Back to the 1960s? Alessandro Pizzorno’s contribution to understanding the labor movement revival then and now

Developing in a period of perceived decline of the labor movement, social movement studies have for a long time paid only limited attention to struggles against social inequalities and, more generally, the structural conditions for the development of some fundamental conflicts. Only recently, addressing social struggles for global justice and against austerity, they have started to return to the social bases of protest. In this article, I point at the particular relevance in this historical moment of revisiting the contribution of Italian sociologist Alessandro Pizzorno to the understanding of class conflicts in turbulent times. While class analysis has been more and more focused on social stratification, reflecting on waves of intense contention is therefore important in order to single out how organizational resources and identification processes can indeed develop in action, from the mobilization itself, rather than being a precondition for it. While much research on social stratification seems to have forgotten the complexity of class conceptualization, looking mainly at statistical aggregates, the work of Alessandro Pizzorno helps refocusing attention on the ways in which class solidarity emerges during workers’ struggles. In this sense, it talks to recent reflections on a return not only of labor action but also of classes as driver of history.