Lucio Colletti (; 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.
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 .Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas, University of California Press, 1984, p. 444. . Inspired by the Western Marxist philosopher Galvano Della Volpe, he then gravitated towards communism.Stella Gian Antonio, Colletti. Il pifferaio rosso della Volpe, Corriere della Sera, 1 July 2000, p. 33. 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.Alfred Schmidt: Il concetto di natura in Marx. Translated by Giorgio Baratta and Giuseppe Bedeschi. Pref. Lucio Colletti. 2nd ed. Bari: Laterza, 1973.
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.Sarti, Roland. Italy: a reference guide from the Renaissance to the present. New York : Facts On File, 2004: 208. In 1964, Colletti 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."Jay, M. Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1984: 429. 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 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
References
External links Lucio Colletti, "Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International" from From Rousseau to Lenin English-language obituary from The Guardian (UK)