Piero Gobetti

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

In his short and eventful life he championed as an extremely active critic and fighters the ideas of radical proletarian liberalism or a non-dogmatic communism.

Life

In high school learned Gobetti Ada Prospero, his future wife, who, like him came from a wealthy merchant family. As a law student at the University of Turin he founded in November 1918, at the age of 17 years, his first magazine energy nove ( "New Energy "). In this he was based both on the liberal thinking Luigi Einaudi, as well as to Benedetto Croce's idealistic philosophy and also entered (structure of public education, women's suffrage, and others) for the progressive positions of Gaetano Salve Minis L' Unità ( "Unity "). At the same time also marked the Russian October Revolution a lasting influence on him. After his conviction, the victory of Bolshevism was to be understood as a necessary liberation of the people, in Italy - had not taken place and was in contrast to the totalitarian oligarchic aspirations of fascism catch up through basic, emanating from the people social reforms still - even in the Risorgimento.

Under the impression of the Turin council movement of sympathizing with the workers Gobetti gave up his first magazine project in the spring of 1920, to further his political beliefs in a historical and philosophical studies. He highlighted increasingly close to his former classmates Antonio Gramsci, who became the spokesman for the factory worker and a communist minority within the Socialist Party (PSI). Gobettis participation in Gramsci's magazine Ordine Nuovo ( " New Order " ), the theater section, he assumed the pseudonym " Giuseppe Baretti ," however, did not mean that he created in 1921 the Communist Party ( PCI) joined. He became a favorite in the conflict of divergent opinions autonomy and collective freedom against the doctrinaire leadership of a single party.

From February 1922 to November 1925 he published his second magazine La Rivoluzione liberals ( " The liberal revolution " ), in which participated alongside Gramsci also other well-known intellectuals such as Luigi Sturzo and Giustino Fortunato. The stated aim of the new body was to prepare the required by Gobetti radical renewal in politics and culture, and thus propagated in its name initiate " liberal revolution ". At the latest with the rise of the fascists in October 1922 moved her anti -fascist activities, however, in the foreground. Firstly, the fascism of Gobetti was just the drastic continuation of a questionable culture of compromise, with the parliamentary democracy and bourgeois liberalism paralyzed the country since the founding of the nation. For another, it represented a dangerous accumulation and potentiation of all the fundamental evil of the Italian Society dar.

In April 1923 Gobetti founded in supplement of the magazine its own publishing house ( Piero Gobetti editore ), which among other Giovanni Amendola Una Battaglia liberal, Einaudi Le lotte del lavoro and Eugenio Montale's poetry collection Ossi di seppia published.

As one of the most prominent opposition mouthpieces, which was liberal with other resistance groups in Italy in conjunction, La Rivoluzione liberals was sharply attacked by the Mussolini regime. Some issues of the newspaper were confiscated and censored and Gobetti came several times in prison before he had to permanently discontinue their appearance on 8 November 1925. On September 5, 1925, he was beaten down from four members of the fascist storm troopers outside his house and suffered serious injuries from which he never recovered.

With Il Baretti he founded in December 1924 his third magazine that mainly confined to literary subjects, to offer no further point of attack as political persecution. In it, among other posts by Benedetto Croce, Eugenio Montale, Natalino Sapegno, Umberto Saba, Emilio Cecchi, Giacomo Debenedetti, Leone Ginzburg and Mario Fubini were read. About Gobettis death, the magazine could still appear to December 1928. He himself became a symbol of liberal anti-fascism and the 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 its publishing activities of the anonymous society Le Edizioni del Baretti. In the night of 15 to 16 February 1926, he died of his injuries. He was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Works

• Dal bolscevismo fascismo al (1923 )
• Felice Casorati pittore (1923 )
• La filosofia politica di Vittorio Alfieri (1923 )
• La frusta teatrale (1923 )
• La rivoluzione liberal. 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)