 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
| Part ofa series on | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Marxism | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Outline | ||||||||||||||||||||
Foundations | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Related topics
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Workerism is aleftist and largely Italianpolitical theory that emphasizes the importance of or glorifies theworking class.[1] Workerism, oroperaismo, was of particular significance inItalianleft-wing politics, being largely embraced in Italian political groups ranging from Italiancommunists toItalian anarchists, and it partially evolved into or influencedautonomismo.
Workerism (oroperaismo) is a political analysis, whose main elements were to merge intoautonomism, that starts out from the power of the working class.Michael Hardt andAntonio Negri, known as operaist and autonomist writers, offer a definition ofoperaismo, quoting fromKarl Marx as they do so:
The workerists followed Marx in seeking to base their politics on an investigation of working class life and struggle. Through translations made available byDanilo Montaldi and others, they drew upon previous activist research in the United States by theJohnson–Forest Tendency and in France by the groupSocialisme ou Barbarie. The Johnson–Forest Tendency had studied working class life and struggles within theDetroit auto industry, publishing pamphlets such as "The American Worker" (1947), "Punching Out" (1952) and "Union Committeemen and Wildcat Strikes" (1955). That work was translated into French by Socialisme ou Barbarie and published, serially, in their journal. They too began investigating and writing about what was going on inside workplaces, in their case inside both auto factories and insurance offices.
The journalQuaderni Rossi ("Red Notebooks", 1961–5), along with its successorClasse Operaia ("Working Class", 1963–6), both founded by Negri and Tronti, developed workerist theory, focusing on the struggles of proletarians.
Associated with this theoretical development was apraxis based on workplace organising, most notably byLotta Continua. This reached its peak in the Italian "Hot Autumn" of 1969.
By the mid-1970s, however, the emphasis shifted from the factory to "thesocial factory"—the everyday lives of working people in their communities. Theoperaist andpost-operaist movement was increasingly known as theautonomist movement.
