Friday, January 27, 2006
Book:The Forgotten World of Italian American
"Reformism"
The ANNOTICO Report
Book: "The Lost World of Italian-American
Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture"
Obviously, that which is considered
Today the "Norm", or a "Reformist" Agenda, was considered "Radical" and
"Anarchistic" fifty to one hundred years ago.
In the forefront of the Reformist
movement were Italian Americans who included anarchist and socialist
?migr?s, immigrants, both educated and self-taught, and contrary to common
belief , the leadership came mostly from Southern Italy. Their documented
involvement starts with the Mesabi Iron Range strikes of 1907 and
1916, the Lawrence textile strikes of 1912 and 1919, and the Paterson silk
strike of 1913.
Providing a general background to
an edited collection of articles by a variety of authors, a fifty-page
introduction traces the history of the Italian-American radical movement,
from the formation of the first anarchist and socialist groups at the beginning
of the twentieth century to the eventual decline after the Second World
War. While not new; this is the first attempt to bring together the different
components of the Italian-American left, and offer a synthesis of the radical
experience as a whole, in all its multifaceted aspects.
The authors justly emphasize not
only the political but also the cultural importance of Italian-American
radicalism. Besides political initiatives aiming at promoting class consciousness,
great attention and energy were given to cultural activities for educational,
associational, and recreational purposes, such as lectures, picnics, plays,
and dances. Perhaps the best example of such a cultural vitality was the
radical press, with nearly 200 newspapers, a number that qualifies Italian
immigrant radicals in the United States as the third most prolific ethnic
group after the Germans and the Jews.
Considering the wide spectrum and
vibrancy of the Italian-American radical experience, how do we account
for the loss of this heritage? Of course, there is no single explanation.
[1] Italian-American radicalism was
seriously crippled by the Red Scare of 1917-20, which successfully dismantled
radical organizations and arrested and deported many of their top leaders.
[2] Among those caught up in
the infamous Palmer Raids were the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, arrested in 1920 under charges of robbery and murder. Although
the evidence presented at the trial against them was contradictory and
inconclusive, they were sentenced to death. The international community
became convinced that their conviction was due more to prejudices against
their foreign birth and radical beliefs, than to solid evidence of criminal
guilt. As Vanzetti proclaimed in a passionate and moving outburst before
the court: ?I am suffering because I am a radical, and indeed I am a radical;
I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian? (1).The
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti had an extremely demoralizing effect on
Italian Americans, driving many to bury aspects of their radical past for
fear of political persecution.
[3] Another powerful wound inflicted
on Italian-American radicalism was the embracing of Fascism, because of
it's attractive "social" agenda, and it's call for National Pride, in reaction
to the persistent prejudices and discrimination Italian Americans encountered.
The Italian Community took great
pride in the first 13 very successful years of Mussolini's reign (1922-1935),
and "endured" his very "questionable" decisions regarding the last 8 years
of his reign (1935-1943), including the Ethiopian Campaign, the Racial
Laws, and his Alliance with Hitler. The Italian American community paid
HEAVILY in International condemnation for those positions.
[4] The Cold War, and its attendant
political repression completed the purge of radicalism from the Italian-American
communities and American society at large. Many Italian-American radicals,
like anarchist Armando Borghi or Communist Michele Salerno, were deported.
Carl Marzani, an important but neglected figure of the Italian-American
left, was arrested in 1947 and sentenced to thirty-two months in jail as
a former Communist, becoming in his own words ?the first victim of McCarthyism.
Marzani produced a steady stream of writing, including the first
American translation of the writings of Antonio Gramsci.
[5] Like the Sacco and Vanzetti case
in the 1920s, the Red Scare of the 1950s, reinforced by the Truman Doctrine
and its patriotic rhetoric, further distanced Italian Americans from their
radical past, and as assimilation translated more and more into anti-radicalism.
Ultimately, Radicals in the United States, try as they may, would not simultaneously
be accepted as good leftists and good Americans.
Although political radicalism among
Italian Americans may have disappeared after the Second World War (a loss
by no means pertaining only to Italian Americans), a radical tradition
seems to have survived in the individual struggles of some exceptional
figures. This is the case of Father James Groppi, the civil rights leader
from Milwaukee, who fused his Christian faith with a leftist commitment
to social justice and equality. Another significant example is that of
Mario Savio, a principal figure of the New Left and the Free Speech movement
of the 1960s, who was expelled by the university and sentenced to four
months of prison for his political activism.
But, above all, an Italian-American
radical tradition transpires today in the work of contemporary writers
who have explored new radical themes such as generational conflict, gender
oppression, and sexuality.
Some of the Italian American writers
like to call it a "transformation", or Americanization, of Italian-American
radicalism rather than its irreversible demise. It is a shift from
a radicalism "made-in-Italy" that was intended mostly as a collective political
struggle aimed at a fundamental social and economic transformation of capitalism,
to a radicalism defined by racial, gender, and ethnic identity, connected
to personal transformation, consciousness, or what scholars call identity
politics.
I personally, in my humble opinion
consider the current effort as an "Abandonment" of the "Class Warfare"
Struggle, when it is needed more than ever.
More Billionaires are being created
with a wholesale "Redistribution of Wealth", through Stock Swindles, Pension
Plan Stealth, Health Care Reductions, Shipping of Skilled Jobs Overseas,
and cleverly constructed Bankruptcies, etc.
Meanwhile, more Middle and
Lower Income are on a slippery economic slope to oblivion.
Those "socially minded", who previously
could have been counted on to be the Defenders of the "Exploited" have
been lured into "Identity" politics, better known as "Me" Politics.
The Corporate Oligarchy ("Robber
Barons") could not be more pleased with the "divisiveness" of a formerly
"United Front". :(
Lost and Found: The Italian-American
Radical Experience
by Marcella Bencivenni
Philip V. Cannistraro and Gerald
Meyer, eds., The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism: Politics, Labor,
and Culture (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003), 346 pages, cloth $79.95,
paper $29.95.
When, almost ten years ago, I came
from Italy to study in New York I was shocked by the discrepancy between
Italian-American and Italian politics. To my amazement, I discovered that
the left, which has always played, and still plays, an important role in
Italian politics, occupies a marginal, if not nonexistent, place in Italian-American
political culture. Even worse, I learned that Italian Americans are perceived
as a basically conservative group, whose only ties to Italy appear to be
the Mafia and food. How did Italian Americans end up identifying themselves,
and being identified, with such conservative values and reactionary political
forces? Why did their political consciousness diverge so markedly from
their Italian counterparts?
The Lost World of Italian American
Radicalism, a collection of articles edited by Philip Cannistraro and Gerald
Meyer, helps provide an explanation to these questions. The book shows
that, despite their present conservative image, Italian Americans have
a vibrant and rich radical past. Italian immigrants, for example, played
a central role in the working-class struggle of the early twentieth century,
providing both leadership and mass militancy in major strikes across the
country?notably the Lawrence textile strikes of 1912 and 1919, the Paterson
silk strike of 1913, the Mesabi Iron Range strikes of 1907 and 1916, and
the New York City Harbor strikes of 1907 and 1919, as well as coal mining
strikes. They also made important contributions to American labor unions,
especially the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World, the International
Ladies? Garment Workers? Union, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America. At the same time, they were able to build vibr! ant radical communities
wherever Italian immigrants settled that replicated the traditions, cultures,
and institutions of the old country. They formed, for example, their own
political and social clubs, mutual aid societies, alternative libraries
and press, as well as their own orchestras and theaters, designed to promote
and sustain a radical subculture that was in stark opposition to both the
hegemonic culture sustained by prominenti (the powerful men of the Little
Italies) and the individualistic culture of capitalist America. Yet, this
radical world has been almost completely forgotten, perhaps deliberately
suppressed from both American and Italian-American memory.
Consider for example the introduction?s
opening story of Cammella Teoli. At thirteen, Cammella was the victim of
a terrible working accident: she was completely scalped when her hair became
stuck in the machine she was operating. Outraged, she agreed, despite her
young age and her scant knowledge of English, to testify before Congress
against the terrible working conditions of American factories. It was 1912?the
year of great working-class struggles and socialist dreams?and the brave
testimony of the young Teoli provoked quite a stir: national newspapers
published her tragic story and she became almost overnight a sort of celebrity.
Yet, Cammella?s family knew nothing of her heroic past. They learned about
it only a few years ago when Paul Cowan, a journalist for the Village Voice
who was writing an article commemorating the Lawrence Strike of 1912, tracked
down one of Cammella?s daughters in the hope of interviewing her and finding
out more information about her mot! her. Cowan was, to say the least, stunned
when he discovered that she had never heard of the accident or the testimony.
As surprising as it is, Teoli?s decision
to keep her political activism away from her children was not atypical:
for most Italian Americans the radical past of their families still remains
impenetrable?buried by their own parents? and grandparents? fears of ethnic
discrimination and political persecution. Philip Cannistraro, for example,
discovered that his grandfather, who in old age seemed a conservative,
had attended Communist meetings and participated in anti-Fascist initiatives
in the 1940s, thanks to the research of two colleagues who found the letters
and contributions of his grandfather to the Communist newspaper L?Unit?
del Popolo.
With this anthology, Cannistraro
and Meyer have sought to break the many silences, like that of Cammella
Teoli, that have distorted the history and identity of Italian Americans.
The editors themselves have long been committed to recover, and uncover,
the lost stories of Italian-American radicalism. Philip Cannistraro, who
passed away on May 28, 2005, was a major figure in Italian-American studies
and modern Italy, contributing numerous books and articles, especially
on fascism and antifascism. Gerald Meyer has also significantly enriched
the field of Italian-American radicalism with a biography of radical Congressman
Vito Marcantonio and articles on Italian-American communism and labor.
Organized into three sections??Labor,?
?Politics,? and ?Culture??the book brings together sixteen essays, selected
from the more than sixty papers presented at a groundbreaking conference
sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens
College in 1997. Along with the pioneering research of veteran scholars
of Italian immigrant radical history and culture (such as Rudolph Vecoli,
Nunzio Pernicone, Calvin Winslow, Paul Avrich, Donna Gabaccia, Salvatore
Salerno, Gary Mormino, George Pozzetta, Paola Sensi-Isolani, and Fred Gardaph?),
the book introduces original contributions by younger historians (Jennifer
Guglielmo and Charles Zappia) and new interpretative studies on the literary
work of Italian-American women (by Mary Jo Bona, Julia Lisella, and Edvige
Giunta) and the involvement of Italian Americans in the civil rights and
student movements of the 1960s (Gil Fagiani and Jackie DiSalvo).
Providing a general background to
the other pieces, a fifty-page introduction by the editors traces the history
of the Italian-American radical movement, from the formation of the first
anarchist and socialist groups at the beginning of the twentieth century
to the eventual decline after the Second World War. Much of the information
contained here is not new; yet this is the first attempt to bring together
the different components of the Italian-American left and offer a synthesis
of the radical experience as a whole, in all its multifaceted aspects.
The authors justly emphasize not only the political but also the cultural
importance of Italian-American radicalism. Besides political initiatives
aiming at promoting class consciousness, great attention and energy were
given to cultural activities for educational, associational, and recreational
purposes, such as lectures, picnics, plays, and dances. Perhaps the best
example of such a cultural vitality was the radical p! ress, with nearly
200 newspapers?a number that qualifies Italian immigrant radicals in the
United States as the third most prolific ethnic group after the Germans
and the Jews.
The importance of this radical culture
is depicted with particular force in the essay by Mormino and Pozzetta
on the radical community of Ybor City (Florida), where Italians, Cubans,
and Spaniards, who worked in the cigar industry, were able to overcome
ethnic barriers and create a ?Latin? culture based on common values such
as working-class solidarity, internationalism, and anticlericalism. Here,
as well as in other American cities, Italian immigrants created socialist
circles, anarchist groups, labor unions, and later on, sections of the
Communist Party. At the same time, they formed educational and recreational
circles, Universit? Popolari (People?s Universities) with librerie rosse
(red bookstores), as well as dramatic societies and orchestras, which helped
sustain and promote revolutionary ideas while also entertaining the immigrants.
This radical movement included anarchist
and socialist ?migr?s, immigrants?both educated and self-taught, who often
were radicalized in America?and, starting with Mussolini?s rise to power
in 1922, anti-Fascist refugees. Contrary to the belief that the radical
leadership came from the northern cities of Italy, The Lost World reveals
that the most important figures among the sovversivi (as Italian radicals
were collectively called), as well as the largest numbers of their adherents,
were children of the south. It should also be noted, that while the movement
was male dominated, women were not completely absent, as has been traditionally
assumed. Gugliemo, for example, argues that Italian immigrant women played
an important role in the anarchist groups of Paterson, New Jersey, as well
as in the Italian garment and needle-trades labor unions.
As the articles in ?Politics? suggest,
one of the distinguishing aspects, as well as one of the main limits, of
the Italian-American left was its enormous political diversity and fragmentation.
Rivalries and jealousies occurred not only among anarchists, socialists,
and communists, but also within each group, as in the case noted by Pernicone
between the organizational and the anti-organizational anarchists led respectively
by Carlo Tresca and Luigi Galleani, two of the most influential personalities
of Italian-American radicalism.
Considering the wide spectrum and
vibrancy of the Italian-American radical experience, how do we account
for the loss of this heritage? Of course, there is no single explanation.
Along with the rest of the American left, Italian-American radicalism was
seriously crippled by the Red Scare of 1917?20, which successfully dismantled
radical organizations and arrested and deported many of their top leaders.
Among those caught up in the infamous Palmer Raids were the anarchists
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, arrested in 1920 under charges of
robbery and murder of a paymaster and his guard at a small shoe factory
in South Braintree, Massachusetts (see Paul Avrich?s article). Although
the evidence presented at the trial against them was contradictory and
inconclusive, they were sentenced to death. The case rapidly won the attention
of national and international radicals, labor organizations, and famous
intellectuals who became convinced that their conviction wa! s due more
to prejudices against their foreign birth and radical beliefs, than to
solid evidence of criminal guilt. As Vanzetti proclaimed in a passionate
and moving outburst before the court: ?I am suffering because I am a radical,
and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and
indeed I am an Italian? (1).
The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
had an extremely demoralizing effect on Italian Americans, driving many
to bury aspects of their radical past for fear of political persecution.
Another powerful wound inflicted on Italian-American radicalism was what
Vecoli called the ?Fascistization? of the Little Italies, fomented by the
prominenti and the clergy through a massive chauvinistic campaign. This
propaganda helped fuel nationalist sentiments, which in turn undermined
the internationalism of the early period and insinuated racial and ethnic
prejudices into the minds of many Italian Americans. Interestingly, however,
Italian immigrants in other parts of the world did not embrace Fascism.
As Cannistraro, as well as John P. Diggins in his Mussolini and Fascism,
have long argued, it was the peculiar conditions of Italians in the United
States?particularly the persistent prejudices and discrimination they encountered?that
made them vulnerable to Fascism.
The Cold War, and its attendant political
repression culminating in the infamous execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
in 1953, completed the purge of radicalism from the Italian-American communities
and American society at large. Many Italian-American radicals, like anarchist
Armando Borghi or Communist Michele Salerno, were deported. Carl Marzani,
an important but neglected figure of the Italian-American left (briefly
discussed in the essays by Meyer and Gardaph?), was arrested in 1947 and
sentenced to thirty-two months in jail as a former Communist, becoming
in his own words ?the first victim of McCarthyism? (217). In prison Marzani
wrote the first revisionist account of the Cold War, We Can Be Friends:
The Origins of the Cold War, which was published in 1952 with a foreword
by W. E. B. Du Bois. In the postwar period he produced a steady stream
of writing, including a novel, a five-volume memoir, and the first American
translation of the writings of Antonio Gram! sci.
Like the Sacco and Vanzetti case
in the 1920s, the Red Scare of the 1950s, reinforced by the Truman Doctrine
and its patriotic rhetoric, further distanced Italian Americans from their
radical past, as assimilation translated more and more into anti-radicalism.
Ultimately, as Gabaccia puts it: ?Radicals in the United States, try as
they may, could not simultaneously be good leftists and good Americans?
(321).
Although political radicalism among
Italian Americans may have disappeared after the Second World War (a loss
by no means pertaining only to Italian Americans), a radical tradition
seems to have survived in the individual struggles of some exceptional
figures. This is the case, as DiSalvo argues, of Father James Groppi, the
civil rights leader from Milwaukee, who fused his Christian faith with
a leftist commitment to social justice and equality. Another significant
example is that of Mario Savio, a principal figure of the New Left and
the Free Speech movement of the 1960s, presented by Fagiani, who was expelled
by the university and sentenced to four months of prison for his political
activism.
But, above all, an Italian-American
radical tradition transpires today in the work of contemporary writers
who have explored new ?radical? themes such as generational conflict, gender
oppression, and sexuality. As Gabaccia suggests in the conclusion, one
perhaps should talk about a transformation, or Americanization, of Italian-American
radicalism rather than its irreversible demise. One can notice a shift
from a radicalism ?made-in-Italy? that was intended mostly as a collective
political struggle aimed at a fundamental social and economic transformation
of capitalism, to a radicalism defined by racial, gender, and ethnic identity,
connected to personal transformation, consciousness, or what scholars call
identity politics.
Both traditions have much to offer:
in a time in which consumerism, individualism, fundamentalism, and conservatism
dominate Italian-American?and American?culture, the anticapitalist politics
of the sovversivi and the personal politics of the new radicals can cast
new light on the current struggle for social change. Indeed some of the
issues we confront today?unorganized labor, economic exploitation, increasing
social inequality, class, ethnic, and racial oppression?are remarkably
similar to the dilemmas of the early twentieth century. A recovery of the
lost world of Italian-American radicalism means much more than correcting
the distortions and omissions of earlier historiography: it represents
a challenge to the dominant neoliberal politics of our times and a vindication
of ethnicity against the coercive efforts of American society to strip
immigrants of their own identity.
Marcella Bencivenni teaches history
at Hostos Community College in New York. She is currently writing a manuscript
on radical Italian immigrant culture in the United States. Her most recent
article, “Letteratura e arte radicale dei calabresi a New York,” appeared
in Amelia Paparazzo, ed., Calabresi sovversivi nel mondo: L’esodo, l’impegno
politico, le lotte degli emigrati in terra straniera, 1880–1940 (Soveria
Mannelli, Cosenza, Italy: Rubbettino Editore, 2004).
http://www.monthlyreview.org/
0106bencivenni.htm