Autonomism is a European far-left political movement that emerged in Italy in the 1970s. It can be divided into two forms depending on the period: Autonomist Marxism (1970s–1990s) and Autonomist anarchism (2000s–present). The movement is committed to anti-capitalist, anti-state, horizontal, and anti-authoritarian struggle.
Born from the anti-authoritarian Marxist reflections of the 20th century and following an increasingly close alignment with anarchism, it took shape within the Italian autonomia of the 1970s. This movement brought together various thinkers, such as Toni Negri, and a primarily working-class population critical of traditional Italian communist structures, such as the Italian Communist Party. This initial form, organized around Italian workers and seeking to promote protest-based communist forms of anti-capitalist struggle, began to engage in a series of anti-authoritarian practices and concepts. Heavily repressed at the end of 1977, the Italian autonomia declined.
Over the following decade, autonomism spread to Germany and France, where its sociology evolved alongside the changing nature of capitalism in Europe. It began to influence a younger or more marginalized population that sought to act through direct action and established numerous squats and alternative experiments. Here again, the central aspect of these autonomist movements remained Marxist thought, developed and re-utilized within Maoist K-groups, among others. Some autonomists of this period engaged in terrorist actions targeting the state or capitalism, notably through groups such as Action Directe (AD) and the Red Army Faction (RAF). After a peak decade, both movements disappeared by the end of the 1980s, either re-integrated into their respective states following the legalization of squats or abandoned by more moderate elements critical of terrorist methods.
After a period of uncertainty during the 1990s, autonomism was reborn in conjunction with anarchism, particularly in France, where the two movements increasingly merged, a dynamic that had already begun in the 1970s. This new emergence of autonomism, referred to as autonomist anarchism, is distinguished by its abandonment of its Marxist and communist heritage and its increasing integration into the anarchist movement. This movement, sometimes called 'toto', participated in black bloc style tactics, ZADs, free parties, and squatting, while maintaining conflictual relations with the traditional institutions of the anarchist movement. Since the second half of the 2010s, it has been considered by several researchers to be an integral part of the anarchist movement.
Etymology and terminology The term autonomism derives from the concept of autonomia developed in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The etymology of this term is Greek, coming from the word αὐτονομία, which means 'freedom to use its own laws'.
In Germans-speaking context, the term Autonomen was used since the late 1970s to refer to a distinct if heterogeeous scene of urban social movement activists involved in countercultural practices and social struggles.
Various other designations exist, depending on the researchers and the specific periods of autonomism being discussed. For instance, in 2000, the Marxist scholar Harry Cleaver referred to "autonomist Marxism" when examining the use of Marxism by autonomists up to that point, which was significant, starting that he invented this terminology in the 1990s. Conversely, in 2021, Isabelle Sommier, a European far-left specialist teaching at La Sorbonne, rather used the term 'anarcho-autonomism' (already used by European police forces since 2000) while focusing on the increasingly significant convergence between autonomists and anarchists since the 2000s and 2010s, which has led autonomists to move away from their Marxist heritage in favor of anarchism.
History
Context : Marxist antecedents in Trotskyist thought and Socialisme ou Barbarie (1950s-late 1960s)
One of the earliest antecedents was the Johnson–Forest Tendency, a faction within the American Trotskyist movement in the 1940s led by C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya. Disillusioned with the orthodox Trotskyist analysis of the Soviet Union as a "degenerate workers' state", they developed a theory of state capitalism, arguing that the USSR was a variation of the same phase of capitalist development occurring in the West. Their analysis was grounded in the study of production relations, identifying the introduction of Taylorism and Fordism in both the US and the USSR as new forms of domination.
Crucially, unlike the Frankfurt School, which saw only domination in these new technologies, the Johnson–Forest Tendency emphasized the power of workers to oppose them. They documented the autonomous struggles of rank-and-file workers against both management and union bureaucracies, particularly in the Detroit auto industry. James also argued that the independent struggles of Black workers constituted a vanguard of the American working class. This led to a "total repudiation of the theory and practice of the Leninist theory of the Vanguard Party", in favor of recognizing that new organizational forms arise spontaneously from workers' own experiences.
In France, a parallel development occurred with the formation of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group (1949–1965), led by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort. They broke with Trotskyism for similar reasons as Johnson–Forest, with whom they were in direct contact. They also developed a critique of Soviet bureaucracy and focused on "workers' daily resistance in industry", translating and publishing accounts of American workers' struggles to inform their own analyses of the French context. These currents directly influenced the Italian workerists through Danilo Montaldi, who translated and circulated their work, providing early Italian thinkers with analyses of autonomous workers' struggles inside modern factories. Facing Reality, a 1958 book co-written by Castoriadis with James and Grace Lee Boggs of the Johnson-Forest Tendency had an influence on both Italian Autonomia and Black auto workers organizing in Detroit.
Birth and development in Italy (late 1960s-1977)
Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, autonomism as a political movement emerged in Italy in the form of autonomia. At the time, it was a deeply working-class movement, uniting thousands of workers around two fundamental points: "class struggle made itself autonomous of the circulation of capital; and [that] the class struggle was not led by traditional organizations of the Left (communists and their trade unions)". One of the reasons for this emergence was the migration of numerous workers from the South of Italy to the North.
These workers, who did not share in the tradition of socialist labor, were initially employed as anti-communist strikebreakers but soon became deeply revolted against the existing system themselves. They engaged in a series of experiments and activities, especially from 1969 onwards, outside of the Italian Communist Party; their practices ranged from squatting to autoriduzione (self-reduction), which refers to the collective refusal to pay the full price for essential goods and services. They also engaged in widespread absenteism from factories.
This dynamic was driven by internal criticisms formulated against the Italian Communist Party by several Marxist thinkers such as Toni Negri, Raniero Panzieri, Romano Alquati, or Mario Tronti, who began to develop broad critiques of the party's bureaucratic and centralized structure; many who were members left the party in the face of its inability to rejuvenate and reinvent itself. Their theoretical work led to the birth of a movement known as operaismo which later gave the theoretical armature of emerging autonomism. Operaismo reached its peak in the “Hot Autumn" of 1969, when a general strike was launched across the country and 600,000 metalworkers demonstrated in Turin. This period saw operaismo move from being a primarily journal-based tendency to informing a number of revolutionary organisations, chief among them Potere Operaio (Workers' Power), formed in 1969. Potere Operaio attempted to generalise the struggles taking place inside the factories, linking them to conflicts in the broader society, such as housing struggles and student protests. Artists and designers affiliated with the group, such as Mario Mariotti, Giovanni Anceschi and Gianfranco Baruchello, contributed to its visual culture through posters, journal layouts, and militant artworks that reflected its political line. However, disappointed by the failure of the Hot Autumn's factory struggles to translate into a direct political challenge to the state, the group's analysis became increasingly pessimistic. It began to stress the necessity of an "armed party" and an insurrectional strategy to break the political impasse, a shift that marked a departure from its earlier focus on the immanent power of workers' struggles.
Whereas operaismo (like the Johnson-Forest Tendency and Socialisme Ou Barbarie) emphasised the antagonism between labour and capital in the sphere of capitalist production, and particular in the factory, autonomia increasingly emphasised social reproduction and community. Furthermore, Italian autonomia was rooted sociological groups outside the male industrial workforce: students and youth, and women. Consequently, many new individuals became politicized within these circles and through exposure to these ideas, subsequently joining the Italian autonomia.
As Potere Operaio entered into crisis and eventually dissolved in 1973, its most prominent theorist, Antonio Negri, began to develop a significant evolution of workerist thought. Negri argued that capitalist restructuring in response to the mass worker's struggles had led to the emergence of what Mario Tronti named a "social factory", where the entire society was put to work for capital. Consequently, the central political figure was no longer the mass worker confined to the factory, but the "social worker" (operaio sociale). This new proletariat was a heterogeneous figure that included not only factory workers but also students, the unemployed, precarious workers in the service sector, and women engaged in unwaged domestic labour, all of whom contributed to the reproduction of capital.
This theory provided the framework for the political movement of Autonomia Operaia ("Workers' Autonomy") in the mid-1970s. This loose network of collectives engaged in a wide range of struggles beyond the factory, including rent strikes, squatting, and "self-reduction" campaigns where communities collectively refused to pay increased prices for public transport, electricity, and food. The movement's aesthetics reflected this new, diffuse social subject, with journals like Rosso and A/traverso adopting a graffiti-like, proto-punk style that contrasted with the modernist austerity of earlier workerist publications.
Negri's demand for a "social wage" was picked up by autonomist feminists such as Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Sylvia Federici in Italy and Selma James in the US, leading to the movement for Wages for Housework launched in 1972.
During this mid-1970s period, the autonomist movement in Italy had two main currents: Autonomia Creativa, a countercultural scene which challenged conventional politics - itself divided into the Circoli del Proletario Giovanile, the “Circles of Young Workers”, formed in 1974 as affinity groups in marginal neighbouroods engaged in activities such as mass looting, and the Indiani Metropolitani, the “Urban Indians” - and Autonomia Operaia Organizzat, which sought to transform spontaneous revolt into a sustained and organised attack on the capitalist system. Autonomia Creativa was heavily involved in the Free Radio movement, with Radio Alice in Bologna its best known station.