Content note: Clandestine Communist front page whose strike slogan uses a vulgar word ('A salario di merda, lavoro di merda!'), shown as printed. This object is shown as it was published. Why
l'Unità, January 1928: 'Resistere alla seconda ondata di riduzione dei salari! SCIOPERATE!' (front page)
Front page of the Communist Party's l'Unità for January 1928, calling for strikes against a 'second wave' of wage cuts: 'SCIOPERATE!' over the slogan 'A salario di merda, lavoro di merda!', in the shop-floor idiom of the workers it addresses. A middle column headed 'L'oro di Mussolini' puts a mocking label on the regime's return to the gold standard, and the right column announces 'La rivoluzione cinese continua!'.
- Date
- January 1928
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Partito Comunista d'Italia (organ l'Unità, produced underground; banned in Italy since 1926)
- Country
- Fascist Italy
- Medium
- Newspaper pages
- Issuer type
- Party
- Regime
- Fascist Italy
- Leader
- Benito Mussolini
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Techniques
- Plain folksName-calling
- Leader
- Benito Mussolini
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (scan credited to the Istituto Gramsci, Rome), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (Italian newspaper, January 1928; Commons tags public domain, credit Istituto Gramsci, Rome)
l'Unità, organ of the Partito Comunista d'Italia, January 1928, no. 1; Istituto Gramsci, Rome, via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
l'Unità Organo del Partito Comunista d'Italia ANNO VII - N. 1 GENNAIO 1928 Resistere alla seconda ondata di riduzione dei salari! SCIOPERATE! A salario di merda, lavoro di merda! [left column, opening:] Anche la seconda ondata contro i salari, come la prima, ha provocato una resistenza vivace della classe operaia. L'ORO DI MUSSOLINI I SALARI DEGLI OPERAI PAGATI IN ASSEGNI, IN CARTA QUALUNQUE!! LA RIVOLUZIONE CINESE CONTINUA! Aiutiamoli! Diamogli la nostra solidarietà [body columns: not transcribed]
The Unity Organ of the Communist Party of Italy YEAR VII - No. 1 JANUARY 1928 Resist the second wave of wage reductions! STRIKE! Shit wages, shit work! [left column, opening:] The second wave against wages, like the first, has also provoked a lively resistance from the working class. MUSSOLINI'S GOLD WORKERS' WAGES PAID IN CHEQUES, IN ANY KIND OF PAPER!! THE CHINESE REVOLUTION CONTINUES! Let us help them! Let us give them our solidarity [body columns: not transcribed]
Read from a 500 px image: masthead, issue line, the three-line banner, the middle and right headlines and the first sentence of the left column are transcribed; the numeral after ANNO is read as VII and the rest of the issue line is small, so treat it as approximate. Body columns are too small to read and are not transcribed. The vulgar word is the original's own and is not softened in the translation.
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