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Mario Tronti is considered one of the most important Italian Marxist philosophers of our time, as well as one of the most influential European political theorists of the post-war period. Largely untranslated and hence unknown in the anglophone world, this is the first volume of a two-volume translation,
The Demon of Politics, presenting an invaluable picture of Tronti's political life and intellectual activity through a selection of his most relevant writings.
Volume I paints a fascinating picture of Tronti's work in the 1960s, when he made landmark contributions to a new reading of Marx, and in the 1970s when he again joined the Communist Party and worked towards a theory of the political that led to lively debates and even splits within workerism. An introduction written by the editors contextualises the writings of the first part of Tronti's career, while also providing the biographical and political details necessary to understand the evolution of his thought during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Footnotes throughout the volume provide valuable precisions and elements of contextualisation.
The volumes of
The Demon of Politics offer the most comprehensive edition of Tronti's works available to students and scholars.
List of contents
Introduction to Volume I.
Part I: The Viewpoint, 1958-1967 1. Between Dialectical Materialism and Philosophy of Praxis. Gramsci and Labriola: 1959 2. Factory and Society: June 1962 3. [The Copernican Revolution]: 27 May 1963 4. Lenin in England: Janurary 1964 5. 1905 in Italy: September 1964 6. The Course of Action: September 1966 7. Class Party Class: March 1967
Part II: The Workers' Movement and The Political, 1968-1984 8. Working Class and Development: Fall 1970
9. Postscript of Problems: December 1970 10. On The Autonomy of the Political 5-6 December 1972 11. Theory and Politics: Science and Revolution: 1 January 1976 12. Political Hegel: 5 April 1976 13. Hobbes and Cromwell: 1977 14. The Time of Politics: 1980
About the author
Mario Tronti was a philosopher and politician. In the 1960s he was among the founders of operaismo and later he played a leading role in the Italian Communist Party. He had been a newspaper editor, university professor, president of the Centro per la Riforma dello Stato, and senator of the Italian Republic. He is the author of
Workers and Capital and many other books in Italian.
Michele Filippini is Associate Professor in History of Political Thought at the University of Bologna, Italy. His research interests include the history of Marxism and post-Marxism (Gramsci, workerism, Laclau), the early modern political thought (Machiavelli, Hobbes), mass society in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the forms of political legitimation and political power.
Jamila M.H. Mascat is Assistant Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the Graduate Gender Programme and a research affiliate at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her transdisciplinary research works across the fields of Political Philosophy (German Idealism and Marxism in particular), Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Theories, and Critical Race Theories. Her current research interests focus, on the one hand, on theories of partisanship and political engagement and, on the other hand, on theories of postcolonial justice and postcolonial reparations.
Matteo Cavalleri is Junior Assistant Professor of Moral Philosphy in the Department of Philosophical, Pedagogical and Social Sciences at the University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He has also held teaching positions at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 2015 he won the Vittorio Sainati Prize. His research interests are developed at the intersection of theoretical analysis and political-historical investigation, with particular reference to the work of G.W.F. Hegel and the theme of freedom; the relationship between philosophical anthropology and the historical dimension; the aesthetics and politics of memory; and the dialogue between political thought, philosophy and literature.
