Italian Marxist philosopher and activist Antonio Negri, leader of historic left-wing movements in Italy, died today in Paris at the age of 90, the press in his native country reported.
Toni Negri, a reference in the renewal of European Marxism at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, as described by the EFE news agency, went into exile in France when he was linked to the assassination of the Italian politician and lawyer Aldo Moro, in 1978, charges of which he was ultimately acquitted.
The Italian agency ANSA describes Toni Negri, who was also a university professor, as one of the main theoreticians and organizers of Autonomy, heir to the radical left groups that emerged from the student and labor movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Toni Negri, together with his former student Michael Hardt, co-authored books such as Empire, Crowd and Common, some of the most influential works of the left at the turn of the century.
For example, in “Empire,” the authors tackle the theme of imperialism, considering that it “may be gone, but the empire is alive and well,” as read in a Harvard University Press synopsis describing the authors’ work as ‘bold’ and that speaks of the ‘new political order of globalization’.
The facet of the writer is highlighted today in a note published on Esquerda.pt, reporting the death of the Italian thinker, reproducing an August interview with Il Manifesto.
Born on August 1, 1933 in Padua, Negri was the son of a communist father who was murdered by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
He took his first political steps in the local branch of the Socialist Party before founding the Independent Socialist Movement and then joining the radical left group Potere operaio (Workers’ Power).
He founded Workers’ Autonomy in 1973, a structure of which he was leader and main theorist until its dissolution in 1979.
Negri was imprisoned for four years awaiting trial after being released after being elected to the Italian parliament in 1983, as noted in the philosopher’s biography at the European Graduate School, where he also taught.
Convicted of “crimes of association and insurrection against the state”, Negri went into exile in France, where he taught at some of the country’s most prestigious schools and was able to come into contact with several of the most important political philosophers of a generation. .
Negri returned to Italy in 1997 to serve six years of a sentence that had already been reduced and was released in 2003.
Source: DN
