Antonio Negri, "B as is Red Brigades"
The following is a dialogue with Anne DuFourmantelle from Negri's recently published "Abecedaire Politique" (Calmann-Levy 2002), and was translated by Thomas Seay.
"B" as in Red Brigade [Brigades Rouges]
Toni Negri: One should be careful not to think of the Red Brigade as the sum-total of the 70s movement; nor should one think of that movement as set off in historical parentheses, an absolutely isolated, singular separate phenomena. In reality, the movement was rather a trajectory, a common route taken by a large part of my generation. There are still people -- some of them ingenuous, but more often stupid -- who continue to present me as chief of the Red Brigade, the malevolent brain behind the organization. Being a professor and political activist or, better yet, university professor and communist could mean none other than that: the bad-boy teacher, cattivo maestro. It's a source of consternation.
Anne DuFourmantelle: Why did everything happen so differently in Italy?
TN: Recently numerous American journalists, as a result of Empire, the book that I wrote with the American philosopher Michael Hardt, have asked me why Italy was the only country that had neither resolved nor come to terms with May 1968. It's an absurd story. I could show you people who are today in office in European governments who did the same things as me. But me, I am the one in prison! Everything's upside down. It's not my story that is particularly interesting; rather, it is the story of a generation that should be told in order to explain why this matter is only coming to light in the year 2001. Some members of the movement are in exile or in prison and others have become men in powerful positions.
It must be understood that Italy is a Catholic country. There was in the middle of the 70s, in response to 1968, a perverse alliance between Catholicism and Stalinism. It was called the "historic compromise", between the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democrats who agreed to implement a common program. In this alliance, the communists abandoned the revolutionary ideal of representing the poor and workers: the large-scale repression in Italy came down on everybody who denounced that. After 1968, in Italy as elsewhere, there was enormous hope for change that was accentuated by struggles -- in factories, universities, the women's movement, etc. It was this hope that the historic compromise crushed. After that, there was repression. In addition, the entire European leftist intelligentsia supported the Italian Communist Party because it maintained a certain independence in relation to the USSR. But, in reality, the Italian Communist Party paid for this freedom of criticism through past alliances with the powers that be in the country, and this included deaths, treason, espionage and intrigue.
AD: Demonstrators then started arming themselves?
TN: Yes, we have already spoken of that [in "Armed Struggle"]. In Italy between 1943 and 1945 there was a very powerful armed resistance. Twenty-five years later, in 1968, that was still fresh in peoples' minds, as anti-fascism was linked to the class struggle. The poor in Italy, at least in the North, were antifascist. From the 60s on, the extra-parliamentary Left was found in all strata of society and, in particular, in the factories. The break with the official Communist Party took place at that level, which led the Party to drastically lose ground, precisely because the opposition was from the workers. It's hard to imagine it today. Furthermore, as the Italian Communist Party was particularly open to western values and reactive in relation to the line of the USSR, repressing the extreme-left meant full entry into the official system of parties of "the free world". At that point, people began to act. Imagine what would have happened in France if the majority of workers at Renault or Citroen had been on the extreme Left. In France, during the events of May 1968, it was the workers who did not take part. Intellectuals led the revolt movement, not the workers. In Italy it was the exact opposite that occurred. It was the workers who refused the historic compromise, not the intellectuals. The imprisoned members of the Red Brigade with whom I was in prison during the 80s, and since my return in 1997, are of working class backgrounds. They really believed they were making revolution.
AD: They didn't think that a peaceful way was possible?
TN: Nobody thought so at the time, neither did I. I believe that State violence continues to exist even today. And that the response to it can be non-violent, but surely not "peaceful". In any case, there is resistance. Capitalism isn't peaceful either! It can't exist without violence. We are told that capitalism is natural, because the market and exchange are natural forms of civil society. They lead us to believe that there isn't another way to imagine and realize the production and reproduction of life's riches. So? That in itself is a form of violence. The problem at the time was not finding a peaceful solution. It was between choosing a form of resistance to this violence, as I did, and using this same form of violence, armed violence, as the Red Brigade did.
In Italy, to defeat terrorism, the government and police mounted two operations. The first was to criminalize intellectuals who participated in the struggle and the second was denouncement. The system of "repentance", that is the juridical recognition of denouncement, granted liberty to all those who agreed to "confess", regardless of the charges against them. Some of them had committed ten or so assassinations and were immediately released! Many of them said any old thing just to get released from prison. Those who thought in a certain manner were put in jail and others were used as witnesses against them. And so it was that when militants were caught red-handed, the police said to them: "Old chum, you can rot in jail and risk your life or you can talk". Some people told the truth, which was tragic enough in itself as it would bring about dozens of arrests. Others told lies and had innocent people arrested. Again, the majority of the accused in my trial, the "trial of April 7", were acquitted after six or seven years of prison. Still today, the same method is used. Out of all the offences committed, the police act on only a dozen or so, using repression to make an example out of the statistically significant ones. The police's main task in this is to find informants. Anybody who thinks of the police strictly as a physical force that protects citizens is making a huge mistake. The other police, immaterial police, create order through the use of denouncements and informants, with consequences that you can well imagine.