Between Marx and Polanyi: New labour mobilisations in the Italian crisis

Abstract

The current scenario in western countries is characterised by a crisis over the last thirty years of class conflict; by the mainly negative consequences of globalisation and of the transformations by production processes of the mobilising strength of work; by the cancellation of the relationship between labour and political representation; by the difficulties of traditional trade unionism; and by the emergence of the social movement unionism (SMU) paradigm. In this article, these phenomena are analysed from the point of view of the workers’ struggles against the closure of factories. The analysis concerns the mobilisation factors on which the struggle rests; the presence or absence, in the representations of workers, of references to class conflict; the major proximity of these mobilisations to the paradigm of traditional syndicalism or to the SMU paradigm; and the prevalence within them of the Marxist or the Polanyian root of conflict. This analysis is mainly based on an empirical study carried out in an engineering company in the province of Milan, Italy.