Italy 60s-70s

Content about the mass struggles in Italy in the 1960s and 70s, known as the Creeping May, and the associated Years of Lead.

Radio Alice flyer/poster

Italy in the late 1970s: Mass party Leninism, Radio Alice and Mao Dada

On Western Maoism, Autonomia, culture, Umberto Eco etc.

Part 2 Situ Reorientation debate: The Red Brigades in Italy

Part 2: On the 1970 Situationist Reorientation Debate, the Never Work(ing) worker. Mayakovsky /…

Critique of Italy '77: Eulogising madness

"Certain publications of the so-called movement are staging a sinister leftist farce of madness which has nothing to do with real madness". An…

Metropolitan Indians

Italy in 1977 - David Wise

A personal memory... .and the link between intensifying cultural commodification, increasing state repression and the spectre of terrorism…

Pinelli Assassinato - EACS (1972)

A English-language pamphlet on the assassination of anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli in 1969 by Milan police - and related context on…

The Workers' Party of Mirafiori - Toni Negri (1973)

This article takes as its starting point the heady days of March 1973, when the FIAT workers of Mirafiori, Turin, once again played out their vanguard role in an uncompromising mass occupation of the factory, which was then taken up as a tactic by dozens of other engineering firms in the city and suburbs of Turin.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back... Toni Negri (1973)

This article is Negri's account of the broad development of the organisation of the revolutionary Left in Italy, from 1968 to 1973, and their crisis in the latter period. The article carries Negri's rejection of the line of terrorism and the line of institutional (e.g. electoral) politics. It also touches on one of the themes of the Autonomy area in 1973 - the organisation of insurrection. He also explores the…

Italy 1973 - Potere Operaio

This article is taken from the newspaper Potere Operaio, in 1973 (before that organisation's self-dissolution). It looks at some of the facts and figures of the crisis of Italian capitalism in the wake of the workers' struggles of 1969-70. The broad lines of the employers' strategy are dealt with, together with the changing form of the State: ("It was the role of the State as a general economic planner that had to…

Class Autonomy: A Chronology - Red Notes

A brief chronology and glossary of the Italian autonomous left movement. This sketch political chronology was prepared for us by a member of the Italy '79 Defence Committee.

Prefaces

Prefaces to "Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis" by Red Notes and Conference of Socialist Economists.

The Italian Inquisition cover

The Italian Inquisition

In June 1982 the trial begins against the Italian workers' autonomy movement — a show-trial without precedent in post-War Europe. Here the…

Women in Struggle issue 3 cover

Women in Struggle #3 (1975)

Feminist documents from Italy covering wages for housework, abortion, the dissolution of Lotta Femminista, etc.