Issue

Coresearch and Counter-Research: Romano Alquati’s Itinerary Within and Beyond Italian Radical Political Thought

Coresearch and Counter-Research: Romano Alquati’s Itinerary Within and Beyond Italian Radical Political Thought

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The personal, political and intellectual itinerary of Romano Alquati was inextricably bound up with Italian postwar history, when a generation of militants relegated the importance of their own profession to second place, seeking instead jobs that could support their political commitment. In doing so, they created a new way of “being-political” that would prove to be a watershed for successive generations, up to the present day.

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Towards a History of the Professional: On the Class Composition of the Research University

Towards a History of the Professional: On the Class Composition of the Research University

The introduction of research into the mission of higher education, a transformation which took place first in Germany and Scotland, had profound and lasting effects; principal among them was providing a means by which faculty in the United States (where the state was far weaker than it was in Europe) could professionalize, organize, and create a new institutional form – a hybrid of European and US higher education now hailed as the American Research University.

Proletarian Experience (1952)

Proletarian Experience (1952)

The pro­le­tariat is the real response to this eco­nomic pseudo-materialism. Its response is elab­o­rated through its prac­ti­cal exis­tence. Any­one who looks at its his­tory can see that the pro­le­tariat has not merely reacted to def­i­nite, exter­nal eco­nomic fac­tors (degree of exploita­tion, stan­dard of liv­ing, mode of con­cen­tra­tion), but that it has really acted.

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Outline of a Pamphlet on FIAT (1967)

Outline of a Pamphlet on FIAT (1967)

We succinctly present here the outline of one of the publications with which, in the near future, we’ll translate directly into theoretical-strategic work some of the findings that have been surfacing for years with a continual practical-political presence, years of tactical surveys of the terrain of class war. We’re choosing again a nodal point: once again, FIAT, “class composition at FIAT.”

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Struggle at FIAT (1964)

Struggle at FIAT (1964)

This arti­cle ana­lyzes schemat­i­cally sev­eral aspects of the so-called “wild­cat” mode of strug­gle recently adopted by the FIAT work­ers; it does not the­o­rize it as the “only” one pos­si­ble. It’s a “par­tic­u­lar” analy­sis, not because the events described are excep­tional or exclu­sive to that “core mass” of work­ers that are FIAT, but because the gen­eral dimen­sion, within which only the move­ment is “polit­i­cal,” is impli­cated here as the deter­mi­nant pre­sup­po­si­tion but isn’t directly analyzed.

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Invisible Organization: Reading Romano Alquati

Invisible Organization: Reading Romano Alquati

At the end of his 1975 introduction to his seminal 1964 Classe Operaia article, “Struggle at FIAT,” Romano Alquati concludes his reflection with a compressed glance back toward one of the impasses that faced him and the other “classical” workerists as they tried to articulate the early days of what would become two decades of social war, from the 1960 magliette a righe (the “striped shirt”) rebellions of Genoa on to a Hot Autumn, a Creeping May, and a range of other seasons, months, and years irrevocably marked by bitter struggle against capital and its stewards.

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The Problem of the Workers’ Paper (1955)

The Problem of the Workers’ Paper (1955)

This text opens a discussion on the problem of the workers’ journal, which will be carried on in the following issues of Socialisme ou Barbarie. It draws on the experience of Tribune Ouvrière, published for over a year by a group of workers from Regie Renault, from which we have published extracts in the preceding issue of this Review, and from which one will find new extracts in the current one.

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Smile Down the Phone: An Attempt at a Workers’ Inquiry in a Call Center

Smile Down the Phone: An Attempt at a Workers’ Inquiry in a Call Center

I chose the site for my workers’ inquiry the way most people find casual employment: by responding to a generic internet advertisement. The advert for the job that I eventually got directed applicants to ring a voicemail number that instructed them to leave a message with their name, number, and why they would be good at the job. I received a call the following day and was invited to come in after the weekend for an interview.