This book describes the activities and political development of industrial workers in the Porta Romana area of Milan during the 1940s. The main focus of discussion is the extent of working class allegiance to the Italian Communist Party, which the author argues was generally more apparent than real. Through the use of unpublished archive material and oral sources, the author argues that many workers possessed a more radical consciousness than that of Communist leaders: the desire for The Long Awaited Moment of an insurrectionary seizure of power. Although this current of working class thought is acknowledged as having existed during the Resistance period of 1943-45, up until now its existence has been denied as regards the immediate postwar years.