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Title: Remembering Luigi Fabbri Author: Francesco Lamendola Date: November 6th, 1988 Language: en Topics: biography, Kate Sharpley Library, obituary Source: https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/2rbpdf Notes: From: Unamita Nova, 6-11-1988. Translated by: Paul Sharkey.
A clear-sighted and very astute intellectual, author of essays crucial
to my libertarian understanding of the great political upheavals of the
20th century (the Russian revolution, the fascist seizure of power in
Italy). A generous and tireless anarchist militant, he knew imprisonment
and internment, physical assault at the hands of fascist thugs and was
driven into exile; he was one of the few professors to refuse to take
the oath of loyalty to the Italian regime after 1922, a refusal that
cost him a chair to which he had always brought honour. A dogged
organiser for the movement, a friend and follower of Errico Malatesta
(of whom he has left us a moving and comprehensive biography), a
supporter of anarcho-communism and of the workersâ movement, he attended
the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam in 1907. This was
Luigi Fabbri, a comrade whose name is all too rarely invoked these days,
and whose books and pamphlets (which are of such immediate relevance,
even though their author died before the second World war broke out) are
too little read.
He was born on 23 December 1877 in Fabriano in the province of Ancona
(Italy), one of the âclassicâ stamping grounds of anarchism (along with
the Romagna, the Valdarno and the areas around Carrera and La Spezia),
which was to be the epicentre of the famous âred weekâ uprising in 1914.
He spent his childhood and early youth farther south in the marches, in
Montefiore dellâAse (in the province of Ascoli Piceno), then went on to
the Recanati high school. In 1893 at the age of 15 he encountered
anarchist teachings for the first time and instinctively embraced them;
from that point on his militant activity would take place under the red
and black colours of freedom and into it he poured all of this energies
and intellect. Unlike Kropotkin, an anarchist academic who was also
capable of scientific work unrelated to politics (such as his research
into Ice Age geology and the geography of the Far East and Central
Asia), for Fabbri academic and militant were one and the same. His
thirst for knowledge and urge to investigate and subject everything to
the probing light of a critical and alert intelligence was placed in the
service of the libertarian ideal. This was a struggle that was unceasing
even during his times in prison (he was first arrested in 1894 at the
age of 16, charged with having printed and distributed anti-militarist
matter: this was at the time of the disgraceful war in Africa launched
by Francesco Crispi for reasons of prestige). In 1896 he enrolled with
the law faculty of the university of Macerata. The following year he met
Malatesta, becoming one of his best friends and most loyal
collaborators. Malatesta was a member of the military draft of 1895, so
he was 24 years Fabbriâs senior. For Malatesta Fabbri felt a filial
affection (if it means anything, the year of Fabbriâs birth was the year
of the Matese gang, the hapless attempted uprising by Malatesta, Carlo
Cafiero and Andrea Costa in the San Lupo mountains). It was with
Malatesta that he cut his teeth in his long career as a movement
journalist and publicist; in fact he was placed in charge of the
publication of LâAgitazione in Ancona, whilst his mentor was in prison.
But in 1898 it was Fabbriâs turn to be arrested. He was interned on
offshore islands first on Ponza and then on Favignana. This was a common
practice in King Umbertoâs freemason and clergy-ridden Italy; it
followed the failure of the attempt to serum a penal colony on the
desolate Dahlak islands in the Red Sea along the lines of French Guyana.
In 1900, Fabbri was released. Even though the anti-anarchist crackdown
was raging as furiously as ever (following the assassination of Umberto
in Monza), his propaganda activity did not let up. In 1903, along with
Pietro Gori, Fabbri launched the review Il Pensiero and a short time
later started to contribute articles to the anarchist newspaper of the
émigrés in Paterson, New Jersey, La Question Sociale. Il Pensiero
continued to appear, albeit faced by thousands of problems, until
December 1911. He shuttled between Rome, Bologna, Fabriano and his
native region, carrying on with his activities as a teacher under close
police surveillance but determined to spread his libertarian ideas
wherever he went. He joined Malatesta in writing for Volonta in Ancona,
In 1907 he was in Amsterdam along with Malatesta to attend the
International Anarchist Congress which was to have such importance for
the evolution of the anarchist movement.
Being caught up in the âred weekâ he was obliged to quit Italy and took
refuge for a while in Switzerland, returning to Italy to throw himself
body and soul into anti-militarist and pro-neutrality propaganda in
1914-1915. These were difficult times: the whole of Italy was convulsed
by pro-intervention euphoria and uncertainty and confusion infected even
the left. Socialists like Cesare Battista, anarchists like Peter
Kropotkin argued that the war was a necessity. This eventually stretched
and snapped the weakening vestiges of the International. Luigi Fabbri,
charged with defeatism, was arrested again; upon his release he carried
on with his work as a teacher during the war years under the closet
police surveillance (in Corticella in Bologna province). His anti-war
propaganda carried on but he had to take certain precautions in order to
remain at large.
Aside from Volonta, he contributed to Umanita Nova which had been
launched in 1920 as a daily. But his contributions to Umanita Nova led
to his being arrested again in the years after the Great War, tried and
convicted again; he also suffered his first fascist attack.
Yet these were his most fertile years as a writer. Back in 1905 he had
published his Letters to a Woman on Anarchy, followed in 1912 by The
School and the Revolution, in 1913 by Giordano Bruno and in 1914 by
Letters to a Socialist and The Aware Generation. But between 1921 and
1922 he sent to the presses his most important books (aside from a later
life of Malatesta), Preventive Counter-revolution; and Dictatorship and
Revolution - works generated by a probing, perceptive intelligence set
out in the clearest of styles and closely argued, consistent in their
reasoning and non conformist in their approach and conclusions. [KSL
hope to print the latter some time in the future]
Some of what he wrote is startlingly relevant even now, like this
extract from the 1906 pamphlet Workersâ Organisation and Anarchy⊠âThis
vicious circle has led reformist socialists to devise the curious theory
that in their strikes the workers should worry about the interests of
the employers and the conditions of their industry⊠Thus are the workers
on strike wrong-footed and the capitalist taken as being right, all in
the name of a brand new interpretation of socialism. It has been
overlooked, however, that it is the workers who always have right on
their side, always, always, even when they declare an ill-timed strike
that harms themselves. True, they are not doing the right thing in
launching a dispute in unfavorable circumstances, when their defeat is a
certainty; but the damage they are doing is to their own interests and
not because the boss is in the right or because the industrialists are
right rather than the wage earners. For as long as the worker works a
single hour for the benefit of an employer, for as long as the boss
makes a penny out of a working manâs labours, that working man will
always have right on his side - the sacrosanct right which is the very
basis of socialism and of anarchismâŠâ
In Dictatorship and Revolution (1921), an analysis of the Russian
Revolution and its authoritarian distortion by the Bolsheviks, he always
deals with the relationship between libertarian socialism and Marxism.
âSocialists always say that the âdictatorshipâ will be a passing thing,
an imperfect transitional stage, something akin to a painful necessity.
We have demonstrated what errors and dangers lurk within that belief;
even granting (which I do not) that dictatorship may truly be necessary,
it would still be a mistake to offer it as an ideal target to aim for
and turn it into a flag to afford precedence over the flag of freedom.
In my event we ought to agree that one of the essential preconditions of
such a dictatorshipâs being provisional and passing and not
consolidating itself and leading on to a stable, lasting future
dictatorship, is that it must terminate at the earliest opportunity, and
that outside and against the law there should be a watchful and
energetic opposition from revolutionaries, a living flame of freedom a
strong faction preventing it from solidifying and combating it until it
is successfully destroyed, just as soon as its raison dâetre has
evaporated⊠assuming that it may have only the one! It will be
anarchismâs natural vocation part of its very essence and tradition, to
represent that ultra-revolutionary opposition within the revolution,
that flame of freedomâŠâ
But his most incisive, most effective, intellectually most inspiring
essay is, in our judgement, Preventive Counter-revolution (1922). It was
written in the heat of the moment whilst fascist goons were gaining the
upper hand over the revolutionary disturbances in the factories and the
fields. The post-war elections had inflated out of all proportion the
strength of the leftwing parties, the striking workforce was poised to
bring the system grinding to a halt and the trams were running with red
flags on display. It was time to act, before the reaction could
orchestrate any countervailing measures. Fabbri wrote: âBut the
revolution did not come and was not made. There were only popular
rallies, lots of rallies; and alongside these demonstrations, countless
choreographed marches and parades ⊠Moreover, this euphoria lasted too
long, at almost two years; and the others, the ones who felt everyday
that they were under threat of being toppled from their thrones and
stripped of their privileges began to wake up to the situation and
appreciate their own strength and the weakness of their enemies.â And
they had armed the fascists to mount a counter-revolution to pre-empt
the revolution; what we might describe as a preventative
counter-revolution which fastened upon society even though the
revolution never happened. This was Fabbriâs interpretation of the
fascist phenomenon, which came into existence as the armed wing of the
landlords and capitalists and as a substantially novel force, the
subsequent evolution of which defies explanation unless we recognise a
frightening series of errors, shortcomings, ingeniousness and weakness
on the part of the left.
At the same time as he was publishing his books he was writing articles
for old and new libertarian publications (like Pensiero e Volonta, Fede,
Libero Accordo, etc.), and Luigi Fabbri was carrying on with his own
activities as a militant. In 1919 he was among the promoters of the
first hard and fast essay at organising, the launching of the Union of
Italian Anarchist Communists, and, the following year, of the Italian
Anarchist Union (UAI). In 1923 he suffered his second beating at the
hands of fascists. In 1926 he declined to swear an oath of loyalty to
the regime and lost his position and fled abroad. This was the beginning
of a series of painful moves, throughout which he carried on writing for
the worldâs anarchist press and launching new publications. In 1927 he
was m Switzerland, only to move quickly thereafter to Paris where he
launched the journal Lotta Umana. Expelled from democratic France he
fled to Belgium only to be expelled from Belgium too. It looked as if
there was no way for him to carry on the struggle in Europe; but he
refused to give up; and in 1929, at the age of 52, he embarked with
youthful courage upon a new life in South America. He set up home in
Uruguay, in Montevideo, where he soon launched Studi Social, although he
continued to send items to the libertarian press in Spain, France and
the United States and penned his Malatesta: His Life and Thought
(published in Buenos Aires in 1945). He died prematurely in the thick of
the struggle on 24 June 1935. The previous December an incident at the
oasis of Wal Wal in Ethiopia had provided the spark for a fascist attack
on Ethiopia and the start of a spiral of war-mongering which would carry
the Mussolini Dictatorship through events in Spain to the catastrophe of
Hitlerâs war. A catastrophe which Fabbri had been awaiting faithfully,
hopefully for many a long year, but which he was denied the chance to
see.