  After World War II, a hyper-pragmatic paradigm was established in physics in
most of the western countries, within which foundations of quantum mechanics
were vastly dismissed as pointless speculations. In this paper, we show that in
Italy, however, the interest toward quantum foundations was revived at the turn
of the 1960s, mainly thanks to the initiative of Franco Selleri, who started
criticising the contents and the practice of modern physics (in the context of
capitalistic society), and thought that the solution was to be sought in a
rethinking of the foundations of the discipline. In 1969, supported by Luis de
Broglie himself, Selleri wrote a paper reviving the idea of hidden variables
and he successfully proposed to the Italian Physical Society to devote the
"Varenna School" of 1970 to quantum foundations. This school's historical
pivotal importance is twofold: it gathered some of the most preeminent
international physicists working on the foundations of quantum theory; and it
provided a first platform for young physicists to express their dissatisfaction
towards "scientism". In fact, Selleri's highly politicised views found the
favour of a critical mass of young, left-wing physicists, who made of quantum
foundations their main topic of research in the 1970s. Although these
physicists understood very early the central importance of Bell's theorem,
their (ideological) aim was to demonstrate that quantum theory could have
limits of validity. Such a research program turned out to be unsuccessful, yet
the Italian endeavour was worldwide one of the first and most significant
revivals of the interest towards quantum foundations.
