Peasants in postwar Italy reorganized production around subsistence needs rather than profit

Evidence

In a feature written months later to describe the events, the political leader Angelo Tasca commented that the peasants demonstrated “the most evident truth” of the working class: to take on “for itself the problem of production.” Tasca detailed how the peasants of Medicina put into operation their own institutions of governance and organization, including an employment offi ce that coordinated employment and a production cooperative that furnished machines and fertilizers. Spontaneous local “councils”— committees to discuss the technical issues of production— were common. Th e community organized production according to the “social necessities of nutrition,” not the organizing principle of capital. Instead of harvesting industrial cannabis, they cultivated cereal, rice, and medicinal herbs. As a peasant told the reporter, “One has to produce fi rst what is necessary to eat, then one can think of profi t.” — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 381

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: This concrete example of workers taking over production for social need rather than profit parallels my grafting/trees piece structure of concrete examples overturning extractive priorities.
• XREF: connects to: Southern Italian rentier ownership extracts surplus from a malnourished peasantry — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1053; Italian Red Biennium workers built self-governed production institutions across land and factories — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186; Peasant rebellions across western Europe demanded wage labor and free markets — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 166 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Southern Italian rentier ownership extracts surplus from a malnourished peasantry #complicates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1053
• Italian law let prefects transfer requisitioned land to peasant cooperatives #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 427
• Peasant rebellions across western Europe demanded wage labor and free markets #contradicts (0.74) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 166
• Peasant cooperatives were converted from voluntary bodies into administrative instruments. #complicates (0.74)
• Italian Red Biennium workers built self-governed production institutions across land and factories #complicates (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186
• Capitalist profit control of resources harmed environmental quality versus peasant subsistence control. #complicates (0.72) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 254
• Exploitative agrarian structures can persist after their original causes vanish #qualifies (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1609
• Postwar social reforms repoliticized private property and wages that war had decoupled from markets #corroborates (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 224
• Policies of qualitative production inevitably produce disqualified quantity and malnutrition #exemplifies (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1136