George Katsiaficas summarizes the forms of autonomous movements by saying that "[i]n contrast to the centralized decisions andhierarchical authority 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 ananti-authoritarian revolutionary perspective that seeks to create a practical political alternative toauthoritarian socialism,state socialism, and contemporaryrepresentative democracy.[8]
Autonomism influenced the GermanAutonomen and remains influential in Italy, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. In the 21st century, those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to anarchists.[9]
Early theorists likeMario Tronti,Antonio Negri,Sergio Bologna, andPaolo 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 unaccountablecollective work, and that only a little of this was redistributed to the workers in the form of wages. Other Italian autonomists—particularlyMarxist feminists, such asMariarosa Dalla Costa andSilvia Federici—emphasised the importance offeminism 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]
InEmpire, Negri andMichael Hardt argue that network power constructs are the most effective methods of organization against theneoliberal regime ofcapital accumulation and predict a massive shift in the dynamics of capital into a 21st century empire.[12]
Within the context of themovement of 1977, riots took place inBologna on 11 March 1977 following the killing of studentFrancesco Lorusso by police. Beginning in 1979, the state effectively prosecuted the autonomist movement, accusing it of protecting theRed Brigades, which had kidnapped and assassinatedAldo Moro. 12,000 far-left activists were detained; 600 fled the country, including 300 to France and 200 to South America.[15]
The autonomist Marxist andAutonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English-speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics.[16] The Italianoperaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics, includingHarry Cleaver,John Holloway, Steve Wright,[17] and Nick Dyer-Witheford.[18] 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 thesquatting ofUngdomshuset inCopenhagen in March 2007.[19][20] Other Marxists have criticised autonomist Marxism or post-operaismo of having a theoretically weak understanding ofvalue incapitalist economies.[21] It has also been criticised by other Marxists for beinganti-humanist and anti-Hegelian.[22]
^abNegri, Antonio (1991). "Translators' Introductions Part II".Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. Translated by Ryan, Michael. New York: Autonomedia. pp. xxx.
Marcinkeviius, Tomas (March 1, 2020). "Concept and Practice of Effectiveness in Autonomism: From Autonomia and Autonomen to Contemporary Movements".Anarchist Studies.29 (1):57–78.doi:10.3898/AS.29.1.03.
(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 TischlerISBN978-0-7453-2836-2.
(in Greek)Νοέμβρης 73. Αυτοί οι αγώνες συνεχίζονται, δεν εξαγοράζονται, δεν δικαιώθηκαν, ed. Αυτόνομη Πρωτοβουλία Πολιτών. Athens 1983.
(in Greek)Αναμνήσεις, Άγης Στίνας, Ύψιλον, Αθήνα 1985.
(in Greek)Το επαναστατικό πρόβλημα σήμερα, Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης, Ύψιλον, 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.
