Alejandro Federico Fogazzi, Todos somos piqueteros, 2001. I Is a prologue internal or external to the text that it precedes? As we know, the prologue precedes from the end: although it opens the book, it is the last part to be written. It is not, then, a text that is internal to the book, nor is it completely external to it. It is, rather, both at the same time. It is

Florencia Vespignano, Marcha, 2000. Hypothesis 891 presents precisely that, a series of situated hypotheses (the number comes from the street address where those hypotheses were elaborated). It also showcases the process through which those hypotheses were proposed, discussed, tested, challenged, accepted or discarded. In other words, it does not

Fabrication de plaques photographiques en verre chez Saint-Gobain à Aniche, 1927/1928. Introduction to Robert Linhart: Concrete Analyses in the Spider’s Web of Production | Paul Rekret, Eoin O’Cearnaigh, and Patrick King Consistent with his rejection of a romanticization of the working class, Linhart insists that workers’ knowledge is fragmented

Diagram from Aleksei Gastev’s 1924 text, How to Work. The following remarks do not stem from a strictly historical interest in the period under consideration. Rather, they throw a retrospective glance and interrogate some historical issues on the basis of investigations into the organization of labor across different industries. In light of these investigations,

Reprise du travail aux usines Alsthom-Saint-Ouen, 1979. Fonds IHS-CGT. Critique communiste: Robert Linhart, you led the Althusserian tendency within the Union of Communist Students (UEC), which went on to establish the Union of Communist Youth (Marxist-Leninist) (UJCML).1 In May 1968 we often clashed with the UJCML under your leadership. After your

Petroleum facilities located around the Étang de Berre, circa 1968. Source: Archives de la chambre de commerce et d’industrie Aix-Marseille-Provence, L19/62/144, brochure commerciale sur le complexe de raffinage de l’étang de Berre, vers 1968. This paper deals with the organization of work and the labor process in large complexes for oil refining and

1988 Hospital Workers’ Strike. Archives Le Progrès. We carried out an inquiry in a hospital located in the south of France, at the time of the transition to the 35-hour workweek and the broader context of the modernization of hospitals, where computerization was implemented to allocate and control budgets.1 We are in late 2001. The reduction of working time,

El-Hadjar steel complex in 1971. Jean Cabot/Le monde en images, CCDMD. The “offshoring” to the Third World of certain basic industries of the major capitalist countries, and the whole operation commonly referred to as “technology transfer” (the sale of industrial equipment, licenses, patents, know how, “turnkey” factories or factories

Robot participating in the assembly of a Peugeot 308 at Sochaux. MaxPPP/Lionel Vadam. Work has changed, especially in the industrial world, where Taylorism established its credentials. With the spread of information technologies, material contact is less and less frequent for many workers, even if it has not disappeared everywhere. Tasks increasingly

Production line for galvanized or lacquered steel sheets, Usine Arcelor-Mittal, route de Saint-Leu, Montataire. Olivier Pasquiers and Caroline Pottier/Le Bar Floréal. The French Trotskyist journal Critique Communiste published a special issue in 1978 to mark the anniversary of the events of May and June 1968. It featured a lengthy interview with Robert

Artwork by Student at the MA Gender, Media & Culture course Painted in bold against the outer walls of the Margaret McMillan building at Goldsmiths, University of London, an inscription in memoriam of Mark Fisher reads, “Emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable

Archival Introduction Throughout 2018-19, in the course of my research for the book So Much To Be Angry About, I interviewed over a dozen people who were involved in the Appalachian Movement Press (AMP) printshop.1 The book weaves together memories and documents of AMP, and in my interviews I often asked about the overall politics that formed the foundation

Agnes Martin, Tremelo (1962) With the recent victory of one of the longest grad labor strikes in North American history, 2022 has begun on a high note in university organizing. It is worth comparing this moment to the start of 2020. Then, a wildcat grading strike at UC Santa Cruz was gaining momentum and visibility, eventually to become a full teaching stoppage

Agnes Martin, Untitled (1977) VP: Introduce yourself to our readers. What was the Midwest Labor Group and what were the conditions that led to its formation? What did it seek to accomplish, and how did it intend to do so? The Midwest Labor Group was an experiment in building a cooperative grad worker labor union, which took place from May to October 2020. Grad workers

Agnes Martin, Homage to Life (2003) VP: Could you explain a little bit about the history of your organization? How did it come together? What does it seek to accomplish? What do you see as the relationship between research and action projects?  The Cops off Campus Research Collective began in summer 2020 when folks involved with abolitionist university

Agnes Martin, Friendship (1963) We think it’s time to take up an abolitionist approach to the university. We can’t do it without you.1 […] In what follows, we lay out a conceptual framework through which to approach an abolitionist university studies that is especially attentive to questions of periodization and informed by a historical materialist interest

Agnes Martin, Summer (1964) Introduction: Notes on Contemporary University Struggles | Eli Lichtenstein In the last two years, renewed militancy in university struggles has led to both victories and defeats at campuses across the country and beyond. Against the backdrop of continuing academic proletarianization, ever rising student debt, and

Agnes Martin, Untitled (1965) i. In a recent editorial in Radical Philosophy we explored ongoing debates around the class character of professional work, and the prospects of casualized (/adjunctified, or otherwise insecurely employed) university worker activism. We endorsed Gabriel Winant’s view that professional workers are part of the working class.

Still from Yamina Benguigui’s 1997 film Mémoires d’immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin. Translator’s Introduction What follows is a translation of Robert Linhart’s preface to the economist-sociologist Albano Cordeiro’s 1981 Pourquoi l’immigration en France? (critique des idées reçues en matière d’immigration). The choice to publish Linhart’s preface

“American Imperialism is the Bitter Enemy of the Palestinian People,” from the Palestine Poster Project Archives. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s political program, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (1969), emphasized the indispensable role of political thought in the Palestinian national liberation struggle. Political

Nearly a decade ago, two Brazilian researchers, Heliana de Barros Conde Rodrigues and Maria Izabel Pitanga, made a remarkable discovery. They requested materials on the French philosopher Michel Foucault from the National Archive of the Ministry of Justice in Brasília and obtained a file on him compiled by an intelligence agency established by the Brazilian

Cover of A/Traverso, September 1977 Steve Wright has the laudable, if unenviable, position of being best known as the author of a definitive history of a subject immune to definitive treatment – Italian operaismo and its legacies. Originally published in 2002, Wright’s Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, presented

Photo of an occupation at 1492 Landback Lane. From the earliest incursions of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the large-scale resource extractive developments of the present day, the history of Canada is fully commensurate with Indigenous struggle against capital accumulation and colonial dispossession—a heist, wrote Secwépemc leader Arthur Manuel, amounting

Alice Trumbull Mason, 9 Triangles (1952) Addressing the theory of political organization is an increasingly urgent task. It does not matter how one approaches the question, whether one takes it from above or from below. After the “age of extremes,” the reaction of the 1980s, the neoliberal hangover of the 1990s, the war on terror of the 2000s, the crisis of 2008,

Photo Credit: Isaac Blacksin The Graveyard of Empires. The Fall of Saigon. Historical reductionism is hardly unexpected as a naturalized status quo in Afghanistan slides, precipitously, into the new – however predictable and indeed predicted this new moment may be. No surprise either, then, that the name of George W. Bush went unmentioned on every Sunday

During Israel’s brutal eleven-day assault on Gaza – itself only an escalation of its daily devastation of Palestinian life – I turned to the writings of the Palestinian novelist and militant Ghassan Kanafani. In his short story “Letter from Gaza,” the narrator writes to his friend in California, where he has been accepted for an engineering degree.

Ende Gelände action in Lausitz, near the Germany-Poland border The following is an excerpt from Rodrigo Nunes’ new book, Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation, out now with Verso. Part balance sheet of the struggles of the last decade, part diagnosis of the left’s traumas and melancholias in the last forty years, part attempt

Detail from Gilberto Rivera, 2020, 2020 The unionization vote at the Bessemer Amazon warehouse has certainly been the most followed unionization vote in recent American history. So much so that it became a political confrontation that went far beyond the rights of the Bessemer Amazon workers. A delegation of Amazon workers was received by the Senate Budget

2013.28 Julie Mehretu Painting Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation, 2001 The course of history, seen in terms of the concept of catastrophe, can actually claim no more attention from thinkers than a child’s kaleidoscope, which with every turn of the hand dissolves the established order in a new way. There is a profound truth in this image. The concepts of the

In the early 1970s, frequent gas leaks (including highly toxic phosgene) in the newly opened Petrolchimico units intoxicated hundreds of workers in Porto Marghera. Translator’s Introduction The paper “Against Noxiousness,” signed by the Political Committee of the Porto Marghera Workers, was presented 50 years ago, on February 28, 1971, at the Veneto

Interview Introduction On the occasion of the recent publication of her book, Chemins de la liberté: Le travail entre hétéronomie et autonomie, we invited Antonella Corsani to explore the assumptions and implications of her research.1    This book forms part of a critical perspective of the theses on cognitive capitalism – a concept that

In February, nineteen-year-old Úrsula Bahillo was murdered, stabbed to death, by her ex-boyfriend Matías Ezequiel Martínez, a police officer. Argentina’s feminist movement, a movement that has grown in opposition to all the forms of violence against women and feminized subjects, was quick to respond with protests around the country and making the lessons

George Grosz, In Memory of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, 1919. Fortunately, an idol of my pantheon was and remains Rosa Luxemburg, as intrepid a lover as she was a revolutionary. Amorous passion and revolution merged within her through the figure of Leo Jogiches. She also demonstrated that politics is not asceticism or shamelessness, both instruments

The COLA strike picket at the base of the UC-Santa Cruz campus in early 2020. Photo Credit: Jane Komori The working class in the United States has not been quiescent during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The field of social struggle has included strikes, walkouts, sickouts, fights against evictions, grassroots-led union drives, and a host of other labor actions

Photo credit: ACTA The following is a short dispatch from the comrades in ACTA, a political collective and partisan media project based in France. They provide an in-depth account of the impressive protests that took place across the Hexagon this weekend against the Loi Sécurité Globale [Global Security Law], a draft bill pushed by the Macron government (with

Alberto Giacometti, Homme qui marche I (1960) In any Capital course, the question of whether the labor theory of value is still valid is a much discussed issue, one that extends to the third volume, as the transformation problem (which I won’t go into at all) shows.  The point of departure for my elaboration is a podcast that is currently popular in Germany

Alberto Giacometti, Homme qui marche I (1960) In any Capital course, the question of whether the labor theory of value is still valid is a much discussed issue, one that extends to the third volume, as the transformation problem (which I won’t go into at all) shows.  The point of departure for my elaboration is a podcast that is currently popular in Germany

Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, Game of War The ancient Greeks had two notions of time: kronos and kairos. The former marked the linear, progressive march of uneventful time. The latter, however, signaled the momentary quality that time can sometimes take: the tempo at which to best tell a good story, when to let the listener hang in suspense, and the instant

Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, Game of War The ancient Greeks had two notions of time: kronos and kairos. The former marked the linear, progressive march of uneventful time. The latter, however, signaled the momentary quality that time can sometimes take: the tempo at which to best tell a good story, when to let the listener hang in suspense, and the instant

Sonia Delaunay, Prismes électriques, 1914 Last year, the largest socialist organization in the United States decided to throw its weight behind Bernie Sanders, with some of its leading members going so far as to argue that in the absence of mass radical movements in this country, a Sanders presidency was the necessary key to kickstarting a socialist advance.

Sonia Delaunay, Prismes électriques, 1914 Last year, the largest socialist organization in the United States decided to throw its weight behind Bernie Sanders, with some of its leading members going so far as to argue that in the absence of mass radical movements in this country, a Sanders presidency was the necessary key to kickstarting a socialist advance.

Image credit: Valery Sharifulin / TASS Following the presidential election on August 9, 2020 and the “re-election” of Aleksandr Lukashenko, a popular uprising is taking place in Belarus. The brutal reaction by the repressive apparatus has incited terror on the streets as well as a firm rebuke from the population. Street battles on the first three nights after

Image credit: Valery Sharifulin / TASS Following the presidential election on August 9, 2020 and the “re-election” of Aleksandr Lukashenko, a popular uprising is taking place in Belarus. The brutal reaction by the repressive apparatus has incited terror on the streets as well as a firm rebuke from the population. Street battles on the first three nights after

Masterplan, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates In the 1909 short story “The Machine Stops,” EM Forster imagined a future where the atmosphere had become poisonous, leaving little life at the surface apart from a few ferns. Humans had all moved to a network of vast subterranean cities—the Machine—where they lived physically isolated from each other

Masterplan, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates In the 1909 short story “The Machine Stops,” EM Forster imagined a future where the atmosphere had become poisonous, leaving little life at the surface apart from a few ferns. Humans had all moved to a network of vast subterranean cities—the Machine—where they lived physically isolated from each other

Now is not the time to focus on whiteness. And yet, if our movement hopes to abolish white domination, we must at least ask what whiteness means. We should be clear on its history and effects on our social existence. Neither endless introspection among white people, nor corporate handbooks on diversity, nor a purely moral recognition of white supremacy’s evils

Now is not the time to focus on whiteness. And yet, if our movement hopes to abolish white domination, we must at least ask what whiteness means. We should be clear on its history and effects on our social existence. Neither endless introspection among white people, nor corporate handbooks on diversity, nor a purely moral recognition of white supremacy’s evils

Interviewer’s Introduction Over a quiet Khartoum, whose order prevails?1 Demonstrations against Omar al-Bashir’s regime began in Sudan’s smaller cities in mid-December 2018. “The proximate cause was rising prices, though the government (if not the state) was weakened after three decades in power, the last of which was dually characterized

Interviewer’s Introduction Over a quiet Khartoum, whose order prevails?1 Demonstrations against Omar al-Bashir’s regime began in Sudan’s smaller cities in mid-December 2018. The proximate cause was rising prices, though the government (if not the state) was weak after three decades in power, the last of which was dually characterized by grueling

Photograph: Francesco Bellina, 2019. This conversation initially appeared in PARSE journal. It is re-published here, lightly edited for style, with the kind permission of the editors, and accompanied by the photographs of Francesco Bellina. Introduction In a brief text titled “Preface on Transgression,” initially published in 1963, one year after the

Photograph: Francesco Bellina, 2019. This conversation initially appeared in PARSE journal. It is re-published here, lightly edited for style, with the kind permission of the editors, and accompanied by the photographs of Francesco Bellina. Introduction In a brief text titled “Preface on Transgression,” initially published in 1963, one year after the

A few days ago Viewpoint sat down on June 13 with P, an activist based in Seattle, for an in-depth conversation about the history and current dynamics of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), the challenges that lie ahead, and lessons still to be learned. Responses have been lightly edited to account for recent developments.  Viewpoint: Over the last

Mural on Pine and Broadway. Image credit: @saint.jermain A few days ago Viewpoint sat down on June 13 with P, an activist based in Seattle, for an in-depth conversation about the history and current dynamics of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), the challenges that lie ahead, and lessons still to be learned. Responses have been lightly edited to account

The Floyd rebellion is changing the world before our very eyes. What type of change and to what degree it will shift the balance of forces between rulers and ruled, haves and the have-nots remains to be seen. What is clear is that there is an active and open political contest to shape the outcome. For the moment, the right wing and the Republicans have been relatively

The Floyd rebellion is changing the world before our very eyes. What type of change and to what degree it will shift the balance of forces between rulers and ruled, haves and the have-nots remains to be seen. What is clear is that there is an active and open political contest to shape the outcome. For the moment, the right wing and the Republicans have been relatively

The front page of the Philadelphia Free Press, “an independent revolutionary newspaper,” declares two police officers “wanted by the people” for the killing of Harold Brown (May 25, 1970). When police kill unarmed Black people, you often hear pleas to lock up the cops in prison. But it rarely happens. Within the space of a couple weeks, however, after the killing

Before it was even built, Barclays Center in Brooklyn was a matter of contention: it was opposed by grassroots groups, which correctly feared that it would end up further driving the racist gentrification of an area already undergoing rapid change. These groups further denounced the $1.6 billion in public funds swallowed up by the project, and Barclays was

The 1992 rebellions of Los Angeles introduced the world to a slogan: “no justice, no peace.” It originated some years earlier, possibly during protests against the murder of Michael Griffith by a white racist mob in Howard Beach, Queens, and has been repeated since at every demonstration against police violence.  This popular slogan, however, is quite

A page from a 1945 Italian Communist Party pamphlet, with the caption: “The red guards of Fiat greet Gramsci.” (Image provided by Paul Saba) In April 1920, Italy was in crisis. The previous month at the Fiat auto factory in Turin, management had set back the clock hands of the factory for daylight saving’s time, without asking permission from the democratic workers’

Editorial Introduction The wildcat grading strike for a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) waged by graduate student workers at UC-Santa Cruz since December 2019 came to an effective close at the end of last month. In an email to senior administration and fellow grads, strikers declared that they had collectively decided to submit outstanding grades from

Robert Delaunay, Rythme, 1934 The future looks bleak. Here in the United States, nursing homes are reborn as temples of death, city governments clear trenches for anonymous corpses, farmers destroy tens of millions of pounds of unsold food, unemployment approaches Great Depression levels, the President encourages us to ingest poison, and politicians

Angelo Verga, Untitled This interview with Gigi Roggero, conducted by Davide Gallo Lassere, makes up the appendix to Roggero’s most recent book, L’operaismo politico italiano: Genealogia, storia, metodo (Italian Political Workerism: Genealogy, History, Method).  Davide Gallo Lassere: Operaismo, the Italian political workerism of the 1960s,

However much upheaval the global COVID-19 pandemic has generated, a great deal more is coming. The economic disaster is already the object of frantic analysis, much of which tells us we can expect a bottom that matches or exceeds the Great Depression of the 1930s, at least as measured by conventional economic indicators like GDP, unemployment, and bankruptcies.

Käthe Kollwitz, The Volunteers (plate 2) from War, 1921-22. Which Crisis? Each day in 2020 brings more shocking news than the last. The unprecedented surge in unemployment has already produced a mountain of unpaid debts and rents, and this is only the beginning. Businesses are shuttering at a clip, investor confidence has fallen off a cliff, and stock markets

Käthe Kollwitz, The Mothers (plate 6) from War, 1921-22. Striking for life  On Monday March 29th, General Electric factory workers staged a protest against the thousands of layoffs announced by the company’s management, demanding the reconversion of production and asking a simple question: “If GE trusts us to build, maintain, and test engines which

The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to rethink the politics of health in the broadest sense. In particular, we have had to confront again that vexed relationship between the state, the dominant social relations and public health. Concepts that may have seemed obscure and or to have fallen out of one academic fashion, such as biopolitics or “naked life”,

Tina Modotti, Untitled (“1st of May Manifestation – Labor Day – Taken from a balcony of the National Palace,” 1927) The surprising trajectory of the Bernie Sanders campaign has revived discussions of socialist politics. And renewed interest in socialist politics has brought a renewed interest in Marxist theory, specifically about the state. This isn’t

Dear sister comrades from all over the world,  The undersigned collectives met to add their voices to the multiple calls coming from working class, indigenous, Black and peasant women, as well as students, lesbians, trans and travestis to mobilize for action and revolt on March 8th and 9th. We call for building common strategies to keep feeding the feminist

Richard Diebenkorn, Large Bright Blue, 1980. The materials below, from 1972, are accompanied by a new introduction written by Andrew Anastasi and Matteo Mandarini, also on Viewpoint. Introductory Presentation Tronti: I have chosen this subject, from among the many objects of study in this research project, not because it generally should be privileged

Richard Diebenkorn, Blue Surround, 1982, detail. This essay introduces the English translation of Mario Tronti’s “The Autonomy of the Political,” a 1972 seminar presentation and discussion, which will be published tomorrow on Viewpoint. Today the left confronts an old dilemma: the problem of the capitalist state. But the situation, as always, is exceptional.

Mural by Brigadas Ramona Parra. “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years” At the beginning of October 2019, a $0.04 increase in the subway fare went into effect in the city of Santiago. A few days later, high school students began organizing days of direct action, calling on people to evade paying the ticket as a sign of protest against the measure imposed by the government.

Wanda Pimentel, Sem título, 1974. Introduction This is part of a conversation with Rafaela Pimental, a member of Territorio Doméstico [Domestic Territory], an autonomous group of migrant women based in Madrid who have been collectively and horizontally working together for over a decade. TD has been a crucial site for making the issue of care visible based

Marx, Feminism, Rupture With the expression “a Marxist feminism of rupture,” I refer to the fruitful and critical encounter between Marxism and radical feminism debated and developed throughout the 1970s. This discussion opened with the 1972 publication (in both Italian and English) of The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community by Mariarosa

Raising the Banner (Geli Korzhev, 1960) Our global situation is one characterized by the increasing politicization of social movements, a flood of young people towards politics, and a sharpening awareness of the traps of political institutions within the status quo. My claim, then, will seem somewhat paradoxical. I propose that our situation should be