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.