Girolamo Li Causi and the Italian Communist Party
Massimo Asta, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST e Robinson College, University of Cambridge

For his role as comprimario in the national politics of the ICP, the study of the political trajectory of Girolamo Li Causi allows us to focus on the front of the scene, and at the same time to adopt a critical unusual gaze. The biographical approach makes it possible to configure the presence of a plurality of histories, a spatial plurality and a plurality of times, and layers of times, which often overlap in the course of three political regimes (the Liberal, the Fascist and the Republican) and different phases of the party. By connecting the totality to the detail of the individual, these temporal sequences can appear in the form of fragments, suggesting incongruities, and even contradictions, which constitute a challenge for the historical interpretation.

Massimo Asta is an historian of modern and contemporary European history, with a particular focus on history of economic thought, intellectuals, labour history and left politics. He is investigador auxiliar at the Instituto de História Contemporânea of Lisbon and affiliated lecturer and researcher at Robinson College, University of Cambridge. He published Girolamo Li Causi, un Rivoluzionario del Novecento 1896-1977 (Carocci, 2017), and coedited The Value of Work since the 18th Century. Theory, Measurement, Custom and Conflict (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2023).

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