Leggiamo Tronti

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)
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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.”

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Nate:

Notes on ch4, the portion that’s been translated. This chapter, Lenin In England, has been translated. I believe it first appeared in English in the Red Notes collection Working Class Autonomy And The Crisis, but I’m not sure. Red Notes and the circulation of translated materials from Italy in the 60s and 70s is a whole other topic worth researching. In any case, the essay was published in 1964 for the first issue of Classe Operaia. I’d like to get some background on these different newspapers/journals and the social/political context at the time, generally and in movements of the day. The piece is brilliant, and some of the more famous things Tronti’s said appear in it. It also opens the second section of the book, A Political Experiment Of A New Type.
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Nate:
Notes on ch3. Original title, “Social Capital”, published in issue 3 of Quaderni Rossi in 1963. Title in the book is Capital’s Plan, which reminds me of the title of a Panzieri piece, “surplus value and planning”. Don’t know when and where that Panzieri thing first appeared. Anyone know? It appeared in English translation in 1976. Anyway, I like the basic point about planning - it’s anti- the state capitalist (ie, socialist) view that planning is antithetical to capital. Lots of long-ish quotes pulled out here. Need to review these eventually and make more of a synthesis/summary, put this in my own words. Later, later…
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Nate:
Notes on ch2. This chapter originally appeared in issue 2 of Quaderni Rossi, in 1962. Tronti reads Marx’s Capital to distinguish two levels of capitalist production, and two points of view on it:
1. The labor process
2. The valorization process
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Nate:
My notes on ch1. This chapter originally appeared in 1962 in issue one of Mundo Nuovo (New World). Opens with a quote from Rudolf Schlessinger, who I’d not heard of before. Moves on say that he’ll advance some working hypotheses that will have to be deepened and verified.
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Nate:

I made the electronically available excerpts of the book that I’m aware of, listed below, into links along the right hand column under the heading “Tronti primary sources”. The correspondence of these excerpts to the book’s pagination is listed below.
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Nate:
I’ve been sick lately which has slowed me down. As a result, behind schedule. Anyway, notes now on the rest of the introduction, just quotes culled, nothing systematic. Also, page references are only to the Spanish edition, I’ll go over this section again with the Italian when I get time.
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