Domenico Losurdo | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1941-11-14)14 November 1941 |
| Died | 28 June 2018(2018-06-28) (aged 76) |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Alma mater | University of Urbino |
| Notable work | Liberalism: A Counter-History Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Hegelianism Marxism |
Notable ideas | Communist autophobia, political-moral and naturalistic despecification |
Domenico Losurdo (14 November 1941 – 28 June 2018) was an Italianhistorian,essayist,Marxist philosopher, and communist politician.
Born inSannicandro di Bari, Losurdo obtained his doctorate in 1963 from theUniversity of Urbino under the guidance of Pasquale Salvucci with a thesis onJohann Karl Rodbertus.[1] During the sixties, he was radicalized and belonged to a small group of Italian communists which sided with thePeople's Republic of China in theSino-Soviet split.[2] Losurdo was director of the Institute of Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Urbino, where he taught history of philosophy asdean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences.[3] From 1988, Losurdo was president of theHegelian International Association Hegel-Marx for Dialectical Thought. Losurdo was also a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin (an association in the tradition ofGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz'sPrussian Academy of Sciences) as well as director of the Marx XXI political-cultural association.[4] Losurdo died on 28 June 2018 at the age of 76 due to brain cancer.[5][6]
Fromcommunist militancy,[7] the condemnation ofAmerican imperialism,[8] and the study of theAfrican-American andNative American question,[9] Losurdo was also engaged concretely in national and international politics.[10] Historian David Broder described Losurdo as "already among the most renowned Italian Marxists at the international level, as a richly partisan historian of philosophy ... ."[11] Philosopher Daniel Tutt described Losurdo as "a renowned Marxist historian and philosopher" who "pioneered a distinctive method of historiography and intellectual history." Tutt wrote "Losurdo made his scholarly mark in philosophical works as well as historical studies of important thinkers from John Locke and Hannah Arendt, to biographical and historical studies of Joseph Stalin. His scholarship on Hegel and modernity is considered an exemplary contribution to Hegel scholarship and he has published widely on topics such as conceptions of class struggle throughout history and the evolution of nonviolence in modern political life."[12]
AHegelian[13] andMarxist philosopher[14][11] as well as historian,[12][better source needed] Losurdo was described as a noncomformist,[15] a heterodox Marxist,[16] and a communist militant.[7] His work ranged from contributions to the study ofKantian philosophy (the so-called self-censorship ofImmanuel Kant and his politicalnicodemism)[17] and the reevaluation of classicalGerman idealism, especially byG. W. F. Hegel,[18] in an attempt to re-propose the legacy in the wake ofGyörgy Lukács in particular,[19] as well as the reaffirmation of the interpretation of German and non-German Marxism (Antonio Gramsci and the brothersBertrando andSilvio Spaventa),[20] with incursions into the sphere ofNietzschean thought (the reading of a radical aristocraticFriedrich Nietzsche)[21] andHeideggerian thought,[22] in particular the question ofMartin Heidegger's adhesion toNazism.[23]
Losurdo's philosophical-political reflection, attentive to the contextualization of philosophical thought in his own historical time, moved in particular from the themes of radical criticism ofliberalism,capitalism, andcolonialism as well as the traditional conception of totalitarianism in the perspective of a defence ofMarxist dialectics andhistorical materialism, devoting himself to the study ofanti-revisionism in theMarxist–Leninist sphere.[14][10] Losurdo included his works in thehistory of ideas and concerned the investigation of questions of contemporary history and politics, with constant critical attention tohistorical revisionism and the controversy against the interpretations ofHannah Arendt,François Furet,Karl Popper, andErnst Nolte. In particular, Losurdo has criticized areactionary tendency among contemporary revisionist historians such as Nolte (who traced the impetus behind theHolocaust to the excesses of the Russian Revolution) and Furet (who linked theStalinist purges to a "disease" originating from the French Revolution). According to Losurdo, the intention of these revisionists is to eradicate therevolutionary tradition as their true motivations have little to do with the search for a greater understanding of the past but rather it lies in both the climate and ideological needs of the political classes and is most evident in the work of the English-speaking imperial revivalists, such asNiall Ferguson andPaul Johnson. His 2015 bookWar and Revolution, published byVerso Books, provided a new perspective on theEnglish,American,French,Russian, andanti-colonial revolutions.[24]
Losurdo turned his attention to the political history of modernGerman philosophy from Kant toKarl Marx and the debate that developed in Germany in the second half of the 19th and in the 20th century as well as a reinterpretation of the tradition ofliberalism, in particular starting from the criticism and accusations of hypocrisy addressed toJohn Locke for his financial participation in theAtlantic slave trade.[25] Taking up what Arendt stated in her 1951 bookThe Origins of Totalitarianism, Losurdo argued that the 20th century's true original sin was theNew Imperialism in the form of colonial empire of the late 19th century, wheretotalitarianism andinternment manifested for the first time.[26] Diego Pautasso wrote that after thedissolution of the Soviet Union, Losurdo "devoted himself to four areas of research: 1) critique of liberalism and the fight against the belief that liberals were at the forefront of democratic struggles; 2) balance of socialist experiences (USSR, China); 3) criticism of colonialism, imperialism and 'the various forms of subjugation of peoples to Washington and its allies'; 4) the critique of the contemporary left, in particular of 'Western Marxism', which would have 'neglected the great problems of its time', abandoned the 'class struggle and the struggle against imperialism' and embraced 'the narratives of globalization.'"[27]
Upon Losurdo's death in 2018, Gianni Fresu wrote that "from the classics of philosophy to the debate around the figure of Stalin; from the analysis of the role of China to historical revisionism; from liberal thinking to the issues of Bonapartism and modern democracy; from the history of Western thought to the problems of colonialism and imperialism ... Losurdo's studies of historical materialism, as well as those of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Nietzsche, are a fundamental milestone in the history of ideas and events of human societies, such is their scientific seriousness and intellectual autonomy, their problematic richness and interpretative complexity."[28]
According to Losurdo, despecification is the exclusion of anindividual orgroup from the civiliancommunity. There are two types of despecification:[9]
For Losurdo, naturalistic despecification is qualitatively worse than the political-moral. While the latter offers at least one escape through the change ofideology, this is not possible in the case of naturalistic despecification since it is irreversible because it refers to biological factors that are in themselves unchangeable.[29][30] Unlike many other thinkers, Losurdo thought thatthe Holocaust of theJewish people is not incomparable, though he was willing to admit its tragic specificity. Losurdo stated that the comparisons he offers about this did not seek to be a relativisation or a belittlement of the Holocaust, but that to consider the Jewish Holocaust as incomparable meant to lose historical perspective and to overlook theBlack Holocaust (i.e. thegenocide ofblack people) or theAmerican Holocaust (i.e. the genocide ofNative Americans in the United States through the continued deportation to the west with theIndian removal and diffusion ofsmallpox), as well as other mass exterminations such as theArmenian genocide.[9]
Losurdo was a strong critic of the equation ofNazism andcommunism, made by scholars likeFrançois Furet andErnst Nolte[29][31] but also byHannah Arendt andKarl Popper.[32] Similarly, Losurdo criticized the concept of aRed Holocaust.[29] He argued that in theNazi concentration camps there was an explicit homicidal intention because theJew who entered one was destined not to get out of it (as there is a naturalistic despecification) while in theGulag there was not (as it is political-moral despecification). In the first case, the Nazis imprisoned those whom they regarded as and calledUntermensch (subhuman), while in the second case (in which, he claimed, only a part of the dissidents ended up) dissidents were locked up to be re-educated and not to be killed. Despite being a practice to be condemned, Losurdo stated that "the prisoner in the Gulag is a potential 'comrade' [the guard was required to call him this] ... and after 1937 [the beginning of the two-year longGreat Purge following the murder ofSergey Kirov] he is ... a potential 'citizen.'"[29][33]
Taking up the opinion ofPrimo Levi (who was interned atAuschwitz, according to whom the Gulag was not morally equivalent to the Nazi concentration camps), and againstSoviet dissidentAleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who was interned in Siberia and asserted the equivalence of the exterminationist intent in both the Gulag and Nazi concentration camps), Losurdo maintained that, although it was a disgrace that asocialist country, born as it is to abolish exploitation, resorted toimperialist andcapitalist systems and methods, the Gulag was more analogous to many Westernconcentration camps (whose governments have supported and claim to be champions of freedom) which in some ways were more akin to the Nazi concentration camps asdeath camps and not re-educational, taking into consideration the history of thegenocide of indigenous peoples. He also argued thatBritish concentration camps andpenal colonies were worse than any Gulag, accusing politicians suchWinston Churchill andHarry S. Truman of being guilty ofwar crimes andcrimes against humanity just like – if not worse than – those attributed toJoseph Stalin.[29] Losurdo also took a critical view ofMahatma Gandhi and hisnonviolent resistance.[34][35]
Autophobia was a concept developed by Losurdo to describe how sometimes victims tend to appropriate the point of view of their oppressors and begin to despise and hate themselves. The concept of autophobia was primarily developed within the framework of the study ofJewish history and thehistory of slavery. Losurdo extended this concept tosocial classes andpolitical parties that have suffered defeat. Losurdo stated his belief that communists suffer from autophobia, defined as a fear of themselves and their own history, a pathological problem that must be faced, unlike healthyself-criticism.[36][37]
In excerpts from a conference, organized in 2003, to re-evaluate the figure of Stalin fifty years after his death, Losurdo harshly criticized the revelations contained inNikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech". According to Losurdo, Stalin's bad reputation derived not from the crimes committed by the latter – which he compared to others of that time – but from the falsehoods present in the report that Khrushchev read during the20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. Losurdo gave credit to one of the main accusations that were at the base of thebloody repression against his opponents, i.e. the existence of the "full-bodied reality of thefifth column" in the Soviet Union ready to ally with the enemy.[38] Losurdo reiterated that he did not want to rehabilitate Stalin, but only to place him in the historical context and present a more neutral analysis of the facts, implementing arevisionism of the general experience ofreal socialism,[31] considered as a past to be studied for the purpose of understanding the future dynamics ofsocialism.[29][31][39]
Ideologically aMarxist–Leninist, Losurdo supported the interpretation thatMao Zedong gave the plurality to theclass struggle by paying attention to the process of female emancipation and colonized peoples.[40] Losurdo saw theChinese economic reform as a newNEP that "did not undermine its socialist values."[14]
Close first to theItalian Communist Party, then to theCommunist Refoundation Party, and finally to theParty of Italian Communists, conflated in theCommunist Party of Italy and in theItalian Communist Party, of which he was a member,[41] Losurdo was also director of the Marx XXI political-cultural association.[42]
Throughout his life he was strongly opposed toAmerican interventionism and itsforeign policies,imperialism, andNATO.[7][10] Controversially, Losurdo contested the awarding of theNobel Peace Prize toChinese dissidentLiu Xiaobo, accusing Liu of supportingWestern colonialism.[43]
InAristocratic Rebel (2002), Losurdo criticized much of Nietzschean thought in the contemporary world, in particular, left-Nietzscheanism, whose influence on the left was a major problem because "it hollows out rationalist-oriented socialist thought and praxis and it often leads to an abandoning of universalism in favour of 'spiritual' interpretations of political struggle." This critique came from the application of Nietzsche by Italian leftists such asGiorgio Colli andGianni Vattimo, although left-Nietzscheanism is beyond just that setting.[12]
Tutt wrote, "[o]ne must read Losurdo'sAristocratic Rebel by staying true to his own method, that is, the political context of Losurdo's debates and polemics on the Italian left shape much of his critiques of Nietzschean thought in the contemporary world, especially left-Nietzscheanism." Tutt wrote "[w]hile Losurdo's comments on contemporary left-Nietzscheanism are brief, the convincing portrait of Nietzsche the book details generate ample material by which a new generation of Marxist philosophers and historians can begin to re-visit Nietzsche and the tradition of left-Nietzscheanism in particular."[12]
InHistorical Revisionism (1996), Losurdo criticised thehistorical revisionism of authors such asFrançois Furet andErnst Nolte. Similar to howEnzo Traverso spoke of aSecond Thirty Years' War (1914–1945) followingArno J. Mayer, Losurdo used the image of the Second Thirty Years War to use as "an expression that historians often use to denote the period of colossal upheavals between 1914 and 1945."[44] Losurdo accused Furet and Nolte for their theory that theRussian Revolution started theEuropean Civil War in 1917 so that the conflict betweenBolshevism andNazism is emphasized and only the former is blamed. In doing so, these revisionist historians omitted two main moments that for Losurdo are indispensable in understanding the Second Thirty Years' War, namely thetotal war as an experience shared by all those involved in the war andcolonialism as a common modern European phenomenon on the other. Losurdo comparedAdolf Hitler's struggle forLebensraum in the East with the acquisition of a German India to theAmerican frontier as part of the American conquest to the Pacific.[45]
Echoing Traverso, who wrote that "Eastern Europe certainly represented the 'living space' that one wanted to colonize, but this conquest implied the annihilation of the USSR and Bolshevism, a state and an ideology which the Nazis saw as the product of a connection between 'Jewish intelligentsia' and Slavic 'sub-humanity.' So this total war was at the same time a war of conquest, a war of race and a colonial war", Losurdo argued that the European Jews got into this colonialist scenario as "Oriental natives", stating: "The fact that the fate of the Jews has been sealed by their double stigmatization as oriental 'natives' and as carriers of oriental Bolshevism is not at all considered."[46]
InLiberalism: A Counter-History (2005), first published in English in 2011, Losurdo argued that while purporting to emphasise the importance of individual liberty, liberalism has long been marked by its exclusion of people from these rights, resulting inracism,slavery, andgenocide. Losurdo asserted that the origins ofNazism are to be found in what he views ascolonialist andimperialist policies of theWestern world. Losurdo examined the intellectual and political positions of intellectuals onmodernity. In his view,Immanuel Kant andGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel were the greatest thinkers of modernity, whileFriedrich Nietzsche was its greatest critic.[26]
Liberalism: A Counter-History received a number of positive reviews from both academic[47][48][49] and popular presses.[50][51]
InStalin: History and Critique of A Black Legend (2008), first published in English in 2023, Losurdo stimulated a debate aboutJoseph Stalin, about whom he claimed is built a kind ofblack legend intended to discredit the whole ofcommunism.[29] Opposed to thecomparison of Nazism and Stalinism, Losurdo criticized the concept oftotalitarianism, especially in the works ofHannah Arendt,François Furet,Karl Popper, andErnst Nolte, among others. Losurdo argued that totalitarianism was apolysemic concept with origins inChristian theology and that applying it to the political sphere required an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to placeNazi Germany and otherfascist regimes, along with theSoviet Union and othersocialist states, in the dock together, serving theanti-communism ofCold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.[52]
As aHegelian, Losurdo aimed to bring to historical knowledge two elements that are under-represented in Marxist historiography, namelyrational reflection on the role of great men and rational criticism of the original form of moral leftism, or what Losurdo referred to as the "beautiful soul", which seeks to impose "the law of the heart" and the intelligence of its inevitable authoritarian reversal. For Losurdo, the ferment ofauthoritarianism in thecommunist movement is to be found more on thelibertarian side of the communist utopia than in thereformist desire to build a state. Losurdo described his work on Stalin as a history of Stalin's image and not a biography or political history of the system with which his name is commonly associated. According to Losurdo, questioning the clichés ofanti-Stalinism andStalinism, including in Communist ranks since 1956, required returning to the substance of the question of the evaluation of Soviet history from 1922 to 1953 and even beyond, since the categories of anti-Stalinism and Stalinism have been generalized to the study of othersocialist states ruled bycommunist parties and other personalities, such asMao Zedong in China andFidel Castro in Cuba.[29] For Losurdo, the study of "the black legend" was partly mixed with a rehabilitation of the personality and the figure of Stalin the statesman, who is clearly distinguished from the political regime. The starting point was the observation that at the time of his death in March 1953, the image of Stalin was rather positive in the world, propaganda on both sides aside. It was the dissemination of theKhrushchev report that "cast the god into hell." According to Losurdo, it was a document originating in the internal struggle in the leadership of the party, therefore lacking in credibility.[53]
Writing foril manifesto, Guido Liguori stated that "[h]is controversialStalin. Storia e critica di una leggenda nera was not without its interesting elements. He proposed not so much tosave Stalin (in fact he recognized many of his limits and faults)", but "he also refused to consider Stalin in merely negative terms."[14] Writing forJacobin, historian David Broder argued that "[w]hile he recognized the exorbitant, paranoid aspects of Stalin's leadership, his efforts to relativize it were often governed by a polemical zeal unjustified by the evidence marshaled. This made his reframing of Stalinism more 'interesting' than necessarily persuasive."[11] Historian Sean Purdy accused Losurdo ofcharlatanism, putting his book on the same level as the works ofGrover Furr andLudo Martens, while contrasting it with what called more serious authors, likeRobert W. Thurston andJ. Arch Getty.[54]
The book rendered Losurdo's polarising view.O Globo summarized that Losurdo has been "[p]raised for his criticism of liberalism by some, and accused of Stalinism by others. ... From liberals to the far left, everyone has an adjective on the tip of their tongue (or fingers) to refer to Caetano's new favourite author: Stalinist, revolutionary, farcical, anti-imperialist, revisionist. For some, the Italian was a champion of socialism who denied the farces propagated by liberalism. For others, he was a defender of the crimes of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) and of Chinese authoritarianism."O Globo wrote that Losurdo compared the crimes of Stalin with those of liberalism (genocides sponsored by capitalist nations, concentration camps maintained by the colonial powers, and war crimes) and argued that in the end, it is the liberals who have the dirtiest or worst track record.[27]
A review written in April 2009 by Guido Liguori inLiberazione (the official organ of theCommunist Refoundation Party) of his book, in which Losurdo criticized the demonisation of Stalin carried out by the predominant historiography and tried to remove it from what he calls "the black legend about him", was at the center of a controversy within the drafting of the aforementioned review. A storm of protests ensued when around twenty editors sent a letter of protest to the editor of the newspaper in which they criticized both Losurdo's attempt at Stalin's rehabilitation in his book and Liguori's review (judged to be too positive with respect to the book) as well as with the choice of the editor of the newspaper to publish said review.[55] The book was criticized for its claims, and the methodology used, byValerio Evangelisti,Antonio Moscato [it], Niccolò Pianciola, andAndrea Romano.[39][56][57][58]
Losurdo's view thatpurges were legitimate because of the "permanent state of exception caused by imperialist intervention and siege",[59] with Liguori summarising Losurdo's argument that "the harshness of his leadership was due to the Western powers' intrigues and the existence of a powerful 'Fifth Column' within the USSR of the 1930s" and a continuation of theRussian Civil War, described as being imposed by imperialism,[60] were criticized as being a defence of theStalinist purges by Cicero Araujo[61] and Mario Maestri.[62][63] Losurdo's work has been praised byGrover Furr, who started a mutual friendship with Losurdo, whom Furr praised especially for his 2008 book on Stalin. Losurdo continued to cooperate with Furr, introducing him to an Italian publisher who published the Italian translation of Furr's bookKhrushchev Lied in 2016, with Losurdo's introduction. Additionally, Losurdo wrote a blurb for the back cover of Furr's 2013 bookThe Murder of Sergei Kirov and an introduction to the book which remains unpublished.[64]
InWestern Marxism (2017), first published in English in 2024,[65] Losurdo outlined a split betweenWestern Marxism andEastern Marxism. Losurdo criticized Western Marxism for "hav[ing] 'neglected the great problems of its time', abandoning the 'class struggle and the struggle against imperialism', and embracing 'the narratives of globalization'".[27]
The book about Stalin caused some controversy and debate internationally, especially in Brazil and Germany, with critics such as Marxist historianChristoph Jünke [de] labelling Losurdo "aneo-Stalinist."[66][67][68] Professor Araujo Cicero wrote that Losurdo "recognizes 'tragedy and horror' from the years when the Soviet Union was led by Stalin" but accused Losurdo's work of being a defence of "the main decisions [Stalin] made over the almost thirty years he was at the head of the country after Lenin's death."[61] Historian Mario Maestri wrote that "[m]uch of the reference and support bibliography used by Losurdo consists of revisionist, denialist and openly conservative and anti-communist authors and/or researchers ... of questionable reputation", citingThe Black Book of Communism andCurzio Malaparte as examples.[62][69] AuthorAndreas Wehr [de] does not consider these accusations tenable, as Losurdo did not in any way deny the crimes during the Stalin era and described them in detail.[70]
The publication in the communist newspaperLiberazione of a positive review by Guido Liguori on Losurdo's book about Stalin caused a crisis in the paper's editorial staff: twenty journalists wrote a letter to the editor Dino Greco, criticizing what they perceived as Losurdo's attempts at Stalin's rehabilitation, alongside Liguori's review (which they perceived as too positive) and Greco's decision to publish it.[71] Losurdo's work was also derided by Italian liberal journalistAndrea Romano, who accused Losurdo andLuciano Canfora of "trying to create a harmless Stalinism".[72]
About Losurdo's work on Stalin, Cicero wrote that "[u]nlike the typical old-time Stalinist, Losurdo does not evade a series of crimes committed by the regime and its dictator, nor does it qualify them simply as 'mistakes'. Also unlike the classic Stalinist, the author is not concerned with showing the coherence of his practices with Marxism or Leninism." Cicero further stated "it is the ability and perspicacity to face realistically the great problems of your country and its time – even against the most ingrained beliefs and utopias of your former travel companions – that the book seeks to highlight. In spite of all the barbarities committed, Stalin and his regime leave their multifaceted assessment with a positive balance." Cicero argued that this was not because "they knew how to build possible socialism, the famous 'socialism in one country", but "for the simple reason that they managed to build a state and a society sufficiently vertebrate to face the chaos of the Russian 'second period of disorder' and the European 'second war of the thirties', with its most deadly by-product (Nazism), were it not for that tremendous endeavour, albeit a bloody one, it was destined to destroy the Slavic nations to the east." Cicero wrote that "Stalin and Stalinism are, in short, defended for reasons to which any admirer of State-building as a good in itself, regardless of its ideological purposes and justifications, should surrender. 'Socialism in one country' becomes, in this sense, just a formula that the dictator and his supporters improvised to fit this elementary task to the language that was understandable to them."[61]
Bernardo Vargaftiq ofEsquerda Online praised Losurdo forLiberalism: A Counter-History and his work on capitalism, colonialism, and liberalism, stating that "books like 'The Counterhistory of Liberalism' are positive, exposing liberalism ... in an energetic and very well documented way" and "[t]he examples given by Losurdo of the extreme reactionary nature of so-called liberals, including people often cited laudably, such as Toqueville, are edifying."[73] While stating that "reading these books on Liberalism and Bonapartism is useful to historians and Marxists in general, they illustrate the history of capitalism in very convincing detail", Vargaftiq referred to Losurdo as a "neo-Stalinist chic", and criticized him for making a nationalist rather than Marxist analysis, for supporting the fifth column theory, and in general for his dismissive views ofTrotskyism.[74]
About Losurdo's work onWestern Marxism, Marxist historian Mario Maestri wrote that this is "a false split and a false controversy", and accused Losurdo of replacing "the proletarian internationalism and class struggles of the 'Western Marxists' with the unified nation – that is, bourgeoisie and united proletarians – in the name of national developmentalism – as if development, as well as science and technology, were ideologically neutral and not dictated by the interests of the dominant versus the dominated classes."[62] Maestri, who defends the thesis "we live in a historical counterrevolutionary phase", whose "milestones were the capitalist restoration in China in 1978 under the leadership of reformer Deng Xiaoping and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992 – events that consolidated the globalization of capitalism", accused Losurdo of presenting "an apology for the capitalism of the Chinese Communist Party and its many business projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America", establishing this "as the only alternative for its economic development and the only way for the emancipation of European and American imperialism." According to Maestri, Losurdo defended that "the working classes of the countries on the periphery of the capital – Asia, Africa and Latin America – give up their political independence and pragmatically ally themselves with the capitalism of the Chinese CP."[62]
It is a brilliant exercise in unmasking liberal pretensions, surveying over three centuries with magisterial command of the sources
Liberalism: A Counter-History stimulatingly uncovers the contradictions of an ideology that is much too self-righteously invoked.
