Autonomism

Hi,

I've seen left communists in the past be quite critical of autonomism/autonomist marxism and was wondering what the general view is here. For starters though I admit I'm quite often confused by what people when they talk about autonomism, I tend to see it as Negrian style praxis but often it seems others think differently, what do you tend to think of people such as Negri or Holloway (I actually think the two are quite different and don't really think they should always be grouped together but anyway...)?

Cheers.

hello
This is an old article, going into the origins of autonomism in Italy, but we haven't really kept up with the critique....http://en.internationalism.org/speci...to_operaia.htm

still, let us know what you think.

that article was a bit harsh. the italian years of lead were years of intensified struggle, and the autonomists, albeit rather confused, were an expression of that. there are all sorts of students and "alternatives" taking the flag of autonomy but a big aspect of autonomy was the disaffected immigrant industrial worker base.

I think autonomia certainly came from a huge wave of working class struggles, but many of the intellectuals around it were far from Marxism before those struggles and have moved away since. Negri's Multitude book doesn't really see the working class as revolutionary but rather the whole "multitude" of "people" which i think neglects what is specifically revolutionary about the social position of the working class in the process of production, and also dissipates the struggle of the united international proletariat into sectional struggles of parts of the proletariat and other oppressed people who may or may not be working class (racial minorities, women, etc.). It's possible that what I've read about Autonomism was misrepresenting it (I mostly refer to what has been published in the last 20 years under this term), but to me it has gotten tangled into the whole anti-globalization movement which doesn't actually look for a real way to fight capitalism at its heart and a class with an interest in destroying capitalism--the anti-globalization movement celebrates anything that it thinks contradicts what they see as the logic of "globalization" from third worldist statesmen, to tariff demands, to land reclamation movements, etc.

There's actually a fairly decent critique of autonomism by the UK group Aufheben (who nevertheless say they are influenced by both autonomism and left communism), mostly written as a response to Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically here: http://libcom.org/library/operaismo-...sm-aufheben-11

As far as the origins of the movement, I think the ICC is starting a series on Italy's Hot Autumn in their International Review. http://en.internationalism.org/ir/140/hot-autumn-1969

I think autonomia certainly came from a huge wave of working class struggles, but many of the intellectuals around it were far from Marxism before those struggles and have moved away since. Negri's Multitude book doesn't really see the working class as revolutionary but rather the whole "multitude" of "people" which i think neglects what is specifically revolutionary about the social position of the working class in the process of production, and also dissipates the struggle of the united international proletariat into sectional struggles of parts of the proletariat and other oppressed people who may or may not be working class (racial minorities, women, etc.). It's possible that what I've read about Autonomism was misrepresenting it (I mostly refer to what has been published in the last 20 years under this term), but to me it has gotten tangled into the whole anti-globalization movement which doesn't actually look for a real way to fight capitalism at its heart and a class with an interest in destroying capitalism--the anti-globalization movement celebrates anything that it thinks contradicts what they see as the logic of "globalization" from third worldist statesmen, to tariff demands, to land reclamation movements, etc.

late 60s italian autonomy has very little to do with what goes for autonomy today. I think some of the most "workerist" currents inside it had almost nothing to do with anti-globalization thyough.

late 60s italian autonomy has very little to do with what goes for autonomy today.

What do you think goes for autonomy today?

a lot of kids beating fringe nationalists and setting up squats and starved off artists and social democrats wailing about multitudes

a lot of kids beating fringe nationalists and setting up squats and starved off artists and social democrats wailing about multitudes

That seems to be one of the big tendencies in the autonomy movement, while the other focuses on working class struggles; at work and in the city.

I really need to go to sleep now, but from what i have understood, the second tendency is pretty much sympathetic and doesn´t have too much to do with Negri and his crazy Multitude talk. The first one probably doesn´t like Negri to, by the way