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The Occupation Of The Factories: Italy 1920
English, Italian (translation)
216 pages, Paperback
Published June 5, 1975
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 23, 2017
This book is an interesting read by a Marxist-Leninist of the factory occupations which swept Italy in 1920 and a critique of a social movement's inability to seize the revolutionary moment. While mostly focusing on the Italian Socialist Party and the various strains inside, it includes the various factions in the state and industrialists for an overhead view of why things played out the way they did.
The thesis seems to be that the occupation movement failed because a lack of disciplined leadership in the PSI, the likely fact that it was a dialectical steam valve of the workers movement which would have been slaughtered in the streets (rather than in the defensive positions of the factories), and the idea that they could have gone for broke if they had national action (and were sold out by reformist leadership), but Turin and some of the anarchist strongholds were more advanced than the workers in the rest of the country.
I am actually a novice when it comes to Bordiga, Gramsci and others ...so that was very interesting. That being said it seemed to slight the anarchists who had hundreds of thousands of participants and set the tone in Turin and other places for more confrontational action.
If anything, this book awakened in me a need to read more of this period from different viewpoints and with more of a focus on Gramsci, Luigi Fabbri, Malatesta, and Bordiga.
Lastly, Im starting to think that the Anarchist experience in the bienno rosso played a huge role in shaping the ideology of the FAU in Uruguay afterwards (because luigi Fabbri ended up there after Mussolini came to power)
The thesis seems to be that the occupation movement failed because a lack of disciplined leadership in the PSI, the likely fact that it was a dialectical steam valve of the workers movement which would have been slaughtered in the streets (rather than in the defensive positions of the factories), and the idea that they could have gone for broke if they had national action (and were sold out by reformist leadership), but Turin and some of the anarchist strongholds were more advanced than the workers in the rest of the country.
I am actually a novice when it comes to Bordiga, Gramsci and others ...so that was very interesting. That being said it seemed to slight the anarchists who had hundreds of thousands of participants and set the tone in Turin and other places for more confrontational action.
If anything, this book awakened in me a need to read more of this period from different viewpoints and with more of a focus on Gramsci, Luigi Fabbri, Malatesta, and Bordiga.
Lastly, Im starting to think that the Anarchist experience in the bienno rosso played a huge role in shaping the ideology of the FAU in Uruguay afterwards (because luigi Fabbri ended up there after Mussolini came to power)
August 24, 2008
Read texts on Russia, Germany, Italy during 1917-1921 interested in the workers' councils movements. Learned much from Siriani, Moore, Spriano. Also read Bookchin's text on the Spanish anarchists to compare with the earlier workers autonomy movements. In comparison, Bookchin seemed too partisan for the CNT and FAI. Much preferred the approach of serious historians like Moore and Spriano who ask the question 'Was this a revolutionary situation'? Then give some serious answers. Maybe Bookchin's was the wrong book for Catalonia/Spain. Also, if there's any Marxist or Anarchist who hasn't read Mayer's great book, well forget about understanding the world. You're interested in morals or ideology!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews