Frank Rosengarten

On Intellectuals, Engaged and Otherwise (With an Afterword on Thomas Mann's Use of Intellectual Reflection in the Novella “Mario and the Magician”)

Abstract After a clarification of the word “intellectual,” this essay proceeds to discuss three influential twentieth-century intellectuals: Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, and Betty Friedan. The works discussed are Gramscis The Prison Notebooks, Saids Humanism and Democratic Criticism and The Question of Palestine, and Friedans The Feminine Mystique. The essay ends with an afterword on Thomas Manns 1929 novella “Mario and the Magician,” with a view to shedding light on why retrospective intellectual commentary is relevant to emotions whose intensity as lived experience seems to lie beyond the purview of such commentary.

History of the Mafia

for the majority of the entire century in question (pp. 123–125). Women’s employment ‘actually declined steadily’; excepting a rally in the 1970s, in 2001 the percentage of women working in Italy ‘was only a little higher than in 1901 and slightly lower than in 1881’ (p. 188). Most intriguing as to the specific character of Italian women’s history, despite the radical lowering of the birthrate over the course of the century, family has retained its status as central organizing and existential social structure. This is not to say that Willson does not appreciate the kinds of change that have transformed the lives of Italian women in this period: ‘Gender disparities in both the private and public spheres diminished, family size grew smaller and female education improved dramatically’ (p. 1). Though she rightly notes the newness of figures like ‘assertive young lesbians ready to debate Church and state alike for the[ir] right[s]’ (p. 186), Willson finds that Italian women now live with a ‘fascinating mix of modernity and tradition’ (p. 189), one that she explicates with verve and accuracy over the course of a book I would enthusiastically recommend at all levels of the academy, from undergraduate Italian or women’s and gender history courses up to non-Italianist scholars interested in adding to their comparative knowledge of twentieth-century gender and political history. Even specialists in the same field will find the book good reading, with pithy insights and valuable information in one eminently user-friendly place.

Piero Gobetti's New World – Antifascism, Liberalism, Writing

peaceful outcome to the Italo-Ethiopian dispute through mediation. The fascist regime reacted with fury to any Vatican involvement short of full endorsement of the colonial war. On the eve of formal hostilities, which began in October, and in the battle for world opinion, the fascist state did not want to be branded as the aggressor by the Pope. The Pope faced a second unpleasant reality. The Italian clergy favored the war and rallied to the patriotic hysteria when sanctions, imposed by the League, went into effect in November. Clergymen rushed to become military chaplains. There was almost a fusion between the aggression of the Italian state and the missionary zeal of the Church. The onset of war and sanctions led to the expulsion of Protestant missionaries from Ethiopia, much to the satisfaction of the Catholic Church. Key figures in the Catholic hierarchy, like Cardinal Schuster of Milan, expressed open approval of the war, much to the dismay of the Pope, but, again, his disapproval was private, not public. The Pope’s silence seemed to encourage both clergy and faithful. The Church actively helped in the collection of gold wedding rings. The impression given to the world was one of complete alignment of the Fascist regime and the Church over the war. Ceci’s book is a well-documented indictment of papal policy. Silence became the rule in the face of fascist aggression right up to the end of the regime. Perhaps nothing better could be expected of a Vatican staffed by clerical apparatchiks. One can only say that, if Pius XI was bad, his successor was worse.

John Cammett's writings on Antonio Gramsci and the PCI *

Abstract This essay on John Cammetts contributions to Gramsci studies is composed of four parts. Part 1 deals with the intriguing interplay in Cammetts writings between Old Left loyalties and New Left challenges to it. Part 2 focuses on his work as a bibliographer and editor, the most important aspect of which is his monumental Bibliografia gramsciana, comprising three volumes published in 1991, 1995 and 2001. Part 3 consists of some remarks on Cammetts career as a professor and academic administrator. Part 4 is a brief discussion of the book for which he is most widely known, his 1967 study Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism.

Looking back in order to look ahead: Twenty years of research and publishing by the research group on socialism and democracy

The project of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy (RGSD), as originally conceived by its co-founders, Mike Brown and myself, had a threefold purpose: historical, theoretical, and methodological. We approached the project with only two presuppositions, which, as stated in our introduction to the first issue of Socialism and Democracy (Fall 1985), were: (1) “that modernization, if it is to be a process involving the development of society as a whole, requires some measure of socialist organization and planning”; and (2) “that socialism and democracy are two aspects of the same general problematic.” Beyond these two basic presuppositions or “premises,” we left the door open for reflections coming from a broad spectrum of intellectual and political sources. It was in this spirit that the RGSD invited speakers of different ideological persuasions to share their thoughts in public, organized seminars on a variety of topics, and sponsored one major conference in 1989 that featured a large number of speakers on the history, theory, and future prospects of the Communist Party USA. The conference was suggested to us by Gil Green, a long-time maverick of the Party who, despite his advanced years, was engaged in the polemics that accompanied the crisis of “really existing socialism” in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The historical part of the project was motivated by a desire to explore the moments of the last several hundred years where intersections and interactions could be detected between socialist and democratic movements of various kinds: political, of course, but social and