Damiano Palano
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (damiano.palano@unicatt.it; Orcid: 0000- 0002-6561-9272).
Abstract: The text reconstructs Mario Tronti’s theoretical elaboration of the idea of the autonomy of the political, beginning with the crisis of operaismo in the 1960s. Through engagement with the first English Revolution, with Hobbes and Cromwell, Tronti rereads the formation of the modern state as the driver of the transition to capitalism, anticipating economic processes and configuring itself as an autonomous machine of power. Hobbes’s negative anthropology and political realism become tools for envisioning a “working-class Realpolitik” capable of governing capital without reproducing its presuppositions. The historical dossier on the state and revolution in England is thus part of a broader exploration of modern politics, aimed at founding a new strategy of transition. Tronti’s reflection, though influenced by Schmitt’s pessimism, remains within a Marxist horizon, framing the critique of the political as an essential task of social transformation.
Keywords: Operaism; Realpolitik; Autonomy of the Political; Capitalist Transition; Negative Anthropology.