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Carlo Rosselli | |
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| Born | Carlo Alberto Rosselli (1899-11-16)16 November 1899 Rome, Italy |
| Died | 9 June 1937(1937-06-09) (aged 37) Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, France |
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| Nationality | Italian |
| Notable works | Liberal Socialism |
Carlo Alberto Rosselli (16 November 1899 – 9 June 1937) was an Italiansocialist political leader andanti-fascist activist, first inItaly and then abroad. He was also ajournalist,historian, andphilosopher who developed a theory ofreformist non-Marxist socialism inspired by the Britishlabour movement that he described as "liberal socialism". Rosselli founded the anti-fascist militant movementGiustizia e Libertà. Rosselli personally took part in combat in theSpanish Civil War, where he served on theRepublican side. He was murdered, alongside his brother, byfascists inFrance on the order ofBenito Mussolini
Rosselli was born inRome to a wealthyTuscan Jewish family. His mother,Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, had been active inrepublican politics and thought and had participated in theunification of Italy. She was also a playwright and children's book author. In 1903, he was taken toFlorence with his mother and siblings. During theFirst World War, he joined theItalian Armed Forces and fought in the alpine campaign, rising to the rank ofsecond lieutenant.[1]
After the war, thanks to his brotherNello, Rosselli studied in Florence withGaetano 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 ofFilippo Turati, in contrast to therevolutionary socialist thinking ofGiacinto Menotti Serrati. In 1921, he graduated with a degree in political sciences from theUniversity of Florence with a thesis aboutsyndicalism. He later undertook a law degree that he would pursue inTurin andMilan, where he metLuigi Einaudi andPiero Gobetti. He graduated in 1923 from theUniversity of Siena. For some weeks, he visitedLondon where he studied the workings of the BritishLabour Party, which would deeply influence him.
An active supporter of theUnitary Socialist Party (PSU) of Turati,Giacomo Matteotti, andClaudio Treves, Rosselli began writing forCritica Sociale (Social Criticism). a review edited by Turati. After the murder of Matteotti, Rosselli pushed for a more active opposition toItalian fascism. With the help of Salvemini andErnesto Rossi, he founded the clandestine publicationNon mollare (Do Not Give Up). During the following months,fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe. Rossi left the country for France, followed by Salvemini. On 15 February 1926, fellow activistPiero Gobetti died as an exile inParis for the consequences of a fascist aggression which happened in Turin the year before. Still in Italy, Rosselli andPietro Nenni founded the reviewQuarto Stato (Fourth Estate), which was banned after a few months.
Later in 1926, Rosselli organized withSandro Pertini andFerruccio 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 ofLipari (1927). It was then that Rosselli began to write his most famous work,Socialismo liberale (Liberal Socialism). In July 1929, he escaped toTunisia, from where he travelled to France, and the community of Italian antifascists includingEmilio Lussu andFrancesco Fausto Nitti. Nitti later portrayed Rosselli's adventurous escape in the bookLe nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione (Our Prisons and Our Escape) in an Italian edition in 1946 (the 1929 English first edition was titledEscape).
In 1929, withAlberto Cianca, Lussu, Nitti, and apartisan circle of refugees that had formed around Salvemini, Rosselli helped found the anti-fascist movementGiustizia e Libertà (GL).[2] GL published various numbers of the review and the notebooksGiustizia e Libertà 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 FrenchSocialisme libéral.
The book was at once a passionate critique of Marxism, a creative synthesis of thedemocratic socialist,Marxist revisionism (Eduard Bernstein, Turati, and Treves) and of classical Italianliberalism (Benedetto Croce,[3] Francisco Saverio Merlino, and Salvemini). It also contained a shattering attack on theStalinism of theThird International, which had lumped togethersocial democracy,bourgeois liberalism, and fascism with the derisive formula of "social fascism". As a result,Palmiro Togliatti, one of the most important leaders of theCommunist Party of Italy (PCd'I) and later theItalian Communist Party (PCI), definedLiberal Socialism as "libellous anti-socialism" and Rosselli "a reactionary ideologue who has nothing to do with the working class".
GL joined theConcentrazione Antifascista Italiana (Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), a union of all the non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, and nationalist) trying to promote and coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy. They also first published the weekly political magazineGiustizia e Libertà. Rosselli was the founding editor of the weekly and served in the post from 1934 to 1937.[4] Following his assassination in 1937, Alberto Cianca replaced him in the post.[4]
After the advent ofNazism in Germany, 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. They wrote that Spain seemed the destiny of all fascist states. In July 1936, theSpanish Civil War erupted as the fascist-monarchical led army attempted a coup d'état against the republican government of thePopular Front. Rosselli helped lead the Italian anti-fascist supporters of theSpanish Republican Army, 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 their own brigades of volunteers to support theSecond Spanish Republic.[5]
WithCamillo Berneri, Rosselli headed theMatteotti Battalion, a mixed volunteer unit of Italiananarchist, liberal, socialist, andcommunist. The unit was sent to theAragon front, and participated in a victory againstFrancoist forces in theBattle of Monte Pelato. Speaking on Barcelona Radio in November, Rosselli made famous the sloganOggi 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 theCommunist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Soviet government ofJoseph Stalin. In 1937, Berneri was killed by Communist forces during a purge of anarchists inBarcelona. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939, GL partisans were forced to flee back to France.
In June 1937, Rosselli and his brother visited the French resort town ofBagnoles-de-l'Orne. On 9 June, the two were killed by a group ofcagoulards, militants ofLa Cagoule, aFrench fascist group. Archival documents later implicated Mussolini's regime in authorizing the murder.[6][7][8][9] The two brothers were buried in thePère Lachaise Cemetery in Paris; in 1951, the family moved them to Italy into theMonumental Cemetery of Trespiano, afrazione ofFlorence.[10] His British-origin wife Marion Catherine Cave,[2] their three children, Giovanni Andrea "John",Amelia "Melina", and Andrew, and his mother Amelia Pincherle Rosselli survived him.
Rosselli published only one book,Liberal Socialism. This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time for whichKarl Marx'sDas Kapital, albeit variously understood, was still regarded as the main reliable source of political analysis and guidance. The influence of the Britishlabour movement, which he knew well, was significant. As a result of the electoral successes of the Labour Party, Rosselli was convinced that the norms ofliberal democracy were essential, not only in building socialism but also for its concrete realization. This stood in contrast toLeninist tactics, which prioritize organizational power over democratic procedures. This Rossellian synthesis is that "[parliamentary] liberalism is the method, Socialism is the aim".
As ademocratic socialist, Rosselli rejected theMarxist–Leninist idea of revolution founded on thedictatorship of the proletariat (which he felt, as in the Russian case, was synonymous with the dictatorship of a single party) in favour of a revolution that—as famously put in the GL program—must be a coherent system of structural reforms aimed at the construction of a socialism, which does not limit but is intended to exalt the freedoms of personality and of association. Writing in his final years, Rosselli became more radical in his positions, defending the social organization of theCNT-FAI he had seen inanarchist Catalonia and Barcelona during the civil war, and informed by the rise ofNazi Germany.
