>If you want to trace the influence of socialist and Marxist ideas
on the
>anti-capitalist movements, you'd be getting warmer if you brought
up the
>Situationists and autonomist Marxists. The council communist
movement
>and so on.
History lesson, Chuckster. Karl Korsch *was* a council communist, and Edward Thompson was a huge influence on what Harry Cleaver likes to call"autonomist" Marxism.
Jus' fer the rekkid, there's really no such thing as "Autonomist" Marxism. "Operaismo" was a current in Italian Marxism, with figures like Tronti, Sergio Bologna, and the early Toni Negri having an influence first in the left-wing of the Socialist Party and then in the extra-parliamentary quasi-Maoist parties like Avanguardia Operaio.
A roughly parallel political development in the United States was the Sojourner Truth Organization, whose Ken Lawrence used to be a member of this list, and whose Noel Ignatiev (formerly Ignatin) has gone on to fame as the editor of Race Traitor.
The minute you start talking about something called "Autonomism," you're talking about a roughly contemporaneous movement of students and squatters in Italy and Germany, which appropriated elements of classical Italian Operaismo, but in many respects breaks with what it would probably consider to be the working-class emphasis of Marxism.
As for your suggestion that the majority of activists in today's anti-capitalist movement (whatever that is) are influenced by Situationism or whatnot, I have to smirk. Even in Germany, which is about ten times more advanced than the U.S. as far as activism goes, most anti-glob types are more likely to be influenced by left-liberal writers like Naomi Klein, Susan George, etc. Empire seems to be a book a tiny handful of people drop the name of but never read, and John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power is making dents here and there,but still, the majority of today's activist get about as radical as reading Noam Chomsky.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think it's a real mistake to assume that just because us smart folks on the internet are into reading certain things, that necessarily means that those are hegemonic ideas with the broader layers of folk who aren't motivated by much other than a desire for a better world.
As for Doug's point about activists in other countries, I'd agree that probably figures like Sweezy, Baran, and Amin are influential figures *still* in what is sometimes called the "Third World."
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