2026-02-21.1_S Wright - assessing operaismo

“In assessing the often tortuous path of operaismo’s efforts to understand working-class behaviour, many of its weaknesses have come to the surface. The first of these consists in its penchant for all-embracing categories that, in seeking to explain everything, too often would clarify very little.
Amongst them, that of the social factory always alluded to a significant rethinking of the process of class composition, yet rarely seemed to deliver on its promises. Another is passivity, too easily conjured forth as a means to avoid facing the problem of class decomposition, a process every bit as real as that of recomposition. Most damaging of all, however, would be operaio sociale, a category that, like Negri’s use of the phrase self-valorisation,”was a very elegant instrument for synthesizing a plurality of social behaviours, but which, precisely for its excessive synthetic aspect, flattened them, negating their specificity.” (Bottaggia 1981: 76).
Each such category had this in common: it was an ideal construct into which certain members of the tendency attempted, with considerable obstinacy and ingenuity, to force the reality of working-class composition.
In doing so, however, they were to forget one of Marx’s (1913: 9) most fundamental lessons: namely, the refusal to anticipate ‘results that are still to be proven.’” pg. 208 - 209

• Steve Wright, Storming Heaven

-> similar risks present with (at least my use of) intersectionality