Carlo Alberto Rosselli (
Rome, 16 November 1899
Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, 9 June 1937) was an Italian political leader,
journalist,
historian,
philosopher and
anti-fascist activist, first in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
and then abroad. He developed a theory of
reformist, non-
Marxist socialism inspired by the
British Labour movement that he described as "
liberal socialism". Rosselli founded the anti-fascist militant movement ''
Giustizia e Libertà''. Rosselli personally took part in combat in the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
, where he served on the
Republican side.
[Spencer Di Scala (1996). ''Italian socialism: between politics and history''. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 87. ]
Life
Birth, war and studies
Rosselli was born in
Rome to a wealthy
Tuscan Jewish family. His mother,
Amelia Pincherle Rosselli
Amelia Pincherle Rosselli (16 January 1870 – 26 December 1954) was an Italian writer.
The daughter of Giacomo Pincherle Moravia and Emilia Capon, she was born Amelia Pincherle Moravia in Venice. Her family were wealthy non-practising Jews. ...
, had been active in
republican politics and thought and had participated in the
unification of Italy. She was also a playwright and children's book author. In 1903 he was taken to
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
with his mother and siblings. During the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
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
The University of Siena ( it, Università degli Studi di Siena, abbreviation: UNISI) in Siena, Tuscany, is one of the oldest and first publicly funded universities in Italy. Originally called ''Studium Senese'', the institution was founded in 12 ...
. For some weeks he visited
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
where he studied the workings of the
British Labour Party: the Labour movement in the UK would deeply influence him.
Rise of Fascism
An active supporter of the
Unitary Socialist Party 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
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and t ...
. With the help of
Ernesto Rossi Ernesto Rossi may refer to:
* Ernesto Rossi (actor) (1827–1896), Italian actor
* Ernesto Rossi (politician)
Ernesto Rossi (25 August 1897 – 9 February 1967) was an Italian politician, journalist and anti-fascist activist. His ideas contribu ...
and
Gaetano Salvemini he founded the clandestine publication "Non mollare" (''Don't give up''). During the following months, fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe. Ernesto Rossi left the country for
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, followed by Salvemini. On 15 February 1926 fellow activist
Piero Gobetti died as an exile in
Paris for the consequences of a fascist aggression happened in
Turin the year before. 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
Alessandro "Sandro" Pertini (; 25 September 1896 – 24 February 1990) was an Italian socialist politician who served as the president of Italy from 1978 to 1985.
Early life
Born in Stella (Province of Savona) as the son of a wealthy landown ...
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
Lipari (; scn, Lìpari) is the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily, southern Italy; it is also the name of the island's main town and ''comune'', which is administratively part of the Metropol ...
(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 (4 December 1890 – 5 March 1975) was an Italian soldier, politician, anti-fascist and writer.
Biography The soldier
Lussu was born in Armungia, province of Cagliari ( Sardinia) and graduated with a degree in law in 1914. Lussu m ...
and
Francesco Fausto Nitti
Francesco Fausto Nitti (born 2 September 1899 in Pisa – died 28 May 1974, in Rome) was an Italian journalist and fighter against fascism. His father Vincenzo (1871–1957) was evangelical preacher of the Italian Methodist Church. His mother ...
. 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
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
first edition was titled ''Escape'').
Exile in Paris and Giustizia e Libertà
In 1929, with
Cianca, Lussu, Nitti, and a Parisian circle of refugees which had formed around Salvemini, Rosselli helped found the anti-fascist movement "
Giustizia e Libertà".
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 of 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
Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within ...
revisionism (Bernstein, Turati and Treves) and of classical Italian
Liberalism (
Benedetto Croce, Francisco Saverio Merlino and
Gaetano Salvemini). But it contained also a shattering attack on the
Stalinism of the
Third International, which had, with the derisive formula of "social fascism", 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
(CAI; Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), officially known as (Anti-Fascist Action Concentration), was an Italian coalition of anti-fascist groups which existed from 1927 to 1934. It was formed in Paris on 27 March 1927 with the purpose of the ...
(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 a weekly political magazine also entitled ''
Giustizia e Libertà''. Rosselli was the founding editor of the weekly and served in the post from 1934 to 1937.
[ Following his assassination in 1937 Alberto Cianca replaced him in the post.]
After the advent of Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...
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.
Spanish Civil War
In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
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
Camillo Berneri (also known as Camillo da Lodi; May 28, 1897 – May 5, 1937) was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist. He was married to Giovanna Berneri, and was father of Marie-Louise Berneri and ...
, 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 Joseph 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.
Murder
In June 1937, Carlo Rosselli and his brother visited the French resort town of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne. On 9 June, the two were killed by a group of "''cagoulards''", militants of the Cagoule, a French fascist group, with archival documents implicating Mussolini's regime in authorizing the murder. The two brothers were buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris but in the 1951 the family moved them to Italy into the Monumental Cemetery of Trespiano, a frazione of Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
.
His British-origin wife Marion Catherine Cave,[ their three children, Giovanni Andrea "John", Amelia "Melina", and Andrew, and his mother Amelia Pincherle Rosselli survived him.
]
Thought
Carlo Rosselli published only one book, ''Liberal Socialism''. This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time (for which Karl Marx's '' Das Kapital'', albeit variously understood, was still regarded as the only reliable source of political analysis and guidance). 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 which prioritize organizational power over democratic procedures. This 'Rossellian' synthesis is that " arliamentaryliberalism 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.
References
Works
* Carlo Rosselli, ''Liberal Socialism''. Edited by Nadia Urbinati. Translated by William McCuaig (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994).
Sources
* Italian Wikipedia article
*
*
* Pugliese, Stanislao G. (1999),
Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile
', Harvard University Press,
External links
*
Links and Timeline
*
*
on Giustizia e Libertà and Carlo Rosselli
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosselli, Carlo
1899 births
1937 deaths
Politicians from Rome
Italian military personnel of World War I
Members of Giustizia e Libertà
Exiled Italian politicians
20th-century Italian philosophers
Italian people of the Spanish Civil War
Italian social liberals
Assassinated Italian people
20th-century Italian Jews
Jewish socialists
University of Siena alumni
Italian anti-fascists
Italian people murdered abroad
Deaths by stabbing in France
People murdered in France
Unitary Socialist Party (Italy, 1922) politicians
20th-century Italian politicians
Terrorism deaths in France
Assassinated activists
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Jewish anti-fascists
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