the chief government administrative officer in Milan: "It is necessary to make the industrialists understand that no Italian government will resort to force and provoke a revolution simply to save them some money."

The first serious discussion of a generalized occupation aiming at a permanent re-organization of the economy took place on Sept. 7th at a convention of the unions in Liguria (the region around Genoa), an area where anarcho-syndicalist influence was particularly strong. The convention agreed to "create a fait accompli by the occupation of Genoa, greatest port of Italy, together with all the other ports of Liguria, and to follow it up at once with a general occupation of every branch of production."(19)

In the incendiary climate of the moment, this action might have quickly spread elsewhere and decided the direction of the struggle, which was wavering between, on the one hand, a revolutionary re-organization of the economy, being pushed by the USI and the Turin labor movement, and, on the other hand, some sort of structural reform worked out in a compromise with the employers, which was the position of the CGL leadership.

At this moment, however, Maurizio Garino, the anarcho-syndicalist secretary of the Turin branch of FIOM, persuaded the Ligurian convention to wait until an emergency national council meeting of the CGL, planned for Sept. 10th. He argued that the CGL council would vote to extend the struggle into a complete socialization of the means of production and this would enable the Genoa unionists to avoid an action taken in isolation. Garino made the mistake of assuming that the revolutionary impetus among the rank and file could convert the bureaucratized CGL into an organ of revolution.

The two alternative directions for the occupation movement were posed at the CGL National Council meeting. At this meeting the Socialist Party, and most especially the Turin socialists, were pushing for extending the occupation, making it a permanent expropriation and "socialization of the means of production and exchange."

Ludovico D'Aragona and the other CGL leaders opposed this direction, and posed an alternative in terms of a struggle for "union control." "Control" here would not mean union management but the right to complete information about the state of the industry and joint labor/management control over hiring and firing. They presented this proposal as the first step in a gradual process leading eventually to the socialization of the economy.

The vote by the assembled union representatives was 54% for the CGL position to 37% for the Socialist Party position(20). (The FIOM leadership abstained.)

Support for the Socialist position came from the industrial unions whereas the majority for the CGL leadership was based on the small craft unions and, most especially, the rural workers union, Federterra, which was adamantly opposed to the proposal for raising the stakes of the struggle. The rural unions had been built in difficult struggles in the countryside largely fought out over issues specific to their sector. They sensed their isolation in the countryside and few links had been developed with the movement among industrial workers in the city.

Commenting on this vote, the International Labor Office in Geneva, which suppor ted the position of the CGL leadership, pointed out that this vote tally actually underestimated the support for the CGL leadership position because it was tallied on the 1919 membership statistics. But the rural federation had mushroomed from 36% of the CGL membership in 1919 to 46% of the CGL by the time of the September vote.

However, the ILO's position ignores the fact that the maritime and rail transport workers union supported extending the movement to a permanent expropriation, but, as independent unions, were denied any vote. Moreover, the USI, which was persistently calling for extension and permanent expropriation, was not even invited to this council meeting and it was claiming 800,000 members at this time — or four-tenths the size of the whole CGL. The evidence is that a majority of urban workers in northern Italy would have supported an extension of the struggle.

Immediately after this vote Giolitti went into action to work out a deal between the CGL leadership and the industrialists' federation. Giolitti told the employers that he supported the position of the CGL leaders and was prepared to introduce legislation that would set up a joint labor/management commission to work out the details of "union control."

This provoked outrage and panic among the industrialists. However, at a meeting of the employers confederation, Silvio Crespi of the Banca Commerciale urged that they go along with the deal. He argued that a recession was on the horizon, there would be high unemployment which would weaken the unions' bargaining position. Changes in the economic and political climate would eventually bury the idea of "union control." In the meantime they could drag their feet to delay implementation of the proposal. The employers' association then voted to accept the deal. As it turned out, Crespi's predictions proved quite accurate.

Despite intense opposition from the USI(21) and the Turin shop stewards' movement, the CGL leadership were successful in getting the majority of rank and file workers to accept the deal. Most went along with the settlement because it gave them at least the sense of having won, of having opened the door to an increasing voice in industry. The settlement also included increases in pay, cost of living bonuses and overtime premiums.

Certainly one of the clearest results of the occupation of the factories was the resurgence of the shop stewards' council movement. The defeat in April in Turin, when the councils were banished from the shopfloor, was now avenged...at least for the moment.

Yet, trouble was not long in coming. In November the Perrone brothers were the first big businessmen to start pouring funds into Mussolini's fascist groups, which began to mushroom into a mass movement at this time, enrolling 300,000 people during the first six months of 1921. Two years of constant strikes, of sitting on the edge of revolution, had provoked anger and fear among the professional and property-owning strata, the small business class and lower-level officials in government and industry. It was mainly from these strata of the population that Mussolini was gaining recruits. As the funds poured into Mussolini's coffers, he was able to provide the fascist squads with vehicles and other equipment, which facilitated rapid strikes against the labor movement, so-called "punitive expeditions" that terrorized whole communities.

Mussolini had been a radical, direct action-oriented socialist before World War I. Indeed, when Mussolini was the fiery, charismatic editor of the Socialist Party's daily paper, he was immensely popular among the rank and file, especially the younger activists. He broke with the PSI in November of 1914 when he decided to support entry of Italy into the war on the side of France.

As he was developing the fascist ideology during the war years, he continued to advocate "heroic action" but he now saw this in terms of military action rather than in terms of workers revolution. "Revolution is an idea that has found bayonets!" — a slogan borrowed from the 19th century guerrillaist socialist Blanqui — was enscribed on the banner of Mussolini's newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia. He considered that the military struggles unfolding in Europe could have "revolutionary" consequences but saw this in terms of an improvement in the position of the Italian nation, as underdogs ("a proletarian nation") in comparison with the major imperialist powers such as Britain.

Nonetheless, Mussolini got very little support from the working class for his new patriotic, pro-war position. Working people in Italy had seen too many instances of troops and cops being used to repress workers' struggles to identify the military as "theirs." However, Mussolini did succeed in convincing the main leadership of the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI) of his patriotic position by early 1915. At the USI's congress in 1915, its general secretary, Alceste de Ambris, and other leaders such as Filippo Corridoni, tried to sway the organization into a pro-war position. It is this event that gave rise to the myth of syndicalist support for Mussolini.

However, Armando Borghi and other anarcho-syndicalists were able to win the debate and the overwhelming majority of USI members rejected the arguments of the pro-war faction, who were only able to break out a few thousand members of USI to set up a new nationalist union, the Italian Labor Union (UIL). Mussolini's movement was mostly not built from within the working class, where anti-militarist sentiment was deeply rooted.

By the spring of 1921 the recession that Crespi had predicted had arrived and unemployment soon increased six-fold. The joint labor/management commission appointed by Giolitti to work out the details of "union control" broke up in hopeless disagreement. Though Giolitti then passed legislation that implemented his version of "union control," it was much too weak to satisfy even the CGL union heads, granting the workers little more than union and political rights in the workplace, rights they had already conquered through their own efforts anyway. The combination of recession and the failure of the union control proposal created widespread disillusionment among rank and file workers.

An employers offensive began to take shape in February of 1921 with wholesale dismissals and attacks on the shop stewards' movement. In April of 1921, taking advantage of the new economic and political situation, the heads of Fiat demanded that the shop councils confine their activity to non-working hours — the same demand that had precipitated the Turin general strike the previous April. Once again troops flooded into the factories and the workers were locked out.

But this time the strike/lockout took place under the worst possible conditions — with high unemployment, widespread disillusionment and with union halls and leftwing newspaper offices being sacked and burned by fascists all over northern Italy. The shop stewards eventually threw in the towel and the workforce returned to the factories in May.

A mass mobilization by the USI defeated an attempted fascist attack on Parma in early 1921 but this was the exception as the fascist onslaught built up throughout the year. Leftwing and union organizations were often forced into a semi-underground existence, as local police and army personnel cooperated, more or less openly, with the fascist groups. Local authorities would routinely grant gun permits to fascists and just as routinely deny them to socialists. Nonetheless, the Socialist Party leadership still insisted upon a legalistic approach. "Call the police!" was their response to a fascist attack. Eventually groups of socialists began to form Arditi del Popolo — a people's militia — for self-defense. But it was "too little, too late."

Though the Socialist Party's radical rhetoric did inspire people with a hope of social change, the party's reliance upon electoral politics and the trade union hierarchy made it structurally impossible to break out of a practice of gradualism and compromises with the employing class. Yet, the radical rhetoric of this bureaucratized wing of the movement hid its tendency to stand in the way of a break with the system. When Maurizio Garino told the Ligurian union convention to hold off on a generalized expropriation of industry in their region — an action that could have provoked an incendiary response elsewhere — he was making the mistake of relying too much on the possibilities of pressuring the CGL trade union federation.

Nonetheless, his mistake was grounded in the unfortunate reality that the rank and file of CGL unions outside Turin had not been mobilized independently of the CGL hierarchy to the extent they had been in Turin. This made it difficult to not rely on the CGL union organizations in building a unified, national movement for extending the struggle, as opposed to isolated actions in particular towns or particular sectors, which could then be more easily crushed by the government. The strength of the Turin movement was precisely its ability to unite workers directly, across union or ideological divisions but independently of the national trade union hierarchy. Despite its militancy and mushrooming growth, the USI recognized that it was a minority of the working class and that the expropriation of the employing class could not be achieved without the participation of the CGL rank and file.

The opposition of the rural unions of the CGL to extending the struggle to the expropriation of the employing class in September of 1920 reflected the isolation of the agricultural sector from the movement developing in the towns and industries. However, there were indications that a linkage between the rural and urban workforces was possible - the mutual support between the farm workers of Piedmont and the shop council movement in Turin in April of 1920 is one example.(22)

The protest occupations of big estates and the huge growth of socialist and Catholic rural unions showed the willingness of rural workers to also fight against the power of the employers. The leftwing of the Catholic labor movement - such as the "Estate Council" movement around Cremona - were also talking about expropriation and collective workers management. But for the most part, the Catholic and social-democratic rural union movement confined its efforts to struggles in its own sector and efforts at reform through the political process.

In hindsight it is possible to see that the real choice that faced the Italian working class after World War I was "Fascism or Revolution?" The union bureaucrats' hopes of "structural reforms" in the system proved to be hopelessly unrealistic.

Posing the stark prospect of workers' revolution before the noses of the small business, professional and managerial classes provoked anger and fear in these sectors. Yet, the failure to carry through on the opportunity for social transformation left the system with the breathing space to mobilize fascist "antibodies" from within those middle strata in order to crush the labor movement with brutal force.

In a polemic against the syndicalists, Antonio Gramsci argued that the syndicalists were wrong in maintaining that unions were capable of being organs of workers' revolution. He said this confused a marketing organization of labor within capitalism — the trade unions — with an organization for running production in a socialized economy — the workers councils. Because the function of a union is to affect the terms and conditions of the sale of labor to the employers, he argued, it is an organization specific to a capitalist society.

However, if we look at the actual functions of the Turin shop councils, as described in the Shop Stewards' Program, we find that much of their actual function is the organization of the struggle with the employers over the "terms and conditions" of labor within capitalism. For example, the shop stewards were called upon to "exercize surveillance" over the enforcement of the existing labor contracts and "resolve disputes that may arise between the workforce and management." In other words, the shop stewards movement was inevitably a shopfloor unionist force precisely because it expressed the desire of the workforce for a more effective organization in the struggles within the current capitalist system as well as expressing their aspirations for complete control. Since any mass workers movement of this sort arises initially within the capitalist system, this "dual" function seems inevitable.

Moreover, Gramsci's real argument against the possibility of "revolutionary unionism" was based on the institutionalized, bureaucratic character of the official CGL trade unions. And, by the same token, his argument for the revolutionary potential of the shop councils, was not their complete non-involvement in present-day unionist struggles, but, rather, their independent, non-hierarchical character.

Gramsci sees that unions develop a top-down regime once they become institutionalized in bargaining with the employers because this enables the emergent leadership to ensure that the workforce does not violate its part of the bargain with management:

"[As it develops,] the union concentrates and generalizes its scope so that the power and discipline of the movement are focused in a central office. This office detaches itself from the masses it regiments, removing itself from the fickle eddy of moods and currents that are typical of the great tumultuous masses. The union thus acquires the ability to sign agreements and take on responsibilities, obliging the entrepreneur to accept a certain legality in his relations with the workers. This legality is conditional on the trust the entrepreneur has in the solvency of the union and its ability to ensure that the working masses respect their contractual obligations."

But it is precisely this bureaucratic structure of institutionalized trade unionism that makes it impossible for it to be an instrument of revolution, since these structures exist to "perpetuate and universalize" the "industrial legality" developed in the accumulated compromises with the employers. The union "represents legality, and must aim to make it respected by its members."

On the other hand, the shop councils are seen as potentially revolutionary, according to Gramsci, precisely because they are not subject to a bureaucracy external to the workforce:

"The factory council is the negation of industrial legality. It tends at every moment to destroy it....By its revolutionary spontaneity, the factory council tends to unleash the class war at any moment; by its bureaucratic form, the trade union tends to prevent the class war ever being unleashed."

But once we understand what Gramsci means by "union" — that is, institutionalized, bureaucratized trade unions -- then we can see that anarcho-syndicalists would agree with Gramsci's views on the limits of trade unions since they agree that the bureaucratized trade unions tend to constrain workers action within the limits of what is acceptable to the employing class. Such top-down structures are, thus, not capable of being organs of revolution.

However, anarcho-syndicalists would point out that when they advocate "revolutionary unionism," they are using the term "union" in a different sense. There is another sense of the term "union," referring to association of the workers themselves in opposition to the employers: the workers "in union" with each other. And, in this sense, the shop council movement was also a form of unionism. Moreover, Gramsci sometimes uses the word "union" in this other sense, as when he says that the Turin shop council movement is a form of "industrial unionism," uniting the workforce across divisions of craft and ideology.

Moreover, if it is the non-bureaucratic, mass autonomous character of the Turin shop councils that gives them a revolutionary potential, as Gramsci had argued, then USI activists could argue that Gramsci must concede that the "unions" advocated by the anarcho-syndicalists have a revolutionary potential also since they have the same character and structure as the Turin shop councils.

One lesson of the Italian revolution of 1919-20 is that the supposed opposition between "councilism" and "syndicalism" is more myth than reality. The main body of Italian syndicalism -- the USI -- adopted the methods and organizational forms of the Turin shop council movement. At the same time, the anarcho-syndicalists in Turin were slow to build an USI organization there because the independent, democratic organization of the Turin councils and their orientation to direct action and workers control made them a living approximation of anarcho-syndicalist ideals.

As the economic crisis deepens and governments—instead of providing support—respond with more austerity, people throughout the world are not only resisting but increasingly creating their own solutions in multiple spheres of life. Work is an especially difficult area around which to organize if the government refuses to aid the unemployed or underemployed, and yet it is also one where some of the most innovative solutions are arising.

One alternative to the prospect of never-ending unemployment is the recuperation of workplaces. No longer making demands on governments that have turned their backs on the population, people are turning to one another. Workers are taking over abandoned workplaces and making them function again, getting rid of bosses and hierarchy while developing democratic assemblies, equal pay remuneration, job rotation and more ecological production practices.

FEELINGS OF POWER AND DIGNITY

Workers in Europe have begun to recuperate their livelihoods, together with the support of the communities around them, following the lead of Argentina after the 2001 economic collapse. There are currently at least a dozen such workplaces in Europe, over 350 in Argentina, and many dozens more in other parts of Latin America.

I have visited a number of recuperated workplaces in Europe over the past two years, and I regularly spend time in Argentina. The stories of these initiatives are all quite similar to one another, as are the feelings of power and dignity that emanate from each and every one of them as soon as you enter the worker-controlled space.

The newer recuperations in Europe not only take the lead from their sisters and brothers in South America, but have often received direct support and encouragement from workers in Argentina in particular. And in almost every case, the workers, when deciding whether or not they could take back and run their workplace, reflected that it was something “they” do, in Argentina, or that it is a cultural thing happening only in Latin America—not imagining that worker-occupied and horizontally-run workplaces could catch on in Europe.

And here we are, with workplaces occupied, democratically self-managed, and producing under workers’ control in countries like France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Slovenia. One of the most emblematic of the recent European recuperations, discussed in detail here, is Vio.Me in Greece. Others that have received international recognition include Ri-Maflow outside Milan and Officine Zero in Rome, as well as and Kazova in Istanbul, Fralib in Gémenos and La Fabrique du Sud in Carcassonne (France).

OCCUPY, RESIST, PRODUCE!

The difference between a traditional workplace occupation and a recuperation is generally that an occupation comes together with a list of demands on the owners, for things like back pay or a reopening of the workplace. In a recuperation, by contrast, the workers first occupy and then apply the formula of the Argentine movements: ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’—a phrase the Argentines, in turn, had borrowed from the landless movement in Brazil, the MST.

To recuperate is to take back and put into production a workplace that is seen as collectively already yours. The need to resist is self-evident, as recuperations almost always face repression from former owners and the government. And in all cases, there is a massive turnout of people in the community; both in the political community and in the surrounding neighborhoods, where people tend to be very understanding of the implications of unemployment and often personally know the workers involved.

It is this community, made up of neighbors and the wider society, that comes together with the workers to defend the workplace from attempted evictions. I have heard story upon story of people who had never thought of themselves as political or faced off with police coming out to defend workers who wanted to run their workplaces themselves.

And then, if the resistance is successful, production begins. In many ways, this is often the most difficult phase, though one that the workers know best and fear least. Different from the occupation and resistance phases, which are new to many workers, production in their own workplace is not. However, what often happens is that, when the owners and managers abandon the workplace, they do not only leave behind a massive debt to the workers in the form of back wages and compensation, but they often owe tremendous amounts to their suppliers and energy companies as well.

Moreover, in those cases where the workers are not able to immediately occupy the workplace, the owners come in and sell off parts of the machinery used for production. As a result, when workers recuperate a workplace it is often a shell of the factory or enterprise it used to be, deeply in debt with no supplier willing to sell to them. Here again is where the solidarity of the community—together with the imagination and innovation of the workers—comes into play, finding ways to obtain machinery and inputs or change the type of goods produced.

WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY AND ECOLOGY

In each of the new recuperations in Europe, as in Latin America, workers organize in horizontal assemblies, making sure that each voice is heard and all opinions considered in all things. While there are spokespeople, they are just that: voices representing the decisions of the assembly, not individuals who make decisions or speak for the other workers.

Increasingly, with the newer recuperations around the world, one of the first decisions made is to change what is produced and how production takes place so as to be more ecological. In the case of Vio.Me, the factory had long been producing industrial glues and cleaners, but after many discussions amongst themselves, the workers—together with their families and supporters—decided that they did not want to either use or produce toxic material. They now only produce organic material, with products that they obtain locally, including lavender and olive oil-based cleaners and soaps.

Ri-Maflow, a former producer of car parts, now—after the occupation and recuperation in 2012—refurbishes electronics, from computers to washing machines, seeing the importance of a more ecological form of production and upcycling. They also host a regular massive flea market together with supporters and make RiMoncello, a lemon liquor (limoncello) with organic lemons they trade with local producers.

Officine Zero, formerly RSI (Rail Service Italy), a train car repair factory, occupied their workplace in 2012, and—after demonstrations and demands for back wages and against permanent closure—met with their neighboring social center, which suggested they recuperate it, using the example of Argentina as a concrete reference point.

After recuperation, the workers and supporters decided to shift production. Drawing on their particular skills, they continue to use the workplace to do such things as welding, carpentry and upholstery, only instead of doing so for train cars or new production, they engage in upcycling—taking used products and, through the process of changing them, giving them a higher value, yet less of an ecological imprint.

After a long struggle and final victory, Fralib—a tea producing plant in France—went from producing tea for such companies as Lipton to now producing organic herbal teas with a direct relationship to the organic farmers in the region where they are located. Again, as with the others, the workers at Fralib are making the conscious choice to break with industrial-chemical and non-ecological production and to make something else instead—both in terms of how they produce (horizontally) and what they produce (environmentally-friendly goods).

While sales and salaries are still relatively low in most of the workplaces—Fralib and Fabrique du Sud being the exceptions—almost all are beginning to make a living. The survival of most of these recuperated workplaces is in no small part due to the support they receive from people in the community, who see their fates tied to that of the workers.

VIO.ME: LESSONS FROM ARGENTINA

Vio.Me is probably one of the best and most concrete examples of South-North relationships between recuperated workplaces. It is also one of the most innovative recuperations with regard to the relationship with the wider community and new visions of collaboration and production. In part, this innovation stems from lessons learned from Argentina.

In 2012, after having unsuccessfully tried to obtain 1.5 million euros in back pay and compensation owed by their bosses and facing a totally unresponsive government, the workers occupied the workplace—in this case meaning a number of buildings and a few hectares of land.

When the workers first occupied the factory they had not yet decided that they would be putting it back into production. It was hard to imagine at first what that might look like in a country like Greece, in the absence of any recent precedents to guide them. But the workers also knew that the bosses and the government would never respond to their demands. They had heard of the experience in Argentina, but as they explained, that all seemed so distant.

Fortunately the workers of Vio.Me were connected to a global solidarity network, and the Greek movements (the basis of what later became the Vio.Me Solidarity Initiative) raised the funds to allow a worker from Argentina—who had already gone through the process of recuperation—to meet with the Greek comrades. As the workers at Vio.Me now reflect, meeting with Lalo, from a factory that had gone through the same experience they were going through—a factory that now was producing—helped them imagine more concretely what it would entail to do something similar in Greece.

It was the final push of confidence they needed to make their decision.

THE SOLIDARITY INITIATIVE

As soon as the workers of Vio.Me occupied their workplace, support poured in from all sectors of society. As with the experience of the Argentines, however, many trade unions and left-leaning political parties did not originally support the process. Using the same argument made around the globe by the more traditional left, many unions complained that the occupation was an anti-union action since it did not go through them. The Communist Party and some inside SYRIZA even argued that recuperation would make the workers owners (petit bourgeoisie, to be exact) and thus capitalists—clearly not something to be supported.

In many ways, this was a fortunate rejection as it opened the path for a solidarity initiative that did not involve groups vying for leadership. The workers are the ones who lead the initiative, and many thousands are now working in support of their effort. Solidarity is expressed in many ways, from people physically being present at the workplace to help defend it against eviction attempts, to the coordination of assemblies—together with the workers—where the community can have a voice in the decisions that affect them.

Like their Argentine counterparts, the workers of Vio.Me are clear that the main reason the struggle has been able to succeed is because of its close relationships with the movements and the community. As the workers were deciding what to do, the local community and the social movements immediately began to come together. What resulted from their meetings was mass rallies and concerts in support of the recuperation, at times numbering in the thousands—as well as the formation of the Solidarity Initiative.

The Solidarity Initiative is an assembly-based community group that works together with the workers from Vio.Me to help defend, spread and deepen their struggle. The Initiative began in ways similar to the Argentine recuperated workplaces, with neighbors and groups coming over to defend the workplace, and then beginning to use it as a space to meet and create a sense of community. But at the same time, having learned from Argentina, they are now going beyond it into unchartered territory.

The Solidarity Initiative, for example, different from the Argentine supporters, is comprised of a vast array of people and groups—organized and unorganized—subscribing to many different political ideologies, from anarchists, socialists, communists, radical leftists and autonomists, to all sorts of unaligned individuals. This is a big advance, particularly considering the sectarianism of radical politics in Greece. Sadly, deep divides between ideological groups preventing such alliances remain common in most places around the world. Not so with the Solidarity Initiative.

In the Solidarity Initiative’s assemblies, which always include workers as well, discussions take on a wide range of topics, from how to continue to support the struggle to issues directly related to production and distribution. The latter area—production—begins to place control of the workplace more and more into the hands of the community, taking yet another step in the direction of recreating and reorganizing what production processes could look like in society as a whole, and not just in individual workplaces.

One of the co-founders of the Initiative describes their functioning as follows:

Self-management is an idea that brings together different ideologies from the left. What the Solidarity Initiative does is to help the workers organize and carry out the campaigns of Vio.Me—though now it has less and less responsibilities since the workers are taking more and more into their own hands.

At first we helped a lot with foreign language communications and helped organize political campaigns, like marches, writing texts, and so on. Of course we did this with the workers and the workers had a final say. It is important to be clear that we are two different entities, so sometimes, for example, the workers write a text on an issue and the Solidarity Initiative writes a different text. But again, the workers have a final say—the Solidarity Initiative always has at least five workers in the assemblies, and they have significant influence over any decision.

BEYOND RESISTANCE

Many still argue that the experience of recuperating workplaces is not an alternative to capitalism. And perhaps, in and of itself, it is not. However, workers who would have been unemployed are no longer. Recuperation is therefore successful in resisting part of the consequences of economic crisis. But it also goes beyond that: these same workers, rather than feeling depressed and having their dignity crushed, are instead leading the way for others to take back control over their own lives.

As Makis, the spokesperson for the assembly of Vio.Me explains, it is not that one recuperated workplace will end capitalism, but the experience is a sort of flexing of the collective anti-capitalist muscle, building towards a broader experience of worker self-management that can eventually lead to a community-based self-administration of society. The vision is one that goes beyond resistance, towards the development of new forms of social relations.

The experiences of the recuperations are vast and profound, challenging capitalist value relations and creating something new in the process. The challenge consists first of all in reclaiming private property and making it something collective, cooperative and common—challenging the very foundation of the capitalist economy.

Second, and perhaps even more important, is the creation of new values and value systems, distinct from the relationship to values and value under capitalism. Around the world there are many tens of thousands of workers directly involved in recuperations and hundreds of thousands more involved in the process at one level or another. This is already creating new relations on multiple levels, as most of these initiatives function through assemblies and horizontal forms of organization, creating alternative ways of relating and less exploited and less alienated lived experiences among those involved.

While these new relations break with the rules of capitalist production, they are simultaneously creating a new value-based relationship to production. Their rule—the rule of those in the movements—is not the accumulation of capital surpluses, but of affect and networks of solidarity and friendship. This new value is experienced at the subjective level, in the changes taking place inside people and their relationships to one another, but also, concretely, in the new ways of living based in these relationships.

As described by Ernesto Lalo Paret from the recuperated workplace Cooperativa Unidos por el Calado, the Argentine worker who visited the workers of Vio.Me:

This process has all of the problems you could imagine, but it has made factories viable that for their previous owners were not viable. Also, what is viability in a society so full of shit? An economist might tell me about the worth of something in terms of cash flow, but it is the person who is recovering their self-esteem, recovering their self-worth and self-confidence, who puts the factory back to work.

This film, "The Story of the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards Alternative Corporate Plan" was made in 1978 for the Open University. It documents an unusual episode in British corporate history. Shop stewards from Lucas Aerospace, facing massive redundancies, developed their own plan to safeguard their jobs by moving the business into alternative technologies that would meet social needs, as well as new methods of production.