Revolt Spreads - the World Changes ---- When addressing the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, one always encounters conflicting assessments. When a blanket of silence has not fallen, one often finds oneself faced with a mystification aimed at describing them exclusively as a period of violence, subversion, bloodshed, and crime: in short, the "Years of Lead." Others, however, define those years simply as 'formidable,' giving in to the exaltation of the period experienced as the most beautiful, the one that transformed daily life, in which the need for community and freedom was expressed, and which witnessed the transformation of gender relations, the sexual revolution, the questioning of totalitarian institutions like prison and mental hospitals, the innovation of artistic and musical language, and so on.
To understand their true meaning and their actual significance, it is therefore a question of retracing their most significant stages.
First of all, we must keep in mind the international context of the time.
In the United States, during these years, a strong student youth movement developed against the Vietnam War and the deployment of troops, with occupations of universities and campuses, such as Columbia University, which was stormed by police in the spring of 1968, resulting in 700 arrests and 150 injuries. African Americans launched movements openly protesting the racism and authoritarianism that permeated American society, suffering harsh repression (recall the assassination of Martin Luther King, followed shortly thereafter by that of Senator Robert Kennedy). The death of Che Guevara in October 1967 in Bolivia during a guerrilla warfare profoundly affected the imagination of the youth of the time, after the Cuban revolution, despite its authoritarian decline, had inspired much of the political and social opposition to North American imperialism.
But throughout 1967, mobilizations and struggles arose in response to the intensifying US intervention in Vietnam, the resurgence of Franco's dictatorship in Spain, the coup d'état by the Greek colonels, and the war between Israel and the Arab countries. Demonstrations and protests were widespread. In April 1968, violent student unrest erupted in Germany against a bill suspending democratic guarantees. A neo-Nazi attack seriously injured Rudi Dutschke, the movement's leader. The response was strong but limited, and in May the "emergency laws" were approved by parliament. Also in May, the Sorbonne University in Paris was occupied and then closed by the authorities. Thousands of young people took to the streets and clashed with the police. The movement spread to the workplace and, after the general strike was called, assumed a pre-insurrectional character. General De Gaulle relies on the army and the social right, and signs with the trade unions the concession of wage increases.
In Africa, which was grappling with decolonization, examples stand out in Algeria, where student protests were repressed to the point of closing the University of Algiers, while opportunities for peasant self-management were reduced. Another case in point is Senegal, where students and workers called a general strike, which the government responded to with the military occupation of the University of Dakar. In Mexico, on October 3, 1968, the army opened fire on students demonstrating in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the capital, killing thirty, while the day before, in Tlalelolco, it had massacred three hundred students who were demonstrating against government corruption. In Asia, ravaged by the wars in Vietnam and Laos, students in Japan banded together in revolutionary organizations like Zengaku-Ren, unafraid to clash with the police, armed with long wooden or bamboo poles, to protest a hyper-authoritarian, rigid, and classist society and the presence of US ships in Japanese ports in the aftermath of the Marines' massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lay, killing 300 women, elderly people, and children.
Signs of rebellion also emerged in the Eastern European satellite countries of the Soviet Union, dominated by a crumbling bureaucracy. Fierce clashes erupted in Warsaw against the ban on the performance of a play evoking Tsarist oppression and against the police presence in universities and high schools. The movement in Czechoslovakia-the Prague Spring-was also largely the result of this youth mobilization, which prompted members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Dubcek and others, to propose the idea of "socialism with a human face," to usher in a period of structural reform, later crushed by the Warsaw Pact tanks. And in Belgrade, too, all the universities were occupied.
As for Italy, since the late 1950s, it has been affected by the consequences of an intense process of industrialization and strong internal migratory movements, within a framework of increasingly conservative and reactionary political power.
In July 1960, an unexpected explosion of struggle and protest broke out, partially outside traditional norms. This was the case with the large student and worker demonstration held in Genoa in response to the neo-fascist MSI (Italian Socialist Party) attempt to hold their national congress in the city, supported by the support given to the Christian Democrat Tambroni's government. Genoa, particularly affected by Nazi and Fascist occupation during the Second World War, boasts a strong tradition of worker resistance, intertwined with a significant libertarian presence. The violent clashes between protesters and police provided the first sign that things were changing; the Communist Party's rigid control over workers was weakening, and the first embryonic forms of autonomy and self-organization were beginning to emerge.
But it wasn't just Genoa; Licata, Rome, Reggio Emilia, Palermo, and Catania were the places where the clashes were most bitter, with the police claiming 11 lives and countless injuries. After the events of July 1960, the growth of working-class power was highlighted by the 1962 workers' revolt in Turin's Piazza Statuto-three days of clashes-against the agreements between Fiat, the UIL, and the pro-employer unions. In October of the same year, there were the riots in Milan, with the death of university student Giovanni Ardizzone during a demonstration against the US blockade of Cuba.
The formation of a center-left government in 1963, with the entry of the Socialists, seemed to usher in a new phase in the country's life, but the ambitions of the 'progressives' were soon dashed by the 'powers that be,' who did not hesitate to stage coup attempts: the protagonist being Carabinieri General De Lorenzo and his 'Piano Solo' in 1964.
Struggles and demonstrations resume, often violently repressed by the police. The agrarian mafia kills trade unionists and farm workers in Sicily; fascists in Rome beat socialist student Paolo Rossi to death during an assault on the Faculty of Letters (1966).
Among young people, widespread countercultural activity emerged, centered on critiquing lifestyles and consumerism. Collectives and groups formed, and significant groups formed around magazines and organizations like 'Mondo Beat' and 'Onda Verde', which, drawing on the Dutch experience of the Provos movement, reaffirmed the centrality of human needs in Italy, opposing rampant motorization for the socialization of transportation, for free contraception, and for the occupation of vacant homes. Music developed a different language, lyrics broke with Italian musical tradition, and singer-songwriters and youth groups emerged, drawing partly from the then-avant-garde Anglo-Saxon tradition and partly forging new paths. This new musical and countercultural presence, on the one hand, is the fruit of ongoing change; on the other, it drives further changes in an Italian society profoundly different from the one we know today: a society permeated by bigotry, largely dominated by the church, with a single-channel television rigidly controlled by the Christian Democrats, harking back to the old sacristy morality. The bourgeois media becomes the mouthpiece of reactionary and conservative intolerance toward youth concerns, smugly reporting on the haircuts of those known as "long-hairs" by emulators of fascist squads. In June 1967, the police raided the "Mondo Beat" tent city in Milan and razed it to the ground: hundreds of arrests and expulsion orders are issued against beats, provos, and, indeed, "long-hairs."
This type of moralistic and bigoted society is no longer capable of coping with the ever-growing demands for change. More and more people no longer find this situation acceptable. It is precisely from this that student organizations emerge, the first expressions of autonomy that break away from the traditional organizations that gathered young students interested in politics, such as the FUCI (Italian Catholic University Federation) and other organizations emanating from political parties and structures aimed at co-opting young people and integrating them into the traditional party system.
While students want to break away from this bigoted moralism, as well as from an authoritarian school system and a university that serves the needs of capital, the working class is increasingly demanding freedom from the confines of wage barriers, long hours, and appalling working conditions, the hyper-exploitation and alienation of the assembly line. The issue of housing and access to even a minimal level of social services is also becoming acute.
These events and these ferments also contributed to the development of a series of youth initiatives in Italy and beyond, expressions of a potentially radical and revolutionary nature. These were not just struggles for political demands, like those of the laborers of Puglia and Calabria, or the Fiat workers and employees; or temporary university occupations, such as those in Pisa and Bologna in solidarity with the Greek, Spanish, and Vietnamese resistance fighters. There was, in essence, a first break with the oppositional political practices then in vogue-at the time, the PCI was the dominant opposition party-starting with various countercultural experiences, from Mondo Beat, the hippie communities, and the so-called flower children, who espoused a worldview entirely different from the dominant one. These experiences, even if trivialized today, represented something significant not only in qualitative terms but also in quantitative terms. A census of these realities was conducted: in 1967, for example, it was estimated that 7,000 young people in Italy participated in these initiatives. These are people who have adopted a communal, alternative lifestyle. Thirty thousand in Scandinavia, 26 thousand in France, 20 thousand in the Netherlands, 18 thousand in England, and so on; it is a transversal movement that spans Europe and presents itself as a radical opposition to the values of the dominant society. This type of experience will later constitute a significant element of the fertile ground from which the movements of the following years will grow.
The first occupations of the universities
In 1967, the first university occupations began: Palazzo Campana in Turin, Naples, Cagliari, and Lecce, Sociology in Trento, Sapienza University in Pisa, Architecture in Rome, the Catholic University of Milan against tuition increases, and others. These occupations ushered in a completely new era-bypassing the current practices of small groups representing political parties, parliamentary outreach, and deputies negotiating with the Rectorate-demonstrating a growing desire for participation that soon became mass participation. Among other things, the first leadership groups of the Student Movement and several extra-parliamentary groups would form there. In Milan, Mario Capanna, leader of the struggle at the Catholic University, was expelled and enrolled at the State University of Milan, a public university where he would embark on a different path, leading him to lead the Student Movement. In Turin, the foundations of Lotta Continua were laid. In Pisa, 'Il Potere Operaio' was born.
With the onset of '68, further occupations occurred in other cities, and students began to weave a broad network of connections between the various universities. By the beginning of the year, 36 universities had been occupied throughout Italy, joined by several high schools, while the repressive attack intensified: in Turin, one hundred students were suspended from exams for a year; in Naples, students and teachers were charged for the April '67 occupation; in Pisa and Palermo, police violently charged student marches. Neo-fascist groups also mobilized, attacking the occupations and assaulting students.
Along with the student protests, the feminist movement also developed: the Lotta femminista collective, the Rivolta Femminile group, and others emerged. The struggle in universities-supported by the growing presence of women in higher education-encouraged women's leadership, thus challenging established roles within the family and society. The importance of reflecting on one's own body, removed from the purview of male specialists, was accompanied by the fight for sexual liberation. In this context, we understand the importance of issues such as divorce, abortion, equal rights and opportunities, and equal pay in women's thinking and mobilization.
On March 8, 1972, women took to the streets in Rome with all their protest energy, and the police charged them, sending several to the hospital. They would then demonstrate a strong commitment in 1974 to repel the attempt to repeal the divorce law and to gain full control over their bodies, which had been impeded by punitive abortion laws. But it was in 1977 that the women's movement would express its full vitality and its capacity to mobilize and influence the entire society, effectively revolutionizing the existing patriarchal order.
Autonomous struggles in the factories
The struggle at the Marzotto plant in Valdagno in April 1968 was characterized by fierce clashes between workers and police: 42 workers were arrested. At Falk, all 13,000 workers went on strike, as did 40,000 metalworkers in Bologna, 2,000 pasta workers in Torre Annunziata, and 7,000 at Italsider in Naples. At Rhodiatoce in Casoria, 1,800 workers went on indefinite strike. Then came the turn of railway workers, textile workers, laborers, footwear workers, seafarers, Italcantieri and Pirelli, Italsider and Eridania, and Olivetti; to these were added general strikes in the earthquake-stricken areas and in Palermo, the petrochemical workers in Porto Marghera, and the metalworkers. In Avola, police shot and killed two laborers, and at the Bussola in Viareggio, they seriously injured a 16-year-old boy, Soriano Ceccanti, who was participating in the workers' and students' protests on the Rich People's New Year's Eve and who was left paralyzed.
The strikes are spreading further and further, affecting all categories.
International events, with the brutal repression of the Mexican student protests which caused hundreds of deaths, the radical nature of May 1945 in France, the coups d'état in Brazil and Panama, and the resurgence of US aggression in Vietnam further inflamed the general climate.
Autonomous struggles develop, especially at the factory level, and above all at Fiat in Turin.
Previously, there had been small 'heretical' groups that relied on magazines like "Quaderni Piacentini" and "Quaderni Rossi," which promoted analysis and debate among militants who had disbanded the Communist and Socialist Parties. In 1956, the Soviet invasion of Hungary had caused major repercussions within both the Communist and Socialist parties, as well as within the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labour), sparking a fierce debate within which criticism of Stalinism gained strength. This challenged a whole range of affiliations and positions, generating forms of critical expression, reinterpretation, distancing, and detachment. In the same years, the Chinese Cultural Revolution had emerged as a force capable of revitalizing not only the actions of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, but also Marxism-Leninism, which had been suffocated by the bureaucracy and authoritarianism of the Soviet Union. The actions of the Red Guards - as interpreted by many young protesters - had a disruptive effect on the general orthodoxy dominant in our country thanks to the hegemony of the PCI, encouraging the birth of small Italian communist groups, a reflection of Maoism in all its variants.
These critical presences grow in harmony with the movement that is erupting, with the university students who are organizing occupations, with the struggles of factory workers, starting with Fiat.
Italy in those years was emerging from a period of intense internal immigration and was no longer the rural country of the early 1950s. Postwar reconstruction was marked and vigorous, and industrial development was particularly significant in the North, where factories now needed labor. Many low-skilled workers from the South were forced into the assembly line structure of Taylorized factories, based on fixed production times. Furthermore, large factories were located in cities like Turin and Milan, which were essentially hostile and unwelcoming: some signs read, "We don't rent to Southerners here" (just as today we read, "We don't rent to Moroccans here"; among other things, Southerners back then were called, in addition to terroni, Marocchini). This condition of marginalization and subordination means it's no longer possible to imagine workers' behavior within union structures built for another type of worker, capable of "sniffing flies," as they used to say-namely, a toolmaker with an extremely high level of manual labor skills who represented what could be briefly called the labor aristocracy, functional to the production processes and with a defined bargaining capacity. Those arriving from the South, on the other hand, are unskilled workers who, in fact, resent factory discipline, built on that other worker profile and aimed at valorizing that type of professionalism.
This spontaneously generates a revolt that the union is unable to control immediately-or even in the medium term-because the union, too, is built on traditional professional figures. This worker insubordination contributes to the emergence of that great cycle of struggles that will allow for major gains, but which, at the same time, will push capital and employers to completely restructure the factory, introducing automation mechanisms capable of eliminating, as much as possible, de facto unmanageable forms of labor.
As these forms of workers' autonomy came to life, all those small groups that had previously formed, those student and university collectives that had expressed their autonomy and culture from the dominant one and that until then had expressed themselves solely on the methods of transmitting knowledge, on how study plans were constructed, on how lessons were conducted, etc., now understood that the struggle was no longer just a student issue (among other things, some spoke of student power, making clear the possibility that students could aspire to become a new "class" that would replace their parents in governing the country).
A sort of "going out" to the factories then began, with the distribution of newspapers and flyers, and pickets at the gates supported by students. This cross-fertilization between students and workers found a significant synthesis in some groups, especially the Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio groups, which subsequently gave rise to particularly representative movements of the period.
Massimo Varengo
https://umanitanova.org/utopie-e-autoritarismi-nel-decennio-1968-1977-prima-parte-relazione-presentata-al-convegno-di-carrara-11-12-10-2025-nell80-della-fai/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #8-26 - Utopias and Authoritarianism in the Decade 1968-1977 (Part One). Paper presented at the Carrara Conference (October 11-12, 2025) on the 80th Anniversary of the FAI (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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