"What causes the lethargy suffered by oppressed populations is the duration of the evil, which knows the imaginations of men and which makes them believe that their oppression will never end. But as soon as they find a day to break out of their lethargy, which is never lacking when things have come to a certain point, they are so surprised, so comforted and so carried away that, all of a sudden, they pass over to the other extreme and, far from believing revolutions to be impossible, believe them to be easy; and this disposition, on its own, is sometimes capable making them happen." Cardinal de Retz, Memoires.
Our social preoccupations are obviously not born of a romantic spirit of the heart, but of a reflection of intelligence, because, in the relative but incontestable poverty of certain social strata, we less see a suffering to be healed -- a bit of demagogic utopia upon which we will let others volunteer to speculate -- than a disorder to be prevented.
Our time is unique in its enunciation of so many principles and concepts with so much pretension and universalism. If history most often seems to present itself as a conflict of interests and passions, our recent history, from which passions haven't been lacking, presents itself instead as a struggle between competing principles of justification and partially as a struggle between subjective passions and objective interests, which are almost always hidden under the flag of certain arguments justified as "superior."
Over the years, we, impassive, have witnessed the lamentable spectacle in which one part of our bourgeoisie has justified itself to the others by its defense of "exploited" people and which has, conversely, accused the other bourgeois of following their own egotistical interests. This was one way -- less useful than others -- of passing the time, in an era in which one could afford to waste it. For our part, we note that the fictive interest in social questions maintained by these respectable gentlemen was principally of psychological origin: it justified itself and responded more or less to the "moral" need to, in one or another manner, put their consciences at ease in this euphoric period of "economic miracle." One discoursed with academic impertinence and studied ignorance on social questions, because the new middle class believed them to be answered and didn't know or understand the scope of the unexpected revolutions of 1919-1920, [1] nor how the bourgeoisie of the era managed to defeat them. In reality, behind the "sensible" facade, dissimulating itself, there was a vague unease with and genuine lack of interest in civil society. There's a correspondence between the downfall of the bourgeoisie's class spirit and the downfall of its assurance (and growth of its timidity): in our opinion, these new members of the bourgeoisie fear to have reason and fear to be afraid; soon they must realize that they have reason to be afraid.
The ruling class's lack of interest in the mutations taking place in civil society reached its height when an unexpected fact of global import brusquely and traumatically awoke it.
The insurrectionary events that took place in France in the month of May [1968] unquestionably showed that a new social revolution, disencumbered of all of its previous illusions and disillusions, knocked on the door of modern society. At first, one didn't understand; later on, not without reason, one hid the fact that this insurrection, by its very existence, was the most scandalous and terrible failure suffered by the European bourgeoisie since [the revolutions of] 1848. As in 1848, the wind of revolt blew all over Europe, and one breathed it in France as in Germany, in Italy as in Czechoslovakia, in Yugoslavia as in England: everywhere, under different forms and in diverse fashions, this world that is ours was, with more or less pronounced violence, confronted with the thoughts and actions of populations in open revolt against society, populations that -- like the ruling classes -- had forgotten for a half-century what one in the 19th century called the "social question."
It isn't necessary to insist on recalling that [in May 1968] France experienced the most extensive and prolonged general strike that ever paralyzed the economy of an advanced industrial country, and the first "spontaneous" general strike in history: for several weeks, all the powers of the State, the political parties and the unions were quite simply effaced, while, in every town, the factories and public buildings found themselves occupied. It isn't in the design of this pamphlet to demonstrate why the events of May were profoundly revolutionary and virtually as dangerous to the world as the Russian Revolution, because we don't want to oblige anyone to share this opinion; we will limit ourselves to considering the facts that May 1968 remains a very menacing precedent and that the ideas of this movement have infiltrated everywhere, because everywhere in Europe the poor classes have increased in number, their importance has increased more than their standard of living, and their aspirations have increased more than their power.
Since the French Revolution, that is to say, since the bourgeoisie seized the political responsibilities for the administration of States everywhere, the peoples of all places have tried to escape their conditions, changing every political institution one by one; but after each change, they have determined that their lot wasn't truly improved or that things get better insupportably slower than the speed of their desires. It is thus inevitable that, one day, the workers will finally discover that what locks them in their situation isn't the constitution of the different States -- royal or republican, fascist or socialist dictatorships, parliamentary or presidential democracies -- but the laws and principles that constitute all modern societies; and it is natural that the poor classes will sooner or later demand that they have the power and perhaps the right to change these laws, just as they've changed all the others. And, to speak specifically of property and the State, which are the foundations of all social order: isn't it inevitable that they are once again, but in a completely new way, denounced as the principal obstacles to equality among men, and that the idea of abolishing them completely -- and not in the way that one used to say that they had been abolished in [Soviet] Russia -- once again comes to all those who feel subservient and excluded?
This natural disturbance of the people, the inevitable agitation of their desires, their resentment of poverty: these instincts of the crowd in some way form the material out of which professional agitators design monstrous or grotesque figures that are rejected by all of the political parties, starting with the Communists. In May, in Paris, each proposed his plan for the construction of the "new society"; one demanded the immediate abolition of salaried work; another the inequality of goods; a third wanted the end of commodity society and the oldest of inequalities, the one between man and women; [2] all seeming to agree that commands of all kinds should be excluded, replaced by experimentation with forms of direct democracy and the rejection of all institutions, political parties and unions.
What struck the most attentive observer was the fact that, contrary to what was said on the matter, the overwhelming majority of the movement in question wasn't made up of students, but workers and other salaried employees. One can obviously find their ideas utopian or simply ridiculous, but the terrain on which these ideas were nourished and propagated must be examined in the most serious fashion by politicians and other men of State, because our entire world is at stake.
In France and Czechoslovakia, where this insurrectionary (indeed, revolutionary) movement principally took hold, who was it that repressed it with the greatest efficiency? Who favored or imposed the return of normalcy in the factories and the streets? Ah, well! in both cases, it was the Communists: in Paris, thanks to the unions, and, in Prague, thanks to the Red Army. Here is the first lesson that one should draw from these events.
But the periods of incubation and development of this social malady -- of which France presents the most visible symptoms (which quickly became an epidemic) and Italy must experience in a completely privileged manner -- are too close to us to be written down as history; but they are sufficiently engraved in everyone's memories to make it useful to re-trace the chronology. It is enough to recall that, here as elsewhere, the so-called student contestations were ephemeral and quickly became simple phenomena of depravity -- tolerable, like so many others -- that didn't preoccupy the vital sector of productive society, but rather the pages of the daily newspapers and the discourses of intellectuals. But everyone knew that, parallel to and contemporaneous with the student movement, there was a deeper, less apparent but much more worrisome movement in the factories, which began without liaisons or publicity. Despite the traditional unionist framing of the Italian working class, the first forms of "spontaneous" struggle and para-union ["wildcat"] strikes broke out. Precisely because these phenomena was underestimated from its start, it was easy for the movement to spread with a growing radicalism in the following months. A kind of frenzy seemed to be seizing our workers, who, reunited in so-called "base committees," began in an autonomous manner to advance extravagant, para-salary claims, which were sometimes picturesque, other times aberrant, but always noxious, since in all cases they found partisans ready to enter into struggle over them. We here put aside the others and cite the beautiful example furnished by the employees of a large firm (notorious in Milan), at which, at the end of 1968, a "base committee" successfully organized a series of strikes that aimed at getting the bosses to include the time necessary for the workers to travel from home to the job as "work time" and to pay them accordingly!
One had the impression that the workers had literally entered into competition to see who could record the greatest extent of damages caused by their fatal fantasies. In reality, the declared goal of each particular conflict was out of collective porportion to the social damages caused by the country-wide generalization of the strikes and demonstrations of all types; and the rest of the workers, in our opinion, didn't want to know why they fought: they simply [3] wanted to fight. Pretexts were found by the thousands, but the desire to fight was their only unacknowledged goal, and no salary increases could suffice to appease it.
It is clear, however, that it was in 1969 that Italy came to know intimately the unfortunate "modernity" of its social crisis: the first serious disturbances in the prisons and factories of the North, as well as the revolt in Battipaglia in the Spring of that year, [4] showed that the crisis now extended from one end of the peninsula to the other and involved a "qualitative leap" in seriousness compared to the preceding year. In truth, while the student passions of 1968 didn't go beyond politics as it is understood by self-proclaimed "Leftists," the passions of the working class became social -- and our readers will not ignore the fatal implications of this -- which meant that they didn't demand some specific reform, or contest a particular politician or government or political party, but society itself and the bases upon which it rests.
And yet, despite all this, we must affirm that, in this period [1968-1969], the government wasn't as alarmed by what had arrived in this country as were the chiefs of the Communist opposition. In the first phase of 1969, the only people who really and truly worried about the near future were union leaders [5] and bosses in the Communist Party, because they were the only ones who closely observed the working class, which, every day, was displaying subversive moods and will-power: the state of permanent agitation in the country had already exceeded, not only the hopes, but also the most ardent desires, of the unions, that is to say, of those who were incorrectly believed to be at the origin of the problem. This was neither the first nor the last occasion on which we recognized the lucidity of the Honorable Giorgio Amendola, [6] but this was perhaps the occasion on which he most surprised us and we most esteemed him: this political man, more so than the others, possesses an agile spirit, cold but cordial, eminently subtle, that immediately goes to the heart of the question, but doesn't neglect the details, without prejudices or grudges, an expert in registering people's weaknesses and human penchants, especially concerning those in his party, and always capable of playing on them when his personal interests aren't adversely affected; in sum, he is a man whom one can neither hinder, assess, nor listen to. And all the more so in such an era when the Honorable Rumor, President of the Council at this moment, [7] didn't win our confidence by saying things of this kind: "Be calm, everything will come out fine; there isn't a free government that doesn't have to surmount obstacles of this sort." We, who are less concerned with the kind of government we have than with our other problems, have found that this response perfectly illustrates this resolute but limited man, limited but spirited, spirited in such a way that, upon seeing clearly and in detail all that's on his horizon, doesn't imagine that this horizon can change unexpectedly. On the other hand, one must bear in mind that certain industrialists who are susceptible to an anguish that, in many cases, verges on pure and simple stupidity, imagined nothing better to do than call the unions to order, as if the unions -- at that moment not at all responsible for the situation -- were in any position to officially oppose the movement without running the risk of being formally eliminated by it.
It was at this moment of 1969 that one explictly asked the Communist Party of Italy [CPI] what guarantees it could offer to help the government stop the movement before Autumn, and what it wanted in return. The Communists, who knew the stakes and the danger of the moment better than anyone, indicated their wishes: but a large number of industrialists, either because they underestimated the risks of the coming months or because they overestimated the "risk" of any agreement with the CPI, found that the Communists' demands exceeded the guarantees they offered. With a posteriori knowledge, one can say that the Christian Democratic party ignored the force and utility of a Communist party in such circumstances, as well as the force of the wave of "spontaneous" strikes that would hit shortly thereafter: because the Communists gambled too casually on time and the "natural" precipitation of events, awaiting the moment at which they would be called upon to lead, and because the Christian Democrats counted too much on the fact that the Communists (fearful of an open rupture) would do exactly what they promised, even without obtaining immediate compensation for their efforts. These calculations were justified, or justifiable, if one were confronting a political crisis; but these calculations were insufficient, not to say thoughtless, to the extent both the Communists and the Christian Democrats failed to recognize that Italy was in the midst of a pre-insurrectionary social crisis. At the moment that the Communist leaders, expecting subsequent developments, were retreating to positions more rigid than those of the Christian Democrats, who nevertheless bear the initial responsibility for this tension, it became necessary to act immediately, but in another direction.
What, consequently, was the direction followed? Heeding a great philosopher, who more than a century and a half ago showed that "everything true and everything false in is public opinion," and knowing that journalists are specialists in public and private opinions, we can answer this question with the words of a journalist: "[...] The number of political symptoms, union-related and cultural" -- Nicola Adelfi wrote in Epoca -- "makes one think that this situation will endure [...], one can't see how the wave of violence can be broken or even attenuated. Unless something unexpected and traumatic takes place: I want to say something that, unexpectedly, will shake public opinion and give it the sensation of finding itself on the verge of anarchy and its inseparable companion, dictatorship." One couldn't say it any better; but he agrees that in order for "something unexpected and traumatic" to take place, one would need above all else a homogenous government, one less fragile than the Center-Left coalition of Rumor-Nenni. [8] After the formation of the first Center-Left coalition, different representatives of economic power gained or placed certain men in eminent positions in the unlucky Socialist Party, which was "unified" at that moment. Oh well! in early July [1969], all it took to topple Rumor-Nenni's Center-Left coalition was a demand for a split by the Social Democrats, whom one has never had to beg to get involved in operations of this kind: the 10-year-old coalition was broken in 10 months. The next day, the government fell, and, a month after that, at the beginning of August, Rumor constituted his second "mono-colored" government, in which (if memory serves) all of the Christian-Democratic currents were represented. And, despite all of its failures, this cabinet was, to us, one of the most efficient in the history of the [Italian] Republic, thanks to the actions taken by the Honorable Donat-Cattin, Minister of Labor, and the Honorable Restivo, Minister of the Interior, [9] during the following autumn, which, by an admirable understatement [10] has been called "hot."
Given the fact, affirmed at the time by the foreign press, that the only two institutions still functioning in Italy were the unions and the police, it is fitting that we single out for praise the Ministers of Labor and Interior: Carlo Donat-Cattin had a long career as a unionist, and Franco Restivo, intimate of the prefect of police, Vicari, [11] who had already experienced political terrorism in the Sicilian region, where Restivo had been President when the bandit Giuliano raged. [12] In 1968, a number of small attacks, which used explosives but didn't have grave consequences, contributed to the increase of disorder that the student and worker contestatory movements created in the big towns and even in the small ones, too. These were acts of limited, narrow range when compared with, for example, the acts of sabotage in the factories; these acts didn't bear the signature of fascist or Maoist groupuscules that are fixated upon their local adversaries; but these small actions found themselves at the origin of big ones, for, as Tacitus says, "It is never useless to discern those things that, at first seen as small, often bring about the linking of things that are big." [13] In Italy during this era and afterwards, the unions and police forces weren't the only institutions still functioning: the secret services had secretly been in action for several months. And since the political sphere continued to equivocate in the face of the worsening crisis, it was necessary, in the summer [of 1969], to employ the diversionary tactic of artificial tension, the principal goal of which was to momentarily distract public opinion from the real tensions splitting the country apart. We can see the undeniable advantages of such a tactic, and the damages caused by transforming it into a strategy; in the next chapter, we will publically expose the critiques that, in other places and times, we have addressed to our secret service, which -- due to a blunder without precedent in history -- today sees itself publically accused by a magistrate and the entire country. [14]
Although they took place against the background [15] of the small attacks that we mentioned above, the first uses of this tactic (we can say with certainty) were in Milan on 25 April 1969 and elsewhere the following August: [16] the operations to which we allude here were, in a certain sense, rehearsals for the events of Autumn. They weren't expected, and, starting in September, the first acts of large-scale sabotage took place at the FIAT factories in Turin and the Pirelli factories in Milan, and hundreds of other places since then. Top-level negotiations concerning the renewal of contracts between employers and unions were no longer one pretext among others: a certain quantity of facts and events, in a period that truly didn't lack them, were eclipsed by those that followed them in an always rising crescendo, [17] and we must be disinterested here, because the profound meaning that this class war gives itself, across its intensive and extensive development, is more important that the ensemble of particular episodes, which are like the billion stones in the road that clearly leads to social revolution.
In the course of our life, we have kept frequent company with those well-read people who write history without mingling in its affairs; and we have acted alongside the political men who are constantly employed in the production and prevention of events, without ever thinking too much about describing them. We have always observed that the former sees the general causes, while the latter, living in the world of everyday facts (and seemingly producing and produced by them), voluntarily imagine that all events that favor them must be attributed to their merit, as if it were incumbent on them alone to determine the progress of the world, and that all set-backs are the absolutely unforseeable consequences of this or that particular event. There is room for one [the historian or the politician] to believe that the other is in error; and, if, in this era, one must expect everything because everything is possible, then one isn't permitted to be taken by surprise. And so, for example, in the Autumn of 1969 -- which Raffaele Mattioli [18] defined with his typical philosophical detachment as "the lyrical expression of history in action, during which no one had the courage to be what they were" -- one witnessed the pitiful spectacle of the industrialists who placed more confidence in the unions than in themselves; and the unions placed their confidence in the concessions that they could obtain from the government; and the government placed its confidence in the efficacity of its sercret services. We were among the small number who knew that what one forecast as 'the worst' was, in fact, too optimistic, in the same way that, today, few know that Italy is once more only an hour away from a general insurrection, and if by luck such an event doesn't take place, it will be thanks less to precautions taken by these or those people, but by the play of other factors.
The struggles over contracts obtained notable success on the terrain of the salaried workers, but it was a pious illusion to believe that the renewed contracts appeased them: as we have already said, from the moment that the workers don't really struggle for salary increases, it is thenceforth clear that, despite any further increases, one can't buy from them social peace, which every day risks becoming no more than a happy memory of past times. In fact, when certain categories, such as municipal workers, win a new work contract, they persevere with their illegal strikes under the pretext of supporting the struggles of [fellow] workers in private mechanized industries, for whom contract negotiations remain in suspense. From their side, the unions expose themselves to the peril of cutting themselves off from the working masses if they [the unions] disavow all the strikes that they haven't wanted to undertake or haven't been able to prevent: on the contrary, they must accept the existence of these worker-strikes so that they don't exclude in advance the possibility of, one day, being accepted by them, the second time around, as the authorized spokesmen for their claims. Thus, to prevent open rioting, the union confederations must find objectives, other than increased salaries, towards which the workers' contestation can be channeled.
It was one such objective, which appeared artificial to the workers themselves, that furnished the occasion to incite a blatant and patent insurrection. For 19 November 1969, the unions had called a national general strike in protest of high rents; this call, which was answered by the most widespread abstention from work [absenteeism] in the recorded history of the Republic, quickly degenerated into a riot in Milan: the union leaders [19] who gave speeches at the Lyrical Theatre [building], were boycotted and insulted by workers who abandonned the meeting, harshly attacked the forces of the Public Security (which were forced to withdraw from the entire neighborhood), and raised barricades in the center of town.
We have a precise memory of this spectacle, because, precisely on 19 November, towards afternoon, we had to cross the Via Larga [in Milan] to go to the residence (located not far from the confrontations) of an industrialist and have lunch with several political men and personalities in the economic world. Since it was impossible to find a taxi, we traversed an entire sector of town by foot: we found the majority of the streets tranquil and nearly deserted, as one finds them on a fine Sunday morning, when the rich are still sleeping and the poor aren't slaving away; here and there, a young man, who had the look of a suburban salaried worker rather than a student, was calmly affixing some kind of poster to the facades; he offered us several, which were signed by such-and-such group of "autonomous workers" or "base committee," and one of these manifestoes surprised us with its lugubrious title, redolent of the 19th century, and that was something like this: "Notice to the proletariat on the current occasion for social revolution." [20] Having crossed (not without difficulty) the barrages of public force and demonstrators, we finally reached the apartment of our host, who was more worried than usual. The food was magnificent, as usual, but the table was deserted: of the half-dozen invitees, only one other presented himself, late, and he wasn't the one whose attendance was most counted upon. We assumed a passive air among this useless abundance, and a profound silence was involuntarily provoked by a simple reflection on our part, that we live in strange times, in which -- as Tocqueville said in 1848 [21] -- one can't be sure that a revolution won't break out between the time one sits down at the table and the moment when the meal is served. [22]
Certain telephone calls scandalized the times and made even more nerve-wracking the expectation of some baleful event; the bits of news accumulated: a Public Security agent was killed in front of the Lyrical Theatre, and neither the police nor the unions were able to dominate the field of battle, which they adandonned. On that afternoon, the telephone was the only umbilical cord that still connected us to the world; after Turin, one feared the worst, because, if one had other times seen Milan escape such a situation, the chances [23] that the riots and strikes would remain limited to this one day were fading away completely. In Rome, one heard that the unions "held" Turin, and that this wasn't a serious incident, nor was [the situation in] Genoa. Several hours later, this information was directly confirmed to us by the union leaders [24] who were there; fortunately, there weren't any dead among the demonstrators, because that was the bonanza anticipated by the agitators. Milan -- Milan the worker -- was discouraged to learn later that evening that the strike had unfolded everywhere without incident; but in Rome (certainly not popular Rome), the events in Milan were ignored, and this created an even greater sense of Rome as a [national] capital habitually and cunningly insensible to the impulses of the rest of the country. One finally advised them that they had no more time to lose, because in Milan neither the unions nor the police were capable of preventing a riot; and, even if (by luck) the riot were brief, one knew all too well that none of the obstacles that gave rise to it had been surmounted in Milan or anywhere else in Italy. There was more than good reason to fear that in several weeks, maybe even sooner, a new riot was going to become a general insurrection.
Instead, three weeks later, on 12 December, bombs exploded in the Piazza Fontana in Milan and [also] in Rome; and in truth [there] one saw "something unexpected and traumatic," which profoundly stirred public opinion in Italy and abroad.
The workers, disoriented and struck dumb by the innocent victims of the attacks, remained, as it were, hypnotized by the unimaginable event and misled by the ensuing rumors, because, in the presence of facts of this kind, the spirit is changed and, as Tacitus says: "The common herd vacillates according to unexpected events, and finds itself all the more inclined to mercy than it had been immoderately inclined to cruelty." [25]
As if by magic, a movement of extensive and prolonged struggles suddenly forgot itself and stopped.
All notes and comments [in brackets] by NOT BORED! except where noted:
[1] Cf. Martin Clark, The Failure of Revolution in Italy, 1919-1920, University of Reading, Department of Italian Studies, 1973.
[2] These remarks were taken straight from a passage in Alexis de Tocqueville's Recollections of the French Revolution of 1848. This same passage was also used by Guy Debord in the film version (1973) of his book The Society of the Spectacle, on which Gianfranco Sanguinetti worked as an assistant.
[3] French in original.
[4] On 9 April 1969, a general strike was called to protest the closing of a tobacco plant, a major source of jobs in Battipaglia. During a demonstration in the streets, a bystander was killed by the police.
[5] English in original.
[6] Note by Guy Debord: ["Honorable" is a] title given out for courtesy for Italian parliamentarians. [Amendola was a Minister of the Interior and member of the Communist Party of Italy (CPI).]
[7] Mariano Rumor, a Christian Democrat, was Prime Minister of Italy off and on between 12 December 1968 and 6 July 1970.
[8] Between 12 December 1968 and 5 July 1969.
[9] Carlo Donat-Cattin was Minister of Labor between 1968 and 1972. Franco Restivo was Minister of the Interior during the same period. Both were Christian Democrats.
[10] English in original.
[11] Angelo Vicari.
[12] Salvatore Giuliano was the leader of the Voluntary Army for the Independence of Sicily. He was murdered by his best friend and lieutenant in 1950.
[13] Latin in original.
[14] In September 1974, the head of the Servizio Informazioni Difesa (Defence Intelligence Service), General Vito Micelli, was arrested and charged with involvement in a failed 1970 coup attempt by the veteran Fascist Valerio Borghese and state asset Stefano delle Chiaie's neo-Nazi Avanguardia Nazionale organisation. During his trial, Micelli defended himself, disclosing the existence of a "Parallel SID" formed as a result of a secret agreement with the United States within the framework of NATO (i.e. Operation Gladio).
[15] English in original.
[16] On 25 April 1969, a bomb exploded at a trade fair in Milan, injuring twenty people. Though initial investigations centered on anarchist and left-wing circles, two right-wing publishers (Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura) were eventually arrested, charged and convicted. Between 8 and 9 August 1969, ten different bomb-attacks took place on trains in Northern Italy.
[17] French in original.
[18] Raffaele Mattioli, a one-time antifascist and later the President of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, died on 27 July 1973 at the age of 78. The entirety of the Veritable Report is dedicated to his memory.
[19] English in original.
[20] Here "Censor" is clearly referring to Avviso al proletario italiano sulle possibilita presetni della rivoluzione sociale ("Notice to the Italian Proletariat on Current Possibilities for Social Revolution"), a tract written and distributed 19 November 1969 by the Italian section of the Situationist International, of which Sanguinetti himself was a member.
[21] See footnote [2] above.
[22] Here one can't help recall the skit by Monty Python's Flying Circus (circa 1970), in which a respectable woman (played by Eric Idle in drag) indicates proper dinner etiquette should a communist revolution break out during a meal attended by guests.
[23] French in original.
[24] English in original.
[25] Latin in original.