The Italian philosopher and political scientist Toni Negri died last night in Paris, aged ninety. Negri was a theoretician of Marxism and his entire career began in the sixties from the Italian Socialist Party. He soon disagreed, however, and moved to decidedly more leftist positions. Always in the sixties he was one of the founders of the publishing house Marsilio and the monthly magazine “Red Notebooks”, Quaderni Rossi. He then publishes analyzes in the journal Classe Operaia, “Working Class” and joins the “Workers Power” organization, Potere Operaio, in the extra-parliamentary left. Main topics of his analysis, among others, are the social situation and problems in the countries of existing socialism, the relations of the West with the “third world”, the changes that had taken place in the industries and the very “identity” of the workers .

In 1973 Negri founded the organization Autonomia Operaia, “Worker’s Autonomy” – always of the extra-parliamentary left – of which he would remain the main point of reference until its dissolution in 1979. In 1983 Negri was elected deputy of the Radical Party, but left the same year Italy and goes to France, because he is involved in a court case for “moral and political support of terrorism” and of the Red Brigades themselves, with accusations of violence, attacks on organs of order and kidnappings.

The professor of philosophy at the University of Padua was eventually sentenced to twelve years in prison for moral complicity in a robbery in which a carabinieri was murdered and for setting up an organization aimed at subverting the legal order. In prison, he clearly distanced himself from armed violence, stressing that violent acts have nothing to do with ideological dimension and analysis. In total, Negri served ten years in prison, the last four of which were in parole.

This is a person who caused great controversy in Italian political and social life. “He was a bad teacher, although his judicial adventure must be evaluated as a particularly complex case,” said Italian culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Adelphi party.

Tony Negri, during his stay in Paris, among others taught at the Sorbonne and at the International College of Philosophical Studies. The Italian former interior minister and former president of the republic, Francesco Cosiga, had described Negri’s arrest as an “injustice” and had underlined that he “paid a disproportionate cost, in relation to his real responsibilities”.