Italy’s flat in Turin: Labour struggles and capital's response

Abstract

The central aim of this thesis is to examine the mutations of capital's strategy for labour in a single industry and historical context, namely in Italy's FIAT in Turin circa from 1950-1980.It is argued that the evolution of technology and managerial techniques in this context is not only the product of a linear "scientific" progress in these fields, but also of the dynamic interplay of class forces, and hence of a wide range of culturally and historically peculiar factors. Three main chronological periods are considered: the 1950s, with the strongly paternalistic attitudes of post- fascist Italian managerial policy in which an intensive exploitation of the national working class gave rise to the profits for mechanization at home and expansion abroad; the 1960s, characterized by the impact of immigration from the rural South of Italy to the large scale factories of the North and a growing political awareness and strength of the working class, and the 1970s, in which the problem of the "ungovernable" giant factory run according to the basic principles of scientific management is approached with new solutions based on modular systems of work organization, advanced technology, an absolute reduction in the labour force and plant relocation.