CHAPTER 2
TURIN
1920: THE DEFEAT OF THE GENERAL STRIKE
PREFACE: In April 1920, the working class of Turin conducted
a General Strike which was fired, in part, by the spirit of the Russian
revolution. Already, the 1917 insurrection in Turin had assumed the character
of an armed revolutionary struggle on a large scale. In many workplaces Factory
Councils had been set up. It was these events that led to the split from the
Socialist Party that was to create
THE STRENGTH OF THE REVOLUTION
by Antonio Gramsci
The celebration of May Day in
In the general strike,
capitalism and the power of the State vaunted the whole of their armoury. The bourgeois state had put at the disposition of
the industrialists of
Against this unleashing of
capitalist forces, the working class had nothing but the single sheet of the
daily strike bulletin and their own powers of resistance and sacrifice. The
metalworkers lasted out for a month, without wages. Many suffered hunger, and
pledged their furniture, even their sheets and mattresses, at the pawn shop;
the rest of the working population also suffered hardships, privation and
desolation.
The strike ended in defeat.
The idea that had sustained the workers was scorned even by a number of those
representing the working class; the energy and faith of those leading the
general strike was described as illusionary simple mindedness and a mistake, by
certain representatives of the working class; when they returned to the
factories, the proletariat suddenly realised the full extent of the setback
forced upon them by the terrible presence of the vast forces of the owning
class and the power of the State: a certain disheartenment, a yielding of the
mind and will, a collapse of class feelings and energies would have been
justifiable, a surge of bitterness would have been natural, a faltering of the
revolutionary army could have been foreseen...
But no! The hungry and the
wretched, these folk, bleeding, beaten by the capitalist scourge and mocked by
the stupidity or malevolence of their so-called comrades in struggle, have not
lost their faith in the communist revolution. The whole of the Turin
proletariat came out onto the streets and into the squares to demonstrate their
allegiance to the revolution, to spread before the millions and billions of
capitalist wealth the human forces of the working class, the hundreds of
thousands of hearts, arms and brains of the working class, to oppose the
capitalists’ cashboxes with the iron battalions of militants in the workers’
revolution.
Ten days of strike, hunger,
hardship, desolation and defeat were not enough to bring about what the
capitalist class and the power of the State felt sure of achieving: the defeat
of the proletariat, the exorcising of the spectre
that broods like a nightmare over their palaces and strong-rooms.
The capitalist class and the
power of the State transformed the day of May 1st into an orgy of blood and
terror. The march was hit by a round of rifle fire – two killed and about fifty
wounded. Just what was needed for the direst and fiercest repression to be
unleashed on the city. The most scandalous rumours are spread: bombs, daggers, plots…
arrests multiply. The Royal Guards set about hunting down the demonstrators.
Those arrested are clubbed and maimed with rifle butts, are trampled to the
point of vomiting blood; the streets and squares ring with the sound of guns
firing at windows, at groups of passers-by; lorryloads
of Royal Guards, with their guns aimed at windows, at doors and at passers-by,
run riot in the city; groups of Royal Guards crawl from every sewer to jab
their bayonets in the faces of all and sundry, regardless now of distinctions
of class, age or sex, be they a worker, a soldier, an officer, a priest, a
woman or a child, such is the rabid fury that their orders arouse in the
confused and twilight minds of the mercenaries hired for this civil war.
But not even the ordeal of
this great day, not even this barbarous saraband of unprecedented
violence has managed to budge the position of the working class one inch: the
funerals of the two people murdered are transformed into an indescribable show
of strength and discipline. New forces of the people spill forth,
new crowds join the revolutionary army as it accompanies its fallen to the
cemetery.
The strength of the revolution
bends before no defeat, bows to no pain, to no obstacle, however great. The
working people have got beyond the critical phase of dispersal and disillusion:
they have become a homogeneous and cohesive unit, they have become an ordered
and disciplined army of desires conscious of a real aim, of minds that are
aware of being the historic energies on whom weighs a mission that is higher
than any human power. The working people, from being raw material for the
history of the privileged classes, have finally become capable of creating
their own history, of rebuilding their city.
[Translated
from L’Ordine Nuovo
– 8 May 1920]
Photo: A page from L’Ordine
nuovo
_______________________________________
Translated by Ed Emery
Extracted from:
THE BOOK
OF FIAT:
Insurrection, insubordination, occupation and revolutionary politics at the
FIAT motor company – 1907-1982
Published: Red Notes / May Day Rooms
First published in 2020