Turin’s militant proletariat proved a natural class ally for Southern peasants

Evidence

The latter task was a formidable one. The proletariat of Turin was the most advanced and combative in Italy. As early as 1904-6, it had demonstrated a high degree of solidarity and a readiness to take to the streets. Although it suffered a series of massive defeats in 1907, which were followed by years which saw the apogee of Giolittian “industrial peace” and the rapid growth of a collaborationist trade-union movement, nevertheless in 1912 the metal-workers (those not organised in unions!) embarked upon a strike “to the end”. This was defeated, after 75 days of struggle; but the metalworkers came out again-this time led by the union, the FIOM in the spring of 1913, and after a 93-day strike won a considerable victory (partly as a result of government intervention against the employers’ dangerous intransigence). These struggles were the background to Gramsci’s first years in Turin. They won him from his youthful Southernism, demonstrating that the workers were the real enemy of the Northern industrialists, despite the collaborationism of their reformist leaders, and that they were thus the potential ally and leader of the peasant masses of the South. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 59

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: This is the historical ground for Gramsci’s ‘Southern Question’ analysis — the urban proletariat as alliance partner of the southern peasant masses — which connects to later postcolonial readings of internal colonial hierarchies.

Related

• Turin’s strikes convinced Gramsci workers could ally with southern peasants (similarity 0.88)
• Gramsci saw northern industrial workers’ revolution as ending the colonization of southern Italy (similarity 0.83)
• Unorganized metalworkers outmilitated a collaborationist union leadership (similarity 0.80)
• Gramsci’s worker-peasant alliance strategy originated in the Southern Question (similarity 0.79)
• Dual power in the factories ended through isolation, not armed force (similarity 0.78)