disinterest-cum-suspicion which they once held towards self-management, in order to officially include it in their programmatic recipes. In this way, self-management has ceased being a concrete objective to fight for, and has become instead one element among many, of electoral propaganda and of the politica! game: the struggle for self-management no longer means trying to bring it about, but bas come to mean instead voting for those parties wbich support it and tben waiting unti! they « take power ». This incorporation of tbe self-management concept, therefore, bas not only served to « remodernise » tbe ideologica! apparatus of the institutional left making it more « coberent » witb popular aspirations but bas also deprived the concept of any revolutionary or innovatory charge, relegating the prospect of its realisatioa to some unspecified future date, after the « conquest of power », and so transforming it into a Myth, or a Faith, on a par with faitb in god or ... in the revolution. This Faitb, witb its faitbful wait for « tbe Great Day», bas tbe useful purpose of directing public interest away from any concrete experimentation and any practical attempt at bringing about selfmanagement: in such a way, self-management (if and when it comes) will not be of tbe type being sought by those directly involved, but that which tbe powerful are willing to concede, as a mere application, functional to tbeir needs, of tbe so-called Scientific Organisation of Labour. In fact, in tbe western world tbe old class of capitalist managers are being replaced by new classes consisting of « technicians » wbo, tbrough tbis manipulation of the self-management Mytb, succeed in biding tbe real nature of their power, whicb is no longer based on private property but on the « intellectual » contro! of tbe means of production. LA ROSA - This study aims to offer some starting-points for reflection on tbe inter-relationsbips between self-management, cbange a1J,dadvanced industriai societies. In this respect the autbor considers tbat tbe preliminary condition for any real process of maturation in tbe direction of a prospect of self-management is tbe diffusion and growtb of a self-managing culture. Tbis, in fact, remains scarcely present in our country especially because of tbe « diffidence » still manifested today by socia! and politica! forces, in particular trade union ones, for precise historical and institutional reasons. Such a culture, moreover, would permit a more precise comparison and definition of tbe framework of tbeoretico-conceptual reference wbicb, besides, is still very imprecise and often « deformed ». Witbin tbis perspective tbe writing aims, in tbe second part, to clarify exactly, on tbe one band, tbe terminologica! level of tbe concepts of self-management (as process and as project-goal) and change, and, on tbe otber, tbe significant « nexuses » and the « valency » wbicb unites sucb terms. Tbe advance, finally, towards late-capitalist societies has tended to bring forward some « specificities » of tbese same societies wbicb today more tban ever seem to be making transgressional tendencie~ of a substantially self-managing nature appear. Tbese tendencies do not seem up to now yet to bave expressed all tbe respective potentialities in tbis direction eitber because of a lack of attention to the « conditions » wbicb make this possible, or 237
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