The chronicles of the time tell that, when the news of the storming of the Bastille reached the Palace of Versailles and was communicated to Louis XVI, who was busy repairing a clock, the king asked the dignitary who had informed him if it was a revolt; but received the following answer: "No, Sire. It is a revolution."
The Difference Between Revolt and Revolution
Le words are always a consequence of the facts they describe: the concept of revolt It refers to often improvised, headless events, to outbreaks of local and disorganised social protest, easily subject to repression by the established power that does not feel challenged by the rebels who do not have the strategic intelligence necessary to start a revolution and to carry out its objectives of palingenesis. But revolutions are never an act of rupture that occurs once and for all; they are paths that require clarity of political direction, but which often crumple up on themselves if they fail to go beyond the coup with which they begin. Then, some of his collaborators will surely have explained to Landini – after reading what he wrote in Il Foglio Dario DiVico, one of the few journalists still convinced that deal with Italian trade unions does not mean wasting time – which from a purely lexical point of view cannot but be noted as the incitement to “social revolt" has placed itself outside the classical tradition of the CGIL, careful in its protest formulas to always remain within the perimeter of structured democracy.
Landini and the language of “social revolt”
“Social revolt” unmistakably, however, has the flavour of “flaccid protest, of insurrection“. Never. So the father/master of the Cgil has decided to cross the Rubicon of a constitutional order inspired by the classic separation of powers of representative democracy. However, Landini still has some reservations; he does not go so far as to affirm that he would be able to transform the deaf and gray hall of Parliament into a bivouac to allow the Leagues of pensioners to consume the packed lunch received during the trip; he is careful not to evoke the intention of opening the Chamber as if it were a can of tuna; he avoids denouncing the expenses for the garrisons of democracy as if they were a useless waste (all statements repeated many times - and not adequately countered - in the unfortunate years for the normal "civil life" of this poor country), but he does not hesitate to represent a "coup" vision of the organization of power.
Landini's view on the government's legitimacy
For Landini the government and majority cannot operate legitimately because – as a consequence of abstentionism – do not express the majority of those entitled to vote, but only a minority that is not allowed to decide for everyone. Nobody denies that there is a serious crisis of participation in the democratic physiology of the country, but theproposed alternative from Landini – a democracy of the streets as an alternative to that of representative institutions – it has no legal, political or ethical basis. Above all, it is denied by the facts, because there is no longer a working class that expresses a general will and in any case it would not recognize itself in the junkyard alliance set up by Maurizio Landini and Pierluigi Bombardieri. And it is not just a question of numbers relating to workers and pensioners registered (in any case more or less small minorities) to the two barricading confederations, compared to the totals. Once upon a time it was said that a strike is legitimized by its success. But how should repeated and high-sounding actions of abstention from work that now regularly fail except for the consequences of the announcement effect be judged?
The November 29 Strike: A Testing Ground for “Social Revolt”
In a few days, on November 29, we will be able to assess the level of social revolt present in a strike proclamation that can be traced back to a practice of ordinary madness. It is difficult to interpret what lies behind the inappropriate chatter of union leaders, if not the evident contempt for their institutional interlocutor: a contempt that can be intercepted from the cheap moralism with which the union leaders present their arguments. The government is not judged for what it has done or is doing but for what it is, for its political nature whose legitimacy is even denied. Indeed, the more the field is freed from arguments of merit, typical of a union/government confrontation, the more the real reason for the strike and the “creative” mobilization rises up in its own light, takes on the palingenetic burden of social revolt and removes any hypothetical misunderstanding regarding a possible modus vivendi that leads to a truce and the possibility of comparing the objective data present in a particular historical phase of the life of an organized community. It is in these moments that the recourse to arrogance becomes the Valtellina redoubt of those who have nothing more to say.
