Born in Sannicandro di Bari, Losurdo obtained his doctorate in 1963 from the University of Urbino under the guidance of Pasquale Salvucci with a thesis on Johann Karl Rodbertus.
[7] His work ranged from contributions to the study of Kantian philosophy (the so-called self-censorship of Immanuel Kant and his political nicodemism)[17] and the reevaluation of classical German idealism, especially by G. W. F. Hegel,[18] in an attempt to re-propose the legacy in the wake of György Lukács in particular,[19] as well as the reaffirmation of the interpretation of German and non-German Marxism (Antonio Gramsci and the brothers Bertrando and Silvio Spaventa),[20] with incursions into the sphere of Nietzschean thought (the reading of a radical aristocratic Friedrich Nietzsche)[21] and Heideggerian thought,[22] in particular the question of Martin Heidegger's adhesion to Nazism.
According to Losurdo, the intention of these revisionists is to eradicate the revolutionary tradition as their true motivations have little to do with the search for a greater understanding of the past but rather it lies in both the climate and ideological needs of the political classes and is most evident in the work of the English-speaking imperial revivalists, such as Niall Ferguson and Paul Johnson.
[24] Losurdo turned his attention to the political history of modern German philosophy from Kant to Karl Marx and the debate that developed in Germany in the second half of the 19th and in the 20th century as well as a reinterpretation of the tradition of liberalism, in particular starting from the criticism and accusations of hypocrisy addressed to John Locke for his financial participation in the Atlantic slave trade.
'"[27] Upon Losurdo's death in 2018, Gianni Fresu wrote that "from the classics of philosophy to the debate around the figure of Stalin; from the analysis of the role of China to historical revisionism; from liberal thinking to the issues of Bonapartism and modern democracy; from the history of Western thought to the problems of colonialism and imperialism ... Losurdo's studies of historical materialism, as well as those of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Nietzsche, are a fundamental milestone in the history of ideas and events of human societies, such is their scientific seriousness and intellectual autonomy, their problematic richness and interpretative complexity.
[9] Losurdo was a strong critic of the equation of Nazism and communism, made by scholars like François Furet and Ernst Nolte[29][31] but also by Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper.
[36][37] In excerpts from a conference, organized in 2003, to re-evaluate the figure of Stalin fifty years after his death, Losurdo harshly criticized the revelations contained in Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech".
According to Losurdo, Stalin's bad reputation derived not from the crimes committed by the latter – which he compared to others of that time – but from the falsehoods present in the report that Khrushchev read during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956.
Losurdo gave credit to one of the main accusations that were at the base of the bloody repression against his opponents, i.e. the existence of the "full-bodied reality of the fifth column" in the Soviet Union ready to ally with the enemy.
[29][31][39] Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, Losurdo supported the interpretation that Mao Zedong gave the plurality to the class struggle by paying attention to the process of female emancipation and colonized peoples.
"[44] Losurdo accused Furet and Nolte for their theory that the Russian Revolution started the European Civil War in 1917 so that the conflict between Bolshevism and Nazism is emphasized and only the former is blamed.
[45] Echoing Traverso, who wrote that "Eastern Europe certainly represented the 'living space' that one wanted to colonize, but this conquest implied the annihilation of the USSR and Bolshevism, a state and an ideology which the Nazis saw as the product of a connection between 'Jewish intelligentsia' and Slavic 'sub-humanity.'
[29] Opposed to the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, Losurdo criticized the concept of totalitarianism, especially in the works of Hannah Arendt, François Furet, Karl Popper, and Ernst Nolte, among others.
Losurdo argued that totalitarianism was a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and that applying it to the political sphere required an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place Nazi Germany and other fascist regimes, along with the Soviet Union and other socialist states, in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.
"[14] Writing for Jacobin, historian David Broder argued that "[w]hile he recognized the exorbitant, paranoid aspects of Stalin's leadership, his efforts to relativize it were often governed by a polemical zeal unjustified by the evidence marshaled.
"[11] Historian Sean Purdy accused Losurdo of charlatanism, putting his book on the same level as the works of Grover Furr and Ludo Martens, while contrasting it with what called more serious authors, like Robert W. Thurston and J. Arch Getty.
[39][56][57][58] Losurdo's view that purges were legitimate because of the "permanent state of exception caused by imperialist intervention and siege",[59] with Liguori summarising Losurdo's argument that "the harshness of his leadership was due to the Western powers' intrigues and the existence of a powerful 'Fifth Column' within the USSR of the 1930s" and a continuation of the Russian Civil War, described as being imposed by imperialism,[60] were criticized as being a defence of the Stalinist purges by Cicero Araujo[61] and Mario Maestri.
[27] The book about Stalin caused some controversy and debate internationally, especially in Brazil and Germany, with critics such as Marxist historian Christoph Jünke [de] labelling Losurdo "a neo-Stalinist.
"[61] Historian Mario Maestri wrote that "[m]uch of the reference and support bibliography used by Losurdo consists of revisionist, denialist and openly conservative and anti-communist authors and/or researchers ... of questionable reputation", citing The Black Book of Communism and Curzio Malaparte as examples.
[70] The publication in the communist newspaper Liberazione of a positive review by Guido Liguori on Losurdo's book about Stalin caused a crisis in the paper's editorial staff: twenty journalists wrote a letter to the editor Dino Greco, criticizing what they perceived as Losurdo's attempts at Stalin's rehabilitation, alongside Liguori's review (which they perceived as too positive) and Greco's decision to publish it.
Cicero further stated "it is the ability and perspicacity to face realistically the great problems of your country and its time – even against the most ingrained beliefs and utopias of your former travel companions – that the book seeks to highlight.
[74] About Losurdo's work on Western Marxism, Marxist historian Mario Maestri wrote that this is "a false split and a false controversy", and accused Losurdo of replacing "the proletarian internationalism and class struggles of the 'Western Marxists' with the unified nation – that is, bourgeoisie and united proletarians – in the name of national developmentalism – as if development, as well as science and technology, were ideologically neutral and not dictated by the interests of the dominant versus the dominated classes.
"[62] Maestri, who defends the thesis "we live in a historical counterrevolutionary phase", whose "milestones were the capitalist restoration in China in 1978 under the leadership of reformer Deng Xiaoping and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992 – events that consolidated the globalization of capitalism", accused Losurdo of presenting "an apology for the capitalism of the Chinese Communist Party and its many business projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America", establishing this "as the only alternative for its economic development and the only way for the emancipation of European and American imperialism."