We Want Everything

by Nanni Balestrini

  So I took myself off home. At home I didn’t wash my finger at all, with the grease making it all black. I didn’t wash it and I didn’t even move it, I was careful not to rest it anywhere. After six days it was all swollen. I hadn’t used my finger at all, just to make it swell up. If you use your fingers, they get thin. But if you get a knock on a finger and then you don’t use it at all, it really swells up and gets fatter than the others. Well, it’s not as if it swells a lot, but you can see that it’s a little fatter. And it’s smoother, because you haven’t touched anything with it.

  I go back in after six days and I say: Look, this finger has really swollen up. It feels like it’s still injured. But can’t you work? No, because we work with our hands. If I have to grab a bolt or grab the pistol, the thing that tightens the bolts, which is called a pistol, I have to use my hands. So either I pay attention to what I’m doing, to the bolts that I’m grabbing, or I pay attention to the finger to make sure I don’t knock it against anything. I’d have to pay attention to what I’m doing and to my finger, and I can’t do that. After three hours of furiously knocking things against things I’ll end up a nervous wreck, I’ll go crazy, I’ll throw something at someone’s head. I can’t do it.

  The doctor figured that I was bluffing and he made me a proposal: Would you rather go back to work or would you rather I sent you to recover in hospital? I said to myself: Now I’ll have to be hard, because a spell in hospital will cost them more. He can’t justify sending a worker to hospital for a sore finger; he can’t do it. He wanted to call my bluff, he was thinking: This guy wants another three or four days’ holiday and so I’ll threaten him. Instead of going to hospital he’ll want to go back to the factory. Clearly, in hospital you’re fucked, it’s no fun, you’re in there and that’s it.

  I go: No, then I’ll go to hospital, because I think the finger is still injured, it hasn’t healed. Then he says to someone: Give this one here the paperwork for hospital. With a sick feeling, I thought: This dickhead has screwed me. I shut up, I almost wanted to say: I’ll go and work. I stretch over to have a look at the paperwork, and see that the guy was giving me another six days. I don’t say a thing, I take the papers and go. Him silent, me silent. Me without saying: So I don’t have to go to hospital. We both knew we were trying to take the piss out of each other.

  So I got twelve days paid sick leave and I was happy. Because I’d managed to cheat the system and get something for myself. But I didn’t know what the fuck to do all day with all that time on my hands. I hung around Valentino, where the hookers and fags are. I was dicking around, bored, and I didn’t know what to do, even though I had money. They paid me nearly one hundred and twenty thousand lire a month at Fiat. Every fifteen days they gave you an advance, and when I got the advance I gave forty thousand to my sister, where I was staying.

  I’d have ten thousand lire left, and I’d blow it in a few days. Partly because I didn’t know what the fuck to do, I went from one bar to the next, bought magazines like Playmen or Diabolik. I went to the movies; I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I went through that money without knowing what the fuck I was doing. I was like that, resting up, tired out by that shit work. It’s a crazy thing, really absurd. In those twelve days sick leave I realised that I didn’t even know how to relax away from work, and that I didn’t know what the fuck to do in Torino.

  At the end of the twelve days scammed from Fiat because there was fuck-all wrong with me, I go back in. They get me bolting on mufflers, and I decided to fuck with my new leading hand. When you have to learn a new process you have the leading hand there teaching you. And I wanted to fuck this guy up because the leading hands are scabs, people who’ve been working there for years. He showed me: See, trrr trrr trrr, you do the next one. I go: trrrrrrr and then I get stuck. I pretended to get stuck with the electric driver, I made out it was jammed on the bolt. Hurry up, I said to the leading hand, come and have a look. I can’t do it.

  For fuck’s sake, what the fuck, goes the guy, who was from Torino. They call them ‘barott’; they’re from the outskirts of Torino, from peasant background. They’re still really farmers, they’ve got land that their wives work. They’re commuters, really hard people, a bit dense, lacking in imagination, dangerous. Not fascists, just really thick. They were PCI (Italian Communist Party), bread and work. As a qualunquista, I could be salvaged. But these types accepted work deep down, work was everything to them, everything, and they showed you that in their behaviour. They stayed there for years, three years, ten years, they got old quickly and died early. For a few lire, never enough, only the most insensitive type, only a drone could spend years in this shitty prison and do a job that destroys your life.

  Anyway, this guy suspected that I wanted to fuck with him, and he leaves his post and stops the line. The section heads turn up. When the line stops there’s a red light where it’s stopped and all the bosses turn up. What’s happening? This guy here doesn’t want to work. Now that’s a lie because I am working, I can’t do it because I’m learning. It’s not as if I’m smart like you, you’ve been here for ten years, obviously someone like you learns everything quickly. I really wanted to kill him: You’re intelligent, I told him, you’ve been here for ten years and you understand everything, for me it’s a little harder. And I’m coming back from sick leave, with this finger, how can I manage?

  So the boss says to me: Listen, it looks to me like you want to slack off. But you need to get into your head that at Fiat you have to work, you can’t slack off. If you want to slack off, get down to Via Roma16 where your mates are. I tell him: Look, I don’t know about mates in Via Roma. But I’m here because I need money. I’m working; I just haven’t got it yet. When I get it I’ll work. Are you going to give me the six days’ trial or not? What do you mean six days, you’ve already been here for a month. Yes, a month, but I was on another line, not this one. Now I need another six days trial and the leading hand has to stay here with me for six days. Otherwise, I’m not lifting a fucking finger.

  I had to tighten the bolts on the muffler, nine bolts. I had to stand there for eight hours with the driver, a pistol-type thing, the engine comes, I tighten, it keeps going. Another guy fitted the muffler and slipped the bolts in, I only had to tighten them. It was pretty easy, but I had to stand there for eight hours with the pistol in my hands or on my shoulder, a pneumatic pistol that weighed fourteen kilos. What’s more, I don’t like jobs where I have to use only one hand or one arm, where I don’t use both together. They make one shoulder bigger, one smaller. You get all twisted, one shoulder one way and the other another way, one muscle bigger and one smaller. It really deforms you. But if you do things like gymnastics, you have to move everything at the same time, that doesn’t bother me. This gymnastics on the other hand pissed me off. The motor was on my shoulder, and then there was the noise: tototototo to tot to, I couldn’t handle it.

  Anyway, I’d already decided to leave Fiat and make some trouble for them. At the latest confrontation with my leading hand the foremen all turned up together again. The other workers stopped because my leading hand had stopped the line. They were all there looking at me, me looking at the bosses. And I threaten them all, the boss, the leading hand, the big boss who had come down as well, the colonel. Look, I say, you need to understand that Fiat isn’t me, get it into your heads. I didn’t want Fiat, I didn’t make it, I’m inside here just to make money and that’s it. But if you piss me off and break my balls I’ll smash your heads in, all of you. I told them in front of the other workers. I clearly threatened them, but they couldn’t chance it, because they didn’t know what I really thought, if I was being serious or not. So the big boss came over all paternal.

  You’re right, he says to me in front of the workers. But work is important, work is something that you have to do. It’s obvious you are a little stressed today, but we can’t help with that, this isn’t a hospital. Go and get better, he says coming nearer to me, take some sick leave, he comes right up to me in front of t
he other workers, but don’t hassle people who want to work. In other words, he brought me back, he brought me back and ended the discussion: If you want to break people’s balls, take some sick leave, fuck off out of here, but don’t hassle people who want to work and who will work. There’s no place here for slackers, crazies, sick people who don’t like work. So anyway, the line started up again and the workers weren’t looking at me any more.

  Fifth chapter The struggle

  All of this happened before I met the comrades at the gates. One evening I was coming out of Fiat and I see a student who goes: Do you want to come to a meeting at the bar? It sounded OK to me and I told him OK, I’ll go. What the fuck, I didn’t have anything to do, it was OK to see what these assholes want, what they say. I saw these students every day, and I figured they were assholes. I didn’t know what they were talking about, I never read their leaflets.

  There were strikes at the time organised by the union. It was the workers who wanted promotion to second category, the crane operators and forklift divers. There were strikes inside; some lines, the 124 lines, had stopped. The workers were playing cards for money. They were reading or sitting around because the parts weren’t coming through. Two or three lines had stopped. When I came out I saw these students handing out leaflets and talking about the strike. But I didn’t care about that stuff.

  Anyway I go to the meeting at the bar near Mirafiori. I meet Mario and some other students, and I tell him which workshop I’m in, what I do. I also meet some other workers and Raffaele, from the 124 line, who I had seen going to the meetings every evening. He said he knew about eighty comrades who were ready to stop work when he said. Fuck, I said to myself, I know everybody but no one is prepared to stop work when I say so. All right then, I said to him, if you know eighty comrades we can stop work when we want. We can even stop tomorrow. We won’t work any more, we’ll start the struggle tomorrow.

  Mario and the other students were all ears hearing what this guy Raffaele and I were saying. Then it was decided to make a leaflet for the next day calling on workers to start the struggle, to go on strike. I don’t know what the leaflet was supposed to mean. Something about second category, I don’t know. I seem to remember that we wanted a meal allowance. At Fiat there’s no cafeteria and we wanted the meal allowance they’d promised us. It would have been something like that.

  Like in lots of factories, at Fiat we brought our food in lunch boxes. And I said they should pay us for the half-hour when we ate because we worked in that half-hour, too. Because the siren sounded while you were working, rrrhhh, and then you had to run off, take the stairs, get to your corridor, get to your locker room, get to your locker, grab your fork, your spoon, your bread, run, get to where your lunchbox was and there were two thousand, grab your lunchbox, get to the table, talk, tatatatatatatatatata, eat, down, uuuhhh, jump up, scramble, corridor, locker room, locker, put your stuff back, run down, half an hour, there you are again back in the workshop. All on the run, while you were going and while you were coming back to the workshop, if you didn’t you couldn’t make it. That’s work, no way it’s a break. It’s productive.

  So I was listening to Raffaele, who said he could bring eighty comrades out. And I told him that we should meet up tomorrow, him with his followers and me with mine. Though I didn’t have any followers, I thought: we’ll see if they follow me, I’ll have a go. I’ll see you with our guys, I say to Raffaele. Let’s meet up at the end of the line and we’ll have a rally. And we’ll threaten all the pimps and scabs and leading hands with death, string ’em up. We’ll threaten them and have a rally, with chanting and singing. Let’s see what the fuck we can start, then we’ll leave the workshop. In other words, let’s fight, no work tomorrow. OK, OK. Then let’s make this leaflet, tomorrow at one o’clock we hand them out at the gate. Then when we’re inside we talk to the comrades in the locker rooms and on the way into the locker rooms.

  The next day we started handing out the leaflets at the gate with the students. Mario had made a sign, I don’t know what was written on it, power to the workers, the working class is strong, that kind of thing. So I started stirring things up at the gates. Comrades, today we must stop work. Because we’ve fucking had it up to here with work. You’ve seen how tough work is. You’ve seen how heavy it is. You’ve seen that it’s bad for you. They’d made you believe that Fiat was the promised land, California, that we’re saved.

  I’ve done all kinds of work, bricklayer, dishwasher, loading and unloading. I’ve done it all, but the most disgusting is Fiat. When I came to Fiat I believed I’d be saved. This myth of Fiat, of work at Fiat. In reality it’s shit, like all work, in fact it’s worse. Every day here they speed up the line. A lot of work and not much money. Here, little by little, you die without noticing. Which means that it is work that is shit, all jobs are shit. There’s no work that is OK, it is work itself that is shit. Here, today, if we want to get ahead, we can’t get ahead by working more. Only by the struggle, not by working more, that’s the only way we can make things better. Kick back, today we’re having a holiday. I spoke in dialect because they were all Neapolitans, southerners. So that they would all understand, the official language there was Neapolitan.

  Then we went inside, and while we were going in I had an idea. I got Mario to give me the sign, I don’t even know what the fuck was written on it exactly. I had a little flash of imagination, now I’m going into Fiat with a sign. I’m going in with a sign in one hand, my ID card in the other. Because to get in you have to show your ID card, whether you’re an employee or not. If not who knows, a thief could get in, someone with a bomb. The first security guard looks at me all surprised, mouth open. It’s the first time in his life he has seen a placard inside Fiat, passing the gate legally, with Fiat ID card in hand. The head security guard comes up to me and says: Stop, please. Are you talking to me? Yes, what are you doing with that sign?

  I go, With this? I hold it out. You know you can’t come in with a sign. And where is that written down? There’s nothing in the regulations about not entering with signs, so I’m going in. No, you can’t enter. But you’re making that up, you’re just saying that I can’t enter, but I’m going in. I like this sign and I’m taking it with me. No, you can’t enter with things that aren’t related to work. Then why is that guy going in with the Corriere dello Sport, what the fuck has the Corriere dello Sport got to do with work and workers? At least this sign concerns workers, that newspaper hasn’t got anything to do with anyone. I don’t give a toss, you come with me. And I say: if I leave the sign can I come in? Yes, leave the sign. Look, I’m leaving it here outside the gate. Is that OK?

  I go inside. The head security guard calls me again: You, come with me please. Where? I have to go to work. Come with me. So I grab him by the tie and I tell him: No, you come with me. I drag him along, then I give him a kick in the balls, a kick in the guts and I push him to the ground. I say: don’t fuck with me, it’s time for the struggle, and you can all go and get fucked. All the workers who were going in gave a rumbling roar, uhhhhh, like an Arab tribe, all of them cheering me on. Then they say: quick, inside, or they’ll single you out. I run inside and go to my locker room: Comrades, it’s time for the struggle, let’s go and turn the place upside down.

  They all went white. It was too provocative. They had never been in a struggle. The union never showed up there. They were thinking: where did this guy come from, this nut who says we have to take up the struggle. Anyway, I was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. Today, the struggle must start. But how? We go down, and instead of going to the lines we make one big group down at the end of the lines. But these guys didn’t go. They were frustrated, stuck, they didn’t understand, they all went to the lines. They all had the neurosis.

  What is the neurosis? Every Fiat worker has a gate number, a corridor number, a locker room number, a locker number, a workshop number, a line number, a number for the tasks they have to do, a number for the parts of the car they have to make. In
other words, it’s all numbers, your day at Fiat is divided up, organised by this series of numbers that you see and by others that you don’t see. By a series of numbered and obligatory things. Being inside there means that as you enter the gate you have to go like this with a numbered ID card, then you have to take that numbered staircase turning to the right, then that numbered corridor. And so on.

  In the cafeteria for example. The workers automatically choose a place to sit, and those remain their places for ever. It’s not as if the cafeteria is organised so that everyone has to sit in the same place all the time. But in fact you always end up sitting in the same place. It’s like, this is a scientific fact, it’s strange. I always ate in the same seat, at the same table, with the same people, without anyone ever having put us together. Well this signifies neurosis, according to me. I don’t know if you can say neurosis for this, if it is the exact word. But to be inside there you have to do this, because if you don’t do it you can’t stay.

  These guys I’d talked to about the struggle couldn’t accept it, they didn’t know what the fuck to do. They didn’t understand what I was proposing. They felt somehow that what I was proposing was right, but they didn’t know how to act on it. They didn’t understand that the important thing was to stir things up all together. I got pissed off. Not because I would get fired for what I had done, because they already wanted to fire me anyway, they were just looking for an excuse. I’d been at Fiat for three months and I couldn’t stand it any more. I couldn’t hack it any more as an employee, as a worker. It was May, it was already warming up and I wanted to go back down south and go to the beach.