"Liberal Revolution" is the sum of his thoughts and his long gaze. Piero Gobetti is a young intellectual who develops ideas that are a warning and a call to action when Italy falls into the arms of the regime that denies freedoms.
Born in Turin in 1901 and died in Neully sur Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, in 1926, following the attacks suffered by men in black shirts, he is one of the central figures of anti-fascism and 20th century culture, as recalled by Gianluca Scroccu, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cagliari, in the volume “Piero Gobetti in the history of Italy. A political and cultural biography” (Le Monnier) which will be presented on 4 May, at 5 pm, in the conference room of the Fondazione di Sardegna in Cagliari.
Scroccu, already winner of the Fiuggi Storia Prize (2016) and the Matteotti Prize (2017) for the work on Antonio Giolitti, offers the picture of the new analyzes on the ideas of the Piedmontese philosopher and journalist, who left a profound mark for the originality and the value of his intellectual experience. Gobetti maintains that fascism was “the autobiography of a nation” and warns that “we fought Mussolini as a corruptor rather than as a tyrant, fascism as a paternal guardianship rather than as a dictatorship; we didn't insist on complaints about the lack of freedom and violence, but we directed our polemic against the Italians who didn't resist, who let themselves be tamed". For him there could be no socialism without freedom. For this reason, liberal praxis had to be the main road to every political choice.
The commitment
Gianluca Scroccu also projects himself into the present to give an account of how current and necessary the thought of Piero Gobetti is, who directed and created, in addition to "Rivoluzione Liberale", the magazines "Energie Nove" and "Il Baretti". This is how his friend Carlo Levi recalls him: " He was a tall and thin young man, he disdained the elegance of the person, he wore glasses with temples, like a modest scholar: his long, tousled hair with red reflections shaded his forehead". From Gobetti comes a lesson in commitment and militancy: " For Piero - adds Levi - it was a duty to participate personally in the contemporary political and intellectual debate".