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The Italians and the Iwma chapter �3 The Italians and the iwma Carl Levy Introduction Italians played a significant and multi-dimensional role in the birth, evolution and death of the First International, and indeed in its multifarious afterlives: the International Working Men's Association (iwma) has also served as a milestone or foundation event for histories of Italian anarchism, syndicalism, socialism and communism.1 The Italian presence was felt simultaneously at the national, international and transnational levels from 1864 onwards. In this chapter I will first present a brief synoptic overview of the history of the iwma (in its varied forms) in Italy and abroad from 1864 to 1881. I will then exam- ine interpretations of aspects of Italian Internationalism: Mazzinian Repub- licanism and the origins of anarchism, the Italians, Bakunin and interactions with Marx and his ideas, the theory and practice of propaganda by the deed and the rise of a third-way socialism neither fully reformist nor revolutionary, neither Marxist nor anarchist. This chapter will also include some brief words on the sociology and geography of Italian Internationalism and a discussion of newer approaches that transcend the rather stale polemics between parti- sans of a Marxist or anarchist reading of Italian Internationalism and incorpo- rates themes that have enlivened the study of the Risorgimento, namely, State responses to the International, the role of transnationalism, romanticism, 1 The best overviews of the iwma in Italy are: Pier Carlo Masini, La Federazione Italiana dell’Associazione Internazionale dei Lavoratori. Atti ufficiali 1871–1880 (atti congressuali; indirizzi, proclaim, manifesti) (Milan, 1966); Pier Carlo Masini, Storia degli Anarchici Ital- iani da Bakunin a Malatesta, (Milan, (1969) 1974); Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anarchism 1864–1892 (Princeton, 1993); Renato Zangheri, Storia del socialismo italiano. Volume primo Dalla rivoluzione francese a Andrea Costa (Turin, 1993); Piero Carlo Masini, “La Prima Inter- nazionale”, in Pier Carlo Masini and Maurizio Antonioli, Il sole dell’avvenire. L’anarchismo in Italia dale origini all Prima Gurra Mondiale (Pisa, 1999). Useful for its statistics is, Emilio Gianni, L’Internazionale italiana fra libertari ed evoluzionisti. I congress della Federazione Ital- iana e della Federazione Alta Italia dell’Associazione Internazionale dei lavoratori, 1872–1880 (Naples, 2008); Pier Carlo Masini (ed.), Epistolario inedito dell’Internazionale. La Carte della Commissione di Corrispondenza dall’Archivio della Federazione Internazionale dei Lavoratori (1872–1874) (Milan, (1966) 2013). © carl levy, ���8 | doi �0.��63/978900433546�_0�4 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc License.Carl Levy - 9789004335462 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:48:59PM via free access <UN> �08 Levy feminism and the politics of gener ational friendship and the afterliv es of the International. Prehistory and Historical Overview The prehistory of the First International can be traced back to three sources. Growing national trade union organisations (largely in north western Eu- rope) and their need to create policies to coordinate the movement of labour across borders and transnational solidarity during strikes, diasporic commu- nities of refugees from the social and national struggles of 1848 and after, and the development of cosmopolitan radical, communist and proto-anarchist secret societies, brotherhoods and clubs.2 The Italians in the 1860s are largely absent from the first type of organisation, but they are present particularly in the nationalist groups which do in fact shade into formations that preach coop- eration and cross-class forms of mutuality and education. The central figure of course is Giuseppe Mazzini but the earlier influences of the more radical and class oriented Buonarrotti cannot be discounted if one recalls this previous in- fluence on Chartist circles in London and elsewhere. Mazzini and several other associates were prominent in the initial discussions which eventually led to the First International. But even if Mazzini and his circle were quickly marginalised from the iwma by Marx and his colleagues, the influence of Mazzinian concepts remained strong in the big battalions of the British trade unions, which never renounced his self-help, cooperative and educational approaches and amongst the most radical fringes of the British trade union movement. Mazzini remained a towering figure even after his negative reaction to the Paris Commune of 1871. Giuseppe Garibaldi was also a strong influence on the milieu in which the Inter- national grew at its London centre in 1864–1865. Although Garibaldi’s ideology was always quite indeterminate, his visit to London during April 1864 produced the greatest public demonstration until the protest against British intervention in the Iraq War in 2003 and supercharged the growing proletarian and middle- class radicalism of London in which the infant International’s centre grew.3 2 Recent overviews: Mathieu Léonard, L’émancipation des travailleurs. Une histoire de la Première Internationale (Paris, 2011); Marcello Musto (ed.), Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later (London, 2014); René Berthier, La Fin de La Première Internationale (Paris, 2015); Robert Graham, We Do Not Fear Anarchy-We Invoke It. The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement (Oakland, 2015). 3 An excellent recent summary is to be found in Enrico Verdecchia, Londra dei cospiratori. L’esilio londinese dei padri del Risorgimento (Milan, 2010). Carl Levy - 9789004335462 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:48:59PM via free access <UN> The Italians and the iwma �09 In Italy, the first section (1869) of the iwma and the centre of activity for Internationalism in the peninsula for the first years of its life were in Naples, albeit an early presence was noted in Sicily, however this would shift to what became the heartland of Italian anarchism and socialism before the Fascist Re- gime and indeed the heart and soul of twentieth century communism and its successors in the twenty first century: Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, the Marches and slightly later in Lazio and Liguria. The Italian iwma had a short but eventful life. Its first national conference was held in Rimini in 1872 and this was followed by national conferences in Bologna (1873), the half- clandestine gathering in Florence-Tosi (1876), Pisa (1878) and on within the Swiss border in 1880 (Chiasso) when the iwma had already been effectively illegalised earlier in the year, albeit its organisation has already been depleted and disrupted by a series of arrests in the previ- ous years. Besides regional and local congresses, the reformist strand of Italian Internationalism had an initial appearance in Swiss exile in the Ceresio (near Lugano) section of 1875 and a formal congress in Milan in 1877 which saw the foundation of the Federation of Upper Italy that can be characterised by its Milan-Mantua axis. The most notable growth of the International occurred in the wake of the Paris Commune from 1871 to 1874 when sections and regional federations creat- ed a dense web of members and sympathisers: the formal membership reached 32,450 in the spring of 1874,4 and it has been argued sympathisers (too cautious to join due to State and employer surveillance) gave it an effective following several times the declared figures. In the small to medium sized towns of Tus- cany and the Romagna, the International was a force to be reckoned with, as Naples and Sicily lost their initial predominance, on the other hand later in the 1870s, the Federation of Upper Italy gained a following in the industrialising environments of Milan, Biella and more marginally in Turin and announced the signal role of the countryside for socialism in the Po Valley, with a nuclei of braccianti (landless labourers) in the surrounds of Mantua.5 Several historians have argued that the International was the first true political party in Italy as opposed to the personal clan-like followings of the Republicans and the con- sortia of the Historic Right and Historic Left. And even if one is cautious and argues that it was a type of proto-political party, its membership in the florid early 1870s, exceeded the membership of the Italian Socialist Party in 1914. 4 Franco della Peruta, “La consistenza numerica dell’Internazionale in Italia nel 1874”, Movimento Operaio, 2,3–4 Dicember 1949–1950, pp. 104–106; Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anar- chism 1864–1892 (Princeton, 1993), pp. 75–76. 5 Most notably Pier Carlo Masini and Nunzio Pernicone. Carl Levy - 9789004335462 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 05:48:59PM via free access <UN> ��0 Levy The Italians and the Schism in the iwma The Italian iwma played an important role in the schism between so-called authoritarian and anti-authoritarian wings in 1871–1872 and this leads us to the vexed question of the role of Bakunin in the formation of the Italian Interna- tional. While it is has been shown that Carlo Pisacane, the federalist socialist hero of the Risorgimento, was not an indigenous source of libertarian social- ism or anarchism, it is also the case that Bakunin did not singlehandedly “con- vert” the Italians to his form of anarchist collectivism, because his anarchism was only formed during his sojourn in Italy in the 1860s.6 For all intents and purposes until the late 1860s, Bakunin was a radical Hegelian “Forty-Eighter” in which the springtime of the peoples was still equated with national revolts
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