What are similarities and differences in the trajectories of the movements in Germany and Italy?
In Italy, the movement resonated among workers in factories to a degree never realized in Germany, where autonomous movements remained largely confined to marginalized youth and women’s groups. Although the armed struggle in Germany appeared to be intense in the days of the Baader-Meinhof group, in Italy it was many times more significant and led to a rapid decline of the popular movement even before the guerrillas were defeated. Looking at these movements from a US perspective, it is hard not to be struck by the weakness of equivalent movements here. Why do you think that is? In thinking about this, it occurred to me that the effort to create communes in the seventies that embodied movement values has some parallels with the autonomous movements. But that was a rural-oriented movement, while you focus on urban ones. Were their similar rural movements in Europe? If so, how do they relate to the urban-based autonomous movements? To the extent that the “1960s” movements in the USA did no
