Carlo Cafiero

Carlo Cafiero

Carlo Cafiero (born September 1, 1846 in Barletta , † July 17, 1892 in Nocera Inferiore ) was an Italian anarchist and revolutionary . He was a theorist of communist anarchism and a member of the First International .

Life

Carlo Cafiero was born in Barletta in Apulia . His father was a wealthy landowner and a member of the Carbonari . After completing his law degree, he went to Florence to enter the diplomatic service. When Cafiero went to London in 1870, he came into contact with the labor movement and gave up the diplomatic career. He met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , who were on the General Council of the First International at the time, and joined the International.

Cafiero was entrusted by Marx and Engels with the task of suppressing the influence of anarchism and, above all, the influence of Mikhail Bakunin in Italy and to win the Italian workers over to Marxism . Through his contacts with Italian anarchists, above all Giuseppe Fanelli , he changed sides and became an anarchist himself. He visited Bakunin in Locarno in 1872 and the two discussed for a month. A year later, Cafiero sold his inherited land and bought the Villa Baronata where Bakunin lived. It was supposed to become the center of the anarchist movement and offered a hiding place for revolutionaries wanted by the police. But shortly afterwards, Cafiero ran into financial difficulties and the house had to be sold. In 1875 he joined the editorial team of Italy's first socialist newspaper La plebe and two years later started an uprising in the province of Caserta with Errico Malatesta , Stepniak and others . They took the village of Letino without fighting and were enthusiastically received by the villagers. Arms and goods were distributed among the residents, taxes were returned to the people and official documents were burned. Cafiero gave a speech about anarchism and freedom and this speech is even said to have convinced the village pastor, who later told the churchgoers that the internationalists were the real apostles , sent by God . The next day they repeated the same thing in Gallo, but on leaving the village they were surprised by government troops and arrested. They were held for a year without charge and were eventually released.

In Switzerland, Cafiero maintained contact with Peter Kropotkin and, together with Elisée Reclus, published Bakunin's book God and the State in 1882 . In the same year he returned to Italy, as he said, to participate in an election campaign. He was arrested and went into mental crisis in prison. After a suicide attempt, his case became a scandal and he was released. After Cafiero tried to commit suicide one more time, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Florence, transferred to Nocera Inferiore , and died there on July 17, 1892.

further reading

• Erwin Oberländer (ed.), Der Anarchismus . In: "Documents of the World Revolution", Volume 4. Page 229ff. Walter-Verlag, Olten 1973. ISBN 3-7632-1725-8
• Carlo Cafiero: Die Aktion (December 1880), in: E. Oberländer (Ed.), "Documents of the World Revolution", Volume 4, p. 229ff.
• Carlo Cafiero: Anarchy and Communism (October 1880) , in the magazine: Freiheit , April 1890.
• Roberto Fineschi , Rolf Hecker : Carlo Cafiero's interpretation of Marx's Le Capital. In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New series 2000. Argument, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-88619-686-0 , pp. 114–124.

Web links

• Cafiero, Carlo in the Lexicon of Anarchy

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See on this: Erwin Oberländer (Ed.), Der Anarchismus . In: "Documents of the World Revolution", Volume 4