Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The first development of workers' associations in Italy dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Friendly societies ( società di mutuo soccorso ) spread from Piedmont, where they began to be established since 1848, to the rest of the country after Unification in 1861, and from a few hundred they rose to more than 5,000 in 1885. They gathered in annual congresses (the first in Asti, 1853), mainly for the aim of mutual assistance (unemployment, health, disability, age benefits), and in many instances also included members of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In some cases mutual assistance was matched with salary and working hours claims; but the transformation of those associations into local unions ( leghe di resistenza ) is more an exception than a general rule and it is highly questionable to consider local unions of the late nineteenth century as instrumental in developing socialist ideology. From the 1880s, mutualism and resistance had two distinctive paths, although in some cases (e.g., printers) overlapping, confronting the rapid growth of conflict-oriented and workers-only organizations. In the countryside the agrarian crisis generated organized protest movements such as the la boje (“the pot is brewing”), that unified land workers from Rovigo, Mantova, and Cremona in 1884–6. In cities some industrial workers (printers, typesetters, and construction workers) ... log in or subscribe to read full text