Lucio Colletti

Lucio Colletti (Italian: [ˈluːtʃo kolˈletti]; 8 December 1924 – 3 November 2001) was an Italian Western Marxist philosopher. Colletti started to be known outside Italy because of a long interview with him that Marxist historian Perry Anderson published in the New Left Review in 1974.^[1]

Lucio Colletti
Lucio Colletti in 1996
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 9 May 1996 – 3 November 2001
Constituency	Lombardy 1 (1996-2001)
Constituency	Veneto 2 (2001)
Personal details
Born	(1924-12-08)8 December 1924 Rome, Italy
Died	3 November 2001(2001-11-03) (aged 76) Campiglia Marittima, Italy
Political party	PdA (1943–1947) PCI (1949–1964) Independent (1964–1994) Forza Italia (1994–2001)
Academic background
Alma mater	Sapienza University of Rome
Academic advisors	Carlo Antoni [it]
Influences	Galvano Della Volpe
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy
Sub-discipline	Political philosophy
School or tradition	Western Marxism (early)

Biography

Colletti studied philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he earned a laurea with a thesis entitled La logica di Benedetto Croce (The Logic of Benedetto Croce), which was supervised by Carlo Antoni [it].^[2] Inspired by the Western Marxist philosopher Galvano Della Volpe, he then gravitated towards communism.^[3] Colletti was well known as a critic of Hegelian idealism and later became a noted critic of Marxism. He wrote the foreword for the Italian edition of Alfred Schmidt's The Concept of Nature in Marx.^[4]

Colletti changed his political beliefs very often and abandoned many of his early Marxist ideals. Having been a member of the anti-fascist Action Party (Partito d'Azione; PdA) in his youth, he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1949 and emerged as an important cultural party figure.^[5] In 1964, Coletti left the PCI because the party's break with its semi-Stalinist past was leading towards what he called, in his view, a "patently rightward direction."^[6] In the 1970s he was among the supporters of Socialist leader Bettino Craxi. From 1996 until his death he was elected on the list of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing political party, as a member of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) in the Italian parliament.

Selected publications

• The Manifesto of 101
• "The Theory of the Crash". Telos, 13 (Fall 1972). New York: Telos Press.
• 1972 (1974) From Rousseau to Lenin
• 1973 (1979) Marxism and Hegel