Autonomist Marxism?

[Malesori]

Can someone please explain to me precisely what autonomist Marxism is? Are there any groups that hold to this idea?

[tuwix]

From what I know there are groups who went towards anarchism.

[Sasha]

the wikipedia is actually quite comprehensive in this instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism

in short; the italian anti pairlametary movement of the 1960's was called broadly "autonomia", it formed because of the FIAT workers got sold out by the unions they developed a distinct anti-union and anti-CP theory and praxis and close bonds with the students movement.
its two main groups where "lotta continua" and "potere operaio" of which Negri was the main theorist. their form of marxism was known then as "workerism"
when they became a threat to the state the italian bourgeoisie came down hard on them by calling them the political wing of the terrorist red-brigades (who dont forget had massive populair support at the beginning), thousands of autonomists got arrested or fled to france, inc negri.
today they are a big influence on the anti-authorian radical left , being seen as a sort of synthesis between anarchism and marxism.
they influenced (and influence, negri is still writing for example) theoretical groups like Tiqqun but also more practical groups like the "interventionistische linken" in germany

[Yuppie Grinder]

They were communists who believed in direct class struggle outside of a CP or unions. The problem with them is their "workerism". The were about confirming and celebrating the working class identity rather than deconstructing it. Workerism is slave morality, and the job of communists is destroying the master/slave dialectic. Ideologically, both workerism and substitionism are two sides of the same coin. They both reduce workers to human nothings who act mechanically as agents of pre-determined history rather than freely acting human beings, it's just that the former has a lot more flannel shirts and domestic beer.
Autonomism doesn't exist as a distinct tendency much anymore but remains an influence on the ultra-left.

[Art Vandelay]

They were communists who believed in direct class struggle outside of a CP or unions. The problem with them is their "workerism". The were about confirming and celebrating the working class identity rather than deconstructing it. Workerism is slave morality, and the job of communists is destroying the master/slave dialectic. Ideologically, both workerism and substitionism are two sides of the same coin. They both reduce workers to human nothings who act mechanically as agents of pre-determined history rather than freely acting human beings.
Autonomism doesn't exist as a distinct tendency much anymore but remains an influence on the ultra-left.

Hmm I find this conception interesting (not to say that I reject it, but that I am skeptical). Ultimately would you not conclude that a revolution must necessarily entail the proletariat gaining class consciousness (ie: what you might call 'workerism' but what I would call, understanding their collective relationship to the means of production?)

[Yuppie Grinder]

Hmm I find this conception interesting (not to say that I reject it, but that I am skeptical). Ultimately would you know conclude that a revolution must necessarily entail the proletariat gaining class consciousness (ie: what you might call 'workerism' but what I would call, understanding their collective relationship to the means of production?)

I don't think you really understand my use of the word. The ultra-left uses it in a derogatory fashion to talk about university student leftists who romanticize the proletarian identity and culture without recognizing that within bourgeois society the proletariat has no culture (Gramsci), and that the point is not to affirm an identity of submission and humility but to destroy it. Operaismo, another name for Autonomism, is Italian for Workerism.
Workerism does not mean recognizing unreconcilable class antagonisms.
Anti-workerism is mostly a thing that the ultra-left and post-left talk about, which is ironic since Lenin pioneered the use of the word in a derogatory sense.

[Art Vandelay]

I don't think you really understand my use of the word. The ultra-left uses it in a derogatory fashion to talk about university student leftists who romanticize the proletarian identity and culture without recognizing that within bourgeois society the proletariat has no culture (Gramsci), and that the point is not to affirm an identity of submission and humility but to destroy it. Operaismo, another name for Autonomism, is Italian for Workerism.
Workerism does not mean recognizing unreconcilable class antagonisms.
Anti-workerism is mostly a thing that the ultra-left and post-left talk about, which is ironic since Lenin pioneered the use of the word in a derogatory sense.

I'll have to do more thinking about the topic, as I clearly did not quite understand the context you were using it; hopefully I'll be able to get back to you, in a more proper mindset and after some reflection.

[Sasha]

some earlier threads on the subject;
http://www.revleft.com/vb/reading-council-communism-t168450/index.html?t=168450
http://www.revleft.com/vb/operaism-t...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/operaism-t144958/index.html?t=144958&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/empirei-ha...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/empirei-hardt-negri-t145952/index.html?t=145952&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/auto-open-...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/auto-open-situ-t145243/index.html?t=145243&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/contempora...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/contemporary-german-and-t143553/index.html?t=143553&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/autonomism...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/autonomismi-t142457/index.html?t=142457&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/autonomism...ght=autonomism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/autonomism-t119498/index.html?t=119498&highlight=autonomism)
http://www.revleft.com/vb/operaism-t144958/index2.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/essential-autonomist-texts-t174442/index.html?t=174442

[MP5]

I shall definitely have to do some more reading on this as i have only read of this tendency in passing. But isn't the whole point of socialism in general to abolish the class system altogether as opposed to just celebrating the working class and essentially turning everyone into the working class? The working class coming to understand their relationship to the bourgeois which is basically economic slavery is certainly essential to working class self emancipation but i think romanticizing the working class is counterproductive to say the least. I am working class and there is certainly nothing romantic about it at all as i do not enjoy being a slave to capitalist society to say the very least.

[Sasha]

They were communists who believed in direct class struggle outside of a CP or unions. The problem with them is their "workerism". The were about confirming and celebrating the working class identity rather than deconstructing it. Workerism is slave morality, and the job of communists is destroying the master/slave dialectic. Ideologically, both workerism and substitionism are two sides of the same coin. They both reduce workers to human nothings who act mechanically as agents of pre-determined history rather than freely acting human beings, it's just that the former has a lot more flannel shirts and domestic beer.
Autonomism doesn't exist as a distinct tendency much anymore but remains an influence on the ultra-left.

but very anti-work situationist groups like the Metropolitan Indians where also really influential on/in automia, workerism as i understand it isnt as much a celebration of work in but the positioning of the proletariat (workers and unemployed) as needing to liberate themselves through struggle and not getting liberated by a vanguard. as such one could argue that workerism was in fact a return to more classical marxism (of course under distinct influence of the frankfurther school) than leninism let alone stalinism. The autonomist workers of fiat in fact broadly used and in some cases pioneered anti-fordist methods of struggle like sabotage, wildcat strikes, floor-organisation and massive "call in sick" days.
Autonomia as such felt much closer to the left-communists as they positioned themselves confrontationally against the PCI when they re-aligned themselves again with Moscow. (but in a bizzare twist of murky international politics the PCI would later break with moscow again over the fact that moscow refused to pressure czechoslavakia to end support for the RedBrigades which drew their militants in part from within autonomia)

[ed miliband]

oh man, i'm doing a serious post for once. :ohmy: for what it's worth, i think it's very difficult - if not impossible - to really talk about an "autonomist marxism". from the early roots of operaismo in 1950s italy (and the u.s. and france, arguably), through the movement of '77 and autonomen, to the very shitty politics of the anti-globalisation movement which trots like to describe as "autonomism". all this is reduced to "autonomist marxism", despite including such a wide variety of currents, ideas, activities, ends and means. it's not very helpful.


They were communists who believed in direct class struggle outside of a CP or unions. The problem with them is their "workerism". The were about confirming and celebrating the working class identity rather than deconstructing it. Workerism is slave morality, and the job of communists is destroying the master/slave dialectic. Ideologically, both workerism and substitionism are two sides of the same coin. They both reduce workers to human nothings who act mechanically as agents of pre-determined history rather than freely acting human beings, it's just that the former has a lot more flannel shirts and domestic beer.
Autonomism doesn't exist as a distinct tendency much anymore but remains an influence on the ultra-left.

operaismo and workerism are two entirely different things, despite 'meaning' the same thing in translation. key to operaismo was the centrality of wage labour, the struggle over wages as the terrain of political struggle, and the importance of this struggle in the development of capitalism (i.e. working class struggles lead to changes in the organisation of labour by capital, which lead to different forms of struggle, and on and on). in this respect, far from being determinists the operaists stressed the subjective factor of the proletariat -- at once part of capital and compelled to struggle against it, and as such itself (tronti: "to struggle against capital, the working class must fight against itself insofar as it is capital").

for e.g., mario tronti, one of the 'founders' of operaismo, in 'the strategy of refusal' (1965), says:


Precisely because the collective worker is that totally particular commodity which counterposes itself to the whole of the conditions of society, including the social conditions of its labour, so it manifests, as already incorporated within itself, that direct political subjectivity, that partiality which constitutes class antagonism. From the very beginning the proletariat is nothing more than an immediate political interest in the abolition of every aspect of the existing order.

http://libcom.org/library/strategy-refusal-mario-tronti

key to the practice of operaists was observing the everyday life and struggles of the working class as they develop, and theorising new modes of struggle based on this self-activity (the influence of c.l.r. james / johnson-forest tendency and socialisme ou barbarie is very important here). psycho rightly points out the example of the metropolitan indians and their anti-work stance, for example, but this refusal of work was observed and theorised at least a decade beforehand.

further, quite at odds with the very crudest forms of workerism, which celebrate the strong white male in heavy industry, the idea of the 'social factory' was developed by tronti and others. this suggested that the process of value production - and the struggle against it - do not simply take place within factory walls, but across society as a whole. tronti didn't draw out the conclusions to this, but others did; the class struggle could involve the unemployed, the unwaged, "housewives" and carers, students, etc.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Back in Italy, some guys like Panzieri, Tronti, Bologna etc. realized how much the CPI sucked, yet were still very much hung up on Leninism and the vanguard party, and from this autonomism was born. It tried to reconcile discrepancies in the worker's movement and create a new analysis of work in Italy.

Honestly not much came of all of it but some of the writings are interesting to read nevertheless.

[Delenda Carthago]

the wikipedia is actually quite comprehensive in this instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism

in short; the italian anti pairlametary movement of the 1960's was called broadly "autonomia", it formed because of the FIAT workers got sold out by the unions they developed a distinct anti-union and anti-CP theory and praxis and close bonds with the students movement.
its two main groups where "lotta continua" and "potere operaio" of which Negri was the main theorist. their form of marxism was known then as "workerism"
when they became a threat to the state the italian bourgeoisie came down hard on them by calling them the political wing of the terrorist red-brigades (who dont forget had massive populair support at the beginning), thousands of autonomists got arrested or fled to france, inc negri.
today they are a big influence on the anti-authorian radical left , being seen as a sort of synthesis between anarchism and marxism.
they influenced (and influence, negri is still writing for example) theoretical groups like Tiqqun but also more practical groups like the "interventionistische linken" in germany
Workerism and proletaria autonomia were two different things. Workerism was a step before autonimia. Potere Operaio was a workerism organisation, quite interesting I d say.

Workersim talked about the "mass worker" ie the worker of the factories in Italy.
Autonomia talked about the "social worker" which was the self-employed and the housekeepers.

Workerism, if I m correct, was not a anti-syndicate movement.

[subcp]

A staple of operaismo was the centrality of the class struggle in the development of capital; Tronti was a proponent of this if I recall correctly. It's the opposite of the orthodox Marxist conception or the Marxist conception stood on its head- which says that the development of the productive forces shapes the class struggle, Tronti argued that the class struggle shapes the development of the productive forces. This comes from observations of the post-war developments in Italy: serious class struggles in Italy resulted in large wage increases in a time when a very militant and politicized working-class exercised an impressive level of control on the job- this is also where his conception of the 'mass worker' comes from.

However, the restructuring of capital following the return of crisis at the end of the post-war boom took the basis out of many of these theories: the mass industrial complexes downsized, closed down and outsourced. New management techniques divided workers (Northern Italian vs Southern Italian, older workers vs younger workers) during the restructuring.

[human strike]

I always assumed that operaismo derived its name from the emphasis it places on labour, as opposed to the state, party, or union, and autonomy from those institutions. Operaismo incorporated a certain anti-work tendency that has been absent from most of the history of the organised left. I don't agree that operaismo was especially 'workerist', in this English sense of the word.

[The Idler]

I thought there'd be a group for this but no, so I created one.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1108