Intellectuals at the factory gates: Early Italian operaismo from Raniero Panzieri to Mario Tronti

Abstract

The article retraces intellectuals’ self-perception within early Italian operaismo and is based on the periodicals Mondo Operaio, Quaderni Rossi, and classe operaia, and on the writings by Panzieri, Asor Rosa, and Tronti. Operaismo was a political tendency that found fertile ground in the Italian non-orthodox Marxist political milieux as a response to the accelerated industrialization and the consequent harsh working conditions in factories between the late 1950s and the early 1960s. It deemed factory life the focal point of contemporary capitalist society, raising criticism against the Italian Communist Party, and supported workers’ councils rather than top-down led unions, investigating the lives of laborers at their workplace in times of so-called neo-capitalism. The article highlights the idea of a coincidence of theoretical and practical levels in the organization of class struggle, and the denying of universal values by taking the one-sided point of view of the workers. It also posits that surveys published in these periodicals, which nowadays are still significant sources for studying the industrial environment of the time, must always be considered in the light of the conception of both the role of intellectuals and the function of culture in society.