In September 1920, the workers in Turin took over the factories. This had been coming for months. The workers had set up factory councils. A council was a group the workers elected. The council ran the work on the shop floor. It did not just ask for better pay. It ran the machines. It kept order. It made the choices. These councils spread across the north of Italy in 1919 and 1920. Turin was the home of Fiat. It had big factories and many workers who were organized. There the councils grew into more than a way to organize labor. The workers were living a new kind of society inside the old one.
Picture a Tuesday in September at a Fiat plant in Turin. The bosses did not come in. No one asked them to. The workers who got there at six ran the shift themselves. The elected workers made the schedule. They handed out the supplies. They settled fights on the floor. The work got done the same as before. But the chain of command was different. A worker who had made the same cut for ten years now also helped choose who ran each machine and when. It was plain and amazing at once. Plain, because the work was the same. Amazing, because until this week, that worker was told their only job was to do what they were told.
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In September 1920, the workers of Turin occupied the factories.
It had been building for months. The factory councils — elected bodies governing production from the shop floor, not just negotiating wages but running the machinery, maintaining discipline, making decisions — had spread through the industrial north of Italy through 1919 and into 1920. In Turin, the city of Fiat, of large-scale industrial production, of a concentrated and organized working class, the councils had become something more than labor organization. They were practicing a different kind of society inside the existing one.
Picture a Tuesday morning in September, a Fiat plant in Turin. The managers haven't come in — they weren't invited. The workers who arrived at six are running the shift themselves: the council's elected delegates handling scheduling, materials allocation, the disputes that arise between workers on a factory floor. The output is the same. The hierarchy is different. A machinist who has been making the same cut for ten years is now also helping decide who works which machine and when. It is ordinary and extraordinary simultaneously — ordinary because the actual work is the same, extraordinary because the person doing it has been classified, until this week, as someone whose only job was to do what they were told.
Then it fell apart. The leaders of the Italian Socialist Party were scared of where this was going. They would not spread the action across the country. The factory owners waited. In two years, Benito Mussolini was in power. In four years, a young man was arrested. His name was Antonio Gramsci. He was from Sardinia. He had been a journalist and a leader of the Communist Party.
He was thirty-five years old. Mussolini's lawyer told the court they had to stop this brain from working for twenty years.
Here is what happened instead. The prison let him have books and notebooks. The guards checked what he wrote. Even so, he wrote almost three thousand pages over the next six years. Then his health gave out and he stopped. He died in 1937, six days after they let him out. Eleven years in prison had wrecked his body. He was forty-six.
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Then it collapsed. The Italian Socialist Party leadership, afraid of where it was going, refused to extend the action nationally. The industrialists waited. Within two years, Benito Mussolini was in power. Within four, a young Sardinian journalist and Communist Party leader named Antonio Gramsci was arrested.
He was thirty-five years old. Mussolini's prosecutor told the court: we must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years.
What happened instead is that the brain, supplied with books and exercise notebooks under prison censorship, produced nearly three thousand pages of analysis over the next six years — before his health failed and the writing stopped. He died in 1937, six days after his conditional release, his body destroyed by eleven years of confinement. He was forty-six.
Since Turin, he had been trying to answer one question. It was not a far-off idea. It was urgent and close to him: why did the councils fail?
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The question he had been trying to answer since Turin was not abstract. It was urgent and personal: why did the councils fail?
Gramsci came to the University of Turin in 1911. He had won a scholarship. Turin was the home of Fiat. It was full of steel and loud machines and workers. They were nothing like the farmers of Sardinia, where he grew up. In one term, in one city, he found Marx and he found factory workers at the same time. It was as if the idea and the people it was about had been waiting for each other. By 1919 he was at the heart of the council movement. He wrote about it as it happened in a journal called L'Ordine Nuovo. He ran that journal. He said the councils were the first form of a new society.
Then the takeovers ended. Mussolini rose. The left had looked so strong, and it fell apart into its own opposite. The same workers who had taken over the factories now went to Blackshirt rallies. Gramsci was left with a question he could not let go. The conditions for change had been there. The way to organize had been there. The moment had been there. Why did the ground not hold?
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Gramsci arrived at the University of Turin in 1911 on a scholarship — into the city of Fiat, of steel and industrial noise and a working class that was nothing like the Sardinian peasants he had grown up among. He discovered Marx and the industrial proletariat in the same semester, in the same city, as though the theory and its subject had been waiting for each other. By 1919 he was at the center of the council movement, theorizing it in real time in L'Ordine Nuovo, the journal he edited, arguing that the councils were the embryonic institutions of a new society.
When the occupations ended, when Mussolini rose, when the left that had seemed so powerful collapsed into its opposite — the same workers who had occupied factories now joining Blackshirt rallies — Gramsci was left with a question that refused release. The material conditions for change had been there. The organizational capacity had been there. The moment had been there. Why had the terrain not held?
Think of a time you heard a new idea. Maybe it was about how housing could work. Maybe it was about a new way to run a workplace. Your first thought was that's not realistic. You thought this before you had really thought about it at all. It was not a reason. It was a reflex. That kind of brush-off does not feel like a choice. It does not feel like anything. It just feels like knowing.
That reflex has a past. It was built. The schools taught you what counts as common sense. The places of daily life shaped how you first saw the world. No one planned this together. These places just kept working as normal. They kept making the same beliefs. Those beliefs piled up. They became the leftover of old thinking that tells you what is natural before you get to choose.
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Think about a moment when you encountered an idea — maybe about how housing could work, or how a workplace could be organized differently — and your immediate response was that's not realistic, before you'd actually thought about whether it was. Not an argument. A reflex. The kind of dismissal that doesn't feel like a decision because it doesn't feel like anything at all. It just feels like knowing.
That reflex has a history. It was built — in the schools that taught you what counts as common sense, in the institutions of daily life that organized your first understanding of how the world works. None of these conspired. They only kept functioning normally, kept producing the same assumptions, and those assumptions accumulated as the sediment of prior thought that tells you what's natural before you've been asked to decide.
Gramsci had a word for how this works: hegemony. It is not force. It is the shaping of the ground that force stands on, done ahead of time. The group in power does not hold power only through the army and the police and the prison. It holds power by making its view of the world feel like plain common sense to everyone. It shapes what feels realistic. It shapes what feels extreme. It shapes what a sensible person thinks. You can see force. Because you can see it, you can fight it. You cannot see hegemony. It works through the school, the church, the newspaper, the work group, and the family. It does not order these places around. It only needs them to keep working as normal. They keep making the same beliefs. In time, those beliefs are the air everyone breathes.
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Gramsci had a word for how this works: hegemony. Not force, but the prior production of the terrain on which force operates. The ruling group maintains power not only through the army and the police and the prison. It maintains it by making its worldview everyone's common sense — by shaping what feels realistic, what feels extreme, what a reasonable person thinks. Force is visible. You can resist force because you can see it. Hegemony isn't. It works through the school, the church, the newspaper, the professional association, the family form — not commanding these institutions but needing only them to keep operating normally, producing the same assumptions, until those assumptions are the air everyone breathes.
The state is like armor. It is the force that can be used. Civil society is the agreement of the people. That agreement means the armor is not needed most of the time.
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The state is the armor. Civil society is the consent that makes the armor unnecessary most of the time.
The councils built something amazing inside the factories. They were right. Everything about them was right. Workers could run the work. The bosses on top were not needed. They had shown it could be done.
And still they fell. Not because they were wrong. Because they were alone. All around them stood the churches, the schools, the newspapers, and the ways of daily life. That ground was built on beliefs that made the councils look like a brief mistake, not the start of something new. When the factory moment passed, the old ground took over again. The workers had won the factories. But they had built nothing in the ground around the factories.
This was the failure. Not a failure of will or planning or courage. A failure of ground. It is the same failure the main left has kept making for a hundred years. They win the state, or the party, or the union, or the moment. Then they find that the ground of civil society builds the old order back up inside the new forms. The armor falls. The agreement of the people builds it again.
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The councils had built something extraordinary inside the factories. They were right — everything about them was right. Workers could govern production. The hierarchy was unnecessary. The demonstration had been made.
And still they fell. Not because they were wrong but because they were isolated. Around them, in the churches and the schools and the newspapers and the forms of daily life, the terrain was organized around assumptions that made the councils seem like a temporary aberration rather than the beginning of something. When the industrial moment passed, the terrain reasserted itself. They had won the factories and built nothing in the ground that surrounds factories.
This was the failure. Not of will or organization or courage. Of territory. And it is the specific failure that the dominant left tradition has kept repeating across a century — winning the state, or the party, or the union, or the moment, and then finding that the terrain of civil society reconstitutes the old order under the new institutional forms. The armor falls. The consent rebuilds it.
The war of maneuver is the head-on attack. You seize state power. You wait for the big moment. You believe that once you hold the state, you can change society from the top. The war of position is the other way. It is slow, patient work in the ground around every place where power is held. You build new kinds of groups. You build a new common sense. You build people from the community who can turn what they live through into clear ideas. Bit by bit, you build the beliefs that make a different world feel normal, not like a dream. Then, when the old order hits a crisis, the energy has somewhere to go. Something is already built to fill the opening.
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The war of maneuver is the frontal assault — the seizure of state power, the revolutionary moment, the assumption that once you hold the state you can transform society from above. The war of position is the alternative: patient, long-term work in the territory that surrounds every site of concentrated power. Building the counter-institutions, the alternative common sense, the organic intellectuals who can translate popular experience into political coherence. Building, gradually, the assumptions that make a different world feel ordinary rather than utopian — so that when the crisis of the old order arrives, there is somewhere for the energy to go, something already built that the opening can fill.
The commons is not just another way to run the economy. It is a hegemonic project.
It is the slow, patient work of building groups that live by different beliefs. They practice a different common sense. In time it becomes the ground the next generation stands on. It is not a plan. It is not a platform. It is a practice. You do it over and over. In time it settles into what feels natural. It settles into what a sensible person takes for granted. It settles into what the next generation grows up thinking is just the way things are.
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The commons isn't just an economic alternative. It's a hegemonic project.
It's the slow, patient work of building institutions that embody different assumptions — that practice a different common sense until it becomes the terrain the next generation stands on. Not a program. Not a platform. A practice, repeated until it sediments into what feels natural, what a reasonable person assumes, what the next generation inherits as the way things are.
I do not want to use the word failed. The long, slow fight does not end when you lose one spot. It keeps going in the next way you can find.
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I want to be careful about the word failed. The war of position doesn't end when a specific position is lost. It continues in the next form available.
The restaurant was open for five years. Five years is about how long a restaurant usually lasts. Stopping is not the same as failing. We could have kept going with the money side. But only if we took the deal that others take. That deal is long hours and little pay. You can never leave. You follow the rules but give up real pay. The real pay is status. It is feeling like you matter in the room. We did not want that deal. So we stopped. That is not the same as failing.
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The restaurant ran for five years. Five years is an average lifespan for a restaurant. Not being able to continue and failing are different things. We could have continued indefinitely, financially, if we had been willing to accept the terms others accept: long hours for little pay, never being able to leave, procedural autonomy in exchange for the real compensation, which is status. Social capital. The sense of being someone in a room. We weren't willing to accept those terms, and so we stopped. That's a different story than failure.
What we left behind is harder to count. A good story. Seeds spread around. Many of our regulars left Norfolk. The city does not hold on to the people who pick it. Some came back years later. They said they could not find anything like what we built. Not in Seattle. Not in DC. As far as I know, none of them started their own.
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What we left behind is harder to measure. A good story. Scattered seeds. Many of our regulars left Norfolk — the city has a way of not holding the people who are choosing to be there. Some of them came back years later and said they couldn't find anything like what we'd built, not in Seattle, not in DC. As far as I know, none of them started their own.
That is the long, slow fight in its true form. It is not the spot you keep. It is the spot you build and then must leave. The real question is what it does for the people who passed through it. Gramsci built his spot in prison. He wrote notebooks. They were snuck out bit by bit. He never saw what came of them. The councils were gone. The old ways had taken back the ground. He built it anyway, in the form he had. That form was sentences. The seeds spread. You do not always get to see what they grow into.
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That's the war of position in its honest form. Not the position you hold — the position you build and then have to leave, and the question of what it does in the hands of the people who passed through it. Gramsci built his position in prison notebooks smuggled out in sections. He never saw what they did. The councils were gone. The terrain had reasserted itself. He built it anyway, in the form available to him, which was sentences. The seeds scatter. You don't always get to see what they become.
Gramsci would know everything in Part II of this book.
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Gramsci would recognize everything in this book's Part II.
Think of the Valencia Water Tribunal. For a thousand years it has held shared sense about how to share water. That sense grew from doing it, not from books. Many rulers tried to take it over or swap it out. It lived through them all. People have done it so long that it is now the only way that feels real in the huerta.
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The Valencia Water Tribunal: a thousand years of common sense about how water is governed, accumulated in practice, surviving every regime that has tried to absorb or replace it — the embodiment of an assumption so long practiced it has become the only thing that feels real in the huerta.
Picture Arizmendi on his bike in the Basque mountains. He did not ask the state for help. He started a school. He built up what the community could do, from the inside. This set up the chance for five of his old students to start a co-op in 1956. He was doing the long, slow fight long before anyone had a name for it.
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Arizmendi on his bike in the Basque mountains, not petitioning the state but starting a school, building the institutional capacity of a community from the inside, creating the conditions under which five former students could found a cooperative in 1956. He was doing war-of-position work decades before anyone called it that.
Look at the Zapatista self-run communities, now thirty years in. They have ways to govern. They have schools in native languages. They have health clinics. They have shared businesses. This is the new society, built on the land the old one left behind. They have not taken over the state. They have built something that lasts longer than the state around them.
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The Zapatista autonomous communities, thirty years in: governance structures, schools in indigenous languages, health clinics, cooperative enterprises — the new society built in the territory the old one abandoned. They have not taken state power. They have built something more durable than the state that surrounds them.
A community land trust takes housing out of the buy-and-sell market for good. That is a spot won. It is not a fix to the market. It is a piece of ground set up under new rules. It makes new shared sense about what housing is for. So does every worker co-op. So does every mutual aid group that lives on past the crisis that started it. These are spots won in the long, slow fight. They add up over many years. They build the ground where a different politics can grow. These groups are not waiting for the big change. They are the big change. It is happening at the speed that real, lasting change happens.
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Every community land trust that removes housing from the speculative market permanently — a position won. Not a reform of the market. A piece of terrain reorganized under different assumptions, producing different common sense about what housing is for. Every worker cooperative. Every mutual aid network that outlasts the crisis that created it. These are positions in the war of position, accumulated across decades, building the terrain on which a different politics becomes possible.
These are not waiting for the revolution. They are the revolution, happening at the speed that permanent change actually happens.
Gramsci gave the plan a name. But he did not name the group that would do it. That is the group of people who live and work in the space once they win it. They run it together. They do not turn into a political party. They keep the space without putting all the power in one place.
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Gramsci named the strategy. He didn't quite name the subject — the collective form that inhabits the terrain once it's been won, that governs without becoming a party, that holds the position without centralizing the power.
There is one line in the Prison Notebooks that readers have kept in mind for ninety years. It says: the crisis is this. The old way is dying. The new way cannot yet be born. In this in-between time, many sick signs show up.
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There is a sentence in the Prison Notebooks that has stayed with readers for ninety years: The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Gramsci was writing about fascism in Italy. We are in such an in-between time now. The old liberal order is breaking. It is breaking under the weight of two things: harm to nature, and the failure of democracy. The new way is not yet born. The sick signs show up in the news every day.
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He was writing about Italian fascism. We are in an interregnum now — the old liberal order cracking under the weight of ecological crisis and democratic failure, the new not yet born, the morbid symptoms visible in every news cycle.
It is spring, and there is so much pollen that I can barely breathe. American tree workers usually plant only male trees. They do this because no one wants to clean up fruit. Male trees make lots of pollen. There is no place in the city where I can be outside and not hear lawnmowers.
Gas costs four dollars a gallon. I want it to cost ten dollars. And I know what that would mean. In some neighborhoods, people could not pay for it. They would die of thirst before the people with lawns stop watering their grass.
This in-between time is not just an idea. It is the price we pay to keep the old order going. We keep it going even though it goes against what is really happening.
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It's springtime and I'm drowning in pollen. Standard American arborist practice plants only male trees because no one wants to maintain fruit. There is nowhere in the city limits where I can be outdoors and not hear lawnmowers. Gas is four dollars a gallon and I want it to hit ten — and I know exactly what that means, that there will be neighborhoods where people can't afford it and die of dehydration before the people with lawns stop watering them. The interregnum is not an abstraction. It is what it costs to maintain the old order against the logic of what's actually happening.
But the great crested flycatchers are courting up in the treetops. A baby mockingbird is begging for food in the church bushes down the street. Local nature gardeners planted native berry bushes there. The bushes are full of berries, right when the baby birds need them. Life goes on. The sick signs are real. So is all the rest of life.
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But the great crested flycatchers are courting in the canopy. There's a baby mockingbird begging in the church hedges down the street, in the indigenous berry bushes the local ecological gardeners planted, heavy with berries just in time for babies. Life goes on. The morbid symptoms are real. So is everything else that's real.
The builders have not stopped. This slow, patient work has gone on for a long time. Think of the council movement of 1919. The cooperative movement of 1956. The Zapatista uprising of 1994. The movement to set up land trusts run by towns, which began in Burlington in 1984. The mutual aid groups of 2020. These are not separate tries. They are one thread. It runs through different hands and grows over time. Not every place was held. But the thread has never broken.
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The builders have not stopped. The war of position has been underway for a long time. The council movement of 1919, the cooperative movement of 1956, the Zapatista uprising of 1994, the municipal land trust movement that took root in Burlington in 1984, the mutual aid networks of 2020 — not separate attempts but a single thread, running through different hands, accumulating. Not every position held. The thread has never broken.
Gramsci died in 1937. His notebooks were carried out in secret. The councils were long gone. Fascism was everywhere. He had been in prison for eleven years. He would not live to see what the notebooks would do. They would pass through the hands of builders. Those builders were already doing this slow, patient work, but they did not have a name for it. The notebooks gave that work a name: the war of position. The name was clear enough to build on.
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Gramsci died in 1937 with the notebooks smuggled out. The councils were long gone. Fascism was everywhere. He had been in prison for eleven years and would not live to see what the notebooks would do — how they would circulate through the hands of builders doing war-of-position work without quite having the language for it, giving that work a name — the war of position — precise enough to build on.
Right now the thing I am building is this book. That is the form I can use. I still make a good curry. I can bake bread and refry beans. The future — who knows. I think we will be all right. Most of us, at least. I just wish it felt that way more often.
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Right now the thing I'm building is this book. That's the form available. I still make a good curry. I can bake bread and refry beans. The future — who knows. I think we'll be all right. Most of us, at least. I just wish it felt like that more often.
The war of position is not a brave pose. It is a choice. It is the choice to keep building in the form you can use. That might be sentences, or meals, or seeds you scatter in a neighborhood. You are not sure the neighborhood will hold them. And you know you will probably not see what they grow into. Gramsci knew this. He built it anyway. He did it in prison, in poor health, in an Italy that was going the opposite way from all he believed. The thread has never broken. It has passed through many hands that did not know they held it.
Luxemburg's hands were one of those pairs. She knew what she held.
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The war of position is not a heroic posture. It is the decision to keep building in the form available to you — sentences, meals, seeds scattered in a neighborhood you're not sure will hold them — against the knowledge that you probably won't see what they become. Gramsci knew this. He built it anyway, in prison, in failing health, in an Italy that was moving in the opposite direction of everything he believed. The thread has never broken. It has passed through many hands that didn't know they were holding it.
Luxemburg's hands were one pair. She knew what she was holding.