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
Top Related