Leggiamo Tronti

ERIC:

Before reading these Tronti chapters, I’d assumed that he was a curio, a once-important figure who had been left behind by history and his successors. I imagined his relationship to autonomism/poststructuralism as similar to Lukacs’s relationship to the Frankfurters: interesting for the directions he hinted at, but completely surpassed by his heirs. I was wrong. (more…)

Notes: Factory and Society

I think Tronti’s main argument in this article is that the revolution begins in the factory given by the formula: factory => society => State.

(more…)

Nate:
Ch7. “Class and party”
This chapter was originally published as an article in Classe Operaia vol1, December 1964. What was Tronti doing, what was he involved in during the time he was writing and publishing these articles? (more…)

Notes
Nate
Ch6. “1905 in Italy”
This chapter was originally published as an article in Classe Operaia vol1, September 1964. (more…)

Nate:
Ch5. “Old tactics for a new strategy”
This chapter was originally published as an article in Classe Operaia #1, May 1964. I’d like to know more about how the articles that make up the first part of this book were received at the time. In any case… (more…)

Alex:

“If it is true that it is on the social base of the most developed capitalism where the decisive confrontation must take place…”

Not quite sure why this is indeed true. It seems that a lot of the Italian autonomist literature I have read to date make the argument, mainly implicitly, that it is capitalism’s most advanced stages that are the appropriate terrain of struggle. An explanation for this tendency would be helpful. I am wondering/concerned about the consequences of this thinking for groups such as peasants and industrial workers today that, it can be argued, are not the workers of capitalism “most advanced” form (i.e. high-technology capitalism)
(more…)

Alex:

I have no page numbers for the quotes since I am using the French online version that is not numbered. Perhaps I could number the paragraphs if need…

On theory and practice:

I read Tronti here as writing against dogmatism and calling for “theory from below” which I liked and agree with.

“Against the aged and blunted bourgeois thought, the worker point of view can, without a doubt, live now the era of its robust youth. For this, it is necessary to break violently from its immediate past, to refuse the traditional role officially assigned to it, surprise the enemy by developing an improvised theoretical framework, unforeseen and uncontrolled.”

“Knowledge is tied to struggle. To truly know is to hate truly.”

(more…)