We Want Everything

by Nanni Balestrini

  The news is that at Borgo San Pietro, at Moncalieri and in other communes around southern Torino there have been clashes. There’s fighting in all the working class neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, outside the university the charges and the stone throwing were getting more violent. The fighting was spreading along the main street, into the side streets, into the entranceways. Teargas, rocks, hand-to-hand, solid. It’s decided to divide into squads and head to the various quarters of the city that were fighting. To check how far the clashes had spread. I’m with a squad of comrades going to Nichelino. To get to Nichelino we had to go along Corso Traiano.

  We get back to Corso Traiano around half-past six and we see an unbelievable battlefield. It happened that the building workers and the other workers who lived in the neighbourhood were going home. They hadn’t been part of the strike, they knew fuck all about it. They were coming back home and saw all this smoke, all these police, the street full of rocks and rubbish. So they joined the comrades right away and started to pile building supplies into the street to make barricades. Because there were lots of building sites around there, so there were bricks, timber, wheelbarrows, those metal drums full of water, cement-mixers.

  They put it all in the middle of the road, and made barricades with cars, and then set it all alight. The police hung back at the end of Corso Traiano, towards Corso Agnelli. Every so often they took off on a sortie, a charge. They cleared the barricades while people pelted them with stones and then ran into the park at the side. Then they went back when the police had left. They carried the stuff back into the street and rebuilt the barricades with planks of wood and whatever. They poured petrol on it all and when the police advanced again they set fire to it. And they set fire to tyres and rolled them, flaming, at the police. Molotov cocktails started to appear.

  There were red flags on some of the barricades; on one there was a sign that said: Che cosa vogliamo: tutto. People kept coming from all around. You could hear a hollow noise, continuous, the drumbeat of stones rhythmically striking the electricity pylons. They made this sound, hollow, striking, continuous. The police couldn’t surround and search the whole area, full of building sites, workshops, public housing, fields. People kept attacking, the whole population was fighting. Groups reorganised themselves, attacked at one point, scattered, came back to attack somewhere else. But now the thing that moved them more than rage was joy. The joy of finally being strong. Of discovering that your needs, your struggle, were everyone’s needs, everyone’s struggle.

  They were feeling their strength, feeling that there was a popular explosion all over the city. They were really feeling this unity, this force. So every rock that was hurled at the police was hurled with joy, not rage. Because in a word we were all strong. And we felt that this was the only way to defeat our enemy, striking him directly with sticks and stones. The neon signs and the billboards were battered. The traffic lights and all the poles were smashed and pulled down. Barricades went up everywhere, with all kinds of things. An overturned steamroller, burnt electricity generators. When darkness fell you saw fires everywhere among the teargas fumes, molotov cocktails flying, flames.

  I couldn’t get into the middle of the fighting with the police. Loads of comrades had got there before me, coming from all over. You couldn’t see for smoke and there was noise and confusion. The police were quickly pushed back towards the end of Corso Traiano with lots of us chasing them. We faced off with the police and fought at the edge of the park. There was one policeman on the ground, who moved now and again. A load of our guys chased the police across the tram tracks and a huge cloud of black smoke rose from the burning cars. Our guys swirled all around, you saw them go into the smoke and come out and you heard lots of explosions.

  Everything was confused, people yelling and running back and forth. When we got near the end of the street it looked like the clashes had already been going on for a while. We came across a comrade bleeding from his mouth and we hoisted him onto our shoulders. Further on we came across another comrade who was bleeding and couldn’t stay on his feet. He kept getting up and falling over again. When we got right near the end we could see the police. They had got out of the vans and were standing in a group with their helmets and their shields.

  They were waiting for us and firing teargas. We had just about surrounded them, from every side. I could hear some of our guys shouting: Get out of here. And I saw that lots of police-men were scared and were running away. All around our guys started to chant: Ho Chi Min. Forward, forward. They rushed forward and the air grew dark with dust and smoke. I saw bodies moving around me like shadows and the noise of explosions, sirens and shouting was really loud. At one point I saw a policeman right in front of me and I got into him with a stick. The policeman fell under foot as everyone ran.

  At the end we turned back down the road and there were loads of injured people there, too. We’d cleared the police right away. We were all crazy with happiness. We waited there a bit longer and after a while we saw a line of trucks coming from one of the cross streets. Everyone began to shout: forward, forward. And we took off chasing the police who were running back the way they’d come. One was hit and we went after him, still hitting him. Then we chased the police back to the end of the cross street they’d come out of.

  Meanwhile they keep firing teargas everywhere, the air more and more unbreathable, and we have to retreat. The police gradually retake Corso Traiano, but barricades are continually thrown up one behind the other. People who are caught get the shit beaten out of them and get thrown into the prison vans. Lots of police get beaten up. At the same time police reinforcements arrive. They come from Alessandria, from Asti, from Genova. The battalion from Padova that came in the morning wasn’t enough. But the clashes keep spreading. The fighting becomes fiercer outside the Fiat office building, in Corso Traiano, in Corso Agnelli, in all the side streets. In Piazza Bengasi, where the police charge like animals, absurd, senseless violence. But they are attacked from two sides and only escape being surrounded by the skin of their teeth. Deputy commissioner Voria is almost captured. Comrades listening to police radio say they have requested authorisation to open fire.

  The comrades block the attacks with more barricades in the smoke and flames. Small groups attack the police, throwing molotovs then escaping into the park in the darkness. Still the low drumming sounds on the pylons. Car bodies in flames. The streets all stripped of paving stones and a huge number of rocks scattered all over the place. The police’s behaviour gets worse and worse, they’re like animals. Teargas is fired at people and directly into apartment buildings to stop people coming out and showing themselves. Deputy commissioner Voria is seen brandishing a grenade launcher and warning people to get out of the windows. Then with more reinforcements arriving the police start to take control of the zone. Later they enter apartment buildings, going right into people’s apartments, where people live, to arrest people, making hundreds of arrests. Even an old woman who gives the police a bit of lip is arrested.

  In Piazza Bengasi the attacks and rock barrages continue. The police reinforcements have arrived, and they no longer have to restrict themselves to controlling Mirafiori like before, every now and again making charges to relieve the pressure. Now they’re able to control the whole area. They surround Piazza Bengasi, go into the entranceways of the apartment buildings, rounding people up even in their apartments. At midnight there are still clashes going on. All around Corso Traiano you hear them shouting at the police who drag people out of their apartments: Bastards, pigs, Nazis. They shout from the windows: This is like the Nazi round-ups, you bastards.

  So then we decide to go to Nichelino where the battle has been going on all afternoon. It wasn’t easy to get to Nichelino, in the sense that you couldn’t get there by the usual way, which was blocked by a barricade of burnt-out cars. The bridge into the neighbourhood was blocked too. We come by another minor street that leads right into the neighbourhood. All those immigrants, the thousands of proletarians who lived at
Nichelino, had built barricades all over the place with cement pipes. They’d pulled down the traffic lights and thrown them into the street. Loads of stuff from building sites was piled in the middle of the street to make barricades, which were then set alight.

  Via Sestriere, which crosses Nichelino, is blocked by a dozen barricades of burning cars and trailers, road signs, rocks, timber. In the night huge bonfires of tyres and wood are burning. An enormous fire burns with timber from an apartment block under construction. The whole building site is in flames. The street lights have been smashed with stones and in the dark all you see are flames. The police tried to stall, they left us alone, they held off. They attacked around four in the morning, when reinforcements came. Almost all the workers were exhausted, they’d been fighting for more than twelve hours, while they, the police, had reinforcements.

  They’d been waiting there at the barricades, waiting for morning, when fresh troops would arrive to relieve them. We had turned back to defend the bridge blocked by burning cars with rocks, where the reinforcements wanted to pass. But there weren’t many of us left defending the bridge, only twenty or so. Then the jeeps and the trucks with reinforcements came through the side street where we had come in, and to avoid being surrounded we all had to run. Some Carabinieri got out of a truck and came after us firing teargas.

  We all fled, chased by the Carabinieri. At one point we saw a line of jeeps coming towards us, right in front. I don’t know how they ended up there, maybe they were coming back from a patrol. Things were turning bad for us. So we all ran at the police, yelling and throwing stones at the jeeps to chase them off. Then we saw that the Carabinieri were behind us, and so we turned around and attacked them. But loads of police were coming up behind the Carabinieri. So we had to run because there were only a few of us left.

  By now I was exhausted and I ran like crazy. I got to a field, stumbled on a rock and nearly lost my shoe. When I stopped to look for my shoe a Carabiniere appeared who’d been chasing me on his own. Then I saw a comrade who was running with me jump the Carabiniere. They fought hand to hand and the Carabiniere went down. At one point I saw smoke at the top of a street. We got to the top of the street and from there you could see a wide avenue where the fighting continued. You couldn’t tell who was winning. Everything was so confused. I just wanted to stop somewhere for a shit, I couldn’t hold on any more.

  Some Carabinieri attacked us and I couldn’t get into the middle where the fighting was hardest. Right then we heard someone shouting: They’re coming, they’re coming. I saw a huge cloud of smoke rising in the middle of the road and everyone ran back and forth yelling. Then out of the smoke the police appeared in armoured vans with spotlights illuminating everything. They looked big and strong and they were all firing teargas. There was a building site beside the road and a group of us were gathering there. The comrade who was with me headed for the building site and I followed him.

  A whole lot of people were running off together down the street. I looked back and saw them all running and scattering into the side streets. When we got to the building site there were already quite a few others there. The police were firing teargas over our heads and knocking down pieces of wood and bricks. We couldn’t see what was going on in the street any more. It was all smoke and shouts and blasts. The street was obscured by smoke and dust and there were only shadows and a din of shouting and sirens and explosions. To my left I heard the roar of motors and the sirens of the police vans that were going back up the street. Two molotovs burst in the middle of the street.

  There was smoke and teargas everywhere, you couldn’t breathe. Then the police got out of the vans and ran towards us. They ran through the smoke with masks and shields. I found myself among a lot of our guys who were running back and forth and scattering into the side streets. The police ran after us and we were all there mixed up in the gloom lit by fires and a huge racket. I couldn’t see much, but once I saw one of our guys lay into a policeman who’d been left behind and hit him again and again with a stick.

  I saw some police come running out of a side street on our left. We all raised our sticks and threw ourselves at them in the half-light surrounding us. I ran into a policeman with a helmet and hit him. He cried out and fell headlong to the ground. Then we all went back towards the road. On the other side of the road we saw a group of our guys hurling themselves at police who were going back towards the vans. The police fled and we all went after them, chasing them back to the end of the street where the vans were waiting with engines running and spotlights illuminating the road. There was a policeman with his arms raised, groaning. I saw a few of our guys helping a kid get up. I saw that he was injured and bleeding from his head.

  With the help of more reinforcements the police slowly took back ground. They started rounding up people house by house, pitiless, brutal. But people didn’t run. Workers and locals relieved each other, they were all used to the teargas by now and they kept on building barricades. Four or five of us being chased by about twenty Carabinieri get to the door of an apartment building and we close it behind us. I climb over a little bit of wall in the courtyard and find myself in a workshop. In the workshop there was a ladder. I climb it and finish up on the roof of this workshop. I pull the ladder up. I see other comrades on the roof of a building next to the one we’d gone into.

  Meanwhile the Carabinieri had managed to break down the street door and were going into all the apartments. From my roof I saw them come out onto the balconies, I saw them in the stairways climbing with their helmets and guns, and after a while I saw them come out onto the balconies of the other apartments looking for us. They were waking people in their beds and checking. We stayed there for a bit, we couldn’t tell whether the Carabinieri had gone away or not. Then some women from the apartment who’d seen us gave us the sign that they’d gone, they called us to come down. It was almost dawn, the sun was coming up. We were exhausted, worn out. That was enough now. We climbed down and went back home.

  Afterword Nanni Balestrini

  We Want Everything was meant to be the story of the mass worker in Italy, a story that took place at the end of the ’60s of last century, already an old story. It is presented as a novel, not so much as an invention of the imagination but as a forced operation to typify the behaviour of an entire social stratum in one person’s experiences, creating a collective character who would personify the protagonist of the great wave of struggles of those years, in whom a new political figure appeared on the stage, with new characteristics, new aims, imposing new forms of struggle. He is the Southern proletarian adept at a thousand trades because he has no trade, without a single professional quality even when he possesses a diploma, lacking a steady job and often unemployed or forced into casual service, who can’t find work in the South and so seeks it in Turin, in Milan, in Switzerland, in Germany, anywhere in Europe. Who finds the hardest, most exhausting, most inhuman jobs, those that no one else is prepared to do. And who brought about the postwar economic development of Italy and Europe: from Fiat to Volkswagen to Renault, from the mines of Belgium to the Ruhr.

  The mass worker has no relation to the old communist tradition, with the channels of organisation of the party and the union. The Italian Communist Party was born in Turin in the wake of the October Revolution, and the factory council movement was born out of the experiences of the workers soviets. Their basis was the skilled worker, highly specialised, who demanded power and wealth because of his technical ability, because of his capacity to create wealth. The vanguard of that movement were the workers’ councils established during the factory occupations, who tried to take the place of the owners’ managers. The capitalist response of the years that followed made use of various means: Fascism, the economic crisis of 1929, a technological leap (the assembly line and Taylorism), and brought about the defeat of the traditional worker and his substitution with a new type of worker, unskilled, not specialised, mobile, interchangeable, who had a quite different relationship with the machine an
d the factory.

  The main characteristic of this new social figure is above all his ideological estrangement from work and from any professional ethic, the inability to present himself as the bearer of a trade and to identify himself in it. His single obsession is the search for a source of income to be able to consume and survive. Also apparent is his total estrangement from any prospect of development, from any request to participate. For him work and development are understood solely as money, immediately transformable into goods to consume. But little by little as he follows the different stages of the organisation of work (mobility, the factory, unemployment) the estrangement is transformed into a newly discovered political opposition, into the refusal of dependent work and finally in practice into destructive revolt. His individual story becomes the collective story of the working class.

  At Fiat in 1969, and then all over Italy, the domination of capital over this figure of the worker was shattered. Not in the formation of a new class consciousness, with the birth of a new ideology, but directly in material demands. It was shattered in the materiality of the struggles, which had different characteristics from those that came before, because they are struggles that are born inside development. The labour-power of the South, which capital wanted to make use of to promote development, unexpectedly revealed an irresolvable contradiction in its contentious behaviour based on material needs. And the worker from the Meridione, ignorant and boorish, plunged the capitalist strategy of the previous 50 years, the mode of production in factories based on the assembly line and the mass worker, into crisis. A complex and tried strategy that had borne fruit and on which the workers’ movement, the Communist Party and the unions had built their strategy. And they were plunged into crisis at the same time.