Take Over the City provides the first comprehensive spatial analysis of Italian operaismo and the extraordinary urban struggles of 1970s Italy.

Take Over the City is the first systemic spatial account of Italian operaismo (workerism). Drawing on  Marxist urban theory, the book situates the struggles of operaismo, especially in the 1970s, within global urbanization. In doing so, Gray draws attention to previously neglected urban struggles in the wider social factory, recognizing these as immanent to the new spatial composition of capital in Italy.

Gray argues that these innovative urban struggles carry important lessons for contemporary forms of organization and social conflict in the sphere of social reproduction. If urbanization has become increasingly central for capital accumulation processes, it follows that urban struggle must become increasingly central to anti capitalist struggle. The struggles to ‘Take Over the City’ in 1970s Italy provide an important marker of how this might be done in the current era.

This talk should be of interest to those interested in autonomist praxis more generally, and those interested in radical urban history, contemporary urban struggles and social reproduction.

Neil Gray is a working class autodidact based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a former editor for Variant magazine and his writing and research have appeared in numerous magazines and academic journals. He is a long-term housing and anti-gentrification activist and is the editor of Rent and its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle.

Refreshments provided