autonomism

Revolutionary perspectives today: society is a factory

Rising from a period of centre-left coalition that had been marked by a constant failure to bring promised reforms to Italian society, the struggles of the 1960s acted as a pressure gauge for many sections of the Italian working class, one which was to reach its climax during the mass strikes of 1968-1970.

Link to PDF of pamphlet.

Published by Red Notes, London, UK, late 1970s

Gasping from out the Shallows
Reflections on revolution in the early twenty-first century

By Wayne Spencer

A text from the first wave of Italian ‘autonomist Marxist’ theory, first published under the name Guido Baldi in Radical America (Vol. 6, No. 3, May-June 1972).

How to interpret the contours of autonomist Marxism over the past quarter century? Before 1979, any discussion of the topic would necessarily have centred upon the Italian experience.

Introduction
One of the main contentions at the core of Autonomist Marxism is that all human activity in either the sphere of production or in circulation and reproduction is potentially productive, that is, can contribute to the valorisation of capital.

Our review article ‘From Operaismo to Autonomist Marxism’ (Aufheben 11) brought a robust response1 from Harry Cleaver the author of one of the two books we were responding to. As we see critique and counter critique as a way of developing theory, this reply, in which Cleaver makes some valid points, should have been an opportunity to clarify our criticisms, to acknowledge weaknesses and inadequacies in what we wrote and to restate some of the issues at stake.

1. 1. http://www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/Faculty/Cleaver/AufhebenResponse2.pdf

First published in Capital & Class as ‘Autonomist Marxism and the Information Society’ in Issue
no. 52, 1994
this edition published by Treason Press, February 2004

Autonomia!

Italy 1977 saw a spontaneous and creative outbreaks of rebellion demonstrating that the potential for revolution still exists in the working class of the industrialised west - no matter what the lefty cynics say.

Virno discusses Marx’s undeveloped concept of the ‘general intellect’, an idea that has become central to many autonomist readings of Marx seeking to understand ‘post-fordist’ (i.e. post industrial) capitalism (2,000 words).

Negri explains his concept of ‘multitude’ in a response to the SWP’s Alex Callinicos at the European Social Forum in Paris, 2003.

[b]This interview illustrates the move amongst the post-Leninist Italian radical left towards an anarchist view of the state, as well as Virno’s insistence that the concept of ‘multitude’ does not replace the concept of ‘working class’ and his controversial assertion that fear and insecurity – which he calls ‘precarity’ – define the globalised world.

A paper on the history of Italian Marxist feminism given at a seminar on Operaismo ('workerism') held in Rome, June 2002 (3,000 words).

[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

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).

[b]In this short essay Deleuze looks to move beyond Michel Foucault’s historical understanding of ‘disciplinary societies’, where power is exercised within discrete institutions, towards the concept of 'societies of control'.

The impossible class

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.

To help navigate the site, this is a rough, textual "family tree" of libertarian Marxism. Please refer to the Companion Map for a graphical guide to these currents