Giacomo Gabbuti is a postdoctoral researcher of economic history at the Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies, Pisa. He is part of the ex-GKN Reindustrialization Group.
For two years, the GKN auto parts plant in Florence, Italy, has been occupied by laid-off workers. It’s the longest factory occupation in Italian history — and its retooling for green production shows how workers can reorganize the economy while saving jobs.
The battle against layoffs at Florence’s GKN auto parts plant may seem like a dispute from a past era. Yet the workers’ plan for the green reconversion of the factory shows how labor can point the way to the future.
In last night’s debate, Joe Biden claimed that Italy shows public health care doesn’t help the response to coronavirus. But the Italian health service is providing a vital defense against mass infection — ensuring that any ill person can get proper treatment, regardless of their ability to pay.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Italy’s Serie A was the world’s leading football league. But as financial interests asset-strip once-great clubs and the terraces become home to harshening racist abuse, Italian football no longer looks like such a “beautiful game.”
Swedish social democracy is often thought of as somehow eternal — the fruit of a solidaristic national culture, or even its historic homogeneity. But Sweden used to be just as unequal as other European countries — and making social democracy “normal” took a fight against what was once considered traditional.
Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was lifted to power by the mass mobilization of the Brazilian middle classes. But it wouldn’t have been possible without years of failed austerity policies.