Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

emerge in Bocca's reconstruction of the foundation of the Red Brigade. Bocca traces this
moment back to 1970, through the merging of a Catholic section set up by the social studies
students Renato Curcio and Mara Cagol, and a Communist section set up by Alberto
Franceschini around whom many students at Reggio Emilia University gathered, students
disillusioned with the Communist Party. The Catholic component, aiming to realize the New
Testament concepts of pure brotherhood, joined the Italian Marxist Leninist Party based in
Milan, which seemed to espouse genuine human egalitarianism (in this regard, the character
of Adelfo, a priest-labourer who supports the terrorists, arguably refers to this Catholic
grouping) (Bocca, 1978: 10-11). In Bocca's view, the Communist Party was to blame for the
political deviation of the young, because it had changed from being a vehicle for ideological
innovation to one of administration (Bocca, 1978: 13). Bocca also uses the kidnapping of the
entrepreneur Angelo Costa in Genoa for a huge ransom (Bocca, 1978: 100) to illustrate how
the Red Brigade's ideology was unrealistic and how outdated their conception of society was.
By identifying the manager/owner as a physical target, the group seemed unaware that where
large companies were concerned, any ransom would be recovered either from a company
shake-up to the detriment of workers - or from government credit, which, in Italy, would
mean taxpayers (Bocca, 1978: 114-115).
If Bocca was a committed, free-speaking intellectual from the Resistance generation,
Antonio Negri was a young philosopher and the leader of two radical movements: Workers'
Power, and upon its dissolution, Workers' Autonomy. Yet their analysis of the issues
affecting Italian society is similar. In the period 1971-1977 Negri wrote five pamphlets which
analysed Italy's socio-political situation and European capitalism; he outlined a hypothesis
and a political project for a movement which disavowed the reformist politics of the Official
Labour Movement (to be intended as both the PCI and the Communist trade union). These
writings caused Negri to be accused of being the clandestine leader of the Red Brigade, 'a
109