Italy 1960s-70s: reading guide

Libcom.org's reading guide on the Italian social movements of the 1960s-70s, which saw massive strikes, protests, occupations, directly democratic assemblies and widespread radicalism across society.

Key texts

• 1962-1973: Worker and student struggles in Italy - Sam Lowry - Short, simply-worded history of the wave of strikes and occupations that gripped Italian factories and universities during the 1960s.
• States of emergency: Cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 - Robert Lumley - Complete text of the definitive book on Italy's mass social movements of the 1960s and 70s tracing their development, growth, co-option and decline. Highly recommended.
• The Workerists and the unions in Italy's 'Hot Autumn' - Steve Wright - A brief history of the Italian 'Workerists' in the 'Hot Autumn' of 1969, when unions succeeded in co-opting radical working class demands. Extract from the excellent and highly recommended book Storming Heaven.
• Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake - Red Notes - Collection of articles, speeches and letters from Italy at a time of intense class struggle, giving an insider's account of the social movement and its struggles against the established left.

Key people and groups

• Lotta Continua - Arguably the most important extra-parliamentary organisation of the 1970s in Italy.
• Potere Operaio - Autonomist Marxist group basing theory on the everyday life of workers and their refusal of work.
• Antonio Negri - Autonomist Marxist academic and leader of Potere Operaio, wrongfully imprisoned for alleged involvement in the Brigate Rosse urban guerrilla group.
• Mario Tronti - Highly influential Marxist philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of autonomist thought.
• Mariarosa Dalla Costa - Marxist feminist famous for arguing that women's unwaged labour is an essential part of capitalist reproduction, rather than merely an oppression imposed on women by men.
• Silvia Federici - Marxist feminist writer drawing the links between capitalism's need for women's unpaid labour and the subjugation of women under patriarchy.
• Sergio Bologna - veteran Italian autonomist intellectual and activist.
• Raniero Panzieri - Co-founder of the early operaist journal Quaderni Rossi, and translator of the second volume of Marx' Capital into Italian.

Workers' struggles

• Porto Marghera – the last firebrands - Booklet on the widespread class struggle in the chemical factories of the Italian industrial zone of Porto Marghera in the 1960s and 70s.
• Against the state as boss: Autonomous Assembly of Alfa Romeo - A fascinating first person account of workers' struggles at Italian state-owned car manufacturer, Alfa Romeo from 1971-1972.
• An interview with workers at Fiat, 1970 - Three workers from FIAT Mirafiori in Italy describe the experiences of the Southern immigrant coming to work in the industrial cities of the North.

Women's struggles

• Italian feminism, workerism and autonomy in the 1970s: The struggle against unpaid reproductive labour and violence - Patrick Cuninghame - Article about the autonomous women's movement in Italy in the 1970s, with particular focus on Wages for Housework and Lotta Femminista.
• Fighting For Feminism: The Womens Question in an Italian Revolutionary Group - A set of letters from the Lotta Continua newspaper discussing the relationship between feminism, Marxism, the women's movement, and Lotta Continua.

Community struggles

• Take over the city - Community struggle in Italy, 1973 - Excellent article about community struggles across Italy, including rent strikes and occupations of empty housing.
• The working class struggle against the crisis: self-reduction of prices in Italy, 1975 - Bruno Ramirez - Bruno Ramirez's analysis of "the refusal to comply with price increases of essential services", also known as 'self-reduction'.

Strategy of tension

• Strategy of tension - A short introduction to the government's "strategy of tension" program, to use fascist groups to carry out terrorist attacks which would then be blamed on anarchists and the left.
• Operation Gladio - A short introduction to Operation Gladio, the secret neofascist army set up with NATO support to combat internal subversion.
• Secrets and bombs: The Piazza Fontana bombing and the strategy of tension - Detailed, book-length history of the strategy of tension.

Other media

- Film by the Wu-Ming Collective against the backdrop of 1970s Bologna, in which two young men become involved in the city's famous radical pirate radio station, Radio Alice

LibCom.org

Länk: https://libcom.org/library/italy-1960s-70s-reading-guide