In the long cycle of State trade unionism ---- The strikes of March
1943, a mythical event in the anti-fascist narrative, are part of a long
historical cycle that simultaneously recorded traumatic ruptures and
continuities. The historical form of the union, based on autonomy and
conflict, had changed for some time; surprising continuities instead, in
the ways of grassroots action for claims, re-emerged from the whirlpools
of civil wars. Disruptive twentieth-century revolutions had in short
distorted the features of the old world. The European war had been the
founding act of the modern administrative State, with the regulation of
social conflicts from above through the normative instrument of
Industrial Mobilization, for the primary management of the interest of
the Nation. From that moment on, the union entered the State and the
State entered the union, in an indissoluble union, a mortal and eternal
embrace. Subsequently, with the bloody defeat of the "red" trade
unionism in Italy, processes of accentuated de-unionization had
developed. The promulgation of the "Labour Charter" in 1927, in the
meantime, designed the corporate State. The "unblocking" of 1928
entailed the delimitation of representation to the federal sphere and
the consequent deterioration of its general political dimension and
synthesis on the territory. Not even the corporate idea, inspired by
class collaboration, was a quid novi of the fascist era. And it had,
among other things, solid roots in the Catholic movement, in the
encyclical "Rerum Novarum" by Leo XIII and in the "Fermo proposito" by
Pius X.
Although the relations took place in a framework of accentuated
authoritarianism, the model that was established was therefore not new,
but preceded and followed the time span of the Mussolini dictatorship.
In it were found: breakdown of the relationship between representation
and protection; end of confederal and union representation at the
factory; exchange conflict / collective agreement. The corporative
doctrine, among other things, a third theoretical way between capitalism
and collectivism, revealing its fragile utopian dimension, remained
overshadowed by a protectionist economic policy, from an industrialized
country, subservient to the large entrepreneurial classes. And the
Bolshevik suggestions launched by Ugo Spirito in 1932, on the
"proprietary corporation" (i.e. in favor of nationalizations and against
free property), on the resolution of unionism in integral corporatism,
remained a dead letter. Therefore, any desire to decline the corporative
doctrine "to the left" was exhausted at birth. After 1945, the State
would restore its "democratic" authority through mass institutions, to
which it ceded delegated powers in social and economic matters. In
exchange, the new confederal union would renounce positioning itself as
a potentially anti-system force. Reconstruction, productivist ideology
and industrial recovery would then be the cornerstones on which the
workers' movement was directed, now the guarantor of the supreme
interest of the Nation. The social and political scenario, between the
first and second post-war periods, radically changed and was
unrecognizable. The union, having lost its independence and autonomy,
left the primacy to the party, in particular, as far as Italy was
concerned, to the three parties that, having been established for this
purpose in the early 1940s, would have conditioned the management of the
unions themselves for a long half century, that is, until the collapse
of the political system with Tangentopoli.
The strikes of March 1943 were therefore the vigorous and angry break
with this continuing state of affairs, against the fascist war first of
all, for bread, for work and freedom. But they were also, in the way, an
indication of perspective for the imminent liberation, "nascent state"
of a promised bright future, then revealed to be bitter in some of its
aspects and for the evident continuities.
A rebel and anti-fascist strike
The 1925 Palazzo Vidoni agreements between Confindustria and the
Confederazione delle Corporazioni had established on a regulatory level
a situation that had already been achieved in fact, manu militari, with
the squadrist action, that is, the formal end of the free unions (USI,
CGdL and CIL, but also the combative SFI railway federations and FILM
sea workers). Furthermore, the absolute ban on strikes was established,
as well as the abolition of internal factory commissions, and the
transfer of the sole representation of labor to the corporate State. The
abolition ope legis of conflict in labor relations was finally confirmed
with the entry into force, in 1931, of the new Rocco Code which,
expressly (articles 330-333, 502-508) prohibited and sanctioned strikes.
This leap forward of the legal norm, in the era of consensus displayed,
a mere propagandistic reaffirmation of the strength of the fascist
state, of a regime subservient to the needs of big industry, would in
reality prove to be an authentic weakness, especially in the context of war.
The high cost of living aggravated by the difficult supply of foodstuffs
and the black market, the popular opposition to the warmongering fascist
policy, the general discontent and anger for the deaths and economic
conditions suffered by the families of the combatants, the layoffs and
the harsh anti-worker repression in the industrial triangle of northern
Italy, created an explosive social mix. The heavy Allied bombings on
Italian industrial cities, which had become military targets, sowed
death and destruction, and, together with the Nazi-fascist massacres,
would constitute the immense price to pay for a devastating war on
civilians.
Between 1942 and 1944, including the "republican" transition, a long
series of self-organized strikes and protests and work stoppages in the
key industrial sectors, metallurgical, chemical and mining, spread
throughout the country (miners from Carbonia and Valdarno, workers from
Ercole Marelli in Sesto San Giovanni, etc.). The organizational input
came mainly from the persistent libertarian, socialist and
anarcho-syndicalist traditions, as in the cases of Milan and the mining
sector, or from the clandestine activism of young communist militants
present within the fascist trade union structures themselves. Women were
the protagonists. And this was, one might say, the birth certificate of
the Resistance, the prelude to mass armed action.
The strike that began on March 5, 1943 was however the grandest and most
significant. It began at FIAT and spread, over a period of ten days,
from Turin to the entire industrial triangle, involving as many as one
hundred thousand workers. In the Piedmontese capital, it had gradually
affected the entire production structure of the city and the surrounding
area, from the Tanneries to the Piedmontese Ironworks, from the textile
factories to Snia Viscosa and the Wamar Biscuit Factory...
The demands were simple: price caps on basic necessities, especially
food, immediate cessation of the war, no more repression in companies
subjected to militarized production discipline.
The first factory to strike in the Milan area was Falck Concordia, the
bolts department, where the fascist forces, on the 22nd, who had
intervened to restore order, had been repelled. In the last week of
March, the protests had spread to small factories and large industries
often linked to war production; in Milan: Pirelli, Alfa Romeo, Breda,
Isotta Fraschini, Marelli, Caproni, Borletti, TIBB (Brown Boveri), OLAP...
The class-based nature of the strikes was in itself a significant wound
for the regime, because it marked the evident failure of the corporate
system on which the social structure of the country was supposed to be
based.
The direct interventions on site by the hierarchs to bring the
rebellious workers, both male and female, back to reason, by fair means
or foul, had been in vain. Tullio Cianetti, undersecretary about to be
appointed Minister of Corporations, visiting the Legnano Cotton Mill,
and Edoardo Malusardi, deputy of the Chamber of Fasci, former
Corridonian and fascist trade unionist (post-war leader of CISNAL),
visiting Borletti, were violently contested by the workers.
Cianetti recounted in his memoirs: "I faced thousands of workers who
immediately resumed work, although the fascists were completely passive
in the factories and unfortunately in some cases fomented strikes. This
phenomenon impressed me enormously". But the 'fascists' he was talking
about were none other than the members of the regime's union.
The toll of the March strikes was heavy, with mass arrests and
imprisonments, with fifty people tried by the territorial military
courts, with the capture and deportation to Germany of some organizers
who in the meantime had become partisans.
Following the event, there was a stormy meeting of the PNF directorate
at Palazzo Venezia, in which the Duce, blaming the illegal strikes on
the inability of the regime's organs and structures to perceive the
warning symptoms, decided to remove from their positions with immediate
effect the party secretary Aldo Vidussoni (replaced by Carlo Scorza),
the police chief Carmine Senise (replaced by Lorenzo Chierici), and the
Minister of Corporations Carlo Tiengo, replaced by Cianetti.
"Let's sabotage Hitler's mobilization and impose immediate peace": this
was the title of the clandestine leaflet signed by the Committee for
Peace and Freedom, dated March 1943. "The people," he wrote, "must not
wait for the Anglo-Americans or the Russians to come and liberate us. It
would be a humiliation: it is up to us Italians to shake off the yoke
that has oppressed us for twenty years. It is up to us to drive fascism
out of the government of our country, to drive out the Germans who
trample on our soil." And he continued by inviting people to sabotage
and boycott the fascist war machine, not to deliver agricultural
products to the stockpiles and not to pay taxes and duties, to desert
and refuse to fight someone else's war, to hinder by any means the
transport of troops and war material.
The other side, intimidated by the strikes, made a last-ditch attempt to
calm the agitated workers by granting "limited to the duration of the
war" both to the categories affected by enemy action and those not
affected, special and graduated daily allowances linked to presence. By
then, however, it was too late.
Giorgio Sacchetti
https://umanitanova.org/gli-scioperi-contro-la-guerra-del-marzo-1943-prove-generali-per-linsurrezione-antifascista-di-classe/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
1943, a mythical event in the anti-fascist narrative, are part of a long
historical cycle that simultaneously recorded traumatic ruptures and
continuities. The historical form of the union, based on autonomy and
conflict, had changed for some time; surprising continuities instead, in
the ways of grassroots action for claims, re-emerged from the whirlpools
of civil wars. Disruptive twentieth-century revolutions had in short
distorted the features of the old world. The European war had been the
founding act of the modern administrative State, with the regulation of
social conflicts from above through the normative instrument of
Industrial Mobilization, for the primary management of the interest of
the Nation. From that moment on, the union entered the State and the
State entered the union, in an indissoluble union, a mortal and eternal
embrace. Subsequently, with the bloody defeat of the "red" trade
unionism in Italy, processes of accentuated de-unionization had
developed. The promulgation of the "Labour Charter" in 1927, in the
meantime, designed the corporate State. The "unblocking" of 1928
entailed the delimitation of representation to the federal sphere and
the consequent deterioration of its general political dimension and
synthesis on the territory. Not even the corporate idea, inspired by
class collaboration, was a quid novi of the fascist era. And it had,
among other things, solid roots in the Catholic movement, in the
encyclical "Rerum Novarum" by Leo XIII and in the "Fermo proposito" by
Pius X.
Although the relations took place in a framework of accentuated
authoritarianism, the model that was established was therefore not new,
but preceded and followed the time span of the Mussolini dictatorship.
In it were found: breakdown of the relationship between representation
and protection; end of confederal and union representation at the
factory; exchange conflict / collective agreement. The corporative
doctrine, among other things, a third theoretical way between capitalism
and collectivism, revealing its fragile utopian dimension, remained
overshadowed by a protectionist economic policy, from an industrialized
country, subservient to the large entrepreneurial classes. And the
Bolshevik suggestions launched by Ugo Spirito in 1932, on the
"proprietary corporation" (i.e. in favor of nationalizations and against
free property), on the resolution of unionism in integral corporatism,
remained a dead letter. Therefore, any desire to decline the corporative
doctrine "to the left" was exhausted at birth. After 1945, the State
would restore its "democratic" authority through mass institutions, to
which it ceded delegated powers in social and economic matters. In
exchange, the new confederal union would renounce positioning itself as
a potentially anti-system force. Reconstruction, productivist ideology
and industrial recovery would then be the cornerstones on which the
workers' movement was directed, now the guarantor of the supreme
interest of the Nation. The social and political scenario, between the
first and second post-war periods, radically changed and was
unrecognizable. The union, having lost its independence and autonomy,
left the primacy to the party, in particular, as far as Italy was
concerned, to the three parties that, having been established for this
purpose in the early 1940s, would have conditioned the management of the
unions themselves for a long half century, that is, until the collapse
of the political system with Tangentopoli.
The strikes of March 1943 were therefore the vigorous and angry break
with this continuing state of affairs, against the fascist war first of
all, for bread, for work and freedom. But they were also, in the way, an
indication of perspective for the imminent liberation, "nascent state"
of a promised bright future, then revealed to be bitter in some of its
aspects and for the evident continuities.
A rebel and anti-fascist strike
The 1925 Palazzo Vidoni agreements between Confindustria and the
Confederazione delle Corporazioni had established on a regulatory level
a situation that had already been achieved in fact, manu militari, with
the squadrist action, that is, the formal end of the free unions (USI,
CGdL and CIL, but also the combative SFI railway federations and FILM
sea workers). Furthermore, the absolute ban on strikes was established,
as well as the abolition of internal factory commissions, and the
transfer of the sole representation of labor to the corporate State. The
abolition ope legis of conflict in labor relations was finally confirmed
with the entry into force, in 1931, of the new Rocco Code which,
expressly (articles 330-333, 502-508) prohibited and sanctioned strikes.
This leap forward of the legal norm, in the era of consensus displayed,
a mere propagandistic reaffirmation of the strength of the fascist
state, of a regime subservient to the needs of big industry, would in
reality prove to be an authentic weakness, especially in the context of war.
The high cost of living aggravated by the difficult supply of foodstuffs
and the black market, the popular opposition to the warmongering fascist
policy, the general discontent and anger for the deaths and economic
conditions suffered by the families of the combatants, the layoffs and
the harsh anti-worker repression in the industrial triangle of northern
Italy, created an explosive social mix. The heavy Allied bombings on
Italian industrial cities, which had become military targets, sowed
death and destruction, and, together with the Nazi-fascist massacres,
would constitute the immense price to pay for a devastating war on
civilians.
Between 1942 and 1944, including the "republican" transition, a long
series of self-organized strikes and protests and work stoppages in the
key industrial sectors, metallurgical, chemical and mining, spread
throughout the country (miners from Carbonia and Valdarno, workers from
Ercole Marelli in Sesto San Giovanni, etc.). The organizational input
came mainly from the persistent libertarian, socialist and
anarcho-syndicalist traditions, as in the cases of Milan and the mining
sector, or from the clandestine activism of young communist militants
present within the fascist trade union structures themselves. Women were
the protagonists. And this was, one might say, the birth certificate of
the Resistance, the prelude to mass armed action.
The strike that began on March 5, 1943 was however the grandest and most
significant. It began at FIAT and spread, over a period of ten days,
from Turin to the entire industrial triangle, involving as many as one
hundred thousand workers. In the Piedmontese capital, it had gradually
affected the entire production structure of the city and the surrounding
area, from the Tanneries to the Piedmontese Ironworks, from the textile
factories to Snia Viscosa and the Wamar Biscuit Factory...
The demands were simple: price caps on basic necessities, especially
food, immediate cessation of the war, no more repression in companies
subjected to militarized production discipline.
The first factory to strike in the Milan area was Falck Concordia, the
bolts department, where the fascist forces, on the 22nd, who had
intervened to restore order, had been repelled. In the last week of
March, the protests had spread to small factories and large industries
often linked to war production; in Milan: Pirelli, Alfa Romeo, Breda,
Isotta Fraschini, Marelli, Caproni, Borletti, TIBB (Brown Boveri), OLAP...
The class-based nature of the strikes was in itself a significant wound
for the regime, because it marked the evident failure of the corporate
system on which the social structure of the country was supposed to be
based.
The direct interventions on site by the hierarchs to bring the
rebellious workers, both male and female, back to reason, by fair means
or foul, had been in vain. Tullio Cianetti, undersecretary about to be
appointed Minister of Corporations, visiting the Legnano Cotton Mill,
and Edoardo Malusardi, deputy of the Chamber of Fasci, former
Corridonian and fascist trade unionist (post-war leader of CISNAL),
visiting Borletti, were violently contested by the workers.
Cianetti recounted in his memoirs: "I faced thousands of workers who
immediately resumed work, although the fascists were completely passive
in the factories and unfortunately in some cases fomented strikes. This
phenomenon impressed me enormously". But the 'fascists' he was talking
about were none other than the members of the regime's union.
The toll of the March strikes was heavy, with mass arrests and
imprisonments, with fifty people tried by the territorial military
courts, with the capture and deportation to Germany of some organizers
who in the meantime had become partisans.
Following the event, there was a stormy meeting of the PNF directorate
at Palazzo Venezia, in which the Duce, blaming the illegal strikes on
the inability of the regime's organs and structures to perceive the
warning symptoms, decided to remove from their positions with immediate
effect the party secretary Aldo Vidussoni (replaced by Carlo Scorza),
the police chief Carmine Senise (replaced by Lorenzo Chierici), and the
Minister of Corporations Carlo Tiengo, replaced by Cianetti.
"Let's sabotage Hitler's mobilization and impose immediate peace": this
was the title of the clandestine leaflet signed by the Committee for
Peace and Freedom, dated March 1943. "The people," he wrote, "must not
wait for the Anglo-Americans or the Russians to come and liberate us. It
would be a humiliation: it is up to us Italians to shake off the yoke
that has oppressed us for twenty years. It is up to us to drive fascism
out of the government of our country, to drive out the Germans who
trample on our soil." And he continued by inviting people to sabotage
and boycott the fascist war machine, not to deliver agricultural
products to the stockpiles and not to pay taxes and duties, to desert
and refuse to fight someone else's war, to hinder by any means the
transport of troops and war material.
The other side, intimidated by the strikes, made a last-ditch attempt to
calm the agitated workers by granting "limited to the duration of the
war" both to the categories affected by enemy action and those not
affected, special and graduated daily allowances linked to presence. By
then, however, it was too late.
Giorgio Sacchetti
https://umanitanova.org/gli-scioperi-contro-la-guerra-del-marzo-1943-prove-generali-per-linsurrezione-antifascista-di-classe/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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