A giant of Italian politics and anti-fascism, director of the magazine Critica Sociale, guiltily forgotten for years. Arrives at the bookstore “The heretic. Giuseppe Faravelli in the history of Italian socialism”, a volume written by Fabio Florindi and published by Arcadia edizioni. This is the first biography on the life of Faravelli, a man who went through a broad Italian political season, always on the side of workers and reformist socialism. Close to Giacomo Matteotti and Filippo Turati, with the advent of fascism he too will suffer persecution which will lead him to expatriate abroad, where he becomes Joseph, one of the most intransigent and influential leaders of anti-fascism in exile. The book offers a narrative full of details and unpublished documentation. Through an engaging style, he gives us not only the public figure of Faravelli, but also the most intimate and human side of him. He was an irascible man who often indulged in legendary outbursts. He was also gifted with a corrosive irony, which willingly slipped into foul language. His health was precarious, due to emphysema that tormented him throughout his life, and his character was strong.
Born in 1896 in Broni, in the province of Pavia, in a land where reformist socialism had given rise to some of its most far-sighted achievements, Throughout his life, Faravelli proved to be the antipode of the powerful politician. He came to socialism after the experience of the trenches in the Great War, where for his conduct he was awarded the bronze medal and the war cross for military valour. He adheres to Turati’s reformist current, of which he is one of his favorite disciples. With the advent of the fascist dictatorship, Faravelli did not flee abroad, but chose to continue the battle underground. He remains in his post as administrative commissioner of the Municipality of Milan and uses the job to provide several anti-fascists with the necessary papers for expatriation. Having discovered his activities against the regime, in 1931 he had to adventurously flee to Switzerland.
When France collapses, under the advance of Hitler’s panzers, it is always Faravelli who tries to put back together the pieces of the PSI in exile, which had fallen into a thousand pieces. Having taken refuge in a daring way in Toulouse, he wrote to the members of the last party leadership to finalize the new directives. In 1943 the authorities of “free” France handed him over to the fascist police. Joseph faces the death penalty, but ultimately gets away with 30 years in prison. Close to the Liberation, an American bombing allows him to escape from prison and take refuge in Switzerland.
At the end of the war he was the first to complain about the paralysis of the Socialist Party due to the clash between the democratic and frontist souls. Faravelli spent all his energy in the internal battle against the frontists. Saragat also acknowledges this, communicating to him from the Italian embassy in Paris: “I have taken the plunge: I am returning to Italy. I have written to President De Gasperi in this sense and I think that by the beginning of March I will be with you […]. What decided me was the show of seriousness, firmness and courage that animates your Social Criticism group”. Joseph is the most lucid of his current in reading the situation and the first to be convinced of the inevitability of the split, which in January 1947 led to the birth of the PSLI.
The idea of a Socialist Party as a “third force”, which did not have to bow its head to either the DC or the PCI, always remained its guiding star. This vision led him to political solitude, Faravelli was one of the few protagonists of anti-fascism who, with the advent of the Republic, did not hold prestigious positions in the institutions. Partly because he shunned honors and nominations, but also because he was an inconvenient politician, not willing to put personal or “clan” gain before the interest of the country. Intransigent with fascism, he was equally strong with communism. After the split, he was one of the three provisional secretaries of the Social Democrats. But, just as he had previously attacked Nenni’s frontist politics, in the new party Faravelli criticized Saragat’s line, which in his opinion was too focused on ministerialism and the DC.
Joseph placed many hopes on socialist unification, which took shape in the second half of the 1960s, although he was critical of the ways in which it was undertaken. The failure of that operation, and the subsequent split with the rebirth of PSI and PSDI, was yet another disappointment in his militancy. All he had left was Social Criticism, of which Faravelli had become director in 1958, after the death of Ugo Guido Mondolfo. He knocked on all doors to find funding and, in a letter to the young collaborator Giuseppe Tamburrano in October 1973, he vented: “I have the doubt that someone thinks that I am trying to save the life of the Critics for a material personal interest But it is good that it is known that I have never taken a penny from the Critics and that instead I donate to them the so-called “merit annuity” that is given to me as a “political victim” (about thirty-three thousand lire per month). Furthermore, I pay the supporter subscription”. Faravelli dedicated his last strength to the magazine, until his death on 15 June 1974.