From: "Margaret" <margaret-AT-rie.net.au>
Subject: AUT: Fw: Article for Direct Action
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 09:44:31 +1000


From: "Paul McCartan" <dastband-AT-hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 11:35 PM
Subject: Article for IWW groups/Direct Action

Dear Marnie and Jim,

Dear Comrades-Reader's letters to "Lotta Continua"-Translated by Pete
Anderson and Hilary Partridge. Edited and annotated by Margaret Kunzle,
Pluto Press, London, 1980.

FROM NOW ON THE ANALYSTS ARE IN THE STREETS

Lotta Continua was a political group/party active in Italy during the
radical upheavals of the 1970's. Starting with the "Hot Autumn" of 1969,
Italian workers, students, unemployed, women and housewives went on the
attack against the Capitalist/Communist managed state, and in particular,
it's most loyal servants, the unions,the ideology of work,patriarchy etc.

Inspired by the revolutionary waves in France and America, radicals to the
left of the Italian Communist Party began to actively question theories and
tactics employed in the past, and reformulated new methods of struggle such
as "Proletarian Shopping", (mass theft from supermarkets) to "Self Reduction
Struggles" (the payment for goods and services at a pre arranged
"proletarian" price manifested in self managed rent strikes and reduced bus
fares.

Feminist thought also challenged many leftist orthodoxies,in particular, by
making the demand "that the personal is political", women called into
question their pre ordained roles as mothers for the revolution, as sex
objects, or as the unacknowledged lynchpin behind the maintainence of
capitalist social and economic relations, i.e by providing sexual, emotional
and domestic services, women help "their" men cope with life on the work
front.

Of all the parties of the Italian ultra left, Lotta Continua "put the class
before party" more often than most. The activists and readers of Lotta
Continua actively intervened and participated in sectors and issues that the
mainstream left wrote off as too marginal. Hardly marginal groups in
 numerical figures, the unemployed, homosexuals,drug users,squatters,hippies
all found a forum sympathetic to their plight, thus increasing the
ideological and practical distance between the ultra reformist Communist
party and Lotta Continua.

THERE ARE MORE TRUTHS IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF A WOMAN'S LIFE THAN IN ALL THE
PHILOSOPHIES

In 1976, Lotta Continua dissolved itself as an organisation, but the
continued production and grew, largely because it served as a forum for
comrades not in formal political organisations to debate and discuss issues
in the paper's letters page. "Dear Comrades" contains 350 of these letters
which provide an amazing critique of the banality and horror we are forced
to endure in everyday life under capitalism.

The diversity of the letters is truly astonishing, ranging from 12 year old
anarchists providing the most theoretically coherent condemnation of
school-prisons yet heard, to women publicly naming male comrades who bash
their partners and refer to female comrades as sluts and cunts. What is
ultimately satisfying about this collection of letters, is that it reveals
that most of us on the far left are actually human beings, who get
depressed, take drugs, hate work/parents/school, commit suicide, fall in
love. It has been my experience both as a workplace "militant" and a social
"activist", that feelings are something to be hidden, that we should
relegate our personal joys,crises,worries to the back burner while we get on
with the job.

Few people in the Left are prepared to talk publicly about issues which
affect us all, yet are never mentioned for fear of facing sanctions or
disapproval from the group at large. Hence, proletarians who dare question
the hegemony of bourgeois mores in the scene are treated as apostates or
labelled as "workerists" or "anti intellectuals".Those who try to question
the dominant paradigm(s) of the left are shunned far more effectively than
even the Valley Girls or Buffy would think possible. Life is hard enough
with your parents, bosses, workmates thinking you are mentally challenged
for trying to destroy the system without so called comrades turning on each
other over matters we have to deal with ourselves. Hopefully if readers are
inspired by this book as much as I am, they will be compelled to put pen to
paper and let all of us know what's going on inside their heads. How about a
regular letters column anyone?

PEOPLE WHO TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION AND CLASS STRUGGLE WITHOUT REFERRING
EXPLICITLY TO EVERYDAY LIFE, WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS SUBVERSIVE ABOUT
LOVE AND WHAT IS POSITIVE ABOUT THE REFUSAL OF CONSTRAINTS-SUCH PEOPLE HAVE
A CORPSE IN THEIR MOUTH

"Dear Comrades" has a special significance because it reminds us that we are
all fallable as humans, and it is o.k to not be full of revolutionary zeal
24 hours a day, that it's o.k to have bad hair days, nervous breakdowns, or
spending the day in bed making love rather than face another day at work.
"Dear Comrades" is a book brimming with life, in a world fixated on death,
and it helped me "keep the faith" for a little while longer yet.

P.S Word on the street is that there is a gang of Situationists are
organising a spontaneous wander throughout Melbourne, without plans,watches,
preconceived ideas they hope that participants can have passionate
adventures and rediscover something new in the shell of the old. Meet
Friday, 7.30pm, 14th September at the State Library Corner, where the
building is growing out of the ground. Hope to see youse there, Tall Paul.

End Transmission-O.K guys, I'm happy with this rant, please don't change it
at all if possible.
Paul

www.iww.org - * education * organisation *emancipation


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