Thread by @libcomorg

Nanni Balestrini, the avant-garde poet, novelist and co-founder of Autonomist Marxist group Autonomia Operaia, died yesterday. The world is poorer without him artforum.com/news/nanni-bal…

A writer of some excellent, modernist-inspired novels, like this one, The Unseen, is a reflection on those heady days of working-class rebellion in 1970s libcom.org/library/unseen…

Similarly, We Want Everything is a fictionalised account of the Hot Autumn, in which a young worker from Italy's impoverished south arrives at Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin, finding himself in conflict with the bosses and the entire capitalist system.
libcom.org/library/we-wan…

More of his modernist inspiration can be read in his short story 'Let a Thousand Hands Reach Out and Touch the Gun', creating his story through a montage of newspaper reports on the death of Mara Cagol, one of the founders of the Red Brigades.

libcom.org/library/two-sh…

Of course, it's impossible to understand Balestrini's work without some knowledge of the period he was writing in/about. This history is a good place to start on what was arguably the most significant post-WW2 revolutionary movement in the West. libcom.org/history/1962-1…

We would suggest taking a look at our reading guide on the topic, but some texts in particular stand out (see tweets below): libcom.org/library/italy-…

The movement in Italy was sometimes described as the 'creeping May'; it was like May 1968 in France... but for about ten years. Robert Lumley's book is an amazing survey of those years. libcom.org/history/states…

The Hot Autumn in 1969, during which We Want Everything is set, was a massive strike wave which ripped through Italy's industrial North. Unions lost control of their members as hundreds of strikes took place & millions of hours were lost to strike action libcom.org/library/the-wo…

The sheer scale and militancy of the Hot Autumn can be seen in our image gallery of the struggle:

libcom.org/gallery/photo-…

Some radicals described Italy as like 'living in an earthquake'. The working class found themselves in opposition not just to capital and the state but also the Communist Party who formed a 'Historic Compromise' with the right-wing Christian Democrats
libcom.org/library/italy-…

There really is just far far far too much to talk about with regards the Italian movements of the 1960s and 70s: we haven't discussed the women's movement, the students, the turn to armed struggle. Sadly, however, I have to work #wrongtowork

Nanni Balestrini's work, however, was steeped in those movements and those debates, which is what makes his work so important. Yesterday, the working class lost an amazing artist from an amazing period of its history.