Italian Operaismo

An accessible, introductory presentation of operaismo, one of the most important revolutionary theories and praxes of the twentieth century. “Operaismo is a Machiavellian return to first principles: it is a return to Marx against Marxism, against its tradition of determinism, historicism, and objectivism. Operaismo isn’t a heresy within the Marxist family, it is a rupture with that family.”—extract from Italian Operaismo This accessible, introductory presentation of operaismo (or “workerism” in English) arms readers with a deeper understanding of the concepts, context, and history of one of the most important revolutionary theories and praxes of the twentieth century. While the ideas of some of its proponents—above all, Antonio Negri—have circulated widely in the English-speaking world over the past twenty years, rather less is known about the context from which (and