Critica Sociale

Last updated

Critica Sociale
Critica Sociale.jpg
Typeweekly newspaper
Owner(s)Giornalisti Editori scarl
PublisherUgo Finetti, Sergio Scalpelli
EditorStefano Carluccio
Founded15 January 1891
Political alignment Social-democratic, formerly Marxist/Socialist
Ceased publicationSuspended 1926, revived 1946
Headquarters Milan [1]
Website www.criticasociale.net

Critica Sociale is a left-wing Italian newspaper. It is linked to the Italian Socialist Party. Before Benito Mussolini banned opposition newspapers in 1926, Critica Sociale was a prominent supporter of the original Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which included a spectrum of views from socialism to Marxism.

Contents

History

From republicanism to socialism

Arcangelo Ghisleri founded a republican political journal called Cuore e Critica in the late 19th century. A former employee, Filippo Turati, succeeded Ghisleri on 15 January 1891 and renamed it Critica Sociale. On 1 January 1893 it moved its political stance, towards socialism. It backed the founding of the PSI at the party's Genoa Conference and changed its masthead to read: "Weekly review of social, political and literary studies of scientific Socialism".

It became the most influential Marxist review in Italy from 1891 to 1898, tackling all the serious public problems of 1890s Italy: banking scandals, repression of the Fasci Siciliani unrest, the colonial war in Africa, and food riots. It featured writing by the most influential socialist thinkers in Italy and abroad, including Enrico Ferri, Lelio Basso, Paul Lafargue, Ivanoe Bonomi, Antonio Graziadei, Antonio Labriola and many others. From 1 May 1898 to 1 July 1899, it was seized by the government and its editor was briefly imprisoned.

In 1901 the journal restarted, as Turati, its editors, and the PSI were entering parliament with the support of Giovanni Giolitti's powerful Liberal Party. In this phase the review became the expression of the reformist tendency inside of the PSI.

From 1902 to 1913 the review was involved in the debate over anti-clerical school reform; discussing the role teachers, their organisation, school building and hygiene, while opposing government budgets that favoured the Ministry of War over the needs of public education.

Critica Sociale adopted, in discussing literature, a positivist and Marxist critical methodology and, convinced of the importance of literature, education and libraries, printed the sociological writing of Pietro Gori beside the poetry of Ada Negri and serialized novels by Italo Svevo. Even if seen as lagging the ideological-literary fashions of the age, Critica Sociale tried to inform its readers on new tendencies, giving judgments and appraisals filtered through its socialist outlook.

Showing little acceptance of the then popular ideas of Nietzsche and d'Annunzio, Critica Sociale editors were instead convinced that intellectuals must open themselves up to and promote new modern ideas while inculcating culture with 'scientific' truth and the requirements of a life led for the benefit of society.

World War I and opposition to fascism

When Italy entered the First World War in May 1915, Critica Sociale did not lose its neutrality nor did it lose its reformist ideals when faced with the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917. While not denying the legitimacy of Vladimir Lenin's revolutionary method, Critica Sociale editors argued it was inapplicable to the Italian situation. But from 1917, the positions of the two wings the PSI became intractable. At the Livorno Conference of January 1921, the nascent Marxist-Leninist wing led by Amadeo Bordiga left the PSI to become the Italian Communist Party. Critica Sociale continued to support the reformist Unitary Socialist Party.

Benito Mussolini's rise to power was a second blow to Critica Sociale. Press censorship and seizures by the government led to irregular publication.

Deprived of resources, writers such as Turati, Anna Kulischov, Giacomo Matteotti, Claudio Treves, and Carlo Rosselli continued to defend the democratic order which was being swept away by the Fascists, and total censorship loomed. Its last political article was published the day after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti on 10 June 1924, an act which Mussolini used to take absolute power in Italy.

Thereafter the editors sheltered behind inoffensive cultural and doctrinale essays. The next year the Fascist government pronounced a blanket ban on opposition press; the last issue was dated 16 September - 15 October 1926.

Revival after World War II

Following the fall of the Fascist regime in 1946, it was reestablished, and has remained in print under a succession of editors-in-chief: Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi, Umberto Giovine and Carlo Tognoli (with Paolo Brera as deputy editor). It is currently the official publication of the New Italian Socialist Party, a minor social-democratic political party. In recent years it has paid particular attention to the reinvention of British centre-left politics under New Labour, and has published articles by both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gaetano Salvemini</span> Italian politician (1873–1957)

Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian Socialist and antifascist politician, historian and writer. Born in a family of modest means, he became an acclaimed historian both in Italy and abroad, particularly in the United States, after he was forced into exile by Mussolini's fascist regime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giacomo Matteotti</span> Early 20th-century Italian socialist politician

Giacomo Matteotti was an Italian socialist politician. On 30 May 1924, he openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Fascists committed fraud in the recently held elections, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes. Eleven days later he was kidnapped and killed by Fascists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arturo Labriola</span> Italian politician

Arturo Labriola was an Italian revolutionary syndicalist and socialist politician and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian Socialist Party</span> Political party that existed in Italy from 1892 to 1994

The Italian Socialist Party was a social-democratic and democratic-socialist political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country. Founded in Genoa in 1892, the PSI was from the beginning a big tent of Italy's political left and socialism, ranging from the revolutionary socialism of Andrea Costa to the Marxist-inspired reformist socialism of Filippo Turati and the anarchism of Anna Kuliscioff. Under Turati's leadership, the party was a frequent ally of the Italian Republican Party and the Italian Radical Party at the parliamentary level, while lately entering in dialogue with the remnants of the Historical Left and the Liberal Union during Giovanni Giolitti's governments to ensure representation for the labour movement and the working class. In the 1900s and 1910s, the PSI achieved significant electoral success, becoming Italy's first party in 1919 and during the country's Biennio Rosso in 1921, when it was victim of violent paramilitary activities from the far right, and was not able to move the country in the revolutionary direction it wanted.

The Aventine Secession was the withdrawal of the parliament opposition, mainly comprising the Italian Socialist Party, Italian Liberal Party, Italian People's Party and Italian Communist Party, from the Chamber of Deputies in 1924–25, following the murder of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti by fascists on June 10, 1924.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Kuliscioff</span> Russian feminist revolutionary (1857–1925)

Anna Kuliscioff was a Russian-born Italian revolutionary, a prominent feminist, an anarchist influenced by Mikhail Bakunin, and eventually a Marxist socialist militant. She was mainly active in Italy, where she was one of the first women to graduate in medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelica Balabanoff</span> Russian-Jewish-Italian dissident writer, social activist, politician, and editor

Angelica Balabanoff was a Russian-Italian communist and social democratic activist of Jewish origin. She served as secretary of the Comintern from 1919 to 1920, and later became a political party leader in Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filippo Turati</span> Italian politician (1857–1932)

Filippo Turati was an Italian sociologist, criminologist, poet and socialist politician.

Avanti! is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since 25 December 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts, the party-newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oddino Morgari</span> Italian socialist journalist and politician

Oddino Morgari was an Italian socialist journalist and politician. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1897 to 1929, for eight legislatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlo Rosselli</span> Italian politician, journalist, historian, philosopher and anti-fascist activist

Carlo Alberto Rosselli was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian, philosopher and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy and then abroad. He developed a theory of reformist, non-Marxist socialism inspired by the British Labour movement that he described as "liberal socialism". Rosselli founded the anti-fascist militant movement Giustizia e Libertà. Rosselli personally took part in combat in the Spanish Civil War, where he served on the Republican side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudio Treves</span>

Claudio Treves was an Italian politician and journalist.

Quarto Stato is an Italian political review (1946–1950), closely associated with the Partito Socialista Italiano, the Italian Socialist Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enrico Ferri (criminologist)</span> Italian criminologist (1856–1929)

Enrico Ferri was an Italian criminologist, socialist and student of Cesare Lombroso, the founder of the Italian school of criminology. While Lombroso researched the purported physiological factors that motivated criminals, Ferri investigated social and economic aspects. He served as editor of the socialist daily Avanti! and, in 1884, saw his book Criminal Sociology published. Later, his work served as the basis for Argentina’s penal code of 1921. Although at first he rejected the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Ferri later became one of Mussolini and his National Fascist Party's main external supporters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unitary Socialist Party (Italy, 1922)</span> Italian political party

The Unitary Socialist Party was a democratic socialist political party in Italy, active from 1922 to 1930.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicola Bombacci</span> Italian politician and revolutionary} (1879–1945)

Nicola Bombacci was an Italian Marxist revolutionary and later a fascist politician. He began in the Italian Socialist Party as an opponent of the reformist wing and became a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921, sitting on the fifteen-man Central Committee. During the latter part of his life, particularly during the Second World War, Bombacci allied with Benito Mussolini and the Italian Social Republic against the Allied invasion of Italy. He met his death after being shot by communist partisans and his body was subsequently strung up in Piazzale Loreto.

Events from the year 1922 in Italy.

<i>The Assassination of Matteotti</i> 1973 Italian film

The Assassination of Matteotti is a 1973 Italian historical drama film directed by Florestano Vancini. The film tells the events that led to the tragic end of Giacomo Matteotti and to the establishment of the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in Italy. It was awarded with the Special Jury Prize at the 8th Moscow International Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ettore Ciccotti</span> Italian politician

Ettore Ciccotti was a historian, lecturer and politician from Italy, member of both the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Italian Senate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XVII Congress of the Italian Socialist Party</span>

The XVII Congress of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was held at the Carlo Goldoni Theatre in Livorno from 15 to 21 January 1921. After tumultuous proceedings the congress resulted in a split in the party. The communist faction, faced with the refusal of the majority to accept the Comintern line and expel reformists and gradualists, abandoned the PSI and established a new Italian Communist Party.

References

  1. 1 2 "Critica Sociale - Chi Siamo". Critica Sociale. Retrieved 5 May 2008.

Bibliography