File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9710, message 168


From: "dave graham" <davgraham-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Party, Unions and Revolution or whatever this thread now is
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 15:48:42 PST


Re: AUT: The Party, etc etc 

I was going to write something at greater length on this theme but I 
find I simply do not have the time. Instead I would just like to make 
two basic points, in the hope that the discussion can move on from the 
impasse its seems to have ended up in.

Firstly, none of the ideas or conceptions that are being advanced are 
particularly new, indeed that is part of the problem. Endlessly going 
over what are essentially Second International notions of working class 
political and economic organisation will not get us anywhere. Simply 
these are notions which have already failed us. 

It was this realisation which spurred on Otto Ruhle [among others] whose 
work was quite casually dismissed in an earlier contribution. Ruhle's 
contribution to what was the German Left is explained / critqued by  
Paul Mattick in an essay which was published in the UK in 1978. Mattick 
deals harshly but realistically with the German Left and I would 
recommend anyone to consult this article [would it be breaking copyright 
if it were scanned in so as to circulate it wider ? I am willing to have 
a go at this - but don't hold your breath.] Even if the German  Left 
failed  to come up with a solution for their time, that does not mean 
that it should be written off. Moreover they were part of an 
international wave of working class struggle - as their constant 
reference to the experiences of the IWW in the US, and the British shop 
stewards movement of the immediate post First World War period, as 
support for their views against those of the Third International, show.

But, just as today we would [I hope] not consider the shop stewards 
organisation at all revolutionary, then we have to be similarly critical 
of other conceptions from that era. The ideas and organisational forms 
of the IWW and De Leon for instance do deserve to be better known and 
studied, but we cannot simply apply them to today's reality. 

The second point I should like to make is that in Italy in the 1970s 
there arose a movement amongst the working class which did confront this 
question. And I for one would like to know a lot more about the decision 
of many working class members of 'Potere Operaio' to auto-dissolve their 
political movement in 1973 into what they called the 'Autonomy'. Can 
anyone say where English versions of some of the texts of this movement 
can be found ?

I have just finished typing in a translation by Red Notes of London, of 
an article which appeared in the newspaper of Potere Operaio in 1973. It 
is called 'We have rejected the logic of the political group in order to 
be within the real movement, in order to be within organised class 
autonomy.¹
 
This gives much of the background to this movement - but I can not 
discover what model of organisation these workers had in mind and how 
they wanted to proceed. Soon afterwards the Italian State cracked down 
on Autonomy using the excuse of the assassination of Aldo Moro.

I can make the article available to whoever wants it - I would imagine 
that it should go in the Italian archive, if whoever maintains it would 
let me know where to send it.

DG

PS In 1973 the workers of Potere Operaio believed there was something we 
could call 'social capital.'

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