Former Italian Senator Mario Tronti has died at the age of 92, according to reports.

The Marxist leader and Democratic Party member's death was announced this week. No cause of death was mentioned.

Roma. Addio Mario Tronti, teorico del pensiero operaio https://t.co/BlzVxp2gB1

— 𝐀𝐯𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐫𝐞 (@Avvenire_Nei) August 7, 2023

His background

"Born in Rome on 24 July 1921 from a popular family that worked in the General Markets and lived in the Ostiense district, Mario Tronti," Avvenire reported (English translation).

"After attending the Pilo Albertelli classical high school, he graduated in philosophy in 1956 at the University of Rome with Ugo Spirito, discussing a thesis on Marx's early works. Alongside his commitment as a scholar, he immediately joined the political one, enrolling in the Communist Youth Federation in 1951 and in the Party in 1954," it added.

Mario Tronti has died aged 92. https://t.co/5NxhydLVNz

His work has recently been published in English by @VersoBooks : https://t.co/cWJ4jRFe09

— Elisa Pannini (@elisapannini) August 7, 2023

His writing

"Workers and Capital is universally recognised as the most important work produced by operaismo, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionised the institutional and extra-parliamentary Left in Italy and beyond," says the description of the English translation.

"In the decade after its first publication in 1966, the debates over Workers and Capital produced new methods of analysis and a new vocabulary for thousands of militants, helping to inform the new forms of workplace, youth and community struggles," it continued.

Autonomimarxismin teoreetikko Mario Tronti on kuollut 92 vuoden iässä. Trontin ajatuksia Suomessa on tuonut esiin erityisesti verkkolehti Megafoni 2000-luvun alussa. Kepeät mullat painavalle kapitalismin kriitikolle!https://t.co/1dlcBkM4ZA

— Jukka Peltokoski (@jukkapeltokoski) August 7, 2023

His later years

"In more recent years Tronti had published several rethinking essays on twentieth-century political experience and he had not even disdained to participate directly in parliamentary activity," Italy 24 News reported.

"Convinced that the fall of the Soviet bloc and the post-industrial transformation of capitalism had marked a decisive turning point in history, he never tired of reproaching the heirs of the PCI for a disconcerting theoretical vacuum," it added.

His longtime support of Marxism made him a controversial figure despite his popularity as both a politician and philosopher.

Many who embrace Marxism within capitalist countries have seen him as a philosophical hero of sorts, similar to Sen. Bernie Sanders in American politics, although more of an academic in his emphasis.

His passing marks the uneasy discussion of Marxism within the Western world that continues to be a controversy even decades after the fall of the Soviet Union.