Antonio Gramsci 1922
The "Alleanza del Lavorno"
Unsigned, L'Ordine Nuovo, 21 February 1922.
Text from Antonio Gramsci "Selections from political writings (1921-1926)", translated and edited by Quintin Hoare (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978). Transcribed to the www with the kind permission of Quintin Hoare.
The leaders of the five most important trade-union
organizations among which the Italian proletariat is divided have
reached an agreement to set up a united national committee, with
the task of realizing a programme of action drawn up on the basis
of the minimum demands which form the most elementary connective
substance of working-class organization. The Alleanza del
Lavoro, thus constituted, represents an undeniable advance
over the original conception, which sought to make it into a
coalition not just of the various trade-union organizations, but
also of the various so-called subversive parties and which thus
sought to create in Italy a monstrous simulacrum of the English
Labour Party. But despite this advance, for us communists the
Alleanza only represents a first step towards realization
of the united front programme.
The fact that the official leaders of the trade-union movement
should reach agreement, and decide to give a permanent
organizational form to their agreement by setting up a unitary
national committee, is a historical fact whose importance for
Italy we do not wish to belittle. But what would the agreement
between the leaders be worth, if it were not based solidly on the
agreement of the masses who fill the union ranks? In the case in
question, we have seen that both the minority in the Confederation
of Labour and the minority in the Unione sindacale
italiana - i.e. in each, the supporters of their
organization's adherence to the Red Trade-union International -
were excluded from the constitutive meeting in Rome (and hence
probably also from the committee that will be elected). The
committee will have the following complexion: 5 reformists for the
Confederation; 1 reformist and 1 anarchist for the Railwaymen's
union; 2 anarchists for the Unione Sindacale; 2
syndicalists for the Unione italiana del lavoro; 1
reformist and 1 syndicalist for the Port-workers' Federation. In
other words, the Alleanza del Lavoro will be made up of 7
reformists, 3 anarchists and 3 syndicalists. The communists, who
certainly represent larger masses in the Italian workers' movement
than do the anarchists or syndicalists, will have no
representative in the Alleanza del Lavoro. The
reformists, on the other hand, will have a majority from the first
day. A rational distribution of mandates, in line with congress
results, would give one 5 reformists, 2 communists, 2 anarchists
and 4 syndicalists.
The fact that it produces situations of this kind is an
additional reason why the agreement between the leaders can thus
only be the beginning, the first step in an organizational
activity that will culminate in the creation of the proletarian
united front. Agreement among the leaders must be followed by
agreement among the masses: what has happened at the leadership
level must be reproduced at the bottom, in the heart of the
proletariat, in all the centres where the working class and
peasantry are struggling for their existence and their
freedom. The national committee of the Alleanza del
Lavoro must, if it wishes to live and develop, seek its
organizational base in a system of local committees, directly
elected by the masses organized in the various union
federations. Only the formation of this new organizational system,
in which all ideological tendencies which inhabit the working
masses can find just representation, will signal the historical
phase of the proletarian united front. This is the objective set
for communist trade-union activity by the theses which the party's
Central Committee will present to the next congress. To achieve
it, the communists will work with all their energy as
propagandists and organizers.