LIBERAL SOCIALISM Carlo Rosselli LIBERAL SOCIALISM Edited by Nadia Urbinati Translated by William MeCuaig in collaboration with Fondazione Rosselli of Torino PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY COPYRIGHT © 1994 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICESTER, WEST SUSSEX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOCING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA ROSSELLI, CARLO, 1899-1937. [SOCIALISMO LIBERALE. ENGLISH] LIBERAL SOCIALISM / CARLO ROSSELLI; EDITED BY NADIA URBINATI ; TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM MCCUAIG. P. CM. INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 0-691-08650-8 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER)—ISBN 0-691-02560-6 (PBK. : ALK. PAPER) 1. SOCIALISM. 2. LIBERALISM. I. URBINATI, N. (NADIA), 1955- II TITLE. HX72.R67I3 1994 335—DC20 93-42365 CIP PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK HAS BEEN AIDED BY A GRANT FROM THE ROSSELLI FOUNDATION THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN LINOTRON PALATINO PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS ARE PRINTED ON ACID-FREE PAPER AND MEET THE GUIDELINES FOR PERMANENCE AND DURABILITY OF THE COMMITTEE ON PRODUCTION GUIDELINES FOR BOOK LONGEVITY OF THE COUNCIL ON LIBRARY RESOURCES PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 13579 10 8642 135 79 10 8642 (PBK) To Norberto Bobbio CONTENTS PREFACE IX INTRODUCTION: ANOTHER SOCIALISM Nadia Urbinati A Short Memorable Life xm Beyond the Ideological Walls xxxm A Permanent War of Position i. LIBERAL SOCIALISM Carlo Rosselli EDITORIAL NOTE BY JOHN ROSSELLI 3 PREFACE 5 ONE The Marxist System 7 TWO From Marxism to Revisionism 17 THREE Marxism and Revisionism in Italy 33 FOUR The Conclusion of Revisionism 54 FIVE Overcoming Marxism 71 SIX Liberal Socialism 83 SEVEN The Struggle for Liberty 103 EIGHT For a New Socialism 114 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 129 INDEX 131 PREFACE HE EXPRESSION "liberal socialism" may sound a little odd to an American reader. It sounded odd to the Italians when TRosselli published this book in 1930. Liberal socialism had, and indeed has, a strange sound to many who are accustomed to current political terminology. Even more strange may be the idea of presenting socialism, as Rosselli did, as a medium for promoting democracy. Nonetheless, in western Europe, socialism was the actual path of de­ velopment whereby the process of democratization was anything but natural. Compared with the previous Utopias of ideal cities, the nov­ elty of modern socialism lie in the fact that it became a true school of democracy for those people who had always been kept out of civil and political life, who did not have a voice to denounce injustice, but only hoped for charity; and who, in the very moment they received charity, were deprived of full citizenship. They needed to invent a language of social rights. This language conveyed a strong sense of dignity, be­ cause it did away with relationships based on noblesse oblige benevo­ lence. Social rights were not an aberration of the liberal state, but a consequence of the liberal state developing into a democratic one. Socialist movements contributed to this evolution. It was, as Rosselli said, a "specification of democracy," because it did not stress the limits of democracy, but its potential. In this sense, socialism was a "like exigency" to that expressed by liberalism in its constitutive era. After sixty years, these words sound all but outdated. Yet Liberal Socialism remains a powerful text that compels us to rethink both the notions and roles of liberalism and socialism. In the face of the crisis of socialist ideology, as well as the unsatisfactory performance of our democracies, Rosselli's book might suggest useful theoretical and polit­ ical clarifications. Confronted with the triumph of fascism and the crisis of the 1930s, when the old was dead and the new was unable to come to light, Rosselli was able to extract the spirit of both liberalism and socialism from the history of previous centuries. He challenged his fellow citizens by asking them to commit themselves to that spirit and renounce the search for the certainty of truth. There was a good deal of voluntarism and perhaps a grain of the pleasure of action in his mes­ sage. But it was necessary. As far as the western world is concerned, the Cold War did not end fruitlessly. Proposals for widening the areas of political activity as well as dissociating socialism from Marxism and perceiving it as a constitutive part of the democratic tradition, are a way X PREFACE of keeping alive the socialist ideal nowadays, and also strengthening our democracies. This book has been made possible by the generous help of Isaiah Berlin, Amy Gutmann, Albert O. Hirschman and Michael Walzer, who recommended it to Princeton University Press, and by the Fon- dazione Rosselli in Turin—in particular its Director, Riccardo Viale, and Maddalena Bafile—which has generously supported its publica­ tion. I wish to express my most sincere gratitude for this support. I worked on this book at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where I greatly profited from the supervision and the comments of Michael Walzer, Albert O. Hirschman, Wendy Brown, James Rule and Monique Canto-Sperber. To Peter Euben, George Kateb, Alan Ryan, Mary L. Shanley, and Danilo Zolo who have discussed liberalism and socialism with me, my sincere thanks. I owe a special debt to William McCuaig for his accurate translation, which captures both the letter and the spirit of Rosselli's text; and to Dalia Geffen, Ruthe Foster and Ann Himmelberger Wald for their patient editorial advice. The idea of translating Rosselli's book into English occurred to me in Princeton—but my interest in liberal socialism originated in Italy, where I discussed this project with Franco Sbarberi, whom I would like to thank for his advice and his friendship. Maurizio Viroli deserves a special mention, for without him, this English edition of Rosselli's book would have perhaps remained merely a desire. But the inspiration for this book came from Norberto Bobbio, who has been an invaluable teacher over the years, and has read and com­ mented on the introductory essay. Recalling the relevance Rosselli's intuition had for many of his generation, Bobbio recently wrote that those who have committed themselves to the ideal of a liberal socialism have always experienced a condition of exile: for its founders, during the Fascist regime, it was a political exile; for its followers, during the decades of the Cold War, a moral exile in their own country. Liberal Socialism is a book for those who, in various ways, lived in or experi­ ence a state of exile. I cannot but dedicate the first English edition to Norberto Bobbio. Princeton, April 1993 INTRODUCTION ANOTHER SOCIALISM Nadia Urbinati A Short Memorable Life Indubitably there are circumstances in which new wills . can only fructify by becoming aware . of their antagonism with previous wills. Such a case always arises when a new generation has an active wish to differentiate itself from the older generation by assigning another goal to its life. For then people are thinking differently, because they are feeling differently; they are feeling differently, because they want to be different. (.Henri De Man, 1926) arlo Rosselli was a socialist before becoming a liberal socialist. He was a sui generis socialist, because from the beginning Csocialism for him was a moral ideal, free of Marxist orthodoxy. Rosselli's first explicit adherence to socialist ideas goes back to 1921, when he attended the Congress of the Italian Socialist Party in Livorno (where the Communist wing led by Antonio Gramsci and Amedeo Bordiga seceded). In a postcard to his mother he wrote that he "felt a new being vibrating within [himjself."1 From that point on, Rosselli devoted his intellectual and political efforts to providing the socialist movement with a new perspective, one that would replace the deter­ ministic vision of Marxism largely adopted by the Continental socialist leaders at the end of the nineteenth century. His efforts bore fruit during the opposition to fascism, but their roots have to be sought elsewhere, in his family, in the cultural life of Florence in the 1910s and 1920s, and in the experience of the First World War. Carlo Rosselli was born in Rome on November 16, 1899, to a Jewish family with strong Mazzinian and liberal traditions. Some members of his father's family, the Rosselli-Nathans, had been exiled to London, where they became close collaborators of Giuseppe Mazzini, who died in Pisa in 1872, in the house of Rosselli's great-uncle Pellegrino Rosselli. Carlo's mother, Amelia Pincherle, brought into the family the liberal tradition of the Risorgimento. Her influence on her three male children was profound, particularly after she left her husband and moved from Rome to Florence in 1903. Amelia Rosselli was a talented and well-known playwright, an assid- 1 Nicola Tmnici^lui, Ciirh> Rowllt tinll'intervnitismoti "Giustizin e Liberia" (Bari: L.iti'rza, 1968), pp. 11-12. XIV INTRODUCTION uous habituee of the nationalistic circles and avant-garde literary clubs that flourished in Florence during the first years of the century. Like many Italians, Amelia saw World War I as the fulfillment of the Risorgi- mento epic, the chance to complete the unification of the country by bringing in the northeastern regions of Trento and Trieste. Her patrio­ tism was also affected by the liberation of the ghettos, which was promoted by the government of Rome. Like other Jews of her genera­ tion, Amelia experienced the first