A Civil War (92 page)

One of the foremost leaders of the PCI, Pietro Secchia, wrote in a letter from Milan to his Roman comrades: ‘Even if the working class is facing far more important tasks, nevertheless day after day the workers have to face and struggle
with these problems of daily life … We have to make sure that we link the immediate demands of the working class to the more general and political ones of the struggle against the Germans and Fascists.'
¹

At the middle-ranking level, the Genoese Communist leaders warned that ‘it would be a gross error to set the struggle for essential, immediate, vital demands against the insurrectional struggle' and denounced the ‘rash and superficial extremism' of those who proclaimed: ‘Enough with economic agitations; there's nothing more we can do on the economic score, we must strike once and for all: either the strike of insurrection or nothing!'
²

More passionately a leaflet urged:

An attempt was made to get around the problem of the relationship between the general situation and immediate demands by stressing the political character that those demands easily acquired. Thus the PCI leadership asked the Turin federal committee to see whether there were ‘other demands which were partially political in character' that ‘can be united with the economic ones', the examples given being the watchword: ‘Don't negotiate with the Germans and refuse the Fascist intermediaries' and the demand for the abolition of the curfew and the removal of the Germans from the factories and the city.
⁴

The coupling of economic claims and political demands – at times argued in depth, at times stated more schematically – was in the tradition of left-wing anti-Fascism. Shortly before the turning-point marked by the Resistance, in the Communist newspaper
L'Azione
, the first number of which appeared in the Biella area on 1 November 1942, said ‘the watchwords of the struggle against Fascism find … their just mediation in grasping a situation that the working class was living every day in the factory'.
⁵
A manifesto preceding 25 July, signed by ‘a group of young men', began by denouncing the repudiation ‘of all the dead
and disabled of the 1914–18 war', went on to exalt the Russians, ‘intensely loyal to their country and their government', and concluded by demanding the ‘abolition of ration cards (an antechamber to indemnity)'.
⁶
But whereas before 8 September the most current watchword was peace, from that day on it became armed struggle. Those who continued to demand ‘bread, peace and liberty' received this answer: ‘Bread and liberty, fine. But why peace? You should be saying: we want the war of liberation'.
⁷

This line was not taken only by the Communists.
Avanti!
also followed it, though at times giving the impression of bringing it back under the old dualist umbrella of a maximum programme and a minimum programme. Announcing the revival of the glorious ‘Tribuna dei ferrovieri' (‘Railroad workers' tribune'), the paper charted the programme of the re-established National Group of Socialist railroad workers, the first point being the struggle for national liberation; then, listed among the ‘class vindications' are: ‘regularisation of the position of casual labourers, revision of wage scales, adoption of the eight-hour working day, etc.'.
⁸

The Catholic paper
Conquiste sindacali
, printed in Rome, devoted a great deal of space to ‘interessi di categoria', but made no specific reference to the political and military struggle that was taking place.
⁹
In the stances taken by the Action Party over the economic struggles, which it sometimes prided itself on having triggered, the connection with the greater struggle in progress is there;
¹⁰
and on one occasion Gian Carlo Pajetta was compelled to acknowledge that, in commenting on the strikes, the Action Party paper had been quicker off the mark than
Il Grido di Spartaco
.
¹¹
If anything, it might be said that alongside its great historic affirmations – for example that the first thing Fascism did was to cut wages
¹²
– the Action Party press, even on labour issues, displayed
the greater capacity for analytic planning that characterised that party. Thus the pamphlet entitled ‘Occupation of the factories and direct running of the companies' raises the question of how to ensure the smooth running of the occupied factories in a phase of transition ‘from capitalistic management to direct workers' management'. It recalls that ‘too often in capitalist-run industries the wages system is fixed to ensure the minimum administrative difficulty', and declares the need for ‘new systems of retribution and planning, which must necessarily be more elastic and more in tune with the performance of each individual factory'.
¹³

Making demands relating to labour relations and factory life in general implied the need to identify an interlocutor. Here the facts themselves revived the problem of the convergence, or separation, between
padrone
, Fascist and German. The latter two figures were explicit enemies; and we have seen how contacts and negotiations with them, on the political and military plane, were considered as amounting to treason. The
padrone
, by contrast, was an ambiguous figure. It is not surprising therefore that, generally speaking, the Communist directives dug their heels in, indicating the employer as the interlocutor in the factory. An intervention by the Milan federal committee is particularly clear on this point: it recommends against refusing contacts with the industrialists ‘for fear of being contaminated and compromised', because by so refusing ‘we do not show strength; on the contrary, we show that we are weak, that we are afraid, in other words, that we are not sure of ourselves'.
¹⁴
A year earlier, at the time of the strikes,
L'Unità
had made its position clear: ‘We must exclude in the most determined way every Fascist (and even more so German) representative; we must negotiate directly with the
padrone
.'
¹⁵

Several of the objectives of the struggle declared by the same issue of the Communist paper were such however that even the best-intentioned employers could not have fulfilled them alone: for example the ‘doubling of basic foodstuffs', the ‘distribution of clothing and fuel', ‘housing for the casualties and adequate means of transport at reduced prices', but above all the ‘liberation of workers who had been arrested for having defended the interests of the working class' and, still more, the ‘return to the normality of civilian life, with the lifting of the curfew and the withdrawal of the Germans from the plants'. Indeed, that same issue of
L'Unità
indicated the Fascists, the Germans, and the ‘great profiteer industrialists in their service' as the adversaries against whom the strike was directed.

Two days later
L'Unità
was denouncing ‘the underhand maneuvers of the industrialists', who first pretend to give way on certain points, then say ‘We can't
do anything about it. Go to the Germans'.
¹⁶
The Breda workers, stated a report written at the time, had refused to take up an enjoinder of this sort.
¹⁷

During those very days a ‘Letter from the Directorate to the Organization of Turin' was sent to explain why the Germans were not to be negotiated with:

This letter readopted and, one might say, gave order to the arguments used on 13 December to criticise the Turin Communists for their contradictory behaviour during the strike: in a first leaflet they had not indicated the Germans as enemies of the country; in a second leaflet they had, but had then gone to negotiate with them.
¹⁹
A note about this from Turin had in fact presented the situation with remarkable realism:

Many tales have been told of the German interventions in the factories, various in number and diverse in outcome, especially when, in the major cities
like Milan and Turin, they were guided by the able General Zimmerman. Here we can recall the case of a small city, Piacenza, where in the Arsenale plant 1,900 workers out of 2,500 had participated in electing the Fascist internal commission, but many had written on their ballot papers: ‘Long live freedom, long live Italy, long live the Soviet Army, long live Stalin, long live communism'. On 2 December 1943, during the strike that some members of the commission had tried to sabotage, the Germans arrived ‘who having learned from the workers that the stoppage was not due to anti-German sentiments, but to the very low wages, promised that they would immediately see to getting their wages increased! And, absurdly, the applause of a group of women workers crowned the Nazi promise. What this lot are interested in is war production.'

The writer of the report, however, did not reproach the workers but the party comrades who were ‘obtuse and sectarian' and ‘claim that the workers are pig-headed, people who think only of their sordid interests, indifferent to our struggle – hence this step and these heresies'.
²¹

The web of situations and desires outlined so far is particularly evident in the strikes, which were extensive, frequent and incisive in the Italian Resistance. Under the occupying regime and an internal regime which in its history and most profound aspiration prohibited strikes, (a legislative decree of 21 June 1944 introduced the death penalty for organisers of strikes and lock-outs), the strikes exalted their very character as affirmations of collective identity, instruments of liberation, discovery (or rediscovery) of direct action – all elements whose moral value, as we have already suggested, is in no way at odds with their being instruments for satisfying immediate needs which even in those conditions the strike could assume. This does not mean that we should not seek the differences and conflicts manifested in the declared aims given to the strikes and among the strikers themselves, beyond declarations of principle like: ‘the struggle for the defence of the daily bread of the workers is an aspect of the struggle to drive the invader off Italian soil, for the total destruction of every form of Nazism and Fascism'.
²²

The impossibility of there being the joyful and festive aspect found in strikes that occur in quite different circumstances made the Resistance strike experience a particularly harsh one, accentuating the dramatic nature of the options
and consequences involved, including the roundup of laborers and deportations to Germany.
²³

The interweavings, overlappings, differences in emphasis over workers' rights or the political objectives, and the latter's downward slide towards insurrectional, military action traverse the whole Resistance period and, by and large, but not mechanically, follow the evolution of the general politico-military situation. The immediate demands were not just wage-demands, though obviously these figured prominently; they tended to spill over from factory life to life as such, thereby accentuating, by this route as well, the existential and political significance of the agitation. An increase in foodstuffs, the distribution of winter clothing, shoes, and coal, the heating of the units with window-panes shattered by the bombings, the setting up of canteens, an increase in the gas and electricity supply, figure among the requests of this nature.

A powerful egalitarian impulse is often present. For example: a minimum guaranteed wage; specific pay claims for women, young people, and labourers; equal advances on wages for everybody, labourers, women and young people included; still further improvement in conditions for the sick, the laid-off and ‘those unable to work for reasons beyond their control';
²⁴
‘granting the same treatment as that given to workers in the protected industries';
²⁵
the extension of war indemnity to all workers; the setting up of canteens in every plant, etc.
²⁶