Trentatre lezioni su Lenin

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Antonio Negri, Arianna Bove

Lenin, la sua inventiva politica e il suo pensiero sono ormai da buttare? Molti sostengono di sì. Questa lettura, condotta nella tumultuosa temperie degli anni '70, sostiene invece il contrario individuando, nel metodo teorico e pratico del leader bolscevico, un elemento di rottura radicale che fa parte a pieno titolo della storia della modernità occidentale. In queste lezioni Negri illustra gli aspetti più decisivi dell'opera e dell'azione di Lenin: l'analisi delle classi, la centralità teorica della prassi sovversiva, il partito come soggetto dialettico dinanzi al movimento delle masse, la rivoluzione permanente, il comunismo come latenza percepibile e vicina. A cent'anni dalla Rivoluzione d'Ottobre, la conoscenza di quello che ne fu lo straordinario stratega resta fondamentale per comprendere le contraddizioni e i conflitti del Novecento, ma anche per affrontare le asperità e i nodi irrisolti di ogni rottura con l'ordine dominante.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

335 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2004

About the author

Antonio Negri was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of Empire with Michael Hardt and his work on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio (Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
Negri was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 1979, he Negri was arrested and charged with a long list of crimes including the Moro murder. Most charges were dropped quickly, but in 1984 he was still sentenced (in absentia) to 30 years in prison. He was given an additional four years on the charge of being "morally responsible" for the violence of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The question of Negri's complicity with left-wing extremism is a controversial subject. He was indicted on a number of charges, including "association and insurrection against the state" (a charge which was later dropped), and sentenced for involvement in two murders.
Negri fled to France where, protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, he taught at the Paris VIII (Vincennes) and the Collège international de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was behind bars. He hence lived in Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel. He was the father of film director Anna Negri.
Like Deleuze, Negri's preoccupation with Spinoza is well known in contemporary philosophy. Along with Althusser and Deleuze, he has been one of the central figures of a French-inspired neo-Spinozism in continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after a well-known rediscovery of Spinoza by German thinkers (especially the German Romantics and Idealists) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of the typical (and possibly outdated) narrative of Lenin put in nearly impenetrable language. When Negri is being more original, I find his insights lacking and sometimes insipid (such as implying that we are already living under sociallsm because the law of value is no longer operative). Most of the text is just hot air.

[James M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant rereading and recontextualisation of Lenins work, from his conception of how the nature of capital shapes the strategy of revolution, the importance of dialectics, and an exceptional analysis of the State and Revolution and it's insights on the withering away of the state