Lucio Magri

Lucio Magri (19 August 1932 – 28 November 2011) was an Italian journalist and politician.

Biography

Magri was born in Ferrara and was one of the founders of the far-left newspaper il manifesto.

He was co-founder (in 1974) and secretary of the Proletarian Unity Party for Communism (or PdUP), which later merged with the Italian Communist Party in 1984. When the latter renounced communism to become the Democratic Party of the Left in 1991, Magri adhered to the Communist Refoundation Party, founding an internal movement whose structure recalled that of PdUP.

In 1995 his movement split, to form the Movement of Unitarian Communists, born to support a centre cabinet led by Lamberto Dini. When the Movement entered the newly formed Democratic Party of the Left, Magri abandoned it, devoting himself only to il manifesto.

In 2009 he published an essay on the history of the Italian Communist Party, entitled Il sarto di Ulm. Una possibile storia del PCI (The Tailor of Ulm. A possible history of the P.C.I.). In 2011, Verso Books published 'The Tailor of Ulm: Communism in the Twentieth Century'. Reviewing the book in Review 31, John Green praised it as 'an invaluable platform for understanding the apparent impasse of the present global and systemic crisis'.