Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

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Home / 2006, Volume 57, Issue 08 (January) / Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

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REVIEW

Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

by Marcella Bencivenni

The New Geopolitics of Empire, John

Bellamy Foster
What Will We Do?: The Destruction of
Occupational Identities in the
Knowledge-Based Economy, Ursula
Huws

topics: Labor, Political Economy

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.

January 2006 (Volume 57, Number 8),

The Editors

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: Lesodo,
limpegno politico, le lotte degli
emigrati in terra straniera, 1880
1940 (Soveria Mannelli,
Cosenza, Italy: Rubbettino
Editore, 2004).

When, almost ten years ago, I came from Italy to study in

New York I was shocked by the discrepancy between ItalianAmerican 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?

What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions

and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt, James
Straub
Heroes and Villains in the Cold War
Battle for the United Electrical
Workers, Peter Gilmore

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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 countrynotably 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
http://monthlyreview.org/2006/01/01/lost-and-found-the-italian-american-radical-experience/

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Page 1 of 5

Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

World, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers of America. At the same time, they were able to build vibrant 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.

8/7/15 12:00 PM

The Socialist
Imperative by
Michael A.
Lebowitz

The Hidden
Structure of

Consider for example the introductions 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 1912the year of great working-class struggles and
socialist dreamsand 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, Cammellas 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 Cammellas daughters in
the hope of interviewing her and finding out more information about her mother. 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, Teolis 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
impenetrableburied 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 antiFascist initiatives in the 1940s, thanks to the research of two colleagues who found the letters
and contributions of his grandfather to the Communist newspaper LUnit 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 ItalianAmerican 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 sectionsLabor, Politics, and Culturethe 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 ItalianAmerican 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).

http://monthlyreview.org/2006/01/01/lost-and-found-the-italian-american-radical-experience/

Violence by Marc
Pilisuk and
Jennifer Rountree

In Walt We Trust
by John Marsh

Reconstructing
Lenin by Tams

Krausz

The Necessity of
Social Control by
Istvn Mszros

A World to Build
by Marta
Harnecker

Cuba, the Media,

and the Challenge
of Impartiality by
Salim Lamrani

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Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

8/7/15 12:00 PM

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 press, with nearly 200 newspapersa 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
(Peoples 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.

Socialist Register
2015:
Transforming
Classes Edited by
Leo Panitch and
Greg Albo

Blowing the Roof

Off the TwentyFirst Century by

This radical movement included anarchist and socialist migrs, immigrantsboth educated
and self-taught, who often were radicalized in Americaand, starting with Mussolinis 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.

Robert W.
McChesney

Labor in the
Global Digital
Economy by
Ursula Huws

E.P. Thompson
and the Making of
the New Left by E.
P. Thompson

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 191720, 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 Avrichs 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

http://monthlyreview.org/2006/01/01/lost-and-found-the-italian-american-radical-experience/

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Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

intellectuals who 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.
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 Statesparticularly the persistent prejudices and discrimination they encounteredthat
made them vulnerable to Fascism.

8/7/15 12:00 PM

Race to
Revolution by
Gerald Horne

Global
Imperialism and
the Great Crisis
by Ernesto
Screpanti

The Theory of
Monopoly

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 ItalianAmerican 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 Gramsci.

Capitalism (New
Edition) by John
Bellamy Foster

PolyluxMarx by
Valeria Bruschi,
Antonella
Muzzupappa,
Sabine Nuss, Anne
Stecklner and Ingo Sttzle

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.

http://monthlyreview.org/2006/01/01/lost-and-found-the-italian-american-radical-experience/

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Lost and Found: The Italian-American Radical Experience

8/7/15 12:00 PM

Both traditions have much to offer: in a time in which consumerism, individualism,

fundamentalism, and conservatism dominate Italian-Americanand Americanculture, 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
todayunorganized labor, economic exploitation, increasing social inequality, class, ethnic,
and racial oppressionare 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.
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