Carlo Cafiero

Carlo Cafiero ( born September 1, 1846 in Barletta, † July 17, 1892 in Nocera Inferiore ) was an Italian anarchist and revolutionary. He was theoretician of the 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 member of the Carbonari. After graduating from law school, he went to Florence to enter the diplomatic service. When Cafiero in 1870 went to London, he came into contact with the labor movement and gave the diplomatic career. He met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels know who were at that time the General Council of the First International, and joined the International at.

Cafiero was entrusted by Marx and Engels with the task to reduce the influence of anarchism and especially the influence of Mikhail Bakunin in Italy and winning the Italian workers for Marxism. Through his contacts with Italian anarchists, led by Giuseppe Fanelli, he switched sides and became an anarchist. He visited Bakunin 1872 in Locarno, and the two discussed a month together. A year later sold his inherited land Cafiero and bought the Villa Baronata in Bakunin lived. It should be to the center of the anarchist movement and offered police sought a hiding revolutionaries. But shortly thereafter Cafiero came into financial difficulties and the house had to be sold. In 1875 he joined the editorial staff of the first socialist newspaper La plebe Italy and launched two years later along with Errico Malatesta, Stepniak and other a revolt in the province of Caserta. Without fighting they took the village Letino and were welcomed by the villagers enthusiastically. Weapons and goods were distributed equally among the residents, the tax was returned to the people and official documents were burned. Cafiero gave a talk about anarchism and freedom, and this speech is even convinced the village priest, who later became the churchgoers said that the internationalists are the true apostles sent by God. The next day, they repeated the same thing in Gallo, but when you leave the village, they were surprised and arrested by government forces. They were detained for a year without being charged and eventually released.

In Switzerland, Cafiero was in contact with Peter Kropotkin and gave together with Elisée Reclus 1882 Bakunin's book God and the state out. In the same year he returned to Italy to back, as he said, to take part in an election campaign. He was arrested and was in jail in a psychological crisis. After a suicide attempt, his case was a scandal and he was released. After Cafiero once again tried to take his life, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Florence, moved to Nocera Inferiore, and died there on 17 July 1892.

Carlo Cafiero

Life

Further Reading