Piero Gobetti

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Piero Gobetti

Piero Gobetti (born June 19, 1901 in Turin , † February 15, 1926 in Paris ) was an Italian publicist and politician , one of the most colorful thought leaders of anti-fascism .

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In his short and eventful life he championed the ideas of radical proletarian liberalism and undogmatic communism as an extraordinarily active critic and fighter .

Life

At high school, Gobetti met his future wife Ada Prospero , who, like him, came from a wealthy merchant family. As a law student at the University of Turin, he founded his first magazine Energie nove (“New Energies”) in November 1918 at the age of 17 . In it he oriented himself both on the liberal thinking of Luigi Einaudi , as well as on Benedetto Croce's idealistic philosophy, and also advocated the progressive positions of Gaetano Salvemini's L'Unità (“The Unity”) (building up popular education, women's suffrage, etc.). At the same time, however, the Russian October Revolution also had a lasting impact on him. He was convinced that the victory of Bolshevism was to be understood as a necessary act of liberation by the people, which did not take place in Italy - even in the Risorgimento - and which, in contrast to the totalitarian - oligarchic aspirations of fascism, had to be made up for by means of fundamental popular social reforms.

Under the influence of the Turin council movement , Gobetti, who sympathized with the workers, gave up his first magazine project in the spring of 1920 in order to deepen his political convictions by studying history and philosophy. In doing so, he moved increasingly close to his former fellow student Antonio Gramsci , who became the spokesman for factory workers and a communist minority within the Socialist Party (PSI). Gobetti's collaboration on Gramsci's magazine Ordine Nuovo (“New Order”), whose theater section he took over under the pseudonym “Giuseppe Baretti”, did not result in him joining the Communist Party (PCI), which was formed in 1921 . He preferred autonomy and collective freedom achieved in the conflict of diverging opinions over the doctrinal claim to leadership of a single party.

From February 1922 to November 1925, his second magazine La Rivoluzione Liberale (“The Liberal Revolution”) appeared, in which, in addition to Gramsci, other well-known intellectuals such as Luigi Sturzo and Giustino Fortunato took part. The declared aim of the new body was to prepare for the radical renewal in politics and culture called for by Gobetti and thus to initiate the “liberal revolution” already propagated in the name. At the latest when the fascists came to power in October 1922, their anti-fascist engagement came to the fore. On the one hand, for Gobetti, fascism was just the more drastic continuation of a dubious culture of compromise with which parliamentary democracy and bourgeois liberalism had paralyzed the country since the existence of the nation. On the other hand, it represented a dangerous accumulation and potentiation of all basic evils in Italian society.

In April 1923 Gobetti founded his own publishing house ( Piero Gobetti editore ) in addition to the magazine . a. Giovanni Amendola's Una battaglia liberale , Einaudi's Le lotte del lavoro and Eugenio Montale's collection of poems Ossi di seppia have been published.

As one of the most exposed mouthpieces of the opposition, in contact with other liberal resistance groups across Italy, La Rivoluzione Liberale was fiercely opposed by the Mussolini regime. Some editions of the newspaper were confiscated and censored, and Gobetti was imprisoned several times before he was finally forced to cease publication on November 8, 1925. On September 5, 1925, he was beaten down by four members of the fascist assault detachments in front of his house and suffered serious injuries from which he could no longer recover.

With Il Baretti , he founded his third magazine in December 1924, which was mainly limited to literary topics so as not to offer any further point of attack for political persecution. It included contributions by Benedetto Croce , Eugenio Montale, Natalino Sapegno , Umberto Saba , Emilio Cecchi , Giacomo Debenedetti , Leone Ginzburg and Mario Fubini . After Gobetti's death, the magazine could appear until December 1928. He himself became a symbol of liberal anti-fascism and a role model for many intellectuals ( Carlo Levi , Norberto Bobbio and others).

At the beginning of 1926 Gobetti went into exile in Paris and transferred all of his publishing activities to the anonymous society Le Edizioni del Baretti . On the night of February 15-16, 1926, he died of the consequences of his injuries. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

Works

  • Dal bolscevismo al fascismo (1923)
  • Felice Casorati Pittore (1923)
  • La filosofia politica di Vittorio Alfieri (1923)
  • La frusta teatrale (1923)
  • La rivoluzione liberale. Saggio sulla lotta politica in Italia (1924)
  • Matteotti (1924)
  • Opere critiche ( 1926/1927 )
  • Paradosso dello spirito russo (1926)
  • Risorgimento senza eroi (1926)
  • Piero e Ada Gobetti: Nella tua breve esistenza. Lettere 1918-1926 . Letters (1991)
  • Carteggio 1918-1922 . Letters (2003)

literature

  • Giancarlo Bergami: Guida bibliografica degli scritti su Piero Gobetti (1918-1975) . Einaudi, Turin 1981.
  • Alberto Cabella: Elogio della libertà. Biografia di Piero Gobetti . Ed. Il Punto, Turin 1998, ISBN 88-86425-57-0 .
  • Marco Gervasoni: L'intellettuale come eroe. Piero Gobetti e le culture del Novecento . La Nuova Italia Ed., Florence 2000, ISBN 88-221-4240-3 , ( Biblioteca di storia 81), ( Dall'azionismo agli azionisti 6).
  • Cesare Pianciola: Piero Gobetti. Biografia per immagini . Gribaudo, Cavallermaggiore (Cuneo) 2001, ISBN 88-8058-152-X .
  • Paolo Bagnoli: Il metodo della libertà. Piero Gobetti tra eresia e rivoluzione . Diabasis, Reggio Emilia 2003, ISBN 88-8103-388-7 , ( Biblioteca di cultura civile 4).
  • Valentina Pazé (Ed.): Cent'anni. Piero Gobetti nella storia d'Italia . Atti del Convegno di studi, Torino 8 - 9 November 2001. Franco Angeli, Milan 2004, ISBN 88-464-5681-5 , ( Centro studi Piero Gobetti 17).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gobetti, Piero
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baretti, Giuseppe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian publicist, politician and anti-fascist
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1926
Place of death Paris