The Worker as Monster: Images of Class and Radicalism in Operaismo and Autonomia

Abstract

‘A concern for the positive is a function of the system. We look for an art, a literature, a form of criticism that can always say only “no”’ (Alberto Asor Rosa, 1962).1 ‘In the second half of the 1970s, we changed our language. […] We deeply criticised the very concept of political revolution. We broke once and for all with the tradition of the historical workers’ movement in the sense that we ceased to be extremist […]. You can only be extremist compared to something else […], something more moderate. If one is radically different […] one cannot even be called extremist’ (Paolo Virmo, 1983–1984).2 Classe operaia (working class) was the first periodical of operaismo, a current of Italian Marxism (also known as ‘workerism’ in the English-speaking world) that developed in the early 1960s and included figures such as Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Massimo Cacciari and Asor Rosa.3 Over the course of its existence, classe operaia featured about twenty cartoons. All of them were made by Mario Mariotti, an artist, illustrator and member of the group that published what was initially meant to be a monthly magazine that addressed militants dissatisfied with the trade unions and the moderatism of the Italian Communist (PCI) and Socialist (PSI) parties. To date, Mariotti’s drawings have received no attention in the essays devoted to operaismo that have appeared over the past twenty-five years. However, they were praised and republished several times during the 1960s and 1970s. Not only were classe operaia members fascinated with Mariotti’s ability to translate their concepts into cogent images, but they also referenced his cartoons while articulating arguments even thirty years after the last issue of classe operaia in 1967.