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A political current which first emerged in Italy (autonomia) and Germany (autonomen) in the 1960s and 1970s.  It is a radicalised version of Marxism in which class struggle rather than structure is placed at the centre of analysis and in which the proletariat is conceived as the [driving force] in history.  Politically, autonomists insist on the importance of class autonomy and of strategies of resistance which [undermine] the existing incorporation of the [working class] and which force the emergence of new configurations of forces.

Associated especially with the work of the Italian [philosopher] Antonio Negri, whose texts, prior to his recent co-authored book Empire, were major expositions of the autonomist perspective.

Although analytically attached to a strongly worker-centric version of Marxism, autonomists were active in favouring the development of diverse subcultural spaces, including squatted social centres, "autoreduction" of train and bus fares (political fare-dodging), subvertising, pirate radio (e.g. radio alice) and the political demands of the emarginati (the "marginalised" or socially excluded) and "precari" (precariously positioned workers).

The main [representative] of this tendency in Britain today is the journal Aufheben.  Autonomist tendencies also exist in most other countries.

Readers should note that autonomism is NOT the same thing as autonomous anarchism.

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