This paper discusses the development of Claudio Napoleoni’s thought during his time at the University of Torino, and in particular the years from 1971 to 1978 in which his relationship with Torino’s cultural-intellectual environment was most intense. In these crucial years, Napoleoni started a new research program, after the crisis of the interpretative paradigm developed in the 1960s. In Torino, Napoleoni embarked on a systematic re-reading of the entire Marxian corpus of the Critique of Political Economy in his university courses in the academic years 1971-1972, 1972-1973 and 1973-1974, beginning with his Lezioni on Marx’s The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Das Kapital: The Results of The Immediate Process of Production, and continuing on to his fundamental monograph Valore (1976), his project of a new Dizionario di Economia Politica, and the paper L’enigma del valore (The Enigma of Value) (1978), which marked the beginning of the evolution of Napoleoni’s thought towards a “philosophical anthropology”.
Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi
An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science
The Annals is a forum for the free exchange of ideas
among scholars working in the field of social sciences
among scholars working in the field of social sciences