The notoriety of the scholar had jumped to the headlines when, in the season of the cultural hegemony of the PCI, “L’Espresso” published on August 27, 1978 the essay “The Socialist Gospel” introduced by Paolo Mieli and signed by Bettino Craxi on Proudhon which reported in vogue an anti-scientific, libertarian, and non-violent socialism that broke with the communism of the Leninist tradition and paved the way for a liberal and reformist socialism of the Turati-Matteotti-Rosselli tradition.
The one who had given form and cultural substance to the autonomist need of Italian socialism embodied by Craxi after years of contiguity or subordination to the PCI had been Luciano Pellicani, director of the battle waged for years by the columns of “Mondoperaio” together with the elite of leftist intellectuals non-communist led by Norberto Bobbio.
The merit of what was then a little known professor was also never to ride the success of the new socialism, not to ask for prebends and places in socialist power, preferring to remain faithful to their rigorous ideas in the season in which many profited from party successes . This is the Pellicani we want to remember, the intelligent and never sovereign friend, an indispensable reference point for the Italian antitotalitarians.
