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This essay investigates the considerations with which an important group of the Italian extreme left wing justifi ed the choice for political violence in the Seventies: Potere Operaio (Workers' Power: an organization founded in 1969, which dissolved in 1973). This issue seems remarkable fi rst of all because of the infl uence exerted by the most important leaders of the group (in particular by Toni Negri and Franco Piperno) on the political debates of those years; moreover, the discussion which opened up within PO would have been carried on beyond the organization's dissolution: the stands taken in the early Seventies would have continued to affect the debates on the prospects for armed struggle which were to develop in Italy in the following years. Therefore they deserve special attention, and the essay suggests some possible interpretative keys.