The Politics of Revolution:
Learning from Autonomist Marxism

Gary Kinsman, Autonomy & Solidarity

Based on a presentation given at a public forum organized by Sudbury [UK] Autonomy & Solidarity in Feb. 2004.

Introduction: Not All Power to Capital

Autonomist Marxism can be seen as a form of Marxism that focuses on developing working class autonomy and power in a capitalist society that is constituted by and through class struggle. One of the strengths of autonomist Marxism is its critique of political economy interpretations of Marxism that end up reifying the social worlds around us, converting what people socially produce into social relationships between things.

Most “orthodox” Marxist political economy gives all power to capital and considers workers as victims without power or agency. In my work and writing I have tried to recognize the resistance and agency of the oppressed and how this agency and action obstructs ruling relations, often forcing the elaboration of new strategies of ruling. For me, autonomist Marxism has provided a much firmer basis for this very different reading of Marxism.

Fired Up in Texas writes:

You Make Me Join The Minutemen

You people are supporters of terrorism... I wouldn't support you if you held a gun to my head!

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Have you ever heard of entering this country legally? You have just compelled this household to join the Minutemen.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

What the Gruesome Images Say

John Chuckman

There is an Internet site that displays extraordinarily gruesome photographs taken by American soldiers in Iraq. Apparently, the owner of the site exchanges access to pornography for soldiers sending him their war pictures.

Digital cameras and the Internet are now providing a real glimpse of war to an American public that still daydreams about fresh-faced boys and girls marching off to do brave deeds on behalf of democracy.

The Pentagon has become concerned about the site, and rightly so. It is a public relations disaster, especially in the Arab world where such pictures must burn deeply.

"The Mysteries of New Orleans:

Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy"

Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

We recently spent a week in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists, and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city
remains submerged in anger and frustration.

Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward, but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern
deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death,
of a great city.

In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with. Until a grand jury or congressional committee begins to uncover the answers, the moral (as opposed to simply
physical) reconstruction of the New Orleans region will remain impossible.

Adrian writes

Playing Down Rita

Things are a mess here in Texas and Lousiana. Yes, Houston was generaly spared, but the little towns all around Port Arthur and Lake Charles were hit very, very hard. Things are bad and almost a repeat of what went down in New Orleans.


Poor folks that did not evacuate are left to fend for themselves unless they mobilize for up to ten miles on their own to be taken out of the region without any information as to where they are going or for how long. Folks choosing not to evacuate are not being brought supplies by FEMA or state and local authorities.

"Anarchism, Nudism, Naturism"

Carlos Ortega

Anarchism and the different Naturist views have always been related. This relationship was quite important at the end of the 1920s. The linking role played by the ‘Sol y Vida’ group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air.

The Naturist athenaeum, ‘Ecléctico’, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First ‘Etica’ and then ‘Iniciales’, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War.

We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time.

clore writes: "[This seems like RAW at his very best to me."]

"The Semantics of 'Good' & 'Evil'"
Robert Anton Wilson, Critique

The late Laurance Labadie once told me a parable about a king who decided that everytime he met somebody he would kick them in the butt, just to emphasize his power. My memory may have elaborated this yarn a bit over the years, but basically it continues as follows: since this maniac wore a crown and had an army, people soon learned to tolerate being kicked fairly often, and even began to accept it philosophically or stoically, as they accept taxation and other impositions of kings and governors. They even learned to bend over as soon as they saw the king coming.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Under the Shadows of Terrorism"
Mathew G.H. Toll

The 7th of July terrorist attacks which set off four bombs throughout the London public transport system have murdered 56 and injured 700 people. This is the worst bombing Britain has seen since Pan Am Flight 103 bombing on December 21, 1988.

With theses attacks on London and the British nation a leading member of the "coalition of the willing." This event forces those of us who aren’t taking in by Tony Blair’s much loved “stoicism” to ask a few questions.

Brain Holmes writes:

"Continental Drift

Or, The Other Side of Neoliberal Globalization"

Brian Holmes

[Brian Holmes is offering the seminar “Continental Drift" in September and October, 2005 in New York City in conjunction with the 16 Beaver art group. Autonomedia will publish a collection of Holmes' essays, Unleashing the Collective Phantoms, this winter.]

This seminar is called “Continental Drift,” and it's about the different sorts of regional blocs that are forming in the world and in our heads. Now, the first questions to ask could be these:

Why even talk about regional blocs or continental integration? Isn't that just about the European Union, and its attempt to regain some lost power? Why not pursue the bottom-up theory of the multitude that was launched with the book Empire? Or conversely, why not admit that the real force of globalization is American imperialism? How can the abstractions of geopolitics have any meaning for the ordinary individual? And what does “continental drift” have to do with art, or with activism?

"Apocalypse Now:

How Mankind Is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth"

Maria Gilardin, Dissident Voice

This headline appeared in the London Independent in early February of 2005, following a conference at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, England, where 200 of the world’s leading scientists issued the most urgent warning to date: that dangerous climate change is taking place today, and not the day after tomorrow.

Floods, storms, and droughts. Melting polar ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. Scientists from the fields of glaciology, biology, meteorology, oceanography, and ecology reported seeing a dramatic rise over the last 50 years of all the indicators of climate change: increase in average world temperatures, extreme weather events, in the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and in the level of the oceans.