rivista anarchica
year 41 n. 362
May 2011


Union dibate/2

(Almost) a replica of the small manual
by Cosimo Scarinzi

To our partner Cosimo Scarinzi, the National Secretary of the Research University School Cub, then union (though not at all "corporate" but very critical), we did read the script of Dom Argiropulo, who also has been and is an active militant in their Cub -School. We asked him to tell him. Here it is.

 

The important thing here is not to talk about your work, which is a little depressing, but far from it. Talking about holidays you've done, what you bought, of Big Brother. If you are not watching Big Brother, in there you're a little cut off ... Young people entering the factory are likely to need, each has its own story. But all, or at least the vast majority see it as a time of transition, so do not care much for their workers to be ... There is no longer a deep sharing of work, the important thing is to spend eight hours in any case in the most quiet as possible and then who cares about tomorrow, we'll see. On the positive side that gives you the opportunity to think about other things, you can also listen to music: you can bring your walkman and hearing in one ear ... Today, workers feel less dominated by working-class and individual strategies. "

Tatiana Gentilizi
Young worker of Zanussi Forlì


Where it is noted with surprise - as in the case of the workers who voted on the right - that "social identity" and "political subjectivity" are split, it is said indirectly that the individual, not only does not coincide with the city - indeed, Tocqueville said, is his "worst enemy" - but is not identified totally with even its place in labor relations, with her being in an area, or only with its role in sex couples, in the family.

Lea Melandri


Reading "Little manual of the perfect union" of Dom Argiropulo I found at least three levels of involvement on my part, which, in my view, is a recognition of no small importance to a text deliberately, apparently, satirist and "light" .
For one thing, in fact, it seemed to me an essay which reflects the noble tradition of the "moralists" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a gnawing criticism of human misery.
It is also, of course, a reconstruction of the phenomenology of the apparatnik described in its little tricks and its contortions.
Finally, it is and what is more, I admit, I'm passionate description, in compensation, or social ties might be more appropriate to say the distorted social bond that underlies the formal organizations of the class.
Our young bureaucrat in fact will have to construct at least two systems of relations. One, if we want more and that is obvious, with the apparatus or equipment where it will make room, the other is with women and men who have, to some extent, "organized" in order to provide a Resistible Rise foundation in appearing the same to her.
And in this regard, I recall a brief conversation I had some decades ago, with Lea Melandri, known as a feminist magazine militant and editor of the interesting "L'Erba Voglio" who often attended meetings, meetings, meetings of movement to which I was there too.
Lea, smiling from person more mature and reflective of me and what was I suppose, I remarked that I was convinced there was some sort of radical autonomy of the proletariat by the existence, independence that was "polluted" by the intervention, which I conceived as an "outside" of both political and bureaucratic trade union conceived as forms of reproduction of a segment of the small parasitic bourgeoisie. It was absolutely clear that in her opinion, the character of subordination of the proletariat were not the product of external apparatniks intervention but a character of internal social relationship which bases itself in its class to be effective.
I admit that then I was not immediately convinced, despite the apparent man of firm beliefs are, but his observation, as others, hit me and competitions, some based on the experience of decades, to change some of my youthful convictions.
It is, I believe, should be clear that placed a firm distinction between the daily condition of female and male workers and their being, when developing struggles important group in the merger, subject to the collective plural.
In everyday life the worker is a citizen like the others, his political convictions, religious, cultural do not differ significantly from the rest of the population, its lifestyle and its expectations, except it has an unsatisfactory income does not differ from that of the upper classes. Not by chance there is he who defines modern society as post-bourgeoisie in both senses of the term, a non-polarized on the grounds of gods and a class society in which the upper classes are not distinguished by adherence to the traditional ethics of the bourgeoisie.

When acting collectively a number of issues arise in such a way that does not occur normally, develop links, language, sense of belonging, their particular perspectives. Obviously there are anthropological changes much less radical and irreversible ontological, on the contrary, it is true that the experience is not removed before the fight but reworked in the struggle itself.
The specific problem of our current experience is that in case the non-separation between the classes prevents a significant cumulation and sedimentation as it lives in the struggle with the effect that the conflicts that develop tend to be from specific problems and do not produce under stable aggregates.
From this, an important consequence for the same class of formal organizations, namely the relative impermeability of the equipment is to the movement because there is a kind of functional division of labor.
The devices "represent" their audience of reference with respect to the employees unions, of course, more and more like a collection of atomized individuals seeking the same protection apparatus basically de-politicized and reduced to a purely "technical" with the effect that the apparatus itself is criticized not only to the extent that meets the needs that are proposed and these requirements have already been formulated to be "resolved" or "can not be resolved technically.
Consequently, the "union" tends to turn into a sort of a provider of services and, like any good company, seeks to build a market protected by state subsidies and protection by requiring secure if not a monopoly union at least an oligopoly.
From this a specific mentality of the union official and a specific relationship with its stakeholders both government and industry.
From this, it should also be mentioned, the necessity and difficulty of testing forms of trade union action which fall outside this dialectic.

Cosimo Scarinzi

translation by Enrico Massetti