‘Sovversivismo’: The radical political culture of otherness in Liberal Italy

Abstract

This article examines the concept of sovversivismo (‘subversiveness’) and the sovversivo (subversive) in Liberal Italy. The term could mean spontaneous unfocussed rebellion and a general mood against the State and the ruling class. Drawing its intellectual sustenance and personnel from a territory that stretched through central Italy, subversive culture gave the anarchists a purchase over the larger socialist movement, as the Red Week of 1914 demonstrated. The subversive also attracted avant-garde intellectuals and artists in Milan, Florence, Rome and elsewhere. Before 1914 Benito Mussolini tried to meld the intellectual subversives with the popular and working-class subversives from its geographical heartland in order to outflank the leadership of the PSI. The article discusses the analyses of sovversivo/sovversivismo by Antonio Gramsci and Errico Malatesta, but sovversivismo was also employed by the polite classes in 1914–1915 during the interventionist crisis and used to overwhelm the Liberal State between 1919 and 1926.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Michael Freeden and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and the hospitality of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where as a Member (2006–2007) I finished the final version of this paper.

Notes

 1. Earlier versions of this paper were given at ‘Italians and their Others: Representations, Identities and Exchanges at Home and Abroad’, Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS), Second Biennial Conference, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 3–5 July 2003 and for the Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism, 56th Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Reading, 3–6 April 2006.

 2. F. Andreucci, ‘“Subversiveness” and anti-fascism in Italy’, in R. Samuel (Ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 201.

 3. T. Abse, Sovversivi e fascisti a Livorno: Lotta politica e sociale 1918–1922 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991), pp. 170–171; T. Abse, ‘Italy’, in S. Berger and D. Broughton (Eds), The Force of Labour: the Western European Labour Movement and the Working Class in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 137–170 (see esp. pp. 158–196), and for a discussion of the literature see A. Sonnessa, ‘Working class defence organisation, anti-Fascist resistance and the Arditi del Popolo in Turin, 1919–1922’, European History Quarterly, 33 (2003), pp. 183–218.

 4. C. Levy, ‘Italian anarchism, 1870–1926’, in D. Goodway (Ed.), For Anarchism. History, Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 25–78; C. Levy, ‘Currents of Italian syndicalism before 1926’, International Review of Social History, 45 (2000), pp. 209–250; C. Levy; ‘The anarchist assassin in Italian history: 1870s to 1930s’, in S. Gundle and L. Rinaldi (Eds), Assassinations, Murders and Mysteries in Modern Italy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

 5. U. Carpi, ‘Sovversivisimo antiborghese e borghesi sovversivi: appunti sull'ideologia del primo fascismo’, Lavoro Critico, 25 (1982), pp. 5–38; G. Berghaus, Futurism and Politics. Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996), pp. 1–91.

 6. For a good account of the young Mussolini and the subversives see Renzo De Felice's first and best volume of his immense and unmanageable biography, Mussolini. Il rivoluzionario (Turin: Einaudi, 1965) and more recently the manageable and enjoyable single volume by Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (London: Arnold, 2002), Chapters 1–2. Still worth consulting is Gaudens Megaro's exposé of the subversive Duce written in 1938: Mussolini was not amused. See, G. Megaro, Mussolini in the Making (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938).

 7. See Roberto Vivarelli's magnum opus on the collapse of liberal Italy, where he uses this as a major theme of his narrative, R. Vivarelli, Storia delle origini del fascism. L'Italia dalla Grande Guerra alla Marcia sulla Roma (Bologna: il Mulino, 1991), Vols. 1–2.

 8. For general overviews see G.I. Kertzer, ‘Religion and Society, 1789–1892’, in J.A. Davis (Ed.), Italy in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp, 181–206; A.A. Kelikian, ‘The Church and Catholicism’, in A. Lyttelton (Ed.), Liberal and Fascist Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). pp. 44–61.

 9. J. Dickie, ‘Darkest Italy’: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); N.M. Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); C. Levy, ‘Italy and its racisms’, forthcoming.

10. J. Schneider (Ed.), Italy's ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country in One Country (Oxford: Berg, 1998).

11. There is an immense literature on this topic, but see the interesting case study of Rome where anarchists, anti-clericals, republicans and socialists united in opposition to the Vatican and the Catholic aristocracy, G. Orsina, Anticlericalismo e democrazia. Storia del Partito Radicale in Italia a Roma, 1901–1914 (Savverio Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2002).

12. C. Levy, Antonio Gramsci. Marxism, Modernity and Machiavelli (Cambridge, MA: Polity, forthcoming).

13. C. Levy, Gramsci and the Anarchists (Oxford/New York: Berg/NYU Press, 1999), pp. 99–102.

14. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers), p. 272.

15. For in-depth analysis in the Notebooks, see A. Gramsci, in V. Gerratana (Ed.), Quaderni del carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), Vol. 1, p. 323, Vol. 2, p. 777; Vol. 3, p. 2108.

16. Gramsci, ibid. p. 326.

17. C. Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, “political education” and the problem of Italian national consciousness, 1860–1896’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2 (1997), pp. 141–166. This is a major theme of his forthcoming history of Italy covering the period 1860–1915.

18. C. Levy, ‘The people and the professors: socialism and the educated middle classes in Italy, 1870–1915’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 6 (2001), pp. 195–208.

19. Quoted from G. Paletta, ‘Strategia rivendicativa di fabbrica e rapporti di delega nelle organizzazioni operaie milanese (1900–1906)’, in A. Riosa (Ed.), Il socialismo riformista a Milano agli inizi del secolo (Milan: Angeli, 1981), p. 180. For the biography of Treves see, A. Casali, Claudio Treves. Dalla giovinezza torinese alla guerra di Libia (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1989), pp. 109–114.

20. For the Turinese context in the 1890s see, M. Scavino, Con la penna e con la lima. Operai e intellettuali nella nascita del socialismo torinese (1889–1993) (Turin: Paravia, 1999). There are several good biographies of Lombroso in Italian, the most recent English account is M. Gibson, Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

21. Levy, 2000, op. cit., Ref. 4, pp. 236–244.

22. For an excellent discussion about the quest for normality in a startling comparative study of Italy and Japan see R.J. Samuels, Machiavelli's Children. Leaders & Their Legacies in Italy & Japan (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2003).

23. See Christopher Duggan's magisterial biography of Francesco Crispi, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901. From Nation to Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

24. I discuss this precisely in the context of the anarchists in Levy, op. cit., Ref. 13. There is an extensive literature on senso buono and senso comune, but see the Italian ‘Gramsci lexicon’, F. Frosini and G. Luguori (Eds), Le parole di Gramsci: per un lessico dei Quaderni del Carcere (Rome: Carocci, 2004).

25. Gramsci, op. cit., Ref. 15, Vol. 1, p. 330.

26. M. Antonioli, Pietro Gori, il cavaliere errante dell'anarchia (Pisa: Franco Serantini, 1995).

27. S. Pivato, Bella ciao, Canto e politica nella storia d'Italia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2005), pp. 55, 57, 67–68, 71, 171, 201.

28. A good account of Malatesta's ideology can be found in P. Nursey-Bray, ‘Malatesta and the anarchist revolution’, Anarchist Studies, 3 (1995), pp. 25–44.

29. See the various treatments of Galleani: P.C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici dal Bakunin a Malatesta (1862–1892) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1974); P. C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici nell'epoca degli attentati (Milan: Rizzoli, 1981); P. Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti. The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); N. Pernicone, Italian Anarchism 1864–1892 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); N. Pernicone, ‘Luigi Galleani and Italian anarchist terrorism in the United States’, Studi Emigrazione, 30 (1993), pp. 469–488; N. Whelehan, ‘Political violence and morality in anarchist theory and practice: Luigi Galleani and Peter Kropotkin in comparative perspective’, Anarchist Studies, 13 (2005), pp. 147–168; N. Pernicone, Carlo Tresca. Portrait of a Rebel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

30. Quoted in Pernicone, 1993, ibid., p. 155.

31. Quoted in ibid., p. 186.

32. Quoted in ibid., p. 186.

33. Masini 1974, op. cit., Ref. 29, p. 166.

34. E. Malatesta, ‘Dichiarazioni Autodifesa alle Assise di Milano. Un Ricordo di Ancona’, Errico Malatesta Pagine di lotta quotidiana, Scritti 2 volume e scritti vari 1919/1923 (Edizioni del Risveglio: Geneva, 1935, reprinted Carrara: Movimento Anarchico, Tipografia ‘Il Seme’, 1975), p. 312.

35. Masini, 1981, op. cit, Ref. 29, p. 74; C. Levy, ‘Malatesta in London: The era of dynamite’, in L. Sponza and A. Tosi (Eds), A Century of Italian Emigration to Britain 1880s to 1980, Five Essays supplement to The Italianist, 13 (1993), pp. 25–42.

36. Quoted in V. Mantovani, Mazurka Blu (Milan: Rusconi, 1979), p. 81.

37. E. Malatesta, Pagine di lotta quotidiana. Scritti. Vol. 1. Umanità Nova 1920/22 (Edizioni del Risveglio: Geneva, 1935, reprinted Carrara: Movimento Anarchico Italiano, Tipografico: ‘Il Seme’, 1975), pp. 33, 51–52, 85–86.

38. Malatesta, ibid., p. 85.

39. Levy, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 43.

40. C. Levy, ‘Charisma and social movements: Errico Malatesta and Italian anarchism’, Modern Italy, 3 (1998), pp. 205–217.

41. F. Tuccari, Il dilemma della democrazia moderna. Max Weber e Robert Michels (Bari: Laterza, 1993).

42. Gramsci, Vol. 1, op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 233.

43. Levy, op. cit., Ref. 12.

44. Levy, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 156.

45. Levy, op. cit., Ref. 40, p. 210.

46. E. Malatesta, ‘Grazie, ma basta’, Il Libertario, 8 January 1920 and Volontà, 16 January 1920.

47. Reversible populism in Italy's ceti medi is discussed in Renzo del Carria's highly ideological 1968 period piece, Proletari senza rivoluzione: storia delle classi subalterne italiane dal 1860 al 1950, 5 volumes (Milan: Edizioni Oriente, 1970–1979). It was also a major theme of the great historian Leo Valiani who in turn was shaped by Carlo Rosselli and the Giustizia e Libertà anti-Fascist organization of the inter-war period.

48. Gramsci, op. cit., Ref. 14.

49. Snapshots of the culture of ‘subversiveness’ can be found in M. Isnenghi, L'Italia in piazza. I luoghi della piazza. I luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai giorni nostri (Milan: Mondadori, 1994); M. Isnenghi (Ed.), I luoghi della memoria (Bari: Laterza, 1998), see various entries for ‘May Day’, etc.

50. Levy, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 198. For the Milanese context see, G. Rosa, ‘La cultura letteraria della modernità’, in D. Biagazzi and M. Meriggi (Eds), Storia d'Italia. Le regioni dall'Unità a oggi. La Lombardia (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), pp. 1919–2000.

51. Berghaus, op. cit., Ref. 5.

52. Levy, 1989, op. cit., Ref. 4, pp. 42–43.

53. A good account of Mussolini's attraction to a certain type of Stirnerite anarchism can be found in P. V. Cannistraro, ‘Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti and the anarchists: the transatlantic context’, Journal of Modern History, 68 (1996), pp. 31–62.

54. For the socialist youth movement see E. Craver, ‘The third generation: the young socialists in Italy, 1907–1915’, Canadian Journal of History, 31 (1996), pp. 199–226. Also see Bosworth, op. cit., Ref. 6 and Megaro, op. cit., Ref. 6.

55. M. Ridolfi, IL PSI e la nascita del partito di massa, 1892–1922 (Bari: Laterza, 1992), p. 192.

56. S. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), p. 43.

57. P.C. Masini, ‘Anarchici italiani tra interventismo e disfattismo rivoluzionario’, Rivista storica del socialismo, 5 (1959), pp. 208–212; G. Cerrito, L'antimilitarismo anarchico in Italia nel primo ventennio del secolo (Pistoia: RL, 1968), ‘Gli anarchici italiani e la prima guerra mondiale. Lettere di Luigi Fabbri e di Cesare Agonstinelli e di Nella Giacomelli (1914–1915)’, Rivista storica dell'anarchismo, 2 (1995), pp. 77–87; A. Luparini, Anarchici di Mussolini: dalla sinistra al fascismo tra rivoluzione e revisionismo (Montespertoli: MIR, 2001); S.P. Whitaker, The Anarchist-Individualist Origins of Italian Fascism (New York: Peter Lang, 2002).

58. I summarize these events in Levy, 2000, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 224. For an in-depth account see Vivarelli, op. cit., Ref. 7

59. G. Salotti, Giuseppe Giulietti (Rome: Bonacci, 1982). For a taste of his bizarre mind, see Giuliettti's memoirs, Pax Mundi: La Federazione Marinara nella bufera fascista, e soluzione della questione sociale con sindacati produttori come la ‘Garibaldi’ (Naples: Rispoli, 1944).

60. Bombacci is an excellent exemplar of Gramsci's sovversivo. Starting out as Maximalist Socialist and Communist he ended his days with Mussolini peddling the socialization of the means of production in the Salò Republic and being ignored by his Nazi protectors; see S. Noiret, Massimalismo e crisi dello stato liberale. Nicola Bombacci (1879–1924) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991).

61. For the most recent account, see C. Salaris, Alla festa della rivoluzione. Artisti e libertari con D'Annunzio a Fiume (Bologna: il Mulino, 2002). I discuss a similar cultural milieu in antebellum Germany, see C. Levy, ‘Max Weber, anarchism and libertarian culture: personality and power politics’, in S. Whimster (Ed.), Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 83–119.

62. M. Rossi, Arditi, non gendarmi! Dall'arditismo di guerra agli Arditi del Popolo, 1917/1921 (Pisa: Biblioteca Franco Serantini, 1997); E. Franceangeli, Arditi del Popolo: Argo Secondari e la prima organizzazione antifascista, 1917–1922 (Rome, Ordradek, 2000). For the conspiracies see L. Di Lembo, Guerra di classe e lotta umana. L'anarchismo in Italia dal biennio rosso alla guerra di Spagna (1919–1939) (Pisa: Biblioteca Franco Serantini, 2001).

63. Pernicone, 1993, op. cit., Ref. 29, p. 144; V. Mantovani, Mazurka blu. La strage del Diana (Milan: Rusconi Libri, 1979), p. 510.

64. For the composition of the Fascist squads see Richard Bosworth's account in, Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship (London: Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 121–183.

65. Levy, 2000, op. cit., Ref. 4, pp. 241–243.

66. Rosselli's connections to the Mazzinian and anarchist traditions of sovversivismo are approached in a fine biography; see S. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli. Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

67. G. Bedani and B. Haddock (Eds), The Politics of Italian National Identity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000); J. Martin, ‘Italian liberal socialism: anti-fascism and the third way’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 7 (2002), pp. 333–350; J. Martin, ‘Ideology and Antagonism in Modern Italy: Poststructuralist Reflections’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), pp. 145–160.