Quaderni Rossi (Red Notebooks)
Classe Operaia (Working Class)
Potere Operaio (Worker Power)
Autonomia (Autonomy)
Lotta Femminista
Wages for Housework
COBAS (Confederation of rank and file unions)
Centri Sociali Occupati e Autogestiti (Occupied Self-Organized Social Centres)
Pantera (Radical Student’s Movement)
Tute Bianche (White Overalls)
Disobeddienti (Disobedients)
Anarcho-Communism
Leninism
Johnson-Forest Tendency
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Marxist Feminism
French Post-Structuralism
Autonomist theory and
practice is an exceptionally varied antagonistic
tradition that emerges out of a conflict between
not only the working class and capital, but
between the working class and its “official”
representatives, the communist party and the
labour movement. Beginning in the post-war
Italy under the name operaismo (literally,
“workerism”, but later known primarily
in English as “autonomist” thought),
the tradition focuses on the ability of the
working class to be potentially autonomous,
that is, to self-organize outside of the logic
of capitalist command. For this reason rather
than beginning (as many forms of Marxism have)
from the analysis of capital itself, the defining
feature of the autonomist tradition is that
it begins with the social composition and
unmediated struggles of the working class
itself in order to better understand how it
can better achieve this self-organization.
Initially influenced by Leninist revolutionary
theory, autonomist thought has produced several
very different offshoots, including post-structuralist,
radical feminist, communication, and post-Leninist
variants.
1960: Thousands of workers converge on Piazza Statuto in Turin, where the headquarters of the UIL union is located. Incensed that the union had come to an agreement with FIAT against their wishes, workers turned the Piazza into an the scene of an extended riot that lasted over two days. Antonio Negri would later refer to Piazza Statuto as Potere Operaio’s “founding congress”.
1961: First issue of Quaderni Rossi put out. Some of autonomist marxism’s
better-known figures participate in the journal, including Negri, Mario Tronti,
Sergio Bologna, Romano Alquati, and Romolo Gobbi.
1964: First issue of Classe Operaia put out, the successor to Quaderni Rossi.
1969: Hot Autumn: Strikes break out across Italy, including wildcat actions,
work stoppages, and monkeywrenching. Students occupy universities throughout
Italy.
-Formation of Potere Operaio group by the editors of Classe Operaia who believed
in a more direct form of political involvement in the emerging struggles.
1971: Formation of Lotta Femminista, feminist offshoot of Potere Operaio which
focuses on patriarchy and female labour
1972: Beginning of housing occupations that lead to the formation of the CSOA
movement
1973: Dissolution of Potere Operaio
Enrico Berlinguer, who had just been elected leader of the Italian Communist
Party (PCI), suggests the need for a “Historic Compromise”, an alliance
between the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the Italian Socialist Party (PSI),
and the right-wing Demo-Christians (DC).
1974-1979: Potere Operaio’s remnants break up into an archipelago of autonomous
groups across Italy, often referred to as “Autonomia Diffusa”
1977: A cycle of struggle culminates in the “movement of ‘77”,
a creative, irreverent, spontaneous, and anti-authoritarian variant of the autonomist
tradition.
-After a student is shot by police, clashes between youth and police force tanks
onto the streets in Bologna.
1979: Judicial repression of the movement, leading to the arrest of hundreds
of militants across Italy and the flight of many to France.
1989-1990 Pantera Movement explodes in universities, occupying faculty building
across Italy.
-A new wave of social centre occupations begins.
Autonomedia Interactivist Exchange
Publishing house discussion forum with a primarily autonomist perspective
http://slash.autonomedia.org/
Autopsy
Discussion list focusing on forum the changing nature of class composition and
class struggle within the planetary work machine.
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/
Class Against Class
Excellent archive of foundational autonomist texts
http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/index.html
Collegamenti/Wobbly
Long-Running Italian journal dedicated to worker’s self-activity and libertarian
critique
http://www.mercatiesplosivi.com/CW/CWmenu.html
Disobbedienti
Ex-White Overalls, a direct descendant of the extra-parliamentary groups of
the seventies
http://www.disobbedienti.org
Ed Emery’s Archive
A useful online archive of translated autonomist materials by one of the theoretical
tradition’s first translators
http://www.emery.archive.mcmail.com/
European Counter Network
Links to the websites of many Italian Social Centres
http://www.ecn.org/presenze/
Telestreet
Homepage of the Italian free television movement
http://www.telestreet.it/
Radio Sherwood
News from the autonomist network of North-Eastern Italy
http://www.sherwood.it/
Texas Archives of Autonomist Marxism
A large archive containing some online materials and much information about
autonomist Marxism, maintained by Harry Cleaver
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/txarchintro.html