Digital Resistances - Digital Culture - page 144

was particularly true of so-called 'Autonomous Marxism', which
originated in Italy in the s. This in turn developed out of

Operaismo , 'Workerism', which articulated its ideas through the
journal Quaderni Rossi . Among the editorial group in the early '

1970

s
was a young professor of State Theory at the University of Padua,
Antonio (Toni) Negri. Operaismo developed several theoretical
tenets, including an interest in the 'refusal of work' in the context of
capitalist relations of production, and in the possibilities of auton-
omy for the working class away from the traditional representative
structures, such as unions. The Operaisti noticed how young workers
of the time were not adhering to the older generation's work
ethic and discipline and were engaging instead in insubordination,
sabotage, confrontation and the use of specialized tactics to slow
down or even stop the processes of production. Out of these obser-
vations the Operaisti developed a theory of the dialectical relation
between class struggle and capitalist development, in which the
continual confrontation between capital and living labour was the
cause of all technological development and structural change. 32 This
differs from Mandel, for example, who, as we have seen, proposed an
economic explanation for capitalism's need to further technological
development. It also presented the basis for later evaluations of
the capacity of the working class to resist the demands of capital
through control of the means of production. In

60

Potere Operaia
disbanded and Negri and others joined a new group Autonomia
Organizzata or Autonomia Operaia , a loose network of collectives
that was intended to avoid the issues of centralized command by
which, supposedly, party power repressed proletarian power.
Antonio Negri developed the connections between the ideas of
Operaismo and Autonomia and those of Deleuze and Guattari while
in exile in France in the late

1973

s, after his arrest for his
alleged involvement in the murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade.
Forbidden by the conditions of his residency to engage in politics,
he nevertheless involved himself in intellectual activities, including

1970 s and 1980