Militant investigation

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The term militant investigation is understood to mean investigations into specific working conditions in companies that not only produce knowledge, but also serve to raise political awareness among workers. The method relates to the theory and political practice of operaism .

history

The forerunner of the Militant Investigation is the questionnaire for workers developed by Karl Marx in 1880 , which, in addition to its investigative nature, had the aim of encouraging workers to reflect on their own situation.

In the late 1960s, various political groups in Italy further developed this method as a tool for industrial intervention. In contrast to Maoist and traditional Marxist groups, which proceeded from the mediation of an already existing Marxist theory and distributed leaflets at the factory gate, a new generation of political activists relied on the immanent radicalization of the "mass workers". They are not covered by traditional trade union and party structures and, precisely because of their disorganization, are more radical than their skilled worker colleagues. In order to awaken this latent radicalism, an attempt was made to record the specific grievances in the factories more precisely and the questionnaires of the “Militant Investigation” were developed. These often came about through cooperation between workers and student groups - for example in the “Chicago Bridge” metal works in Sestri Ponente near Genoa, where medical students and shipyard workers started an investigation and then a campaign against unhealthy working conditions. Here, as in other studies, the expansion of company policy from pure wage claims to the entire living conditions of workers was the central feature of the “militant investigation” method.

It was just as important to abolish the classic division of the research object “worker” and the dominant research subject “scientist” in the positivist understanding of science. By helping to shape the investigation, the workers themselves became subjects; their emancipation was not only proclaimed, but was based on the method. Therefore, the militant investigation is less a purely social science investigation with the aim of the greatest possible objectivity , but a method of political intervention. In its declared intention to radically change the object of investigation, it goes far beyond the participant observation that is customary in ethnology .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Davide Serafino, The fight against health-damaging working conditions using the example of "Chicago Bridge" in Sestri Ponente (Genoa) 1968/1969 , in: Work - Movement - History. Journal for Historical Studies , Issue I / 2016.