Lelio Basso
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Lelio Basso | |
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Personal details | |
Born | Varazze, Italy | 25 December 1903
Died | 16 December 1978 Rome | (aged 74)
Political party | Italian Socialist Party Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity |
Alma mater | University of Pavia |
Profession | Lawyer, political scientist, journalist |
Lelio Basso (25 December 1903 – 16 December 1978) was an Italian
Early life
Lelio Basso was born in
In April 1928, Basso was arrested by the Fascist authorities in Milan and interned on the island of Ponza, where he studied for his degree in philosophy. He returned to Milan in 1931 and, while practising as a lawyer, graduated with a thesis on Rudolf Otto. In 1934 he once more took up politics as director of the Centro Interno Socialista, with Rodolfo Morandi, Lucio Luzzatto and Eugenio Colorni. This work was interrupted by his imprisonment in the internment camp in Colfiorito (Province of Perugia) from 1939 to 1940.
In the Resistance and the early Italian Republic
After lengthy, secret preparations, he was present at the founding of the Movimento di Unità Proletaria (MUP) on 10 January 1943. The leading group of the movement was formed by Basso, Luzzatto, Roberto Veratti, and Umberto Recalcati. After 25 July (when Benito Mussolini was ousted by a coup d'état inside his Grand Council of Fascism), the movement joined with the PSI to form the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP), with Basso as one of the leading figures. Later in 1943, Basso went against the party line to found the clandestine newspaper Bandiera Rossa. In the period leading up to the 1945 Liberation, Basso was an active member of the Italian resistance movement and, with Sandro Pertini and Rodolfo Morandi, he set up the covert executive body of the PSIUP in northern Italy (the territory of the Fascist Italian Social Republic), which he had the responsibility for running.
Post-1945, Lelio Basso was elected Vice-secretary of the PSIUP, and, in 1946, became a
PSI-PSIUP split
In 1946 he set up the review
Basso was an active member of the
As lawyer
Lelio Basso founded and wrote for a number of international publications. He was famous throughout Europe as a criminal lawyer, and sat in the
Works
Lelio Basso's life was a medley of intellectual activity and research on the one hand and the search for an effective political instrument on the other, all on an international scale. As an expert and interpreter of the work of
Basso wrote a huge number of essays for periodicals and collections. His most important titles include:
- Due totalitarismi: fascismo e democrazia cristiana (1951);
- Il Partito socialista italiano (1956);
- Il principe senza scettro (1958, re-print 1998);
- Da Stalin a Krusciov (1962);
- Introduction and editorship of R. Luxemburg, Scritti politici (1967, re-print: 1970, 1976);
- Neocapitalismo e sinistra europea (1969);
- Introduction and editorship of R. Luxemburg, Lettere alla famiglia Kautsky (1971);
- Rosa Luxemburg: A Reappraisal (London 1975);
- Introduction and editorship of Stato e crisi delle istituzioni (1978);
- Socialismo e rivoluzione (1980);
- Scritti sul cristianesimo (1983).
References
- ^ Lelio Basso was contrary to judicial intervention, in the relations between the party and its members: Buonomo, Giampiero (2016). "Le multe di Di Maio". Mondoperaio Edizione Online. Archived from the original on 2012-08-01. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
External links
- The Italian Left, "Universities & Left Review", 1957.
- The Italian Left, "Socialist Register", 1966.