Luigi Galleani

Luigi Galleani (Template:IPA; 12 August 1861 – 4 November 1931) was an Italian insurrectionary anarchist and communist best known for his advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", a strategy of political assassinations and violent attacks.

Born in Vercelli, he became a leading figure in the Piedmont labor movement, for which he was sentenced to exile on the island of Pantelleria. In 1901, he fled to the United States and he joined the Italian immigrant workers movement in Paterson, New Jersey. He subsequently moved to Vermont and Massachusetts, where he launched the radical newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva. He gained many dedicated followers among Italian American anarchists, known as the Galleanisti, who carried out a series of bombing attacks throughout the United States.

For his involvement in the anti-war movement during World War I, he was deported back to Italy, where he was subjected to political repression following the rise of fascism. During the final years of his life, he published The End of Anarchism?, a defense of anarchist communism from criticisms by reformist socialists. He rejected reformism, in favor of "continuous attack" against institutions of capitalism and the state, and opposed any form of formal organization, which he saw as inherently corrupting and hierarchical.

Biography

Early life

Luigi Galleani was born on 12 August 1861,Template:Sfnm into a middle-class family,Template:Sfnm in the Piedmontese city of Vercelli. He first became interested in anarchism while studying law at the University of Turin, eventually renouncing his career in law in order to carry out anarchist propaganda against capitalism and the state.Template:Sfnm His skill in oratory and writing quickly made him a leading voice in the new generation of the Italian anarchist movement.Template:Sfn Alongside Sicilian anarchist Pietro Gori, he led a resurgence of militant anarchist activism, which gained a large following among the workers of Northern Italy.Template:Sfn

Labor movement activism

Portrait photograph of Pietro Gori

Pietro Gori, one of Galleani's close collaborators in the Italian anarchist movement

By the mid-1880s, the anarchists had already lost ground to the Italian Workers' Party (POI), which developed a large support base among northern workers.Template:Sfn The anarchists were initially skeptical of the POI, due to the latter's tendencies towards workerism and reformism, but relations between the two parties became more cordial over time.Template:Sfn In 1887, Galleani led the Piedmontese anarchist movement's reorientation towards the labor movement and its rapprochement with the POI.Template:Sfn That year, he established the Turin-based newspaper Gazzetta Operaia, formed a number of workers' organizations in Vercelli, and distributed revolutionary propaganda among the factory workers of Biella. In 1888, he went on a lecture tour in towns throughout Piedmont and led a series of strike actions by Piedmontese workers in both Turin and Vercelli, increasing support for the anarchist movement and the POI.Template:Sfn

Relations between the anarchists and the POI worsened, due to the latter's continued participation in local elections. Nevertheless, Galleani continued to pursue the anarchist infiltration of the POI, in order to attempt to bring it towards revolutionary socialism.Template:Sfn He continued to advocate for a conciliatory approach between the reformists and revolutionaries, resulting in the POI both continuing its electoral participation while also endorsing class conflict.Template:Sfn Although he prevented a formal split from occurring, the two factions were ultimately irreconciable and Galleani's attempts to transform the POI proved unsuccessful.Template:Sfn

When he was threatened with arrest for his radical activism, in 1889 he fled to France and then to Switzerland.Template:Sfnm There he collaborated with the French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus in the preparation of his Nouvelle Geographie Universalle and organised a students' demonstration at the University of Geneva, in honor of the Haymarket martyrs.Template:Sfn Galleani was also scheduled to attend the Italian anarchist movement's Capolago congress,Template:Sfn but en route to the congress from Geneva,Template:Sfn he was arrested by the Swiss authorities and expelled back to Italy.Template:Sfnm Back in Italy, he immediately continued his radical activities,Template:Sfnm embarking on a speaking tour of Tuscany,Template:Sfnm with the aim of fomenting an uprising on International Workers' Day of 1891.Template:Sfn

In 1892, together with Pietro Gori and Calabrese anarchist Giovanni Domanico, Galleani was delegated to represent the anarchists at the Genoa Workers' Congress, with the intention of obstructing the motions of the dominant reformist faction.Template:Sfn In opposition to the social democrats, led by Lombard lawyer Filippo Turati, an alliance was formed by the anarchists and the workerists, who both opposed political participation.Template:Sfn On 14 August, a fierce argument broke out between the anarchist and socialist delegates, leading to two separate meetings being convened the following day.Template:Sfn Having finally forced the anarchists to split from the movement, Turati's social democratic majority established the new Italian Socialist Party (PSI), despite the objections of Galleani and his fellow delegates, whose own attempts at forming an anarchist party were unsuccessful.Template:Sfn The congress proved that Galleani's agitational campaign had ultimately failed to gain a mass following among the workers, leading to many Italian anarchists becoming disillusioned with the labor movement, which came under the direction of the PSI.Template:Sfn

Exile

In the wake of the Fatti di Maggio (Bava Beccaris massacre),Template:Sfn the Italian government launched a new campaign of political repression against the anarchist movement, arresting anarchists en masse and internally exiling them to small islands for up to five years,Template:Sfnm all without a trial.Template:Sfn Galleani himself was swiftly arrested, convicted for conspiracy,Template:Sfn and exiled to the Sicilian island of Pantelleria.Template:Sfnm There he met and married Maria Rallo, who already had a young son. Luigi and Maria Galleani had four children of their own.Template:Sfn

With Elisee Reclus's aid,Template:Sfnm Galleani managed escape from Italy to Egypt,Template:Sfnm where he stayed with other Italian immigrants for a year.Template:Sfn When he was threatened with extradition back to Italy,Template:Sfn he fled to the United States, arriving in October 1901, shortly after the assassination of United States President William McKinley.Template:Sfnm

Life in the United States

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Cronaca Sovversiva header

Galleani settled in Paterson, New Jersey,Template:Sfnm a hub for Piedmontese immigrant silk weavers and dyers,Template:Sfn where he took up editing the Italian anarchist newspaper La Questione Sociale.Template:Sfnm He became a vocal supporter of the 1902 Paterson silk strike,Template:Sfnm giving a series of speeches in which he called for a revolutionary general strike to overthrow capitalism.Template:Sfn When the striking workers clashed with police, he was shot in the face and charged for incitement to riot.Template:Sfnm He escaped to Canada and recovered from his wounds, before covertly returning over the border and hiding out in Barre, Vermont,Template:Sfnm where he stayed with Tuscan stonemasons from Carrara.Template:Sfnm With these new comrades, on 6 June 1903,Template:Sfn he launched Cronaca Sovversiva, which rapidly became the most influential Italian anarchist periodical in North America,Template:Sfnm receiving worldwide distribution.Template:Sfnm Through this new publication, in 1905 he published the bomb-making manual La Salute è in voi!,Template:Sfnm in which he supplied to his readers the formula for making nitroglycerine, compiled by a friend and explosives expert, Professor Ettore Molinari.Template:Sfn Galleani also translated and published the memoirs of Clément Duval, a French illegalist who he admired and who his associates had hidden after his escape from a French penal colony to the United States.Template:Sfn

File:Merlino.jpg

Socialist politician Francesco Saverio Merlino, whose critique of anarchism provoked Galleani to write his book The End of Anarchism?

In 1906, the editor of the rival Italian socialist newspaper Il Proletario publicised Galleani's location and he was quickly located by the authorities.Template:Sfn Arrested, he was brought back to Paterson and tried for incitement, although a hung jury resulted in him being released.Template:Sfnm He returned to Barre, where he once again resumed giving fiery speeches and writing hundreds of articles for his newspaper, quickly becoming a leading voice in the Italian American anarchist movement.Template:Sfn In late 1907, in response to Neapolitan socialist Francesco Saverio Merlino's public renunciation of anarchism in favour of reformist labor unionism, Galleani published a series of articles in defense of anarchism.Template:Sfnm By this time, he had become disillusioned with the labor movement and came to reject labor unions entirely, instead adopting an anti-organizational form of anarchism,Template:Sfnm which became the dominant tendency within the Italian American anarchist movement.Template:Sfn He even openly broke with the anarcho-syndicalist Carlo Tresca over the latter's cooperation with the Industrial Workers of the World, causing a rift between their followers that undermined the Italian American anarchist movement's cohesion.Template:Sfn

Galleani gained many militant and highly devoted followers, known as the Galleanisti,Template:Sfnm who likewise rejected all formal organization and developed markedly extremist tendencies.Template:Sfn These disciples included Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,Template:Sfnm who promoted Galleani's lectures and distributed his literature.Template:Sfn The Galleanisti, following Galleani's anti-organizational principles, formed small, tight-knit cells made up of "self-selecting individuals". Although they rejected formal leadership, Galleani himself was treated with reverence and he had the status of an unofficial leader.Template:Sfn

Deportation and death

Following the American entry into World War I, Galleani became a leading voice in the anti-war movement,Template:Sfnm declaring that the anarchist movement was "Against the War, Against the Peace, For Social Revolution!"Template:Sfnm In response to the Selective Service Act of 1917 being passed into law, he urged his followers to refuse registration and go into hiding,Template:Sfnm with he and many of his comrades moving to a cabin in the woods near Taunton, Massachusetts.Template:Sfn At his direction, some Galleanisti escaped to Mexico,Template:Sfnm from which they planned to return to Italy, where they believed a revolution was imminent.Template:Sfn Despite the ongoing Mexican Revolution, Galleani had rejected the possibility of an anarchist revolution in Mexico itself, due to its high population of people of color, whom he characterized as "uninterested" racial groups.Template:Sfn

His anti-war activities made him a target for political repression by the American government.Template:Sfnm On 17 June 1917, federal agents raided the offices of the Cronaca Sovversiva in Lynn, Massachusetts,Template:Sfn arresting Galleani and shutting down the newspaper.Template:Sfnm Charged with conspiracy, he and eight of his followers were subsequently deported back to Italy,Template:Sfnm leaving his family behind in the United States,Template:Sfn on 24 June 1919.Template:Sfnm

He attempted to continue publishing Cronaca Sovversiva upon arrival in Turin,Template:Sfnm but it was quickly suppressed by the Italian authorities.Template:Sfnm In the wake of the March on Rome in 1922, he was arrested and convicted of sedition by the new fascist authorities,Template:Sfnm which sentenced him to 14 months in prison.Template:Sfn After being released, he concluded his polemic against Merlino, writing a further series of articles and publishing them together in his book The End of Anarchism? (1925).Template:Sfnm While the book was hailed by Neapolitan anarchist Errico Malatesta as a key text in anarchist communism, in November 1926, it provoked his arrest by the fascist authorities, on charges of insulting the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Galleani spent time in the cell he had been kept in for months in 1892, before being banished to Lipari and later Messina, where he was imprisoned for 6 months.Template:Sfn

In February 1930, he was granted compassionate release due to his failing health. He retired to Template:Ill, a 'frazione' of Aulla,Template:Sfn where he was kept under close and constant surveillance.Template:Sfnm After returning from a walk through the countryside, during which he was followed by the police,Template:Sfnm he collapsed from a heart attack,Template:Sfnm dying on 4 November 1931.Template:Sfnm

Political ideology

Template:Communism in Italy Galleani's conception of anarchist communism combined the insurrectionary anarchism expounded by German individualist Max Stirner with the mutual aid advocated by Russian communist Peter Kropotkin. He defended the principles of revolutionary spontaneity, autonomy, diversity, self-determination and direct action,Template:Sfn and advocated for the violent overthrow of the state and capitalism through propaganda of the deed.Template:Sfnm

He rejected all forms of formal organization, including anarchist federations and labor unions,Template:Sfnm and opposed participating in the labor movement, as he believed it was inherently reformist and susceptible to corruption.Template:Sfnm From his rejection of reformism, he concluded that social change could only be brought about through violent attacks against institutions, which he believed could build towards a popular insurrection.Template:Sfn As such, he publicly endorsed terrorism,Template:Sfn or what he called "propaganda of the deed", which came in the form of the assassination of authority figures and the expropriation of private property.Template:Sfn Galleani defended both the assassination of William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz and the assassination of Umberto I of Italy by Gaetano Bresci.Template:Sfn

In his own words, his ultimate aim was to establish "a society without masters, without government, without law, without any coercive control—a society functioning on the basis of mutual agreement and allowing each member the freedom to enjoy absolute autonomy."Template:Sfn But he also rejected prefigurative politics, such as that advocated by anarcho-syndicalists, as he believed that people themselves would instinctively understand how to live as a free and equal society once the state and capitalism were overthrown.Template:Sfn

Legacy

File:New-York Tribune coverage of 1919 United States anarchist bombings.png

Coverage of the 1919 United States anarchist bombings by the New-York Tribune

In retaliation for Galleani's deportation from the United States, the Galleanisti launched a campaign of terrorist attacks, carrying out a series of bombings in 1919.Template:Sfnm In April 1919, the Galleanisti sent around thirty bombs out to government officials.Template:Sfnm Most of the bombs were intercepted and disarmed before reaching their destination, with only one detonating - injuring the intended target's maid.Template:Sfn In June 1919, they carried out a coordinated attack of nine bombings throughout the North-eastern United States, but none of their targets were killed or gravely wounded. One of the bombs detonated prematurely outside Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's house, killing the attacker.Template:Sfnm Another bomb that was placed in a church detonated following its discovery by police, killing ten police officers and a bystander.Template:Sfn In the political repression that followed, many of the Galleanisti were arrested, including Italian American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were executed despite the lack of evidence against them.Template:Sfnm In reprisal, the Galleanist Mario Buda was alleged to have carried out the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which killed 33 people.Template:Sfn

During the 1930s, the Romanian American anarchist Marcus Graham attempted to revive the Galleanist movement with the San Francisco-based newspaper Man!,Template:Sfn but its efforts were unsuccessful and the paper was shut down in 1939.Template:Sfn By the time of the defeat of Italian Fascism in World War II, the Italian American anarchist movement had largely dissipated.Template:Sfnm The Galleanist L'Adunata dei refrattari continued publication until 1971,Template:Sfn when it was succeeded by the anti-authoritarian periodical Fifth Estate.Template:Sfn

By the late-20th century, Galleani's figure had fallen into obscurity, receiving relatively little research from scholars.Template:Sfnm It was only in 1982, when The End of Anarchism? received a translation into English, that interest in him again began to grow.Template:Sfn In 2006, more English translations of his work were published in a compilation by AK Press.Template:Sfn

Selected works

• (1914) Contro la guerra, contro la pace, per la rivoluzione sociale; English translation: Against War, Against Peace, For The Social Revolution (1983, Centrolibri Books)
• (1925) La fine dell'Anarchismo?; English translation: The End of Anarchism? (1982, Cienfuegos Press)
• (1927) Il principio dell'organizzazione alla luce dell'anarchismo; English Translation: The Principal of Organization to the Light of Anarchism (2006, Pirate Press)

See also

• 1919 United States anarchist bombings
• First Red Scare
• Immigration Act of 1903

Bibliography

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Further reading

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