TEORIA POLITICA

Direttori

Carla AUniversità degli Studi di Macerata

Natascia MUniversità degli Studi di Macerata

Comitato scientifico

Cristiano Maria BUniversità degli Studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo”

José Francisco J DUniversidad Pablo de Olavide

Julien PUniversité de Liège

Matteo TUniversità di Parma

Gianluca VUniversità degli Studi di Macerata

TEORIA POLITICA

L’apoliticità non esiste. Tutto è politica.

— Thomas Mann

La collana di Teoria politica si propone di accogliere e pubblicare ricerche estudi, in particolare monografie e volumi collettanei, dedicati alle trasfor-mazioni del “politico” analizzato attraverso le pratiche, le istituzioni, illessico, le teorie e la storia delle idee. Si intende offrire spazio anche a la-vori inediti che ricostruiscano i mutamenti dello spazio politico attraversotemi quali la sfera pubblica, i cambiamenti che investono le soggettivitàpolitiche (con riferimento alle capacità e ai diritti), la fenomenologia rappre-sentativa, il simbolismo e la comunicazione politica. Con questa iniziativaeditoriale ci si rivolge a quanti seguono le metamorfosi contemporanee del“politico” con l’intento critico proprio degli studiosi, teso a intercettare ledinamiche che si intrecciano nel rapporto società–politica–diritto, e conl’attenzione vigile di quei lettori che vogliano orientarsi nella comprensionedei fenomeni politici con strumenti concettuali adeguati alle sfide di unmondo che esige uno sguardo locale, nazionale e globale.

There is nothing that is not political. Everything is politics.

— Thomas Mann

The aim of the “Political Theory” series is to publish studies and research,particularly monographs and miscellaneous volumes, on the transformationof the political realm, analyzed through practices, institutions, language, the-ories, and the history of ideas. It is also a space for previously unpublishedworks that reconstruct the alterations of political space through aspects suchas the public sphere, changes that affect political subjectivities (with refer-ence to capacities and rights), representative phenomenology, symbolism,and political communication. This publishing initiative is for those whofollow the contemporary metamorphoses of politics with the critical intentof scholars in order to tap into the dynamics of the relationships linkingsociety, politics and law. It is attentive to readers striving to orient theirunderstanding of political phenomena by using conceptual instruments upto the challenges of a world requiring a local, national, and global focus.

Opera originale:Ester Saletta, L’utopia democratica di Hermann Broch e il contributo

politico-ideologico di Giuseppe Antonio Borgese e di Gaetano Salvemini, Aracne,Roma, .

Ester Saletta

The City of Man

The Political–Ideological Contribution ofGiuseppe Antonio Borgese and Gaetano Salvemini

to Hermann Broch’s Democratic Utopia

English translation byCatherine Bolton

Copyright © MMXVARACNE editrice int.le S.r.l.

www.aracneeditrice.itinfo@aracneeditrice.it

via Quarto Negroni, Ariccia (RM)

()

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No part of this book may be reproducedby print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means,

without publisher’s authorization.

First edition: October

To Sachisincere friend and mentor for this study

Only in the knowledge of his Essencehas any man ceased to be many mon-keys.

A H, Ape and Essence

Contents

Prologue

Chapter IUtopia and Dystopia

Chapter IIThe Dystopian Utopia of Fascism and Nazism

.. The “Political Architecture” of Benito Mussolini’s FascistUtopia, – .. The Mortal “Literary Utopia” of the Führer’sPolitical Project, .

Chapter IIIBetween the New Deal and Utopia

.. The American Years of the New Deal: The Political Prin-ciples of the Philosophical Pragmatism of John Dewey andWilliam James, – .. The Phenomenon of Fuoriuscitismo: TheReaction of Exiled Italian Intellectuals to Fascism, – .. ThePolitical Thought of the Anti-Fascist Gaetano Salvemini, –.. Giuseppe Antonio Borgese between Anti-Fascist Inconsis-tency and Universalistic Democratic Utopia, – .. The Ger-man Resistance in New York between and . Collabora-tion with the American Democratic Framework, .

Chapter IVThe City of Man

.. The Political and Literary Echoes of a Democratic Utopia, – .. The City of Man: Constitution and Argumentative Struc-ture, .

Conclusions

Contents

Note

List and Description of Consulted Sources

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Prologue

“Historia se ripetit.” It was the year when in the fifth bookof The New Science the Neapolitan philosopher GiambattistaVico defined history as a progressive path of “corsi e ricorsi,”of evolutions and modern innovations, but also of involutionsand inevitable violent regressions, hailing the recovery of prim-itivism. Vico’s “recurring cycles” of history have continued tomake themselves felt over the decades and centuries, bringingwith them moments that greatly celebrate human dignity, butalso moments of primordial and bestial inhumanity that aredetrimental to human freedom and that endanger its demo-cratic experience.

Many historical examples can be cited: from the AmericanRevolution in that brought independence to the Englishcolonies in North America to the French Revolution of that put an end to the Ancien Régime with the emanation of theDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, whicheven today is the document of reference for the organizationof modern democratic constitutions; from Europe’s liberalrevolution of that overturned the geopolitical structure ofthe Restoration, enacted by the Congress of Vienna in , tothe Russian Revolution of , which gave control of the stateto the Soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers.

Contemporary history provides even more significant epi-sodes, celebrating democratic liberty and becoming the voiceof a massive migration to the West, toward old Europe, whichthus returned to being an area of welcome for those whosettled there or traveled through it. We can cite the fall of theBerlin Wall in , the prelude to the collapse of CommunistEurope, and the very recent Arab Spring, when the populations

Prologue

of North Africa rebelled against local dictatorships. These arepopulations that fled the tyrannical oppression of deeply rootedoligarchical powers, that left the East and the Arab world toseek Martin Luther King’s democratic ideal of “I have a dream.”

These dynamics merely repeat the history of Europe which,during the Francoist, Fascist, and Nazi periods, could certainlynot claim to be a safe haven for refugees seeking democracy,but was in the grips of totalitarianism. Not so in the UnitedStates, where the dream of oppressed populations continuedto be that of a tolerant democracy that could also welcomeexiles persecuted by European dictatorships. Of course, thegeography has changed and even been radically inverted, butthe common denominator has remained the same. Today thehuman desire to be free of violent oppression, the denial ofhuman rights, and the standardizing alienation of ideologizedmass politics is still rooted in recovering individual dignity andvalorizing subjective diversity as an added factor of living insociety — just as it was then.

In the wake of dictatorships ravaging Europe, several fig-ures rose to become spokespersons for anti-totalitarian free-dom, the strengthening of democracy, and the protection ofhumans rights, and they included the Austrian Hermann Broch(–), and the Italians Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (-–) and Gaetano Salvemini (–). Along with leadingfigures from the European and American cultural milieu, suchas the German Thomas Mann (–), and the AmericansLewis Mumford (–) and Reinhold Niebuhr (–),they were among the coauthors of The City of Man. Declarationon World Democracy (). They testify to the intellectual battlewaged in the United States to protect and renew democracy inEurope, a battle that ran parallel to the European fight againstthe troops of Hitler and Mussolini.

. The reference to the polysemy of the concept of democracy based onsociopolitical changes and the questions of the existence of a single undisputedmeaning of existential equality can be traced back to the idea of a value that is

Prologue

Analysis of historical and literary structures has clarified thespatiotemporal coordinates that encouraged not only intensifi-cation of the personal and literary friendship between Brochand Borgese, but also their profound political collaborationas exiles in the United States during World War II. The com-mon sentiment of Broch and Borgese regarding the urgency ofpacific propaganda against totalitarianism, to which Salveminialso contributed ideologically, is testified by autograph docu-mentary sources — in German, English, and Italian — that arenot well known among international Broch scholars (see thelist of archival material in the appendix). They have encour-aged interdisciplinary and comparative studies of the politicalcooperation among German and Italian immigrants, enrichingthe already extensive bibliography regarding Broch’s politicaland democratic commitment, which, for the sake of complete-ness, should be studied alongside Borgese’s Golia. La marcia delfascismo () and Polemica sul fascismo (), and Salvemini’sLettere dall’America (–) and Memorie di un fuoriuscito(posthumous, ). From this perspective, we must also notethe importance of Borgese’s project titled Draft of a World Con-stitution () for a universal democratic constitution, whichnot only followed the publication of The City of Man, but also

dynamic in nature and is constantly evolving, as intended by Dietrich Eckhart andKlaus Wallraven. “Democracy, more accurately than any other category, reflectsall the changes to which political education was subjected in the postwar period,in which the democratic picture was an active part of these changes and to whichdemocracy subjected itself: this reveals a certain relativism and depends on thecourse of historical evolutions, and thus it must be interpreted within the historicalcontext.”

. Ester Saletta, “Hermann Broch und Giuseppe Antonio Borgese – Dichtungund Engagement,” in ed. Endre Kiss, Paul Michael Lützeler, and Gabriella Rácz,Hermann Brochs literarische Freundschaften (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, ), –.

. See Hermann Broch – ein Engagierter zwischen Literatur und Politik, ed. Österre-ichische Liga für Menschenrechte (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, ); Milind Brahme,“Hermann Broch’s Political Writings,” in Apperception. Journal of the Depth of En-glish and Other Modern European Languages, Santiniketan, vol. III, March , –;Patrick Eiden-Offe, Das Reich der Demokratie: Hermann Brochs “Der Tod des Vergil”(Paderborn: Wilhelm Finck, ).

Prologue

the foundation of the Mazzini Society () with the aid ofother anti-Fascist Italian exiles such as Max Ascoli (–),Nicola Chiaromonte (–), Giorgio La Piana (–),Max Salvatori (–), and Arturo Toscanini (–).

It is important to note that literary research has also led toin-depth investigation and the enrichment of prior historicaland critical knowledge of Italian studies in the country. I am re-ferring to Borgese and Salvemini’s democratic attitudes, which— unquestionably influenced by Broch regarding the protec-tion of human rights and dignity — would finally eliminate theaura of mystery that has long cast a vague and contradictoryshadow on the anti-Fascist Borgese. In fact, although Borgeseforcefully and decisively rejected Mussolini’s regime, varioushistorians — including Giorgio Boatti, Walter Wilhelm Goetz,and Enrico Ghidetti — viewed him as a figure who waxed nos-talgic over the twenty-year Fascist regime, above all becauseof his youthful appreciation of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzioin Hermes, the journal he founded and headed between and . The active and peaceful intellectual commitment thatunited German and Italian exiles in the United States againstHitler and Mussolini’s mad hegemonic projects for Europerecovered the “true” meaning of the democratic principle and

. Inspired by the ideals and morals of the Risorgimento patriot GiuseppeMazzini, the society envisioned a constitution interested in informing the Americanpublic about the true conditions of Fascist Italy in order to fight Fascist propagandain the United States, defend American democratic institutions, assist Italian politicalexiles seeking refuge in the United States, establish collaborative contacts with anti-Fascist and liberal American intellectuals, and promote cultural initiatives for theItalian-American community. The society had more than a thousand members andover forty venues in the United States. It grew substantially following the Fascistinvasion of Ethiopia, and after Mussolini and Hitler signed the Italian-Germanalliance. In the Forties, with the Badoglio government and America’s decision tosupport it, some of the society’s eminent members such as Salvemini, Toscanini, andVenturini distanced themselves, as they were convinced that Badoglio’s positionswere not liberal enough.

. See Michele Strazza, Emigrazione e fascismo in Basilicata. Gli emigrati lucaninegli Stati Uniti e l’appoggio al fascism (Melfi: Tarsia Editore, ) as well as MatteoPretelli, Il fascismo e gli italiani all’estero (Bologna: Clueb, ).

Prologue

highlighted the full extent of the efforts made by intellectualssuch as Broch, Borgese, and Salvemini who, even before theywere exiled, defended human rights and personal dignity.

The democratic manifesto of The City of Man has alreadybeen examined by the Germanist Paul Michael Lützeler in thesecond section of his detailed biography of Hermann Broch,

but in light of the productive epistolary contacts among thosewho drew it up, which encouraged idealization of the project,it is equally true that so far scholars have yet to investigatethe “ideological correspondences” of thought and interculturalinspiration that arose among the various members of the Brochgroup on American soil.

Consequently, reconstruction of the ideological processof The City of Man entailed a comparative study of Ameri-can and Italian archival material — historical and political— in order to retrace the steps of the democratic and anti-totalitarian ideas of Broch, Borgese, and Salvemini. Consulta-tion of American sources at Yale University’s Beinecke RareBook and Manuscript Library, the University of Chicago, andthe Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. revealed thedemocratic ideas of Broch and Borgese regarding the need forradical political change in the European way of life as far backas the end of World War I. Italian sources have instead testifiedto Borgese and Salvemini’s aversion for Mussolini’s dictatorialmethods as harmful to human dignity, considering them re-sponsible for the deterioration of the country’s historical andhuman dimension, which instead needed to be reconstructedon democratic and liberal grounds.

Research into the sources and their discussion thus pro-gressed diachronically, rediscovering the historical and culturalevents that marked the genesis of the ideological context in

. See Paul Michael Lützeler, “Visionaries in Exile: Broch’s Cooperation withG.A. Borgese und Hannah Arendt,” in ed. Paul Michael Lützeler, Hermann Broch,Visionary in Exile (New York: Camden House, ), –.

. Ibid., –.

Prologue

which Broch, Borgese, and Salvemini devised their democraticproject. Instead, it was impossible to reconstruct a topographicpath that would mirror the temporal one, given that our au-thors worked in very different geographic areas. Broch wasactive in Vienna, Borgese in Milan, and Salvemini in Florenceand Rome. This gap was partially bridged by finding testimonyof the three men’s literary democracy and liberal commitmentbefore they were forced into exile. These literary examples areBroch’s Völkerbund-Resolution (), Borgese’s Golia. La marciadel fascismo (), and Salvemini’s Non Mollare (), whileexamples of their commitment can be found in organizationsdistinguished by a collegiate character and respect for individ-ual liberty, which converged in the Broch group and Borgese’sintellectual circle that developed at the University of Chicago.

Therefore, it is evident that the initial commitment to de-fend the democratic principle arose in the minds of Brochand Borgese above and beyond the topographic and relationalcomponent, which instead played a leading role in the phasesthat followed, when the two actually met each other thanksto Elizabeth Mann, the younger daughter of Thomas Mannand Borgese’s second wife. This marked the beginning of theirassiduous participation in Mann’s intellectual circle and, withit, the birth of their common interest in writing a documentthat would declare the compelling need to fight the spread ofEuropean totalitarianism with the weapon of the word. Underthe influence of Salvemini’s ideas, collected in Under the Axeof Fascism () and Prelude to World War II (), and withthe cultural support of other leading representatives of Euro-American circles, Broch and Borgese put into practice what,decades later, J. L. Austin would suggest in How To Do Thingswith Words () regarding the performativity of language.

The uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of anaction, which again would not normally be described as, or as “just,”

. See the explanatory footnote in The City of Man, –.

Prologue

saying something . In these examples it seems clear that to utterthe sentence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is notto describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering tobe doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it. What are weto call a sentence or an utterance of this type? I propose to callit a performative sentence or a performative utterance, or, for short, a“performative.”

According to Ruth Norden, however, Broch’s epistolaryconfidante and translator of Der Tod des Vergil (), the per-formative power of words must be followed by tangible andoperative action, monitoring the events in the field, in order toavoid making politics one of the many salon arguments.

That the appeal is made by people in the States who base it onsecond-hand information. If Franck or Thomas Mann or Borgesereally feel so strongly about the matter, why doesn’t one of themcome to Germany and see for himself ? It’s just too smug to dothis from an armchair in the States and not convincing. Not thatI doubt their integrity in the matter and the basic justification oftheir uneasiness. But don’t you see that they lay themselves openthis charge of being armchair strategists?

Norden’s ardent warning to Broch in her letter from Berlindated February , allows us to grasp the risk that demo-cratic operations of this scope may prove to be utopian, becom-ing chimeras of performative literary action. In the wake ofNorden’s words, I have attempted to understand if — and theextent to which — the democratic political project of The Cityof Man can truly be the result of a conceptual utopia devised byseveral minds, born as the consequence of a common desire toput an end to Europe’s totalitarian utopia.

As a result, I had to structure the critical path of The City ofMan starting from a literary reconstruction of the definition

. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), –.

. Hermann Broch and Ruth Norden, Translatlantische Korrespondenz, ed. PaulMichael Lützeler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ), .

Prologue

and meaning of utopia and dystopia in a selection of Europeanliterary texts (Chapter I). The comparative perspective, birth,circulation, and modus operandi of the Fascist and Nazi to-talitarian systems, respectively in Italy and Germany, insteadprovided the contextual premises for the advent of The Cityof Man (Chapter II) that, even in the stages of its conceptionand collaborative gestation, entailed structural investigationregarding the ideological contributions of its various authors(Chapter III). These three macro-areas of study allow the readerto arrive at a personal judgment of The City of Man and offer aresponse regarding the utopian nature of the democratic andanti-totalitarian project of Euro-American exiles in the Thirtiesand Forties.

. The utopian literary texts in Chapter I of this book were selected based onthe renown of the authors and their writings. For a more detailed selection that alsotakes into consideration utopian literature that is not as well known, see AndreasVoigt Die sozialen Utopien. Fünf Vorträge (Leipzig: Göschenische Verlagshandlung,) –.