The Winter Is over: Writings on Transformation Denied, 1989--1995

by Negri, Antonio; Caccia, Giuseppe; Smith, Jason E.; Bertoletti, Isabella; Cascaito, James

• ISBN13: 9781584351214
• ISBN10: 1584351217
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-06-07
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Automation and information technology have transformed the organization of labor tosuch an extent that the processes of exploitation have moved beyond the labor class and now workupon society as a whole. If this displacement has destroyed the political primacy of the laborclass, it has not, however, eliminated exploitation; rather, it has broadened it, implanting itwithin the given conditions of the most diverse spheres of society. -- from The Winter IsOver In late 1995, in opposition to the conservative agenda of JacquesChirac and his prime minister Alain Juppé and their proposed widespread welfare cuts, Frenchstudents rose up against their government; public sector workers, together with all the major tradeunions, went on strike. When railway workers and Paris Metro personnel joined in the protests,France's public transportation system came to a halt. These extensive social upheavals, the likes ofwhich had not been seen in France since 1968, found widespread public support and fuelled thecreation of many political organizations. Chirac backed down from restructuring the publicretirement system. Antonio Negri's The Winter is Over comes outof the glimmer of optimism created by the events of 1995, when the long, cold season ofneoliberalism, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, reaction, and counterrevolution appeared to have run itscourse. Published in Italian in 1996, The Winter is Over brings together a seriesof articles, speeches, and other documents written by Negri between 1989 and 1995 at the thresholdof this thaw. It offers a revealing and wide-reaching account of those years of change andbrink-of-change, focusing on such topics as the networks of social production, the decline of"limp thought," the end of applied socialism, the Gulf War, and, finally, Italy'stransition to its so-called "Second Republic," as seen by an exile.

Author Biography

Antonio Negri is a philosopher, essay writer, and teacher. A political and social activist in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy, he has taught political science for many years and has written numerous books on political philosophy, including Marx beyond Marx, The Savage Anomaly, Insurgencies, The Porcelain Workshop: For a New Grammar of Politics (Semiotext(e)), and, in collaboration with Michael Hardt, Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.