From the Factory to the World

From the Factory to the World offers a landmark historical and theoretical reconstruction of Antonio Negri’s political thought, from Italian Operaismo in the 1960s and 1970s to his global influence via Empire (2000), and up to his death in 2023. The book highlights Negri’s epistemic continuity, showing how he extended the core tenets of Operaismo – such as the working class’s autonomy and Tronti’s “Copernican revolution” – beyond the Fordist factory into a “global Marxism” for the present. Employing a methodology at the intersection of the history of political thought and intellectual history, it elucidates Negri’s ideas and innovations, engages major critiques, and distinguishes his approach from Western Marxism, post-Marxism, and neo-Marxism, assessing its contributions to critical theory and social movements.