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Spring 2010 |
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Giuseppe Mazzini, A
Cosmopolitanism of Nations. Giuseppe Mazzini’s Writings on
Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations, Edited and with an Introduction
by Stefano Recchia and Nadia Urbinati, Translations by Stefano Recchia, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp.
249 |
Review by Gaspare Battistuzzo |
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A Cosmopolitanism of
Nations is a collection of essays by Mazzini which focus on his concept
of “Cosmopolitanism”. Its Introduction needs to be considered in detail, as
it is certainly an interesting guide in the abundant production of the
Italian political thinker. The first aspect to be highlighted is indeed that
of Mazzini’s internationality. This is not at all a secondary feature, since
for many years Italian scholars have been inclined to neglect Mazzini’s
concerns about Nations – where the final “s” marks the genuine interest of a man for all the peoples of this
World – in order to concentrate on his role on the formation of the Italian
nation. It seems perhaps worth explaining that the average Italian usually
considers Giuseppe Mazzini as one of the founding fathers of their country
and very often do not realize that the same man was also instrumental in the
creation of an international “flow of thoughts” which was to influence other
great thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, and
to lead them towards what it was to become Internationalism. All this is very
well described by the editors of this volume by hinting at the friendly
relationships that Mazzini entertained with a considerable number of
economic/political philosophers of his time, such as the ones mentioned
above, and with Italian patriots self-exiled in England, like Count Giovanni
Arrivabene and Sir Anthony Panizzi. |
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Another focus is that of education. The editors are clearly very interested in this aspect
of Mazzini’s work, which indeed represents one of the cores of his thought.
Education, according to him, has to be supplied to all the citizens of a
Nation, since this is the first step to grant them the right to influence,
through vote, the decisions concerning their country. The relationship
between education and Mazzini’s middle-class milieu is very well described as one of the main justifications
for his activity in favour of republicanism, which he conceived of as the
supremacy of the cultured middle classes over the uncouth and conservative
aristocracies which oppressed Europe in those days. Although the analysis of
this aspect is very acute, it appears nonetheless as one of the main
limitations of the volume. The fame still surrounding Mazzini in the United
States and in present-day Italy is greatly due to his attitude towards the middle
classes and his justification of their moral
right to power. In this case, both editors do not hide their personal
support for this republican-bourgeois theory, support which in a sense may
turn up to be a deminutio of
Mazzini’s own achievements, which are not merely those of suggesting the
substitution of a ruling class with another. |
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The Introduction also supplies the reader with a very
useful background on Mazzini’s first steps as a political thinker. His
disillusionment with the Carboneria, the Italian secret society originally
modelled on Freemasonry and meant to be the strategic organizer of Italian
Risorgimento, which he thought to be too secret and detached from the people;
his middle-class aspirations for a Nation governed by learned and deserving élites; his progressive separation
from Socialism which ended up in a final and complete divorce from it. |
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One of the best parts of the book is certainly the chapter
dedicated to Mazzini’s notion of Duty. Starting from his disillusionment with
Cavour’s policy of Italian unification, which indeed suppressed the right of
the People to take the lead of what should have been in Mazzini’s eyes a
national movement, Recchia and Urbinati uncover Mazzini’s natural hostility
towards Liberalism. He thought Liberalism was basically a selfish doctrine,
which forced human beings to pursue a restless search for money and to deny
the “brotherhood of nations” he aspired to. At this point the editors deal
with what is indeed the main concept in Mazzini’s thought, namely the theory
of “Right and Duty”. They offer a very intriguing explanation of right to be
considered as “negative liberty” (non-interference) and duty as “positive
liberty” (autonomy and self-development); this aspect is strongly connected
with some founding principles in the Italian Constitution, whose Article 48
explains that the right to the vote has to be considered a duty of the
citizen, and not simply a right. |
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Another aspect much dealt with in this noteworthy volume
is that of Non-intervention in
other countries’ internal disputes. Indulgence in this aspect of Mazzini’s
political doctrine cannot help being connected to the international events that
occurred in the last few years. The notion according to which Intervention
risks perverting the balance of a
Nation and undermining the brotherhood between nations, reminds the reader of
American foreign policy during the George W. Bush presidency. This line of
thought is linked to Mazzini’s idea of Nationalism. One may be easily led to
think that he must have been one of the greatest supporters of such a creed,
whereas we are reminded by the editors that Mazzini looked at Nationalism as
something which, despite its good side connected to the waking of peoples’
conscience, may quickly transcend this positive notion and become a dangerous
obstacle on the path towards friendship among the peoples. This was indeed
what Mazzini was most concerned with – the cosmopolitanism that the moral countries (i.e. the republics)
had to nurture and which could be the only answer to oppression and
autocratic rule. |
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One of the great merits of this book is however that of
highlighting some visible contradictions in Mazzini’s ideas, without hiding
them as several Italian scholars have done. As Recchia and Urbinati put it,
Mazzini was both a progressive thinker and a man of his time. This means that
he believed in God’s providential design for this world and was also fairly
in favour of colonialism, even though he was convinced that Europe had a
moral duty towards other peoples. These sides of Mazzini’s personality and
thought have to be contextualized in the epoch he lived in and in the general
frame of mind he was brought up in. Nonetheless, his idea of “colonial
intervention” was surely less aggressive than that practiced by countries
like France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy itself. Moreover, it was argued
through a minimum-interference policy which was meant to free natives from
tyrants, and was backed by the idea that European occupation might in the end
lead to self-government. |
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To conclude, it is worthwhile to spend a few words on the
translations of Mazzini’s texts collected in the book. Recchia is indeed a
very gifted translator and his achievement is impressive – in fact, Mazzini’s
prose is oftentimes characterized by a density of thought which makes the
effort at translating it a great challenge. Sometimes Recchia indulges in
Italianisms, which however enrich the text by giving it a somewhat archaic
register. The final result is a readable anthology of capital essays,
hitherto not very much known both among Anglo-Saxons and Italians, which can
be perfectly appreciated thanks to the scholarly and acute Introduction. |
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v
Gaspare
Battistuzzo received his MA in English Literature from the University of
Venice, Ca’ Foscari with a dissertation on Sir Walter Raleigh and is
currently a Ph.D candidate at the same university. His interests cover
different authors, periods and genres: from Trollope to Thackeray to P.G.
Wodehouse, from the Georgian revival to the fin de siècle, from medieval romances to dandyism. A member of
several societies dedicated to the study and promotion of heraldry, he is a
regular contributor to periodicals dealing with the subject. |
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