Partito d'Azione
Encyclopedia
History
It was an anti-fascist political party in the tradition of Giuseppe MazziniGiuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
and the Risorgimento. Founded in July 1942 by former militants of Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
(Justice and Liberty), liberal socialists, democrats. Ideologically they were heirs to the "Liberal Socialism" of Carlo Rosselli
Carlo Rosselli
Carlo Rosselli was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy then abroad...
and to Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti
Piero Gobetti was an Italian journalist, intellectual and radical liberal and anti-fascist. He was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after the First World War and into the early years of Fascist rule.-Biography:...
's "Liberal Revolution", whose writings rejected Marxist "economic determinism
Economic determinism
Economic determinism is the theory which attributes primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history. It is usually associated with the theories of Karl Marx, although many Marxist thinkers have dismissed plain and unilateral economic determinism as a form of...
" and aimed at the overcoming of class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
and for a new shape of Socialism, respect for civil liberty and for radical change in both the social and the economic structure of Italy. From January 1943 it published a clandestine newspaper, L'Italia Libera
L'Italia Libera
L'Italia Libera was the newspaper of the Italian anti-fascist organization and political party Partito d'Azione , which was founded in July 1942. The paper was published on a press in the basement of premises at Via Basento 55, in Rome, until it was raided in November 1943...
("Free Italy"), edited by Leone Ginzburg
Leone Ginzburg
Leone Ginzburg was an Italian editor, writer, journalist and teacher, as well as an important anti-fascist political activist and a hero of the resistance movement...
.
Central members of the National Liberation Committee
National Liberation Committee
The National Liberation Committee was the underground political entity of Italian Partisans during the German occupation of Italy in the last years of the Second World War. It was a multi-party entity, whose members were united by their anti-fascism...
, they participated actively in the Italian resistance movement
Italian resistance movement
The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...
with units of Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
(Justice and Liberty), commanded by Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri was an Italian partisan and politician who served as the 43rd Prime Minister of Italy for several months in 1945. During the resistance he was known as Maurizio.-Biography:...
. It maintained a clear antimonarchical position and it was opposed to Togliatti
Tolyatti
Tolyatti , also known as Togliatti, is a city in Samara Oblast, Russia. It serves as the administrative center of Stavropolsky District, although it is administratively separate from it...
and the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
's Salerno Initiative for postwar governance. The party adopted the symbol of a flaming sword. (For Partito d'Azione units and involvement in the Italian resistance movement, see Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
.)
In the immediate post-war period it joined the government securing the post of Prime Minister for Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri
Ferruccio Parri was an Italian partisan and politician who served as the 43rd Prime Minister of Italy for several months in 1945. During the resistance he was known as Maurizio.-Biography:...
from June to November 1945. However as a result of the internal conflict between the democratic-reformist line of Ugo La Malfa
Ugo La Malfa
Ugo La Malfa was an Italian politician, and an important leader in the Italian Republican Party, of which his son, Giorgio La Malfa, is now president.- Early years and anti-Fascist resistance :...
and the socialist line of Emilio Lussu
Emilio Lussu
Emilio Lussu was an Italian soldier, politician and a writer.-The soldier:Lussu was born in Armungia, province of Cagliari and graduated with a degree in law in 1914...
, combined with the electoral defeat of 1946, the party folded. Unwillingness of the "Actionists" to work with reviving political parties "tainted by association with Fascism" also resulted in the decline of the Partito d'Azione. The main group of former members, led by Riccardo Lombardi, joined the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
, while the Malfa group entered the Italian Republican Party
Italian Republican Party
The Italian Republican Party is a liberal political party in Italy.The PRI is party with old roots that originally took a left-wing position, claiming descent from the political position of Giuseppe Mazzini...
.
Prominent members
- Giorgio Agosti
- Giorgio BassaniGiorgio BassaniGiorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.-Biography:Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny...
- Riccardo Bauer
- Norberto BobbioNorberto BobbioNorberto Bobbio was an Italian philosopher of law and political sciences and a historian of political thought. He also wrote regularly for the Turin-based daily La Stampa....
- Andrea Caffi
- Piero CalamandreiPiero CalamandreiPiero Calamandrei was an Italian author, jurist, soldier, university professor and politician. He was one of Italy's leading authorities on the law of civil procedure....
- Guido Calogero
- Aldo CapitiniAldo CapitiniAldo Capitini was a leading Italian theorist of nonviolence, known as the "Italian Gandhi".-Introduction:Nonviolent methodologies were used effectively for the first time by Gandhi in South Africa and later in the fight for independence against the British Empire in the early 1940s...
- Nicola ChiaromonteNicola ChiaromonteNicola Chiaromonte was an Italian activist and author. In 1934 he fled Italy for France, after opposing Benito Mussolini's fascist government. During the Spanish Civil War, he flew in André Malraux's squadron, fighting against fascist supported General Francisco Franco...
- Carlo Azeglio CiampiCarlo Azeglio Ciampidr. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi is an Italian politician and banker. He was the 73rd Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and was the tenth President of the Italian Republic from 1999 to 2006...
, President of the Italian Republic (1999–2006) - Tristano Codignola
- Enrico Cuccia
- Guido Dorso
- Francesco de MartinoFrancesco De MartinoFrancesco de Martino was an Italian jurist, politician, lifetime senator and former interim Vice President of the Italian Republic...
- Enzo Enriques Agnoletti
- Oriana FallaciOriana FallaciOriana Fallaci was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career...
- Vittorio FoaVittorio FoaVittorio Foa was an Italian politician, trade unionist, journalist and writer.-Biography:Foa was born in Turin in 1910 into a middle-class Jewish family....
- Alessandro Galante Garrone
- Ettore Gallo
- Aldo Garosci
- Leone GinzburgLeone GinzburgLeone Ginzburg was an Italian editor, writer, journalist and teacher, as well as an important anti-fascist political activist and a hero of the resistance movement...
- Natalia GinzburgNatalia GinzburgNatalia Ginzburg née Levi was an award-winning Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize...
- Ugo La MalfaUgo La MalfaUgo La Malfa was an Italian politician, and an important leader in the Italian Republican Party, of which his son, Giorgio La Malfa, is now president.- Early years and anti-Fascist resistance :...
- Massimo Mila
- Carlo LeviCarlo LeviDr. Carlo Levi was an Italian-Jewish painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist, and doctor.He is best known for his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli , published in 1945, a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism...
- Primo LeviPrimo LeviPrimo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
- Riccardo Lombardi
- Emilio LussuEmilio LussuEmilio Lussu was an Italian soldier, politician and a writer.-The soldier:Lussu was born in Armungia, province of Cagliari and graduated with a degree in law in 1914...
- Raffaele Mattioli
- Ferruccio ParriFerruccio ParriFerruccio Parri was an Italian partisan and politician who served as the 43rd Prime Minister of Italy for several months in 1945. During the resistance he was known as Maurizio.-Biography:...
, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy (1945) - Ernesto RossiErnesto RossiErnesto Rossi was an Italian politician, journalist and anti-fascist activist. His ideas contributed to the Partito d'Azione, and subsequently the Partito Radicaleco-authur of the Ventotene Manifesto. Rossi was born in Caserta....
- Manlio Rossi Doria
- Joyce Salvadori Lussu
- Gaetano SalveminiGaetano SalveminiGaetano Salvemini was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer.- Biography :Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia....
- Altiero SpinelliAltiero SpinelliAltiero Spinelli was an Italian political theorist and a European federalist. Spinelli is referred to as one of the "Founding Fathers of the European Union" due to his co-authorship of the Ventotene Manifesto, his founding role in the European federalist movement, his strong influence on the first...
- Alberto Tarchiani
- Adolfo Tino
- Silvio Trentin
- Leo ValianiLeo ValianiLeo Valiani was an Italian politician and journalist.He was born in Rijeka , on the Adriatic, which is today in independent Croatia but was then a leading seaport for the largely landlocked Austro-Hungarian Empire...
- Franco VenturiFranco VenturiFranco Venturi was an Italian historian, essayist and journalist, a scholar of the Enlightenment in Italy and of the history of Russia, and an anti-fascist active in the Resistance.-Life:...
- Paolo Vittorelli
- Bruno ZeviBruno ZeviBruno Zevi was an Italian architect, historian, professor, curator, author and editor. Zevi was a vocal critic of 'classicising' modern architecture and postmodernism.-University years:...
Sources
Website of the Italian Resistance Historical Society: http://www.romacivica.net/anpiroma/antifascismo/antifascismo15.html http://www.romacivica.net/anpiroma/antifascismo/antifascismo15.htmlIncludes in-depth bios, recent remembrances, and selections from party documents.
Historical Dictionary entry from Paravia Mondadori Editori, an Italian Educational publishing house: http://www.pbmstoria.it/dizionari/storia_mod/p/p062.htm http://www.pbmstoria.it/dizionari/storia_mod/p/p062.htm