ABSTRACT
Toni negri's political history reads like a Hollywood movie script: a dazzling roller-coaster ride of spectacular successes and defeats, of subversion, false accusations, intrigue, imprisonment, flight, exile. Negri is perhaps unique among contemporary political theorists in the depth of his own practical involvement in political militancy and in the effort to recast his theorizing continually to keep step with the innovations and evolutions of social practices. In the early 1960s Negri became involved in the worker struggles that were flourishing in the factories of northern Italy. Negri participated actively in a group called Potere Operaio that focused its activity on the large factories in northern Italy, particularly the FIAT plant in Turin. In the 1970s, Negri and others developed the concept of "self-valorization," taken from Marx's Grundrisse, as a complement to the refusal of work, or rather, as a means of characterizing the affirmation inherent in the refusal.
