INTRODUCTION During the recent Turin congress of the Italian Section of the Fourth International, Alain Krivine interviewed two comrades who have been active in the workers' struggles in the city. The first Vito Bisceglia is a member of the Central Committee of the FIOM (Metallurgy Federation) of the CGIL (CP controlled trade union federation).
He is a factory delegate and a member of the provincial committee of the FIOM-CGIL in Turin. The comrade works in the Nebiola factory la machine-tools plant with 1200 workers where a factory council still exists and publishes its own paper, Centrasessen ta, which has a regular circulation of 800.
The two interviews conducted by Cde.
Krivine enable us to make a preliminary balance sheet both of the workers' councils which were formed during the great struggles which erupted in 1969 and the class struggles which continue today. This is a necessary task since all the indications suggest that a decisive turning point in the social, political and economic situation in Italy has been reached.
The economic crisis continues to deteriorate. In the first four months of 1971, industrial production dropped by 2.3%. This situation is not just the case with backward industries, but affects the heartlands of Italian capitalism: Fiat, Pirelli, Montedison are also experiencing grave difficulties. Of course the workers are the ones really affected by this crisis: Pirelli invites' several thousand workers to 'declare themselves redundant", in other car factories in Milan, a reduction in the hours of work and of wages is forced on the workers; in Sanussi, a major electrical goods trust, more than 9000 are suffering unemployment.
The most significant fact is that growing unemployment has not dampened the workers' militancy which continues to express itself in tested local class struggles, which owing to the lack of an overall perspective, tend to be ineffective. The chief responsibility for this state of affairs can only be laid at the door of the Communist Party bureaucracy and the union leaderships, who in a period of crisis, make a bloc with the bourgeoisie to save the "national economy'. Thus the only slogan which these timid and conservative bureaucrats can put forward to struggle against redundancies is one which demands that the bourgeois state subsidises capitalist enterprises in difficulty, of How long has the Factory Council been in existence and how is it organized?
The Council was formed during the struggles in May '69. It expressed the desire of the workers, to take the organization and leadership of the struggle into their own hands, confronted by the bureaucratisation of the unions, which still had The elimination of Wasfi Tall, the Jordanian Prime Minister, by the commandos of the Palestinian "Black September Group does not fill us with tears. This mass murderer received the fate he so richly deserved for his pro-imperialist endeavours, and which is due to all his kind. A loyal servant first of British imperialism, and then of its American counterpart, Washi Tall was a virulent antisemite who depicted everything which upset the status que (including, in fact especially, the Palestinian Resistance) as the produer of a vast international conspiracy of Jewish Bolsheviks (1) And yet, by a seeming paradox, he was Zionist Israel's best protector, to the point where a leading Israeli commentator could say shortly after his death: not with out reason: "He killed more terrorists in one year than we did in ten."
As early as 1952, this wretched counter-revolutionary thug was clamouring for repression of Palestinian opposition to the Jordanian monarchy, and till the end of his life he fought with remarkable consistency against any and all movements which posed a threat to his power and that of his masters, whether in the Yemen, where his unbriddled attachment to the antiRepublican cause led Nasser to denounce him as an agent of the CIA, or, more recently, in Jordan itself, where he led the campaign to destroy the Palestinian Resistance and was personally responsible for the liquidation of thousands of fighters and civilians alike.
The RAMALL A ONDA 700 members. All the workers, both unionized and non-unionized are organised in work sectors (turners, fitters, etc). Each sector's assembly elects a delegate who can be instantly recalled. At least 10 assemblies are held each year. Every worker has 10 paid hours per year so that he can participate in sector or general assemblies. For instance, in 1971, 12 general assemblies were held which discussed factory problems (wage rates, work speed, grading problems). The workers' council consists of 42 delegates. 504 hours a month are paid for by the employer for the benefit of the Council, which divides the hours among its members as it sees fit. There is an executive committee of 7 members, which is changed every 2 months; its sole function being coordination. The Council edits the paper, delegates militants to negotiate with the boss and organizes struggles. How many workers take part in the assemblies? All the workers take part. Political debate is allowed-for example, I have been elected a delegate and all my comrades know 1 am a Trotskyist. What role does the Union play in the Council?
In 1969 a minority of the delegates did not belong to the Union, today they are all members. There is no union structure in the factory but the PCI (Italian Communist Party) is attempting to transform the Council into a Union organisation. The Union takes part in negotiations which have a bear ing beyond the factory, for example, at local or regional level. The Union is occupied, or at least should be occupied with the coordination of strug gles with other factories.
Is this workers council an exceptional case in 1971? Yes, it certainly is an exception. We are involved in a political fight against the regional union leadership. 20 members of the internal commission, who Moreover, the council is split between those who accept the orientation of the CGIL leadership and those who, like us, want to preserve the council's autonomy. In 1969 there were over 150 councils of this type in the Metal Industry: today there are only about 30 left with no coordination between them, mostly in the more politicized factories like ours. In most cases the councils have become union sections in the factories with a low participation on the part of the workers, but in each struggle the vanguard militants attempt to lead the struggle democratically, to politicize it and to recreate democratic structures. We should take note of the fact that before 1969 the union course with the taxes extracted from the workers. had very little implantation in the Metal Industry it was through this deficiency that the workers' committees were created.
How do you explain the decline of the factory committees?
Firstly by the inexperience of most of the young workers and by the fact that the decreasing of the struggle has brought about some depoliticisation.
on this act of revolutionary justice, or the right of the desperation to which unflagging repression has reduced because of their spontaneist conceptions which lead them to take the position that the spontadelegates"). Thus the union bureaucracies have appeared to many militants to be the only permanent structures. The unification of Union organizations which is being carried out from the top without any right of tendency, will allow this absorption to be carried out in the logic of the bureaucracy. That is the logic of negotiation and not of struggle.
The 2nd comrade interviewed, Raffaele Ivani, is a worker in FIAT, a delegate, and member of the committee of the Metal Federation of the FIMCISL.
We have heard a lot about the base committees in FIAT. Could you tell us something about them?
During the struggles of 1968-69, spontaneous strikes broke out in the workshops. The vastness of the factory (65,000 workers in Miraflori) and the militancy of the workers allowed the strike in workshop 32 to spread rapidly in the mechanical con struction sector. Demands were raised on the con ditions of work (heat, noise, etc.). It was at that time that the need for coordination was realized and a desire to stay in the factories during the strike and go from workshop to workshop to spread the strike arose. This was a new technique of struggle for the FIAT workers. At the very beginning the workers chose their delegates without election simply by taking the most combative of their comrades. At this point the unions, which were very weak in the factory (14,000 workers) began to take alarm. For the 65,000 workers at the factory, the Union appeared in the person of were paid for by the boss on a permanent basis, completely unknown and without credibility at the base. They then tried to "calm" the workers.
But a council was created in each workshop with the same organization as at Nebiolo. Between 800 and 1000 delegates were elected who met every Saturday afternoon.
Inal commission and provincial leadership) did not interfere, since it was unable to do so, simply making left demagogic noises in the workers' assemblies.
Why were the unions able to gain more control over the committees at the end of'69.
The Unions played a part in the meeting of the coordination throughout the whole factory.
When the struggle slackened off, they attempted to obstruct these meetings and have assemblies according to shifts or by sector of production, using the old trick of 'divide and rule'. The activity of the spontaneist groups (Lotta Continua, WASFI TALL: A belated, but necessary obituary Our compathies are fully on the side of the four Palestinian militants who avenged their fallen brothers and sisters and showed that there is no permanent respite for imperialism and its valets, however hard the blows they succeed in deal? ing to the struggle at various stages. We do not accept the right of the bourgeois press to pronounce moral judgment Egyptian regime, which remained silent during the September massacre and is ready to recognise Israel (not to speak of its role in the Sudan), to try the comrades responsible.
Nevertheless. if Tall's assassination is a good index of the many fedayin, acts of this type will not lead the Resistance out of its present impasse. The defeat of September. 1970 and the subsequent throttling of the guerrilla movement by the Jordanian regime, in coordination with U.S. and British imperialism, and with the connivence of all the Arab govern. ments and the Soviet bureaucracy were due essentially to the petty-bourgeols nationalist outlook which dominated the Resistance and particularly Fatah, its largest formation, as expressed in the ridiculous slogan of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Arab countries", the refusal to organise and mobilise the mass support they enjoyed in the Arab world, the conception of the struggle as being solely directed at Israel, and the failure to observe and act on the absolute For example, during a meeting between students and 300 delegates in the Architecture Faculty, neity of the masses is enough by itself (We all are Sofri the leader of Lotta Continua explained tha 'delegates' were in infringement of the worker's autonomy, and that unions and bosses were all the same. This led them to bring out a leaflet saying that the strikers were right because they struck against the boss but the non-strikers were also right because they fought against the unions They would only support spontaneous strikes Today their influence is negligible among the de legates and workers except in the coachwork sec tor. The spontaneist's absurdities, the absence o an organized revolutionary force capable of explaining the role of the councils, and the tempo rary ending of struggle has allowed the union to use the strength of its apparatus and to gather th majority of the delegates to its perspective. The other delegates, very combative but not very pol ticized have become demoralized. This stresses the necessity of always maintaining political e cation during the struggle.
What is the situation in the factory now?
All the delegates are union members and new delegates quickly become unionized. Three structures exist. The 650 delegates still elected by the workers by sector or by production belt have most of them, submitted to the repression Alongside them are 350 official union represen tatives, 25% of them nominated by the union, the rest elected. On a third level there is an executive committee of 120 semi-permanent members, paid for by the boss, chosen theoretically by the union delegates and other delegates but in practice at the council of union delegates Thus, the workers' council no longer plays a rol It no longer meets without union authorization and the union has regained control of the whole factory. Only about 20 delegates fight to preserve the old gains and even they are not coord nated.
What political conclusions can be drawn from this experience?
Until the end of 1969 the union leadership (inter- We have seen the necessity to structure the revo lutionary tendency in the unions so that the activity of these 20 delegates can be coordinate and to homogenize the vanguard by permanent political propaganda through our factory bulletin, The Red Mole.
Our object is to recreate the conditions for struggle. We have seen that autonomous base structures can only be created in periods of con 800 delegates since only they were able to ensure bat. When the struggle finishes only the most politicezed workers stay ready to lead permanent political action, which poses the problem the construction of a revolutionary party which alone is capable of ensuring a permanent politicization in the factory. That is what we are in the process of building.
contradiction between the interests of the established Arab regimes (whether reactionary or "progressive") and the very existence of a popular armed struggle which, moreover. served as an objective stimulus for revolutionary activity throughout the region.
But activism, however heroic and spectacular, which is unsustained by a systematic critique of past failure and a conseque re-definition of strategy, can lead only to further demoralisation in the ranks of the Palestinian movement, or what remair of it. What is needed at this late hour is a serious reassessmer of the fundamental premises of guerrilla action hitherto and attempt to correct them, in theory and practice, which impl acknowledgement of the primacy of politics over the gun" (please note, Maoist comrades), elaboration of an all-Arab stra tegy by the most advanced elements of the Resistance in con junction with the revolutionary left groups in the area, and th building of a revolutionary communists party which can ham tring the power of imperialism, and its junior partners Zionis and Arab reaction -in the Middle East. This is a long a painf process, but it bears infinitely more chance of success than th illusory chimeras of hijacking and individual terror. Hast Tall is dead. Let us regret that the same cannot ver be said of the class which he so ably represented and whose power remains to be destroyed before the Palestinian an Arab masses are to be truly free
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Also many vanguard left groups have not unders Potere Operaio) has objectively assisted them in tood the role and advantages of these committees, this process by denying the role of the delegates