Yes, someone needs to interview Ferruccio Gambino about all this. There is some stuff in his interview for Futuro Anteriore - on contact with both Glaberman and Bookchin in the mid 60s.

I’ll see what I can dig out, although I have a feeling what I have is back over in England in an attic somewhere.

I don’t know the Irish scene very well at all, not getting here until 93. Of course, I know one or two of the Shinners and I know some of the folk in the Workers Solidarity Movement, who are the only people I’d have any time for here anyway; they’re a Platformist organization with some fairly substantial archives online somewhere or other. Most of the Solidarity stuff I picked up in London in the early 80s.

http://www.mnhs.org/localhistory/howto/index.htm

Changing gears a sec, googling on related themes (I think somehow I got onto the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and from there onto this) I found a talk by Glaberman, which includes the following great quote:

“[T]he one thing that I think is an absolute given: workers will resist, because work sucks. Until someone can tell me that work has become real nice under capitalism, whether in the United States or anywhere else, I say that is the fundamental basis of our theory and our practice. Work sucks, and sooner or later workers are going to resist it in whatever way they can. One of the things George Rawick said is, “Unions don’t organize workers. Workers organize unions.” Workers’ self-activity does create organizations create unions and other institutions, which may become bureaucratized and turn against the worker. Unions are not a secret plot designed to fool the workers. Workers organize them and then they get out of control.”

Glaberman’s my guy. Text is here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/1997/xx/workersreality.htm

http://www.phoblacht.net/lor1401051g.html
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002/msg03846.htm
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002/msg03868.htm

best,
Nate

*

For now, that exchange, in order…

Me:

I’d love to know more on the Potere Operaio and any other Italian influence on STO. Is that from stuff folks have said, or is it written down anywhere? I’d also be very curious to know what folk from PotOp made of the STO stuff.

Mike:

Hey Nate,

I don’t know a whole lot about the PO connection, but here’s what I’ve gathered (all from conversations with Noel, really, who seems to have been the most important connection to the European scene, as well as drawing some parallels from stuff in Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, which talks about the Italian interest in the LRBW): PO, apparently much more so than Lotta Continua, was very interested in the United States because they thought that it represented the most advanced situation in terms of capital and the struggle against it. It seems that they were very influenced by the black struggle (thus their interest in the LRBW) and through that encountered the STO approach to both workplace organizing and white supremacy. What Noel told me was that he drafted a “constitution” for a future organization modeled on the old IWW (STO apparently either didn’t know or didn’t care the the IWW was then in the process of a slight resurgence — largely due to the efforts of the Rosemonts in the mid-sixties, you are correct to recall; if you haven’t read “Dancin’ In the Streets,” you should); to quote from his preface to the 1980 edition of “Workplace Papers,”:

(I remember writing out a model constitution for such an organization, based on the expectation that it would shortly have chapters in all the major plants in Chicago and be widely recognized as a force in industry. Fortunately, that document has been lost.)

What Noel told me in January that didn’t make it into the written version of the anecdote, was that when he visited Italy in the late 1970’s, he came across a copy of this constitution in the personal collection of a former member of PO, whose name I think he didn’t tell me.

Noel and others have talked about a general trend in the international left to which STO belonged, which was essentially “anti-parliamentary” and “anti-imperialist,” although those terms probably meant different things to different groups. Among the groups, various people have listed PO, Big Flame in England, and Revolutionary Struggle in Ireland (which was sort of a kissing/fighting cousin of the group People’s Democracy, whose pamphlet you have). The only problem with this is that from what I understand independently of my conversations with ex-STO people, Potere Operaio ceased to exist in the early-mid 70’s. So I don’t know if STO maintained some connection to Autonomia Operiao, or to some other group, or simply to individuals who had previously been in PO. Hopefully I’ll learn more as I do this research.

And as for what PO made of the STO stuff they encountered, I honestly have no idea. Noel said that for STO and other similar groups in the States, a critique of white supremacy led to a critique of the trade unions, whereas for the Italians the critique of the trade unions led them to the critique of white supremacy (through contact with the LRBW, etc.). This is probably over-simplified, but a helpful encapsulation, I think.

Me:

I gotta go to bed in a minute here, so I need to be brief. Thanks a lot for this. I’m going to have to respond to this later at more length. In the meantime, here’s two pieces by Gambino you might be interested in, if you haven’t already seen them -

one on W.E.B. DuBois
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379/dubois.htm

and one on Malcolm X
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379/gambino.htm

and a piece by Steve Wright which briefly mentions an Italian use of black nationalism
http://www.arpnet.it/chaos/steve.htm

and

I wrote to Harry Cleaver re: this stuff. Here’s what he said -

“I don’t know anything specific about these particular contacts but there is no doubt that the Italians were reading and communicating with the Americans. For example, Bruno Cartosio was studying and writing about the
American autonomists, just as Montaldi had drawn on the Johnson-Forest material. In fact I learned the most about J-F sitting in Cartosio’s office in Milano reading his stack of original J-F materials. So I don’t doubt people in PO had their own stack. Rawick’s from Sundown to Sunup sold more copies in Italy than it did in the US, or so I’m told. Remember Tronti had argued early on that Italians should look to American history to see what capital had in store for Italy’s future.”

Blog as notebook, up to date again.

AK Press have brought out the book “For Workers’ Power” which is a compilation of Maurice Brinton’s writings. I’m fairly sure I have some old Solidarity pamphlets from the late 70s/early 80s knocking around. I got a Bewick edition of “Facing Reality” via Jim Monk ( http://homepage.mac.com/jimmonk/iblog/C265541295/E976316708/index.html ) who was a friend of Marty Glaberman.

Very quickly: 1) I’d love to do some readings on radical history stuff; I’ll think about stuff to read. 2) David Roediger was not in STO, although he did tell me a great anecdote about a disagreement he had with Noel during those years, which I’ll tell you someday. 3) I’d love to catelogue my pamphlets, but I don’t know when I’ll have the time; I am working on a bibliography of all STO publications, which I will post to my blog at some point. 4) I have copies of two of the Root and Branch pamphlets you provided links to (the translated piece on France in 68, and the “No Class Today, No Ruling Class Tomorrow” piece). The website you identified said more than I knew, which was pretty much just that Jeremy Brecher had been a member and that “Strike!” was initially an R&B project. 5) Yep, I probably sold you the copy of “Day Mournful…” in addition to having helped in its production back in 1997 or so. 6) I’d love to get copies of the Big Flame stuff you have. 7) Black and Red Detroit was Fredy and Lorraine Perlman and a handful of others, including some of the Fifth Estate people; I’ve been perusing “Having Little, Being Much” which is Fredy’s biography, and has some interesting information on that front (including some tentative connections between B&R and the LRBW). Okay, I have to run.

Solidarity,
Mike