WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 4/2023: sent review: BOOKS. ANARCHY AND COOPERATION (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

 Often the historiography of libertarian movements is forced to move on the

expansion - or more often on the deconstruction - of the official one,
highlighting aspects considered marginal by most scholars. ---- A capillary
research work follows between written sources and testimonies that are not easy
to find, with the awareness of how basic it is, to start exhaustive analyses, the
recomposition of even partial tiles: a concept highlighted by Tito Menzani,
editor of the preface of the book by Antonio Senta, Anarchy and cooperation - At
the origins of a relationship (1861-1914), ed. Malamente, Urbino, 2023, when he
underlines: "The hope is that the volume is not a point of arrival, but a
starting point for further insights into these topics".
Abstraction, in my opinion, extendable to any non-fiction work but in reality
Senta makes us participate in a well-documented study, focused on the Romagna
area and then radiating onto other experiences, highlighting different ways of
experimenting with collective work.

The author does not deny the role that Marxist, Mazzinian and those linked to
Christian social thought had in the evolution of cooperative realities in Italy,
but clarifies how much the anarchist movement has acted to make them concrete and
how much all this has contributed to raising awareness among workers, peasants
and, above all, labourers.

If the origins are to be placed in the ideals of utopian socialism which
understood cooperation as an integral part of the emancipation of the working
class and of society as a whole, over the years it was precisely the libertarian
components that put into practice the requests for overcoming labor relations and
to set up mutual aid societies which, in addition to providing economic support
to those who could not work (e.g. in the event of illness, disability,
postpartum), implemented literacy and training courses, as well as dealing with
the management of free time through the music, the acting and more. Mutual aid
societies, albeit minimized by official historiography, were very significant: as
the author points out, in 1904 there were 6535 of them; and from these the
experience of cooperation took off, where solidarity among those who lend the
workforce was experienced as a priority, but also declined on different political
approaches with regard to the criticism that was established against the top
management of some cooperatives, the positions undertaken by Andrea Costa and
solutions to the recurring problem of lack of work and unhealthy places.

At the same time other experiments were born, such as those of the community
colonies. Senta writes: "Trying, trying ways and paths that can lead to happiness
first and in the best possible way: this is, in my opinion, what the
experimentation of socialist colonies has in common with the cooperative practice
of laborers and it is in this area of overlapping and contamination that moves
several agricultural workers from Romagna, some of anarchist ideas, who decide to
go to the Roman countryside. The point is to work without tyranny, with as little
exploitation as possible and as much as possible in a communist way, living a
life without authority. The discussion on these issues, as you will have
understood, is heated.

   Although daily practice had to deal with divisions and contradictions, there
were those who nurtured revolutionary aspirations precisely on the basis of
collective work experiences, through the reversal of the balance of power between
social classes, and those who criticized these positions for their illusory . And
it is precisely on this that the debate within the anarchist movement is
expressed in very warm tones, as well as dictated by the inevitable state
repression, well described and contextualized in the text that can be requested
from the editionimalamente.it website or from bookstores.

clear gazzola

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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