The magazine was one of the theoretical-political media outlets of the New Left[1] and was one of the early publications with a pro-Chinese stance in Italy.
[3][4] It followed the tradition of Il Politecnico, a Milan-based Communist cultural and literary magazine published between 1945 and 1947.
[6] After 1965 it began to feature discussions about the American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
[4] Although the Quaderni piacentini writers did not have a homogenous ideology, they were all adherents of the anti-moderate, anti-reformism and libertarianism.
[2] Notable contributors of Quaderni piacentini included Franco Fortini,[2] Goffredo Fofi, Giovanni Giudici[6] and Alberto Asor Rosa.