| Biographical/Historical Information: | Midnight Notes began after a split in the Italian-US collaborative journal Zerowork (1975-1977). After the Zerowork journal ceased in 1977, Midnight Notes picked up the discussion of the refusal of work, energy, prices and international class struggle and begun to develop these themes, initially through the optic of a growing movement in the US against nuclear power. The members of the collective who collaborated on this first issue were: Hans Widmer, George Caffentzis, Monty Neill, john willshire, Vasilis Passas. Their output has been incredibly important for its non-dogmatic Marxism, class analysis, outernationalism and openness to vivid analysis of new social struggles wherever they occur, in the workplace or outside of it, whilst retaining an emphasis on the centrality of work and the working class to any meaningful analysis of capitalism. Initially, based in Brooklyn N.Y., the Midnight Notes Collective’s first meetings were in 1978 and its first issue, Midnight Notes #1 (1979) – Strange Victories: The Anti-Nuclear Movement in the U.S. and Europe was published in 1979. The first issue listed the following collaborators: Hans Widmer (p.m.), George Caffentzis, Monty Neill, john willshire, Vasilis Passas. Later collaborators and contributors have included: Harry Cleaver Jr,, Steven Colatrella, Sharon Haggins Dunn, Ed Emery, Silvia Federici, Les Levidow, Peter Linebaugh, David Riker and John Roosa. Midnight Notes’ initial sequence culminated in 1990 with Midnight Notes #10 (1990) – The New Enclosures . However, since then occasional publications, self-published by the collective, e.g. Midnight Notes #12 (1998) – One No, Many Yeses , or published by a publisher e.g. Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War 1972-1992 , published by Autonomedia (1992) , have been generally treated as ‘issues’ of Midnight Notes at their website, and thus this collection follows this convention. The post-1990 sequence concludes with Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons (2009 ) , published under the ‘ambiguous’ moniker, Midnight Notes & friends, after the beginning of the 2007-2008 subprime-crisis. Resources consulted in the assembly of this collection: Libcom Midnight Notes archives, Midnight Notes online archive, TPTG Conversation with George Caffentzis, MayDay Rooms Archives (London premises currently hold physical copies of MN issues and correspondence), “High Entropy Workers Unite!” Midnight Notes at Thirty, Zerowork online archive |
| Subjects: | marxism, autonomist marxism, ecology, anti-nuclear movement, feminism, class, labour, revolt, globalisation, technology |