Italian anarchism as a movement began primarily
from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe
Fanelli, and Errico Malatesta.
From there it expanded to include illegalist
individualist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism.
It participated in the biennio rosso and survived
fascism.
The synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation
appeared after the war, and the old factions
alongside platformism and insurrectionary
anarchism continue today.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
When the Italian section of the International
Workingman's Association was formed in 1869,
new and more famous (or infamous) anarchists
began appearing on the scene, notable individuals
include Carlo Cafiero and Errico Malatesta.
Within the Italian section of the IWMA the
ideas of Anarchist Communism as a clear, cohesive
movement were formed.
At an 1876 conference in Florence, the Italian
section of the International Workingman's
Association declared the principles of Anarchist-Communism,
proclaiming:
The Italian Federation considers the collective
property of the products of labour as the
necessary complement to the collectivist programme,
the aid of all for the satisfaction of the
needs of each being the only rule of production
and consumption which corresponds to the principle
of solidarity.
The federal congress at Florence has eloquently
demonstrated the opinion of the Italian International
on this point...
It was also in Italy that early Anarchist
attempts at revolution began.
Bakunin was involved in an insurrection taking
place in Florence in 1869, and in a failed
attempt at insurrection in 1874 in Bologna.
In 1877, Errico Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero,
and Costa began an attempt at revolution in
Italy.
They liberated two villages in Campania before
being put down by the military.Italian Anarchism
was first materialized in the Italian section
of the First International.
The popularity of the IWA skyrocketed with
the Paris Commune.
Because of limited knowledge of the actual
events taking place, many militants had utopian
visions of the nature of the Commune, leading
to a popularity of Anarchist and other Socialist
ideas.
The radical republican Giuseppe Mazzini condemned
the Commune because it represented everything
he hated: class struggle, mass violence, atheism,
and materialism.
Mazzini's condemnation helped to increase
the defection of many republicans to the ranks
of the IWA.As the split between Marx and Bakunin
became more prominent, the Italian section
of the IWA primarily took the side of Bakunin
against the authoritarian behavior of Marx's
General Council.
Bakunin's defense of the Paris Commune against
the attacks of Mazzini and Marx and Engels's
incompetence in challenging them led to Bakuninism
becoming the prominent strain of thought in
the Italian IWA.
In 1872, Bakunin, and Cafiero helped to organize
a national federation of Italian IWA sections.
All the delegates at the founding congress
excluding Carlo Terzaghi (a police spy) and
two Garibaldian socialists, were Anarchists.
=== Errico Malatesta ===
Errico Malatesta was an important Italian
anarchist.
He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers
and was also a friend of Mikhail Bakunin.
Partly via his enthusiasm for the Paris Commune
and partly via his friendship with Carmelo
Palladino, he joined the Naples section of
the International Workingmen's Association
that same year, as well as teaching himself
to be a mechanic and electrician.
In 1872 he met Mikhail Bakunin, with whom
he participated in the St Imier congress of
the International.
For the next four years, Malatesta helped
spread Internationalist propaganda in Italy;
he was imprisoned twice for these activities.
In April 1877, Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero, the
Russian Stepniak and about 30 others started
an insurrection in the province of Benevento,
taking the villages of Letino and Gallo without
a struggle.
The revolutionaries burned tax registers and
declared the end of the King's reign, and
were met by enthusiasm: even a local priest
showed his support.
In Florence he founded the weekly anarchist
paper La Questione Sociale (The Social Question)
in which his most popular pamphlet, Fra Contadini
(Among Farmers), first appeared.
He lived in Buenos Aires from 1885, where
he resumed publication of La Questione Sociale,
and was involved in the founding of the first
militant workers' union in Argentina, the
Bakers Union, and left an anarchist impression
in the workers' movements there for years
to come.
Returning to Europe in 1889, he published
a newspaper called L'Associazione in Nice
until he was forced to flee to London.
During this time he wrote several important
pamphlets, including L'Anarchia.
Malatesta then took part in the International
Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam (1907), where
he debated in particular with Pierre Monatte
on the relation between anarchism and syndicalism
(or trade-unionism).
After the First World War, Malatesta eventually
returned to Italy for the final time.
Two years after his return, in 1921, the Italian
government imprisoned him, again, although
he was released two months before the fascists
came to power.
From 1924 until 1926, when Benito Mussolini
silenced all independent press, Malatesta
published the journal Pensiero e Volontà,
although he was harassed and the journal suffered
from government censorship.
He was to spend his remaining years leading
a relatively quiet life, earning a living
as an electrician.
After years of suffering from a weak respiratory
system and regular bronchial attacks, he developed
bronchial pneumonia from which he died after
a few weeks, despite being given 1500 litres
of oxygen in his last five hours.
He died on Friday, 22 July 1932.
=== The Socialist Revolutionary Anarchist
Party ===
The Socialist Revolutionary Anarchist Party
(Italian: Partito Socialista Anarchico Rivoluzionario)
was a short-lived Italian political party.
Founded in January 1891 at the Congress of
Capolago, at which around 80 delegates from
Italian socialist and anarchist groups participated.
Notable figures included, Errico Malatesta,
Luigi Galleani, Amilcare Cipriani, Andrea
Costa and Filippo Turati.
Malatesta envisioned the PSAR as the Italian
federation of a new, anarchist and socialist,
International Workingmen's Association.
=== The founding of Unione Sindacale Italiana
===
Unione Sindacale Italiana is an Italian trade
union that was founded in 1912, after a group
of workers, previously affiliated with the
Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGI),
met in Modena and declared themselves linked
to the legacy of the First International,
and later joined the anarcho-syndicalist International
Workers Association (IWA; Associazione Internazionale
dei Lavoratori in Italian or AIT - Asociación
Internacional de los Trabajadores in the common
Spanish reference).
The most left-wing camere del lavoro adhered
in rapid succession to the USI, and it engaged
in all major political battles for labor rights
- without ever adopting the militarist attitudes
present with other trade unions.
Nonetheless, after the outbreak of World War
I, USI was shaken by the dispute around the
issue of Italy's intervention in the conflict
on the Entente Powers' side.
The problem was made acute by the presence
of eminent pro-intervention, national-syndicalist
voices inside the body: Alceste De Ambris,
Filippo Corridoni, and, initially, Giuseppe
Di Vittorio.
The union managed to maintain its opposition
to militarism, under the leadership of Armando
Borghi and Alberto Meschi.
=== The Unione Anarchica Italiana and the
biennio rosso ===
In the Italian events known as the biennio
rosso the anarcho-syndicalist trade union
Unione Sindacale Italiana "grew to 800,000
members and the influence of the Italian Anarchist
Union (20,000 members plus Umanita Nova, its
daily paper) grew accordingly...Anarchists
were the first to suggest occupying workplaces.
=== Italian individualist anarchism and illegalism
===
Renzo Novatore was an important individualist
anarchist who collaborated in numerous anarchist
journals and participated in futurism avant-garde
currents.
Novatore collaborated in the individualist
anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the
young stirnerist illegalist Bruno Filippi
Novatore belonged to the leftist section of
the avant-garde movement of Futurism alongside
other individualist anarcho-futurists such
as Dante Carnesecchi, Leda Rafanelli, Auro
d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.
Pietro Bruzzi published the journal L'Individualista
in the 1920s alongside Ugo Fedeli and Francesco
Ghezzi but who fell to fascist forces later.
Pietro Bruzzi also collaborated with the Italian
American individualist anarchist publication
Eresia of New York City edited by Enrico Arrigoni.
=== The Fascist regime and afterwards ===
When the war ended, USI peaked in numbers
(it was during this time that it joined the
IWA, becoming known as the USI-AIT).
It became a major opponent of Benito Mussolini
and the Fascist regime, fighting street battles
with the Blackshirts - culminating in the
August 1922 riots of Parma, when the USI-AIT
faced Italo Balbo and his Arditi.
USI-AIT was outlawed by Mussolini in 1926,
but resumed its activities in clandestinity
and exile.
It fought against Francisco Franco in the
Spanish Civil War, alongside the Confederación
Nacional del Trabajo and Federación Anarquista
Ibérica, and took part in the Spanish Revolution.
After World War II and the proclamation of
the Republic, former members of the union
followed the guidelines of the Federazione
Anarchica Italiana that called for the creation
of a unitary movement, and joined the Confederazione
Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL).
The prominent Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri,
who volunteered to fight against Franco was
killed instead in Spain by gunmen associated
with the Communist Party of Spain.
=== Postwar years and today ===
In the immediate postwar years there existed
failed attempts at a resurgence of anarchosyndicalism.
The Italian Anarchist Federation was founded
in 1945 in Carrara.
It adopted an "Associative Pact" and the "Anarchist
Program" of Errico Malatesta.
It decided to publish the weekly Umanità
Nova retaking the name of the journal published
by Errico Malatesta.
Inside the FAI a tendency grouped as (GAAP
- Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action)
led by Pier Carlo Masini was founded which
"proposed a Libertarian Party with an anarchist
theory and practice adapted to the new economic,
political and social reality of post-war Italy,
with an internationalist outlook and effective
presence in the workplaces...The GAAP allied
themselves with a similar development within
the French Anarchist movement, the Federation
Communiste Libertaire, whose leading light
was Georges Fontenis."Another tendency which
didn´t identify either with the more classical
FAI or with the GAAP started to emerge as
local groups.
These groups emphasized direct action, informal
affinity groups and expropriation for financing
anarchist activity.
From within these groups the influential insurrectionary
anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno will emerge
influenced by the practice of the Spanish
exiled anarchist Josep Lluís i Facerias.In
the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation
in Carrara, 1965 a group decided to split
off from this organization and creates the
Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica which was mostly
composed of individualist anarchists who disagreed
with important aspects of the "Associative
Pact" and was critical of anarcho-syndicalism.
The GIA published the bi-weekly L'Internazionale.
Another group split off from the Anarchist
Federation and regrouped as Gruppi Anarchici
Federati.
The GAF later starts publishing Interrogations
and A Rivista Anarchica.
In the early seventies a platformist tendency
emerged within the Italian Anarchist Federation
which argued for more strategic coherence
and social insertion in the workers movement
while rejecting the syntesist "Associative
Pact" of Malatesta which the FAI adhered to.
These groups started organizing themselves
outside the FAI in organizations such as O.R.A.
from Liguria which organized a Congress attended
by 250 delegates of grupos from 60 locations.
This movement was influential in the autonomia
movements of the seventies.
They published Fronte Libertario della lotta
di classe in Bologna and Comunismo libertario
from Modena.Another group tended to emphasize
anarcho-syndicalism and published Per l'Azione
Diretta from Florence and Bolletino d'Informazione
Anarcosindicalista.
The Federation of Anarchist Communists (Federazione
dei Comunisti Anarchici), or FdCA, was established
in 1985 in Italy from the fusion of the Organizzazione
Rivoluzionaria Anarchica (Revolutionary Anarchist
Organisation) and the Unione dei Comunisti
Anarchici della Toscana (Tuscan Union of Anarchist
Communists).
In 1986, the Congress of ORA/UCAT adopted
the name Federation of Anarchist Communists.
The synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation
and the platformist Federation of Anarchist
Communists continue existing today but insurrectionary
anarchism continues to be relevant as the
recent establishment of the Informal Anarchist
Federation shows.
== Timeline ==
1865 Foundation of the International Revolutionary
Brotherhood.
1869 Foundation of the Italian section of
the International Workingman's Association.
1876 - The red-and-black flag was first used
by the Italian section of the First International
1891: Foundation of the Socialist Revolutionary
Anarchist Party
1900: The Anarchist Gaetano Bresci assassinates
King Umberto I of Italy.
1912: Foundation of the Unione Sindacale Italiana
trade-union (joined the International Workers
Association founded in 1922)
1918: Beginning of the Italian Factory Occupations
known as biennio rosso
1920: Publication of the newspaper Umanità
Nova (New Humanity)
1920: Founding of the Unione Anarchica Italiana
1936–1939: Sébastien Faure Century, contingent
of the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil
War
1945: Establishment of the Italian Anarchist
Federation
1986: Foundation in Italy of the Federation
of Anarchist Communists
2003: Foundation of the Informal Anarchist
Federation
== See also ==
Federazione Anarchica Italiana
Federation of Anarchist Communists
European individualist anarchism#Italy
Autonomism
Fasci Siciliani
== Footnotes ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Anarchy in Italy
"Anarchism in Italy".
Spunk Library.
Italian anarchists outside Italy at the Kate
Sharpley Library
Anarchism in Italy at the Kate Sharpley Library
