Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism

The only comprehensive survey of Italian autonomist theory, Storming Heaven explores its origins in the anti-Stalinist left of the 1950s and traces it through its glory days twenty years later. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of class composition and struggle as the distinguishing feature of autonomist thought, Steve Wright documents how class politics developed alongside emerging social movements. A critical and historical exploration of autonomist Marxism in postwar Italy, Storming Heaven moves beyond traditional analytical frameworks and instead assesses the strengths and limitations of the theory and how it foreshadowed many of contemporary European social struggles, such as the refusal of work, self-organization, openness to non-militarized political violence, mass illegality, and the extension of revolutionary agency. This updated edition also offers a substantial new afterword looking at the recent debates around operaismo and autonomia in Italy.   
 

Steve Wright is a senior lecturer the faculty of information technology at Monash University, in Australia.