Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism

by Steve Wright, Harry Cleaver (Foreword by), Riccardo Bellofiore (Afterword), Massimiliano Tomba (Afterword)

Overview

"Storming Heaven" is the first comprehensive survey of Italian autonomist theory, from its origins in the anti-Stalinist and workerist left of the 1950s to its heyday twenty years later. Autonomist marxism was a political tendency which privileged themes - self-organization, construction of identity, grassroots politics, subjects in struggle - which in many ways can be seen as the precursor of today's debates around social movements and popular direct action protest. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of class struggle as the distinguishing feature of autonomist thought, Wright explores the manner in which its understanding of class politics developed alongside emerging social movements.

Offering a critical and historical exploration of the tendency's emergence in post-war Italy, "Storming Heaven" moves beyond the crisis of traditional analytical frameworks on the left, and assesses the strengths and limitations of autonomist Marxism as first developed by Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786801173
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	07/20/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	627 KB

About the Author

Steve Wright is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. He is the author of the classic survey of Italian autonomist theory Storming Heaven (Pluto, 2017), now in its second edition.

Harry Cleaver is Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Reading Capital Politically (AK Press; 2nd ed, 2000).

Riccardo Bellofiore is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Bergamo. He is the co-editor of The Constitution of Capital: Essays on Volume I of Marx's 'Capital' (Palgrave, 2004).

Massimiliano Tomba is in the Department of Political and Juridical Sciences and International Studies at the University of Padova. He is the author of Marx's Temporalities (Haymarket, 2014).

Table of Contents

Foreword by Harry Cleaver
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Weathering the 1950s
2. Quaderni Rossi and the Workers' Enquiry
3. Classe Operaia
4. New Subjects
5. The Creeping May
6. Potere Operaio
7. Toni Negri and the Operaio Sociale
8. The Historiography of the Mass Worker
9. The Collapse of Workerism
10. Conclusion
Postscript: Once More, With Feeling: A Bibliographic Essay
Afterword to the Italian Edition by Riccardo Bellofiore&Massimiliano Tomba
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Over the last several years, the emergence of a new wave of anti-capitalist activism on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Genoa has been accompanied by a growing interest in "autonomist Marxism." Steve Wright's study brilliantly illuminates the history, complexity and internal debates of this tradition. In doing so, it fills a void in English language scholarship and makes a vital, lucid contribution to understanding how the red threads of Marxism are being rewoven into the fabric of twenty-first century radicalism.

Nick Dyer-Witheford

Italian "workerism" (or ), an anti-statist Marxist tendency that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, saw itself as storming the "heavens" of class rule. Wright (research fellow, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash U., Australia) explores the theoretical and thematic elements of as it developed in the revolutionary group Potere Operaio (Worker's Power). Focusing on more famous thinkers, such as Antonio Negri, as well as lesser-known advocates of , Wright explores how the movement's concept of class underwent changes, separating into different tendencies, but leaving important lessons "to those who continue to seek a world without bosses." Distributed by Stylus. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"A vital, lucid  contribution to understanding how the red threads of Marxism are being rewoven into the fabric of twenty-first century radicalism."

author of Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in Nick Dyer-Witheford

"The best account in English of the developments of autonomous politics in Italy in the 1960s and 70s."

Michael Hardt co-author of Empire

"As the most wide-ranging, historically nuanced and theoretically incisive treatment of the contested tradition of operaismo, Wright's book is an indispensable contribution to the study, critique or revitalisation of Italy's foremost contribution to Marxian heterodoxy."

Alberto Toscano

'The emergence of a new wave of anti-capitalist activism on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Genoa has been accompanied by a growing interest in "autonomist Marxism." Steve Wright’s study brilliantly illuminates the history, complexity and internal debates of this tradition ... A vital, lucid contribution to understanding how the red threads of Marxism are being rewoven into the fabric of twenty-first century radicalism.' --Nick Dyer-Witheford, author of Cyber-Marx

From the Publisher