On Liberal Revolution

by Piero Gobetti, William McCuaig (Translator), Nadia Urbinati (Editor)

This book is the first English-language edition of a collection of writings by one of Italy’s most important radical liberals, Piero Gobetti (1901–1926). In thirty-five thought-provoking essays, Gobetti proposes an original and challenging notion of liberalism as a revolutionary theory of both the individual and social and political movements. His theory is of particular relevance in the wake of the collapse of Marxist socialism, as non-Western countries with nonliberal or antiliberal cultural and moral traditions confront the problems of transition toward democracy and liberalism. Gobetti’s ideas continue to influence in important ways today’s heated debates over the nature of liberalism.

Gobetti was the first Italian scholar to identify “two Italys”: one enlightened and modern though small and weak, the other premodern, traditional, and dominant. A witness to the seizure of power by the Fascists, Gobetti became convinced that Italy’s hostility to liberalism could be overcome only with a cultural revolution. Endorsing a radical liberalism, he nevertheless believed that the Communists, led by Antonio Gramsci, could play a crucial role in democratizing Italy by helping to develop a secular culture. For a liberal state to subsist and grow, Gobetti argued, there must first be a transformation of both the economic structure and the legal and moral culture of the society.

Genres: Politics

303 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Piero Gobetti was an italian philosopher, journalist, editor, traslator and antifascist activist. He is often regarded as one of the most important italian intellectuals.

He died in France where he was in exile by complications for the wounds he suffered after being savage beaten by a group of fascists.

Reviews

[Donald]

Piero Gobetti was an Italian radical liberal who died at 24 years old. Gobetti was a strident antifascist and this earned him beatings and probably cost him his life. This book gathers some of his articles with an introduction from Nadia Urbinati. There are biographical portraits of contemporaries and discussions of the twists and turns of Italian politics from a century ago, some of this was useful to me but a lot I had difficulty following not knowing much about the period. The flashes of insight were helpful though, discussing liberalism as something to be struggled for and rights as historical rather than introduced from on high. Gobetti was unique as a liberal in that he was sympathetic towards the Turin factory councils movement and aspects of the Russian Revolution as elements of a cultural revolution to make workers claim their freedom. Urbinati notes Gobetti's "ethic of intransigence" and standing up for yourself as the proper response to fascism and other attempts of "protectionism" against free exchange. This led Gobetti to be a supporter of the free-market, impressed by the dynamism of Anglo-American capitalism, but I did get a sense of the loss of his voice over the next decades, much like Gramsci.