Labriola, Antonio

(1843–1904)

   One of the most prominent Marxist philosophers of the late 19th century, Antonio Labriola was the son of a schoolteacher from Cassino (Campania). A brilliant student who won prizes for essays on Spinoza and Greek interpretations of Socrates’s thought before he was 30 years old, Labriola became ordinario (full professor) of history in 1877. Labriola’s conversion to socialism was a slow process. The seemingly scientific approach of Marxism to social questions, his disgust at the increasingly corrupt form of parliamentary democracy practiced in liberal Italy, contacts with workers’study groups, and the intolerance of right-wing students toward his ideas (Labriola was forced to abandon a course on the French Revolution in February 1889 by riotous students) were the chief factors that led him to embrace the socialist cause, which can be dated to a speech he gave to a study group of Roman workers in June 1889.

   In the 1890s, Labriola established an international reputation as a Marxist theorist. Between April 1895 and 1897, he published three long essays on historical materialism in the journal Devenir Social, edited by the French theorist Georges Sorel. In these essays, Labriola introduced the notion of Marxism as a practical doctrine—a guide to understanding historical development rather than a dogma—that would later be taken up by Antonio Gramsci. In Italy, the same essays were edited for publication by Benedetto Croce, and they had an enormous influence on Croce’s early thought.

   Despite his doctrinal flexibility, Labriola was hostile to the reformism of Filippo Turati. He opposed the Partito Socialista Italiano/Italian Socialist Party’s (PSI) collaboration with the forces of Italian liberalism and evinced at times an intemperate hostility toward the Italian bourgeoisie. Paradoxically, however, he supported the imperialist adventures of the Italian state in Libya and East Africa, arguing somewhat coldly that imperialism was a necessary stage in the development of European capitalism, from which Italy could not refrain without condemning itself to social backwardness. Labriola died of throat cancer in 1904.