The Campaigner

Executive Council m Sept. 23, 1920 movement," he wrote, "was essentially lacking
decisiveness." [69] As the records show, both inside the
[CGL leaders discuss problems of evacuating the factory and inside the meeting room in Milan What was
factories, setting up a committee to study the "control" lacking was revolutionaries, men and women capable of
plan, union funds, membership dues, etc. Terracini of overriding the cazzista's infantile whining; capable of
the PSI leadership is also present.] knowing, thinking, feeling and acting for what was
historically necessary then.
D'Aragona [asked about workers' response to the Had PSI leader Serrati been in Italy and not in Russia
decision, answers]: Generally, the masses have at the time, nothing would have changed, as he himself
accepted it .... made clear in an article written shortly thereafter:
91
Terracini: I am convinced the workers will accept. I There could be only one justification for our taking
have just come from Turin, and at the Fiat Centro power: the flight of the bourgeoisie, its abandoning
plant the workers were shouting hurrahs for every condition of privilege; a peaceful revolution like
the one in Hungary. But... it doesn't seem to me that the
D'Aragona .... In the name oftheparty leadership, Italian bourgeoisie will give up its power so easily ....
I want to note that the error here was that of Making the revolution means...taking advantage of the
committing ourselves in a form of struggle whose elements that the situation puts naturally at our disposal
outcome was not foreseen.., organizations involved to turn events to our advantage. In other words: It is not
we who make the revolution, or better, who make the
in serious struggles should make arrangements decisive act of the revolution; it is we who, aware of our
beforehand with the party leadership... From now force as created by the desired conditions, intend'to take
on, in struggles political means will have to be used. advantage of them to force them to the conclusions
General strikes will no longer be sufficient, dictated by our doctrine.(70)
[They discuss what kinds of "control" have been Serrati was not mentally deranged; nor were
contemplated in the government bi11.[67] Big firms, D'Aragona, Gennari, Buozzi, Terracini, Togliatti,
banks, consumption, industry, factories are all men- Tasca or any of the others. They were simply victims of
tioned. Terracini must add one militant word.] an ideology which assigned them their roles in the most
disgusting, ignominious working-class defeat in modern
Terracini: And class control, history.
Lenin, when he heard the news, became livid with
The session is over. anger; at the Third Congress of the Comintern, his
evaluation was unequivocal: "During the occupation of
• • • the factories, did even one person show himself to be a
It was all over for the Italian working class. For twenty Communist?" [71]
years the workers were to suffer layoffs, austerity, exile
and murder at the hands of the fascist regime before Where was Antonio?
being led once again by their squeamish leaders, this t
time through the farcial outcome of the resistance The single most important individual in the Italian
movement. Then twenty-five years of looting at the socialist movement, the theoretician of the councils and
hands of U.S. imperialism, before coming full circle in rounder of Ordine Nuovo was Antonio Gramsci. And
the late 1960's to sporadically reoccupy the factories and yet, oddly enough, he was nowhere to be found during
rediscover the factory councils, the occupation period. Somehow, he had always just left.
In 1935, writing for the Paris edition of the Socialist The availar_le documentation of Gramsci's whereabouts
Almanac, the exiled Buozzi claimed that the 1920 and activities during that month of September provides
occupations "closed with a victory, which from the an initial indication of Gramsci's "tragic flaw"; further
strictly union point of view, has no equal in the entire information on his actual political activity at that time
history of the international workers' movement." [68] In helps fill out the pattern of his behavior, supplying the
a perverse sense, he was absolutely right; no other mass- factual basis necessary to develop a competent analysis
strike ferment of those proportions and possibilities of his theoretical writings and politics;
"won" more than twenty years of fascist rule in that By then delving more deeply into Gramsci's
period! Buozzi was wrong though, about the reasons psychological makeup, particularly into the biographical
behind the missed revolution. "The Italian socialist information on those crucial early years of his