Blackwell Reference Online

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The Disobbedienti were a group in Italy who had their greatest visibility around the G8 (most industrialized nations) summit in Genoa in 2001 . The movement understood itself as explicitly extra-parliamentary and basis-democratic. The Disobbedienti, who were strongly rooted in the counter-globalization movement, regarded themselves as anti-capitalist and anti-racist, as well as a transformatory and revolutionary current. At the same time, they regarded a redefinition of many of the left's categories and forms of struggle as necessary for today's social reality. Their roots lie in the Italian Marxist tradition of Operaismo – or post-Operaismo – which turned traditional Marxism on its head, arguing workers not to be merely passive, reactive victims of capitalist development, but a powerful social force whose struggles drive it forward. They propagated first of all “civil” and then “social disobedience” as a form of action, and drew heavily upon the philosophy of Zapatismo propagated by the Zapatista (EZLN) rebels in Chiapas, Mexico. Their immediate predecessors, up until the summit in Genoa, were the Tute Bianche (White Overall) movement. Ya Basta, a network set up in 1996 to support the Zapatistas and spread the struggle against neoliberalism, played an important role within both Tute Bianche and the Disobbedienti. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's concept of the multitude ... log in or subscribe to read full text