Livio Maitan died on 16^th September 2004. Born in Venice in 1923, he participated in the resistance movement during the Nazi occupation. Obliged to seek refuge in Switzerland, he was interned at the end of the War. In 1947, he joined the Fourth International, and was a leading member of the latter from 1951 until his death. From the creation of Rifondazione Comunista onwards, he held without interruption a national leadership role in the party to which he devoted most of his energy during his later years. From 2001 he followed with interest the activities of the anti-globalisation movement and often participated in it.

Maitan’s indefatigible activism was always accompanied by reflection and political and economic analysis, which bore fruit in an innumerable series of articles and many books. Amongst the latter, over and above the translation and editing of a large part of Trotsky’s writings, his works treated subjects as wide and varied as the nature of social classes in Italy, world economic crises, the history of the PCI from its origins to the present, the theoretical heritage of Gramsci, as well as the historical trajectory of China, especially the Cultural Revolution. At the end of his life, Maitan even found time to write his memoirs and a history of the Fourth International, which will be published shortly.
His activity as a political leader as well as his theoretical reflection were characterised by great rigour, ethical and intellectual, without ever becoming dogmatic. On the contrary, what remained constant throughout his nearly sixty years of political engagement was his attention to the concrete dynamics of the relationship of forces between the classes and the historical and political dialectic, combined with a real openness to debate and confrontation with different positions.

To create a research centre in his name and dedicated to his memory means, first of all, to take up his inheritance. However, to take this up means to make it live in the present. The research centre will thus have the following concrete objectives:

1. To create a library which can give the general public access to the many works on politics, economics, history of the the workers’ movement, revolutionary Marxism and so forth which Livio Maitan had collected over many years and which he left for all to be able to use.

2. To pursue Livio Maitan’s historical, political and economic thought via the promotion of research in the domains of the history of the workers’ movement and of an open and critical Marxism, via the organisation of conferences and discussion sessions at a national and international level, and via the publication of new research and the encouragement of young students and researchers engaged in work in this field.

The Livio Maitan research centre thus sees itself as a contribution to the renewal of Marxist debate at an international level, by stimulating the encounter of currents of critical thought which have different traditions and cultural references, as well as between activist and academic currents and between older and younger generations which have grown up in different intellectual and political contexts.
For all these reasons, we support the creation of the ‘Livio Maitan’ Research Centre, with which we hope to collaborate over the next few years.

Tobias Abse (Goldsmiths College, London)
Gilbert Achcar (Université de Paris VIII)
Neville Alexander (University of Cape Town)
Rob Albritton (University of York, Canada)
Tariq Ali (New Left Review)
Guillermo Almeyra (giornalista e scrittore)
Elmar Altvater (Freie Universität von Berlin)
Christopher Arthur (University of Sussex)
Antoine Artous (Critique Communiste)
Stefano Azzarà (Università di Urbino)
Jairus Banaji (University of Bombay- Princeton University)
John Bellamy Foster (University of Oregon)
Riccardo Bellofiore (Università di Bergamo)
Daniel Bensaïd (Université de Paris VIII)
Emiliano Bevilacqua (Università di Lecce)
Robin Blackburn (University of Essex)
Patrick Bond (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban)
Emiliano Brancaccio (Università del Sannio)
Robert Brenner (University of California Los Angeles)
Simon Bromley (The Open University)
Francisco Fernández Buey (Universidad Pompeu Fabra-Barcelonne)
Liudmila Bulavka (Institute of culture Moscow)
Michael Burawoy (University of California Berkeley)
Alberto Burgio (Università di Bologna)
Alexandr Buzgalin (Moscow State University)
Alex Callinicos (Kings College London)
Mario Candeias (University of Jena/Berlin Institute for Critical Theory)
Guglielmo Carchedi (University of Amsterdam)
Kunal Chattopadhyay (Jadavpur University-Calcutta)
Paresh Chattopadhyay (Université du Quebec)
Vivek Chibber (New York University)
Giulietto Chiesa
Lidia Cirillo (Quaderni Viola)
Simon Clarke (University of Warwick)
Sheila Cohen (London)
George C. Comninel (York University, Toronto)
Cristina Corradi (Roma)
Carlos Nelson Coutinho (Università Federale di Rio de Janeiro, Brasile)
Mike Davis (University of California San Diego)
Richard B. Day (University of Toronto)
Alex Demirovic (Universität von Frankfurt)
Antoni Domènech (Universidad de Barcelona)
Ben Fine (University of London)
Roberto Finelli (Università di Bari)
Roberto Fineschi (Università di Siena)
John Foot (University College London)
Fabio Frosini (Università di Urbino)
Aldo Garzia (Aprile)
Diego Giachetti (Università di Torino)
Alfonso Gianni
Maurice Godelier (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales- Paris)
Peter Gowan (London Metropolitan University)
Cristina Gramolini (Towanda)
Jeanette Habel (Paris III Sorbonne)
Celia Hart Santamaria (La Habana)
Frigga Haug (Hamburger Universität for Wirtschaft und Politik)
Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Freie Universitat Berlin)
Michael Heinrich (PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft)
François Houtart (Université Louvain-la-Neuve)
Michel Husson (IRES)
Augusto Illuminati (Università di Urbino)
Fredric Jameson (Duke University)
Domenico Jervolino (Università degli studi “Federico II” di Napoli)
Robert Jessop (Lancaster University)
Claudio Katz (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Juha Koivisto (University of Helsinki)
Andrei Kolganov (Lomonosov Moscow state University)
Stathis Kouvelakis (Kings College London)
Michael R. Krätke (University of Amsterdam)
Georges Labica (Université de Paris X)
Gianfranco La Grassa (Università di Venezia)
Costas Lapavitsas (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Paul Le Blanc (La Roche College Pittsburgh)
Colin Leys (University of Westminster)
Domenico Losurdo (Università di Urbino)
Francisco Louça (Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Lisboa)
Michael Löwy (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique)
David MacNally (York University Toronto)
David Mandel (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Fernando Martinez Heredia (La Habana)
Istvan Meszaros (University of Sussex)
Savas Michael-Matsas (Aristotelian University of Thessalonica)
Gaspar Miklos Tamas (University of Budapest)
John Milios (National Technical University of Athens)
Kim Moody (London)
Warren Montag (Occidental College)
Raul Mordenti (Università di Roma Tor Vergata)
Vittorio Morfino (Università di Milano- Bicocca)
Antonio Moscato (Università degli Studi di Lecce)
Gerassimos Moschonas (University of Athens-Panteion)
Fred Moseley (Mount Holyoke College)
Francis Mulhern (University of Middlesex)
Marcello Musto (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”)
Bertell Olmann (New York University)
Bryan Palmer (Trent University Canada)
Leo Panitch (York University Toronto)
Jaime Pastor (Universidad de Madrid)
Christopher Phelps (Ohio State University at Mansfield)
Francesca Polo (Il Dito e la Luna)
Beatriz Rajland (Universidad de Buenos Aires-FISYP)
Jan Rehmann (Union Theological Seminary, New York)
Stephen Resnick (University of Massachussets)
Vittorio Rieser (Torino)
Justin Rosenberg (University of Sussex)
Emil Roudik (Academy of Labor Moscow)
Alfredo Saad-Filho (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Thomas Sablowski (York University, Toronto)
Emir Sader (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Sean Sayers (University of Kent)
Spyros Sakellaropoulos (University of Patras)
Pierre Salama (Université de Paris XIII)
Catherine Samary (Université Paris Dauphine)
Anwar Shaikh (New School University- New York)
Tony Smith (State University of Iowa)
Panagiotis Sotiris (University of Athens-Panteion)
Hillel Ticktin (University of Glasgow)
Massimiliano Tomba (Università di Padova)
André Tosel (Université de Nice)
Enzo Traverso (Université d’Amiens)
Achin Vanaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University- New Delhi)
Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Dominique Vidal (giornalista e storico)
Michael Voeikov (Russian Academy of Science)
Alan Wald (University of Michigan)
Immanuel Wallerstein (Yale University)
Erik Olin Whrigt (University of Wisconsin)
Chris Wickham (University of Birmingham)
Frieder Otto Wolf (Freie Universität Berlin)
Richard D. Wolff (University of Massachussets)
Ellen Meiksins Wood (University of York, Toronto)
Slavoj _i_ek (University of Ljubljana)

centrostudiliviomaitan email.it