Toni Negri, historic leader of Autonomia Operaia, has died

The philosopher and teacher Toni Negri, historic leader of Workers' Autonomy during the Years of Lead, died in Paris last night at the age of 90.

Negri was born in Padua on August 1, 1933 and was among the most important theorists of the extra-parliamentary left and workerist Marxism, starting from the end of the 1960s.

He took his first steps in the Padua section of the Socialist Party, but distanced himself from it and became critical of it. After having created the independent socialist movement and the monthly Quaderni Rossi, Negri then joined the magazine Classe Operaia, born in January 1964 precisely from a split within the monthly magazine.

In the meantime, in 1961 he also founded a publishing house - Marsilio editore - together with Paolo Ceccarelli, Giulio Felisari and Giorgio Tinazzi.

Toni Negri's philosophical, intellectual, but also political activity continued with Potere Operaio, which he left in 1973 with the Rosolina conference.

The same year Negri founded the magazine Controformazione, but above all Autonomia Operaia, of which he was the leader and main theoretician until its dissolution in 1979.

In 1983 Negri was elected deputy with the Radical Party with over 13 thousand preferences, but in September of the same year he took refuge in France because he was involved in the "7 April" trials of the Autonomia Operaia militants. Beyond the Alps benefited from the Mitterrand doctrine.

Negri returned to Italy on 1 July 1997 to serve his final 12-year sentence.

From 1999 he was granted semi-freedom, in 2003 full freedom.

(Unioneonline/lf)