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Fascism Destroyed Italy’s Socialist City Halls

By: Marshall Pierce

After World War I, Italian Socialists built an impressive array of welfare programs, schools, and libraries in cities. Fascist backlash soon revealed the limits of their strength.

A century ago, Italy witnessed an unprecedented wave of labor militancy, combining electoral advances with revolutionary mobilization. Nurtured by socialist and syndicalist currents and buoyed by a wave of municipal victories, the biennio rosso — the “two red years” of 1919 and 1920 — ushered in mass strikes, factory occupations, and organized experiments in worker self-management. In Turin, a […]

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A century ago, Italy witnessed an unprecedented wave of labor militancy, combining electoral advances with revolutionary mobilization. Nurtured by socialist and syndicalist currents and buoyed by a wave of municipal victories, the biennio rosso — the “two red years” of 1919 and 1920 — ushered in mass strikes, factory occupations, and organized experiments in worker self-management. In Turin, a […]

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A century ago, Italy witnessed an unprecedented wave of labor militancy, combining electoral advances with revolutionary mobilization. Nurtured by socialist and syndicalist currents and buoyed by a wave of municipal victories, the biennio rosso — the “two red years” of 1919 and 1920 — ushered in mass strikes, factory occupations, and organized experiments in worker self-management. In Turin, a […]

Large

A century ago, Italy witnessed an unprecedented wave of labor militancy, combining electoral advances with revolutionary mobilization. Nurtured by socialist and syndicalist currents and buoyed by a wave of municipal victories, the biennio rosso — the “two red years” of 1919 and 1920 — ushered in mass strikes, factory occupations, and organized experiments in worker self-management. In Turin, a […]