Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture) - Softcover

Negri, Antonio; Bove, Arianna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231146833 ISBN 13: 9780231146838

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Factory of Strategy is the last of Antonio Negri's major political works to be translated into English. Rigorous and accessible, it is both a systematic inquiry into the development of Lenin's thought and an encapsulation of a critical shift in Negri's theoretical trajectory. Lenin is the only prominent politician of the modern era to seriously question the "withering away" and "extinction" of the state, and like Marx, he recognized the link between capitalism and modern sovereignty and the need to destroy capitalism and reconfigure the state. Negri refrains from portraying Lenin as a ferocious dictator enforcing the proletariat's reappropriation of wealth, nor does he depict him as a mere military tool of a vanguard opposed to the Ancien Regime. Negri instead champions Leninism's ability to adapt to different working-class configurations in Russia, China, Latin America, and elsewhere. He argues that Lenin developed a new political figuration in and beyond modernity and an effective organization capable of absorbing different historical conditions. He ultimately urges readers to recognize the universal application of Leninism today and its potential to institutionally-not anarchically-dismantle centralized power.

About this title

Review

This book on Lenin turns into a revolutionary text, into a true manual of resistance.--Slavoj Žižek, author of Living in the End Times

There are many Lenins: in this exciting synthesis, with its emphasis on philosophy as well as praxis and on spontaneity versus organization, Antonio Negri discloses the dialectical logic of Lenin's historical situation. At the same time, by insisting on situational logic as such, he demonstrates its differences from our own today, where keeping faith with Lenin's lessons might lead to different forms. This important text from Negri's activist period is therefore a crucial document for understanding Negri's own work and positions and those of Lenin.--Fredric Jameson, Duke University

Factory of Strategy is a bracingly original and systematic inquiry into the development of the Russian revolutionary's political thought, bearing comparison with Lukács's earlier Lenin. It doubles as a unique record of a crucial moment in Negri's trajectory as a political philosopher and activist, when questions of strategy and insurrection were foremost in his mind. Among the most accessible, accomplished, and vibrant pieces of Negri's writing, it stands out for its effort to combine political pedagogy and ideological intervention.--Alberto Toscano, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea

About the Author

Antonio Negri has taught political philosophy at the University of Padua, the University of Vincennes, and the College Internationale de Philosophie. His books include The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century and Negri on Negri. Arianna Bove has translated many texts from Italian and French into English. Her work can be found at www.generation-online.org.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0231146833
• ISBN 13: 9780231146838
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368