The Crucial Role of Domenico Losurdo in the Historical, Political and Philosophical Understanding of the “Chinese Way”

ABSTRACT

Domenico Losurdo traveled to Beijing for the first time in the 1970s, when (Western) Maoism thrilled a large number of Western progressive intellectuals. But when these intellectuals turned away from China—which they accused of having consolidated an “illiberal totalitarian political regime” but also of having “restored capitalism”—by contrast Losurdo remained a friend of China. For him it was from the Chinese experience and its ability to survive the end of the USSR that one could draw inspiration to confront the most important event in the life of an entire generation: the radical crisis of Marxism and the defeat of the communist movement in the West. Western Marxism, born out of the shock of the First World War, is characterized by a utopian messianism prone to anarchism (the thesis of the extinction of the state, for example, or the claim of an immediate cancelation of borders, or hostility towards economy and technology). In China, on the other hand, Marxism has become the basis of national awareness and the consequent liberation struggle. Once political independence is reached, however, the revolution continues today in order to achieve economic independence. Hence the need for a re-elaboration of the same Marxian category of class struggle.

KEYWORDS:

• Losurdo
• China
• Western Marxism
• Western Maoism
• class struggle

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Giambattista Vico's idea of an heterogenesis of ends is expressed as follows: “Men have made this world of nations [. . .] but this world, without a doubt, has come from a different mind, at times entirely contrary and always superior to the particular purposes that men had set themselves” (Vico 1971, 700).

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Stefano G. Azzarà

Stefano G. Azzarà teaches history of philosophy at the Department of Humanities at the University of Urbino where he was Domenico Losurdo's assistant and then main collaborator. He is also director of the philosophical magazine Materialismo Storico. His work focuses on a comparison between the main philosophical and political traditions of the contemporary age: conservatism, liberalism, historical materialism. He took part in several projects of national interest and presented his researches at numerous national and international conferences and seminars, also contributing to their organization. He has written several books, among which Imperialism and Globalization (1999), Thinking the Conservative Revolution (2000, 2004), An Italian Nietzsche (2011), Imperialism of Universal Rights (2011), In Search for Democracy (2014), Friedrich Nietzsche from Aristocratic Radicalism to Conservative Revolution (2015), Communists, Fascists and National Question (2015), The Common Humanity (on Domenico Losurdo, 2019), The Virus of the West (on the pandemic and the different approaches in China and in the West, 2020). He collaborates with Italian and foreign magazines such as MicroMega, Belfagor, Phenomenology and Society, Democracy and Law, Marxistische Blätter, Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung, Marxist Critics, Rivista di Estetica, Philosophy Today, and International Critical Thought.