Share
April 11, 2020 Luciano Pellicani died in Rome after a long illness. Sociologist, journalist and university professor, he was born in Ruvo di Puglia (Bari) on April 10, 1939.He embraced socialist-reformist ideas since the time of university. In 1976 he began collaborating with the PSI of Bettino Craxi, directing, among other things, the monthly socialist magazine "Mondoperaio". He also worked as a professor at the Luiss University of Rome as a professor of political sociology and a professor of cultural anthropology.
Pellicani grew up in Naples with his mother and in 1964 he graduated in political science with a thesis on Antonio Gramsci. Working on the thesis, however, Pellicani is convinced that "communism was not a bad idea. It was a wrong idea". At that point he embraces the ideas of reformist socialism, which will accompany him throughout his life.
In 1976 the meeting with the secretary of the PSI, Bettino Craxi arrives. The socialist leader, in an article, quotes an essay by Pellicani on Eduard Bernstein. So the sociologist decides to contact him and an intense collaboration begins. In 1978, on the Espresso, Craxi's article 'The Socialist Gospel' came out, in which the whole experience of humanitarian and liberal socialism is re-evaluated and the communist ideology is attacked. The ghost writer of the piece is Pellicani. Despite the close collaboration with Craxi, the sociologist will always remain an intellectual far from the party apparatus. In fact, he contributes almost exclusively to essays and articles to the life of the PSI and, since 1985, has directed the historical periodical of the socialist Mondoperio area. Magazine that Pellicani decides to close after the Clean Hands tsunami and the dissolution of the party.
In 1998 he returned to approach politics: he chose the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI), declaring that he wanted to remain center-left. In the same year, "Mondoperaio" returns, of which Pellicani is renamed director. In 2006 he was nominated by Rosa nel Pugno for political elections, but was not elected. In all these years he has continued to teach political sociology at Luiss University and to publish essays, some of which have been translated into various languages. It sparked many controversies "Lenin and Hitler. The two faces of totalitarianism", in which Pellicani equated the leader of the Russian revolution with the fuhrer of the Nazi party.
Scholar, teacher, journalist but above all an intellectual free from conditioning and independent in judgments. This is how his friends and colleagues who greet him today remember him.
Bobo Craxi: "He paved the way for Italian socialist revisionism"
"It is with great sadness that I learned of the disappearance of Luciano Pellicani. Man of extraordinary and unreachable culture. He has paved the way for the theoretical and political revisionism of Italian Socialism maintaining a consistent and passionate line throughout all these years. I will keep a dear memory for his support also for my cultural education and for the dedication to the common cause and the free spirit with which he maintained his intellectual relationship with the PSI and the guidance of my father at the time. Hi Luciano and thank you !! ". Bobo Craxi says so.
Stefania Craxi: "He was a lively and original thinker"
"Luciano Pellicani was a lively and original thinker, a passionate scholar of whom we will all miss a great deal. He was a companion outside the box, among the prominent intellectuals of a political season of Italian and European socialism that marked a paradigm shift in the history of the left and the country. With his constant action as an indomitable scholar, full of essays, writings and speeches of great historical-philosophical and socio-political relevance, he accompanied the work of profound political and of the socialist 'new course' led by Bettino Craxi ".
So Stefania Craxi, senator of Forza Italia and Vice-President of the Foreign Affairs Commission.
"With my father, starting from his advent to the secretariat and thanks to the common feeling of libertarian and anti-communist, he started a loyal, continuous and constant collaboration. An affinity and sensitivity of action and thought that culminated with the elaboration and publication in August 1978, in the pages of the Espresso, of the 'socialist gospel', the Craxian essay on Proudhon with which the PSI broke with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine ".
"Luciano then successfully led the magazine 'Mondoperaio' in the 1980s and continued his activity as an indomitable divulger, a few months back, within the world of academia as in magazines and newspapers, with ideas and reflections never obvious and never banal. His disappearance in this difficult moment requires us to place on his grave only an ideal 'red carnation' which with his conduct has helped to flourish and grow. Hi Luciano! ', concludes Stefania Craxi.
Antiseri: Italian culture loses brave intellectual
"With the disappearance of Luciano Pellicani, Italian culture loses an innovator, a brave intellectual. In the years in which communist hegemony was prevailing in Italy, he was a great defender of freedom".
This is what the philosopher Dario Antiseri told Adnkronos about the disappearance of Luciano Pellicani. And he added: "Pellicani was also a great teacher and fascinating teacher. All his boys remember him."
And he still stressed: "We often heard each other, the last time about a month ago. I repeat, what was really important for him was the problem of freedom and solidarity. He was basically a socialist liberal. His Left - Antiseri concluded - has always been a reformist and liberal left. Sometimes, speaking to me, he complained that a country like ours did not have a liberal left ".