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Charisma and social movements: Errico Malatesta and Italian anarchism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Carl Levy
Carl Levy*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy and Politics, Goldsmiths College, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

This article examines the role of charismatic leadership in the Italian anarchist and socialist movements in the period up to the biennio rosso. It focuses on the activities of Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) in 1920 after his return from exile in London. Italian anarchism may have relied upon the informal prestige of leaders such as Malatesta to keep the sinews of its organizations together, however even if Malatesta drew enormous crowds on his return, his oratory was far less demagogic than his maximalist socialist competitors. Malatesta's charisma was a product of the supercharged atmosphere of 1920 and his reputation as the ‘socialist Garibaldi’ or the ‘Lenin of Italy’. In fact his Socratic approach, demonstrated in his written and spoken interventions, was rather closer to the educationalism of Mazzini.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 3 , Issue 2: Charisma and the cult of personality in modern Italy , November 1998 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. Ridolfi, Maurizio, Il PSI e la nascita del partito di massa, 1892–1922, Laterza, Bari, 1992.Google Scholar

2. I have dealt with Weber's relationship with Michels and his effect on the Weberian concept of charisma elsewhere. See, Levy, Carl, ‘Max Weber, anarchism and libertarian culture: personality and power politics’, in Whimster, Sam (ed.), Max Weber Between Culture and Anarchy, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998.Google Scholar

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4. Ridolfi, , Il PSI, p. 150.Google Scholar

5. The next two paragraphs are based on material in my forthcoming study see, Levy, Carl, Gramsci and the Anarchists, Berg, Oxford, 1999.Google Scholar

6. The most recent excellent history of Italian anarchism up to 1892 is Pernicone's, Nunzio Italian Anarchism 1864–1892, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1993. For surveys of Italian anarchism from 1892 to 1926 see Masini, Pier Carlo, Storia degli anarchici italiani nell'epoca degli attentati, Rizzoli Editore, Milan, 1981 and Levy, Carl, ‘Italian anarchism, 1870–1926’, in Goodway, David (ed.), For Anarchism. History, Theory, and Practice, Routledge, London, 1989, pp. 25–78. For Malatesta in exile see Levy, Carl, ‘Malatesta in exile’, Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einuadi, XV, 1981, pp. 246–80; Levy, Carl, ‘Malatesta in London: the era of dynamite’, in Sponza, Lucio and Tosi, Arturo (eds), A Century of Italian Emigration to Britain. 1880s to 1980s. Five Essays, Supplement to The Italianist, 13, 1993, pp. 25–42. For general biographies of Malatesta see Levy, , ‘Italian anarchism’, pp. 39–42; Pernicone, Italian Anarchism, throughout, but especially, pp. 244–57; Richards, Vernon, Malatesta. Life & Ideas, Freedom Press, London, 1965, reprinted several times since; Marshall, Peter, Demanding the Impossible. A History of Anarchism, London, Harper Collins, 1992, pp. 345–61. In Italian see, Nettlau, Max, Errico Malatesta, Il Martello, New York, 1922; Fabbri, Luigi, Malatesta. L'uomo e il pensiero, Edizioni RL, Naples, 1951; Landi, Gianpiero, ‘Malatesta e Merlino dalla prima internazionale alla opposizione al fascismo’, Bolletino del Museo del Risorgimento, 28, 1983, pp. 121–56; Toda, Misato, Errico Malatesta da Mazzini a Bakunin: La sua formazione giovanile nell'ambiente napoletana (1868–1873), Guida Editori, Naples, 1988; Antonioli, Maurizio, ‘Errico Malatesta, l'organizzazione operaia e il sindacalismo (1889–1914)’, in Antonioli, Maurizio (ed.), Azione diretta e organizzazione operaia. Sindacalismo rivoluzionario e anarchismo tra la fine dell'Ottocento e il fascismo, Piero Lacaita Editore, Manduria, 1990, pp. 203–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9. Ibid.Google Scholar

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14. Nettlau, , Errico Malatesta, p. 261.Google Scholar

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17. Quoted in Mantovani, , Mazurka Blu, p. 156.Google Scholar

18. For these events see, Levy, , ‘Italian anarchism’, pp. 63–4; Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, pp. 160–6.Google Scholar

19. For a general account see Finzi, Paolo, La nota persona Errico Malatesta in Italia Dicembre 1919–Luglio 1920, La Fiaccola, Ragusa, 1990.Google Scholar

20. Fabbri, , Malatesta, pp. 30–1.Google Scholar

21. Levy, , ‘Italian anarchism’, pp. 62–8.Google Scholar

22. Finzi, , La nota persona; Mantovani, , Mazurka blu. Google Scholar

23. Quoted in Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti. The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1991, p. 47. For a review of Galleani's activities in the United States see, Pernicone, Nunzio, ‘Luigi Galleani and Italian Anarchist Terrorism in the United States’, Studi Emigrazione, 20, September 1993, pp. 469–88.Google Scholar

24. Finzi, , La nota persona, p. 74.Google Scholar

25. Fabbri, , Malatesta, pp. 29–30. For a prime example of maximalist socialist rhetoric at its most demagogic see, Noiret, Serge, Massimalismo e crisi dello stato liberate. Nicola Bombacci (1879–1924), Franco Angeli, Milan, 1991.Google Scholar

26. Fabbri, , Malatesta, p. 34.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

28. Richards, , Malatesta, p. 217.Google Scholar

29. Fabbri, , Malatesta, p. 31.Google Scholar

30. Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, p. 147.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 159 Google Scholar

32. This article appeared in the anarchist newspaper of Spezia, La, Il Libertario, on January 8 1920 and in Volontà on January 16 1920.Google Scholar

33. Levy, , ‘Italian anarchism’, p. 73.Google Scholar

34. Nursey-Bray, Paul, ‘Malatesta and the anarchist revolution’, Anarchist Studies, 3, 1, 1995, pp. 25–44.Google Scholar

35. Quoted in Finzi, , La nota persona, p. 81.Google Scholar

36. Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, pp. 184–91; Levy, , Gramsci. Google Scholar

37. The anarchist was the Turinese Corrado Quaglino see, Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, p. 274. The best account of the negotiations surrounding the occupation of the factories is found in Clark's, Martin Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed, Yale University Press, Yale, Conn., 1977. I cover the role of the anarchists in Gramsci and the Anarchists. Google Scholar

38. Finzi argues that his release occurred 18 hours before the general strikes in Livorno, Pisa and La Spezia. However, the general atmosphere was certainly not conducive to a trial of Malatesta in the first half of 1920. See, Finzi, , La nota persona, p. 71.Google Scholar

39. Figure Caption. See the very interesting recent memoirs of her father by Fabbri, Luce, Luigi Fabbri. Storia d'un uomo libero, Biblioteca Franco Serantini, Pisa, 1996, p. 131.Google Scholar

40. Giulietti reported to Borghi in his cell: ‘Benito is with us too’. See, Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, p. 406.Google Scholar

41. The fullest account is quite naturally in Mantovani, , Mazurka blu.Google Scholar

42. Quoted in Levy, , ‘Malatesta in London: the era of dynamite’, p. 33. The similarities of this and other quotes in Malatesta's writings with Gramsci's notion of hegemony has been noted by Nursey-Bray, see, ‘Malatesta’.Google Scholar

43. Malatesta, Errico, ‘The Duties of the Present Hour’, Liberty, August 1894.Google Scholar

44. For an account of the trial in Benevento see, Pernicone, , Italian Anarchism, p. 144.Google Scholar

45. Mantovani, , Mazurka blu, p. 510.Google Scholar

46. Gentile, Emilio, Storia del Partito Fascista 1919–1922. Movimento e milizia, Laterza, Bari, 1989.Google Scholar