Three books published by DeriveApprodi offer an essential guide to Italian workerism beyond the stereotypes and convenient interpretations that took hold in later years: L’operaismo degli anni Sessanta (Workerism in the Sixties), edited by Giuseppe Trotta and Fabio Milana; Gli operaisti (The Workerists), edited by Guido Borio, Francesca Pozzi and Gigi Roggero; and the collective volume Operai e Stato (Workers and the State). Different in structure and purpose, they share an aim: to reconstruct the history of the intellectuals and activists who, from the late 1950s through the 1960s, sought to understand the profound changes in Italy’s working class and capitalism.

First published in the early 1970s, Workers and the State is a cornerstone of workerist thought and helped shape an entire generation of activists. It addresses a wide range of theoretical and historical questions, from theories of political organisation and class composition at the turn of the twentieth century to the revolutionary wave following the First World War.

The book also examines capitalist development through the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and their practical application in Roosevelt’s New Deal. It compares major international cycles of struggle, from British industrial disputes to waves of strikes in the United States.

Throughout the collection, the critique of ideology goes hand in hand with historical analysis. Its chief achievement was to challenge a major taboo in traditional labour historiography: the rigid, artificial separation of class struggles in the United States from those in Europe. Instead, it offers a global perspective on capitalist development that emphasises the connections between these struggles.

Mauro Gobbini’s essay on the British industrial conflict of 1926 deserves particular attention. This was a general strike, rather than a series of spontaneous or disorganised revolts: the largest and most organised workers’ mobilisation in British history. It brought the country to a standstill for nine days and involved more than 1.7 million workers.

Gobbini is not among workerism’s most celebrated or publicly prominent figures. Yet he embodies a clear and rigorous political approach: to develop an interpretation while remaining among workers and within the movement, rather than seeking the limelight. His testimony and analysis offer a distinctive perspective on everyday political work rooted in factories and in lively debates among comrades.

Gobbini’s political development was strongly shaped by his work alongside Danilo Dolci in Sicily. His approach brings together economics, sociology, material conditions and social organisation.

Both his essay in Workers and the State and his political practice firmly reject a top-down approach. Political strategy is not handed down to the rank and file; it develops from below, through an understanding of what actually happens in workplaces. Daily investigation on the ground examines shift patterns, union agreements, changes in production and workers’ practical needs.

This method of workers’ inquiry and a constant presence at factory gates is at the heart of the workerist experience. Gobbini also located the movement’s later limitations in the abandonment of that practice: daily investigation gradually gave way to rivalry between organisations and an excessive pursuit of centralised political leadership.

Reading these three books today, and returning in particular to the theoretical insights and experience of struggle collected in Workers and the State, means brushing the archival dust off workerism. They offer no dogma or ready-made truth, but analytical tools that remain useful in addressing the movement’s original question: how can we understand what is changing in society and at work before those changes become history already written?

Source: Il Fatto Quotidiano