During a period of retreat in struggles like the current one, it is
important to remember the moments in which the working class was able todevelop strong conflict and solidarity to defend and advance its rights,
expressing the aspiration for a society founded on economic equality,
the only one that could guarantee collective well-being and individual
freedom. ---- 105 years ago, in September 1920, over half a million
workers across Italy occupied the factories where they worked, demanding
ownership and initiating direct management of production. The Factory
Council movement had its stronghold in Turin, and class-based anarchist
militants played a leading role there, leading the great labor,
revolutionary, and anti-fascist struggles.
The history of the Red Biennium (1919-1920) and the factory occupations,
despite the defeat, but also through it, teaches us that anarchists can
have an impact when they are part of mass movements and that only class
unity, organized in autonomous workers' organizations, is the way to
defeat reformism and the bourgeoisie.
1. From the end of the war to the factory occupations (1919-1920)
The Red Biennium of 1919-1920 marked the highest point of social
conflict and revolutionary tension in our country's history. Turin, with
one hundred and fifty thousand workers, fifty thousand of them in the
metallurgical sector, was the hub of that great season of union and
revolutionary struggles: "the brain of the proletariat," as the
libertarian historian Pier Carlo Masini called it.
The city's anarchist movement, organized in the Piedmontese Anarchist
Communist Union (UCAP), numbered a dozen groups and approximately three
hundred members in 1919, around one hundred of whom were activists and
rank-and-file members of the Italian Federation of Metalworkers (FIOM),
a sectoral union within the General Confederation of Labor (CGL).
Present in major factories, starting with FIAT, they represented the
heart of the factory council movement, along with communist militants,
then in the Socialist Party (PSI).
In addition to the groups, present in all working-class neighborhoods,
the anarchists had the "Francisco Ferrer" Modern School, a cultural and
recreational club with several hundred members. Individualists and
anti-organizationists represented a minority, united around the magazine
"Cronaca Sovversiva" and the local branch of the Italian Trade Union
Union (USI).
Already protagonists of the popular revolt against hunger and war in
1917, Turin's anarchists were among the main supporters of the high-cost
riots of July 1919, which saw the working masses, starving from post-war
inflation, take over the city, requisitioning shops and warehouses,
bypassing the reformist union bureaucracy and imposing their own
grassroots organizations.
On May 1st, the police attacked the large workers' march, when 100,000
workers took to the streets, causing two deaths, one of them an
anarchist—Domenico Arduino, a foundryman at Lancia and a FIOM
militant—and several serious injuries, three of them our comrades.
After continuous waves of strikes, in August the first factory councils,
institutions of direct workers' power, were formed at FIAT and in the
main metallurgical plants. Among the factory commissioners, elected by
workers in all factories, many were anarchists, especially at FIAT
Ferriere and Lingotto. Anarchists Pietro Ferrero and Maurizio Garino,
metalworkers and rank-and-file leaders of the FIOM, participated in the
Study Committee that developed the program of revolutionary councilism,
together with Gramsci and the communist group "L'Ordine Nuovo."
In November, the provincial congress of the FIOM, composed mostly of
factory commissioners, elected Ferrero as secretary and Garino to the
Steering Committee. The alliance between the anarchists and the
communists, now leading the city's PSI, also won over the Chamber of
Labor, defeating the reformist faction. Errico Malatesta, welcomed to
Turin in December upon his return from exile in London, praised the
actions of his comrades in the FIOM and the factory councils. While new
councils were being formed in all industrial sectors, in March 1920 the
"clock strike" broke out against the introduction of daylight saving
time. Through this strike, workers sought to assert the power of the
councils in the workshops. For the first time, factories were occupied,
halting production. In April, the general strike spread throughout
Piedmont, involving half a million workers. The Agitation Committee, led
by Ferrero and Garino along with the Communists, declared an
insurrectionary strike and the expropriation of factories and launched
an appeal to workers throughout Italy. However, state repression and
agreements reached by the CGL leaders with the government put an end to
the unrest.
In July, the congress of the Italian Anarchist Union (UAI) approved the
Factory Councils program presented by Garino, meeting opposition from
the anti-organizational minority, which supported the self-sufficiency
of the anarchist movement and rejected collaboration with the Communists.
During the summer, the national dispute over the metalworkers' contract
pitted the FIOM, driven by the workers, against Confindustria (Italian
Industrialists' Confederation), leading to a breakdown in negotiations
in August, a strike, and a subsequent employers' lockout.
By decision of the factory councils and the FIOM Agitation Committee,
led by Ferrero, on September 1st, workers occupied FIAT Centro, Turin's
largest factory, and all the main metallurgical plants, initiating
direct management of production and organizing defense with the Red
Guards. Within days, factories in other industrial sectors were also
occupied, reaching a total of one hundred thousand workers and two
hundred plants, while self-management of transportation, communications,
and food supplies was experimented with. Malatesta strongly supported
the struggle, advocating its revolutionary outcome in the anarchist
newspaper "Umanità Nova," founded at the beginning of the year.
"Workers," he wrote on September 8, "a more favorable opportunity than
this to attempt definitive liberation has never presented itself until
now, nor can we know if and when it will arise again: so do not let it
pass in vain! The force today is you, and the government's impotence
against your will is evident. Dare again, dare more, and victory cannot
be missed!"
Armed conflicts between Red Guards and state forces erupted in the
streets and in several factories, such as Savigliano and Biak, resulting
in fifteen casualties. At Capamianto, two USI anarchist
militants—Alfonso Garamella and Raffaele Vandich—were killed, while
others were convicted of weapons possession, inciting civil war, and
murder. Faced with provocations from the nascent fascist squadrism, the
workers responded firmly with their organized force, as at FIAT Centro
and SPA. On September 15, the CGL and Confindustria signed an agreement
with Prime Minister Giolitti for worker participation in company
management, known as "worker control," and significant wage increases.
The agreement aimed to end factory occupations. On the 22nd, the
agreement was approved by the FIOM extraordinary national congress,
dominated by the reformists, which sanctioned the dismantling of the
occupations. Despite the resistance of the Councils, the last factories
were returned to their owners on September 29th.
2. From the factory eviction to the massacre of December 18th (1921-1922)
The defeat of the Councils movement marked the end of the Biennio Rosso
and the beginning of the anti-worker reaction that would lead to
fascism. Luigi Fabbri, an anarchist communist leader and theoretician,
defined this combined action of employers' economic pressure, state
repression, and squadrist violence as a "preventive counterrevolution."
The factory eviction was followed by thousands of layoffs and arrests of
the most active worker militants during the occupation, starting with
communists and anarchists. While fascist punitive expeditions multiplied
in northern Italy, in October Malatesta, the editors of "Umanità Nova,"
and the leaders of the USI were arrested in Milan, accused of inciting
class hatred and insurrection against state power.
In Turin, the USI was strengthened by the withdrawal of many workers
from the CGL, held responsible for the September surrender, and the
anti-organizational minority accused Ferrero and Garino of opportunism,
supported by the Piedmontese Anarchist Union (UAP, the new name of the
UCAP) and the anarchist militants of the FIOM. Remaining a minority, the
USI would be the first to be hit by repression and squadrism.
In March 1921, the massacre at the Diana Theater in Milan, carried out
by a group of individualists demanding the release of Malatesta and
other arrested anarchist leaders, sparked renewed squadrist violence,
legitimizing fascism as an instrument of social order, intensifying
repression, and discrediting the anarchist movement in the eyes of workers.
Following the squadrist attack on the Chamber of Labor, where the UAP
had its headquarters, the Arditi del Popolo, an anti-fascist militias
led by anarchists and communists, were also formed in Turin in July.
The newly formed Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I), which had its
strongest structure in Turin, forced its militants to leave that mass
organization and join its own self-defense squads. This weakened the
united anti-fascist front, already heavily impacted by repression, just
as attacks on workers' organizations and their members were rampant.
Buoyed by their victory the previous September, the employers imposed
tens of thousands of layoffs and severe wage cuts, undermining the
strength of the Turin proletariat. The repression struck ever harder,
with hundreds of convictions against militants of the Factory Councils
and the Arditi del Popolo. Anarchists were involved in organizing
strikes, in the Joint Committee for the Victims of Repression, and in
the international campaign for the release of Sacco and Vanzetti,
forming new groups and preparing to defend their headquarters.
The failure of the anti-fascist general strike of August 1922, managed
with weakness and opportunism by the reformist leaders of the CGL, paved
the way for the March on Rome. Turin, the workers' capital, would be the
last city to surrender to fascism, which would only prevail in December
with the destruction of the Chamber of Labor and the massacre of eleven
workers and union militants, including our comrade Pietro Ferrero, who
remained at the helm of the FIOM until the end.
Bibliography
Guido Barroero, Tobia Imperato (ed.), The Dream in the Hands. Turin
1909-1922. Passions and Revolutionary Struggles in the Memories of
Maurizio Garino, Zero in Condotta, Milan, 2011.
Adriana Dadà, Anarchism in Italy: Between Movement and Party. History
and Documents of Italian Anarchism, Teti, Milan, 1984.
Luigi Fabbri, The Preventive Counterrevolution. Reflections on Fascism,
Cappelli, Bologna, 1922.
Gaetano Gervasio, Giovanna Gervasio, A Simple Worker: The Story of a
Revolutionary Anarchist Syndicalist, 1886-1964, Zero in Condotta, Milan,
2011.
Daniel Guérin, Anarchism from Doctrine to Action, Savelli, Rome, 1974.
Carl Levy, Gramsci and the Anarchists, Berg, Oxford-New York, 1999.
Pier Carlo Masini, Anarchists and Communists in the Council Movement in
Turin (Post-War, 1919-1920), Gruppo Barriera di Milano, Turin, 1951.
Pier Carlo Masini, Antonio Gramsci and the New Order Seen by a
Libertarian, L’Impulso, Livorno, 1956.
Paolo Spriano, The Occupation of the Factories. September 1920, Einaudi,
Turin, 1964.
Photographic Documents
1. Workers' Assembly at the Occupied Fiat Centro (L'Illustrazione
Italiana, September 26, 1920); 2. Maurizio Garino (Garino Family
Archive, Turin); 3. Front page of the anarchist newspaper Umanità Nova,
September 5, 1920.
On this topic, the pamphlet "Pietro Ferrero, a Worker Hero," Quaderni di
Alternativa Libertaria, 2022, is available.
Request from ilcantiere@autistici.org.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
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