Political subversives I: The bibliographic travels of Luigi Galleani and Armando Borghi

Title

Political subversives I: The bibliographic travels of Luigi Galleani and Armando Borghi

Subject

Consistent with their travels to speak with their "disciples" and the international nature of anarchism, these two leaders, Galleani and Borghi, also published in a wide variety of places in the U.S., Italy and elsewhere. Doing so was often a function of evading crackdowns on subversives by U.S. postal authorities, or in Borghi's case, avoiding being imprisoned and possibly killed in Italy during the Mussolini years, when publishers, printers and authors all lived in fear.

Description

Luigi Galleani

Galleani was one of the anarchist movement’s most eloquent writers and spellbinding orators, heir to the great Errico Malatesta in Italy and elsewhere, a political agitator and charismatic anarchist leader, and a prolific political publisher.

Mentor to Sacco and Vanzetti, the peripatetic Galleani was born in Italy, and lived in various venues in the U.S. from 1901 until he was deported back to Italy in 1919. He first settled in Paterson, New Jersey in 1901 to be the editor of the then-most important anarchist journal, La Questione Sociale. Then, after starting the newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva [Subversive Chronicle]  in 1903, he moved to Lynn, Mass. (see his Madri d’Italia, under the pseudonym Mentana), until the postmaster in Lynn refused to mail Cronaca Sovversiva and his books, at which time he repaired to Barre, Vermont (see his Verso il comunismo, among other examples of publications from that venue).

He was prosecuted for violating anti-leftist laws, especially the 1918 Anarchist Exclusion Act. This act, which permitted the government to shut down publication of the Cronaca Sovversiva in that year (and deport Galleani and other editors of the newspaper subsequently), had been passed by Congress largely in response to the bombings that Galleani incited his followers to undertake (see his Faccia a faccia col nemico) through his publications as well as his personal direction: he even published a manual on how to make bombs (“La salute è in voi!” [Your salvation is up to you!]).

Galleani’s deportation in 1919 arose as much from his newspaper and pamphlet publications that were themselves regarded by the authorities as incitements to violence, as it did from his actual and attempted bombings. He and his followers of the individualist school of anarchism were wary of not only electoral politics but also of syndicalism, i.e., the use of trade unions to bring industry and government under the control by direct action, such as strikes and sabotage, the preferred methods of Carlo Tresca, among others. Because of these doctrinal differences, as well as Tresca’s immense personal charm and popularity, Galleani’s followers were even more determined to destroy the reputation and thus the effectiveness of Tresca, despite the anti-fascist views they shared in the 1920s and 1930s.

Like his unlikely ally Armando Borghi, Galleani was internationally well known, so that even his deportation from the U.S. hardly put a stop to his influence. L’Adunata dei Refrattari (The Gathering of the Recalcitrants) became the successor newspaper to La Cronaca Sovversiva after Galleani’s deportation in 1919, begun and run by his followers in the U.S. after Galleani’s deportation in 1919, and edited by Raffaele Schiavina. Its publishing arm released many full-length works (typically, collections of shorter pieces) like those exhibited here, as well as pamphlets, sometimes without Galleani’s authorization, due to his being unreachable in exile on the island of Lipari.

L’Adunata also published Galleani in Europe, e.g., in Rome as late as 1947, often using the same printer’s mark (a mermaid-like torchbearer) he used in the earliest of his works. The international character of the movement had long been clear: in one work, readers of an Italian-language edition of Organizzazione e anarchia, published in Paris (by L. Chauvet) sometime after 1925, are urged in a message in the inside rear cover to buy a copy of Galleani’s La fine dell’anarchismo?, published in the United States (Newark) in 1925.

Armando Borghi

Armando Borghi’s unflattering biography of Mussolini (Mussolini in camicia) was too dangerous to be released in Italy: after Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, publishing a work criticizing Mussolini soon became impossible. Simply for speaking in the Italian Parliament in June 1924 against fraud (and violence) employed by Mussolini in the recent election, United Socialist Party chief Giacomo Matteotti was within days thereafter murdered by the fascists, a politically explosive development that became a rallying cry of anti-fascists for many years.

In 1925, measures that gave the government powers to gag the press were passed. Emergency laws in 1926 suppressed every political party and every newspaper other than those of the fascists. It was in that context that anarcho-syndicalist Borghi arrived in the U.S. in or about November 1926, where he was joined by his lover, Virgilia D’Andrea (see her works in the collection). Shortly thereafter, in 1927 he published Mussolini in camicia in Italian in the only safe place to do so at the time, New York. This work became internationally popular, was translated into French and published in Paris (1932), in Amsterdam in Dutch (1933) - the collection has recently (in 2021) acquired a Dutch copy - , and then translated into English from the French edition, not the Italian original, and published in London (1935).

Mussolini in camicia was again published to America, but in English, in 1938 using the same British translation, and was not published in Italy until 1947, not long after the war’s end and Mussolini’s execution. In Italy, Borghi ranked second only to the legendary Errico Malatesta as its most important anarchist, so that when he arrived in the U.S., Borghi expected to be the foremost Italian anarchist there (Galleani having been deported some years before).

However, Carlo Tresca, director of Il Martello, who as a fellow “organization” anarchist might otherwise have been his natural ally, was in the way, and Borghi surprisingly thus aligned himself with the anti-organizational anarchist Galleanisti and their L’Adunata dei Refrattari, a move that he eventually came to regret. Like the Galleanisti, Borghi attacked Tresca not only on ideological grounds but also on personal ones.

Collection Items

Mussolini in camicia [Mussolini in a Nightshirt]. Bologna: Mammolo Zamboni, 1947.
See the lengthy history of this work in the description of the 1927 Edizione Libertarie edition published in Italian in New York in order to understand where this edition fits into that history.Borghi's work was only published in Italy (of course, in…

Mussolini in camicia [Mussolini in a Nightshirt]. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1961.
See the lengthy history of this work in the description of the 1927 Edizione Libertarie edition published in Italian in New York in order to understand where this edition fits into that history.Borghi's work continued its popularity in Italy, some 16…

Mussolini in zijn hemd [Mussolini in a Nightshirt]. Amsterdam: N.V. De Arbeiderspers, [1933].
Anyone wondering why the collection would include a book printed in Dutch will want to consult the main entry for the first Italian publication, in New York, of Armando Borghi's Mussolini in camicia.This is the Dutch translation of that work: shortly…

Verso il comunismo [Towards Communism]. Barre, VT: Tip. della Cronica Sovversiva, 1904.
This short (13-page) pamphlet was published in Barre, VT by the Cronaca Sovversiva only about a year after that newspaper's founding in 1903 on the types of political views of different people the narrator met while a student at the University of…

Mussolini in camicia [Mussolini in a Nightshirt]. New York: Edizioni Libertarie, 1927.
Armando Borghi’s unflattering biography of Mussolini, Mussolini in camicia, was too dangerous (to author, publisher or printer) to be released in Italy: soon after Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, publishing a work criticizing him or the Fascist…

Figure e figuri. Medaglioni [Characters and suspicious types. Sketches]. Newark: Biblioteca de L'Adunata dei Refrattari, 1930.
The articles collected here were originally published in La Questione or Cronaca Sovversiva between 1901 and 1920. This is a collection of Galleani’s articles on various important movement characters, Italian and otherwise, published by the…

La fine dell' anarchismo? [The End of Anarchism?] New York: Ed. curata da vecchi lettori di Cronica Sovversiva, 1925.
This is in part the transcript of an interview between socialist and anarchist writer and attorney for the anarchists, Francesco Saverio Merlino, and Cesare Sobrero of the Italian daily, La Stampa, and in part, following the interview, Galleani’s…

Aneliti e singulti. Medaglioni [Yearnings and Sobs. Sketches]. Newark: Biblioteca de L'Adunata dei Refrattari, 1935.
This work was published in Newark by the Adunata dei Refrattari, the successor to the Cronaca Sovversiva led by Raffaele Schiavina (Max Sartin) after his sub rosa return to America some time after his deportation in 1919. However, this work was…

Contro la guerra, contro la pace, per la rivoluzione sociale [Against War, Against Peace, for the Social Revolution]. Newark: Biblioteca de L'Adunata dei Refrattari, [c. 1930]
This work contains two essays of Galleani's, Per la guerra, per la neutralita o per la pace? (pp. 5-60) and Contro la guerra, contro la pace, per la rivoluzione! (lacking the word "sociale" at the end)(pp. 61-74), the first appearing to be the same…

Viva l'anarchia! [Hooray for Anarchy!] Newark: Cronaca Sovversiva, [1931].
Three-panel folded keepsake from the Cronaca Sovversiva, on heavy stock, enunciating the principles of how long anarchism will have to exist - so long as all the injustices of the world remain. Luigi Galleani was one of the anarchist movement’s most…

Faccia a faccia col nemico: cronache giudiziarie dell'anarchismo militante [Face to Face with the Enemy: Judicial chronicles of militant anarchism]. East Boston: Edizione Del Gruppo Autonomo, 1914.
This text is a lengthy work containing fifteen articles and essays from (and printed by the book publishing arm of) the anarchist Cronaca Sovversiva, led by author Luigi Galleani, describing various bombings by militant anarchists and their trials…

Madri d'Italia! (per Augusto Masetti) [Italian Mothers (for Augusto Masetti)]. Lynn, MA: Tipografia della Cronaca Sovversiva, 1913.
A pamphlet of 24 pages, this work addresses Italian mothers about the injustices of a nation whose sons return from war, mutilated and undone. In particular it calls for the release of Augusto Masetti, a soldier who, during the Libyan war, is alleged…

Una battaglia [A Struggle]. Roma: Biblioteca de L'Adunata dei Refrattari, 1947.
The first 65 pages of this work reprint and expand upon an earlier Galleani work, also in the Collection, Contro la guerra – contro la pace – per la rivoluzione sociale. In addition to the original essay, the work includes over fifty articles written…

Contro gli intrighi massonici nel campo rivoluzionario [Against Massonic Plots in the Revolutionary Battlefield]. Newark: I gruppi anarchici del antracite, 1939.
This is a collection of essays by Camillo Berneri and Armando Borghi. Berneri was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist. Along with Carlo Rosselli and Mario Angeloni, he organized anti-fascist militiamen in…

Mussolini Red and Black. New York: Freie Arbeiter Stimme, 1938.
For a full description of this work and its significance, see the description of it in the entry for the 1927 edition (published in New York) of Mussolini in camicia, q.v. It took 11 years for Borghi's work to return in translation to New York, where…

Errico Malatesta in 60 anni di lotte anarchiche: storia*critica*ricordi [Errico Malatesta in 60 Years of Anarchist Struggles: History, Criticism, Memories]. New York: Edizioni Sociali, 1933.
Preface by Sébastien Faure. That the story of the transnational work of a figure like Malatesta was written in Italian, published in New York, and printed in Paris by an Italian printer, Tipografia Sociali, is testimony to the international nature of…

Il banchetto dei cancri [The Banquet of the Evil Ones]. New York: Libreria Editrice dei Lavoratori Industriali del Mondo, 1925.
This is a collection of anti-fascist articles Borghi had published in the then New York-based Il Proletario about Matteotti’s assassination by Mussolini’s blackshirts. It is introduced by his preface written from Paris in June 1925. Both the…

Mezzo secolo di anarchia (1898-1945) [A Half Century of Anarchy (1898-1945)]. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1954.
This memoir describes Borghi's arrival in the world of anarchism, so new to him, in very dramatic terms. He was amazed by America: "For a long time, I did not understand it. I was attracted by it and at the same time repelled by it." The preface is…

Mussolini Red and Black. London: Wishart Books Limited, 1935.
Note that his translation by Dorothy Daudley is from the 1932 French edition (Mussolini en chemise, q.v.), rather than the Italian original of 1927 in New York. This edition also includes an Epilogue (fancifully entitled "Hitler: Mussolini's…
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