The legacy of political ecology in italy: from labour movements to climate struggles

Italian political ecology is nowadays a space of mobilization and productive theoretical and political reflection. It also represents a vantage point from which to look back at the history of Italian social movements since the second half of the 20th century. Differently from widespread interpretations that see a discontinuity between the long history of the Italian labour movement and recent mobilisations against major infrastructure and for climate justice, this article proposes to look at their continuity, with special reference to struggles against industrial noxiousness. This legacy was particularly visible in the mobilisations against nuclear power and the anti-globalisation cycle of struggles (most notably against the G8 in Genoa in 2001), centred on the critique of the notions of development, progress and modernisation. In this article, we propose a reconstruction of this history, which also highlights the major role that feminist and post-colonial criticism have played in the theoretical development of these movements. Today, these strands of political thought articulate new claims and new forms of systemic critique, to extend Marxist debates (especially the one concerning Autonomist Marxism), bringing to the fore the issue of socio- ecological reproduction as a major space for conflicts and anticapitalist struggles.