I finally got around to reading the Lingua Franca piece on Antonio Negri,
which--in my opinion--helps to shed light on problems facing the
"anti-globalization" movement today. I learned that Negri was a guru of the
"autonomist" movement in Italy in the mid-1970s that seemed to have as much
of a fetish over street-fighting as many of the "black bloc" types today do.
"Autonomia" referred to a belief that workers and students should take
direction action against the capitalist system 'autonomously', like not
paying for a ride on a bus, etc. This was a fancy term for the sort of
thing that Abby Hoffman used to be involved with but without the
pretentious jargon. It was Negri's contribution to garnish these direct
actions with "post-Marxist" profundities from Guattari-Deleuze. By
establishing "autonomist" groups all across Italy in "rhizomic" fashion,
some kind of proletarian revolution would take place. Of course, what these
"roots" based grouplets lacked was any kind of accountability to the mass
movement. The notion of putting direction actions to a vote would be
considered some kind of antiquated Leninism.
When Italy failed to respond to the autonomist movement, the activists
became frustrated and turned to the terrorism of the Red Brigades, their
version of the Weathermen. Negri was charged with aiding the Red Brigades
and sentenced to a long prison term. Although Negri denied any direct
involvement, he refused to disassociate himself politically from the aims
of the Red Brigades. The judge in the case, who interestingly enough was
sympathetic to the Communist Party, decided that even though no direct
links between the "autonomists" and the brigades could be proven, there was
heavily circumstantial evidence that they had overlapping memberships and
that Negri was a link between the two movements.
As is well understood in Marxist circles, populists of the Narodnik type
often turn to the right when the system can not be overthrown through
kidnappings, assassination, etc. Many a Russian middle-class radical who
could not overthrow Czarism through the "propaganda of the deed" became
transformed into Social Revolutionaries, who were revolutionary in name
only. Kerensky was their leader.
In Italy, a similar phenomenon took place. And Negri apparently was swept
up by the rightward boomerang, as indicated by his decision to run for
office on the Radical Party ticket. A brief review of Lexis-Nexis gives you
a flavor of the sort of people who joined this party and what it stands
for. This is from a July 6, 1996 FT article on the candidacy of Emma Bonino.
---
No doubt Emma Bonino was headstrong from the start. She was born in the
small town of Bra, south of Turin, the kind of place where going to church
was the social highlight of the week. Her father ('a very strange kind of
person but I loved him very much') saw no reason for girls to be bothering
with high school or university but was persuaded to let her go.
While in New York to research a thesis on Malcolm X, the Black Power
leader, she found a job selling shoes in Carrano's elegant boutique on
Fifth Avenue. It was un-demanding: the shoes came in little Italian sizes -
'So unless we could find some Chinese customers we had nothing to do.'
In 1975 she was asked to become a candidate for the Radicals, a small
centrist party seeking to promote an individualist society against what she
calls the authoritarianism of the Christian Democrats on the right and the
Communists on the left. She was five times elected to the Chamber of
Deputies and twice to the European Parliament.
---
Louis Proyect
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