George Katsiaficas summarizes the forms of autonomous movements saying that "In contrast to the centralized decisions and
hierarchicalauthority structures of modern institutions, autonomous social movements involve people directly in decisions affecting their everyday lives, seeking to expand democracy and help individuals break free of political structures and behavior patterns imposed from the outside".[6] This has involved a call for the independence of social movements from political parties[7] in a revolutionary perspective which seeks to create a practical political alternative to both
authoritarian/
state socialism and contemporary
representative democracy.[8]
Autonomism influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen/Autonomen, the worldwide
social centre movement and today is
influential in Italy, France and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to anarchists.[9]
Early theorists such as
Mario Tronti,
Antonio Negri,
Sergio Bologna and
Paolo Virno developed notions of "immaterial" and "social labour" that extended the Marxist concept of labour to all society. They suggested that modern society's wealth was produced by unaccountable
collective work, and that only a little of this was redistributed to the workers in the form of wages. Other Italian autonomists—particularly feminists, such as
Mariarosa Dalla Costa and
Silvia Federici—emphasised the importance of
feminism and the value of unpaid female labour to capitalist society.[10][11] Michael Ryan, a scholar of the movement, writes:
Autonomy, as a movement and as a theory, opposes the notion that capitalism is an irrational system which can be made rational through planning. Instead, it assumes the workers' viewpoint, privileging their activity as the lever of revolutionary passage as that which alone can construct a communist society. Economics is seen as being entirely political; economic relations are direct political relations of force between class subjects. And it is in the economic category of the social worker, not in an alienated political form like the party, that the initiative for political change resides.[4]
Antonio Negri and
Michael Hardt argue that network power constructs are the most effective methods of organization against the neoliberal regime of accumulation and predict a massive shift in the dynamics of capital into a
21st century empire.[12]
In
West Germany, Autonome was used during the late 1970s to depict the most radical part of the political left.[14]
Italy
On 11 March 1977, riots took place in Bologna following the killing of student Francesco Lorusso by police. Beginning in 1979, the state effectively prosecuted the autonomist movement, accusing it of protecting the
Red Brigades, which had kidnapped and assassinated
Aldo Moro. 12,000 far-left activists were detained; 600 fled the country, including 300 to France and 200 to South America.[15]
Criticism
Other Marxists have criticised Autonomist Marxism or post-operaismo of having a theoretically weak understanding of
value in capitalist economies.[16] It has also been criticised by other Marxists for being
anti-humanist / anti-hegelian.[17]
Influence
The autonomist Marxist and Autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English-speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics.[18] The Italian operaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics such as
Harry Cleaver,
John Holloway, Steve Wright[19] and Nick Dyer-Witheford.[20] In Denmark and Sweden, the word is used as a catch-all phrase for anarchists and the extra-parliamentary left in general, as was seen in the media coverage of the eviction of the Ungdomshusetsquat in
Copenhagen in March 2007.[21][22]
^
abNegri, Antonio (1991). "Translators' Introductions Part II". Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. Translated by Ryan, Michael. New York: Autonomedia. pp. xxx.
(in French)L’Autonomie. Le mouvement autonome en France et en Italie, éditions Spartacus 1978
(in French)Autonomes, Jan Bucquoy and Jacques Santi, ANSALDI 1985
(in French)Action Directe. Du terrorisme français à l'euroterrorisme, Alain Hamon and Jean-Charles Marchand, SEUIL 1986
(in French)Paroles Directes. Légitimité, révolte et révolution : autour d'Action Directe, Loïc Debray, Jean-Pierre Duteuil, Philippe Godard,
Henri Lefebvre, Catherine Régulier, Anne Sveva, Jacques Wajnsztejn, ACRATIE 1990
(in French)Un Traître chez les totos, Guy Dardel, ACTES SUD 1999 (novel)
(in French)Italie 77. Le « Mouvement », les intellectuels, Fabrizio Calvi, Seuil 1977
(in Italian)L'operaismo degli anni Sessanta. Da 'Quaderni rossi' a 'classe operaia', Giuseppe Trotta e Fabio Milana edd., Deriveapprod I 2008
(in Italian)Una sparatoria tranquilla. Per una storia orale del '77, Ordadek 1997
(in German)Die Autonomen, Thomas Schultze et Almut Gross, Konkret Literatur 1997
(in German)Autonome in Bewegung, AG Grauwacke aus den ersten 23 Jahren, Association A 2003
(in English) Galimberti, Jacopo (6 September 2022). Images of Class. Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962-1988).
Verso Books .
ISBN978-1-8397-6531-5.
(in English)Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism London: Pluto Press, 2009 John Holloway ed. with Fernando Matamoros & Sergio Tischler
ISBN978-0-7453-2836-2
(in Greek)Νοέμβρης 73. Αυτοί οι αγώνες συνεχίζονται, δεν εξαγοράζονται, δεν δικαιώθηκαν, ed. Αυτόνομη Πρωτοβουλία Πολιτών. Athens 1983.
(in Greek)Αναμνήσεις, Άγης Στίνας, υψιλον, Αθήνα 1985
(in Greek)Το επαναστατικό πρόβλημα σήμερα, Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης, υψιλον, Αθήνα 2000
(In English) The city is ours: Squatting and autonomous movements from the 1970s to the present. Ed. Bart van der Steen, Ask Katzeff, Leendert van Hoogenhuijze. PM press, 2014.
ISBN978-1604866834