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Title: Workers’ Autonomy
Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno
Date: 1975
Language: en
Topics: autonomy, workers’ control
Source: *Anarchismo* n. 3, 1975. https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-kronstadt-editions-mab-workers-autonomy
Notes: The comrades of Kronstadt editions, Autonomia proletaria, superamento del sindacalismo Anarchismo n. 10–11, 1976; Dai consigli operai all’autonomia proletaria Anarchismo n. 8, 1976.  MAB — Movimento Autonomo di Base (Autonomous Workers’ Movement) of railway workers in the Turin region. Organisational proposal 1976. Translated by Jean Weir. First English edition by Bratach Dubh 1976.

Alfredo M. Bonanno

Workers’ Autonomy

Introduction

The growing contrast between the real workers’ movement and their

‘official’ spokesmen (parties of the left, trades unions, etc.) is a

direct consequence of the latter’s failure to fulfil their professed

task of freeing the workers from exploitation. Each day that passes

demonstrates to whoever wants to see it that these organs have no

intention of challenging the basic structure of capitalism, and are now

making quite unashamed appeals to the workers to make sacrifices, accept

unemployment, wage cuts, increased prices and so on, in order to save

the economy for their employers.

Strangely, those who seem most reluctant to see things as they are, are

the conscious minority where even anarchists are still discussing

whether or not we should be ‘working within’ the trade unions, or

proposing to build alternative but essentially similar structures. It is

to this minority that we are proposing the following articles. The

subject is not new but is being experimented daily in the immense

variety of trials and errors put into effect both at individual

(absenteeism, sabotage, etc.) and mass (wildcat strikes, rent strikes,

squatting, etc.) level by those who suffer the brunt of exploitation

directly: the low paid workers, the unemployed and other emarginated

minorities, those for whom autonomous organisation is not a choice among

others but a necessity at the very level of survival.

This leads to the problem of the role of the anarchist minority within

the workers’ movement. Does the anarchist, refusing the role of leader

or vanguard, have any role to play within the mass movement? This is a

problem that needs going into in depth. There seems to be some

reluctance among many anarchists to do so, often leading to situations

of total inertia even in the face of struggles where an anarchist

presence might be of considerable significance.

The direction our work takes is conditioned from the start by our

attitudes and analyses no matter how unsophisticated these may be. In

recent years the libertarian movement has come to take certain

assumptions for granted concerning the working class and the struggle

against capitalism, which if gone into can be found to have their roots

in the Marxist theories. This has led to workerist attitudes

(idealisation of the industrial worker, disdain of minorities and the

so-called ‘lumpen proletariat’, and an economistic vision of the class

struggle), and sterility of ideas and action. It is not a question of

theoretical purity, but the more serious problem that the means we use

condition ends to be attained.

This is the main theme of the first article, where Alfredo Bonanno

questions the ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ Marxist analyses, reminding us

of the great influence that Hegel had on Marx throughout his work, and

the not inconsiderable ‘idealist’ element that this alimented. In the

place of Marxist metaphysics we must direct our efforts to developing a

pluralist analysis based on concrete factors that are constantly

modifying the relationship exploitation/struggle. But as Alfredo Bonanno

continues, not only must we take into account the objective causes of

oppression, we must also examine the subjective factors that play an

important role in the persistence of exploitation and are hindering the

process of workers’ autonomy. One of the main factors is what he defines

the ‘religiosity’ of the masses, causing them to solicit a ‘guide’ or

leader. Another subjective obstacle in the path of workers’ autonomy,

and therefore of social revolution, is the set of moral values inherited

by the industrial workers from the bourgeoisie, which creates a division

between skilled and unskilled or unemployed workers, and exalts the work

ethic, guardian angel of production.

In the two articles that follow, written by the comrades of Kronstadt

Editions, the essential theme is the role of the anarchist minority in

the autonomous struggle of the workers. If this could once be considered

that of working to build syndicalist structures or workers’ councils,

time has demonstrated how these organisms cannot reach a truly

revolutionary perspective but remain tied to a precise vision of the

economy (that of a quantitative consideration of production), and their

perspective as organs of counter-power. The concept of workers’ autonomy

bases itself on a qualitative change in human relations, not a simple

change in the ownership of the means of production. This involves taking

in a global vision of the struggle and not restricting it to that of the

factory or the demand for more jobs, hence the concept of ‘territory’,

covering in addition to the workplace, also the living area, the school,

the land, and so on. Within this global reality every individual finds

his or her dimension through direct struggle, without passing through

the intermediary of party or trade union.

The ever important question is raised again: are these struggles a

natural, spontaneous process, or is there a place, a need for the

presence of a minority with a revolutionary consciousness to work within

this movement, not as a vanguard, but in order to stimulate moments of

direct action and clarification.

The comrades of Kronstadt Editions go into this problem in some depth.

They consider that a distinction should be clear between the actual mass

organism (the spontaneous organisational form that grows around a

specific struggle), and the specific one (that made up of anarchist

comrades with the aim of stimulating such moments). There can of course

be times when the two merge, but, as they point out, the distinction

should be clear at the outset in order to avoid possible mystification

or illusions.

Another point they raise is that autonomous struggle cannot be imposed

from the outside (as it would then be autonomous in name only), but

there must be a disposition within the people in a given situation to

act in such a way. The work of the revolutionary minority is therefore

not that of trying to form autonomous mass organisms, but rather that of

measuring the potential for such to come about, and trying to increase

that potential through actions that are relative to the situation.

Needless to say, the phenomenon of workers’ autonomy is attracting the

attention of parties who feel the way the wind is blowing and have an

interest in trying to insert themselves within this movement in order to

instrumentalise it. This is another place where anarchists come in: to

expose such attempts, and for this we must be clear ourselves, and wary

of subconscious attempts to see them as a potential for the growth of

some fictitious anarchist movement.

The fourth article, by the autonomous movement of the Turin railway

workers, the MAB, is a document that has grown from a concrete

situation, an attempt by some of the railway worker comrades in that

area to organise in the form expressed in the document: in autonomous

workers’ nuclei, free from the interference of trade unions or parties.

Problems have been raised in this pamphlet that have found little space

in anarchist publications until now. We hope that this attempt will lead

to further discussion on the problem of autonomy.

Jean Weir

Catania 1976

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’ praised, 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’ claim

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 it 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 put 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 pre=established 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

is 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 abovementioned 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.

Workers’ autonomy: surpassing trade unionism

Given the development of national trade union disputes, some comrades

might think it natural to insert themselves within this movement with

alternative claims or platforms aimed at radicalising the bargaining in

an attempt to expel the trade union leadership, the Communist Party and

other reformist groups. But this kind of action has nothing to do with

proletarian autonomy.

The only possible way to turn the workers towards direct action is to go

beyond the logic of disputes and collective bargaining. The struggle for

better wages and demands for investment (especially in cases where it is

necessary to reduce production) are areas where the bourgeoisie are able

to create strata of workers’ consensus and aquiescence in order to

impose restructuring, and attempts to lead disputes in the direction of

the workers’ interests results in increasing faith in the unions.

In the face of a complex and many-sided restructuring of industry the

reasons for which are compound (increasing production in some sectors, a

complete elimination of it in others; adapting to technological change,

or returning to old and proven methods of exploitation), it is absurd to

move in an optic that defends trade unionism, whose claim to confront

general problems is only a façade for creating equilibrium within the

capitalist system.

Now that the supranational bourgeoisie find themselves managing the

economy in a speculative and substantially unproductive key, it does not

make sense to think one can fight them by ‘imposing’ investment and new

consumer channels. When restructuring leads to mass redundancies, to

reply with demands for employment and a union ‘guaranteed wage’, enters

the schemes of bourgeois interest: many promises, some money right away,

which is taken back through other channels, and so go the plans aimed at

weakening the proletariat’s capacity for resistance, and re-enforcing

the economic structure.

Demands for work by the unemployed invariably result in not getting a

stable job, at the most a short spell in a government sponsored scheme

to be used as direct or indirect blackmail against the employed workers.

Even recent proposals such as a reduction of the working week to 35

hours, if inserted into the logic of the refusal of work, are objectives

of no real consequence in that capitalism (far more elastic in its

structure than it was in the past) can impose greater exploitation even

in situations of reduced working hours.

Left-wing trade unionism can at best put the bourgeoisie in difficulty,

but is not capable of even scratching their positions of strength,

whereas the autonomous actions of the proletariat need to move on more

immediate foundations, allowing the development of certain concrete

forms of struggle that can be experimented daily.

The authentic unifying moments for the class, in which it is possible to

mobilise in first person, exist in the contradictions inherent in

working conditions in the factory and those of the proletariat in

general, in the living area (physical region of exploitation), the

structures of production and consumption, the factory hierarchy,

politics, administration, the police, fascists, work pace, pollution,

mobility, prices, rents, bills, etc.. Direct action, the self-conscious

struggle of the masses, can only be born from aspects of everyday life,

not abstract programmes or platforms. Class initiative must be concrete

and managed in first person, without the mediation of trade unions or

political parties. These apparently minimal struggles actually represent

the first step upon which to base a new consciousness and organisational

practice, starting off from the contradictions that are suffered daily

in individual situations within the organisation of work and consumption

and gradually approaching general confrontation, always getting closer

to the roots of class oppression. The logic of proletarian autonomy is

therefore one of sporadic growth, so there can be different levels of

autonomous expression.

One of the main points of this discourse is the smallest element of mass

struggle: the mass organism, which by its very nature does not comprise

the whole class in a given situation, but is strictly tied to

experiences of direct action. These organisms are formed by the

exploited during particular struggles and moments of awareness and

reflection preceding and following them, not as a result of discussions

by groups on the problem. The more they merge with and become an

internal element of the mass movement, the more effective they become,

sometimes without realising it. The validity of their activity can be

verified in their absorption into successive mass actions that are

capable of developing or surpassing the indications they have provided.

These organisms should not be considered a form of counterpower or

alternative unions directing groups or parties, all denominations that

are more or less consciously transmission belts of some ideological

regroupment. Mass organisms are one stage in autonomy, but they always

represent partial aspects that can be surpassed. They are the first

point of reference, but their function is always to remain tied to

precise situations. Their initiatives do not therefore represent the

needs of the whole of the proletariat, of which they are nevertheless an

expression. Their institutionalisation in the party sense would

therefore be impossible without changing their very nature.

There was a time when a super-evaluation of mass organisms led to a

purely organisational concept of autonomy, resulting in a passage to

autonomous trade unions, and where proletarian autonomy came to be

reduced to trade union autonomy. We must therefore examine the whole

process of autonomy, where the intervention of the active minority

(specific organisms) should not be directed towards the formation of

mass organisms, but towards stimulating moments of direct action, the

only thing capable of expressing true proletarian organisational forms.

Even the most violent encounter with economic contradictions does not

necessarily push the proletariat to find a solution in direct action. We

see evidence of this every day. The most recent examples are the

response to the closure of industrial plants, redundancies and increased

dependence on social security, which has usually been in the form of the

now old practices of meetings that are open to all the democratic

forces, mediation with the government and local authorities, etc.. Mass

direct action is therefore not an automatic reply, but is the result of

a process that comes about through a fairly slow and not easily tangible

process of maturation. The dialectical process existing within the

masses is capable of working out certain forms of retaliation, even

repeating the same experience more than once before surpassing it,

transforming mere lack of faith in reformist structures into the

capacity to attack.

Comrades of the active minority must therefore act in the direction of a

re-entry into this process, taking the indications put forward by the

masses and carrying them on as analyses and information that are useful

for the struggle. Often the classical instruments for spreading

proposals are disdained (posters, leaflets, wall writing, etc. ). Every

now and then someone makes the great discovery that they are useless,

that instead one ‘must remain within the situation’, or that things

should be discussed directly, etc.. But this is not a problem. Posters,

leaflets, newspapers, discussions (or even actions of the so-called

‘vanguard’) are simply instruments, what is important is the use that is

made of them. If one is simply going to say ‘long live autonomy’, ‘ahead

with direct action’, ‘no to repression’, and other such meaningless

remarks, they are clearly senseless. Nor is it enough to single out

concrete issues (e.g. piece work, contractual work, wages, prices, etc.)

as the fact that the problem exists is not enough, but there must be a

disposition for it to be perceived. There must be a synthesis therefore

between the proposition and the potential for direct action.

The functioning of the specific organism, or active minority, is subject

to a series of contradictions that do not always make the relationship

with the mass easy. The reason for these contradictions lies in the fact

that most often such organisms are not formed as a result of direct

action, but are due to theoretical sedimentation concerning the

experiences of proletarian autonomy. It is possible however that

following prolonged activity, mass organisms can evolve into specific

ones, just as it can happen that comrades of the active minority can

participate in the functioning of mass organisms. This produces a

fluidity of organisational forms within the process of autonomy. Many

comrades prefer not to make a distinction between mass organism and

active minority, talking instead of different organisational levels

within the process of autonomy. This is not altogether unfounded, and in

fact the two kinds of organisation can blend roles. The distinction

makes sense in order to avoid certain arbitrary identification by

militant ‘autonomists’ with the organisms of the mass, and their

consequent self-selection as a vanguard. Direct action and the

self-managed struggle of the workers are the only criteria for moments

of organisation expressed directly by the masses. It is therefore a

question of making a distinction between what is clearly expressed by

the proletariat in struggle, and what are only very useful attempts to

clarify and elaborate proposals.

The need for a continual updating of organisms gives space to

opportunism and one even hears comrades who call for autonomy making

statements such as, ‘We don’t absolutely refuse to negotiate with the

bosses, but only accept to do so in situations where it leads to a

recognition of gains that have already been conquered through direct

struggles’, or, ‘Trade unionism can still be valid in backward

situations, where it becomes in itself a step forward’. Negotiation to

legalise conquests is a contradiction in terms and seems to be an

elegant reproposal of the principle of the delegate. The discourse on

backward situations can come to justify anything under the sun.

The work of the active minority is conditioned by the reality around

them, but specific actions are still possible. Although carried out by a

minority, when drawn from thoroughly analysed experiences in other

situations, these actions can carry information and forms of struggle

that are susceptible to development, and possibilities of direct action

where the industrial workers are a minority compared to the rest of the

proletariat. It is a mistake to think that autonomy is a typical

expression of the large factories in the North, and that it cannot be

extended to other situations. Apart from the fact that autonomous action

has certainly not yet taken the place of trade union illusions, that

which is carried out is always action characteristic of a particular

reality, and not the only possible expression of autonomy. It is

moreover always susceptible to further developments that are not always

foreseeable.

It would be easy to say: trade unionism is still predominant, therefore

I shall continue to move, even if only partly, within the trade union

optic. Autonomy is an historical process, an objective reality in the

course of development, and not a movement managed by so-called

autonomous militants. The potential for a growth in autonomy always

exists, even if it is repressed, and it is on this alone that we base

our work.

Trade-unionism cannot be surpassed through the simple spreading of

propaganda about other positions aimed at dissuading the worker from

belonging to the union (also because it is not enough to take away the

trade unions for autonomous struggle to develop), but rather through the

proposal of forms of struggle that the workers are receptive to,

allowing the construction of more advanced bases. Self-reduction of the

work pace, already common in certain factories in the North (where the

struggle against the work pace has been the most advanced expression of

autonomous activity), and also some in the South, represent, in this

phase, the type of struggle that can come about through a qualitative

change in the workers’ consciousness, capable of reaching the point of a

total self-management of their own interests. One of the main tasks of

the specific organism should be that of generalising and consolidating

this and other forms of struggle as far as possible. These are proposals

that can be made directly without the mediation of the shop stewards,

trade union officials, or ideological militants, because they involve

the working class at the place of exploitation itself and in what he

knows best, his work. They avoid abstract, exhausting arguments with the

Communist Party or groups, because, carrying the contradictions back to

their original source, they allow the class to make a clear choice of

what their interests are, and thus create beyond any ideological

discussion, the foundations for a mass confrontation with the trade

unions and all the other repressive structures. They progressively

introduce more advanced forms of direct action and tougher forms of

struggle: sabotage, blockages, distribution of products in stock (or

free distribution of food products, etc, in suitable cases) without

forcing levels of consciousness. They also represent a way for

predicting and combatting projects of redundancies and dependence on

social security due to excess production: a defence of jobs managed

directly by the workers without a supine acceptation of the work

ideology. Obviously, the trade unions can also succeed in repressing

these struggles, even opening disputes for a reduction of the work pace

or referring to ‘general themes of, major importance’, just as

autonomous actions can be used as occasional supports for a single

dispute. These dangers are always present, and it is useless to spill

tears over the fact that an experience of direct action burns itself

out, or that it does not immediately move on to higher levels, because

the process of autonomy should be considered in its complexity, also at

an international level, and not be reduced to one single experience.

It should be clear therefore, that the function of the active minority

consists not so much of devising forms of struggle and objectives, as

that of understanding the effective potential of the mass.

To explain better we shall refer for a moment to the railway sector. It

would be too easy, starting from the fact that in the first place a

transport strike affects the passengers, to propose, for example, a form

of struggle based on not charging passengers for tickets, thus creating

a unitary situation within the proletariat. Not that this is not a valid

hypothesis, but the problem lies not in the technical application of the

proposal, but in the disposition of the mass

(workers-proletarians-passengers) to lay the foundations for a combined

practice of direct action that can only come about through a whole

process that is open to error, crises of lack of self-confidence, or

instrumentalisation. It would obviously be just as much of a mistake to

applaud every initiative on the part of the workers, always seeing in

them possibilities for autonomous outlets.

It is necessary to refer not to a hypothetical level of perfection, but

to the effective availability of the mass, which in this case would mean

stimulating a process (which is in fact already happening) of

reappropriation in the living areas, capable of linking up with outlets

in the service industry.

The link with the living area is not an episodic factor, nor is it

something that is due to particular circumstances. Exploitation also

occurs at the level of consumption (as well as work), to which all the

other political, social and cultural structures that constitute the

capitalist organisation of an area are related. The reality of

consumption is therefore not secondary to that of production in the aims

of the struggle, and one could say that the two are tending to

synthesize in the living area, point of unification of both employed and

unemployed workers, whose main expression has been squatting, where

there has also been a development of an autonomous female social role.

The appropriation of an autonomous social and economic role by women

also opens the way for an autonomous sexual role. The proletarian woman,

used to having to bear the greatest burden of capitalist exploitation at

the point of consumption, has great fighting potential concerning the

struggle in the living area, putting her in a position of a vanguard in

respect to the men. Some feminist projects that speak of self-management

of their sexuality by women and form educational programmes in this

direction, leave out of consideration the question of real

appropriation, thus falling into an ideological situation and eventually

finding themselves only proposing a more tolerable management of their

sexual oppression. Besides, the most overtly reformist solutions (free

abortion, play schools, creches. etc.) merely come to rationalise

repression. The proposal of work for women is sometimes seen as an

instrument of emancipation; but salaried work is not emancipation, but

further slavery, and does not even create a weakening of family or

social oppression. This does not mean that women’s’ liberation should be

postponed until after the revolution. On the contrary, the female

proletarian struggle in the territory, the appropriation of an economic

and social role by women (and therefore of their sexual autonomy)

resolves immediate contradictions, as well as being at the same time a

part of the revolutionary struggle for communism.

Also, leaving aside women’s struggle, the (useless) demand for

infrastructures (‘social salaries’) represents a way of imposing a trade

union logic in the living area (see disputes on housing supported by

groups), a clear demonstration of imposing on proletarian reality. The

work in the housing estates, if not set out on the basis of immediate

contradictions, can easily end up in competition with the parish,

evening classes, clinics, meals for proletarian children, and lots of

people’s parties, with the Red Flag in the place of hymns. There is

nothing new in this: competition with the parish is in the tradition of

Italian reformism.

Rent strikes, squatting, self-reduction of bills and transport charges,

are all a defence of wages or living conditions, that also permit the

unemployed to conquer a dignified level of existence during the struggle

in the territory alongside the employed workers, and not through social

security payments and subsidies, which are only instruments for dividing

the proletariat.

Going beyond trade-unionism is not therefore some ideological argument

that is more or less revolutionary or more to the left, but is an

historical necessity, the only way to rebuild, in the face of changed

conditions, a defence of the immediate interests of the proletariat

outside trade union negotiation and practice. The new data is no longer

a question of struggle becoming finalised in disputes, but struggles

that represent in their very form and development, the satisfaction of

proletarian needs.

The defence of health in the factory is realised by self-reduction of

the work pace and the refusal of mobility, with systematic boycotts and

sabotage of production and restructuring, preventing the boss from

carrying out redundancies.

The indications we have glanced at are just a start, a first possible

basis upon which to act, but which already have the capacity to go

beyond the purely defensive aspect, and lay the immediate foundations

for the offensive. The self-managed struggle of the mass is therefore

capable of uniting in one practice, both the problem of economic defence

and that of revolutionary struggle in the long term, surpassing, through

their actions and not through anti-reformist propaganda, trade union

illusions and practice.

The comrades of Kronstadt Editions Workers’ councils, self-management

and developments in proletarian autonomy

What can the theory of workers’ councils tell us today? Does it lead to

a possible opening towards proletarian autonomy?

The comrades who have theorised this form of proletarian organisation

have anything but a static or fixed vision, but they also see in the

councils more than anything a form of organisation based on workers’

self-management. The councils thus represent a workers’ State, a

dictatorship of the proletariat, a way in which the proletariat can

exercise their class domination by being organised in such a way at the

workplace (and we would add also in the living areas).

What is the main idea upon which they are based? The workers taking over

the structures of production and the capitalist organisation of work, to

develop a new mode of production.

In fact, in their conception of a communist economy, the councils do not

manage to go beyond the limits within which they were born and which

justify their existence, that is, the factory and the capitalist

organisation of work and, leaving the form of production unaltered,

succeed in only forming a different criterion of consumption.

The socialist society envisaged by the council communists even bears a

close resemblance to capitalism, and the calculation of the individual

worker’s consumption based on hours worked does not have the value of

the break with wage earning that it professes to have, because in

reality work remains a commodity that is no longer to be exchanged for

money, but for another commodity.

In the period in which they developed all over Europe, the councils

created an unstable situation that on the one hand aimed at opposing the

bourgeoisie in the factory on the one hand, and on the other left living

conditions unaltered, in other words continued the capitalist

organisation of work.

The utopia of the councils is therefore the control of the State and the

bourgeoisie by the proletariat, a State and bourgeoisie that they do not

have the power to eliminate. They therefore stopped at the factory,

competing with the bourgeoisie for power within the limits of their own

boundaries.

In these terms the councils are simply a form of counter-power,

organised workers’ power opposed to bourgeois power. The

Marxist-Leninists have a good hand in criticising the theory and

practice of counter-power, accusing it of reformism, saying that it is

not a question of opposing one form of power to another, but of taking

away the bourgeoisie’s instruments and establishing a dictatorship of

the proletariat through the party, which can at best be assisted by the

organizational forms of workers’ councils. In this way we find ourselves

back in square one, back to the Bolshevik theories whose total

inconsistence has been unequivocally demonstrated in other works by

those who support workers’ councils.

But one fact remains: that as a form of counter-power, the councils

cannot go beyond reformism, engaging themselves in a wearing struggle

with the bourgeoisie without really questioning their existence. The

councils would either end up exhausted, or give space to repression, as

happened in Germany and Russia. Their limitations were clearly sensed by

Lenin, who was clever enough not to attack them. He actually proclaimed

them supreme organs of power, being anxious to extend State power and

that of the dominating class, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, personified

in the Bolshevik party. The bloody repression in Germany and the

bureaucratic involution in Russia have demonstrated the limitations of

the council communist movement that takes the form of the extreme

consequence of the syndicalist logic. The council communist movement

undoubtedly represented an enormous qualitative leap compared to the

syndicalist type of organisation but, like the trade unions, took for

granted the existence of an employer with whom to negotiate. The

councils therefore implicitly affirm the impossibility of going beyond

the capitalistic organisation of work, and therefore the very reason for

the existence of a bourgeoisie.

The expropriation and self-management of the means of production by the

proletariat is an illusion: the means of production as such (machinery,

plants, etc.) are transitory and perishable. They constantly being

updated within the capitalist organisation, and this includes the

substitution of plants, readjustments, modifications and restructuring.

What the workers would really inherit in the case of an ‘expropriation’

of the means of production is nothing other than the capitalistic

organization of work and its logic of hierarchy and exploitation. To

self-manage such a reality would create no substantial improvement for

the worker, and the thought of working more or less the same way as

before, even for the edification of the ‘socialist society’, would be

small consolation.

It is not by chance that ‘self-management’ has been discussed or imposed

in various bourgeois States (Switzerland, France) or pseudo socialist

ones (Yugoslavia, Algeria), proposing to the proletariat their

self-exploitation. Also, as we shall see further on, the structural

foundations for a true discourse on self-management such as could be

made at the beginning of the century are lacking. In either case

therefore it would be a question of always pseudo forms of

self-management, except for isolated cases of small industrial and

agricultural complexes.

The only valid self-managed activity for the workers is therefore that

of self-management of the struggle, i.e., direct action.

It is therefore not a question of imposing oneself on capitalist

structures in order to use them for socialist ends, but that of building

new relationships between man and nature.

We are not speaking of simply making ‘a clean slate’ of the past,

because if the present structures are destroyed without creating

something new, the most probable thing would be a return to the old

models, even although with different labels.

The discourse therefore leads us to the problem of means and ends: if

one acts in terms of disputes and the struggle for power

(trade-unionism, workers’ councils, counter-power), the result can only

be a return to the point of departure. It is therefore necessary to

synthesize the means with the ends desired, and construct the new social

model now, within the struggles of the proletariat in the present

society.

The council communists cannot manage to theorise any forms of

proletarian struggle apart from the wildcat strike, not trade unionist

perhaps in form, but in content because the significance of dispute and

bargaining is implicit in the strike itself as a form of struggle. Even

insurrection (armed struggle) does not always solve the problem because,

taken in itself, it is only a way for some party, presumed

representative of the proletariat, to reach power. Proletarian autonomy

(intended as a real mass movement and not the label of an ideological

grouping) has recently succeeded in imposing activities that are capable

of going beyond disputes and trade unions in all their forms.

We hear of the struggle against production (self-reduction of the work

pace, etc.), i.e. activities that represent the satisfaction of the

workers’ interests (health in the factory, the block against

restructuring and therefore against redundancies, etc.) without having

recourse to trade union mediation, either directly or indirectly.

In this way the synthesis means-ends is achieved: struggles are not

finalised in claims or disputes, but reach their own aims directly, and

are valid as such.

These struggles are revolutionary and communist even though they

represent the defence of minor interests. Through direct action and the

collective responsibilisation of the proletariat concerning everyday

problems, they are moving in the direction of the negation of capitalist

organisation, and doing so through its essential component, salaried

work.

By advancing their autonomy the proletariat are not affirming themselves

as a class, they are denying and annulling themselves as such, realising

themselves fully as humanity, thus taking away from the bourgeoisie

their only support, a subordinate class who work, produce, consume.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible because the

proletariats’ interest is to annul themselves as a class, in order to

become humanity in the fullest sense of the word. An eventual would-be

dictatorship of the proletariat (even if it were represented as

‘anti-State’ or ‘from the base’), could only be exercised by

‘representatives’ of the proletariat, the presumed holders of their true

essence and will.

The proletariat therefore struggle for their own interests, denying

themselves as a class, and at the same time denying the entire

capitalist system.

In the total refusal of the capitalistic organisation of work through

direct action, the proletariat are elaborating socialist communist

relations, the alternative social model. In other words, direct action

is already communism, the self-construction by the proletariat of

consciousness and communist organisation, new social relationships as an

alternative to capitalism.

The acquisition of this capacity by the proletariat is the result of an

historical process made up of numerous experiences, mistakes and

theoretical sedimentation that the development of production relations

has also influenced.

The production relations that existed at the beginning of the century,

with work in the factory still in part skilled, allowed the worker a

cultural space of his own, albeit it minimal. He had a self-awareness

that made him feel bound to the work organization in such a way as to

prevent him from realistically posing himself the problem of destroying

it, but rather of taking possession of it himself. This figure of the

worker first found expression in the trade unions, then in the councils,

neither of which, as we have seen, have managed to break through the

patterns of capitalism. If the Leninist and party experiences have

nothing at all to do with the workers and constitute only middle class

interference, trade-unionism, syndicalism and workers’ councils were on

the contrary experiences of proletarian autonomy, because they

constituted the first basis for a distinction of class interests. It is

not a question of refusing them, but of surpassing them as immature

proletarian experiences.

Present production relations have destroyed all the proletariat’s

cultural space, and are continuing to do so in such a way that, in order

to safeguard his humanity, the worker is obliged to employ his

individual and collective intelligence against production and the

capitalist organisation of consumption in the territory, the latter

assuming an increasing importance in the present mechanism of

exploitation.

In struggling against the organisation of production and consumption,

the proletariat are creating new cultural space, new social relations in

forms irreconcilable with capitalism.

This discourse has led many to declare that autonomy is a practice for

the use and consumption of the so-called mass (unskilled) worker, and

that, given that this figure is destined to disappear in favour of a

return to skilled work due to restructuring it is necessary to form a

new party or organization capable of becoming the ‘memory’ of past

experiences of struggle in order to re-elaborate them and give the

proletariat new indications fitted to changed conditions.

This thesis does not take account of certain elements:

In recent years capitalist restructuring has already brought about

important changes both in the organisation of production and the

functioning of the work process. But these changes have always put an

accent on mobility, applying it to the stratum generally considered to

be technicians. One could say that the main aim of this restructuring is

to be able to dispose of a vast stratum of interchangeable unskilled

labour to be used for brief periods and at a very high work pace. This

allows the capitalists to expel workers from the productive process not

only through redundancies, but also through super-exploitation that

pushes them to leave the workplace of their own accord. The presence of

a vast stratum of unemployed then augments underemployment and

underpayment in collateral productive activities (domicile workers,

etc.). It should also be borne in mind that the continual readjusting of

production being carried out by the capitalists at the present time

requires a proletariat that are not tied to a precise way of producing,

but who are able to adapt to the different systems put into effect (not

always a question of technical innovation, but also restructuring with

the aim of increasing repression). In this context skills and grades are

only a means for dividing workers and stimulating collaboration. Present

restructuring therefore seems to be going against the criterion of

skilled work, towards the extension of mobility, the jack of all trades,

even in sectors which until recently were considered skilled. An elastic

system of production cannot base itself on skilled work, because of the

latter’s static nature.

This reality renders trade union claims and disputes, with their

adjacent forms of struggle (strikes, factory occupations, etc.) useless.

These are instruments that cannot go beyond partial control or

counter-power, in the face of a capitalism capable of totally

controlling the management of production. Continual restructuring, with

the dismembering of the factory environment, and work mobility, puts the

worker in an unstable position, depriving him of any bargaining power

whatsoever. For this reason proletarian autonomy has expressed itself in

the struggle directly against production: self-reduction of the work

pace, direct and immediate refusal of mobility and noxious work,

boycotts and sabotage of production and restructuring, etc.. These

struggles, begun organically in 1967/68 and first developed parallel to

the ‘great disputes’ and expiry of contracts, have increasingly been

recognised by the proletariat as their only valid instruments of

defence, not complementary to, but an alternative to trade unionsim.

Struggles against production are not aimed at gaining bargaining power,

but at contrasting, time after time, the bosses’ steps to increase

exploitation and decrease labour. It is not by chance that the action of

the trade unions today is that of suppressing these struggles, both

through launching false programmes, and through overt repression.

Proletarian experiences, even if they wear themselves out, do not

disappear entirely but sediment and change from one sector to another,

hence we see how certain criteria of struggle applied in the factory are

then generalised over the territory with similar forms of struggle:

squatting, self-reduction of rents, bills, fares, food prices, etc.,

valid also for the unemployed and part time workers. The struggle

against production therefore extends over the whole territory, giving

the unemployed and underemployed the possibility of fighting, not for an

improbable job, but for a real defence of their standard of living. The

thesis of the struggle against production obviously does not apply to

the services sector (transport, hospitals, etc.) where the bourgeoisie

have an interest in the existence of inefficient conditions. These are

unproductive sectors which capitalism uses as channels for speculation.

Even a radical restructuring of capitalism could not destroy the

sedimentation of experiences of autonomous struggles. For example, an

elimination of the assembly line in favour of co-management or pseudo

self-management of production could eliminate the specific struggle of

self-reduction of the work pace, but not certain criteria of direct

action that the reduction of the work pace would have left the seeds of.

That is to say, the proletariat possess a ‘memory’ of their own, and

therefore the development of class autonomy does not depend solely on

the structural modifications of capitalism, but also on experiences of

autonomy accumulated beforehand. Forms of ‘self-management’ and

co-management already exist in certain situations, but it would be

difficult for them to take on a general character.

The various parties and organizations who consider themselves the

memory of the working class always tend to filter problems through the

polarising optic of power groups, thereby having a negative effect on

the proletariat. This discourse obviously excludes the role of the

active minority (or specific organisms), but rather addresses them

towards acts of clarification, circulation of information and the

generalisation of experiences of direct action.

Immediate struggles against production are almost unanimously accepted

as valid by the so-called ‘area of autonomy’, apart from a few who say

that it is useless to waste time with autonomous struggles, believing it

necessary to build the party and that this should not be distracted by

movement and turmoil.

These immediate struggles, although accepted, are nearly always

interpreted as supports or collateral aspect of other ‘political’ and

organisational requirements: the 35 hour week, armed struggle, the party

again, factory and housing committees, also seen as organs of

counter-power.

The objective of the 35 hour week, presented as a concrete ‘outlet’ for

present struggles against production, represents the typical attitude of

those who, wanting to coat their proposals with a touch of realism, end

up falling into the vague and incomprehensible.

Self-reduction of working hours could be an extremely valid form of

struggle, similar to the immediate struggles we have already mentioned,

but precisely for this reason cannot be pinned down in one objective:

why 35 hours and not, for example, 30? Who decides? The answer is clear:

the potential of the class struggle in that particular situation,

therefore a priori and theoretical decisions on such matters do not make

sense.

The line of armed struggle (in the form of the military party) starts

right away from a total lack of faith in the content of these struggles

and their only validity is seen in their potential for armed conflict.

Certainly, workers’ autonomy does pose the problem of violence, and one

could say that all forms of autonomous action place themselves in the

logic of violence and illegality. The problem is not therefore out of

place, but the groups proposing such a line are constructing, through

their own initiative, a practice of violence that they want to impose as

the supreme outlet in the process of proletarian autonomy, thereby

electing themselves as managers and arbitrators. It is the party

discourse once again, which, instead of moving along all possible roads,

bases itself on the military and insurrectional one.

Those who speak of the party are those who have the least faith in the

possible generalisation of direct action and immediate struggle against

production, defining the latter as contingent movements of little

importance: a proletariat accustomed to confronting immediate problems

directly and without a delegate is a very bad taker of orders and

directions, and difficult to subordinate to the will of a party.

Most common, however, are the positions of those who mean to organise

proletarian autonomy in factory committees and intersectoral tenants’

associations. Included in this category are those who consider the mass

organism to be an essential starting point for autonomous struggles, and

those who measure the validity of a struggle by the organisation it

leaves behind. The first therefore give precedence to the actions of

coordination by the ‘vanguard’ in the building of organisms, the second

to the formation of organisms during the struggle. Often, though, the

two positions combine, with various nuances.

The result of the first is a series of pseudo mass organisms (autonomous

collectives, workers’ committees and tenants’ associations, which are

usually called ‘organised proletarian autonomy’) and which in reality

are minorities (specific organisms), or quite simply political groups.

The non-awareness of their role renders them substantially useless and

also dangerous.

On the other hand the results of the second are usually delusions, in

that the mass organisms, authentic expressions of the direct action of

the mass movement, are born, die or develop in the struggle and for the

struggle, often without the practical possibility of characterising

themselves or of being characterised as such, and therefore of becoming

institutionalised in precise structures.

In general one could say that an organisational conception of

proletarian autonomy is counterproductive and indirectly repressive in

that it results in the constitution of so-called committees of workers’

power and counter-power, whose only immediate possibility is to act as

small alternative unions, and therefore struggle in a game of escalation

of claims and contracts with the official unions.

In perspective, their optic of counter-power cannot lead to anything

other than to involvement in workers’ councils and self-management. A

possible council communist and self-managed neosyndical road already

defeated and surpassed by the experiences of the proletariat, would not

find even a structural base from which to draw a minimum of significance

today, and would find itself instrumentalised in the sense of pseudo

self-management.

In conclusion we can say that direct action is born from and develops on

potential and levels of struggle, to be verified from time to time. It

can express itself minimally, just as it can reach high levels of class

confrontation, but no one of these experiences can be caged within

structures or patterns, in fixed programmes or objectives. On the

contrary, what they leave behind is sedimentation for new and often

unforeseeable superior developments and autonomous organisational

consciousness, communist social relations.

The shortcomings of council communism, its incapacity to go beyond

competing for power with the bourgeoisie in the factory without managing

to put the existence of the latter in question, was also understood by a

Russian anarchist current (the Dielo Truda) which in 1926 drew up an

organisational platform mistakenly known as the ‘Archinov Platform’.

In the latter was proposed the foundation of a specific anarchist

communist political organisation that, parallel to the expropriation of

the means of production by the proletariat organised in workers’

councils, would take on the task of engaging the political

superstructure, the State, in direct confrontation, and demolishing it.

This conception of organisation (at two levels, one specific, political;

the other at mass level) does not get to the roots of the shortcomings

of council communism, and limits itself to trying to compensate for

certain defects in action. It also introduces a series of ambiguous

elements into the discourse alongside others that are extremely valid

and interesting. This is not the place to go into the problems

concerning the Dielo Trudo and organisation in general, but we would

like to make a few points on the subject.

The complexity of bourgeois power is not finalised in the organised

violence of the State. Not only would it not be enough for the

proletariat to expropriate the means of production in order to eliminate

bourgeois power, but even the immediate liquidation of the State would

not solve the problem. As we have already seen, the main support of

bourgeois power in its economic and state forms, is the acceptation by

the proletariat of their role as such. For this reason, in order to deny

and annul bourgeois power the proletariat must in the first place annul

themselves as a class, to realise themselves fully as humanity through

the construction of direct action and communist relations.

This theme is alluded to more than once in the platform, but is not

carried to its logical conclusion. The reason can be found in the

weakest point of the platform, the unknowing acceptation of certain

Leninist principles. It is not a question of authoritarianism (as some

anarchists think), but of making reference to a theory beyond the

proletariat, that is, to an ideology; this was elaborated for the first

time precisely by Lenin, with his thesis of the party as consciousness

beyond the class.

It is precisely the transposition of the platform on to an ideological

level that has pushed its instigators to try to go beyond the

limitations of the council communist movement, not in the direction of

the mass potential for direct action, but through the political action

of anarchist communist militants with a strong libertarian ideology, but

whose terms become vague and unclear.

The comrades of Kronstadt Editions

Autonomous Movement of the Turin Railway Workers Organization of the

autonomous workers’ nucleus

The present situation is characterised by an alliance between employers,

trade unions and reformist parties.

The first are using the help of the unions and so-called parties of the

Left in order to continue exploitation, finding a way to make the

workers pay the price of the economic crisis through a considerable sum

of money paid to the industrialists by the State, thereby allowing them

to survive for a few more years. To complete the picture, the parties of

the Left, (with the Communist Party in the lead) are asking the working

class to make sacrifices in order to save the employers and their

servants.

The present characteristic of the unions and reformist parties is

therefore that of collaboration with the employers; their most important

task is that of extinguishing the spontaneous workers’ movement,

suggesting sacrifice and condemning the workers who are disposed to

carrying on a tougher form of struggle with the usual slander (calling

them provocateurs).

Under these conditions it does not seem to us that the trade union can

be used as an instrument of struggle.

The three main unions, the SFI, SAUFI and the SIUF are putting their

collaboration into effect by selling out the railway workers through a

project of restructuring that means a heavier workload for those who are

employed (increased productivity), with less money (wage blocks), and an

increase in unemployment.

These anti-worker objectives are backed up by demagoguery and a strong

condemnation of any initiative. In this way they want to get the

proposal accepted that management cannot take on wage increases, that to

keep up productivity the number of working hours must remain unaltered,

that the so-called phenomenon of absenteeism must be fought, and that to

control the worker better the process of functional skills and work

mobility will have to be re-organised.

Clearly they want to destroy all will to struggle, creating a financial

situation that is unsupportable for most, hence the recourse to

overtime, giving the bosses the arm of blackmail perfected by the use of

the selective mechanism that stops anyone who is not capable and

disciplined from getting on (in other words, whoever does not let

himself be used and who refuses absolute respect for the bosses). THE

AUTONOMOUS UNION, FISAFS, is developing a struggle in opposition to the

three central trade unions, and claims to be autonomous.

The FISAFS is trying to exploit the rage and discontent of the workers

in order to gain mass adhesion to its corporative and reactionary line.

The trade-unionism of this so-called autonomous organisation is a

further element in delaying the real possibility of workers’ struggle at

the base, which is very strong at the present time. The aim of the

FISAFS is therefore that of channelling the workers into a corporative

logic necessary for the industrialists, political parties, the

government and capitalism, in order to consolidate exploitation and make

it last.

The FISAFS therefore, in defending the employers’ interests, cannot

possibly employ the methods of struggle that characterise and qualify

workers’ autonomy. At the level of alliances and political decisions, it

becomes impossible for the FISAFS to differentiate itself from the other

union organisations that are in opposition to the three central

majority-holding unions (for example, the USFI-CISNAL).

TRUE PROLETARIAN AUTONOMY is the only possible solution for the

continuation of the struggle against the employers and their servants.

To do this it is necessary to begin to form Autonomous Workers’ Nuclei.

These nuclei, such as those we want to create among the Turin railway

workers, are born from within a precise productive reality, and should

consider themselves a constant point of reference for the reality

outside in the living areas, the land, the schools and so on, and draw

them into the struggle.

Beginning from a clear conception of proletarian autonomy, two dangers

ever present in sectorial or trade union methods of struggle are

eliminated:

the bureaucratisation of the structure;

the tendency towards a corporate vision of the struggle.

THE AUTONOMOUS WORKERS’ NUCLEUS organises itself autonomously of the

political parties and trade unions, in order to better defend the worker

as a man. Its perspective of organisation and struggle keep in mind the

double necessity of imposing the confrontation both at the level of

production (wages, contracts, etc.), and at the level of the individual

worker’s life (work risks, alienation, necessary links between living

area, place of work, school, etc.).

Autonomy is therefore a reevaluation of the man in the worker, with a

clear view of the struggle aimed at safeguarding the conditions which

render possible work and life itself.

The autonomous workers’ nucleus

A) Characteristics

Is an organisation that means to distinguish itself from the trade

unions including the autonomous versions of such.

Its autonomy is based on an anti-bureaucratic structure.

It is based on the elimination of the permanent delegate and the

negation of professional representatives.

All the workers are engaged in the struggle against the bosses and

their servants.

This involvement in the struggle is permanent and does not limit

itself to the strike periods fixed by the trade unions.

Each component of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus considers himself to

be in continual struggle against the bosses and their servants, in the

same way as the latter are continually in struggle against the workers

in their attempt to perpetuate exploitation.

The Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus has no link with trade union ideology

or practice, while its anti-employer position qualifies it clearly and

without doubt as an instrument that the workers have created for their

own emancipation.

Propaganda activity and struggles directed at obtaining precise

results, and the choice of means for the realization of these struggles,

are all elements to be clarified by the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus.

To belong to an Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus is the logical step for

all those who consider they have been betrayed by the various trade

union organisations and who want to continue the struggle against the

State-employer, widening this struggle in a perspective that is totally

different to that of trade union power.

B) Methods

The repression put into effect by the bosses with the help of their

servants is constant. It is exercised over us in many ways: reducing the

spending power of wage increases; refusing legitimate increases; putting

pressure on the worker by avoiding taking on more personnel and

increasing work risks; nullifying our struggles through the unions’

politics of recuperation. This repression must be fought with a struggle

that is also constant. So: permanent repression, permanent conflict.

The comrades making up the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus should have a

clear idea of the direction the struggle against exploitation should

take. The boss strikes the worker as part of a whole (the productive

collectivity), therefore when he strikes him as a railway worker, the

company adapts its exploitation to the general situation of production.

For this reason a sectorial and corporate struggle does not make sense.

The method of workers’ autonomy is based on exporting the struggle, even

if the immediate effects (economic and work conditions) remain within

the productive sector.

The method is therefore that of permanent conflict and taking the

struggle beyond the workplace.

The objectives to be reached outside the workplace are the users of

the railway service, especially commuters who must be constantly kept up

to date with the evolution of the conflict within the company; and the

same goes for the sectors of production closest to that of the railways

(airways, road transport, postal services, telephones, contracting

sectors, etc.).

Hence the great importance of information in the autonomous

organisation of the struggle. Obviously in the beginning the means

available for this method of struggle will be inadequate compared to

those of the trade union confederacy; however, even having recourse to

leafletting; what matters most is working in the right direction,

intervening constantly towards the users who must gradually be

sensitized to the struggle of the railway workers and our perspectives.

The same goes for the collateral sectors with whom it is necessary to

make contact, favouring, whenever possible, the birth of other

autonomous nuclei that can do the same kind of work.

In this perspective the strike maintains its validity as a means of

struggle, but must be seen critically, not as a means that automatically

sets conflict in motion whenever the trade union leadership decides. The

strike in that sense becomes an instrument that puts an end to a

situation of conflict, and is thus useful to the bosses and all those

who have an interest in extinguishing concrete struggle. Another element

against the strike as a means of struggle is the fact that it is an

intermittent instrument that the counterpart always has warning of in

advance, enabling them to intervene (for example, reducing personnel

from goods trains and transferring them to passenger ones).

Other means exist that can be used alongside the strike, or in the

place of it, means that attack the company’s productive output directly

and that constitute a very effective threat.

During a strike the technical procedure is arranged at union meetings.

Reading these rules, one is amazed by the care that is taken to avoid

any damage to the company. But, in the other direction, what does the

company do to try to reduce the exploitation of the workers? All these

precautions reduce the effectiveness of the strike as an arm in the

attack against the bosses, and the responsibility for all that is also

due to the legalism and conservatism of the unions. To hard and constant

repression, we must oppose struggle without half measures and without

warning: hard, constant struggle.

The choice of means to be employed in a certain struggle, and the

basic direction to be given to the information that has to be constantly

circulated towards the exterior, is decided by all those who belong to

the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus, for which they must meet periodically.

C) Perspectives

The concrete development of the struggle must be evaluated from time

to time in the light of the objective situation, and not serve as a

shield for vague and irresolute ideological constructions.

Wage increase is one of the most important points of the struggle,

because it allows the worker a greater capacity for resistance and the

possibility of facing other battles that are just as important for his

existence. This is not necessarily the main point of the Autonomous

Workers’ Nucleus, but, for obvious reasons it cannot be considered to be

of secondary importance.

The struggle for a different organisation of work is undoubtedly more

interesting, because it indirectly supplements real wages in a way that

cannot be taken back by the mechanism of devaluation. These indirect

supplements to wages are elements of great value during the course of

the conflict. A reduction in working hours, the refusal of mobility or

accumulation of duties, total staff coverage, the improvement of working

conditions, the modification of rules and working hours for drivers,

ticket collectors, etc., the strengthening of installations, lines,

locomotives, carriages, etc. are all elements that improve the general

situation of the railway worker and can come to be a part of real wages

that are very much inferior to the sum written on the pay slip.

The basic perspective in which a long-term struggle could be planned

would be that of the base of the workers getting control of management,

progressively removing it from the bosses and foremen who find

themselves in secure positions with the unions’ approval. In this way an

example could be given, through a series of proposals re changes in

management, and the organisational capacity of the workers, denouncing

those responsible for the present disservice at the cost of the

passengers and everyone involved.

Capillary penetration in order to explain the mistaken position of the

trade union struggles and their need to collaborate with the company,

the impossibility of any change in this situation in the near future,

and a return to struggle at the base. Struggle against the trade union

structures and bureaucrats, not against union members.

The final perspective is therefore that of autonomous management of

the struggle, both for wages and working conditions, as well as the

progressive taking over of management in its totality. Clearly this

autonomy of struggle can only develop through a proper evaluation of the

unions’ position of collaboration with the bosses.

Conclusion

THE AUTONOMOUS WORKERS’ NUCLEUS is an organism of struggle for the

defense of the railway workers who mean to affirm the principle of

autonomous struggle. For this reason it denies the validity of the trade

unions, and denounces their collusion with the system.

On the basis of the principle of autonomy, the Autonomous Workers’

Nucleus affirms the need for permanent conflict within the reality of

production, and the need to export the essential characteristics of the

struggle towards the exterior. The objectives of this communication with

the exterior are the users of the railway service and the co-lateral

productive sectors.

The methods necessary for the realisation of the defence of those

involved and therefore of the whole productive collectivity are chosen

in harmony with the principle of autonomy and permanent conflict. The

validity of the strike should be questioned, and a great deal of

attention paid to the search for other effective forms of struggle not

so easily controllable by the company.

The perspectives of the Autonomous Workers’ Nucleus are the constant

ones of increasing wages and affecting working conditions, with the aim

of safeguarding real wages which is the basis for all concrete

possibilities of struggle by the workers.

MAB — Turin