Despite the consensus opinion that alterglobalism is in crisis and apparently without a clear objective or vehicle for promoting global change through the ineffective World Social Forum "model," a significant anticapitalist tendency continues to remain active. However, questions remain over autonomism's ability to avoid ghettoizing itself and provide more than intense internal criticism of other more institutionalized and "vertical" currents. Autonomism originated in Europe in the seventies and eighties, specifically around the Autonomia and Autonomen radical social movements in Italy and Germany. Based on Italian workerist theories of worker self-management and autonomy from the mediating institutions of both capital and labor, the movement has since absorbed strong influences from radical feminism, the North American counterculture, French poststructuralism, neoanarchism, Mexican neo-Zapatism, and the Argentinean workerrecuperated factory and self-management movements.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Italian “1977 Movement” in its conflict with the grey, humourless political system was its use of irony to ridicule its opponents. Irony was central to the identity of the movement and its cultural and political break with the institutional old and vanguardist new lefts. Its use, particularly by the “Metropolitan Indians”, the transversalists and other “creatives”, marked a social revolt by mainly marginalized young people, who invented a new political counter-culture based on linguistic experimentation in circumstances far from the optimism of 1968. The paper, based directly on primary sources from the movement and on interviews with former participants, reassesses a movement usually characterized as “violent” by Italianist social history. It concludes that the movement's “ironic praxis” contributed to a fundamental change in Italian society in the late seventies and has influenced the political style of contemporary alter-globalist and anti-capitalist movements.
THE BRUTAL MASSACRE of 45 indigenous sympathisers, mostly women and children, of the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) in a refugee camp near Acteal in the south-eastern state of Chiapas, Mexico, last December 22, at the hands of paramilitary death squads linked to the PRI government served to remind world opinion that the ‘Rebellion of the Forgotten’ of January 1994 has moved from a low to a high intensity conflict. The success of the Zapatistas in mobilising Mexican and international ‘civil society’, particularly through the Internet, in a common struggle against the disastrous human and environmental consequences of neoliberalism, globalisation and “free trade” and for increased autonomy for indigenous peoples has forced the PRI regime, under the instigation of the US government and World Bank, to adopt a more violent and politically riskier strategy of repression through state terror. This has effectively ended the phase of negotiations which led to the signing of the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture in February 1996, which the PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution) regime has since refused to implement, so intensifying the conflict.
One of my aims is to unpack the myths and conspiracy theories surrounding Italian Autonomia and the 1970s to clarify better its role as a movement involved in the conflicts of a period of almost continuous political and economic upheaval and of profound cultural and social change.
Cet essai examine certaines des différences entre le féminisme italien ouvriériste et les féminismes de tendance libérale, socialiste et séparatiste dans les années 1970. Il décrit l'émergence des principales organisations féministes ouvriéristes, émergence étroitement liée à de problématiques telles que le « travail » de reproduction non rémunéré ainsi que la violence physique et sexuelle contre les femmes. Les problèmes liés aux relations entre le féminisme et le mouvement social anti-capitaliste Autonomia sont également explorés.
En este ensayo se analizan algunas de las diferencias entre el feminismo obrerista italiano y los feminismos liberal, socialista y separatista en el decenio de los 1970. Se describe el surgimiento de las principales organizaciones feministas obreristas en torno a las cuestiones de « trabajo » no remunerado de reproducción y de la violencia física y sexual contra la mujer. Los problemas vinculados a las relaciones entre el feminismo y el movimiento social anticapitalista Autonomía también son explorados.
This essay discusses some of the differences between Italian workerist feminism and liberal, socialist and separatist feminisms during the 1970s. It outlines the emergence of the main workerist feminist organizations around the issues of unpaid reproductive labour and of physical and sexual violence against women. The problems linked to relations between feminism and the anti-capitalist Autonomia social movement are also explored
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