Re: AUT: why gramsci

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Profit Margin)]

an interesting post, Bob.

I'll let others address your main points, but for now I'll make a minor
quibble: I have my doubts how much Gramsci influenced most people in the
Autonomia of the seventies. Formally, at least, many of those who cared to
write about such things seem to reject both his later work (the Prison
Notebooks) as non-materialist, and his earlier work (the councils period)
as productivist (i.e. glorifying work). Thus all the talk about class
composition rather than hegemony, to give one example. Of course, an
argument could be mounted that it was then very difficult to ignore
Gramsci's influence completely, given the extent to which many of his
precepts had become enshrined as part of the broad Italian left's common
sense. On the other hand, as far as I can tell much of Autonomia was in
part an attempt to revolt precisely against that common sense. This was so
to such a degree that it was only in the late seventies that some of the
editors of the journal _Primo Maggio_ (influential on the borders of the
autonomist movement) tried to re-examine Gramsci again, fearing that they
may have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

I'll emphasise the rider I used above of "those who cared to write about
such things" - I'd be very interested to hear fromanyone who was there at
the time whether such arguments amongst workerist intellectuals had much to
do with what activists were on about  . . .

Steve




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