Mario Tronti

Mario Tronti (24 July 1931 – 7 August 2023) was an Italian academic Marxist philosopher and politician. He is considered to be one of the key theorists for operaismo and autonomist Marxism in the 1960s. Mario Tronti taught philosophy at the University of Siena for more than three decades.

Life and career An active member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) during the 1950s, he was, along with Raniero Panzieri, amongst the founders of the Quaderni Rossi (Red Notebooks) review from which he split in 1963 to establish the Classe Operaia (Working Class) review. This evolving journey progressively distanced him from the PCI, without him ever formally leaving, and engaged him in the radical experiences of operaismo. Such experience, considered by many to be the matrix of Italian autonomist Marxism in the 1960s, was characterised by challenging the roles of the traditional organisations of the workers' movement (the unions and the parties) and the direct engagement, without intermediaries, with the working class itself and to the struggles in the factories.

Influenced by the work of Galvano Della Volpe which led him to distance himself from the thinking of Antonio Gramsci, Tronti dedicated himself to the formulation of a politics basing theory on practice, which could renew traditional Marxism and contribute to re-opening the revolutionary road in the West.

Faced with mass revolt by Western workers in the 1960s, Tronti's operaismo was able to propose a modern analysis of class relations and above all, refocus attention of the subjective factor, claiming the central political role of the working class. His ideas found an echo in 1966, with the publication of Operai e capitale (Workers and Capital),

Publications Tra materialismo dialettico e filosofia della prassi. Gramsci e Labriola, in A. Caracciolo et G. Scalia (éd.), La città futura. Saggi sulla figura e il pensiero di Antonio Gramsci, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1959 (éd.), Scritti inediti di economia politica di Marx, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1963 Baldi, Camillo, in A.M. Ghisalberti (éd.), Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 5, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 1963 Operai e capitale, Einaudi, Torino, 1966 (DeriveApprodi, Roma, 2006) Hegel politico, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia italiana, Roma, 1975 Sull'autonomia del politico, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1977 Stato e rivoluzione in Inghilterra, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1977 (en collab. avec G. Napolitano, A. Accornero et M. Cacciari), Operaismo e centralità operaia, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1978 (éd.), Il politico. Antologia di testi del pensiero politico. 1 : Da Machiavelli a Cromwell, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1979 Soggetti, crisi, potere, A. Piazzi et A. De Martinis (éd.), Cappelli, Bologna, 1980; Il tempo della politica, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1980 Con le spalle al futuro. Per un altro dizionario politico, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1992; Berlinguer. Il Principe disarmato, Edizioni Sisifo, Roma, 1994 La politica al tramonto, Einaudi, Torino, 1998 Rileggendo "La libertà comunista", in G. Liguori (éd.), Galvano Della Volpe. Un altro marxismo, Edizioni Fahrenheit 451, Roma, 2000 (éd. avec P. Favilli), Classe operaia. Le identità : storia e prospettiva, Angeli, Milano, 2001 Cenni di Castella, Edizioni Cadmo, Fiesole, 2001 Per la critica della democrazia politica, in M. Tari (éd.), Guerra e democrazia, ManifestoLibri, Roma, 2005 Id. et al., Politica e destino, Sossella editore, Roma, 2006 (avec les contributions de divers auteurs sur la pensée de Mario Tronti) Il proprio tempo appreso col pensiero, 2024