Autonomist Marxism

Mario Tronti, 1931-2023

Mario Tronti, one of the foremost inspirations for the "autonomist" strand of Marxism, died on 7 August at the age of 92.

Class Power on Zero Hours

The book is the culmination of six years of “getting rooted” in Greenford in West London. It documents in workers’ enquiry style some key jobs and the lives of the supporters and organisers of the Angry Workers of the World (AWW) have been doing while based in an area of West London that has an extensive history of class struggle, but not an area of London that is heavily populated by the organised left. It also seeks to lay down a kind of manifesto or programme for others to consider “getting rooted” as well. The editors even included this Trotskyist’s reflection on working in a library out...

What is the “social strike”?

Recent strikes by “gig economy” workers (e.g. Deliveroo) are profoundly significant. They explode the myth, peddled by some on both left and right, that so-called precarious workers can’t organise, and that the proliferation of those types of work is in the process of rendering labour organising historically redundant. Some on the radical left confer a particular significance on these sort of strikes and have coupled them with the notion of “the social strike”. This idea, for instance by the group Plan C, has been put forward as a way to overcome the current weakness of organised labour as a...

Two critiques: "Empire" and "new imperialism"

Download this article (pdf) . It discusses the issues round “globalisation” by way of two critiques, of Negri-Hardt and of the “new imperialism” theory of John Rees, Alex Callinicos and other writers associated with the British SWP. Both accounts have a theological taste to them. But where Negri’s and Hardt’s is enthusiastic, mystical theology, Callinicos’s is the theology of the worldly-wise, “moderate” prelate of a modern established church. Both Hardt/Negri and Callinicos/Rees slide off the narrow and slippery path of scientific analysis — substituting speculative construction for empirical...

Anarchism today: PowerPoint presentation

Introducing some of the strands in anarchist thinking today: download here (5MB). This is not meant to be "self-sufficient", but rather to help with discussing the ideas.

An interview with Beverly Silver

An interview with Beverly Silver about her book Forces Of Labor, which we studied in the Brisbane Workers' Liberty study group of 2005, and which we will be studying at the AWL day schools in London and Sheffield on 1 October 2005. Beverly J Silver came to Germany in early June 2005 to present her book "Forces of Labor". This is an interview for the German magazine Analyse + Kritik . Q: In your book Forces of Labor you put a certain emphasis on the perspective that labor unrest is a kind of driving force of the development of capitalism. That bears a specific resemblance to an approach in...

Trotskyism, workerism and autonomism in Italy

A postscript to my review of Steve Wright's Storming Heaven and my article on Autonomist Marxism . Other material on this site: Review of Negri and Hardt's "Empire" Autonomism, workerism, and Trotskyism in Italy ; Review of Steve Wright's book on the history of autonomism in the 1960s and 70s . On other sites: A compact summary of autonomism, in the form of an interview with the American autonomist Harry Cleaver by Massimo De Angelis: www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/facstaff/Cleaver/InterviewwithHarryCleaver… . Other texts, including the historic ones like Mario Tronti's "Lenin in England"...

Autonomist Marxism: three themes, three critiques

A critical survey of "autonomist" Marxism, from its origins in Italian "operaismo" in the 1960s through to the writings today of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Other material on this site: Review of Negri and Hardt's "Empire" Autonomism, workerism, and Trotskyism in Italy ; Review of Steve Wright's book on the history of autonomism in the 1960s and 70s . On other sites: A compact summary of autonomism, in the form of an interview with the American autonomist Harry Cleaver by Massimo De Angelis: www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/facstaff/Cleaver/InterviewwithHarryCleaver… . Mario Tronti's...

Storming heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian autonomist Marxism

Martin Thomas reviews Storming Heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, by Steve Wright. Pluto Press. "Autonomist" Marxism is influential in the new anti-capitalist generation. Quite what it means is hard to tell from its best-selling books, like Toni Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire , or even the practice of its avowed partisans, like Italy's Disobedienti. Steve Wright's book Storming Heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (Pluto Press) - readable, critical, but sympathetic - is much more down to earth, tracing the origins of...

Forum on "autonomist Marxism"

Wednesday 17 December, 7.30pm. Marx, Negri and working-class autonomy: a discussion of "autonomist" Marxism and its relevance in the new anti-capitalist movements of today. London AWL forum with Massimo De Angelis and Martin Thomas. Also sponsored by London Social Forum .

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