Autonomist Marxism - Nick Dyer-Witheford

This paper argues for the pertinence of autonomist Marxism to an era of computerised capital and postmodern culture. Broadly speaking, ’autonomist Marxism’ designates that tradition of Marxism which places at its centre the self-activity of the working class - a tradition with deep historical roots and wide international diffusion. However, perhaps its most developed contemporary expression, and the one I shall focus on here, is that arising out of the struggles of Italian workers, students and feminists during the 1960s and 70s and formulated in the work of such revolutionary intellectuals as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna, Mariorosa Dalla Costa, Francois Beradi, and Antonio Negri. When in 1979 the ferment of the Italian New Left was violently repressed under the pretext of counter-insurgency against the Red Brigades the development of this innovative body of theory was abruptly interrupted, and subsequently the heretical tenor of its positions - anathema to neoliberals, Soviet-style nomenklatura and social democrats alike - has ensured it a subterranean existence, even on the left. Yet despite the destruction of the movement in which it was originally based, this strand of autonomist Marxism has continued to develop, undergoing new mutations and making fresh connections.