Jacques Bidet a Stathis Kouvelakis

54 • André Tosel
and the labour theory of value was rejected on the basis of the classic problem
of the transformation of values into prices, which was highlighted by a generation
of economists who had also reformulated Marx’s critique downwards
(C. Napoleoni, P. Garegnani, or M. Lippi). Having started out from an antirevisionist
and scienti� c (or scientistic) Marxism, Colletti left Marxism behind
in stages, aligning himself with Popper, whose falsi� cationist epistemology
and political options in favour of social engineering focused on social amelioration
he defended. A Philosophico-Political Interview (1974), Tra marxismo e no
(1979), and � nally Tramonto dell’ideologia (1980) are the milestones on this road
out of Marxism.
There was resistance, above all on the part of philosophers who had participated
in the debate on the Galilean scienti� city of the Marxist critique, immediately
followed by the debate on historicism provoked by the reception of the
Althusserian problematic. The road of the return to Marx crossed that of the
reference to concrete utopia. The � rst road was followed by Cesare Luporini
(1909–92); the second by Nicola Badaloni (1924–2005). In his 1974 collection
Dialettica e materialismo, Luporini proposed to read Marx according to Marx.
Criticising historicism with Althusser for its inability to think socio- historical
forms and its tendency to � atten them out on the apparently continuous � ow
of tactical choices, he proposed to study the different modalities of transition
to a different society within a model of the uneven development of the
relations of production and the superstructures. He urged further research
on the levels neglected by Marx, such as the critique of politics. His interventions
in the 1980s led him to radicalise his position: the return to Marx beyond
Marxisms amounted to registering the failure of the latter in the dual task of
re� ecting on the aporiae of socialism and the displacement in the relations of
production of a now victorious neocapitalism. The stress on politics consisted
in linking the theme of the dictatorship of the proletariat to an archaic phase
of historical materialism dominated by the liberal opposition between civil
society and the state. The mature phase of the doctrine thus lacked a political
theory and this, so it was implied, could not be de� ned in such a dictatorship.
Luporini went no further and ended his career without accepting the socialdemocratic
normalisation of the PCI turned PDS.
For his part, Badaloni did not abandon the perspective opened up by his
work of 1972, Per il comunismo. Questioni di teoria. In numerous important
studies devoted to Marx and Gramsci among others (in particular, Dialettica