The workers' movement in Italy reached new heights when a wave of factory occupations swept the industrial centres–only to be swiftly defeated by the political disorganisation of the revolutionary left. The legacy of this movement's defeat helped Gramsci develop his theory of revolution.
The revolutionary wave of 1848 began with a joyous struggle for democracy. But it ended with violent struggles between workers and capitalists, liberals and socialists, revolutionaries and reformers. The experience was a decisive influence on the development of Marx's theory of revolution.
In the wake of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, Italy was swept by a militant workers' movement that inspired and challenged Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci. This article, the first in a two-part series, explores how the factory council movement emerged.
In the late 1960s, militant Black workers in Detroit's auto industry tried to combine radical socialist politics with rank-and-file union activism, to "take the uprising into the factories". The result was DRUM: the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement.
