We want everything
A commentary to Pun Ngai’s ‘The new Chinese working class in struggle
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7745182 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A E Pia (0000-0002-4061-7369, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 331-335 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Dialectical Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0304-4092 • E-ISSN: 1573-0786 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10624-019-09567-0 |
| OpenAlex | W2972857085 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
Vogliamo Tutto (We Want Everything), the working-class novel symbol of the Italian autonomist Marxism of the 70s, is finally available in Chinese. 1 Penned by Nanni Balestrini (2016 [1971]), an experimental poet linked to the leftist literary movement Neoavanguardia, the novel describes a wave of wildcat strikes and protests in the Turin car factory of FIAT. The book is based on interviews Balestrini conducted between 1968 and 1970 with a worker from Southern Italy, Alfonso Natella, who, like the majority of the hundred thousand migrant workers who made industrialisation possible in post-war northern Italy, had been directly involved in a long season of violent labour unrest commonly known in Italy as the Autunno Caldo (Hot Autumn). At one point in the book, we see Natella's alter ego taking part to a factory sit-in. What did the FIAT workers want to achieve by direct action and the prolonged withdrawal of their labour? It's not fair, living this shitty life, the workers said in meetings, in groups at the gates. All the stuff, all the wealth that we make is ours. Enough. We can't stand it anymore, we can't just be stuff too, goods to be sold. Vogliamo tutto -We want everything. All the wealth, all the power, and no work. What does work mean to us. They'd had it up to here, they wanted to fight not because of work, not because the boss is bad, but because the boss and work exist. In a word, the desire for power started to grow. It started for everyone, for workers with three or four children, unmarried workers, workers who had kids to put through school, workers who didn't have their own apartment. All our unbounded needs came out in concrete aims during the meetings. So, the struggle wasn't just a struggle in the factory. Because Fiat has one hundred and fifty thousand workers. It was a huge struggle not just because it involved this great mass of workers
Art · Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Literature · Political science · Politics · Pun · Sociology · Working class · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |