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Leading Italian revolutionary socialist Livio Maitain died on 16th September, at the age of 81.
" My autobiographical balance sheet cannot be separated from the balance sheet of the political and cultural, national and international current which I joined in 1947 and in which I have been an active participant ever since."
Livio had been a leading member of Italian Communist Refoundation since it came into existence in the early 1990s, and a long-time leader of the revolutionary marxist current Bandiera Rossa .
He became politically active during the years of the Nazi occupation of Italy, and subsequently a leading member of the Italian Socialist Youth. In 1947 he joined the Italian Trotskyist movement. He was one of a small group of comrades who led the Fourth International during the difficult years of the 1950s and early 1960s; opponents of the Fourth International talked about the 'Mandel-Frank-Maitan' leadership of the FI, following the departure of Pablo in 1953.
His generation were the cadres who carried the programme of revolutionary marxism through the difficult post-war years, and who were gradually able to link up with a broader layer of new young activists in the mid-late 1960s.
Livio was actively involved in the huge worker-student upsurge in Italy between 1969 and 1976, and universally seen as someone who had played a key role in training numerous leaders of the Italian revolutionary left, whether inside the Fourth International or outside.
Until recently, despite age and illness, he maintained his participation in all the leadership bodies of the FI. A football fanatic, he played weekly until into his 70s.
Below are some comments from Communist Refoundation leader Fausto Bertinotti, in the latter's introduction to Livio's book La Strada Percosa - The Road Taken. In this Maitain argues strongly against the view that the defeats of socialism in the 20th Century were 'inevitable', and equally strongly for the view that the possibility of socialism remains open. His other published works include his 1976 book on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a long text on the history of the Italian Communist Party, published by the IRRE - for details click here .
A splendid ride in opposition to historical determinisms
A splendid ride through sixty years of the history of the workers' movement in Italy and Europe, seen from the inside, travelled by way of direct participation in the movements, read from the standpoint of a tendency within the workers movement, that of the Fourth International: that is the initial emotion derived from this volume by Livio Maitan. As the author himself explains in his concluding chapter: "My autobiographical balance sheet cannot be separated from the balance sheet of the political and cultural, national and international current which I joined in 1947 and in which I have been an active participant ever since. And this current, in turn, while it arose in opposition to the predominant currents, cannot be regarded in isolation from the record of the workers' movement as a whole."
The events, the major divisions of History, the great upsurges of the workers movement and the tragic defeats are evoked together with the individual and collective choices made by the author, his memories, his scrupulous reconstruction of the debates in the parties (PCI, post-Resistance PS, PSI, Democrazia Proletaria and then PRC), in the other political and trade-union organizations of the workers movement, within the movements that have traversed the 20th century, to the emergence in the new millennium of the 'movement of movements', that is, the stormy emergence in the world arena of the movement in opposition to neoliberal globalization. The history of sixty years is therefore written and analyzed by one of its direct protagonists: it is a life that has been lived."
… Livio Maitan, and with him many men and women who were activists in the workers movement and adhered to philosophical currents and critical cultures on the communist left, have lived through some very bitter moments, misunderstandings and periods of true ostracism. It is one of the many paradoxes of History that many of those who handed down a priori verdicts in the name of an acritical orthodoxy, who excommunicated those expressing theoretical and political differences, denouncing them as enemies of the proletariat, landed in the course of events on distant banks and now proclaim the end of History, often with the same brutality of yesteryear, explaining that capitalism is the only possible social horizon and that it is neither desirable nor permissible to go beyond. …
"I remain convinced", says Livio Maitan, "that the choices made by the hegemonic forces in the workers movement were not ineluctable and that different choices, with different results, were fully possible. I reaffirm that the strategic projects advanced over the years by the various parties and leaders - the policy of national union projected for an indeterminate period, including after the end of the war and the fall of fascism, the centre-left in the perspective of Nenni and the Socialist Party, and the historic compromise (envisaged by the PCI) - were unrealistic, since they were based on an unfounded interpretation of the possible dynamics, as experience has by and large demonstrated. And that's not to mention the schemes, largely undefined, first of Occhetto and then of Veltroni-D'Alema."
This is a significant and important aspect of the approach suggested to us by Livio Maitan in his book. History is also written with 'ifs' and 'buts' and it is not true that there is an historical determinism that predefines the actual options. Other options were indeed possible, with different consequences on the development of the societies that emerged from the great revolutions of the 20th century, and on the fate of the major political and trade-union forces of the western workers movement of the last century.
… To conclude, I can do no better than to quote Livio Maitan, while a young anti-fascist student, describing his critical method: "to start from a scrupulous philological analysis of the most significant documents, to grasp incongruities and internal contradictions in the conceptions submitted to critical thinking. Needless to say, this approach is not sufficient in itself, but it does provide the necessary point of departure."
This message, which applies to many of us, applies even more to this new generation that is a protagonist in the new movement representing the great novelty of the new century, and constituting a point of reference in which to situate a new phase in the movement for social emancipation.
* Fausto Bertinotti is the general secretary of Italy's Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC).