Back to the 1960s? Alessandro Pizzorno’s contribution to understanding the labor movement revival then and now

Introduction

Developing in a period of perceived decline of the labor movement, social movement studies have for a long time paid only limited attention to struggles against social inequalities and, more generally, the structural conditions for the development of some fundamental conflicts (Silver & Karataşlı 2016: 133). Only recently, addressing social struggles for global justice and against austerity, they have started to return to the social bases of protest (Della Porta 2015, 2017). A main question has become the capacity to mobilize discontent against a neoliberal system, in which there is high reliance on free markets and a decline of social protection. Especially during the Great Regression in Europe, Polanyi-like defensive counter movements and Wallerstein-like anti-systemic movements saw the involvement of labor and the unions, even if in different forms and with different levels of strength (Della Porta et al 2017). As the financial crisis reopened the dormant class cleavage, the percentage of citizens that participated in protest events strongly increased in several countries. In particular, the labor movement remobilized, among others, in frequent and well-attended general strikes (Hamann Johnston & Kelly 2013: ff; Seeliger & Kiess 2019: 9). While conflicts at the national level in the European periphery reemerged, under weak structural conditions for labor (Seeliger & Kiess 2019: 61), social struggles also increasingly took on the forms of mass mobilization and grassroots organization (Huke et al. 2015).

In what follows, I point at the particular relevance in this historical moment of revisiting the contribution of Italian sociologist Alessandro Pizzorno to the understanding of class conflicts in turbulent times. Born in Trieste in 1924, Pizzorno has worked in different universities, from Teheran, to Urbino, Oxford, Milan, Harvard, and the European University Institute in Florence. Combining a theoretical interest in processes of identification and exchanges with a taste for empirical analysis, his work has been path breaking in the analysis of phenomena as different as social conflicts and political corruption, urban politics and organized crime. Reflecting upon the fundamentals of social action, Pizzorno focused attention on the uncertainties of the actors in relation to complex circumstances and therefore on the role of processes of identification and recognition in overcoming uncertainties (Chesta 2019; Della Porta et al. 2000). In this sense, Pizzorno’s analysis helps understanding ‘the complex dialectical interplay between structure and agency – or what we might term objective conditioning and subjective influencing factors both internal and external to the workplace and union which can shape the emergence and dynamics of collective action’ (Darlington 2018: 620).

While class analysis has been more and more focused on social stratification, reflecting on waves of intense contention is therefore important in order to single out how organizational resources and identification processes can indeed develop in action, from the mobilization itself, rather than being a precondition for it (Atzeni 2010). In these processes, rank and file union members can play an important role in ‘translating grievances into a sense of injustice, blaming management, and encouraging collective forms of activity aimed at protecting workers’ immediate interests’ (Darlington 2018: 620). While much research on social stratification seems to have forgotten the complexity of class conceptualization, looking mainly at statistical aggregates, the work of Alessandro Pizzorno helps refocusing attention on the ways in which class solidarity emerges during workers’ struggles. In this sense, it talks to recent reflections on a return not only of labor action but also of classes as drivers of history. As Mike Savage (2021: vi-vii) noted, in fact,

Within the heroic pedigree of socialist politics and Marxist analysis, social class was assigned a preeminent role, not simply as a technical measurement tool but in shaping the course of history itself. … Class is clearly not some old, industrial relic … but is alive and kicking, generating anger and resentment, and symptomatic of a host of dystopian problems.

Originally applied to the labor movement in Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Alessandro Pizzorno’s analysis of the emergence and reemergence of struggles for recognition could greatly contribute to our understanding of what has been defined as a revival of the labor movement as well as, more broadly, the reemergence of conflicts around social issues in times of crisis. This seems all the more important as the broad research project on the resurgence of class conflict in Europe led by Alessandro Pizzorno had not found the attention it deserves not only in social movement studies that were focusing on new conflicts, considering the old ones as pacified, but also in labor sociology that focused on the role of unions within institutional industrial relations or neocorporatist tripartite institutions (Silver & Karataşlı 2016).

In particular, from Pizzorno’s research we can learn how to combine attention to the transformation of the class bases of conflicts with consideration of class organizational tradition and innovation, the evolution of the repertoire of action and the emergence of class consciousness within struggles for recognition of emerging social groups. It was the latter that Pizzorno considered as a preliminary step for the struggles upon specific interests, given that this can be assessed only once collective identities are formed. In this sense, as he suggested, a first degree exchange, oriented at the creation of collective identities, is a precondition for a second-degree exchange, oriented to achieve specific benefits and utilities.

Recognition is so considered a core aim of the struggles of emerging groups:

In order to be able to assess his/her interest, the calculating subject needs a recognition of an identifying collectivity. From the latter, s/he will draw criteria that makes the definition of interest intelligible or, in other words, allowing one to give meaning to action. (Pizzorno 1983: 167)

Struggles for recognition express the need of emerging groups to construct a collective identity around which to assess future advantages (Pizzorno 1993b: 228). By building circles of recognition, collective action constructs solidarities, transforming the particular aim into a general one (Pizzorno 1991: 221–13; Pizzorno 1993a). In this way, social movement organizations Sociaitote the formation of collective identity allowing the individuals to embed themselves into collectivities (Pizzorno 1988: 141).

The periodic reemergence of struggles of recognition warns against visions of a pacification of the labor conflict and a ‘withering away’ of strikes as a unescapable trend, emphasizing rather the cyclical nature of the history of strikes (Shalev 1978). Theorizing the variations in time related to the emergence of new social groups, forms of struggles and class consciousness, Alessandro Pizzorno (1978) has suggested that

attention be paid to periodic variations in certain phenomena. Otherwise, at every new upstart of a wave of conflict we shall be induced to think that we are at the verge of a revolution; and when the downswing appears, we shall predict the end of class conflict. (p. 291)

Fifty years after the so-called ‘hot Autumn’ of 1969, signaling a most intense period of labor mobilization in Italy, Alessandro Pizzorno’s theoretical and empirical contributions to research on labor (and other) conflicts help us understand the periodic rise, peaking and decline of class conflicts.

With this intent, I will address in what follows – mainly through the evidence collected in the two volumes edited by Alessandro Pizzorno with Colin Crouch (1978a, 1978b) – the mobilization of specific social groups (part 2), the repertoires of action (part 3), and organizational transformation (part 4) moving to an analysis of how actions create momentum for the development of class consciousness (part 5). The end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s have been characterized, in different forms all over Europe, by a wave of strikes (often unofficial and spontaneous) that extended to different sectors, geographical areas, and types of workers. The length of the conflict and its intensity grew with the recourse to direct action inside the factory and the development of new structures of representation. This was related to the use of more radical forms of action, especially those that made it possible to disrupt production without total loss of earnings by the strikers, implying more rank-and-file control. I will sum up some main general contributions in the conclusion (part 6).

Classes beyond structures

In recent decades, social movement studies have addressed grievances, claims and collective action frames, but rarely investigated their structural bases. Only recently, Marxist, neo-Marxist, and post-Marxist approaches reemerged in the field, focusing especially on the social bases of the protest (Della Porta 2018). The debate on the reasons for a resurgence of labor conflicts started with the consideration of transformation in the class structures, that was, however, immediately linked to the relational dynamics of the cycle of protest itself. Alessandro Pizzorno’s reflection on struggles for recognition points, however, at the complexity of a class analysis that goes well beyond the statistical analysis of social stratification, embedding forms of production into complex social relations.

First of all, the analysis of the resurgent class conflicts has addressed the retrenchment of the traditional working class. The decline of traditional industries (such as textile, coal mining, ship building, iron and steel) could have, however, different effects in terms of the mobilizations of those workers by pushing them toward militancy, and even a radical questioning of the economic system or, on the contrary, encouraging collaboration with the employers (Hyman 1978). In addition, the analysis challenged the assumption that the geographical or social isolation of specific industrial groups produces a mutual reinforcement of grievances and therefore that groups embedded in distinctive occupational communities are particularly endowed with solidarism, industrial militancy and political radicalism, inspiring cohesion and militancy within the broader labor movement.

The effects of a reduction of traditional craft workers are also ambivalent as skilled workers were at times a class vanguard with a radical political position, but also an aristocracy of labor, that jeopardized class unity (Hyman 1978: 52). As in other periods in history (e.g. in early 19th-century England), skilled workers were the first to establish unions, especially when they needed to ally with other sectors of the working class, but they have otherwise promoted sectional, conservative, individualistic claims (Hyman 1978: 52).

The analysis of the role played by an emerging new middle class also pointed to complex potential developments caught between the defense of traditional individualistic privilege and a push toward self-management against perceived alienation, expectation of increasing autonomy through new technologies, and de-qualification of non-manual work through mechanization and the fragmentation of jobs (Molitor 1978; see also Poulantzas 1978 and Wright 1978). The growth of white-collar employment was addressed within expectations for a new (professional and technical) working class (Mallet 1963), subject to fragmentation, compartmentalization and routinization of tasks, but also pushed by education and professional training toward values that clash with capitalism, but also hardly identified as workers (Bell 1974).

Similar controversies emerged on the role of semi-skilled production workers, machine operators, assembly-line workers, often regarded as constituting the main basis of collective organization in the factory, but also as lacking class consciousness (Touraine 1966: 322–323) and/or intrinsic attachment to work and being only interested in increasing material rewards (Goldthorpe et al. 1968, 1969). However, the resurgence of the class struggles was driven, against the predictions, by the unskilled workers, especially the so-called ‘mass workers’. Cataloged as outsiders, young, often female and immigrant, unskilled workers were characterized by a lack of tradition of industrial action, a precapitalist background, refusal of capitalist discipline, and the uprootedness of the recently urbanized. In particular, attention was paid to the militancy of new workers, who were especially present in the factories in which advanced technologies did not eliminate unskilled manual labor, in labor-intensive routine tasks in which workers were easily replaceable. Especially, mass workers were localized en masse in the big factories in which a growing concentration of relatively homogeneous and unskilled mass production workers triggered increased militancy (Hyman 1978: 54). Conflicts developed in particular in large-scale units, with so-called ‘rationalised’ methods of work and organization of the division of labor (Hyman 1978: 56).

Concluding, for collective mobilization to occur, important are not only the opportunities and constraints that come from the specific location in the working place, but especially the interactions of the different social groups in an intense moment of mobilization. The effects of the structural belonging to a certain social stratum are often ambivalent and it is in the dynamics of the struggles that the mobilization of specific social groups has to be understood. As Sidney Tarrow (1989) observed in his analysis of Italy, different groups compete and converge in the different phases of a cycle of protest.

Innovating the repertoire of protests

Social movement scholars have analyzed repertoires of protests as slowly developing in time. Especially during moments of intense contention, they produce innovation in the forms of protest. In Alessandro Pizzorno’s analysis, this innovation is to be expected in particular during struggles for recognition. In action, the mobilization of symbols ‘allows members of a community to recognize themselves as such with ensuing possibility to mobilize solidarities and collective action’ (Pizzorno 1983: 175).

In the late 1960s and early 1970s in Europe, action was certainly innovative and radical, adapting to, but also challenging the new forms of production: inside the factories, specific tactics were invented in order to upset the balance between the cost of the strike to the firm and to the workers through the articulation of strikes both over time and across space as well (Regalia et al. 1978: 112). In particular, the new forms of action such as salto della scocca (the omission of certain tasks during work on the assembly-line) or chessboard strikes (called in different territories in different days) brought about a decentralization of conflict, increasing the responsibility of the shop stewards (Regalia et al. 1978: 116). Attempts at rationalization of production not only triggered grievances, but also made firms more vulnerable to some forms of articulated strikes given increased reliance upon supply chains: as production became more complex and the job-tasks more and more fragmented, forms of action developed with the aim of a concerted disorganization of production activity (Dubois 1978: 17).

Some forms of strikes also aimed to ‘put the aims into practice’ or ‘forestall the goal’—for instance, go-slow actions which allowed the workers to reduce the rhythms of work to the level they want to have recognized as normal (Regalia et al. 1978: 118). Together with innovative forms of action within the factories, external actions were also used, among others, for strengthening internal solidarity. As in other moments of intensification of protests, innovation in action repertoires was mixed with a revisitation of old patterns of industrial relations like mobilization outside of the labor place, such as marches and road blocks, with community supported struggles, including boycotts and demonstrations in support of the strikers (Crouch 1978a: 204).

In sum, the resurgence of the class struggles brought about new forms of action as well as the adaptation of old ones (Favretto & Itçaina 2016), with often intensification of conflicts as traditional forms of action were adapted to new times. Militancy was particularly high among the groups not represented in the established processes of collective bargaining (Hyman 1978: 56). Radical forms of action, including co-ordinated shop-floor stoppages and go-slow activity, were more often used by workers with recent social adaptation to industry (such as unskilled workers, young workers and immigrants from the south) and without a tradition of unionization (Dubois 197: 20). While protests also radicalized in some factories with more traditional and highly qualified labor forces, radicalization was highly related to the predominance of non-skilled workers, especially in industries (cars, steel, and rubber) in which the labor force was mostly made of young workers.

Class organization

The resurgence of class conflict was also affected by and affected the dynamics of workers’ representation. Social movement studies have addressed the importance or organizational resources, especially but not only within the resource mobilization approach, with however different expectations about the organizational models that could be more successful in mobilizing powerless, unrepresented constituencies into social movements (Della Porta & Diani 2020: chap. 5). The research on the resurgence of class struggles allows us to empirically investigate the specific organizational adaptations in times of turbulences. As Alessandro Pizzorno (1978: 281) noted,

The union is an actor in its own right, not only developing its own specific interest, but being capable of carrying out a strategy, that is a succession of intertemporal decisions in which present action is evaluated in terms of its consequences for future goals.

As repeatedly in history, internal tensions within organizations such as trade unions develop over time, given differences in the logics of action of the organizations’ leaders versus the grassroots. So,

when the organisation which represents the workers becomes more powerful – by receiving new positions of power instead of immediate benefits for its members – it is by this token strengthening its capacity for obtaining future benefits. But the possibility of a gap between the interest of the represented and the interests of the representative exists in the sacrifice of immediate benefits for the sake of future gains, when the union has the monopoly of legitimate interpretation of what is best, of what constitutes the “true”, that is long-term, interests of its member. (Pizzorno 1978: 285)

While the organizational control can work in some periods, exchanging labor moderation for stability,

when the interpretation gap becomes too wide, when the ‘power of’ bears no relation to the ‘power over’, and the objectives of the rank and file appear too distorted by the action of the organisation, then the danger of a breakdown of representation is approaching. The same may happen when new groups which are not, or do not feel themselves to be, represented as such in the existing system express a collective will to be represented. A process of formation of collective identity sets in, which tends to disrupt the pattern of mediation. (Pizzorno 1978: 285)

While processes of bureaucratization of trade unions and resistance to it have been often studied in the long history of labor, the original contribution of Pizzorno is to link them to the very relational dynamics of the emergence of new groups of workers. Tensions are expected in fact to develop especially as new groups of workers struggle for recognition: ‘periods of destablisation and conflict appear when the unions are either unable or unwilling to exchange moderation for power, and either unable or unwilling to prevent new “entries” and the formation of new collective identities’ (Pizzorno 1978, 285).

The protests of the late 1960s grew as a reaction to institutionalization through the integration of the unions into the income policies negotiations that had followed, in particular the short recession in the mid-1960s. As activists were sensitive to autonomy while unions aimed at organizational effectiveness instead (Martin 1978), there was a tendency toward centralized collective bargaining which was contrasted by shop-floor unionism (Zoll 1978). So, conflicts grew in particular upon the attempt by the unions’ leaders to trade social peace in exchange for some protection of the interest of a (selectively defined) constituency of workers.

Organizational changes develop in parallel with transformations in the repertoire of contention. In order to carry out ‘spot’ and ‘rolling’ strikes, that can seriously damage the production process but have more limited costs for the workers, widespread approval and a capillary network are necessary for the strike calls to be rapidly transmitted and carried out (Regalia et al. 1978: 113). Organizational resources to carry out articulated strikes came from different actors in different times, being initially produced in the course of action. As the protest itself gave the workers new strength by revealing their power, criticism of the established unions triggered the emergence of new models of coordination of the struggles that reflected the characteristics of the mobilized constituency and of the new forms of actions. In particular, with a reemergence of strategies that were typical of waves of ‘new unionism’ in the past, the new forms of strikes, which involved especially unskilled workers, have been connected with more decentralized horizontal structures, with assembleary forms and delegates which were elected in the work place and remained under the control of their constituency. The factory delegates, as new forms of workers’ representation responding to the specific needs for action, formed the vanguard of the conflicts in the Italian ‘Hot Autumn’ (Zoll 1978: 148). The base and unity committees of the delegates, originally with large control from grassroots, promoted action, militancy, and loyalty toward the rank and file, contributing to the spreading of new forms and contents of struggle (Zoll 1978: 148). In these committees, ‘new’ strata of the working class, such as unskilled or semi-skilled, women, foreign, and young workers found representation (Deppe et al. 1978: 177; Muller-Jentsch & Sperling 1978). Initially spontaneous, the strikes were then articulated through the involvement of the unions that were trying to regain control over labor action (Regalia et al. 1978: 113).

In sum, the resurgence of class conflict moves then in cycles which are characterized by, first, contestation of existing organizational structures by new social groups and, then, by a partial institutionalization of organizational innovation (Crouch 1978b: 198). It was not (so much) the preexisting organizational resources, but rather the creation in action of new, horizontal forms of representation which gave impulse to the struggle, then becoming resilient.

Claims and identities

Social movement studies have paid attention to the formation of collective identities as well as to the framing of grievances. Research on industrial relations has looked at the claims put forward during labor conflicts. A main contribution of Alessandro Pizzorno to this debate is in particular the distinction between the emergence of new identities within struggles for recognition and the exchange orientation of struggles around already formed interests and identities. New identities in search of recognition tend to reject the logic of negotiation as

The real end is non-negotiable, since it consists in the formation of the very subject which has successively to become the actor of the exchange and the bearer of gains and losses. There is a category of action which may be observed in social conflicts, that can be understood only if it is asked of them not what gains and what losses they will produce for the actors, but whether they produce solidarity or not. These are the actions connoting a process of formation of a collective identity. Here expressive conduct will replace instrumental conduct. Direct participation will be felt to be necessary since representation is excluded and trust is not yet grounded. (Pizzorno 1978: 293)

As ‘the Olsonian law that participation for the acquisition of collective goods is uneconomical is suspended’, conflicts will be more militant as

Lack of precedent, disturbance of accepted patterns, lack of trust, lack of experience in autonomous collective action and bargaining– all this will account for more aggressiveness and conflict, more participation, innovation in claims, often unprocessable by the existing system. At times, real claims will even be lacking and conflictual action will be undertaken for the simple sake of affirming the existence of the new, or the unrecognised, collective actor. (Pizzorno 1978: 293)

The research on the resurgence of the labor struggles in Europe in the late 1960s applied those intuitions to the specific demands of the emergent social groups that were characterized by non-negotiable and egalitarian aims as well as a broad concern for conditions of work and life that went beyond the economic negotiations typical of ‘normal times’. Starting from immediate claims for the protection of employment or improvement of working conditions, new demands included egalitarian (such as demands for equal pay for equal work) and political ones (such as workers’ control over public investment or calls for state intervention in industry) (Molitor 1978: 43). Another set of claims aimed at improving the deteriorating working conditions, with particular attention to the conditions for piecework, with concerns for the burden and pace of work. Challenging the traditional demands for financial compensation, workers’ organizations called for changes in those conditions, under slogans like ‘health is not for sale’ (Dubois et al. 1978: 56).

In sum, the claims put forward during the struggles reflected the specific demands of emerging social groups, with a strong concern for equality as well as for working and living conditions. These types of demands were in fact particularly widespread among unskilled mass workers, especially women and migrant workers (Kirchlechner 1978, 176). In general, there was also a contestation of job hierarchy as well as calls for the end of wage discrimination between sexes, for more paid leave, and for better living and lodging condition—for example, through rent strikes, often directly linked to labor struggles through the leading role of workers and their organizations (Baudouin Collin & Guillerm 1978). With the spreading of conflicts to various areas, a connection was made between experience at work and experience elsewhere in several conflict situations, amongst which were the feminist struggles that often developed within the workplaces, including factories, targeting the double exploitation of women at work and in the family (Molitor 1978: 47).

Developing class consciousness in action: concluding remarks

This article puts forward the argument that social movement studies have until recently tended to neglect struggles against social inequalities and that, as contemporary history pushes such questions to the forefront, the field can learn from the analyses of Alessandro Pizzorno on the ways in which class consciousness emerges from struggles for recognition.

Social movement studies have traditionally considered protests as a ‘dependent’ variable, investigating the conditions for their development. Only recently the emergent characteristics of protests as ‘eventful’ in terms of their capacity to create resources and opportunities have been emphasized (Della Porta 2017). Alessandro Pizzorno’s reflections on the struggles for recognition contribute to an understanding of how action challenges structures, producing collective identification. As he noted,

The processes of the formation of new collective identities and of the dispersion of power may thus be seen as responsible for the destabilisation of a system of industrial relations and for the increase in claims and conflict. But they tend also to generate processes in the opposite direction, that is to have restabilising effects. A first type of re-equilibrium process takes place when new collective identities are recognised and become a component of a new system of representation. An important historical instance was the way in which the entry of new industrial workers in several European labour movements around the turn of the century influenced union structures and transformed systems of industrial relations. Such a process of reabsorption has two aspects. One is the transformation of the universalistic claims of the movement (the non-negotiable claim, based on a universalistic right, to have the new identity recognised) into sectional, corporate claims. … The second aspect is the transformation of an expressive participation, based on the assertion of a new collective identity, into an instrumental participation based on the calculation of individual gains and losses. … This however implies the reintroduction of a process of representation, with the acceptance of the system in which it must take place, and the pursuit of negotiable ends. (Pizzorno 1978: 294)

During the resurgence of class struggle in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the very innovation in the forms of action fueled the mobilization, influencing the organizational forms it took. The specific forms of collective action affected in fact the organization of the conflict – the reciprocal control of the workers in piecework transferred into collective act of resistance (Zoll 1978: 151).

Confirming the importance of collective action for the building of solidarity (Fantasia 1988), collective mobilization grew on itself through imitation and collective learning. After the initial spark, different groups of workers became involved in the (cooperative or competitive) mobilization with protest also extending geographically. Participation in protest events has long-term empowering effects (Muller-Jentsch & Sperling 1978: 298). Even if structural constraints still impact the capacity to mobilize, socialization to various forms of contention is in fact a long-lasting legacy of waves of protest, as the participation in the strikes develops political awareness (Dubois et al. 1978: 67). In the 1970s, in fact, it was in action that protest spread through comparative mechanisms, leaving behind long-lasting memories.

In sum, the research, led by Alessandro Pizzorno, on the cycle of labor protest in Europe has shown how the location in the production process offers an often ambivalent mix of opportunities and constraints toward class action and identification processes. It is during intense mobilization, with complex relations of solidarity and/or competition between different groups, that the potential for collective action is implemented and solidarity ties are formed. So, in the 1970s, labor actions comprised old and new repertoires that adapt in times and space to the specific conditions of the struggle, with a bridging of innovative strikes, practices of the objective, direct social action, massive marches, and symbolic action. Organizationally, the mobilization challenged old structures of representation and pushed for the development of new, grassroots, autonomous, and self-managed participatory models that are then selectively institutionalized. The framing of the struggles reflected the calls for recognition, through the developments of demands for equal treatment as well as improvement of working and living conditions.

This relational approach can be helpful to address current debates about the revival of trade unionism and frequent protest waves (including during pandemic times) for social justice which often see the mobilization of new social groups. Looking at the related debate on the use of Marxist analyses for the understanding of these types of collective action, Alessandro Pizzorno’s focus on struggles of recognition has some parallels with Rosa Luxembourg’s analysis of the ‘general strike” in Russia. As she noted, action itself assumed a most important role in creating the conditions for an activation of class politics. As in the cases covered by the research on the resurgence of class conflict in Europe, in the Russian mass strikes, consciousness proceeds in parallel with organization in action, since

The most precious, lasting, thing in the rapid ebb and flow of the wave is its mental sediment: the intellectual, cultural growth of the proletariat, which proceeds by fits and starts, and which offers an inviolable guarantee of their further irresistible progress in the economic as in the political struggle. (Luxemburg 1906: 26)

Without claiming that resurgence of conflicts, like the ones magisterially studied by Alessandro Pizzorno and his collaborators, are all revolutionary moments, they nevertheless are rich with consequences in terms of the emergence of new social groups, repertoires of action, organizational forms, and collective identities. Struggles for recognition have, that is, empowering effects.