"Those who governed in the West weren't mistaken in their politics: they judged it necessary to save Italy [...] The entire system was overthrown by a revolution more fatal than all the others [...] and this was the mortal blow to the Empire." -- Montesquieu, Considerations of the Causes of the Grandeur and the Decadence of Rome[1]

Revolutionaries should disdain neither the profundity of the current class struggle, nor the crisis in which they debate all the powers of the parties, because it is the result of their own struggle. However, they should not exaggerate and fall into a kind of apocalyptic optimism that announces the victory of total subversion the day after each conflict and afterward relapses into the miserable imbecilic disillusion of recuperators, who still talk of the "ebb of the movement," precisely when it is extending beyond the workers and the factories.

Yesterday in Milan, 3000 delegates from 350 factory councils gathered in a common assembly for the first time, overcoming the bureaucratic unionists' monopoly over the coordination of workers, and these delegates cemented the first organization of autonomous revolutionary workers since the ruin of the [Italian] Workers Councils' movement of 1919-20. Some of us attended this first assembly, after which others immediately followed. The union bureaucracies will be ruined by the workers themselves!

Today in Italy there is a real danger of violent repression and, in some cases, it has already started. But there are not enough countrymen who are aware of these events and too few to protest against the repression: it is necessary to stop it!

The repressive forces of the system are the unions, the police, and the secret services; in these times, these forces have two possible courses of action: either bringing to a head the preventive repression of the fights that they fear or the subsequent repression of these fights, because they know that each repressive measure employed effectively feeds into the struggles. In Padua, Florence, and Naples, the repression and the arrests of workers and unemployed countrymen preceded the violent explosion of the movement. In Bologna, the repression was applauded by the so-called Communist Party. In Rome, the repression has just begun.

Countrymen,

We cannot prevent repression if we don't extend the movement everywhere, and above all into the factories of all the cities of Italy. Yesterday, in the Lyric Theater in Milan, the coordination of future fights was prepared with that which was taken away from the unions.

All the political parties have formed a coalition that sustains our decadent capitalism and they have accused us of being subversives. All right then, countrymen: let's be totally subversive! Let us not allow them to accuse us of being revolutionaries; we have earned this "accusation" and for us it is an honor.

There is no need to worry about criminal charges: our own fights oblige us to move away from power, for example, by means of an amnesty. In 1969, they brought charges against a total of 10,000 workers in Milan and in Turin. But no one swore out the charges: they had the power to choose between 10,000 guilty verdicts and provoking a civil war, on the one hand, or yielding, on the other. And they preferred to avoid civil war.

It remains for us to be clear about the possibilities and risks of the present movement: our only real self-defense consists in extending the struggles throughout the country. Whoever makes a revolution halfway digs his own grave (Saint Just), and we have already begun to grieve. The workers have to occupy all the factories indefinitely and expel the Stalinist bureaucrats from them. Then we know what has to be done. The very consequences of our actions carry us forward. Then the slogan will be: All power to the Workers Councils!

Countrymen,

Watch out for terrorist provocations by the secret services! Remember that, after the Piazza Fontana, we immediately reported about those terrorists for hire.[2] The abduction of De Martino[3] formed part of the strategy of the S.I.D.; it is well-known that the N.A.P.[4] are remote-controlled and infiltrated. Other terrorists, of the most varied labels, serve only Power. Terrorism is a spectacular deed that hides and masks the authentic class struggle in which we fight and which the so-called Communist Party would like to pacify.

We denounce the maneuvers of the S.I.D.-S.I.S.[5] by clarifying the fine truths that are dogging them. The principal function of the abduction of De Martino was to disorient the council delegates from the factories who met in Milan a few hours later in an assembly that neither the PCI nor anyone else could prevent. The police maneuver failed at least in this. When the unions can't dominate the struggles, it is normal that the police and secret services rise up.

Countrymen,

The old mole finally comes out into the light. It is necessary to get Lama[6] to stop provoking the proletariat by brazenly smoking the pipe of social peace.

The autonomous struggles of the proletariat are growing more rapidly than wages, and the credit of the so-called Communist Party is going down more rapidly than the value of the Lira.

Long live the Metropolitan Indians![7]

Long live Radio Alice![8]

Long live the autonomy of struggles!

Long live the workers who ousted the Stalinist bureaucrats from their movement in Milan! Long live the autonomous and sovereign assemblies! Long live the absolute power of the Workers Councils!

(Written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, dated 7 April 1977, and distributed in Rome, Italy, and also on the Via Carlo Pisacane, in Milan. Originally written in Italian. Translated into Spanish by Muturreko and published in Terrorism in Search of Two Authors: Documents of the Revolution in Italy (Bilbao, 2000). Lacking the Italian original, Kim Paice translated this text into English from the Spanish version, May 2007. All footnotes by NOT BORED!)

[1] Translated by Kim Paice directed from the French: Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence (1734).

[2] A reference to "Is the Reichstag Burning?" a text written and distributed by members of the Italian section of the Situationist International on 19 December 1969, one week after the bombing of the Piazza Fontana train station in Bologna.

[3] Guido De Martino, son of the prominent Socialist politician Francesco De Martino, was kidnapped on 5 April 1977, allegedly by radical leftists. He was released on 15 May 1977 in exchange for a ransom.

[4] The Armed Proletarian Nuclei, which claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of De Martino.

[5] The Defense Intelligence Service (Servizio Informazioni Difesa) was dissolved in 1977 due to its involvement in the bombing at the Piazza Fontana, and was replaced by the SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democrarica, the Democratic Information and Security Service) in 1977.

[6] Luciano Lama, a Communist union leader who was expelled on 17 February 1977 from the University of Rome, which was then occupied by revolutionary students.

[7] Indiani metropoliani, a group of Bolognese graffiti artists, much admired by Sanguinetti. See http://www.radioalice.org/muri.html and/or the book published by Egeria Di Nallo (Cappelli Editore, Bologna).

[8] Pirate radio station. See http://www.radioalice.org.