Suchergebnisse

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Detroit and Turin were both sites of significant political and social upheaval. This comparative and transnational study examines the political and theoretical developments that emerged in these two "motor cities" among activist workers and political militants during these decades.

AbstractThis article analyses how in the 1970s a segment of Italian radical activists belonging to the tradition of operaismo (workerism) appropriated and interrogated the history of the International Workers of the World (IWW) using it as a tool of political intervention in the Italian context. Following the upheaval of the 'Hot Autumn', the IWW provided to the Italians an inspiring comparison with a militant labour organisation in times of changing composition of the working class and of transformation of the organisation of production. The importance of this political use of the past lies in the way it illuminates the particular context in which these activists operated. In the course of the 1970s, Italian radicals responded to the normalization of industrial relations by joining groups that endorsed a political line tinted with Leninism and advocated a revolution led by a vanguard of militants. This was in contrast to the tenets of shopfloor-centered strategy and grassroots and shopfloor participation typical of operaismo. The – eventually – failed attempt of the 'militant historians' to revive, through their distinctive interpretation of the IWW, that political tradition sheds light on the success of the backlash against shopfloor working class militancy at the end of the decade, when vanguard groups had become marginal in the factories and reformist unions lacked a political clout to oppose company restructuring and relocation. This article is based on articles, memoirs and interviews that are evidence of the politically-driven debate about the IWW among Italian radicals. It improves on the existing historiography of the Italian labour movement by resisting its teleological impulse to explain the backlash on the 1980s as an inevitable outcome. It also contributes to the burgeoning transnational labor historiography; it challenges methodological nationalism in the study of workers' insurgency by charting the influence of US history far beyond its borders and across time, adopting a transnational approach that is, unusually, both geographical and a diachronic. This story tells us more about Italian history than it does about American history, but it is testimony to a far reaching influence of American history and to entanglements that crossed borders through the work of the activists, scholars, and translators who acted as transnational vehicles of ideas and political practices.

Abstract The social protest that engulfed Italy in the 1970s found a theoretical analysis in the work of the operaisti. Through a series of concepts, they outlined a new revolutionary practice that aimed to return to a more authentic reading of Marxism. This article focuses on the notion of 'refusal of work' and the ancillary concept of 'appropriation' and examines how these theoretical tools emerged out of radical protest in factories and were put forward by the operaisti as a central plank of a revolutionary strategy for the working class.

The social protest that engulfed Italy in the 1970s found a theoretical analysis in the work of the operaisti. Through a series of concepts, they outlined a new revolutionary practice that aimed to return to a more authentic reading of Marxism. This article focuses on the notion of 'refusal of work' and the ancillary concept of 'appropriation' and examines how these theoretical tools emerged out of radical protest in factories and were put forward by the operaisti as a central plank of a revolutionary strategy for the working class. ; Las protestas sociales que dominaron Italia en la década de 1970 obtuvieron fundamentación teórica en el trabajo de los obreristas. Con base en una serie de nociones, delinearon una práctica revolucionaria nueva, considerada como el regreso a una interpretación más auténtica del marxismo. El presente artículo trata de la noción de «rechazo al trabajo» y del concepto asociado de «apropiación», examinando de qué modo estas herramientas teóricas se moldaron en las protestas radicales en las fábricas y fueron presentadas por obreristas como plataforma central de una estrategia revolucionaria para la clase obrera. ; Os protestos sociais que tomaram conta da Itália na década de 1970 ganharam fundamentação teórica no trabalho dos obreiristas. Estes, com base numa série de noções, delinearam uma prática revolucionária nova, encarada como retorno a uma interpretação mais autêntica do marxismo. O presente artigo trata da noção de "recusa do trabalho" e do conceito associado de "apropriação", examinando de que modo estas ferramentas teóricas se modelaram nos protestos radicais nas fábricas e foram apresentadas pelos obreiristas como plataforma central de uma estratégia revolucionária para a classe trabalhadora.

In the postwar years, Grace Lee Boggs developed her defining contribution to Marxist social theory within a tight group of theorists and activists dissenting from the official doctrine of Stalinism and, later, of Trotskyism: the Johnson-Forest Tendency (later Correspondence). Named after its initiators, CLR James (Johnson) and Raya Dunayevskaya (Forest), this Trotskyist splinter group elaborated an original theoretical position that soon forced them to sever their ties with the Old Left and anticipate some of the themes of the New Left. While the figure of James usually looms large in historical accounts of the group, their political position was borne out of intense internal debate, one in which the political contribution of its women is not often highlighted.This short essay lends a renewed focus to those arcane debates, as they constitute the core of Grace Lee Boggs's contribution to a version of Marxism, one both humane and emancipatory in its vision.

AbstractThis article proposes a revision of the predominant view of southern Italians during the 'Hot Autumn' of 1969 in Turin, one of the most remarkable moments of working-class mobilisation in modern European history. The representation of southern Italians as 'primitive rebels' and 'spontaneous' radicals has its roots in an earlier notion of southerners as social deviants and has obscured a much more complex historical reality. This image, endorsed by historians and popularised in fictional accounts, contradicts contemporary evidence which points to southerners' singular mix of radicalism and conservatism, resistance and integration.

SummaryThis article investigates the entangled histories of radicals in Detroit and Turin who challenged capitalism in ways that departed from "orthodox" Marxism. Starting from the 1950s, small but influential groups of labour radicals, such as Correspondence in Detroit and Quaderni Rossi in Turin, circulated ideas that questioned the Fordist system in a drastic way. These radicals saw the car factories as laboratories for a possible "autonomist" working-class activity that could take over industrial production and overhaul the societal system. They criticized the usefulness of the unions and urged workers to develop their own forms of collective organization. These links were rekindled during the intense working-class mobilization of the late 1960s, when younger radicals would also engage in a dialogue across national boundaries that influenced each other's interpretation of the local context. These transnational connections, well-known to contemporaries but ignored by historians, show how American events and debates were influenced by, and impinged on, distant countries, and how local activists imagined their political identity as encompassing struggles occurring elsewhere.

Between 1969 and 1975, in Turin, a social movement with migrants from southern Italy as its protagonists addressed the issues of working conditions in the automobile plants, and housing and living standards in the city's overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods. Southern migrants, from different regions and speaking sometimes mutually incomprehensible dialects, forged a collective identity as Meridionali – "southerners" – and claimed recognition as fully fledged citizens of Turin's industrial society. This identity-building was captured in the making through the satirical cartoons featuring Gasparazzo, the character of a southern worker at FIAT who struggled daily with the alienation of work, the arrogance of supervisors, the repression enforced by the police, and, back in the south, the backwardness of the social system. Although the publication of Gasparazzo ended abruptly in 1972 the qualities of the cartoon character continued to resonate in succeeding years. As militancy waned and the social movement started to crumble, Gasparazzo came to symbolize the nostalgic model of a working-class hero rather than any actual southerner in the plant.