A distant legacy for a turbulent present

The legacy of the transnational radicals of Detroit and Turin continues to inspire and live on. In Italy, operaismo left its imprint on the Italian politics of the 1960s and 1970s drawing on its ability to inspire and articulate the political meaning of workers' struggle outside of the fold of organised labor. Activists and intellectuals such as Mario Tronti, Toni Negri, Romano Alquati, Franco Berardi and many others have left a corpus of writing that represents Italians’ most significant contribution to social theory in the 20th century. In Detroit, in the context of an accelerating deindustrialization, the political effects of radical struggles were more short-lived, but understanding the philosophy and political vocabulary of DRUM and the League of the Revolutionary Black Workers is essential to comprehend the trajectory of the civil rights movement in the North and the workings of racial capitalism in the United States, foregrounding the themes underpinning Black Lives Matter in the 21st century.

This fiery speech by the late General Baker, a key protagonist of this story, is an apt way of ending this introduction to the topic.