A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #8-26 - Utopias and Authoritarianism in the Decade 1968-1977 (Part One). Paper presented at the Carrara Conference (October 11-12, 2025) on the 80th Anniversary of the FAI (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Revolt Spreads - the World Changes ---- When addressing the period from 
the late 1960s to the early 1980s, one always encounters conflicting 
assessments. When a blanket of silence has not fallen, one often finds 
oneself faced with a mystification aimed at describing them exclusively 
as a period of violence, subversion, bloodshed, and crime: in short, the 
"Years of Lead." Others, however, define those years simply as 
'formidable,' giving in to the exaltation of the period experienced as 
the most beautiful, the one that transformed daily life, in which the 
need for community and freedom was expressed, and which witnessed the 
transformation of gender relations, the sexual revolution, the 
questioning of totalitarian institutions like prison and mental 
hospitals, the innovation of artistic and musical language, and so on.

To understand their true meaning and their actual significance, it is 
therefore a question of retracing their most significant stages.

First of all, we must keep in mind the international context of the time.

In the United States, during these years, a strong student youth 
movement developed against the Vietnam War and the deployment of troops, 
with occupations of universities and campuses, such as Columbia 
University, which was stormed by police in the spring of 1968, resulting 
in 700 arrests and 150 injuries. African Americans launched movements 
openly protesting the racism and authoritarianism that permeated 
American society, suffering harsh repression (recall the assassination 
of Martin Luther King, followed shortly thereafter by that of Senator 
Robert Kennedy). The death of Che Guevara in October 1967 in Bolivia 
during a guerrilla warfare profoundly affected the imagination of the 
youth of the time, after the Cuban revolution, despite its authoritarian 
decline, had inspired much of the political and social opposition to 
North American imperialism.

But throughout 1967, mobilizations and struggles arose in response to 
the intensifying US intervention in Vietnam, the resurgence of Franco's 
dictatorship in Spain, the coup d'état by the Greek colonels, and the 
war between Israel and the Arab countries. Demonstrations and protests 
were widespread. In April 1968, violent student unrest erupted in 
Germany against a bill suspending democratic guarantees. A neo-Nazi 
attack seriously injured Rudi Dutschke, the movement's leader. The 
response was strong but limited, and in May the "emergency laws" were 
approved by parliament. Also in May, the Sorbonne University in Paris 
was occupied and then closed by the authorities. Thousands of young 
people took to the streets and clashed with the police. The movement 
spread to the workplace and, after the general strike was called, 
assumed a pre-insurrectional character. General De Gaulle relies on the 
army and the social right, and signs with the trade unions the 
concession of wage increases.

In Africa, which was grappling with decolonization, examples stand out 
in Algeria, where student protests were repressed to the point of 
closing the University of Algiers, while opportunities for peasant 
self-management were reduced. Another case in point is Senegal, where 
students and workers called a general strike, which the government 
responded to with the military occupation of the University of Dakar. In 
Mexico, on October 3, 1968, the army opened fire on students 
demonstrating in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the capital, killing 
thirty, while the day before, in Tlalelolco, it had massacred three 
hundred students who were demonstrating against government corruption. 
In Asia, ravaged by the wars in Vietnam and Laos, students in Japan 
banded together in revolutionary organizations like Zengaku-Ren, 
unafraid to clash with the police, armed with long wooden or bamboo 
poles, to protest a hyper-authoritarian, rigid, and classist society and 
the presence of US ships in Japanese ports in the aftermath of the 
Marines' massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lay, killing 300 
women, elderly people, and children.

Signs of rebellion also emerged in the Eastern European satellite 
countries of the Soviet Union, dominated by a crumbling bureaucracy. 
Fierce clashes erupted in Warsaw against the ban on the performance of a 
play evoking Tsarist oppression and against the police presence in 
universities and high schools. The movement in Czechoslovakia-the Prague 
Spring-was also largely the result of this youth mobilization, which 
prompted members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Dubcek and others, 
to propose the idea of "socialism with a human face," to usher in a 
period of structural reform, later crushed by the Warsaw Pact tanks. And 
in Belgrade, too, all the universities were occupied.

As for Italy, since the late 1950s, it has been affected by the 
consequences of an intense process of industrialization and strong 
internal migratory movements, within a framework of increasingly 
conservative and reactionary political power.

In July 1960, an unexpected explosion of struggle and protest broke out, 
partially outside traditional norms. This was the case with the large 
student and worker demonstration held in Genoa in response to the 
neo-fascist MSI (Italian Socialist Party) attempt to hold their national 
congress in the city, supported by the support given to the Christian 
Democrat Tambroni's government. Genoa, particularly affected by Nazi and 
Fascist occupation during the Second World War, boasts a strong 
tradition of worker resistance, intertwined with a significant 
libertarian presence. The violent clashes between protesters and police 
provided the first sign that things were changing; the Communist Party's 
rigid control over workers was weakening, and the first embryonic forms 
of autonomy and self-organization were beginning to emerge.

But it wasn't just Genoa; Licata, Rome, Reggio Emilia, Palermo, and 
Catania were the places where the clashes were most bitter, with the 
police claiming 11 lives and countless injuries. After the events of 
July 1960, the growth of working-class power was highlighted by the 1962 
workers' revolt in Turin's Piazza Statuto-three days of clashes-against 
the agreements between Fiat, the UIL, and the pro-employer unions. In 
October of the same year, there were the riots in Milan, with the death 
of university student Giovanni Ardizzone during a demonstration against 
the US blockade of Cuba.

The formation of a center-left government in 1963, with the entry of the 
Socialists, seemed to usher in a new phase in the country's life, but 
the ambitions of the 'progressives' were soon dashed by the 'powers that 
be,' who did not hesitate to stage coup attempts: the protagonist being 
Carabinieri General De Lorenzo and his 'Piano Solo' in 1964.

Struggles and demonstrations resume, often violently repressed by the 
police. The agrarian mafia kills trade unionists and farm workers in 
Sicily; fascists in Rome beat socialist student Paolo Rossi to death 
during an assault on the Faculty of Letters (1966).

Among young people, widespread countercultural activity emerged, 
centered on critiquing lifestyles and consumerism. Collectives and 
groups formed, and significant groups formed around magazines and 
organizations like 'Mondo Beat' and 'Onda Verde', which, drawing on the 
Dutch experience of the Provos movement, reaffirmed the centrality of 
human needs in Italy, opposing rampant motorization for the 
socialization of transportation, for free contraception, and for the 
occupation of vacant homes. Music developed a different language, lyrics 
broke with Italian musical tradition, and singer-songwriters and youth 
groups emerged, drawing partly from the then-avant-garde Anglo-Saxon 
tradition and partly forging new paths. This new musical and 
countercultural presence, on the one hand, is the fruit of ongoing 
change; on the other, it drives further changes in an Italian society 
profoundly different from the one we know today: a society permeated by 
bigotry, largely dominated by the church, with a single-channel 
television rigidly controlled by the Christian Democrats, harking back 
to the old sacristy morality. The bourgeois media becomes the mouthpiece 
of reactionary and conservative intolerance toward youth concerns, 
smugly reporting on the haircuts of those known as "long-hairs" by 
emulators of fascist squads. In June 1967, the police raided the "Mondo 
Beat" tent city in Milan and razed it to the ground: hundreds of arrests 
and expulsion orders are issued against beats, provos, and, indeed, 
"long-hairs."

This type of moralistic and bigoted society is no longer capable of 
coping with the ever-growing demands for change. More and more people no 
longer find this situation acceptable. It is precisely from this that 
student organizations emerge, the first expressions of autonomy that 
break away from the traditional organizations that gathered young 
students interested in politics, such as the FUCI (Italian Catholic 
University Federation) and other organizations emanating from political 
parties and structures aimed at co-opting young people and integrating 
them into the traditional party system.

While students want to break away from this bigoted moralism, as well as 
from an authoritarian school system and a university that serves the 
needs of capital, the working class is increasingly demanding freedom 
from the confines of wage barriers, long hours, and appalling working 
conditions, the hyper-exploitation and alienation of the assembly line. 
The issue of housing and access to even a minimal level of social 
services is also becoming acute.

These events and these ferments also contributed to the development of a 
series of youth initiatives in Italy and beyond, expressions of a 
potentially radical and revolutionary nature. These were not just 
struggles for political demands, like those of the laborers of Puglia 
and Calabria, or the Fiat workers and employees; or temporary university 
occupations, such as those in Pisa and Bologna in solidarity with the 
Greek, Spanish, and Vietnamese resistance fighters. There was, in 
essence, a first break with the oppositional political practices then in 
vogue-at the time, the PCI was the dominant opposition party-starting 
with various countercultural experiences, from Mondo Beat, the hippie 
communities, and the so-called flower children, who espoused a worldview 
entirely different from the dominant one. These experiences, even if 
trivialized today, represented something significant not only in 
qualitative terms but also in quantitative terms. A census of these 
realities was conducted: in 1967, for example, it was estimated that 
7,000 young people in Italy participated in these initiatives. These are 
people who have adopted a communal, alternative lifestyle. Thirty 
thousand in Scandinavia, 26 thousand in France, 20 thousand in the 
Netherlands, 18 thousand in England, and so on; it is a transversal 
movement that spans Europe and presents itself as a radical opposition 
to the values of the dominant society. This type of experience will 
later constitute a significant element of the fertile ground from which 
the movements of the following years will grow.

The first occupations of the universities

In 1967, the first university occupations began: Palazzo Campana in 
Turin, Naples, Cagliari, and Lecce, Sociology in Trento, Sapienza 
University in Pisa, Architecture in Rome, the Catholic University of 
Milan against tuition increases, and others. These occupations ushered 
in a completely new era-bypassing the current practices of small groups 
representing political parties, parliamentary outreach, and deputies 
negotiating with the Rectorate-demonstrating a growing desire for 
participation that soon became mass participation. Among other things, 
the first leadership groups of the Student Movement and several 
extra-parliamentary groups would form there. In Milan, Mario Capanna, 
leader of the struggle at the Catholic University, was expelled and 
enrolled at the State University of Milan, a public university where he 
would embark on a different path, leading him to lead the Student 
Movement. In Turin, the foundations of Lotta Continua were laid. In 
Pisa, 'Il Potere Operaio' was born.

With the onset of '68, further occupations occurred in other cities, and 
students began to weave a broad network of connections between the 
various universities. By the beginning of the year, 36 universities had 
been occupied throughout Italy, joined by several high schools, while 
the repressive attack intensified: in Turin, one hundred students were 
suspended from exams for a year; in Naples, students and teachers were 
charged for the April '67 occupation; in Pisa and Palermo, police 
violently charged student marches. Neo-fascist groups also mobilized, 
attacking the occupations and assaulting students.

Along with the student protests, the feminist movement also developed: 
the Lotta femminista collective, the Rivolta Femminile group, and others 
emerged. The struggle in universities-supported by the growing presence 
of women in higher education-encouraged women's leadership, thus 
challenging established roles within the family and society. The 
importance of reflecting on one's own body, removed from the purview of 
male specialists, was accompanied by the fight for sexual liberation. In 
this context, we understand the importance of issues such as divorce, 
abortion, equal rights and opportunities, and equal pay in women's 
thinking and mobilization.

On March 8, 1972, women took to the streets in Rome with all their 
protest energy, and the police charged them, sending several to the 
hospital. They would then demonstrate a strong commitment in 1974 to 
repel the attempt to repeal the divorce law and to gain full control 
over their bodies, which had been impeded by punitive abortion laws. But 
it was in 1977 that the women's movement would express its full vitality 
and its capacity to mobilize and influence the entire society, 
effectively revolutionizing the existing patriarchal order.

Autonomous struggles in the factories

The struggle at the Marzotto plant in Valdagno in April 1968 was 
characterized by fierce clashes between workers and police: 42 workers 
were arrested. At Falk, all 13,000 workers went on strike, as did 40,000 
metalworkers in Bologna, 2,000 pasta workers in Torre Annunziata, and 
7,000 at Italsider in Naples. At Rhodiatoce in Casoria, 1,800 workers 
went on indefinite strike. Then came the turn of railway workers, 
textile workers, laborers, footwear workers, seafarers, Italcantieri and 
Pirelli, Italsider and Eridania, and Olivetti; to these were added 
general strikes in the earthquake-stricken areas and in Palermo, the 
petrochemical workers in Porto Marghera, and the metalworkers. In Avola, 
police shot and killed two laborers, and at the Bussola in Viareggio, 
they seriously injured a 16-year-old boy, Soriano Ceccanti, who was 
participating in the workers' and students' protests on the Rich 
People's New Year's Eve and who was left paralyzed.

The strikes are spreading further and further, affecting all categories.

International events, with the brutal repression of the Mexican student 
protests which caused hundreds of deaths, the radical nature of May 1945 
in France, the coups d'état in Brazil and Panama, and the resurgence of 
US aggression in Vietnam further inflamed the general climate.

Autonomous struggles develop, especially at the factory level, and above 
all at Fiat in Turin.

Previously, there had been small 'heretical' groups that relied on 
magazines like "Quaderni Piacentini" and "Quaderni Rossi," which 
promoted analysis and debate among militants who had disbanded the 
Communist and Socialist Parties. In 1956, the Soviet invasion of Hungary 
had caused major repercussions within both the Communist and Socialist 
parties, as well as within the CGIL (Italian General Confederation of 
Labour), sparking a fierce debate within which criticism of Stalinism 
gained strength. This challenged a whole range of affiliations and 
positions, generating forms of critical expression, reinterpretation, 
distancing, and detachment. In the same years, the Chinese Cultural 
Revolution had emerged as a force capable of revitalizing not only the 
actions of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, but also 
Marxism-Leninism, which had been suffocated by the bureaucracy and 
authoritarianism of the Soviet Union. The actions of the Red Guards - as 
interpreted by many young protesters - had a disruptive effect on the 
general orthodoxy dominant in our country thanks to the hegemony of the 
PCI, encouraging the birth of small Italian communist groups, a 
reflection of Maoism in all its variants.

These critical presences grow in harmony with the movement that is 
erupting, with the university students who are organizing occupations, 
with the struggles of factory workers, starting with Fiat.

Italy in those years was emerging from a period of intense internal 
immigration and was no longer the rural country of the early 1950s. 
Postwar reconstruction was marked and vigorous, and industrial 
development was particularly significant in the North, where factories 
now needed labor. Many low-skilled workers from the South were forced 
into the assembly line structure of Taylorized factories, based on fixed 
production times. Furthermore, large factories were located in cities 
like Turin and Milan, which were essentially hostile and unwelcoming: 
some signs read, "We don't rent to Southerners here" (just as today we 
read, "We don't rent to Moroccans here"; among other things, Southerners 
back then were called, in addition to terroni, Marocchini). This 
condition of marginalization and subordination means it's no longer 
possible to imagine workers' behavior within union structures built for 
another type of worker, capable of "sniffing flies," as they used to 
say-namely, a toolmaker with an extremely high level of manual labor 
skills who represented what could be briefly called the labor 
aristocracy, functional to the production processes and with a defined 
bargaining capacity. Those arriving from the South, on the other hand, 
are unskilled workers who, in fact, resent factory discipline, built on 
that other worker profile and aimed at valorizing that type of 
professionalism.

This spontaneously generates a revolt that the union is unable to 
control immediately-or even in the medium term-because the union, too, 
is built on traditional professional figures. This worker 
insubordination contributes to the emergence of that great cycle of 
struggles that will allow for major gains, but which, at the same time, 
will push capital and employers to completely restructure the factory, 
introducing automation mechanisms capable of eliminating, as much as 
possible, de facto unmanageable forms of labor.

As these forms of workers' autonomy came to life, all those small groups 
that had previously formed, those student and university collectives 
that had expressed their autonomy and culture from the dominant one and 
that until then had expressed themselves solely on the methods of 
transmitting knowledge, on how study plans were constructed, on how 
lessons were conducted, etc., now understood that the struggle was no 
longer just a student issue (among other things, some spoke of student 
power, making clear the possibility that students could aspire to become 
a new "class" that would replace their parents in governing the country).

A sort of "going out" to the factories then began, with the distribution 
of newspapers and flyers, and pickets at the gates supported by 
students. This cross-fertilization between students and workers found a 
significant synthesis in some groups, especially the Lotta Continua and 
Potere Operaio groups, which subsequently gave rise to particularly 
representative movements of the period.

Massimo Varengo

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