Antonio Negri
Italian autonomist Marxist academic who was wrongfully imprisoned by the Italian state for alleged involvement in the Brigate Rosse urban guerrilla group.
Lessons from defeat: Antonio Negri, autonomist Marxism and anarcho-syndicalism from seventies Italy to today
A discussion of the history and theory of Italian operaismo, its strengths, weaknesses and legacy. The second part of the essay examines the convergence and divergence of autonomist Marxist thought and anarcho-syndicalist thought.
“...analysis becomes complete only through participation in struggles...”
(Panzieri, La crisi del movimento operaio,1973)
1.0 Into the laboratory
Keep on Smiling - questions on immaterial labour
Toni Negri and Michael Hardt’s recent works, Empire and Multitude, have earned these authors great popularity in the Anglo-Saxon world. Negri is known in Italy for belonging to autonomia operaia in the ’70s and for being on the receiving end of political persecution by the Italian state at the end of that decade. His earlier work (above all Marx Beyond Marx) was a valid contribution to the understanding of the nature of capitalism and influenced many among us who sought an answer to Marxist objectivism and a theory of history based on class struggle. However, Negri’s earlier work circulated among a restricted public, via obscure publishers. The new Toni Negri for the ‘new’ era emerges in 2000 with Empire. A tome written with literature professor Michael Hardt, Empire was warmly welcomed even by the bourgeois press.
Reviewing the experience of Italy in the 1970s - Negri
Antonio Negri recalls the political experience of various aspects of the mass struggles of the 1970s in Italy, including the Strategy of Tension.
Between "historic compromise" and terrorism
Reviewing the experience of Italy in the 1970s
Multitude or working class? - Antonio Negri
Negri explains his concept of ‘multitude’ in a response to the SWP’s Alex Callinicos at the European Social Forum in Paris, 2003.
Negri on Foucault
[b]In this interview Negri discusses the influence of Michel Foucault on his work, stating how as the radical Italian left drifted towards vanguardist armed struggle after 1968 [i]“we understood that this military drift was something which the movements would not be concerned with; and that it was not only a humanly unbearable choice, but also
Marx’s mole is dead! - Globalisation and communication - Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri
This text is effectively a summary of the arguments in Empire, in particular Negri & Hardt’s contention that Marx’s conception of class struggle is obsolete and that globalisation can be understood as capitalism's response to class struggle (7,000 words).
The limits of Negri's class analysis: Italian autonomist theory in the seventies - Steve Wright
Steve Wright's critical analysis of Negri's ideas.
From Reconstruction 8 (Winter/Spring 1996)
Over the past decade, Toni Negri's association with Deleuze and Guattari has made his name well known to English-language readers of radical thought. But as STEVE WRIGHT shows, Negri's most distinctive ideas would first be debated within the Italian revolutionary movement of the seventies.
Introduction to Antonio Negri's Marx beyond Marx
Harry Cleaver's beautifully written introduction to Antonio Negri's autonomist classic, Marx Beyond Marx.
Empire
Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.
Crisis of the Crisis State
Part One
To begin with, let us summarize some developments in capitalist and state policies that seem to characterize the 1980s. These are just approximations, examples that come immediately to mind:- (1) the transition from the 'welfare state' to the 'warfare State';
(2) the 'negative' use of Keynesian economic policy as a means of reactivating a 'positive' use of the market;
