On the 1st of septmber in 1920, the first of many worker occupations and seizures of factories in Italy began, a movement that more than half a million workers participated in.
During the month of September 1920, a widespread occupation of Italian factories by their workers took place. Although originating in the auto factories, steel mills, and machine tool plants of the metal sector, the occupation/revolt spread to cotton mills and hosiery firms, lignite mines, tire factories, breweries and distilleries, and steamships and warehouses in port towns. At its height, more than 600,000 workers were involved.
The worker rebellion was the culmination of years of labor strife - weeks before the occupations, the Italian Federation of Metallurgical Workers (FIOM), the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), and the General Confederation of Labor (CGL) called for "obstructionism" (essentially, a work slowdown) to be applied in all the engineering factories and shipyards starting on August 21st.
By the 24th, production at the Romeo factory in Milan had come to a complete standstill. A week later, production at the FIAT-Centro plant was reduced by 60%. On the morning of the 30th, the 2000 workers of the Romeo plant found the gates locked and the factory surrounded by troops. The FIOM responded by calling on its members to occupy the 300 engineering factories in Milan. Historian Lynn Williams describes what happened next:
"Between the 1st and 4th of September metal workers occupied factories throughout the Italian peninsula...the occupations rolled forward not only in the industrial heartland around Milan, Turin and Genoa but in Rome, Florence, Naples and Palermo, in a forest of red and black flags and a fanfare of workers bands...Within three days 400,000 workers were in occupation. As the movement spread to other sectors, the total rose to over half a million."
Although some radical elements within the workers' movement (Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Syndicalist Union) called for revolution, referring to the occupations as "an expropriating general strike" and demanding total socialization of the economy, more moderate forces (the CGL) prevailed, using the pressure of the rebellion to cut a deal with employers, granting better conditions to the workers on the condition of returning to work.
The Italian Factory Occupations of 1920
Italy September 1920: The Occupation of the Factories: The Lost Revolution 
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
- 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⭐️ August Movie Nominations ⭐️
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
I know like I seem like I have no critiques of the soviets or china but fine I'm feeling doomer today so here I go
(This is a rant pieced together with information I've learned so far, but it also isn't my area of focus, take with some grains of salt and if you have questions or critiques I would love to hear them. Its a white girl looking from afar too so literally discounting my opinion is completely fine. )
Okay to start Sino-Soviet Split is the dumbest fucking thing ever. Us Communists are our own worst enemy sometimes.
China was in the right at first, but then chose to align with the fucking US, fuck you idiots. China also trained Muslim militants for the US pressure on soviets, and deservedly got clapped back with the newly radicalized terrorists in Xinjiang that they had trained. You get what you fucking deserve Jesus Christ. You wouldn't have all this terrorist shit if you hadn't helped train them.
Xi is the only okay leader since mao, deng was almost okay, but the liberalization of the PRC caused the deep poverty in the first place, and also unnecessarily broke the autonomous communes that worked within the PRC. Deng knew that something needed to be done about the growing gap of industrial prowess, and acted accordingly. He did allow that gap to be reached. Good on him. His policies worked economically. Politically they were disastrous. The CPC became very corrupt (again thank you Xi please purge more) and the liberalization meant that worker rights were completely tarnished. It was almost akin to Glasnost and Perestroika, except deliberate and actually knew what they were doing (gorbachev, you were a loser). China is greater now, and they've completed many wondrous achievements I can wholeheartedly applaud. They have improved in many sectors, and are now only working with the US in only an economic way (and even then its just business, not anything special). They are a source of economic stability around the globe, especially to non US aligned powers.
But some criticisms I've seen are very fair. They have a pathetic internationalism that they've only recently attempted at reigniting. Even then they're still siding militarily against excellent partisan movements in the Philippines, India, Wa State, and helped put down the literal revolution in Nepal! One of the first communist revolutions in decades and China chose to fuck it up. There is some things going to the DPRK, but haven't done nearly enough to count as sticking up for them. They've decided to put economics above all in their economic dealings. China hasn't made any movements to put their necks out for the various communist parties around the world that I've seen. Their intelligence networks is mainly focused on maintaining internal cohesion. They haven't inspired any socialist economic changes in the world around them. Internally their liberalism continues to cause massive problems, even though there is clear sign of them clamping down on it. They've made statements critiquing their new growing nationalism among the populace (a trend plain as day that anyone can see), but I'd like to see actions taken against reactionary tendencies. God the Cultural Revolution fucked up but that doesn't mean keeping many antiquated views, there is a lot of clear misogyny among the male populace. Traditional gender roles are broken more often in china, but not nearly good enough.
The Party itself has gotten better, but there's been still a whole lot of libshit from it. Xi himself has made some bad comments. Although it does seem to be just courting capital, it still makes me nervous. Every time I see them do something good like killing billionaires, antiliberalism, little efforts of internationalism, and nationalization, its soured by them doing something very liberal in one of the other sectors.
BRICS is only good in the way it just allows for a rival bloc of capital rises against the American one, otherwise its just a loose economic federation, where the other countries are liberal shitholes and fascist. beggars can't be choosers, yeah, but I guarantee if a communist revolution occurred in either Russia or India, China would step in on the side of the liberal government, not that of the communists. South Africa, Brazil on the other hand are far enough that they may just watch and see.
Even as a trans woman, I'm not expecting perfection, its been less than a hundred years since they were a backwater ripped up by warlords and bombed by the Japanese. Their LGBTQ policies don't seem to be persecution, but not protection either. Although there is a large movement within the party itself to do better in this effort, only time will tell. Cuba just got some of the best protections on this planet, so I'm hopeful.
Everything else is of little concern to me. Taiwan? They know what they're doing. Separatist movements? They're fake and I don't care. Hong Kong is an anglo colony still suffering from british ideology. Tibet lovers for some reason have the need to defend serf enslavement. Xinjiang dudes are supporting right wing religious terrorists.
Soviets were wrong side of the split the whole time no matter what, and were being torn apart on the inside by their own revisionism. BUT AT LEAST THEY NEVER SIDED WITH THE US. But Andrapov and that one stalinist lady were the last smart people in soviet high command. God the soviets should have decentralized a bit, there was a perfect transition from Stalin to a well read marxist that had plans for thawing stalin's lionization (which stalin himself critiqued at numerous points). Cuba perfected the Soviet democratic model I fully believe reforms like that could have allowed for a healthy amount of cycling through the supreme soviet. Everything else had a beautiful diversity of soviet citizens, but the main dudes were mostly old men from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and fuckin Uzbekistan. Stalin was unironically the most diverse leader of the USSR.
Yes I overall approve of Stalin and what he did at the time he was in, although I felt he should have either stepped down earlier. That or purged the rising revisionist sect. Although he probably would have if he had been further aware of it. The man should have died peacefully in a dacha, not from a stress induced stroke in his office.
Then fucking khruschev comes in to ruin everything. His plans backfired, he destabilized the soviet union, and ruined the trust of the soviet people after using troops to put down numerous pro-stalin protests. He was a bombastic fool in that manner, a smart fool, but a fool all the same. An opportunist.
His Virgin Lands campaign was all right, but I don't know much about it to comment on it so for now that's in his favor. Almost everything else he did that was good were not special things that no other soviet leader could have done.
What pisses me off the most was the weird claim to build communism in ten years. Khrushchev are you a fucking moron?! COMMUNISM IN 10 YEARS?! IN THE 1960S?! Whats next, Jesus will descend from the heavens and build a world commune by 20 years? Jesus fucking Christ. Yes the stalin era made mistakes that needed rectification, but why in the worst way possible? Also why the fuck were you meddling so much with the economies of other socialist republics? Let them do their fucking thing! Hoxha was a zealous annoying nerd but he was completely right on this topic. These economies might have been independent enough to be self sustaining and they wouldn't have been so weak to the subversion they were subjected to. As well as adding redundant competition within the soviet economy that drained it until the fall in 91. De-Collectivisation efforts were fucking stupid you hack, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! Just made the system stupid. God the man let his political beef with Stalin go personal. It made the bureaucrats become inflated and stagnate the centralized economy. Everything he did set up the future failure of the soviets. It could have been only saved by Andropov's reforms at that point.
Also you included Zhukov in your little coup just to fuck him over later, damn you. Beria seems to have deserved it, but I've heard conflicting opinions.
Dude you are Ukrainian why are you pushing for Russiafication? Why? Everyone's doing fine with their own scripts? Just respect their independent cultures and we wouldn't have to deal with the baltic nazis bitching about this shit all the time.
The Hungary intervention was fine good on him. Space tech stuff was excellent, but that was the work of soviet scientists, working from a framework set up before the shit reforms.
Housing program would have been done by literally any other leader, housing was a huge issue, and I attribute any efforts like that in any country more to the work of the architects and planners than the leader.
FUCKING BREZHNEV YOU WERE THE FUCKING WORST AHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The USSR was basically doomed the moment you stepped into office. You were just khruschev, but stupid and a fool. Khruschev was an opportunist, but at least he was a Communist opportunist! How annoying, you undid some things, but in the worst way. You made things worse and stagnated it. You were a corrupt stooge I hate you! (although compared to any other western leader he was cool).
BUT NO ONE WAS AS BAD AS THAT TRAITOR YELTSIN! I WOULD RATHER HAVE A DOZEN KHRUSCHEVS AND BREZHNEVS BESIDES YOU, YOU BASTARD!
okay thats a bit much, I would have written more professionally if I had known how long this would be.
uhhhh, want a drink 🍹 ?
you're right comrade
In Russia, maybe. In India, a communist Government would be more willing to solve the border dispute with China.
and I think Brezhnev's biggest flaw was not doing enough to stop decline. There is a reason why Russians see him positively because despite stagnation USSR had achieved high living standards under him, not because of his actions but general development.
It really depends on if China is willing to gamble on exchanging someone they know for an unknown. China doesn't seem to take gambles in foreign policy. I doubt even more that they would invade india in any such situation, they'd be a peacekeeping force at most.
Perhaps if NATO or just the US tried to intervene. It also depends on how large the revolution is, if its just the southern half, they may devote resources to help india "calm the riots". If its larger... China would have to choose to break with their "real politik" method for the first time in decades, and side with Internationalism. Such a hypothetical seems too unlikely in my view though.