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Interview
BiographyBorn in Bari in 1939, Giuseppe Vacca graduated in the Philosophy of Law in 1961 with a thesis on the political and legal philosophy of Benedetto Croce. After graduating, he worked for a year as an editor for the publishers Laterza, before concentrating on research. From his early years he was always intensely involved in politics and organising cultural activities, which culminated in his work with the publishers De Donato from the early 70s until 1983. This activity was combined with the founding in 1975 of the Gramsci Institute of Puglia to which Vacca was particularly dedicated. Lecturer in the History of Political Doctrine from 1966, in 1975 he was awarded the chair in that discipline at the University of Bari. In 1968 he attended the London School of Economics studying the History of Economics in the USA and the USSR. From 1978 to 1983 he was on the board of RAI, the Italian public broadcaster. He was a member of Parliament for Bari-Foggia in the 9th and 10th legislature and has held posts in the PCI (Partito Communista Italiano) and the PDS (Partito Democratico della Sinistra), and was a member the Central Committee of the PCI from 1972 until 1991. He is a currently part of the leadership of the PDS. Since 1985 he has been Director of the Gramsci Institute Foundation of Rome. At the beginning of his academic career Vacca studied twentieth-century idealism and Italian Hegelianism of the late nineteenth century, with particular attention to the growth of Marxism in Italy. He then turned to the study of contemporary Marxism, and Italian society, particularly the culture and politics in the republican era. In the nineteen eighties Vacca continued the transformation of contemporary economics in the light of the computer revolution and re-examined the "Italian case". As a director of the Gramsci Institute he was particularly concerned with the twentieth century, setting up the "Annals" of the Institute, the "Europa Europa" review, beginning the research which led to the monumental "History of the Italian Republic" (published by Einadi), acquiring new documents from the archives of the Comintern and the Communist Party in Moscow and the entire archive of the Italian Communist Party. The Gramsci Institute Foundation now possesses the largest archive on the twentieth-century in Italy and has recently opened it for research. Since the 1960s Vacca has contributed continuously to numerous Italian and international reviews and newspapers. His writings have been translated into all the major European languages and his works are well known in Europe, the Americas, India and Japan. |
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BibliographyAmong his works published in English are:
In Italian:
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