Factory
Councils
Fanny By Gaslight
Fascism
Feuerbach, The Theses on
Fondazione Antonio Gramsci
Fortune-telling
Forza Italia
Fowler, Sir Norman
French Revolutionary Calendar, The
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Factory
Councils
In September 1919,
Antonio Gramsci wrote in Ordine Nuovo that "the formation
of a system of [factory] councils represents the first concrete assertion
of the communist revolution in Italy." The factory councils were
the Italian version of Russian Soviets, or participatory and political
democratic workers' organisations. When Gramsci wrote, tens of thousands
of Italian workers were organised in factory councils, and the movement
was expanding fast. The factory councils sought to provide a means for
raising workers' consciousness; they aimed to become the nucleus of
a revolutionary movement and to serve as the institutions of "dual
power"; and thus they would present in embryonic form the institutional
outlines of the future proletarian state.
In the pages of
the weekly paper Ordine Nuovo, in many ways the "collective
organiser" of the factory council movement, Gramsci theorised the
nature of the councils. He stressed the gulf that separated the councils
from mainstream trade unions: the unions were institutions brought into
existence by the capitalist system, and could not serve as agents to
transform that system; in particular they organised workers as wage-earners,
an identity which the socialist transformation would abolish. The factory
councils, by contrast, organised workers as producers, and organised
them in the factories, which would themselves stand at the heart of
the socialist order.
Although the factory
councils continued to spread throughout 1920, the political guts of
the movement were smashed by the Turin bosses when the metal-workers
were provoked into striking in April and an industry-wide lockout followed.
Although half a million Piedmont workers came out on an eleven-day general
strike in support of their comrades, the Italian Socialist Party declined
to support the strike and effectively prevented the militancy from spreading
throughout Italy. The strikers were isolated, and the conflict ended
with the emasculation of the political power of the city's factory councils.
This was the last great industrial action before the fascist takeover.
Gramsci considered
that the workers had been betrayed by the PSI, and the rancour over
the experience of April contributed to the split into Communist and
Socialist Parties at the Livorno Congress of January 1921. Other communists,
including Amadeo Bordiga, considered the Ordine Nuovo position
to be "gradualist", "economist", "syndicalist"
or "reformist", neglecting the importance of the workers'
party launching a direct attack on the political institutions of the
bourgeois state. It may be true that Gramsci's position did become more
"Leninist" in the period between the failure of the council
movement and his imprisonment. Yet he tended to worry, contra
Bordiga, that a Bolshevik-style rising without the support of the militant
working class organised in factory councils would lead to disaster as
the insurrectionists being crushed by the mercenaries of capitalism.
Although indissolubly
linked to Gramsci's political thought and to the biennio rosso
of 1919-20, factory councils have also been theorised in alternative
socialist formulations. In some versions of industrial democracy, the
difference between soviets and factory councils is precisely that the
latter lack a political function. Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer thought
that factory organisation could be modelled on a constitutional monarchy,
with the boss as the king and the factory council as the parliament,
before giving way to a version of "republicanism" where the
boss was discarded and the factory became entirely self-managing.
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Fanny
By Gaslight
[directed by Anthony
Asquith, UK, 1944, 108 mins, starring Phyllis Calvert, James Mason,
Stewart Granger, Margaretta Scott]
One of the Gainsborough
melodramas, this is notable for its explicit condemnation of the British
class system, via its contrasting of evil aristocrat Lord Manderstoke
(a wonderfully sneering James Mason) with lovable working-class characters
with names like Chunks (Wilfrid Lawson), and above all by the scene
in which aspiring politician Harry Somerford (Stewart Granger) denounces
the hierarchy that prevents Victorian society accepting his plans to
marry young barmaid Fanny (Phyllis Calvert). One would like to think
that his speech assuring her that the class system would be considered
laughable "a hundred years from now" was greeted with resounding
cheers on its original cinema run, but - sadly - there appears to be
no anecdotal evidence to support this.
The film also features
the spectacle of James Mason pushing Scottish brothel-keeper John Laurie
to his death under a horse-drawn cart, a scene that is impossible to
watch today without mentally overdubbing Laurie's immortal "we're
doomed!" catchphrase from Dad's Army.
If political historians
find the director's name vaguely familiar, it's because he was the son
of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, whose 1909 "People's
Budget" was controversially vetoed by the House of Lords, which
led to the Parliament Act of 1911 which curbed many of the ermine-wearers'
powers, especially over financial matters. It therefore seems that young
Anthony was carrying on a noble family tradition.
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Fascism
The Turtle's pages
contain a number of ruminations on this important subject. Dave
Renton's article on the success of the neo-fascist right in the
Austrian elections of 1999 is here,
and his book Fascism: Theory and Practice is reviewed here
by Chris Brooke, who has also contributed
a review of Ian Kershaw's recent biography of Hitler here.
Understanding fascist politics -- both in their 1930s and present-day
incarnations -- remains of extreme interest to the Community of the
Turtle, and we look forward to a variety of further contributions on
this important topic.
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Feuerbach,
The Theses on
1. The
chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach
included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only
in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous
human activity, practice, not subjectively.
Hence, in contradistinction
to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism
- which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought
objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective
activity. Hence, in Das Wesen des Christentums, he regards
the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while
practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation.
Hence, he does not grasp the significance of "revolutionary",
or "practical-critical", activity.
2. The
question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking
is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must
prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of
his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality
of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic
question.
3. The
materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and
upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that
it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must,
therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior
to society.
The coincidence
of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing
can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary
practice.
4. Feuerbach
starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation,
of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular
one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular
basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and
establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only
be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within the secular
basis.
The latter must,
therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and
revolutionized in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly
family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former
must then be destroyed in theory and in practice.
5. Feuerbach,
not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he
does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.
6. Feuerbach
resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human
essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its
reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.
Feuerbach, who
does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently
compelled: (1) To abstract from the historical process and to fix
the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose
an abstract - isolated - human individual. (2) Essence, therefore,
can be comprehended only as "genus", as an internal, dumb
generality which naturally unites the many individuals.
7. Feuerbach,
consequently, does not see that the "religious sentiment"
is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom
he analyses belongs to a particular form of society.
8. All
social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory
to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in
the comprehension of this practice.
9. The
highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism
which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the
contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.
10. The
standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint
of the new is human society, or social humanity.
11. The
philosophers have only interpreted the world, in a variety of ways;
but the point is to change it!
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Fondazione
Antonio Gramsci
The Gramsci Institute's
website tells us this:
"The Gramsci
Institute Foundation was founded in 1982, on the basis of the pre-existent
Gramsci Institute, born in 1949 with the aim to collect bibliographic
and archival materials concerning Antonio Gramsci's profile and thought,
the history of Italian labour and socialist movements, the history
of the Italian communist party. The Foundation carries out its activities
in the fields of historical and philosophical research, organisation
of conferences and symposia, publications and training. The Foundation
regularly publishes its Annali and the quarterly journals Studi
storici and Europa/Europe. The Foundation's Archives focus
on the records of the Italian Communist Party (1921-1991), collecting
also several other archival holdings related to the political, social
and cultural history of XXth century Italy. The Foundation's library
holds over 100,000 printed volumes, especially in the historical field,
and a collection of over 4,400 periodical publications .The Gramsci
Institute Foundation is open from Monday till Friday, from 9.00 am
till 5 pm, and closed on the second and third weeks of August. For
further informations contact us at info@gramsci.it."
The address of this
useful organisation is: Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, Via Portuense,
95 C - 00153 Roma, ITALY.
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Fortune-telling
Here are two extracts
from the article on this interesting subject from the Big Soviet
Encyclopaedia (3rd ed., English version, v.5 p.146):
"Among the
Slavs common methods of fortune-telling included dropping a ring into
water, pouring wax, and fortune-telling with a mirror."
"Fortune-telling
has as its basis a religious conception of a supernatural world that
governs nature and mankind, with which one can establish contact and
thereby learn the unknown. Fortune-telling is usually a tool of charlatans
who exploit people's ignorance and superstition."
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Forza
Italia
We are more or less
familiar with the idea of states taking over corporations. We are less
used to the idea that corporations may want to take over states. Yet
in 1994 this is roughly what happened in Italy, when the cruiseship
crooner turned commercial TV emperor Silvio Berlusconi transmogrified
his Fininvest company into the brand new rightist Forza Italia movement
and marched to victory in the Italian elections.
Forza Italia, which
translates roughly as "Go for it, Italy!", is a chant from
the football terraces, perhaps a suitable name for the owner of AC Milan's
party, a man who effortlessly mixes the languages of Catholicism, anti-communism
and football together in his speeches. It has also been called "the
last Stalinist party in Europe" owing to its notable lack of internal
party democracy. The party's electoral zenith was the 30% of the vote
that it scored in the 1994 elections to the European parliament, a result
which prompted the resignation of Achille Occhetto as party secretary
of the PDS.
But Forza Italia's
success in office was short-lived, owing to the extremely unstable governing
coalition. Berlusconi could deal with the Lega Nord in northern Italy
and with the (post?-)fascist Alleanza Nazionale in the south. But those
two parties -- one federalist, the other centralist -- were never comfortable
bedfellows, and the Lega's leader Umberto Bossi caused the coalition
to collapse and Berlusconi to resign in December 1994. A period of non-party
ruled ensued under Lamberto Dini's ministry, and the elections, when
they finally came in 1996, produced a workable majority for the centre-left,
under Romano Prodi of the PPI and then under Massimo D'Alema of the
PDS. Berlusconi, still under investigative clouds, remains the politician
most likely to hold the right together, but he is a much weaker figure
now than he was five years ago. Whether Forza Italia itself can outgrow
its founder and become a less unusual political outfit remains to be
seen.
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Fowler,
Sir Norman
Conservative politician,
MP for Sutton Coldfield and long-term front-bench survivor. Fowler served
as minister at the DHSS in the mid-1980s, where he was responsible for
the Government's (non-)response to the AIDS epidemic. In January 1990,
he resigned from the Thatcher govenrment claiming that he wanted "to
spend more time with his family". He must have decided that he
had spent enough time with them, for he came out of retirement not once
but twice: he returned in the first place to take over as John Major's
party chairman during the period when the Conservatives were quite unable
to win even the easiest by-election; and then again when he was appointed
as John Prescott's shadow after the 1997 election disaster, when little
William Hague's Conservatives were catastrophically short of experience
for the Tory front-bench team. He stood down from the front bench, again,
in June 1999, although we can doubtless expect his return. Sir Norman
Fowler's finest achievement, however, was to write the least interesting
memoir of the Thatcher years. Among the duller autobiographies (The
Whitelaw Memoirs, Kenneth Baker's
The Turbulent Years, Geoffrey Howe's Conflict of Loyalty,
etc.) Fowler's 1991 effort Ministers Decide was the worst of
the lot, and sold a pitifully small number of copies.
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French
Revolutionary Calendar, The
Visitors to The
Voice of the Turtle are now greeted with the presentation of the
date according to the inspirational French Revolutionary Calendar, and
it is the job of this Dictionary entry will say a little about the Calendar,
and about the Turtle's version of it, for the general enlightenment
of the internet community.
On 24 November 1793
(Gregorian) Convention of the French Republic decreed the use of a new
calendar. The epoch, or starting date of the new calendar, was
held to be 22 September 1792, which was both the Autumnal equinox and
the day after the formal abolition of the French Monarchy at the hands
of the same revolutionary Convention.
The first day of
the new year each year was to be the date of the Autumnal equinox, giving
a 365 or 366-day year, depending on when the equinox fell. The years
were usually listed as Roman numerals. In each year there were twelve
months, each 30 days long and named as follows: Vendémiaire,
Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse, Germinal,
Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor. Each month
contained three "décades", or ten-day weeks, whose
days were Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi,
Octidi, Nonidi and Decadi. The extra days at the end of the year were
the festivals or "Sansculottides", the "jour de la vertu",
"jour de la génie", "jour du travail", "jour
de la raison", "jour de la récompense" and when
a sixth extra day was called for to complete the cycle it was, appropriately
enough, the"jour de la révolution".
The Turtle's Calendar
is a slightly modified version of this original design. In 1795, the
Montagnard Gilbert Romme proposed a simple amendment to regularise the
pattern of leap years to forgo the need to calculate the precise date
of the equinox each year. According to his proposal, the rule for leap
years was to be a very simple one: Every fourth year is a leap year,
except every hundredth year, which is not a leap year, except every
four hundredth year which is a leap year. In addition to this, a three-day
correction was called for every four thousand years, and each four thousand-year
cycle was to be known as a "franciade millaire".
This amended calendar
was approved but never implemented by the Republic and, despite its
vastly superior accuracy over the Gregorian Calendar, lasted fewer than
a dozen years. Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the Calendar, returning
France to the Gregorian Calendar for the start of 1806. It flourished
again, briefly, during the Paris Commune, but has since been largely
ignored.
The Turtle's Calendar
is a version of Romme's modified French Revolutionary Calendar, and
the JavaScript code -- magnificently engineered by Steve
Pugh -- will serve up an accurate date for the next 3,800 years
or so, by which time the Calendar will be in such widespread use that
gadgets like ours will no longer be necessary.
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