UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation argues that contemporary feminist historiography and perspectives have erroneously conflated the theories of workerist autonomist-feminist tendencies with that of “Autonomist-Marxism”, thus assuming the former as partisans of the shift from Operaismo to Autonomia. The legacy of the Italian workerist-feminist tendency Lotta Femminista, and the work of Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Leopoldina Fortunati, and Silvia Federici, have been confused with what has been called “Autonomist-feminism”. This name signals a shift within the Operaismo Workerist-Marxian theory, moving away from a Marxian labor theory of value–and the associated strategy of the political wage demand–towards the praxis of Post-Workerism and its Autonomia iterations circa 1973-1977, which is now known as “Autonomist-Marxism”.

The following dissertation works to dispel this confusion, while distinguishing the theory of sexual difference within both forms of autonomist-feminism in order to show that Lotta Femminista was opposed to Autonomist-Marxian theories due to its affirmation of the Marxian labor theory of value.

Using Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s methodology, I argue that Lotta Femminista is a workerist-feminist tendency of autonomist-feminism, elaborating upon the value-theoretical basis of classical Italian Workerism and appropriating many of its genre-forms in critical-feminist performative practice. Additionally, through original interpretations of the archive of Lotta Femminista, I show that an autonomist-feminist “developmental-interventionist” praxis is consistent on both theoretical and practical bases, while also proposing an original theory of the social reproduction of labor power as a labor force.