Corrupter of the Working Class. Italian Revolutionary Syndicalism and Antisemitic Critics of Democracy

Abstract

This chapter intends to reconstruct the reception of antisemitism in Italian revolutionary syndicalism. The history of this important group of the Italian labor movement is limited to a relatively brief period in the twentieth century, corresponding to about a decade (1904–1914). Its nature is not understandable without connecting it to the history of the trade-union movement in France, which provided the model for the insurrectional and anti-statist culture in Italy, along with the criticism of the gradualist and reformist dogmatism of official socialism. The revolutionary revision of Italian socialism, driven by trade union leaders Arturo Labriola and Enrico Leone, intended to put the workers’ movement at the center of modernity, aiming to push it even deeper into the capitalistic contradictions and into its own lines of development. The workers’ movement was not just a mere antithesis to the capitalist system, but rather it would become a vital and dynamic protagonist of historical-social progress.