Italian student movement of the 60s and 70

The Student Movement: 1968-1978: Introduction

• Came to represent new forms of rebellion

• Peculiar: arose in a period of relative growth and prosperity

• Students were the first to organize en-masse

• Students became a social subject

Crisis of the old organizations

• Education controlled by governments and parties

• Not taking account of the opinions of the students

• Too much paternalism • Students wanted to assert their own idenitity

and needs• Older form of representation: unable to

react on student activism

Crisis of the old organizations: The first generation

• First student activist groups still connected to main political parties

• The most radical of those was UGI. Linked to PCI.

• Still electorial policies within the student organizations. – Reflecting parliamental mentality

Crisis of the old organizations: The changing character

• 1960-63 strikes: First signs of change within the movement.– Students take part in demonstrations– They start to occupy university buildings

• Mobilization against the Gui bill– This bill proposed to limit student intake– Establish 3 types of diplomas

Crisis of the old organizations: the changing character

• The architecture faculties especially lively centers of activism

• Study groups were formed – Criticized courses and learning methods

• Education became perceived as a process rather than product

Crisis of the old organizations: 1967: beginning of a new movement

• Opposition to goverment 50 day occupation in Milan

• An environment of debate and collective work

• New forms of decision-making: General assemblies rather than elected-representatives

Crisis of the old organizations

• In Pisa, resistance against government’s reform:– Disrupting a conference of university heads– Occupations– Clash with the police

• New theories about student politics: The Pisan Theses

Crisis of the old organizations: The Pisan approach: Marxism and the

student movement• An operaist analysis to the student situation• Transformation to planned capitalism requires:

– Qualified labor-power– Advanced technological production

• Therefore: studenst are not a priviliged elite anymore; they are members of the working class.

• Common enemy of students and workers: capitalism and the state

Crisis of the old organizations: The Pisan approach

• Strong appeal on dissident socialists and communists

• Militant refusal of parliamentarism and reformism

• Associating student politics with workers struggle

Student identity and the politics of violence

• 1968: Student agitation grows to national proportions– Against the Gui bill– A wave of occupations begins

• Students start to clash with the police:– Students begin to fight back– Use of violence as a means

Use of Violence: The Battle of Valle Giulia, Rome 1968

• A turning point for the student movement

Use of Violence

• Also clashes in Milan

• The students were severly beaten and terrorized

• Police became the hated enemy– Legitimate to use force against

Reactions from the establishment

• Center-Left government wanted compromise– Demanded the release of those arrested

• The Conservatives and the right:– Favored use of force to put down disorders

• As a consequence more police crackdown, injuries and death– Pacifism was now pronounced dead

Use of Violence

• Students start militarize:– Learn to make Molotovs– Spread the idea of violent armed struggle

• Reflected in their slogans and songs– Most famous song becomes La Violenza

How was violence justified within the movement?

• It made it easy to distinguish friends from foes: a demacration line

• It had a therapeutic shock effect: – It distanced students from bourgeois values– Notions of legality were overcome

• It created solidarity• Created commitment to the group• It was group power in action

Politics of student dress: changing culture

• Lifestyle and apprearence became at one with anti-bourgeois and anti-institutional ideas

• Appearence for expressive purposes• In 1967: still clean shaven and with jackets and

ties• In 1968: cuban styled beards; no jackets; military

look; clenched fists• Desire to express a political self-image

Before and after

From Operaismo to atunomoist Marxism: Intro

• Operaismo (workersim): Marxist approach focused on rank and file struggels– Against the politics and opportunism of

dominant Marxist-Leninist left– Still in the realm of workers struggle

• Autonomia:– Workerist analysis of class struggle apllied to

social groups outside of the workplace

Operaismo and autonomist Marxism: Classical workersim

• Origins of operaismo: research of workers behavior in 1950s

• To research of workers own needs and problems • Core features of operaismo:

– Identification of working class with the immediate process of production

– Wage struggle as a key terrain of political conflict

– Working class is the driving force within capitalist society

– Against traditional party, parliament and union bureaucracy

– No distinction between political and economic struggles

Classical workersim

• Introduction of the concept of the Mass Worker: – Relatively simple labor– Placed in the hearth of the process of

production– Not tied to the process of production

Workerism beyond workers

• Production process itself is not neutral

• It is a process of domination: despotism

• Social Factory: Factory as locus of power extended to the wider society– Thus resistance outside the factory can be a

moment of class struggle

Autonomia emerges

• Loose network of groupings influenced by operaist theories

• Many young people join the network• Emphasis on the localized and personal struggle

rather than class-wide struggle• Negri: mass worker is replaced by socialized

worker:– Capital socializes labor beyond the immediate process

of production– The extension of the concept of laborer grows

Autonomia emerges

• New social groups as collective subjects of social change– Women– Students– Peasants

• They all belong to the workig class, so their actions contribute to anti-capitalism

Autonomia and students

• Classical operaism: student struggle must be subordinated to workers struggle

• But students were important for:– Theorizing the proletarization of intellectual

labor– Link workers and students both

organizationally and in terms of demands

Autonomia: “the will is enough!”

• Thus for autonomia, the classical operaist idea of workers class and struggle must expand

• Include new social groups• Emphasize the local and individual struggle above

class wide• The will to destruction enough to count as anti-

capitalist strugle rather than material determinants like of class composition

Some criticism

• Operaists: still too Leninist in organizational aspect

• Autonomia: lack of organization • Autonomia: in the end reverted to vanguardism• The fragmented and individualized forms of

resistance are a sign of the historic weakness of the class

• Focus on plurality of autonomous struggles can lead to abandonment of revolution as totality