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Anti-capitalist antecedents
Senoir Service
By Carlo Feltrinelli (translated by Alastair McEwen)
Granta Books, 2001, £20
Reviewed by
Niall Mulholland
AMID THE recent upturn in class struggle in Italy, and the
alleged return of the Red Brigades’ armed campaign, the recent publication on
the life of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli could hardly be more timely. Senoir Service
charts the rise of the radical Feltrinelli publishing house in the post-war
period, as well as its founder’s pivotal, and eventually fatal, role in the
underground leftwing terrorist groups during the early 1970s.
Giangiacomo’s son, Carlo Feltrinelli, tells the story. To
begin with, the narrative moves slowly and the author employs an idiosyncratic
style throughout. Moreover, the political analysis of the left and society as a
whole is often confused and inconclusive, to say the least. Nevertheless, this
is a worthwhile and often compulsive read, with many lessons for the Italian
left and anti-capitalist movement, as well as offering an insight into important
aspects of 20th century literature.
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was born into a wealthy Italian
family – his father ran a number of companies. During the 1920s and 1930s,
however, the Feltrinelli empire increasingly came into conflict with the fascist
regime of Benito Mussolini. The death of Feltrinelli senior at a relatively
young age is surrounded in some mystery – was it suicide resulting from
hounding by the fascists?
As an adolescent, Giangiacomo first took an interest in the
lives of workers and the poor during discussions with the staff who ran his
family’s estate. He came to understand that, under capitalism, and the fascist
regime it had spawned, the vast majority of people could never attain his
privileges and were compelled to sell their labour to the bosses and landowners
for a pittance. During the latter stages of the second world war, Giangiacomo
joined the partisans, led by the Communist Party (PCI), fighting the invading
German army and the remnants of Mussolini’s regime. It was a small step from
this to formally joining the PCI.
Over the next few years, Giangiacomo played a key role in
financing the activities of the PCI. In collaboration with the party, he
established an important library, archives and a new publishing company,
Feltrinelli Editore.
In the post-war period the PCI held a dominant position
amongst the Italian working class. The country was in economic ruins and the
ruling class was weak. Given the widespread radicalisation in society, it was
entirely possible for the PCI to embark on a struggle to peacefully take power
on a number of occasions. The leadership of the party, however, was firmly under
the influence of the reactionary, ruling Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow, which
wanted to come to an accommodation with Western imperialism. This lead the PCI
to propose a coalition government in Italy, which would see them sharing power
with ‘progressive’ capitalist parties and putting off the struggle for
socialism to some distant date. But even this was too much for the Italian
bosses, who were afraid that the PCI in office would unleash a revolution from
below.
In the late 1950s Feltrinelli accidentally came across the
manuscript of the novel Doctor Zhivago by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak.
Set in Russia, the novel follows a multitude of characters from 1903 to 1943,
the period of revolution and Stalinist degeneration. At once, Feltrinelli saw a
masterpiece. Joseph Stalin and the PCI leaders saw it entirely differently –
they could not abide any criticism whatsoever, implied or explicit, of the
Moscow regime. (Unfortunately, the literary merits of the novel and its use as
an anti-communist propaganda weapon by reactionaries in the West are important
issues not treated in any depth by Carlo Feltrinelli.)
Senoir Service records the fascinating correspondence
between Feltrinelli and Pasternak, as they successfully resisted clumsy attempts
by the Stalinist bureaucracy to stop publication. Doctor Zhivago immediately
became a best seller internationally, to be followed by a hugely popular film
version. Feltrinelli was soon effectively expelled from the PCI.
Feltrinelli Editore scored another coup in 1958 and became
the first to publish The Leopard, by Guisppe di Lampedusa. Described as ‘the
greatest novel of the century’, The Leopard centres on the Prince of Salina in
the 1860s during Risorgimento, a movement for Italian unification (the
capitalist democratic revolution). Should he, a landowner and representative of
the old feudal system, resist the forces of change or come to terms with them?
Whatever his own reading tastes, Feltrinelli was always keen
to promote the avant-garde, including the works of the influential Group 63
literary circle. He also took the risk of illegally publishing and distributing
novels banned under ‘obscenity’ laws, such as Henry Miller’s Tropic of
Cancer.
Freed from PCI control, Feltrinelli spent the next years
travelling the world and making links with various radical ‘Third World’
leaders and anti-imperialist and guerrilla movements. He published the writings
of figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and a series of
pamphlets on the unfolding revolution in the colonial world and the Middle East.
Feltrinelli’s political ideas were confused and
contradictory. Lacking an independent class analysis, he increasingly sought to
advocate guerrilla struggle to further the aims of the Italian working class.
But guerrilla campaigns could only play a role in fighting the ruling classes in
underdeveloped countries, where the peasantry predominated. Even then, isolated
from a struggle of the working class, guerrilla movements could not provide a
route to genuine socialist states. By contrast, Italy was a modern capitalist
country. Here the struggle for power lay in the weapons of collective action by
the working class, including the general strike.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a period of renewed
student and labour struggles both in Italy and internationally, marking the end
of the post-war economic boom and a new offensive by the bosses. Many in Italy
feared an attempted coup d’état by the rightwing in response. As the
conservative labour and PCI leaders refused to develop the mass movements, and
confusion and impatience grew amongst some middle class youth and workers,
Feltrinelli mistakenly prioritised organising ‘clandestine resistance’ to
the right-wing threat. Along with the sprouting of other underground terrorist
groups, such as the Red Brigades, he established the Partisan Action Group
(GAP). As the GAP carried out a series of small-scale bomb attacks against
neo-fascist targets and employers, its founder was forced to go on the run.
On 14 March 1972, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was found dead at
the foot of an electricity pylon near Milan, apparently killed by his own
explosives while on an operation with other GAP members. Like his father’s
death, the passing of Giangiacomo is viewed suspiciously. Did the Italian secret
services, which had a number of informants in the underground groups, have some
hand in the events?
The sum contribution of the short-lived GAP to the class
struggle, like the Red Brigades, was to disorientate some sections of the
working class and to give the state excuses to use repressive measures. Yet
8,000 youth and workers attended Feltrinelli’s funeral. Undoubtedly, they were
paying homage to a son of the ruling class who had broken ranks and pursued an
intransigent goal of revolution, as well as having created a valuable publishing
house whose affordable publications both informed and enlightened. But if
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli’s life story is to serve in any way to educate the new
generation of militant Italian workers and anti-capitalist youth, it is also
necessary to learn from his serious political mistakes.
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