Emilio Quadrelli
Autonomia Operaia

I am pleased to present to the friends of DeBaser this book, as, in my humble opinion, it can help to understand a difficult period in our history. I'm talking about the 1970s and a movement that was the protagonist of those years, namely Autonomia Operaia, about which there has been a deafening silence. A true damnatio memoriae. If it is talked about at all, it is talked about poorly, with the usual hymns about the bad teachers.

AO, a very fragmented universe, is the child both of the crisis of early 20th-century capitalism and the Fordist factory, and, dialectically, of the rise of a new capitalism, with new techniques and places of production, more financial and more globalized, robotized, and computerized. AO does not merely interpret the evolution of capitalism; it acts, trying to resist and oppose the new rationality, leveraging, besides young workers, also on those marginal or marginalized subjects, such as students, dropouts, underemployed, and unemployed, who do not recognize themselves in the emerging new economic order, nor in the power that emanates from it and of which it is the reference. AO questions everything, starting with traditional parties and unions; everything must be reviewed, corrected, and redefined. Morality, politics, culture. From public to private, from private to political. Even family, sex, feelings. And especially work: the common trait of the AO universe is the rejection of work, of that work, of those rhythms, with those conditions. In short, the rejection of capital interests and work hierarchies (a nice dream, right?).

At this point, in the final chapters, the author tackles the most explosive theme, namely the fact that from a political explosion, from that particular political explosion, always derives a military aspect. Political and military are aspects closely connected, even in those years (only in those years?). It’s a burning topic, these are hot chapters. Difficult. However, the author tackles them with competence (without hypocrisy), relying on many testimonies and documents, managing to give us a rather complete picture. Only a few decades have passed since AO shouted "The power must be worker," but it seems like centuries.

Here, this book can help us understand why that phrase was shouted and how and why that adventure ended (and how we all ended up).