Raniero Panzieri Works - Toledo Translation Fund
Raniero Panzieri Works

Raniero Panzieri (1921-1964) was a central figure in the history of Italian Marxism. A militant and leader of the Italian Socialist Party, he was a tireless promoter of political, social and cultural activities. As such, he played a formative role in the Italian postwar new left, and, in particular, in the emergence of operaismo, which contributed, in turn, to further theoretical-political experiences, including the movement of Autonomia and so-called post-workerism. In this way, both Panzieri’s biography and his writings remain a fundamental keystone in the history of the workers’ movement of the second half of the 20th century, a history whose legacy is finally attaining some well-deserved interest.
Historical Materialism Book Series is now proposing to translate almost all of Panzieri’s writings into English, making the body of his work - rather than only a handful of essays - accessible for the first time to an international audience. Because of Panzieri’s untimely death, in Italy his work was long confined to selective and partial anthologies that conveyed at best a limited sense of his political and theoretical trajectory. Even the excellent (but now largely out of print) series of volumes curated by Stefano Merli, which were notable for their comprehensiveness and philological care, would appear as a number of isolated texts. Thus, while Panzieri is unanimously recognized for his decisive influence on the developments of operaista and post-operaista thought, it is still difficult today to lay hands on the core body of his work, making it hard to learn about, let alone to critically appraise, the significance of his legacy. The main purpose of this anthology project, therefore, is to remedy this by finally presenting the body of Panzieri’s texts to an international readership.
Just as importantly, by placing the great majority of Panzieri’s texts in chronological order, the anthology will provide an overview of both the author and his era. Along with theoretical writings, significant correspondence with collaborators famous (e.g. Franco Fortini, Toni Negri, Mario Tronti) and not so famous will be included, in order to better frame Panzieri within the broader cultural and political milieu of his time. In doing so, and beyond the admittedly decisive requirements of philological rigor and documentary/archival importance, we want to emphasize the relevance of Panzieri’s approach for the political debates of the present. Indeed, our main purpose in assembling this anthology lies not simply in making accessible Panzieri's thought, but of unleashing its potential to address matters that continue to be of great concern, viewing them from the centrality of the workers’ point of view, and of living labour’s dialectical opposition to capital’s need to subjugate it. Confronting the crisis of the postwar Western workers’ movement in the face of capital’s apparent preparedness to reform social institutions, Panzieri displayed great originality in his exploration of the capitalist use of technology, the development of capital, the plan of capital as a crucial political terrain, and living labour as a potential foundation for the crisis of that plan. These are all aspects that forcefully question and challenge us from within the contemporary society in which we live: a society, Western capitalist society, that - alongside a radical crisis of the workers’ movement - has seen the technological dimension explode, and with it the enormous expansion of the now all-pervasive capital relation.
The guiding thread of this project is that, far from being some atrophied relic from the workers’ movement’s past, Raniero Panzieri’s insights offer an indispensable guide for movements of social emancipation in our 21st century, beginning with his critique of the neutrality of technological progress, and his method of understanding social reality through the practice of political inquiry.
For further information on the project: [email protected]