Factory Councils in Turin, 1919–1920

“The Sole and Authentic Social Representatives of the Proletarian Class”⁶²

Pietro Di Paola

The factory council, a different approach, I mean for really uniting the working class. When all the factory councils met together in Turin, they were the highest authority. Higher than the party and higher than the union. And that united us; in fact, anarchist trade unionists agreed with us, some from the Catholic trade unions agreed with us. . .

—Battista Santhià, oral testimony
(Bermani, Gramsci, gli intellettuali e la cultura proletaria)

The emergence and rapid spread of factory councils in Turin in 1919 and 1920 demonstrated the innovation and revolutionary potential of this form of workers’ organization. Conversely, the movement’s eventual failure revealed the inherent flaws of workers’ councils and the complexity of their contradictions.

The factory councils were the outcome of a high point of widespread militancy, independent local action, and confrontation that erupted immediately after World War I among industrial workers in Turin and in the rest of Italy. This new form of organization created an important shift in workers’ self-perception: from “wage earner” to “producer” (Masini 1951, 9). The nature of industrial conflict addressed by factory councils shifted. It widened from the economic to include the political field, moving from bargaining and the management of industrial relations to attempting to achieve complete control over production. However, this approach not only encountered fierce opposition from industrialists but also encroached on the sphere of activity of the traditional labor organizations: the national union federation Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). An area of further conflict, particularly within the CGIL, concerned the role and degree of participation in decision-making that would be given to nonunionized workers. For the organizers of factory councils, all workers were considered “producers,” and therefore all were theoretically entitled to take an active part in the new organization and its governing body.

If militancy and spontaneity were key factors in the emergence of factory councils, their rapid spread and consolidation in Turin and the surrounding area were due to the vigor of the editorial crew of the newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo (New Order) and of the anarchist militants within the local section of the iron and steel industrial union, the Federazione Italiana Operai Metallurgici (FIOM). The young intellectuals—Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, Umberto Terracini, and Angelo Tasca—who helped organize L’Ordine Nuovo beginning in the spring of 1919 made a crucial contribution to both the theoretical framework and the practical constitution of the factory councils.

They committed time to practice-based research, studying “the capitalist factory as a necessary form of the working class, as a political organ, as the ‘national territory’ of workers’ self government” (Gramsci 1920). The newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo became an organ of analysis and investigation based “not on abstraction . . . but on the real experience of the masses” (Montagnana, 1952, 111). Gramsci and Togliatti interviewed workers about every aspect of the system of production and about their lives within the factories:

In the Chamber of Labour, at party headquarters, even on the tram . . . we did not understand why they pressed so hard with their questions.⁶³ They wanted to know . . . the manufacturing processes in use, how the factories were equipped, the organization of production, what skills the engineers had, their relationships with the manual workers, and the reasons for fines. And the worker being questioned had to make a big effort. He would have preferred, at least when not at work, not to think about the things that drove him mad six days a week (Santhià 1956, 60).

At the same time, the libertarian group in Turin and anarchist workers—particularly Pietro Ferrero, secretary of the local branch of FIOM, and Maurizio Garino—played equally important roles in the promotion of factory councils. This group, in contrast to the position of anarchist militants in the Unione Sindacale Italiana, argued for the need to participate in reformist trade union organizations in order to fight the reformists from within and build contacts with a greater mass of workers (Masini 1951, 12).

One of the cardinal reasons for the success of this form of organization was rooted in the “aspirations already latent in the conscience of the working masses” (L’Ordine Nuovo, 1919b) as “the traditional institutions of the movement have become incapable of containing such a flowering of revolutionary activity” (L’Ordine Nuovo, 1919a). After the war, social and industrial protests of unprecedented intensity and scale broke out all over Italy. Membership in trade unions, the Socialist Party, and the anarchist movement increased dramatically; however, most social conflicts of the period were characterized by an unparalleled level of autonomy from party and trade union organization. Popular discontent burst out spontaneously and unexpectedly in the shape of cost-of-living and bread riots, occupations and seizures of land, mutinies, and strikes (Bianchi 2006). Trade unions strove to channel this combative energy. This was a vital issue within the factories: employers were ready to grant considerable concessions at a time that they were investing heavily to convert their systems of industrial production to meet peacetime rather than military needs. For both the industrialists and the unions, the presence of a representative body within the factory was essential.

During the war this function had been performed by union representatives that comprised the Commissioni Interne (internal commissions), most of which remained in place after the conflict (Clark 1977, 36–45). On the one hand, the internal commissions guaranteed the factory managers that the implementation of national or local agreements as well as the resolution of shop-floor disciplinary disputes would be carried out. On the other, the union representatives could wield complete control over the development of industrial relations and labor disputes. A national agreement, signed in February 1919, gave formal recognition to the internal commissions; most importantly, it established the eight-hour workday for metalworkers. This agreement also established a long and complicated system of negotiations before a strike could be called, ruling out unofficial strikes and implicitly committing the trade unions to a period of “social peace” that would prove, however, to be illusory (Castronovo 2005, 83; Maione 1975, 7–12).

The representatives on the internal commissions were union members elected from a list drawn up by union officials, without debate or interaction between the candidates. Moreover, the nomination of these candidates was based largely on personality and charisma. As a consequence, the internal commissions were “trade union organs” rather than representative of the workers as a whole (Terracini 1920; Magri 1947, 184–187). The trade unions saw “the whole workforce as one close-knit, uniform body, almost as if thousands of workers made the same movement and performed the same task. This was due to the fact that . . . the Trade Union only considered the worker in his capacity as wage earner” (Terracini 1920).

These features rendered the internal commissions incapable of effectively marshaling the growing unrest of the mass of the workers. At Fiat, for example, the internal commissions were systematically bypassed by groups of workers who were able to exert pressure on the management (Castronovo 2005, 86). In spite of this, “a tendency to subvert official procedures emerged within the internal commissions themselves, as their attitudes became more contentious than those of the unions” (Soave 1964, 13).

In addition, the exponential growth in membership of local organizations (FIOM had more than twenty thousand members, the Chamber of Labour more than ninety thousand) challenged the effectiveness of the representative structures of the labor movement and their relationship to the growing numbers of recently unionized and nonunionized workers.

Toward the Factory Councils

How are the immense social forces unleashed by the war to be harnessed? How are they to be disciplined and given a political form [ . . . ]? How can the present be welded to the future?

—Gramsci and Togliatti, unsigned, “Democrazia Operaia,”
L’Ordine Nuovo, June 21, 1919

In the spring of 1919 a debate about transforming the internal commissions developed in several labor movement publications and in heated discussions in the rooms of Socialist clubs in Turin. The debate focused on several issues: the system of representation and its function, relationships between unionized and nonunionized workers, and the role of skilled and white-collar workers in the labor movement. The debate also incorporated the analysis of experiences of factory councils in other countries, including Britain, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and the United States. The search for an alternative system of shop-floor organization had begun.

That March, in an article published in the newspaper L’Avanguardia, Alfonso Leonetti proposed the creation of “Italian Soviets from the industrial organizations existing in Italian Factories” (Levy 1999, 142). L’Ordine Nuovo reopened the issue toward the end of June. Gramsci and Togliatti saw the internal commissions—freed from the limitations imposed on them by employers—“as a germ of workers’ Soviet style government” (Gramsci 1920). Instead of organs of workers’ democracy dealing with arbitration and discipline, they envisaged the internal commissions as “organs of proletarian power, replacing the capitalist in all his useful functions of management and administration” (Gramsci and Togliatti, 1919).⁶⁴ In August, Ottavio Pastore launched the idea of a different procedure for the election of the internal commissars. While stating firmly that the internal commissions were the creations of the trade unions and not oppositional bodies, he proposed that the workers of each unit in the factory, whether union members or not, should elect their own “workshop commissars.”

The members of the internal commission would then be selected from these commissars. This proposal, however, still allocated a traditional role to the internal commission and tried to minimize the impact of nonunionized workers (Pastore 1919). Pastore reported that some workers were already trying out the new form of organization. Indeed, the system had recently been adopted at the Fiat Centro plant. The internal commission had resigned and it was decided to appoint a temporary commission with a mandate to organize new elections based on each work unit. The new commission, however, was elected only by unionized workers (Magri 1947, 187).

In fact, the structure of factory councils was determined not only by theoretical debates and discussions, but also through “the practical experience that suggested the definitive forms of these organisms” (Montagnana 1952, 116). The Turin workers established factory councils without a predetermined plan: “They entered, in a chaotic way perhaps, but spontaneously, a new route” (Togliatti 1919).

The first factory council was established in early September 1919 at the Fiat Brevetti plant. More than two thousand workers, unionized and nonunionized, participated in the voting. Each shop floor and each work unit elected their commissars. Thirty-two commissars were nominated: all were union members except one, who promptly resigned (L’Ordine Nuovo, 1919d).

In the following weeks, workshop commissars were elected and factory councils were constituted in almost all the metalworking factories in Turin, as well as in the chemical and other industries, representing more than fifty thousand workers (Spriano 1971, 54).

L’Ordine Nuovo hailed these developments and encouraged future courses of action for these delegates (L’Ordine Nuovo 1919c). On October 17, the first assembly of workshop commissars was held in Turin, with representatives of more than thirty thousand workers. The formation of factory councils was considered a “point of no return”: with the new system, the executive commission—the descriptor adopted by the assembly to replace “internal commission”—was the direct expression of the workers and their ideas. The assembly emphasized that the two most urgent problems, “that of the vote for non-unionized workers, and the relationship with the Trade Unions, must be resolved in a general and systematic way in order to facilitate these mass organizations” (Avanti! 1920). Three days later a Study Committee for Factory Councils was formed; in the following months this committee would help coordinate theory with practice.

The relationship between factory councils and trade unions and the question of the voting rights of nonunionized employees were closely linked. The resulting debate illustrated contrasting conceptions of workers’ organizations not only in industrial and political relations, but also in the development of a revolutionary movement. As the anarchist Garino reflected:

As regards the relationships with union organizations, three ideas were supported. The first wanted the councils to be inside the unions, in such a way as to cancel out their autonomy. The second, supported by Antonio Gramsci and the socialists of L’Ordine Nuovo, was opposed to this assimilation and considered the councils as revolutionary bodies preparing to take political power. And finally, the third, defended by us, the anarchists, saw the councils as revolutionary bodies outside the unions, capable not of assuming power, but of destroying it (Lattarulo and Ambrosoli 1971/2009).

The presence of the anarchists within the council movement in Turin was significant: anarchist militants were “chosen as workshop commissars in disproportionate numbers.” The anarchists also exerted an influence on the local branch of FIOM: one hundred militants were associated with FIOM, and three of the nine members of the executive committee established in November 1920 were anarchists (Levy 1999, 150). Moreover, both the Unione Anarchica Italiana (UAI) and the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI) supported the factory council movement.⁶⁵

As means of revolutionary struggle, the councils were considered by the anarchists to be excellent instruments for immediate action and for guaranteeing the continuation of production both during and after the revolution. The factory council, by developing among the workers the consciousness of their role as producers, heightened the tendency toward expropriation, taking “the class struggle on to its natural terrain” (Garino 1920). However, for the anarchists, factory councils could be effective only in a revolutionary period; under different circumstances they could easily become organs of class collaboration. Another problem was that factory councils reduced the control of the state apparatus without actually destroying it. They would therefore be ineffective without the intervention of an organized political force to overthrow the state, an issue that was not addressed by L’Ordine Nuovo.

Furthermore, for the anarchists, factory councils were not to be confused with the soviet: “While the Council is the coalition of all productive labor, the Soviet is the political organ through which the authoritarian communists intend to exercise their power” (Garino 1920). Opposing political views about the future of factory councils were underlined by Garino:

[Gramsci’s] agreement with our proposal for the Factory Councils stopped precisely at the issue of the State, of the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . .He told me: “Not only are we working together now, but we must do so until the overthrow of capitalism. At that point, if there are different assessments by us communists, and by you, the libertarian communists, we’ll each go our own way.” . . . Until then we had worked together in practical action, union action, preparation for the revolution, even armed preparation.

In his discussion with Gramsci, Garino clearly indicated his fear that the revolution would devolve into a one-party state dictatorship:

I said: “Look, Gramsci, I think that the dictatorship of the proletariat will eventually mutate and degenerate into the dictatorship of a party or, even worse, of an individual.” Gramsci replied, “No, no, Garino! That can’t happen, the party will not allow one man to take the reins of power and do whatever he likes.” “I’m not convinced,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what I believe: when you take power, we’ll be the first to be shot.” Gramsci jumped to his feet, with that big bushy head: “Garino, Garino, no! Don’t say that! That will never happen!” Yes, with Gramsci there was an incredibly close relationship (Garino, oral testimony in Bermani 2007, 298).

Gramsci’s search for an organizational form to replace the parliamentary system and “his conception of an industrially based socialism developed over a long period” (Levy 1999, 138). However, in the spring of 1919 Gramsci and the editors of L’Ordine Nuovo focused specifically on the internal commission as a possible form of self-government for the working classes, something that “could be compared to the Soviet, which shared some of its characteristics” (Gramsci 1920).

One of the theoretical bases for the creation of factory councils lay in the idea of the conquest of the state. L’Ordine Nuovo made clear that:

In the light of the revolutionary experiences of Russia, Hungary and Germany . . . the Socialist State cannot be embodied in the institutions of the capitalist State. We remain convinced that with respect to these institutions . . . the Socialist State must be a completely new creation. . . . The formula “conquest of the State” should be understood in the following sense: replacement of the democratic-parliamentary State by a new State, one that is generated by the associative experiences of the proletarian class . . . .New State-orientated institutions must arise and develop—the very institutions which will replace the person of the capitalist in his administrative functions and his industrial power, and so achieve the autonomy of the producer in the factory (L’Ordine Nuovo 1919a).

Factory councils, “arising from the condition created for the working class in the present historical period by the structure of capitalism,” were the nucleus of this new organization. They represented the model of the proletarian state because the unity of the working class was realized in practice within factory councils. “On the shop floor the workers are divided into teams and every team constitutes a work unit (a craft unit). The Council itself is made up of the delegates the workers elect on a craft basis in each shop floor.... The Council is based on the concrete, organic unity of the craft as it is forged by the discipline of the industrial process” (L’Ordine Nuovo 1919e).

Factory councils were seen as the product of a historical development that was making traditional labor organizations obsolete: “The craft unions, the Chambers of Labour, the industrial federations and the General Confederation of Labour are all types of proletarian organization specific to the period of history dominated by capital. It can be argued that they are in a sense an integral part of capitalist society, and have a function that is inherent in a regime of private property” (ibid.)

In the capitalist system the workers could rely only on the sale of their labor power and professional skills; trade unions were the organizations “expert in this kind of transaction, capable of controlling market conditions, of drawing up contracts, assessing commercial risks and initiating economically profitable operations.” As unions organized workers not as producers, but as wage earners, they were “nothing other than a form of capitalist society, not a potential successor to that society” (ibid.) Indeed, all the achievements and the victories of the unions were based on the same foundation: the principle of private property and the exploitation of man by man. Thus trade union action, within its own sphere and using its customary methods, stands revealed as utterly incapable of overthrowing capitalist society or embodying the proletarian dictatorship (ibid.). According to the theorists of L’Ordine Nuovo, because factory councils were based on “producers” and not “wage-earners,” they could not be coordinated or subordinated to the union. On the contrary, their emergence would cause radical structural changes for the trade unions (L’Ordine Nuovo 1920c). Nonetheless, while the capitalist system was in place, trade unions were still an indispensable form of organization for improving workers’ living conditions.

Both the anarchists and L’Ordine Nuovo pressed for the inclusion of nonunionized workers in the election of workshop commissars. Their exclusion would have meant “reducing the factory councils to bureaucratic organs, emptied of their class and unifying functions, making them just a mechanism for connecting union officials with the factory” (Santhià 1956, 66).

By the summer of 1919, Andrea Viglongo had already pointed out that allowing only unionized members to vote placed the internal commission under the influence of the trade unions, seriously damaging it. To exercise its full influence, the internal commission needed to be elected by all the workers, even if that necessitated a radical transformation of the unions. The role of the internal commission was not only to maintain discipline in the workshop, but also to prepare the working class to replace the capitalists in management of the factories: all the workers, not just union members, were to take part in the soviet republic (Viglongo 1919).

The proposal to allow nonunionized members to participate in the election of the internal commissions met with fierce opposition from FIOM and CGIL. Indeed, the system of election was vital in determining the relationship between the new bodies and the trade unions. Two interrelated issues were under discussion: who, among the workers, had the right to elect the workshop commissars; and to what extent the commissars should determine who was elected onto trade union committees and other bodies.

For Emilio Colombino, a member of the national secretariat of FIOM, giving the vote to nonunionized workers meant that the workshops, not the working class, would lead the trade union according to their corporative interests, in this way undermining its very existence. Factory councils needed to be subsidiary organisms: unions were the expression of the working class, not of the workshop. The members of union executive bodies needed to be the most able and experienced union activists, and not selected on the basis of their role in the production process (Colombino 1920, 26–29).

The first discussion in a formal setting about the relationship between factory councils and the unions was held at the annual meeting of the local branch of FIOM in Turin on November 1, 1919. Before the meeting, the assembly of the workshop commissars drew up a Program of the Workshop Commissars, which included a declaration of principles and regulations of the factory councils (Comitato di Studio dei Consigli di Fabbrica 1920).

The first principle stated that “Factory commissars are the sole, true social (economic and political) representatives of the proletarian class, because they are elected, in universal suffrage, by all workers at their workplace.” As a consequence, “the commissars. . .represent a social power, and because they are union men elected by all proletarians can represent the will of the union men themselves within the organizations.”

With some contradictions, the document underlined the different functions of the craft and industrial unions and factory councils. It recognized that trade unions were an indispensable form of organization and that craft and industrial unions needed to “continue in their function of organising individual categories of workers to obtain improvements in wages and working hours.” However, the Program of the Workshop Commissars made it clear that the trade unions had to act according to the will of the mass of the workers represented by the commissars, and not vice versa:

The union workers in the councils accept without question that discipline and order in industrial action, partial or collective, be decided by the trade unions, provided, however, that directions to the unions are given by factory commissars as representatives of the working mass. They reject as artificial, ineffective and false every other system that the trade unions want to use to discern the will of the organized masses (Comitato di Studio dei Consigli di Fabbrica 1920).

At the meeting, Giovanni Boero and Garino, representing the workshop commissars, presented a motion stating that trade unions should be the direct manifestation of the will of their members, as expressed by bodies emerging from the workplace. The FIOM officials opposed this approach. Their secretary, Uberti, rejected the proposal that the management committee of the unions’ local branches should take its lead from the factory councils. He also condemned the practice of allowing nonunionized workers to vote, a principle that in his opinion clashed with the raison d’être of trade union federations and Chambers of Labour. The only point they conceded was the establishment of the workshop commissars, but only under the control of the unions and as an instrument to increase the democratic participation of the growing numbers of workers.

The motion presented by Boero and Garino obtained the majority of votes and the advocates for factory councils gained control of the local section of FIOM. A few days later, the leader of the Socialist Party, Serrati, commented on this victory in the newspaper Avanti! He wondered with dismay how it could be thought that the organs of unity of the working class could be created by the “non-united” workers—those “that up to now have stood on the sidelines watching, with the scepticism of the conservative or the individualism of the anarchist? . . . To claim that the trade unions are outdated bodies is proof of great superficiality, and extremely dangerous for the future of the proletariat” (Serrati 1919).

Despite the passage of the motion in favor of the factory councils, FIOM’s official line was promptly reaffirmed at a national meeting in Florence few days later. A motion was passed stating that:

The metalworking congress . . . declares that the union organization must have total responsibility for the movement and activity of the class both within and outside the factory. . . .It draws the attention of all unionized workers to the danger and the consequences for the union caused by the establishment of new organizations, which could be considered as overriding the union, which in this way could be placed under the dominant influence of non-unionised masses (Antonioli and Bezza 1978, 121–124).

With this motion, the factory council experiment was allowed only as a continuation of the work of the internal commissions and under the coordination of the trade union.

A similar confrontation took place in December at the congress of the Chamber of Labour in Turin, the difference being that in this case all industries were involved. The motion in support of factory councils and for giving the vote to nonunionized workers was passed: “By this time the factory council movement was branded as anti-union by the reformist leadership of FIOM and CGIL, as well as the maximalist directorate of the PSI” (Levy 1999, 146).

The new institution also met with strong opposition from the majority of industrialists. At a national congress of the Industrialist League, Gino Olivetti warned of the more dangerous nature of the Italian system of councils as compared to the Russian or German experiences. Tolerating an institution that undermined management’s power in the factory was out of the question: “It is not possible to establish the existence of a dualism of power in a firm . . . .Until a communist system is established by a legislative act, the introduction of factory councils is unacceptable” (L’Ordine Nuovo 1920a). In the beginning of March 1920, the General Confederation of Industry expressed its firm opposition to the establishment of factory councils.

The April Strike

April 1920—It was called the “clock hand strike” because the industrialists wanted to return to daylight savings time and they put the clock back without consultation with the factory councils, with the internal commission. . . . It was a question of power, of deciding . . . who was to organize the rhythm of work within the factory . . . it was a conflict of power.

—Leonetti, oral testimony in Bermani,
Gramsci, gli intellettuali e la cultura proletaria

On March 20, 1920, the president of the Industrial League, De Benedetti, Olivetti, and the Fiat company owner Giovanni Agnelli visited the prefect of Turin to complain about the widespread indiscipline in the factories and the persistent and unreasonable demands of the workers. The three made clear that they intended to resort to a general lockout to put a stop to this situation. The prefect warned them about the damaging consequences of a lockout and suggested they oppose all unjustified requests and punish any breach of the internal regulations (Taddei, 1920a). Four days later he informed the minister of the interior that the industrialists had followed his suggestions.

At the Fiat Acciaierie steelworks plant, the management closed a workshop because the workers had walked out in protest at not having received an answer to their request for compensatory payment for the members of the internal commissions. At the Industrie Metallurgiche factory, also owned by Fiat, the workers halted production because members of the internal commission had been dismissed for insubordination—they had readjusted the hands of the official factory clock from summer time to standard time without permission.⁶⁶

About a thousand workers rejected a first agreement reached between the unions and management to resolve this issue, and refused to leave the factory (Taddei, 1920b). They were subsequently forced to leave by the police. The minister of the Interior sent clear instructions to the prefect to act without hesitation, to use the army in defense of the factories, to ban all meetings, to keep dangerous characters under surveillance, and to arrest troublemakers (Taddei, 1920b). In the following days the army took control of the factories to forestall potential occupation by the workers; the offensive against the factory councils had been launched.

The following day, the employers agreed to rescind the dismissal of the members of the internal commission at the Industrie Metallurgiche factory, but with the proviso that those individuals would not be reelected for a year. This condition was regarded as an unacceptable interference in the selection of workers’ representatives. Moreover, the employers stressed that in the future the internal commissions should act in strict observance of the regulations of the national agreement.

On March 26, the workshop commissars of all the metalworking factories elected an action committee and an internal strike was called for the following day. The strike was supported by thirty thousand metalworkers.

The best meetings that I can remember took place within the plants. Public and speakers, all in their work clothes, made for an unforgettable sight. Everybody was there: from skilled workers to white-collar staff, and then unskilled workers and apprentices. Everybody, at that point, understood that the game being played was an extremely serious one, and that to lose this battle would mean, for everybody, the loss of a great, great deal (Montagnana 1952, 120).

The two disputes were regarded as matters of principle. However, as reported by the prefect, the focus of the confrontation was the industrialists’ intention to introduce norms and regulations for the internal commissions that represented a “repudiation of the status quo, either agreed or implicitly accepted, in some of the factories” (Taddei, 1920d)

After several meetings, an initial agreement was reached. As regards the Industrie Metallurgiche factory, the workers’ representatives agreed that the internal commission should not have moved the clock hands, that the workshop commissars should resign, that workers should not receive any payment for the hours of stoppage time, and that the local branch of FIOM should have been consulted before striking. More importantly, they agreed that “the local branch of FIOM should pledge itself to recall the Internal Commissions to their specific functions of safeguarding the workers’ interests in matters concerning wage agreement and factory regulations” (Clark 1977, 102).

At the Acciaierie plant the managers not only intended to fine the workers for their unofficial strike, but they claimed that, before work was resumed, it was necessary to reach an agreement about the role of the internal commission and “with regard to the clarifications needed in certain cases, where concessions have been made in certain factories based on a wider interpretation of regulations, it is absolutely essential that such important details should be cleared up” (Clark 1977, 102).

Then, in an attempt to elevate the dispute to a national footing, the Chamber of Labour and the National Committee of FIOM were asked to join the negotiations. The national secretary of FIOM, the reformist Bruno Buozzi, led the discussions. An agreement was reached on April 8. The workers at the Acciaierie works were to be fined a symbolic one hour of pay, and the money would go into their unemployment fund. Discussions about factory regulations were to be postponed. The prefect considered it “a great victory for the industrialism,” as the pact implied limitations on the scope of the internal commission. The terms of the agreement, however, were rejected by the local branch of FIOM and also by the assembly of workshop commissars. Consequently, a ballot of the metalworkers of Turin was organized, but out of the 50,000 workers entitled to vote only 11,579 actually voted. The result was a majority of 794 in favor of the settlement. After two stormy meetings it was decided to return to work on April 12.

When the workers’ representatives went to sign the agreement, the real issue of the dispute emerged. Claiming that the issue of the regulation of the internal commission had not been resolved, the industrialists presented a proposal depriving it of most of its functions and capacities to take action (Taddei, 1920c). At this point, the dispute had become focused on the very existence of factory councils. On April 13 the workshop commissars rejected this proposal, and the following day the Chamber of Labour and the local and provincial sections of the PSI formed an action committee. On April 17 a general strike was called in the Piedmont region.

The authorities forbade all public meetings. The prefect requested four thousand more troops in support of the three thousand already present in the city (Taddei, 1920e).

Turin was under siege. From the first days the arrests were continuous, especially of our comrades; and the first was of our friend Garino, one of the most active anarchists among the metalworkers in Turin. . . .In Turin all the public buildings were transformed into barracks, armoured vehicles patrolled the streets incessantly, machine guns nests were mounted on the palaces and churches (Volontà 1920).

During the negotiations, Buozzi and the workers’ representatives put forward alternative proposals for regulation of the internal commissions. For the industrialists, however, the main issue was the factory councils, which had not been addressed in any previous agreement. They requested that the trade unions repudiate factory councils. There was no attempt by Buozzi and the union representatives to steer the negotiations toward recognition of this form of organization. This would have required the full support of the CGIL and the PSI at a national level.

The executive committee of the workshop commissars had already identified, at the beginning of the confrontation, the political problem of the recognition of factory councils:

The form of the Factory Council depends on the political and economic strength of the working class . . . .It is beyond any doubt that the industrialists will never recognize nor allow the peaceful functioning of the Factory Councils, which aim at destruction of the capitalist system ....Recognition would only be given to the Councils if their proponents promised to restrict themselves to action concerning work contracts, and to conform . . . .To obtain recognition for the Factory Council it would be necessary to sign agreements and to accept all the legal limitations that the industrialists may wish to introduce. This would mean the death of the new workers’ institution, which can establish itself and develop only if it retains the freedom to manoeuvre and change its approach in response to the changing needs of the revolutionary process and the psychology of the working class (L’Ordine Nuovo 1920b).

At the same time, the national conference of the PSI was being held in Milan. The leader of the CGIL, Ludovico D’Aragona, arrived in Turin. The action committee argued for extending the action to the whole country: a national general strike was now the only way that a successful outcome could be achieved by the protest. On April 21 the Committee of the Study of the Workers’ Council launched a national manifesto exhorting the working class and the peasantry to join the struggle in defense of the workshop commissars and factory councils (Umanità Nova 1920).

The manifesto was published in the anarchist newspaper Umanità Nova and the Turin edition of Avanti! However, the Rome and Milan editions of Avanti! refused to print it. Indeed, the national leaders rejected any widening of the conflict and requested instead a full mandate for the negotiations. On the same day, D’Aragona met with Olivetti. After twenty days of action in the metalworking factories and ten days of general strike—the longest strike in Piedmont history—D’Aragona accepted all the conditions that the industrialists had put forward earlier. On the evening of April 22 the strike was called off. Union officials spent two more days overcoming the resistance of the workshop commissars, who wanted to resume work without signing any agreement: a clear rejection of the union’s role as mediator.

We very much doubt that the leaders of the Italian Socialist Party will dare to confess—openly, clearly, without euphemisms—that the metalworking and general strike in Turin and Piedmont ended with the greatest defeat that can be remembered in the history of the Italian proletariat (Mussolini 1920).