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Title: After Marx, autonomy
Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno
Date: 1975
Language: en
Topics: Marx, Insurrectionary, autonomy
Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-15 from https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-after-marx-autonomy
Notes: Original title: Alfredo M. Bonanno, Autonomia dei nuclei produttivi di base, Anarchismo n. 3, 1975. Translated by Jean Weir.

Alfredo M. Bonanno

After Marx, autonomy

The road ahead of the proletariat is blocked: the reformist parties,

trade unions and employers have coalesced to obstruct any growth in the

level of the struggle, or any conquests that could lead to a

revolutionary transformation of production relations.

The proletariat have only one alternative: that of building communism

directly, passing over the counterrevolutionary bureaucratic structures.

In order to do this we must provide analyses of and realise in practice,

elements organised by the base at the level of production: autonomous

workers’ nuclei.

These nuclei must not, in our opinion, be confused with the company, the

factory, etc., but their concept must extend to a global vision of

factory, living area, school and land.

Within this globality the idea of autonomy must be reinterpreted by the

working class and related to the autonomy of each individual, element of

constant reference and correction of any tendency to construct the

former at the cost of the latter.

Here the action of a minority that has acquired a revolutionary

consciousness has its place: to point out the ever present dangers of

bureaucratisation, any involution towards the control of the struggle by

a minority, certain corporative tendencies intrinsic to the workers’

movement, and all the other limitations that centuries of oppression

have developed.

Their very delicate task is therefore that of fusing together struggle

and organisation, uniting them in daily praxis. This requires analytical

clarity in order that the second should be maintained within the usable

limits of the first, and to prevent its autonomous essence being

destroyed by the organisational aspect, leaving it in name only.

Not negligible, finally, is the work of the active minority concerning

the problem of gaining information, essential element for the

emancipation of the working masses and their control over the elements

necessary for their liberation: the demolition of all constituted power,

and the communitarian management of the means of production.

If once the possibility of revolution could be confused with the simple

expropriation of the means of production (on which the Marxist ambiguity

rests today), we now know with certainty that the bourgeoisie themselves

are prepared to transform their property titles in order that

exploitation can continue under another guise. The ‘smooth’ passage to

State socialism is the most widely diffused prospect among the

‘progressive’ circles of the bourgeoisie.

In the face of such a prospect the working class must build the means

necessary for the struggle and the recapture of a revolutionary

perspective.

Working class autonomy

The analytical individuation of the working ‘class’ is a complex

problem. Usually comrades like to refer to even the most sophisticated

of the Marxist analyses, coming through with all possible glory by

affirming that they intend to limit the ‘use of Marx’ to the strictly

indispensable (usually identified with the economic analyses), for the

construction of the true libertarian perspective of workers’ autonomy

and their struggle.

Frankly, I have never been able to do as much. Perhaps for reasons

derived from my profound aversion to metaphysics, and perhaps, given the

character of my studies, I have learned to detect the smell of

metaphysics a long way off. And such a large part of the Marxist

analyses, even in economy and historical methodology, stinks of

metaphysics. That is why, as far as is possible, I mean to avoid doing

the same.

As the great founder fathers themselves have admitted, the themes of the

problem of class are not their ‘invention’. They, and Marx in

particular, limited themselves to relating the existence of classes to

certain precise historical phases in the development of production, from

which, with a considerable logical jump, they drew the conclusion of the

ineluctability of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the consequent

mythology of a transition to the classless society.

I have often heard Marx’s ‘realism’ exalted, it being identified in his

refusal to lament on the ‘immorality’ of society, and in his analysis of

exploitation and the chapter of accidents of the class struggle as a

necessary process leading to the liberation of society, therefore a

salutary and evolutionary process. We do not see anything ‘scientific’

in all that. Marx could not follow his predecessors such as Saint-Simon,

Fourier, Owen and Sismondi for two good reasons: he believed in

revolution (in his own way) and had studied Hegel (whom he never

digested, in spite of all his youthful criticisms). In this way he

managed to found in his ‘systematic’ brain, the realism of the

propagandist and political journalist and the optimism of the

metaphysician who identifies rational with real.

What bewilders us most is the fact that anarchist comrades often do not

realise that they are fully subscribing to a programme that has its

roots in German protestant mysticism of the Middle Ages (see Hegel and

his debtors), a philosophical Middle Ages that still insists on a

claimed difference between ‘class in itself’ and ‘class for itself’. The

passage is the awakening of consciousness; the point of departure the

objective situation obtained by the distribution of private property.

Sometimes the awakening of consciousness is made to coincide with class

organisation.

Apart from the metaphysical premise, the only concrete fact here is

history. For the first time, with great clarity and analytical

explanation, Marx manages to free reasoning on Man from all religious,

biological or evolutionary idealisation. What remains is man in history:

no small feat, seriously wasted, however, by the ‘rationalising’

pretension of enclosing it within the ‘Romanesque’ atmosphere of the

phenomenology of the spirit (albeit it upside down). In this way the

justification of the history of man emerges from the dialectical process

placed within a fixed structure. History is rationalised through a

metaphysical process, in the same way as it has been done by other

historians with just as much need for ‘a point of reference’, using the

dominion of religion or the evolution of the species. Once history is

‘rationalised’ historical reason ceases to be ‘absolute reason’ (as it

was for example for the theoreticians of the old democracy) and becomes

‘dialectical reason’. Rationality becomes a new wrapping for an old

parcel, enabling it to be sold off as new goods. But old or new, these

goods are always a product of ‘Metaphysical & Co.’, supplier to all the

‘Royal Houses’ of the world.

Certainly the old ‘absolute reason’ had lost favour. To reinterpret the

world with its measure would have been a very difficult and easily

discreditable operation, as were the attempts of the ingenuous

materialists of the first half of the nineteenth century, romantics in

love with matter and its metaphysical ‘sensations’, incapable of tearing

the vicissitudes of Man from their absolute periodicity:

exploitation/rebellion, and again exploitation, and again rebellion.

Obtusity of history on the one hand, obtusity of its interpreters on the

other. This blessed spirit’s path did not want to move in a progressive

direction: exploitation continued to grow again after the revolt, the

workers’ blood bathed the streets with a constancy that gave some with a

sense of humour the idea of predicting revolutionary cycles.

Nevertheless, in spite of such poverty of means and pollution in the few

basic ideas, Marx managed to go beyond the useless production of his

time, uniting optimism and realism in a remarkable reconstruction, even

though they were lacking in many aspects and requiring some fundamental

changes. One of the most deficient parts is precisely that concerning

the problem of ‘class’. It is no coincidence that the unfinished

manuscript of Das Capital stops precisely here.

For we anarchists the problem should be quite clear. Any reasoning of

the kind ‘thing in itself’ should not interest us. Who the devil ‘class

in itself’ might be does not strike us as being an important problem; in

fact we do not see it as a problem at all. How this ‘class in itself’

could become a ‘class for itself’ seems to us to be a joke in bad taste.

Let us leave such ‘typographical jokes’ to professors of philosophy and

reason more simply, sticking to the facts.

We do not know, nor do we want to know, if a class in itself actually

exists. What does interest us is to know that there exists a power

structure. This macroscopic fact, which goes right through history,

cannot be denied. In this way history can be said to be marked by power

and by the various transformations it has undergone in order to persist

as such. But such reasoning would begin to smell of metaphysics in that

it would lead us to the question: is it power that determines history,

or something in history that determines power in one form or another?

Let us put such reasoning aside. History is marked by many events that

are more or less constant throughout its development: the State,

religion, production, sex, and the struggles of the exploited. In fact

it would be impossible to construct an historical development of any one

of those elements, thereby giving us a history based on the State,

religion, production, sex, the struggles of the exploited, etc..

And let it not be understood that we believe possible a military

history, a history of religion, an economic history, a sexual history,

and a history of the struggles of the exploited. We know, like everyone

else, that history is an indissoluble unity. We are only saying that,

for the sake of argument, it would be possible to single out the above

mentioned elements.

That proves, or at least it seems so to us, that it is always possible

to construct an external model, whether be dialectical (the metaphysical

model), idealist (the religious model), materialist (the economic

model), or descriptive (the empirical model): but that also proves that

such work would be quite pointless.

For anarchists, history is all these elements together, and many other

things besides. We can also include irrational and metaphysical aspects:

they too are history, and although from time to time they should be

isolated and condemned, not for this can they be eliminated. If we did

otherwise we should fall into two indissoluble alternatives, such as

that between ideas and action, or the other way around. In practice all

that does not matter to us: we can leave such work to the philosophy

professors.

This places us before one last metaphysical obstacle: should we ask the

meaning of reality? (This is no idle question. Marxism is due much

credit for having managed to camouflage it by postponing it to

infinity). Reality is at the same time power, religion, production, sex,

the struggle, and many other things as well that we do not remember or

that we do not know. What matters is not interpreting it in its totality

(which would be the metaphysical model of ‘thing in itself’) but

interpreting the main elements that are useful for the construction of a

programme of action.

Every attempt at analysis should have this aim Let us take an example,

starting from the model that takes into consideration the struggle of

the exploited, a constantly recurring fact in history. The common lot of

these struggles is to be reabsorbed by the State. This process, which

has cost millions of lives and incredible suffering, has not killed the

will to struggle.

We thus have two elements: the struggle, and the will to struggle. Now

we must ask why this struggle has constantly had a negative outcome, and

what is significant about this. The first point can be partly explained

by the presence of a minority ‘leading’ this struggle; a minority which,

if on the one hand it takes itself as being the ‘head’ of the movement

of the exploited, on the other adopts the role of ‘ascending elite’,

that is a minority that intends to take power itself, taking the place

of the elite who were previously in charge. There is another, deeper

reason for the first point: the persistent ‘religiosity’ of the

exploited masses, hence their ‘need’ for a ‘guide’, a group or a person

capable of materialising their desire for vengeance. This takes us to

the second point: what significance should be given to the constant

negative outcome of these struggles? The conclusion is linked to the

discourse on the autonomy of the individual. Only the will to freedom,

at the same time the fruit of and the reason for the struggle, can

eliminate the sentiment of religiosity that is still intrinsic in the

struggles of the workers today.

This model might explain the great flood of reformist and authoritarian

parties in that they become, in our opinion, the symbol of vengeance.

The masses see in these organisations the sacerdotal caste and church

that will lead to their millenary dream. For their part, the bureaucrats

of power (the trade unions should be included in this argument) who

present themselves as ascending elites, have every interest in

exploiting this sentiment, while their very nature prevents them from

stimulating any initiative towards a process of liberalisation.

But the sum of these struggles throughout the course of history can be

seen as a progression. Certainly we must not fall prey to the

progressivist illusion, but in our analysis, the acknowledgment of a

certain progress is based on observable facts. For example, the

reduction in working hours and improvement in working conditions are

objectively progress compared to previous situations, although they can

become a part of a process of recuperation, rendering the struggle just

as necessary as before. What matters here is the obvious fact that this

process transforms the type of religiosity in a situation of

exploitation. To the old religiosity instrumentalised by the Church, we

can compare the lay religiosity instrumentalised by the political

parties today. The comparison is useful and allows us to see the

differences.

If the identification of the class of exploited is vague and cannot be

otherwise once we have deliberately left history and, as we shall see,

reality in the realm of vagueness, on the other hand we now have the

possibility of using various elements in our analysis that would

otherwise have remained irremediably outside it in the case of an a

priori choice of a precise system (for example, dialectics, religion,

economics, metaphysics, etc.). If the construction of the analytical

model is more difficult, the richer should be the result of its

application, it neither having to work for the construction of a party,

or in defense of a preestablished order.

A rough conclusion would be one linking the working class to a

progressive elimination of the religious sentiment that gives rise to

the need for a ‘guide’. Every attempt to do ‘for oneself’ is for us a

sign of acting in first person on the situation of exploitation. The

struggle, taken in itself as the phenomenon of an amorphous mass more or

less sensitised under the teachings of a church or party, is not enough

to define a class. Nor is the productive process as a whole, as a

precise repartition of the ownership of the means of production that

excludes a part of the human race, enough to define a class.

Marxists can also speak of class ‘consciousness’; the term does not

worry us. But not for this should we be drawn into their philosophical

arguments on this pseudo problem. We have often said that the autonomy

of the individual is determined by his or her acceptance of

responsibility in making decisions concerning his or her life: this

responsibilisation can also be called ‘consciousness’. It would be

preferable to define it ‘will’. The will to do for oneself, the will to

intervene in first person, the will to break the spellbound circle of

religiosity, the will to overturn tradition, the will to break with

orders from above: in a word, the will to build one’s own autonomy. And

it is here that the discourse on the autonomy of the individual meets

that of the autonomy of the working class.

The active minority

The conclusion for working class autonomy comes to us, as we have seen,

from the impossibility of breaking through the counterrevolutionary

circle in any other way. That this impossibility is supposed to be due

to some historical process does not concern us. Workers’ autonomy is not

another philosophical ‘form’ like so many others, it is an objective

necessity. Workers must look after their own interests: the religious

stimulus towards a delegate to take care of their interests must be

fought.

Here a question arises. What determines the birth and development of the

autonomous organisation of the struggle within the working class? Is it

automatic, a direct consequence of the impossibility of a revolutionary

outlet due to the ‘holy alliance’ between capital, parties and trade

unions? Or does a precise minority exist, acting within the masses,

developing a progressive clarification of the dangers, obstacles and

possibilities: i.e. pushing the masses to act for themselves?

The most exact answer would be an illustration of the two factors

alongside each other. But in practice the most serious problem that

arises is that of the precise historical character of the industrial

proletariat, and their ‘hegemonic’ role in the revolutionary

perspective. It would seem to some that without the birth of the

industrial proletariat the tendency towards autonomous organisation

would not have come about. We find such reasoning curious for two

reasons: first, it insists on giving the industrial proletariat the

historic role of ‘guide’, and proposes an illogical alternative in

history, the possibility of a ‘nonexistence’ of the proletariat. But the

proletariat does exist. Industry and its development have their place in

history, the industrial revolution determined the birth of capitalism

and this has evolved to the present day as we know it, and shows clear

signs of going in a certain direction. All this leads to a

simplification of our problem. A large part of the working class today

is made up of the industrial proletariat. They are directly linked in

their class configuration to the development of the industrial

revolution, which is logical. But we do not understand how from this we

can pass to the affirmation that the industrial workers must play a

predominant role over the rest of the working class. Not only that, we

do not understand the second question: why autonomy must only come about

within the industrial proletariat.

If we allow such reasoning, we must admit that the crisis of capitalism

to be a ‘mortal’ one, and not one of ‘transformation’. If the industrial

proletariat are the most sensitive edge of the working class, they would

also be the most fitted to perceiving the sickness of capitalism and of

opposing it with a specific form of struggle, i.e. autonomous

organisation. The other strata, the peasants for example, not being

immediately in contact with the privileged stratum of production, would

not heed these stimuli, and the possibility of autonomy would not arise.

It does not seem to us that capitalism is in ‘mortal crisis’. On the

contrary, it seems to us that it is as lively and vigorous as ever. Its

very obvious crisis is manifesting itself as a passing one, an evolution

towards a very different type of capitalism far more capable and

efficient than that of the present time. Therefore we cannot speak in

terms of a ‘final crisis’. Nevertheless, a tendency for autonomous

working class organisation does exist.

In fact, the present position of the reformists (parties and trade

unions) is not a ‘response’ to capitalism’s ‘final crisis’ any more than

proletarian autonomy is. The collaboration of the unions and parties is

not a new strategy but is the normal response from developing

institutions to those in power. They would like to destroy the latter

but must allow them to subsist so that the changeover can come about

with the least possible damage to the structure, otherwise the ascending

elite, when they come into power, will find themselves with a heap of

rubble in their hands. That is the real position of the reformists. In

the same way, working class autonomy intended as the remaining

possibility of struggle, is not derived from capitalism’s ‘final

crisis’, but is part of the constant attempts of the class to free

themselves from exploitation. In this sense we can see how workers have

always looked for new and autonomous organisations in contrast to

preceding ones (out of date or absorbed by the system), with the aim of

surviving or fighting, and we can also see how these organisations have

been consigned into the hands of the ascending elite, reached power, and

denied the autonomous instance of the base of the workers.

We must study this mechanism of ‘consigning’ autonomy into the hands of

the ‘leaders’ and guiding parties more closely. We must examine the

causes of this ‘religiosity’, irrational motivations that act on and

become a part of the structure, the lack of self-confidence that seems

to afflict the masses and throws them into the hands of the reformists.

We have asked what the role of the active minority should be within the

perspective of working class autonomy. The conclusion is a constant

measuring of the forces that determine the failure of class autonomy,

i.e. the forces we have perhaps incorrectly summarised as ‘religiosity’

in order to underline their irrational essence. It is impossible to

theorise the formation of an anarchist minority group acting on the

masses beyond the level of their own interests in abstract. What we can

agree upon is the essence and content of these interests. The

smokescreen drawn by the reformists is hindering a proper evaluation of

the workers’ interests far more drastically than the brutal power of the

bosses and the fascists did in the past. Social democracy’s alliance

with the bosses is the worst imaginable obstacle in the path of workers’

freedom.

We must therefore establish a point of reference for anarchist action

within the area of workers’ autonomy. This can be found in the latter’s’

objective interests, the clarification of which constitutes an initial

contribution by the anarchist minority. But this does not mean within

the perspective of ‘leadership’ which, even if adopted by the most

orthodox anarchist tendency, would end up tracing the path of social

democracy, agent of the power structure. On the contrary, it means

action within the workers’ movement itself, starting from the concept of

autonomy and autonomous organisation concerning the workers’ interests,

linked to that of individual autonomy lived through the class

perspective of revolutionary liberation.

The failure of so many concrete instances is that the action of

anarchists, if clear at a certain analytical level, often errs in the

choice of means, a decision that raises the whole question of ends to be

attained. To attack the project of the parties and trade unions requires

a clear idea of the means to be employed in the struggle, and not just a

blind postponement to workers’ spontaneity. The question of autonomy is

not separate from the question of the choice of means in the struggle:

the two are linked, and condition each other in turn. The violent

perspective, workers’ direct action such as sabotage, the destruction of

work, etc., are not actions ‘more to the left’ than some other

supposedly left-wing action. They are precise choices dictated by

autonomy of interests, choices where the active presence of anarchists

is of very great importance.

We must now stop and reflect carefully on the problem of the workers’

‘interests’. If they were to emerge, as in the Marxist analysis, from a

concrete situation—the dominion of capital—one could, with a logical

effort, talk of ‘interests in themselves’, corresponding to ‘class for

itself’. But these interests are only really those of the working class

on condition that they recognise themselves as such and manage to

overcome the obstacles that have been deliberately constructed by the

State, reject the false proposals of the reformists, and so on. In other

words, we see a voluntaristic aspect in the autonomous action of the

workers, an aspect that reaches the centre of their ‘objective’ class

interests, but only on condition that this is obtained through struggle

and awareness. And it is here that the positive action of anarchist fits

in.

To become aware of one’s own interests, a subjective rediscovery in

objective form, is the essential condition for the verification of

social revolution without first passing through State communism.

Another aspect of anarchist action in the region of autonomy is that

aimed at clarifying the relationship with power, leading to a solution

of the above-mentioned problem of the religiosity of the ‘guide’.

Power does not solidify in one precise point of the forces of reaction.

There are substantial differences between capitalists, bureaucracy,

middle class and petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals and other elements,

all within a very complex framework. No less substantial differences

exist between parties in government, reformist parties, trade unions,

the repressive organs of capital (army, police, judiciary, fascists.

etc. ). But beyond the specific differences in constitution and

employment, all of these forces are united by the one basic need of

every organisation of power : survival. In the first place they struggle

for their own survival and self-perpetuation in the situation that makes

their existence possible; then, to make this survival easier they move

on to the phase of development and the desire for even greater dominion.

That the Marxist doctrine is the expression of a certain middle class

that aspires to power and the overcoming of the final obstacle that

separates them from it, is an attractive and valid hypothesis, but one

that needs to be gone into more deeply in our opinion. We cannot agree

to simply see this as something to be found in the attitudes and

interests of the middle and petty bourgeoisie alone. An equally

important reflex exists in the irrational residual within the working

class, which allows the development of the interests of the intermediate

class that aspires to power. In this case the ascending elite is not the

whole of the middle or petty bourgeois class, but a minority among them,

the political parties and trade unions, who define themselves as the

representatives of the workers’ interests and those of the less

financially endowed bourgeoisie.

That is why anarchists in the sense of an active minority should not

define themselves a vanguard that is sensitive to a certain level of

struggle and authorised to represent the masses. This would open the way

to violent action as an end in itself, with the claim that it could

solicit the workers’ movement from outside as a consequence of certain

actions ‘exemplary’ by their very isolation. The very principle of

workers’ self-management and direct action as the patrimony of the

exploited masses, and not the prerogative of a minority, would come into

contrast with such a limited vision of the revolutionary task.

Relations within the working class

The ‘religiosity’ that we have spoken of is not the only characteristic

of the working class. This is more a basic sentiment than a precise

element, something irrational that persists within the class, and which

finds its origins in exploitation itself. It is concretised in the

demand for ‘vengeance’, a kind of millenarianism that accompanies every

kind of religion, and in the positive evaluation of certain

principles—shared with the enemy—and which the latter are accused of

having profaned.

Let us take an historical example. In the Middle Ages the German

peasants rose up against the lords and the Church, demanding vengeance

for the suffering and privation they had always been subjected to, but

at the same time asking for the restoration of the Christian principle

of poverty and morality in custom that had been profaned both by the

lords and the Church. They were therefore fighting in the name of a

desire for vengeance, hence put themselves—with great reticence in this

case—into the hands of a leader in the name of a moral code shared by

the exploiters who were considered profane by the people.

Today, changing the conditions of production and the composition of the

classes involved in the social conflict, these relations remain constant

within the working class. First of all religiosity, then morals. The

first is the essential condition for falling into the hands of an elite

aiming for the conquest of power and denying the existence of autonomy

once again; the second is the condition for operating a radical

selection within the working class itself, establishing the existence of

a privileged strata that would be the first to be instrumentalised by

the ascending elite.

The reason is simple. The moral values of the shop-keeping bourgeoisie

persist within the working class. On this basis a division exists

between ‘skilled’ and ‘manual’ workers, between professionally qualified

workers who have a decent ‘honourable’ socially esteemed past, and those

who live from day to day, the so-called rabble, usually present in the

large cities. Marxism, typical product of the moral mentality of the

bourgeoisie, has always insisted on this point, relegating the

lumpen-proletariat to the margins of the revolutionary discourse,

considering them with suspicion, washing their hands every time they

find themselves obliged to approach them.

What is more serious is the fact that this is not simply a literary

component that belongs to the priests of the Marxist church, but is also

a common sentiment among the mass, one of so many factors of corporate

origins which, out of interest, has not been fought by the reformists.

The latter’s’ collaboration has in fact hindered any action capable of

confronting the State with an irrecuperable situation of conflict.

We thus have: religiosity in general, which determines the acceptation

of a leader identified in the ascending elite, and the moral residual

that causes a deep division within the autonomous movement of the

workers, laying the foundations for their instrumentalisation by the

future power structure.

The first consequence of this moral residual is the refusal of every

spontaneous tendency in the organisation of the struggle, any recourse

to illegality, any action beyond the ‘canons’ of the current morality

that has been artfully exploited by the bourgeoisie for many centuries.

The division within the workers’ movement causes a division in the

choice of strategy to be used in the struggle. The indiscriminate

condemnation of the use of criminality is a notable example of this

perspective.

We do not want to take up an argument here that would require going into

in great detail. We only want to say that the seeds of bourgeois morals,

if not eradicated in time, are serious enough to cause a fracture of

considerable importance.

Going into the problem we realise that if the ‘religiosity’ of vengeance

is essentially a fruit of exploitation, therefore belongs to the class

of producers themselves, the bourgeois moral conception is not a fruit

of exploitation, but reaches the class of producers through their

contamination from the petty bourgeois class that is not easily

distinguishable from themselves.

All the models that fill the Marxists’ pages certainly do not help to

clarify this distinction. The petty bourgeois class consists of

shopkeepers (distribution), administrators (control), and police

(repression). Shopkeepers represent the traditional bourgeoisie with

their antiquated forms of distribution, and are in the process of being

transformed, at least in the advanced capitalist countries. Their moral

thought is diffused among other strata, for example the skilled workers.

The administrators represent the part that controls the circulation of

surplus value extracted by the capitalists. This is the most obtuse and

retrograde class, the one most tied to a vision of life based on the

values of the past, and careful to defend the privileges they have

obtained up till now. In the growing phase of the State’s contractual

strength, this class identifies with the bureaucracy. The policing class

cover all the elements of repression. Included in this class are the

politicians, trade union officials, police force, priests, and all those

who live on the margins of the producing class, repressing or helping to

repress any sign of revolt. All of these brave people exalt and

guarantee the continuation of bourgeois morality. The stratum of

privileged producers, approximately identifiable with the industrial

proletariat by their situation and privilege, end up accepting these

morals and imposing them on the lumpenproletariat through their negative

judgement.

In the same way the ideology of work and production is imported from the

class of the petty bourgeoisie. The work ethic, typically bourgeois,

also covers a large part of the producing class with its essential

condition: the safeguarding of production. Clearly those who have most

interest in spreading such an ideology are the bourgeoisie themselves

and the strata who safeguard their existence. An instructive parallel

could be drawn between bourgeois morals, the ideology of production, and

Marxism. In any case we cannot deny that even this aspect constitutes a

great problem, alimented by the specific interests of the bourgeoisie

and the parties in their service.

But relationships within the working class are affected by constant

changes in production relations. The analysis of the latter enables us

to identify the development of the workers’ defense against exploitation

as this exploitation, although constant, does not always express itself

in the same way. The workers defend themselves and attack their

exploiters, but this struggle and offensive take on different aspects in

relation to the development of accumulation, the ultimate result of

capitalism.

Today, within the very complex structure of advanced capitalism it would

be a mistake not to see the interdependence that exists between the

producing classes of different countries due to capitalism’s links at an

international level clearly. This interdependence exists at two levels:

first, as unequal exploitation depending on whether capitalism is in an

advanced or an underdeveloped stage, and secondly according to the

unequal development of capitalism within one country. The relationship

between centre and periphery both at world and international level

conditions relationships within the working class.

In Italy we can see a certain type of relationship in force between

employers and producers, but we cannot crystallise this in one model

that is valid for the whole of the country. In the first place we must

see its relationship to the international situation. Secondly, we must

see it in relationship to the South of Italy. For this reason the

autonomous structure of the struggle must not close itself within the

manufacturing dimension, but must include the situation of international

and national conflict.

The problem is not an easy one. Many comrades have seen it simply as a

problem of political equilibrium. To us it seems that, although it

remains a political problem, it also presents the important technical

aspect of how to organise the struggle from an autonomous point of view.

Let us try to go into this a little further.

The groups of producers who, as we have seen, are making plans for a

struggle based on autonomy, i.e. the refusal of an intermediary such as

parties or trade unions, must know the productive capacity of the

manufacturing or agricultural complex and how to adapt their struggle in

relation to autonomous management based on the choice of production

perspectives (rational distribution of work). To do this it is necessary

to know that surplus-value can be formed beyond the manufacturing and

agricultural situation, extracted directly through the situation of

underdevelopment in which one part of the country (or the world) is

being held. In other words, the economic calculation based on autonomy,

and therefore the very possibility of a future communist form of

production, and the basis for the autonomous of struggles today, must

not only bear in mind the extraction of profit at the centre of the

capitalist complex, but also that which is reached through the simple

existence of a centre and a periphery. The colonialist and imperialist

situation opens vast horizons for recuperation and communist

accumulation (not to be confused with the capitalist or State-capitalist

kind). This must be clarified in order to understand that autonomy is

not just a contingent factor, a way of building the struggle, only to

consign it into the hands of an ascending elite, but is a new way of

conceiving production relations, a revolutionary way of completely

eliminating the surplus value that is derived from exploitation.

But the presence of a periphery is not just an objective fact, it brings

in subjective reality as well: men and women who suffer incredibly,

exploited like beasts, who die of hunger. Men and women who live from

chance, stamped with the infamous brand of criminality. This constitutes

a whole explosive area that capitalism at a national and international

level is hunting down with police and army, cudgels and bombs, with

every means and no pity. But this is at the same time a periphery that

is managing to open up the road towards a new society considered far

nearer than is normally believed, because it is not seen through the

deforming lens of ‘professionalism’. They are starting to rebuild the

faith they had lost, a faith that comes into contrast with ‘religiosity’

and those who instrumentalise it: the parties and unions.

Not to bear this dualistic reality in mind means to fail to understand

that even autonomous action can fall into the contradictions of

particularism and racism. Even the revolutionary workers’ councils, if

composed of workers closed within their ‘specialisation’, not

opportunely vitalised by the presence of an active minority who are

against the idea of party or union—expressions of a manufacturing centre

that looks with disdain upon the underdeveloped periphery—can before

long turn into imperialist workers’ councils, anti-room of

instrumentalisation by the parties and of an even more terrible form of

exploitation.