Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 13:53:18 +1000
Subject: Re: AUT: RE:


Hi all.

I read the Katsiaficas book some time ago and was disappointed on the
section on Italy, which struck me as simplistic and too dependent on the
limited range of materials available in English, and even then some of
them. It left me wondering just how accurate the rest of the book (mainly
on the German autonomist movement) actually is - since I don't read German,
I have no idea. Some friends have praised the Katsiaficas book on '68, but
I haven't ever looked at that properly.

>> Mired in the tradition of Russian sovietism he cannot
>> comprehend the dictatorial character of Russian politics, from lenin and
>> Trotsky's assault on Kronstadt  to Yeltsin 's turning the military loose
>> on parliament...Negri's perspective should be understood as part of the
>> reason that the left has been so singularly irrelevant in nations where
>> democratic civil liberties exist."
>>    Pg.229
>>
>Thano: I find these assertions downright hysterical and demonstrating no
>understanding whatsoever of either Toni or the movement in which he
>struggled. Take the text that we were going to try to discuss: Marx Beyond
>Marx and look, for example, at the first Lesson and the discussion of
>Soviet Marxism and Vygodskij on page 16 --hardly the comments of someone
>"mired in the tradition of Russian sovietism". Or take a look at the
>discussion of "the crisis of real socialism" in THE LABOR of DIONYSUS,
>etc. etc. etc.

I don't have the book to hand, Harry, but it wouldn't surprise me if the
phrase "the tradition of Russian sovietism" is actually meant here to evoke
the politics of the Russian workers councils rather than the "Soviet"
state. In fact Negri wrote in the 60s, 70s (when he criticised the left
communists, in his Lenin book) and again in the 80s about Lenin and the
soviet movement, although as far as I can tell Katsiaficas is not aware of
this, and none of these essays have appeared in English. Anyway, if this is
what Katsiaficas is getting at, there is some unintended irony in his
comments, given that Negri used to criticise the Roman autonomists for
*their* "soviettismo" i.e. for being too much like council communists . . .

Steve




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