The Campaigner

work done in the obstructionist phase; in addition, a The theoretical premises underlying magical
joint committee of six labor representatives and six conceptions assert that the forces controlling human
industrialists would be formed by decree to study a plan behavior lie outside the realm of human activity as such.
for workers' control. In apparent contradiction to the notion of control over a
The workers- tired, demoralized and half-starved locally specific area of human activity typical of a
for lack of pay for weeks- were willing to accept peasant chauvinist mentality, the recourse to outside
anything that was offered. Those workers still remaining agencies functions as an ideological support for the
in the factories at the end of September when unpredictability of world forces that the individual,
absenteeism was running high, voted on the referendum within the limits of his knowledge of his own practice,
presented them by their leadership in the CGL. The must necessarily recognize as beyond his powers.
referendum passed by more than a five-to-two margin Were the individual to accept total "responsibility" for
and the factories emptied one by one. the consequences of his acts, then the actual world
Within months the fascist squadristi were roaming the processes his magical worldview is inherently incapable
streets destroying every working-class organization they of understanding would perforce be conceived as
could lay hold of. uncontrollable: such a conception, if consciously
embraced, could lead only to despair and ultimately
suicide. Thus the control mechanism, which is at the
II. THE ITALIAN IDEOLOGY heart of a magical conception of reality, functions to
delude the individual, to convince him he is at once in
No historian to date has been able to intelligently deal control and not in control. The responsibility for the
with the failure of the occupation of the factories to turn functioning of the control mechanism is shifted from the
into revolution: few historians have even recognized it as real socio-economic processes determining and defining
a failure. The reason for over fifty years of blindness individual activity to the ideologically defined magical
among historians is perfectly coherent with the reasons conception of the individual human being as possessing,
behind the failure itself. No well-intentioned neurotic or having means to reach, supernatural powers to
could, after all, be reasonably expected to write a determine reality.
conclusive analysis of neurosis. When clashes occur between the ideology and the
That neurosis on a social scale, is ideology a reality, then the blame, the guilt, must be attributed to
psychologically sick worldview irresisitibly propelling its the quality of the individual actor or passed on to
victims to pathetic failure and defeat, a socially some third party. At the same time, the very notion of an
"hereditary" self-conception which perpetuates and is extra-human force determining things provides the
perpetuated by the alienated social relations on which it ultimate explanation for the motives behind the inability
is founded. To reinstate the sanity of the working class of the magic spell performed to take effect.
and left in Italy, it is necessary to root out and expose the Magical practice is based therefore on the strict
ideology, observance of ritual norms deemed (socially) capable of
controlling processes. Man's task in the magical world is
Magic and the Peasant Worldvlew to propitiate those outside forces alienated from him, by
way of ritualized behavior.
The peasant conceives of life processes in terms of his The magical world...is not only protection, but also a
own individual activity as contributing to a localized constant threat;an evilunknown. In such a world every
new decision and every spontaneous action becomes a
expression of development. Alienated from contact with challenge to the fascinazione, the ever-impending
worldwide productive processes necessitating and bewitchment .... Magic rites hold off evil but do not
making possible his isolated activity, he views the render it powerless; for it is passed on to others. This
agricultural process of semination, growth and fruition offers
for the
an
livewy
explanation
and active
for both
participation
boundless
of
mistrust..,
the community
and
as part of a life cycle he deludes himself is under his in the sorrows of a victim of an evil bewitchment... Life
personal jurisdiction. So too, his conception of human is thus ahistorical and consists of a repetition of rites
birth and development is confined to an asocial realm of which are traditionally and passively accepted as forever
the family detached, apparently, from wider social valid. There is neither new decision nor new device;
everything begins all over again from the same method,
relations. This is the essence of the magical worldview, perpetual, unchanging.(17)
typical historically of societies in the food-gathering and Mother Magic
agricultural stages of development, which pervades the What the magical conception corresponds to in social
modern peasant conception even in the midst of a world- reality is the mother. In her socially-physiologically
productive process determining its very existence, determined role she does embody the process of physical
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