Autonomism Garland Libre

322 Autonomism

Autonomism

Christian Garland

The term autonomism or autonomist may

broadly refer to a number of different theories and

movements that, while in some ways disparate,

can be said to share several underlying aims and

principles. Autonomism assumes a perspective of

critical and reflexive Marxism, emphasizing both

its essentially negative and open-ended nature

as with any critical theory and identifying its

own theory and practice as anti-hierarchical, anti-

capitalist, and anti-authoritarian. Similarly, while

retaining the centrality of class struggle, autonom-

ist currents maintain the need for revolt and

self-emancipation by the exploited and oppressed

themselves, as a self-valorizing agency, and not

by a vanguard party or other self-declared

liberator. The theory of autonomy can thus be

defined as one of self-determination over the

form and substance of life, both collectively

and individually. Unlike orthodox Marxism,

autonomous movements can also be defined as

anti-political and indeed anti-state, in that

they reject the traditional means of political action

and the traditional goal of assuming political

power embodied in the state-form.

International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, pp. 322325

Autonomism 323

Autonomy, then, is not rigidly fixed in ideo-

logical terms, but rather can be defined as the

power to freely determine the conditions of ones

existence. Against hierarchical power, and its

embodiment in the forces of market and state,

autonomist practice stresses the possibility of

alternative modes of being in the here and now,

without losing sight of the need for this to

become total, both in the sense of encompass-

ing a majority of society and acting against the

existing system in its entirety. However, in so

far as we can speak of autonomism it should

be stated that this very broad term is basically

anti-systemic and non-ideological, and the vari-

ous theories and movements associated with it

deliberately resist any easily assimilation into a

standard definition.

Autonomist theory has much in common with

class struggle anarchism, and many autonomists

and anarchists recognize the affinity. However, the

Marxist character of autonomist theory makes

for an important distinction with anarchism.

Being a heterodox tradition, autonomism has

more than one historical forerunner; as such,

many within the broad movement identify a line

of continuity with the critical and libertarian

aspects of Marxs original theory, as much as

the anti-Leninist Left Communist currents which

followed in the early twentieth century.

The term autonomism has its origins in the

Italian Autonomia and Operaismo movements of

the late 1960s, which reached their high point in

the Hot Autumn of unofficial strikes, sabotage,

occupations, and street protests of 1969, before

reemerging in the tumult of 1977. Italian autonom-

ist Marxism found its best theoretical expres-

sion in the likes of Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti,

and Sergio Bologna, but the movement, which

their theories fed into, was not defined solely by

such theories. In terms of late twentieth-century

revolutionary ruptures, it can be argued that

the two Italian movements of the late 1960s

and late 1970s are second only to the French May

Events of 1968 for significance and impact. In

both cases, currents usually confined to the mar-

gins swept across the entirety of social relations

in an advanced industrial society, to radically and

permanently alter it.

The Italian movement of 1969 offers a number

of notable examples of autonomous practice,

in which effective collective action undermined

and subverted capitalist social relations. Besides

mass squatting as a solution to housing need,

equally wide-scale rent strikes offered a further

refusal of the market imperative of having to pay

for the privilege of a roof over ones head. This

mass movement spread to include the infam-

ous use of autoriduzione, or self-reduction, in

which thousands refused to pay full price,

or indeed anything at all, for essential services

such as electricity, gas, water, and transport. In

the workplace, too, when not sabotaging pro-

duction, workers engaged in an endless wave

of unofficial strikes and stoppages outside of the

control of trade unions and political parties.

In the converging struggles of the first move-

ment of 19689 there can be discerned some-

thing of the more fluid and dynamic definition

of the proletariat that autonomists continue

to theorize, encompassing a non-unionized white

collar sector and also recognizing the unpaid

domestic labor performed by women. Instead of

the party, either Leninist or Social Democratic,

pressing for official recognition from the powers

that be through legal and electoral channels,

autonomous movements can be seen to assume a

dynamic, negative anti-power aimed at sub-

verting and challenging hierarchical power in all

its forms. Such examples of direct action taken

by social subjects themselves remain anathema

to the Leninist belief in the need for a single,

disciplined party, which will lead and oversee

social revolt. However, as John Holloway and

other autonomist theorists have argued, such

movements do not merely propose passive with-

drawal, because they are opposed to engaging

with the existing structures of political power.

Instead, autonomist theory favors an anti-political

practice: the material contestation of the totality

of social relations.

Although autonomism or at least the

theoretical shorthand this term has come to

assume may have its origins in Italy, its hetero-

geneous and fluid dynamic means it cannot

be temporally or spatially confined to a par-

ticular historical context. As the Italian movement

of 1977 was consumed by an escalating cycle of

armed provocation and repression, its force as

a social movement acting in and against the

existing society ebbed away until it evaporated

altogether. The great strength of the movements

of 1969 and 1977 was that they could not be iso-

lated or contained and at their peak threatened

to actually overwhelm the existing social order.

The other, later focus for autonomism found

a somewhat different expression in the West


324 Autonomism

in a society where no rupture on the scale of those

in Italy in 1969 or 1977 was experienced.

In analyzing the autonomous movement in

Germany, and other countries, notably Switzer-

land, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, and its

relative isolation from the rest of the population,

it is important not to attribute this to the absence

of sufficient organization and failure to build

the party. As Katsiaficas has argued, The

autonomen do not subscribe to the belief that

there is one overriding truth or one true form

of autonomy. In this sense there is a clear dis-

tinction between autonomous anti-political action

and indeed cultural subversion in everyday life,

and the standard orthodox Marxist view of the

necessity for following the usual political paths

to arrive at the usual political end of govern-

mental or state power. Autonomist practice does

not ignore politics as such, but rather refuses

to accept the terms this dictates, instead waging

irregular battles on a terrain as far as possible

of its own choosing. One such example in which

the movement successfully spread its influence

was at the height of the Cold War, when in

Germany at least, autonomists fueled the fires

of discontent with American nuclear bases being

stationed in the country and helped catalyze a

wider opposition that had noticeable political

repercussions.

Autonomist currents as they exist today con-

tinue to draw inspiration from a wide range of

theoretical influences and unsurprisingly diverge

as much as they agree, one obvious example

being the substantial differences between those

for whom Antonio Negris recent work, especially

with Michael Hardt, is a major inspiration, and

those for whom this offers at best limited crit-

ical insights. Without attempting a division of

the clearly very broad autonomist tradition into

opposing camps, the differences between the

poststructuralist and Deleuzian Negri, and

those working more in the dialectical tradition

of Hegelian Marxism and the Critical Theory of

the Frankfurt School, should not be ignored.

Another major criticism of the later Negri is what

many have argued is his somewhat timid insist-

ence on focusing rebellious energies on reform-

based demands for a minimum or social income.

Autonomism has a number of important

antecedents. In the Left Communist currents

of the early twentieth century lie a number

of notable precedents, specifically opposition to

German Federal Republic of the 1980s. Here,

the autonomie movement consisting mostly of

radicalized youth strove to develop distinctive

alternative modes of being, which by their very

nature were antagonistic to that of mainstream

German society. Here, again, squatting offered

an immediate answer to the problem of housing

while challenging and undermining the market

relations responsible for it. The usually com-

munal nature of the squats of Hamburg and

Berlin facilitated free experimentation with

new egalitarian, non-hierarchical ways of living

as distinct from the atomization experienced in

advanced urban societies. Likewise, the networks

of social centers and info shops offering

non-commercial non-institutional space for

meeting, socializing, and exchanging ideas,

originating in northwest and central Europe,

now exist in most parts of the world, albeit with

varying degrees of success.

The German and central European move-

ment has also been notable for its willingness

to take offensive action against the forces of the

state and in the destruction of symbolic targets

of consumer capitalism: prestige cars, retail

outlets, fast food chains what Georgy Katsia-

ficas calls civil luddism. This willingness to

engage in militant offensive action continues to

be a source of heated debate among the varying

tendencies in the broad autonomist tradition,

but it is noticeably more one of tactics than of

outright hostility to such strategies.

In the anti-capitalist or alter-globalization

movement of the last decade we find similar issues

at stake, with the appearance of black blocs

of militant affinity groups openly advocating

revolution and indeed prepared to take offensive

action as well as create alternatives in the present.

The anti-capitalist or alter-globalization move-

ment has arguably been most visible in the mass

mobilizations at the various global summits of

the G8, WTO, IMF, and World Bank, where

black blocs of militants have also been present.

However, this is not to overemphasize the

role such groups play, or to ignore the short-

comings of some of their actions, which on at least

two occasions have resulted in protesters being

wounded or shot dead by police. Despite its

undoubted successes, the German autonomist

movement of the Cold War Federal Republic, no

less than in the reunified Germany of today, found

itself comparatively isolated from the proletariat


Ayim, May (19601996) 325

traditional political action using parliamentary

and electoral strategies, and the need for anti-

hierarchical or at least radically democratic and

diffuse forms of organization. Rosa Luxemburgs

insistence on the creative spontaneity of class

struggle is echoed in the autonomist belief that

it is only from a radical collective subjectivity

that real opposition stems. Similarly, other Left

Communist principles such as the refusal to adopt

the methods of party politics with an eye to state

power can be observed in the autonomists

belief that revolutionary means should prefigure

revolutionary ends and strive to avoid replicating

those of the existing system.

A later continuity in the lines of autonomist

thought can be found in Cornelius Castoriadis

and the council-communist influenced French

Socialisme ou Barbarie (SoB) group of the 1960s,

which had its British equivalent in Maurice

Brintons Solidarity grouping. Castoriadis and

SoB were especially notable for developing the

theory of the USSR as being bureaucratic state

capitalism, a result also of Lenins belief in the

necessity for the party to create a bureaucratized,

militarized state in which the Bolshevik concept

of democratic centralism came into its own.

Likewise, the Situationist Internationals pre-

ference for cultural subversion and its critique

of the totality of consumer society has had a

noticeable influence on autonomist thought and

practice, as has Gilles Dauve, perhaps better known

by his pen name Jean Barrot, who has sought to

develop a theory of communism antagonistic to

ideological categories or containment.

Though autonomism is a broadly defined

concept, the currents within it do indeed share

several definite similarities in terms of theory

and practice. We can recognize the primacy that

autonomy is, if nothing else, the freedom to be,

to live, which by its very definition is antagonistic

to the dominant material forces shaping the

world. It is this antagonism towards capitalism

and the state and party politics, and the values

and norms of existing society, which autonomist

theories and movements share, the refusal of the

existent, of that which is in Adornos phrase,

posing again the question of alternatives, that

remain merely not yet.

SEE ALSO: Anarchism; Global Justice Movement and

Resistance; Marxism; Negri, Antonio (b. 1933);

Socialisme ou Barbarie

References and Suggested ReadingsBonefeld, W. (Ed.) (2004) Revolutionary Writing:

Common Sense Essays in Post-Political Politics. New

York: Autnomedia.

De Angelis, M. (2007) The Beginning of History: Value

Struggles and Global Capital. London: Pluto Press.

Dyer-Witheford, N. (1999) Cyber-Marx: Cycles and

Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism.

Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Holloway, J. (2002) Change the World without Taking

Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. London:

Pluto Press.

Katsiaficas, G. (2006) The Subversion of Politics:

European Autonomous Social Movements and the Deco-

lonizaion of Everyday Life. Edinburgh: AK Press.

Wright, S. (2002) Storming Heaven: Class Composition

and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism. London:

Verso.


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