WEBVTT

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[music]

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I first want to introduce
to you Antonio Negri

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who is a free intellectual.
(inaudible) he’s now free.

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So we are very pleased
so he will be speaking.

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Exploitation no longer just takes place at the factory,
exploitation takes place when you’re traveling

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to work, exploitation now takes place during
the reproduction of the whole new society.

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After more than 20 years
of prison and exile,

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this is one of the first public appearances of the
Italian philosopher, Antonio Negri since his release.

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In the 60s, he agitated in the
front of Italian factories,

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today, he is considered one of the leading
intellectuals of the anti-globalization movement.

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In his world best seller,

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Empire, which he co-authored with the American literature
Professor, Michael Hardt, Negri promises the possibility

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of revolt in a globalized world.

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This films tells the story of an intellectual
who has been admired as a philosopher,

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and visionary, and condemned as a
terrorist, and enemy of the State.

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In 1979, Negri, who at that time

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was a professor of political science,
was accused of having kidnapped

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and murdered the Chairman of the
Christian Democratic Party, Aldo Moro.

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A state of emergency arraigned in Italy,

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and Negri was further accused of being the
head of the terrorist group, The Red Brigades,

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and of inciting armed
resistance against the state.

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To the Italian public, he became
known as the cattivo maestro,

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and accursed seducer of the Italian youth,

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a persona non grata.

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[music]

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What culminated in the
charges against Negri,

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begins in the Venetian industrial
suburb of Porto Marghera.

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Here Negri finds the main theme of his
research and later, theories, labor

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and the struggle against exploitation.
In the 1950s,

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industrialization prompts massive migrations of workers
from the countries Southern regions to the North

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where they live in overcrowded tenements

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and perform repetitive piece work. [music]

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Negri and a group of intellectuals,

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their so called Operaisti investigate the situation
to assess the potential of political action.

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[music]

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Negri is a professor at the Institute of
Political Science at the University of Padua.

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There seem to be no contradiction between his
academic work and his political engagement.

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[music]

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[music]

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The group of political activists

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around Negri called themselves
Potero Operaio or Workers Power.

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Workers and intellectuals joined
forces for political action,

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their demands go far beyond
those of the trade unions.

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Instead of only insisting on higher wages, they
strived for the abolition of wage labor itself,

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the freedom to live rather
than work in the factory.

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[music]

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As the situation, the factories heat up,

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Potero Operaio gains influence
with its radical demands.

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[music]

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When student revolt

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erupted across Europe in 1968, the movement
in Italy encounters an independent workers’

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movement that has been organized for years.

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[sil.]

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It is not true that we are
free in this society,

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we’re only free to get up every morning and go to morning.
The idea that work and nobles is a capitalist invention.

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[music]

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In the autumn of 1969, the workers

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have nothing left to lose.
They refused to work

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and attack Fiat assembly plants. Assembly lines
have locked, and workers councils take control.

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It is the beginning of a conflict
that will last for years.

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[non-English narration]

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Negri takes part in the revolt
at the Fiat plant in Torino,

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and the chemical industry
in Porto Marghera.

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[non-English narration]

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[sil.]

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Potero Operaio! Potero Operaio!

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Potero Operaio!

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[music]

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A bomb in Milan’s Piazza Fontana killed
16 people and injuries countless others.

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The attack is attributed to the left,

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only years later did the truth come
out, that fascist groups with ties

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to the Italian secret service
were responsible for the bombing.

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Their so called strategy of tension is
series of terrorist attacks is employed

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by the right to create a climate
of anxiety and insecurity.

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Having become centers have revolt,

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numerous light factories are
closed and decentralized.

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Factory production becomes automated and the
striking workers are replaced by machines.

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Massive unemployment and an
economic crisis follows.

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The conflict between traditional unions
and radical groups comes to ahead.

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Trade unions respond to this situation by calling
on workers to work overtime and Saturdays.

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[non-English narration]

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The protest expands from
the factories to the city.

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[sil.]

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Negri witnesses the
emergence of a new class.

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He coins the term the social worker
conceptual precursor to his later theories.

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[non-English narration]

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Potere Operaio emerges with Autonomia, the
most radical wing of the protest movement.

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A counter society should be established, their life
fundamentally changed, tumbled rains in the streets

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and in the people’s minds.

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Telephone and electrical rates are
self-reduced without authorization,

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super markets are emptied, and
their contents redistributed.

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For Negri, the theorists of Autonomia, these actions
constitute a re-appropriation of society’s accumulated wealth,

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capitalism and exploitation should be abolished
with violence in the streets if necessary.

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This marks the most ambivalent
period in Negri’s rioting.

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The State leader holds these riotings to be morally
responsible for the escalation of terrorist violence.

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[non-English narration]

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The political situation
in Italy is unstable.

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The State feels threatened from
both the Right and the Left.

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The Christian-Democrat want to form a
coalition with the communist party,

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the so called historic compromise.
For the radical movement, Autonomia,

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this is betrayal.

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The situation explodes in (inaudible) and Rome,
open confrontations with the State follow.

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[music]

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[music]

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The Autonomia movement
has come to a dead end.

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Above all, the violence question provokes unbridgeable
differences between factions in the movement.

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It is a time of rising influence for the Red Brigades.
Many activists decide to go undergo and operate illegally.

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The state answers with
tanks in the streets.

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[sil.]

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In 1978, Aldo Moro, the Chairman of
the Christian-Democrats is kidnapped,

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and his bodyguard’s shot. The Red Brigades
claim responsibility for the kidnapping

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a military logic has prevailed from
which Negri distances himself.

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Two months later, the body of
Aldo Moro is found in Rome.

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Almost a year later,

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the State moves against the intellectual
leaders of the Autonomia movement.

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On April 7, 1979, they are arrested.
In the following years,

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60,000 activists are investigated and
25,000 arrested. Special laws allowed

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defendants to be held in jail for years. It
is the first step of a massive retaliation

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by the State against the Italian Left.

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Negri’s charged with maintaining
suppressive associations,

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political conspiracy, the
establishment of an armed gang,

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armed resistance against the State, and participation
in the abduction and murder of Aldo Moro.

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[sil.]

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The wave of repression spreads over Italy.

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The trials continue for decades while
the accused remain behind bars.

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The State has won, and power relations have
been reestablished. A whole generation

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that desired to change Italian
society is jailed or in exile.

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[music]

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Negri spends four years in jail.

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He uses the work on his book about the
philosopher Baruch Spinoza for a new beginning.

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[music]

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In 1983,

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while still in prison, Negri is spectacularly into
parliament as a representative of the radical party.

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He’s given parliamentary
immunity and is released.

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A few months later, he learns that
his immunity is about to be revoked.

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[music]

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So I decided to leave. Of
course, I had… many doubts.

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Especially, because I am someone who
is very loyal to comrades and friends.

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I feel very close to people.

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It was a very difficult
decision for me to leave.

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Then there was a ferocious
attack in the media,

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especially by the PCI, the Communist Party.

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It was a very hard attack:\"You coward.
You’re running away!

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First, you lecture with your
silver tongue and then you go!\"

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[sil.]

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Negri is condemned in absentia
to 30 years in prison,

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a sentence that will later
be reduced to 18 years.

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The charges of murdering Aldo Moro and armed
resistance against the State are dropped.

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But Negri is convicted of being the head of
Autonomia, and of inciting criminal activities

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with his riotings. Negri flees to Paris,

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where a scene of Italian political activists
from the 1970s is living in exile.

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The Socialist government of François
Mitterrand tolerates him and many others.

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Here, he will spend the next
14 years without papers.

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[music]

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Renown friends and
philosophers, Félix Guattari

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and Gilles Deleuze helped Negri
to establish himself in Paris.

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Negri focuses his attention on philosophy,

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it is a period of reconstruction.

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[sil.]

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With help from Deleuze and Guattari,
Negri can teach at the (inaudible),

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an institute of contemporary French philosophy.
Negri’s seminars become a showcase

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for new school of critical thought.
Of the Italian exile (inaudible),

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Toni was the best known,

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and also the… he was at least for many
essential, let’s say, intellectual figures.

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But Toni also was able who seems to me

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the great project of those years of his
which was to construct in Paris to…

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construct with the French intellectual
scene, a new hole of thinking.

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From his French colleagues, Negri
adopts the idea that power

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can no longer be located at a fixed centre,
but rather infuses all aspects of life,

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he speaks of bio-politics and radicalize
the concept of the social worker

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from the 1970s. Now all of society
is part of the production process,

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and thus defined by exploitation.

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Negri implies the term immaterial labor. He reflects
on the realization that most wealth in a post

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industrial economy is no longer achieved
with physical labor, but through the use

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of knowledge and language. The intellectual

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and social abilities of workers determine the
complex production processes of our time.

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For Negri, the question becomes, how’s
global political power organized

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in the 21st century, and how can
political opposition emerge

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from a multitude of political perspectives.
Work on the book empire begins.

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Drawn to this new school of thought,

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a young generation of
activists arrives in Paris.

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Many of them are Italians who are searching
for the professor in exile, through them,

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Negri’s connections to Italy are revived.

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In 1997, after 14 years of exile in Paris,

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Negri decides to return to Italy.

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He hopes that by turning himself in to the Italian authorities,
he can revive the debate about amnesty for the exiles

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and political prisoners from the 1970s.
He wants to come to terms with his past,

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so that he can become politically
active again in Italy.

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As Negri boards the
plane, he leaves friends

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and an esteemed existence
in Paris behind him

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and step into the unknown.

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[music]

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The decision was, in a way, long incoming. I mean there’ve been
years he’s been thinking that that was something he needed to do,

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so it wasn’t… In fact, that
was one of the only ones,

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at least in the Paris group and maybe I was
wrong, I was one of the only ones who thought

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that that was right who said
that it was the right decision.

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It seemed to me the right decision at the time. It
seemed to everyone else, although Toni, of course,

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you know, he’s stuck in his ideas no matter
what people tell him, he’s going to do it.

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So it’s not like people (inaudible), but the vast majority of
the friends in Paris and in Italy got a real terrible idea.

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[sil.]

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[non-English narration]

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Immediately, upon arriving in Rome,

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he’s arrested and thrown in jail.
Instead of amnesty, the 64-year-old

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faces prison and house arrest,
the past has caught up with him.

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[sil.]

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Meanwhile, Empire, the book

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Negri co-authored with Michael Hardt
is published in the United States.

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It becomes a world best seller and celebrated
as the communist manifesto of the 21st century.

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Negri and Hardt

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have devised a neo-political vocabulary and outline
a vision of revolt in the globalized world.

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At the same time, the anti-globalization
movement grabs the world’s attention,

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first in Seattle, and then in Geneva.
In this context,

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Negri and Hardt work appears to offer
theoretical reflection on the unfolding events.

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[sil.]

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The Empire does not fortify its boundaries
to push others away, but rather pulls them

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within its specific order,
like a powerful votex,

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with boundaries and differences
suppressed or set aside,

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the empire is a kind of smooth space across

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which subjectivities glide without
substantial resistance or conflict.

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What one shouldn’t forget is that there is always a
kind of theorizing that goes on in the movement.

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It’s not like the people in the
movements are only receiving ideas

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from the great thinkers or that they’re
only involved in practical situations.

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And so, I think it’s, you know, therefore
important that in all the movements

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there’s whatever developed
discussions about theoretical issues

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and there are. And so that I think a book
like ours can fit as a one element in

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these kinds of discussions.
Despite international attention,

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Negri isn’t freed until the spring of 2003.

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His passport is returned to him,
and he’s allowed to travel.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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Negri cannot teach nor exercise
his right to vote in Italy,

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but overnight he has become a
highly-acclaimed speaker around the world.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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For Negri, resistance develops on
the global level through networks,

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but it also takes the form of local conflicts. The forms
of revolt have changed, but they’re still a part of larger

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struggle against exploitation.

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[music]

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Negri has developed a new
class concept, the Multitude.

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The term describes consolations of creatively
productive individuals. It differs from older concept

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such as the masses, the
people, or the nation.

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This intelligent, flexible, and mobile multitude
defends itself in parallel actions around the world

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against exploitation by global
power structures against Empire.

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In Negri’s vision, it becomes a swarm
of globally active resistance.

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[music]

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The whole world has suddenly
become a stage for Negri,

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the former enemy of the State. He’s surprised a
bit himself about this stance with the media.

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The disobedients are an activists group

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from Negri’s former home, Porto Marghera. There’s
spectacular actions reference, the main concept of Empire.

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Among other things, they demand
subsistent money for everybody

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Discount! Discount!

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Conflict also means disobedience in
regards to borders and asylum laws.

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The main focus of revolt today
for Negri is opposition to war.

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It too has changed in the age of Empire.

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