1905
Notes
Nate
Ch6. “1905 in Italy”
This chapter was originally published as an article in Classe Operaia vol1, September 1964.
This chapter is on the situation of Italian capitalism at the time of Tronti’s writing. Tronti states that highly developed capital has an “elevated possibility of control over the objective movements of economic laws” (108), which would make them political rather than simply given.
I need to review this chapter, but I get the sense that for Tronti capital and working class are in a sort of deadlock, each needing to take the initiative in the class struggle in condition where neither really has it. (If I’m right on this then this complicates the sort of … vulgar autonomist view in which the working class always already has the initiative no matter what.) On the workers side, what is needed is a “restructuration of the movement as a whole, starting from the mutation of the general line.” (110) This will be made possible in confrontation with the enemy class. This is interesting, relates to the stuff about recomposition in the previous chapter: what Tronti wants is a certain type of confrontation, not because it will be a decisive blow against capital, but for the recompositional effect it will have on the working class. This might be another moment where Tronti’s Leninism plays out, as it’s not at all clear if this recompositional confrontation is in the immediate interests of those who will fight it out (in a sense in which general class interest politically opposes and subordinate interests of specific class interest). This also might resonate with Alex’s comment about Steve’s book, re: Tronti wanting a leadership of the party who subordinate their own interests to the class movement as a whole.
The PCI plays a role in the maturation of Italian capital, its use of reformism. Interesting, curious to know what Tronti made of this after he made peace with the PCI later. The PCI’s relationship with “the popular masses expresses and mystifies at the same time a still real relationship with the working class.” Faced with this is a working class that has “not broken all links with the old political organization (…) and not begun new and alternative organization.” (111) Such an organization is something that must be researched further and carried out within the class struggle, he says.
“The cult of spontaneity tends always to invert itself into a fetishism of organization. This is the destiny of the minority groupings. This must be refused. The bolshevik pleasure of being in the majority must be fully reclaimed.” The dilemma is not that “between spontaneity and organization, but rather between two possible ways to bring about the new organization.” One passes through a “positive crisis on the part of the old organizations” which can only come about via “political work that is carried out not inside but outside the party, in the factory, in production, among the workers, among all the workers, the less organized as among the unorganized.” (111-112) This will also eliminate the danger of constructing a new bureaucracy. What’s the second way? I missed that.
Tronti sees the capitalists beginning to take the initiative and this must be stopped. (Was it stopped?) If it is, this will mean the Italian 1905 will lay the groundwork for an Italian 1917 (which is still the symbol for revolution for Tronti).
