apostles and agitators Italy's marxist revolutionary tradition

286 Pages·2003·1.01 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
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,
x (cid:127) Preface
maiming,andmurderofpoliticians,policemen,journalists,university
professors,andjudges—occurredonthesamescaleanyplaceelse.His-
tory alone provides the means for understanding the unique state of
affairsthatexistedtheninItaly.Thecountryhadanextremeleft-wing
valuesysteminplacethatgaveformtothecontentoftheyoungergen-
eration’s anger, frustration, and disappointment. The precise issues
andproblemsthatconcernedthemareimportantandneedtobeun-
derstood, but the form this vast eruption of violence took originated
intheMarxistrevolutionarytradition.
An ideology comes into being as a result of many historical factors.
Foranideologythatisnativetoacountry,theappearanceandrecep-
tion of foundational texts and the political response they engender
can best be understood in the context of the country’s long-term so-
cioeconomicconditionsandculturallife.Insuchacasetextsandcon-
textsinfluenceeachotherinvaryingdegreesofreciprocity.TheMarx-
istrevolutionarytradition,however,wasnotnativetoItaly.TheItalians
imported it, mainly from Germany and Russia. Moreover, the influ-
enceofforeignthinkersandactivistslongcontinuedtobeofvitalim-
portancetoItalianMarxists.Thesocialcontextofanideologymatters
decisively in the long run, and the Marxist revolutionary tradition in
Italy is not an exception to the rule. Nevertheless, for this particular
story the ideas came first, from abroad, and then the intellectual and
activist figures examined in this book adapted them to the evolving
Italianenvironment.
Although Marx himself found intellectuals to be a useless category
forhistoricalanalysis—themodeofproductionhavingadetermining
effect on culture and thought—the history of his movement in Italy
contradictshim.AntonioGramsci,thecountry’sforemostMarxist,un-
derstoodthemaster’sshortcomingsasanhistorianofideas.Inthehe-
gemonytheoryofthePrisonNotebooks,Gramsciemphasizedthepivotal
role of intellectuals in the culture wars that help to decide the out-
come of history. He thus connected Marxism to the well-established
scholarly canons to be found in the classic works of Edmund Burke,
AlexisdeTocqueville,JacobBurckhardt,MaxWeber,KarlMannheim,
andBenedettoCroce.Iconceivedmybookwiththetheoreticalguide-
lines of these thinkers uppermost in mind, principally that all politics
ensues from a vision of the world and depends on intellectuals for its
articulationandpreservationthroughtime.
Preface (cid:127) xi
ThestorybeginswithMarx,thecentralfigureofthecommunistrev-
olutionarytradition.Thefirstchapterdealswiththeprincipalfeatures
ofcommunisttheoryasitcametogetherinMarx’swritings.Herethe
aim is to survey the concepts and vocabulary from which Marx’s fol-
lowers in Italy derived their often discordant worldviews, not to pres-
entacompleteoverviewofhislifeandthought.
From the beginning, Italian Marxism developed a split personality.
On the one hand, reformists attempted to harmonize Marxism with
existingdemocraticandliberaltraditions.Ontheother,revolutionar-
ies thought that Marxism would replace democracy and liberalism, as
those terms had come to be understood in the nineteenth century,
with a completely new proletarian society and political consciousness.
Thisbookdealswiththerevolutionaries.Thefocuswillbeontheirar-
gumentsandactionsagainstthecapitaliststatusquo,thenon-Marxist
socialists, and the Marxist reformists. The defining figures of the
Marxist revolutionary tradition in Italy were Carlo Cafiero, Antonio
Labriola, Arturo Labriola, Benito Mussolini, Amadeo Bordiga, Anto-
nio Gramsci, and Palmiro Togliatti. All of them stand out as histori-
cal actors of high importance in the crusade for a Marxist revolution
inItaly.Onlythroughahistoricalexaminationoftheirwritingsandca-
reers can the complex unfolding of the Marxist revolutionary tradi-
tion in Italy be understood. Their hopes and dreams belong not only
tothepagesofdistanthistorybuttotherecordofcontemporarytimes
aswell.
APOSTLES AND AGITATORS
chapter 1
Karl Marx: The Word
ThediscoveryofgoldandsilverinAmerica,theextirpation,
enslavement,andentombmentinminesoftheaboriginalpopulation,
thebeginningoftheconquestandlootingoftheEastIndies,theturning
ofAfricaintoawarrenforthecommercialhuntingofblack-skins,
signalisedtherosydawnoftheeraofcapitalistproduction.
—KarlMarx,Capital
For an intellectual who seethed with ambition and never lacked a ro-
bust sense of self-worth, Marx made surprisingly modest claims about
the originality of his ideas. A remarkably consistent thinker through-
outhiscareer,Marxgrandlysoughttoexplainandtocreateaclassless
communistsocietythatwouldbebroughtaboutbytheinitiativeofthe
proletariat, actuating the natural trend of history and directing it to-
ward its ultimate destination. Yet in a letter of 5 March 1852 to his
friend Joseph Weydemeyer Marx denied that he had said anything
new about the class struggle or its economic character, the very ideas
most often associated with his name. These ideas, he insisted, had
long been known to historians. “What I did that was new,” Marx told
Weydemeyer, “was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only
boundupwithparticularhistoricalphasesinthedevelopmentofpro-
duction,2)thattheclassstrugglenecessarilyleadstothedictatorship
of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the
transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” By
Marx’s own count, two-thirds of his true intellectual legacy had to do
withthedictatorshipoftheproletariat.1
Marx’sself-estimateofhisoriginalityasathinkeroddlycoincides,in
significant measure, with the way his foremost antagonist on the left,
MikhailBakunin,thoughtabouthim.NotingthatbecauseMarxwasa
German and a Jew he had to be an authoritarian from head to foot,
Bakunin reduced the uniqueness of Marxism to the concept of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. In Statism and Anarchy (1873) he at-
1
2 (cid:127) APOSTLES AND AGITATORS
tacked this concept on anarchist grounds: “If there is to be a state
there will be those who are ruled and those who are slaves.” Bakunin
mocked Marx’s naive assurances that the dictatorship of the proletar-
iat would consist of workers: “Yes, possibly of former workers who, as
soon as they become the rulers or the representatives of the people,
willceasetobeworkersandwilllookdownattheplainworkingmasses
from the governing heights of the state; they will no longer represent
the people, but only themselves and their claim to rulership over the
people. Marx and his followers, in short, lacked an understanding of
how political power actually worked. To the end of his life, through
declining health, prestige, and influence, Bakunin sought to unmask
thedictatorshipoftheproletariatas“theworstofalldespoticgovern-
ments.”2
Prophetic as Bakunin’s comments were, they did not address the
real sources of strength and attractiveness in Marxism. In fact, the
originality of Marx’s thinking went far beyond the point he made in
the letter to Weydemeyer, to say nothing of Bakunin’s invective-laced
characterization of him. A brilliant university student in philosophy,
MarxdrankdeepofHegelianism.Inparticular,Hegel’sdialecticalthe-
oryofhistoryfascinatedhim.BythistheoryHegelmeantthathistory
is process, not the immediate reality that our senses and common
sense apprehend. History, in other words, is moving by stages toward
theAbsolute,towardGod,andwemustnotbedeceivedintothinking
thatourimmediatefieldofvisionconstitutesrealityinthefullsenseof
the term. By putting the famously headstanding Hegel on his feet,
Marxnotonlysubstitutedthefullnessoftheproletariat’sdevelopment
for man’s at-one-ness with God in Hegelian theory; he set in motion
ideas that would redirect history. The question of how Marx devel-
opedhisworld-shakingideasmustbeansweredbeforewecanproceed
to an examination of their impact on the Marxist revolutionary tradi-
tioninItaly.
Early Writings
Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier, Prussia. Although descended
from rabbis on both sides of his family, he grew up in the Lutheran
faith,aconsequenceofhislawyerfather’sprofessionallyinspiredcon-
version in 1817 from Judaism to the Evangelical Established Church.3