Concept
Operaismo
Overview
Operaismo (Italian for "workerism") was a heterodox Marxist political and theoretical tendency that emerged in Italy in the early 1960s. Its foundational insight, a "Copernican revolution" in Marxist thought, was to invert the traditional relationship between capital and labour, positing that the struggles of the working class were the primary driving force of capitalist development. Capital, in this view, does not develop along its own internal laws but is forced to restructure and innovate in response to working-class antagonism.
Originating from dissident circles within the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and Italian Socialist Party (PSI) during Italy's post-war "economic miracle", operaismo's key thinkers included Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri, Sergio Bologna, and Romano Alquati. Their analysis was initially developed in journals such as Quaderni Rossi (1961–1965) and Classe Operaia (1964–1967). The central analytical category of operaismo was "class composition", which examines the relationship between the material structure of the working class (its technical composition) and its capacity for political self-organisation (its political composition). This analysis was often informed by a novel method of "workers' inquiry" (inchiesta operaia), a form of militant co-research (conricerca) conducted with factory workers.
At its height in the late 1960s and 1970s, during a period of intense social conflict in Italy known as the "Hot Autumn", operaismo provided the theoretical framework for revolutionary groups like Potere Operaio and, in its later development, the broader Autonomia Operaia movement. Key concepts such as the "refusal of work" and the analysis of the "mass worker" and later the "social worker" (operaio sociale) were influential, as was its critical engagement with aesthetics and culture. Following the decline of the movements in the late 1970s and increased state repression, operaismo as a coherent tendency collapsed. Its legacy, however, continued through its influence on autonomist Marxism, post-Marxism, the theoretical work of figures like Michael Hardt and Negri; and even post-war Italian anarchism.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In bourgeois society living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In Communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
States what Operaismo is; the author is tied to Operaismo in the knowledge graph.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
The author is tied to Operaismo in the knowledge graph.
The materialistic conception of history, as it is called, is due to Marx, and underlies the whole Communist philosophy. I do not mean, of course, that a man could not be a Communist without accepting it, but that in fact it is accepted by the Communist Party, and that it profoundly influences their views as to politics and tactics. The name does not convey at all accurately what is meant by the theory. It means that…
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
States what Operaismo is.
Philosophers who discussed Operaismo
Related ideas
- Historiography
- Joseph Stalin
- Karl Marx
- Marxism
- Antonio Negri
- Copernican Revolution
- Galileo Galilei
- Council communism
- Milan
- Post-Marxism
- Autonomism
- Italian economic miracle
- Years of Lead (Italy)
Place in the tradition
Part of Italian philosophy.