So we won’t fall for that any more, because we really aren’t one body, us and them. We have nothing in common, we’re worlds apart, we’re enemies and that’s it, us and them. Our biggest strength is being finally convinced that we have absolutely nothing in common with the work of the bosses and the State of the bosses. In fact, our interests are the opposite. All of our material objectives are against this economy, they’re against this development, they’re against the general interest, which is that of the bosses’ State. Now they tell us that Fiat is building a factory in Russia, in Togliattigrad, and that we should go there to learn how to work the way you work under communism.
But what the fuck do we care if workers in Russia are exploited too, if they are exploited by the socialist state instead of the capitalist boss. It means that is not the type of communism that works. And in fact it seems to me that they think more about production and about going to the moon than the people’s wellbeing. Because wellbeing comes before everything else in allowing us to work less. And that is why now we say no to the terrified bosses when they ask us to help them with their production, when they explain to us that we have to take part, that it is in all our interests, too.
We say no to the reforms that the unions and the party want us to fight for. Because we understand that those reforms only improve the system that the bosses exploit us with. Why should we care about being exploited more, with a few more apartments, a few more medicines and a few more kids at school. All of this only advances the State, advances the general interest, advances development. But our aims are against development, they’re against the general interest, they’re ours and that’s it. Our aims, the interests of the working class, are the mortal enemy of capital and its interests.
We started this great struggle by demanding more money and less work. Now we know that this is a call that turns everything upside-down, that sends all the bosses’ projects, capital’s entire plan, up in smoke. And now we must move from the struggle for wages to the struggle for power. Comrades, let us refuse work. We want all the power, we want all the wealth. It will be a long struggle, years, with successes and setbacks, with defeats and advances. But this is the struggle that we have to start now, a violent fight to the end. We must fight to end work. We must fight for the violent destruction of capital. We must fight against a State founded on work. We say: yes to working-class violence.
Because it’s us, the proletariat of the south, us mass workers, an enormous mass of workers, the one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand workers of Fiat who have developed capital and its State. It is us who created all the wealth that exists, of which they leave us only the crumbs. We created all this wealth by dying of work at Fiat or dying of hunger in the south. And it is us, the great majority of the proletariat, who don’t want to work and die any more for the development of capital and its State. We can’t keep this crap going any more.
So now we say it’s time to end it, because they don’t know what to do with all this enormous wealth that we produce in the world other than waste it and destroy it. They waste it making thousands of atomic bombs or going to the moon. They destroy fruit, peaches and pears by the ton, because there’s too much and it isn’t worth anything. Because for them everything must have a price, it’s the only thing they care about, products without value can’t exist as far as they’re concerned. It can’t just be for people who don’t have food, according to them. But with all the wealth that exists people don’t need to die of hunger any more, they don’t have to work any more. So we’ll take the wealth, we’ll take everything.
Are we all going mad? The bosses who make us work like dogs destroy the wealth we’ve produced. But it’s time to be done with these people. It’s time for us to fuck these pigs off once and for all, to get rid of them all and free ourselves for ever. Listen, State and bosses, it’s war, it’s a struggle to the end. Forward, comrades, forward like at Battipaglia, let’s burn everything here, let’s sweep this lowlife away, let’s sweep this republic away. Very long applause.
Tuesday 1 July. Comrade workers of Rivalta, after the internal stop works of the past week, yesterday many workers went back to work. This doesn’t mean that everything is finished and that we return to normal. The basic reason for this pause in the struggle is the general strike called by the unions for Thursday. In fact many workers stopped their struggle yesterday and postponed everything until Thursday. This is dangerous, because the workers are organising themselves in the factories, where they are strongest, whereas Thursday’s strike is about breaking this organisation and bringing everything to an end in a single day. But the unions are fooling themselves if they think everything will end, because the workers know how to use this opportunity to strengthen their struggle and their aims. The strike will happen as part of the great struggle the workers of Fiat have carried on for 45 days now.
The strike won’t be to end the struggle and accept the crappy agreement that the unions want at any price, but must be used by the workers to strengthen the struggle for their aims, which haven’t changed. The unions have called Thursday’s strike about the problem of housing. But the problem of rents can’t be separated from the struggle in the factories. It is with these struggles, and not by whining to the prefect, that a real working-class force will be built. Comrade workers, on Thursday morning we meet outside the factory to discuss how to carry on the struggle in the days to come. In the afternoon a march by all Fiat workers leaves from Mirafiori gate 2 in Corso Tazzoli at 3pm.
Wednesday 2 July. Today the struggle continues with stop works at Rivalta and in workshop 13 at Lingotto and is about to start again on the lines. The unions are threatening not to sign the agreement, the phony agreement that the workers have already refused by continuing the struggle, if the dismissals of the previous week are not revoked. To offer the unions, who are already completely discredited, a chance to get back in the game, the management revoked the dismissals straight away. Without a single hour of strike being called, something that had never happened in the previous twenty years.
The attempt at intimidation was completed by the sudden appearance of police and Carabinieri at the gates of Mirafiori. As if the sight of them could stop our struggle. Nor will we let ourselves be intimidated by the police during the march tomorrow. If the bosses think they can use the police to stop our struggle, try sending them into the factory to make us work in the workshops when we’re deciding to strike.
Tenth chapter The insurrection
The evening before we’d gone to paste up posters all over the city, in every quarter. It was a poster of a clenched fist. On it were the aims of our day of struggle and the time: three o’clock at Mirafiori gate 2. At five in the morning we went to Mirafiori with megaphones. There were already loads of police outside even at five in the morning. Two or three hundred at least counting the jeeps, vans, prison vans and police and Carabinieri trucks. There were two at every gate and at least fifty outside the office building. We went to each gate at five in the morning using megaphones to explain to the workers of the first shift that they shouldn’t go in, but no worker did.
There wasn’t even any need to picket. Evidently the police were waiting for us to picket, so they could provoke us and attack us. On and off they hassled us, saying we shouldn’t be using the megaphone and we shouldn’t be in front of the gates. We said: We’re using the megaphones because there’s a strike, it’s not like we’re standing there with pistols threatening people to stop them going in. If they want to go in, fine, they go in, if they don’t want to, then they don’t go in. It’s just a political action. There were no more than three or four scabs who tried to go in, and the police jumped in to block anyone who tried to stop them. But the night shift workers coming out of gate 1 pushed them back out.
No one went in, no one at all. They had all come, the workers, but they all stayed on the other side of the street. To check whether anyone went in. But no one was going in, and after a while everyone went home. In the afternoon we went to the gates with
the megaphones for the second shift. We were supposed to meet at three o’clock outside gate 2. We got there a few at a time and there were already lots of workers waiting. Apart from the workers from the second shift who hadn’t gone in, there were also loads of workers from the first shift who’d gone back to Mirafiori for this march.
By three o’clock there were already three thousand workers outside Mirafiori. Police were guarding all the streets that lead to Mirafiori, as well as all the gates, the office buildings and all that. Reinforcements had been coming since morning. There were no incidents at the union demonstration in the morning. They’d held their rally over housing with workers from the small and medium-sized factories, where they were strong, while at Fiat they barely existed. Outside gate 2 there were lots of red flags, signs and banners. While we were there waiting for the march to begin the police started up their provocations.
But what the police hadn’t thought about, what the commissioner hadn’t thought about, what the interior minister hadn’t thought about, what Agnelli hadn’t thought about, was that you weren’t dealing with the usual student march, the so-called march of extremists. Or as the bourgeois newspapers said, the usual rich kids who have fun playing at revolution.
The workers who met outside Mirafiori gate 2 were the same workers who had been fighting at Fiat for all those weeks. They were workers who had been in hard struggles, victorious struggles. While the start of the march was being organised, the police began their manoeuvres. To one side they set a double cordon of Carabinieri who linked arms and pushed the demonstrators back. Other platoons of Carabinieri lined up in fours and advanced slowly into the middle of the demonstrators.
While deputy commissioner Voria gave these orders, moving the Carabinieri to surround us, he told a worker to move away from him. But this worker threw a punch that laid him out flat on the ground. Meanwhile the platoons of Carabinieri who were manoeuvring came on at a trot, jogging like Bersaglieri,26 right into the middle of the demonstrators. And they were holding their rifles like cudgels, like clubs. Suddenly the charge sounded, which naturally no one fucking heard.
Then the teargas started to land, a dense mist of teargas, and everyone instinctively ran. Everyone ran and the Carabinieri began cracking us all with their rifle butts. They pushed us against the cordon of Carabinieri who held fast to surround us. I was right next to the cordon, their faces were pale, white, green with terror. Because they found themselves so close to us, face to face. A little while before I’d wound one up, I told him: Just wait, I’ll take your pistol and shoot you with it. He didn’t say a word.
They grabbed a comrade and wanted to drag him off, but they couldn’t because we pulled him away and threatened them. Meanwhile with the sudden mist of teargas they dispersed the crowd around Mirafiori. We all ran away from the front of Mirafiori, and then the Carabinieri who had formed the cordon took their rifles, which they’d had on their shoulder straps, in their hands like clubs and came after us. It was a nice little massacre, they belted us madly with their rifle butts. Then they arrested about ten comrades. Just because we were there, without sticks, without stones. While I’m running I come upon a load of Carabinieri, ten of them, beating the shit out of a comrade who was stretched out on the ground. I yelled at one of them: What the fuck, do you want to kill him?
The guy gives me a dirty look, then he turns and takes off with the others, dragging this comrade along behind them. Then while I was there, about three or four metres away I saw a comrade, a student who was running with four or five Carabinieri after him. One catches him, and he smashes him in the head with his rifle, cracks his skull. I run over with some other guys and the Carabinieri take off. We get this comrade who’s on the ground out cold and carry him away. We leave him with some women who were standing in a doorway. Because by now everyone from the surrounding buildings had come down into the street or out on their balconies, women, kids and babies, to see what was going on.
They had more or less managed to disperse us, but they hadn’t reckoned with the workers’ will to fight. Ten thousand people gathered between Corso Agnelli and Corso Unione Sovietica. There were tram tracks there with cobblestones between them. They start to fly at the police and the Carabinieri. And so they started to take a few hits, too. We got the march going that they had stopped at first. A policeman had been disarmed, his shield and helmet were taken off him and raised like trophies. There were banners that said: Potere operaio, and: La lotta continua. Suddenly a police ambulance sped into the middle of the march. It charged into the middle of the march with its siren wailing for no reason. Then it turned back the other way slowly. It was another provocation by the police. But the march starts and turns towards Corso Traiano.
Corso Traiano is right in front of the Fiat office building. Corso Traiano has two roadways and a lane in the middle with tram tracks and cobblestones. We came marching down on the right and the police advanced from the opposite direction. They stop and wait, blocking the traffic. They wanted to cut off our path, they didn’t want to let us move from there. That is, they wanted to restrict the struggle to Fiat, around Fiat, not let it spread into the city. They thought that we wanted to head into the city centre, and in fact that was our idea.
People watched us from the windows along Corso Traiano as the march advanced. They appeared on the balconies, came down and listened to what we had to say. They were all with us because it was all workers who lived around there. Then suddenly teargas grenades come from the police line in front of us. An insane amount, unbelievable this time, firing them at people so they ended up everywhere. They were landing on the first-floor balconies, with the gas spreading through the apartments because it was summer and all the windows were open. More grenades landed on parked cars, smashing them and setting fire to them. And this really pissed off the people who lived around there.
Meanwhile a truck loaded with Fiat 500s entered Corso Traiano, a big transporter. We threw stones at the cabin and the driver got out. We started to smash up the cars with stones, then we put a rag in the tank. We lit it to blow up the truck, but the diesel didn’t ignite. So we started to push it in neutral towards the Corso and we left it there across the street. They called the fire brigade, and when the fire brigade arrived they copped stones, too. We didn’t let them move the truck, so the truck stayed where it was.
It was four o’clock, and that was the start of a battle that would last for more than twelve hours. The police circled and charged, and from the other side the Carabinieri moved in to close us in. We didn’t disperse and right away we responded with stones that we collected from all over. Most of us moved into the park beside Corso Traiano, where there was also a building site. We armed ourselves with timber, sticks, material for building barricades. And there was a big pile of stones.
We got into this park, and the police came with their wagons and the Carabinieri with their trucks. The Carabinieri copped a barrage of stones, because they were out in the open and it was easy to hit them. We came right up to the trucks to attack them with sticks, and they threatened to fire on us with their machine-guns, and we stopped. So they took off. The police in armoured vans heard this constant din, the heavy rain of stones falling on their vans, and there’s no way they wanted to get out. We’d surrounded all the vehicles, hurling stones from all sides. As soon as they got out we would have beaten the shit out of them with the sticks. We even tried to overturn a couple of the vans. The guys inside, terrified, told the drivers to get out of there, and in fact they took off, the lot of them.
A quarter of an hour later they tried again, coming into the park on foot. With shields, helmets, batons, rifles with teargas grenades. We were waiting for them in the park. They came to within fifteen or twenty metres of us. We started to taunt them, saying: Why don’t you try to get us now, like you did outside gate 2? We’ll fuck you up good. Only one of them answered: Come out on your own, we’ll go man to man, I’ll fuck you right up I will and so on. But they didn’t move, they were scared.
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br /> We had all these stones, and more stones and sticks and clubs on the ground in front of us. They waited there for a bit, then they gave the order to fire the teargas and charge. But they hadn’t thought about being in the park, in an open space. So you could see the teargas grenades as they landed, and we grabbed them and threw them back so that they were surrounded by the smoke as much as we were. We threw stones, and as they weren’t protected when they were running they copped heaps. When they realised they couldn’t do anything, they took off like rabbits and we went after them with sticks.
Meanwhile the people of Corso Traiano had had a gutful of the teargas landing on the balconies and in the windows and the smoke spreading through their apartments. The police beat anyone they found in the doorways. Women, old people, children, whoever they found. They especially beat the kids, even ten- and eleven-year-olds. Everyone had joined in to fight with the workers. Youths throwing stones, the women handing out wet handkerchiefs to counter the gas. Comrades being chased by the police found refuge in apartments. Everyone was throwing things at the police from the windows and the balconies.
The police came after us from all over, scattering us and dividing us into lots of small groups. Even in the side streets you couldn’t breathe because of the smoke. I’m with some students who decide to go to the Faculty of Architecture, which is occupied, for a meeting and to get back together with the other groups. As we are heading out of there a column of armoured vans with sirens appears. We split into two groups, one that heads to Architecture and one that stays to fight.
While people were arriving at the Architecture faculty, and the red flag had been run up the flagpole, the Carabinieri come. They charge, fire teargas, arrest about a dozen comrades. We defend ourselves, we fight back with stones. So they don’t get into the university. They fire teargas through the windows, but a group of us fight back with stones and stop them getting in while we hold a meeting. More comrades arrive and tell us that the clashes in Corso Traiano have spread and are getting bigger and that there were big clashes at Nichelino.
We Want Everything Page 14