Francesco Saverio Merlino (born 9 September 1856 in Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

; deceased 30 June 1930 in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

) was an Italian lawyer, anarchist activist and theorist of libertarian socialism.

Life

Merlino started to participate in the militant anarchist movement in Italy during his university studies.

In 1884 he went into exile in England and also travelled to the USA. After he returned to Italy in 1894 he was arrested and had to spend two years in prison.

In the following years he developed his theory of libertarian socialism

Libertarian socialism

Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...

 in arguments with his friend Errico Malatesta

Errico Malatesta

Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...

.

In 1900 he defended Gaetano Bresci

Gaetano Bresci

Gaetano Bresci was an Italian American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. Bresci was the first European regicide not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been abolished since 1889.-Militancy:...

, an Italian-American anarchist who assassinated the king of Italy, Umberto I

Umberto I of Italy

Umberto I or Humbert I , nicknamed the Good , was the King of Italy from 9 January 1878 until his death. He was deeply loathed in far-left circles, especially among anarchists, because of his conservatism and support of the Bava-Beccaris massacre in Milan...

, in response to the Bava-Beccaris massacre

Bava-Beccaris massacre

The Bava Beccaris massacre, named after the Italian General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris, refers to the repression of widespread riots in Milan in May 1898....

. Despite successfully killing the monarch, Bresci was not sentenced to death, making him the only person to ever kill a monarch (without toppling the monarchy) and not be executed.

Major works

• Socialismo o monopolismo? (1887)
• L’Italie telle qu’elle est (1890)
• gli opuscoli Necessità e basi di un accordo (1892)
• L’individua-lismo nell’anarchismo (1893)
• Pro e contro il socialismo (1897)
• L’utopia collettivista e la crisi del “socialismo scientifico” (1898)
• Formes et essence du socialisme (1898)
• Fascismo e democrazia (1924)
• Politica e Magistratura dal 1860 ad oggi in Italia (1925)
• Il socialismo senza Marx. Studi e polemiche per una revisione della dottrina socialista (1897-1930), Massimiliano Boni, Bologna 1974.
• Il problema economico e politico del socialismo. (1948)