Maoism with Italian Characteristics: China’s Global Influence and the Italian Left, 1956-1976

This book is, primarily, a historical study that investigates why Mao’s thought took root in Italy, how it developed, and its emergence in opposition to the Italian Communist Party, with a focus on the years 1956-1976. The book also prompts reflection on how dissent has been perceived in Leftist parties more broadly, and how ’sub-cultures’ can become prominent. The authors delve into the relations between Mao’s China and the Italian institutional Left, mindful of the fact that not all the involved parties represented monolithic clusters of consent. The book confronts a watershed of reforms or revolution, in which the Italian Communist Party embraced a non-revolutionary and parliamentary policy, and where Italian radicals took Mao’s slogans literally to argue that a revolution in Italy was not only possible, but necessary. Tracking the subsequent abandonment of Maoism in modern left-wing parties in Italy, which gradually became more distant from the working class, the authors juxtapose this to modern China, which opened up with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and Xi Jinping’s search for rejuvenation. In presenting Italian Maoism-a largely forgotten topic and fascinating example of Western Maoism-to an English-reading audience, the authors contextualize these local historical events in a global modern perspective, linking them to the Cold War and horizontal issues, such as dissent, in a rich comparison of Italian and Chinese sources from party archives and collections. It is relevant to historians interested in the circulation of Chinese political ideas in the West, and China’s historical trajectory from the Cold War to the present.

Lorenzo M. Capisani holds a B.A. in Literature and History, an M.A. in Contemporary History, and a Ph.D. in Modern Chinese History (Milan, Shanghai). He completed post-doc projects at the Historical Archives of the EU (European University Institute), Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and the History Project of the European Space Agency. He wrote 12 peer-reviewed publications, and joined more than a dozen of national and international conferences. He has expertise in international relations, which he developed working in the think-tank ISPI, and in the editorial committees of the Atlante Geopolitico Treccani and Federico Motta Editore. His research fields are: political, cultural and scientific connections between Europe and Asia; Italian-Chinese political, cultural and commercial relations during the Cold War; and Republican China with a focus on the Nationalist Party between the world wars. He was awarded a prize for research by Fondazione Turati, Florence. He continued his career in the Executive Agency of the European Research Council (ERC). He is now a Policy Officer of the European Commission in DG Research and Innovation, and maintains a separate research activity.

Marco Gabbas holds a B.A. in Translation and Interpreting, an M.A. in Comparative Contemporary History (CEU, Budapest), and a Ph.D. in Historical Studies. His research has focused on the history of the international Communist movement and on disability studies. He dedicated his Ph.D. to the study of Italian Maoism. He published relevant academic articles in international journals like The Global Sixties and Terrorism and Political Violence. He also published academic essays on crucial international figures of the global Sixties such as Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and Camilo Torres; and on Soviet history. In 2023, he published Inferno a Rosarno, a fact-based fiction on race riots in Italy. In 2024, he wrote La balbuzie attraverso l’intervista orale, an oral-history book on Italian stutterers. He is currently a teacher and mentor at Milestone Institute, Budapest.