Carlo Rosselli
Encyclopedia
Carlo Rosselli was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy then abroad. He developed a theory of reformist, non-Marxist Socialism
inspired by the British Labour movement, that he described as "liberal Socialism
".
Jewish family. His mother, Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, had been active in republican
politics and thought and had participated in the unification of Italy. In 1903 he was taken to Florence
with his mother and siblings. During the First World War he joined the Italian armed forces and fought in the alpine campaign, rising to the rank of second lieutenant.
After the war, thanks to his brother Nello
, he studied in Florence with Gaetano Salvemini
, who was to be from then a constant companion of both the Rosselli brothers. It was in this period that he became a socialist, sympathetic to the reformist ideas of Filippo Turati
, in contrast to that revolutionary thinking of Giacinto Menotti Serrati
. In 1921 he graduated with a degree in political sciences from the University of Florence with a thesis titled: "sindacalismo" (Syndicalism
). Later he undertook a law degree that he would pursue in Turin
and Milan
, where he met Luigi Einaudi
and Piero Gobetti
.
He graduated in 1923 from the university of Siena
. For some weeks he visited London where he studied the workings of the British Labour Party: the English Labour movement would deeply influence him.
of Turati, Matteotti
and Treves
, he began writing for "Critica Sociale
", a review edited by Turati. After the murder of Matteotti, Rosselli pushed for a more active opposition to Fascism
. With the help of Ernesto Rossi
and Gaetano Salvemini
he founded the clandestine publication "Non mollare". During the following months, fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe. Ernesto Rossi left the country for France, followed by Salvemini. In February 1926 fellow activist Piero Gobetti
was assassinated in Paris by a Fascist hit squad. Still in Italy, Rosselli and Pietro Nenni
founded the review "Quarto Stato", which was banned after a few months.
Later in 1926, he organized with Sandro Pertini and Ferruccio Parri
the escape of Turati to France. While Pertini followed Turati to France, Parri and Rosselli were captured and convicted for their roles in Turati's escape and sentenced to a period of confinement on the island of Lipari
(1927). It is then that Rosselli began to write his most famous work, "Liberal Socialism". In July 1929 he escaped to Tunisia, from where he travelled to France, and the community of Italian antifascists including Emilio Lussu
and Francesco Fausto Nitti
. Nitti later portrayed Rosselli's adventurous escape in the book Le nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione (Our Prisons and Our Escape) in an Italian edition in 1946 (the 1929 English first edition was titled Escape).
". GL various numbers of the review and the notebooks omonimi (with cadence weekly magazine and salary) and was active in the organization of various spectacular actions, notable among which was the flight over Milan di Bassanesi (1930). In 1930 he published, in French, "Socialisme Libéral".
The book was at once a passionate critique of Marxism
, a creative synthesis of the democratic socialist revisionism (Bernstein, Turati and Treves) and of classical Italian Liberalism
(Francisco Saverio Merlino and Salvemini). But it contained also a shattering attack on the Stalinism
of the Third International, which had, with the derisive formula of "socialfascism", lumped together social democracy
, bourgeois liberalism
and fascism
. It was not surprising, therefore, when one of the most important Italian Communists, Togliatti
, defined "liberal Socialism" "libellous anti-socialism" and Rosselli "a reactionary ideologue who has nothing to do with the working class".
Giustizia e Libertà joined the Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana (The Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), a union of all the non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, nationalist) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy. They also first published the "Giustizia e Libertà Journals".
After the advent of Nazism in Germany (1933), the paper began to call for insurgency, revolutionary action, and military action in order to stop the Italian and German regimes before they plunge Europe into a tragic war. Spain, they wrote, seems the destiny of all fascist states.
erupted as the fascist-monarchical led army attempted a coup d'état against the republican government of the Popular Front
. Rosselli helped lead the Italian anti-fascist supporters of the republican forces, criticizing the neutrality policy of France and Britain, especially as Italy and Germany sent arms and troops in support of the rebels. In August, Rosselli and the GL organized its own brigades of volunteers to support the Spanish Republic
.
With Camillo Berneri
, Rosselli headed the Matteotti Battalion
, a mixed volunteer unit of anarchist, liberal, socialist and communist Italians. The unit was sent to the Aragon front, and participated in a victory against Francoist forces in the Battle of Monte Pelato
. Speaking on Barcelona Radio in November, Rosselli made famous the slogan: "Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia" ("Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy").
After falling ill, Rosselli was sent back to Paris, from where he led support for the anti-fascist cause, and proposed an even broader 'popular front
' while still remaining critical of the Communist Party of Spain and the Soviet government of Stalin. In 1937, Berneri was killed by Communist forces during a purge of anarchists in Barcelona. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939, Giustizia e Libertà
partisans were forced to flee back to France.
. On 9 June the two were killed by a group of "cagoulards", militants of the "Cagoule
", a French fascist group, probably on the orders of Mussolini
.
This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time (for which Marx's Das Kapital
, variously interpreted, was still the bible). Undoubtedly the influence of the British labour movement, which he knew well, is visible. As a result of the electoral successes of the Labour Party
, Rosselli was convinced that the 'norms' of liberal democracy were essential, not only in building Socialism, but also for its concrete realization. This stands in contrast to Leninist tactics, in which these rules, once power is taken, must be set aside. This 'Rossellian' synthesis is that "[parliamentary] liberalism is the method, Socialism is the aim".
The Marxist-Leninist idea of revolution founded on the dictatorship of the proletariat (which he felt, as in the Russian case, was synonymous with the dictatorship of a single party) he rejected in favour of a revolution that—as famously put in the GL program—is a coherent system of structural reforms aimed at the construction of a Socialism; that does not limit, but indeed exalts, freedom of personality and of association. Writing in his final years, Rosselli became more radical in his libertarian positions, defending the social organization of the CNT-FAI
he had seen in Anarchist Catalonia
and Barcelona during the civil war, and informed by the rise of Nazi Germany
.
and Carlo Rosselli]
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
inspired by the British Labour movement, that he described as "liberal Socialism
Liberal Socialism
Liberal socialism is a term that could refer to several political ideologies:*Libertarian socialism*Democratic socialism*Social democracy*Social liberalism*Market socialism...
".
Birth, war and studies
Rosselli was born in Rome to a wealthy TuscanTuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
Jewish family. His mother, Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, had been active in republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
politics and thought and had participated in the unification of Italy. In 1903 he was taken to Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
with his mother and siblings. During the First World War he joined the Italian armed forces and fought in the alpine campaign, rising to the rank of second lieutenant.
After the war, thanks to his brother Nello
Nello Rosselli
Nello Rosselli was an Italian Socialist leader and historian.Rosselli was born in Rome to a prominent Jewish family, and was the brother of Carlo Rosselli. Nello was a member of the reformist Partito Socialista Unitario of Filippo Turati, Giacomo Matteotti and Claudio Treves, which had split from...
, he studied in Florence with Gaetano Salvemini
Gaetano Salvemini
Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer.- Biography :Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia....
, who was to be from then a constant companion of both the Rosselli brothers. It was in this period that he became a socialist, sympathetic to the reformist ideas of Filippo Turati
Filippo Turati
Filippo Turati was an Italian sociologist, poet and Socialist politician.-Early life:Born in Canzo, province of Como, he graduated in law at the University of Bologna in 1877, and participated in the Scapigliatura movement with the most important artists of the period in Milan, publishing poetry...
, in contrast to that revolutionary thinking of Giacinto Menotti Serrati
Giacinto Menotti Serrati
Giacinto Menotti Serrati was an Italian communist politician. He was born in Spotorno, near Savona and died in Asso, near Como....
. In 1921 he graduated with a degree in political sciences from the University of Florence with a thesis titled: "sindacalismo" (Syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
). Later he undertook a law degree that he would pursue in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
and Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, where he met Luigi Einaudi
Luigi Einaudi
Luigi Einaudi , Cavaliere di Gran Croce decorato di Gran Cordone OMRI was an Italian politician and economist. He served as the second President of the Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955.-Early life:...
and Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti was an Italian journalist, intellectual and radical liberal and anti-fascist. He was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after the First World War and into the early years of Fascist rule.-Biography:...
.
He graduated in 1923 from the university of Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
. For some weeks he visited London where he studied the workings of the British Labour Party: the English Labour movement would deeply influence him.
The rise of Fascism
An active supporter of the Partito Socialista UnitarioUnited Socialist Party (Italy, 1922–1930)
The United Socialist Party was a social-democratic political party in Italy, active from 1922 to 1930....
of Turati, Matteotti
Giacomo Matteotti
Giacomo Matteotti was an Italian socialist politician. On 30 May 1924, he openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Fascists committed fraud in the recently held elections, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes...
and Treves
Claudio Treves
Claudio Treves was an Italian politician and journalist.-Youth:Claudio Treves was born in Turin into a well off assimilated Jewish family...
, he began writing for "Critica Sociale
Critica Sociale
Critica Sociale is a left-wing Italian newspaper. It is linked to the social democratic Partito Socialista Nuovo PSI party. Before Benito Mussolini banned opposition newspapers in 1926, Critica Sociale was a prominent supporter of the original Italian Socialist Party , which included a spectrum of...
", a review edited by Turati. After the murder of Matteotti, Rosselli pushed for a more active opposition to Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. With the help of Ernesto Rossi
Ernesto Rossi
Ernesto Rossi was an Italian politician, journalist and anti-fascist activist. His ideas contributed to the Partito d'Azione, and subsequently the Partito Radicaleco-authur of the Ventotene Manifesto. Rossi was born in Caserta....
and Gaetano Salvemini
Gaetano Salvemini
Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer.- Biography :Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia....
he founded the clandestine publication "Non mollare". During the following months, fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe. Ernesto Rossi left the country for France, followed by Salvemini. In February 1926 fellow activist Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti was an Italian journalist, intellectual and radical liberal and anti-fascist. He was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after the First World War and into the early years of Fascist rule.-Biography:...
was assassinated in Paris by a Fascist hit squad. Still in Italy, Rosselli and Pietro Nenni
Pietro Nenni
Pietro Sandro Nenni was an Italian socialist politician, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party and lifetime Senator since 1970. He was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951...
founded the review "Quarto Stato", which was banned after a few months.
Later in 1926, he organized with Sandro Pertini and Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri was an Italian partisan and politician who served as the 43rd Prime Minister of Italy for several months in 1945. During the resistance he was known as Maurizio.-Biography:...
the escape of Turati to France. While Pertini followed Turati to France, Parri and Rosselli were captured and convicted for their roles in Turati's escape and sentenced to a period of confinement on the island of Lipari
Lipari
Lipari is the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the north coast of Sicily, and the name of the island's main town. It has a permanent population of 11,231; during the May–September tourist season, its population may reach up to 20,000....
(1927). It is then that Rosselli began to write his most famous work, "Liberal Socialism". In July 1929 he escaped to Tunisia, from where he travelled to France, and the community of Italian antifascists including Emilio Lussu
Emilio Lussu
Emilio Lussu was an Italian soldier, politician and a writer.-The soldier:Lussu was born in Armungia, province of Cagliari and graduated with a degree in law in 1914...
and Francesco Fausto Nitti
Francesco Fausto Nitti
Francesco Fausto Nitti was a journalist and fighter against fascism. His father Vincenzo was evangelical preacher of the Italian Methodist Church. His mother was Paola Ciari .He was arrested and exiled 1 December 1926, went to Spain in March 1937...
. Nitti later portrayed Rosselli's adventurous escape in the book Le nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione (Our Prisons and Our Escape) in an Italian edition in 1946 (the 1929 English first edition was titled Escape).
Exile in Paris: Giustizia e Libertà
In 1929, with Lussu, Nitti, and a Parisian circle of refugees which had formed around Salvemini, Rosselli helped found the anti-fascist movement "Giustizia e LibertàGiustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
". GL various numbers of the review and the notebooks omonimi (with cadence weekly magazine and salary) and was active in the organization of various spectacular actions, notable among which was the flight over Milan di Bassanesi (1930). In 1930 he published, in French, "Socialisme Libéral".
The book was at once a passionate critique of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, a creative synthesis of the democratic socialist revisionism (Bernstein, Turati and Treves) and of classical Italian Liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
(Francisco Saverio Merlino and Salvemini). But it contained also a shattering attack on the Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
of the Third International, which had, with the derisive formula of "socialfascism", lumped together social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
, bourgeois liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. It was not surprising, therefore, when one of the most important Italian Communists, Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
, defined "liberal Socialism" "libellous anti-socialism" and Rosselli "a reactionary ideologue who has nothing to do with the working class".
Giustizia e Libertà joined the Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana (The Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), a union of all the non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, nationalist) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy. They also first published the "Giustizia e Libertà Journals".
After the advent of Nazism in Germany (1933), the paper began to call for insurgency, revolutionary action, and military action in order to stop the Italian and German regimes before they plunge Europe into a tragic war. Spain, they wrote, seems the destiny of all fascist states.
The Spanish civil war
In July 1936 the Spanish Civil WarSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
erupted as the fascist-monarchical led army attempted a coup d'état against the republican government of the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....
. Rosselli helped lead the Italian anti-fascist supporters of the republican forces, criticizing the neutrality policy of France and Britain, especially as Italy and Germany sent arms and troops in support of the rebels. In August, Rosselli and the GL organized its own brigades of volunteers to support the Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
.
With Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist....
, Rosselli headed the Matteotti Battalion
Matteotti Battalion
The Matteotti Battalion or "Centuria Giustizia e Libertà" or Italian Column was an Italian radical and anarchist exile group which fought with the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War...
, a mixed volunteer unit of anarchist, liberal, socialist and communist Italians. The unit was sent to the Aragon front, and participated in a victory against Francoist forces in the Battle of Monte Pelato
Battle of Monte Pelato
The Battle of Monte Pelato was an engagement of the Spanish Civil War fought on 28 August 1936. It was notable as the first major engagement of the Italian Republican volunteers of the Matteotti Battalion....
. Speaking on Barcelona Radio in November, Rosselli made famous the slogan: "Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia" ("Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy").
After falling ill, Rosselli was sent back to Paris, from where he led support for the anti-fascist cause, and proposed an even broader 'popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
' while still remaining critical of the Communist Party of Spain and the Soviet government of Stalin. In 1937, Berneri was killed by Communist forces during a purge of anarchists in Barcelona. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939, Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
partisans were forced to flee back to France.
Murder
In June 1937 Carlo Rosselli and his brother visited the French resort town of Bagnoles-de-l'OrneBagnoles-de-l'Orne
Bagnoles-de-l'Orne is a commune in the Orne department in north-western France.-Spa:This commune is famous for its hydrotherapic baths, which are known for their supposed healing powers for rheumatic, gynaecologic and circulatory problems. The origins of thermal activity are said to date back to...
. On 9 June the two were killed by a group of "cagoulards", militants of the "Cagoule
La Cagoule
La Cagoule , officially called Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire , was a violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group, active in the 1930s, and designed to attempt the overthrow of the French Third Republic...
", a French fascist group, probably on the orders of Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
.
Thought
Carlo Rosselli only published a single book, "Liberal Socialism", in his life.This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time (for which Marx's Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
, variously interpreted, was still the bible). Undoubtedly the influence of the British labour movement, which he knew well, is visible. As a result of the electoral successes of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, Rosselli was convinced that the 'norms' of liberal democracy were essential, not only in building Socialism, but also for its concrete realization. This stands in contrast to Leninist tactics, in which these rules, once power is taken, must be set aside. This 'Rossellian' synthesis is that "[parliamentary] liberalism is the method, Socialism is the aim".
The Marxist-Leninist idea of revolution founded on the dictatorship of the proletariat (which he felt, as in the Russian case, was synonymous with the dictatorship of a single party) he rejected in favour of a revolution that—as famously put in the GL program—is a coherent system of structural reforms aimed at the construction of a Socialism; that does not limit, but indeed exalts, freedom of personality and of association. Writing in his final years, Rosselli became more radical in his libertarian positions, defending the social organization of the CNT-FAI
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
he had seen in Anarchist Catalonia
Anarchist Catalonia
Anarchist Catalonia was the part of Catalonia controlled by the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo during the Spanish Civil War.-Anarchists enter government:...
and Barcelona during the civil war, and informed by the rise of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Sources
- Italian Wikipedia article:it:Carlo Rosselli.
- Pugliese, Stanislao G. (1999), Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-00053-6
- Italian Life Under Fascism: Opposition to Fascism
External links
"Carlo Rosselli e l'altro socialismo" Links and Timeline Biography of Rosselli http://web.tiscalinet.it/circologl/home.htmBiography, information and other links on Giustizia e LibertàGiustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
and Carlo Rosselli]