The Long '68

On the heels of the outbreak of the tumultuous student movement in 1967, workers' uprisings erupted throughout Italy, bringing the struggle from the factories into the streets in a revolutionary movement that culminated in the "Hot Autumn" of 1969. This is the story of the rise of the New Left in Italy and the wave of reaction to it that set the stage for the Years of Lead. 

Includes interviews with 

Alberto Pantaloni, PhD in Historical Sciences and Documents, co-editor of Historia Magistra, and author of La dissoluzione di Lotta continua e il movimento del '77 and 1969: L'assemblea operai studenti: Una storia dell'autunno caldo, both recently published through Derive Approdi. 

Emanuela Scarpellini, Professor of Modern History at the University of Milan, Italy. She is the author of several books, including Material Nation: A Consumer's History of Modern Italy (2011) and Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present (Palgrave, 2016). 

Michael Hardt, a political philosopher and literary theorist, best known for three books he co-authored with Antonio Negri: Empire (2000), Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), and Commonwealth (2009). The trilogy, in particular its first volume—Empire—has often been hailed as the “Communist Manifesto of the 21st Century.” Michael Hardt is a professor of literature at Duke University and a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. 

Steve Wright, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University and author of Storming Heaven and The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo. 

Table of Contents 

0.00: Introduction 

6.25: Classe operaia 

10.00: Migration and Labor Relations 

22.00: Avola Massacre 

24.00: Introducing the Pisa Kids 

34.00: Marzotto Uprising 

39.00: 1968: The Breakout Year 

42.00: Far-Right Entryism 

44.30: The Veneto Group 

53.00: The Veneto and Emilia Collaboration 

57.00: The Roman Students 

1.00.00: Battipaglia Massacre 

1.05.25: Birth of La Classe 

1.09.10: The Battle of Corso Traiano and the Creation of Lotta Continua 

1.18.50: The Hot Autumn 1.21.35: Class War 1.29.00: The Struggle Outside the Factories 1.36.27: The Origin of the Red Brigades Works Cited Cazzullo, Aldo. I ragazzi che volevano fare rivoluzione: 1968-1978: storia di Lotta Continua. Milan: Mondadori, 2015. Edwards, Phil. "More work! Less pay!": Rebellion and repression in Italy, 1972–77. Manchester University Press, 2013. Keach, William. "What do we want? Everything!": 1969: Italy’s “Hot Autumn," International Socialist Review, Issue #67. Lumley, Robert. States of emergency: Cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. New York: Verso, 1990. Palazzo, David P. The "Social Factory" In Postwar Italian Radical Thought From Operaismo To Autonomia" (2014). CUNY Academic Works. Pantaloni, Alberto. 1969: L'assemblea operai studenti: Una storia dell'autunno caldo. Roma: Derive Approdi, 2020. Sannucci, Corrado. Lotta Continua: Gli uomini Dopo. Milan: fuori|onda, 2012. Scarpellini, Emanuela. Italian Fashion since 1945: a Cultural History. Springer International Publishing, 2019. Scavino, Marco. Potere operaio: La storia. La teoria. Vol. 1. Roma: Derive Approdi, 2018. Senti Le Rani Che Canto. https://sites.google.com/site/sentileranechecantano/cronologia Thirion, Marie. La fabbriche della rivoluzione: discorsi e rappresentazioni del potere operaio nelle riviste di Pisa, Marghera e Torino, Dissertation. Università degli Studi di Padova and Université Grenoble Alpes, 2017. Wright, Steve. Storming Heaven. London: Pluto Press, 2017. Wright, Steve. The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo. Leiden: Brill, 2021.