2026-02-01_autonomy

“Capitalist subjectivity is about being able to dominate; the counter-subjectivity of the class is characterized by being able to break this relationship of domination and construct an alternative, an otherness, an autonomy. Autonomy, for Alquati, is always a relationship with something else, the construction of a collective force. Intrinsic politicità is the capacity to modify the relations of force. And in capitalist society the litmus test of these relations is the wage.”

“Some final words on autonomy: it’s not about living in a bubble separated from everything else, but about acting in a specific way and putting real opposition into action. You thus construct yourself as an alternative to and different from something else. If we look at revolutionary processes, we see that it is precisely the incapacity to go beyond a certain limit that leads to their decline. So, antagonism is positioning oneself in opposition; autonomy is constructing a diversity that depends on what there is but at the same time is able to construct something that doesn’t exist yet.”

“For Alquati, the liberation from capitalism presupposes the capacity to imagine and hypothesize a subjectivity able to break with the process of commodification. This is the strategic revolutionary dimension; it is no longer that of the separateness of the political.”

• Guido Borio, Italian Operaismo