Description

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-organisation, 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 postwar 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.     Steve Wright has taught politics and European studies – on and off – at a number of Australian universities since 1980. He has edited Work of the Future (1997) and Never Give In (1998). He lives in Melbourne where he has been active in anti-nuclear politics and workplace organising and is associated with the journal Rank and File News.    Contents Introduction / 1. Weathering the Fifties / 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 / Bibliography / Index