Apostles and Agitators: Italy's Marxist Revolutionary Tradition

300 Pages·2003·0.83 MB·English

by  Richard Drake

APOSTLES AND AGITATORS

RICHARD DRAKE
Apostles
and Agitators
Italy’s Marxist
Revolutionary Tradition
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge,Massachusetts,andLondon,England
2003
Copyright©2003bythePresidentandFellowsofHarvardCollege
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Drake,Richard1942–
Apostlesandagitators : Italy’sMarxistrevolutionarytradition / RichardDrake.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-674-01036-1(alk.paper)
1.Socialism—Italy—History. 2.Communism—Italy—History. I.Title.
HX286.5.D73 2003
335.43′092′245—dc21 2002191344
For Laure

Contents
Preface ix
1 KarlMarx:
TheWord 1
2 CarloCafiero:
ProphetofAnarchistCommunism 29
3 AntonioLabriola:
ThePhilosopherofPraxis 56
4 ArturoLabriola:
TheRevolutionaryBetrayed 84
5 BenitoMussolini:
TheIndispensableRevolutionary 111
6 AmadeoBordiga:
TheRevolutionaryasAnti-Realpolitiker 138
7 AntonioGramsci:
TheRevolutionaryasCentrist 166
8 PalmiroTogliatti:
TheRevolutionaryasCulturalImpresario 194
Coda:
RevolutionandTerrorisminContemporaryItaly 222
Notes 233
Acknowledgments 261
Index 265

Preface
In 1978 the Red Brigades murdered Aldo Moro, who for twenty years
had been Italy’s leading political figure. The judicial investigation of
this spectacular crime resulted in thousands of pages of testimony by
defendantsfromacross-sectionofItaliansociety.Universityintellectu-
als and high school dropouts, members of the working class and job-
less drifters, middle-class professionals and layabouts of indefinable
class status testified at the trials. All of the defendants spoke about
theirdreamsofaMarxistrevolution.Toexaminetherecordintheju-
dicial archives is to discover just how many such dreamers there were
in Italy. The documents also confirm that large numbers of Italians
thrilledtotheprospectofcapitalism’sviolentoverthrow.Theubiquity
ofthedream,itsforceandbasicallyunchangeablecharacter,suggesta
rootedness in the culture for which Italy’s long national experience
with revolutionary Marxism offers the most persuasive account. The
emergence and development of this tradition, its protagonists, and
theirlegacyincontemporaryItalyarethethemesthatIaddressinthis
book.
Only a people of the most vivid imagination, idealistic yearnings,
and unconsoled injuries could have produced such a tradition and
acted on it in the intense way that the Italians did. Other peoples in
the 1960s rebelled against the war in Vietnam, racism, consumerism,
andsexualrepression,buttheItalianssufferedintheseyearsandtheir
terrible aftermath from record levels of politicized violence. Nothing
like the Red Brigade’s reign of terror—involving the intimidation,