A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #25 - Gianni Bosio and Mario Lodi - Acquanegra sul Chiese, 5 November 2023 on the centenary of Bosio's birth (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In addition to Acquanegra sul Chiese, where Bosio was born and lived, I 
believe there is only one other center in which his influence operated 
in such a profound way that it continues today, over fifty years after 
his death, to initiate initiatives and stimulate reflection on the past 
and current events. I'm referring to Piadena. ---- The beginning of the 
relationship between Bosio and Piadena coincides with that between the 
intellectual from Mantua and Mario Lodi and can be traced back to a very 
specific date: 20 June 1959. It is on that day, in fact, that Lodi 
writes a letter to Bosio, director of Edizioni Avanti!, to propose the 
publication of Cipì. The letter is proof that the two did not know each 
other personally, despite their common membership of the Socialist Party 
and the closeness between Piadena and Acquanegra.
Bosio's response was not long in coming. Three days later, he said he 
was available to discuss it on the occasion of his imminent trip to 
Acquanegra.
The two met and Lodi spoke to him about Cipì and about a diary in which 
he was collecting his teaching experiences, but also about the first 
"notebooks" of the Biblioteca Popolare di Piadena founded by Lodi in 
1945, a few months after the Liberation, as part of of the reconstituted 
consumer cooperative.
Bosio had immediately understood the value of that "true" fairy tale 
written by Lodi together with his students and of the revolutionary 
scholastic experience underway in the small school of Vho, but certainly 
what had struck him most was discovering that that teacher from Piadena 
was not a isolated, that around him operated a group engaged in an 
original and lively work of research and basic cultural production from 
within the working and peasant class. A work that made use of oral 
sources, the tape recorder, photography and the camera; a set of 
activities that started from the recognition of the dignity and value of 
the "other" culture, the one expressed by the subordinate classes.
A close correspondence and frequent contact began between Bosio and Lodi.
In 1956 the left-wing list was defeated in the Piaden municipal 
elections, due to divisions within the Communist Party. It was a 
traumatic event, which was barely overcome thanks to work on a cultural 
level focused on the activities of the Popular Library and in particular 
on the publication of the first notebooks.
In the introduction to I quaderni di Piadena, published in 1962 by 
Edizioni Avanti!, edited by Lodi and Morandi, a book which collected six 
of the first notebooks of the People's Library and which was seized by 
the authorities for contents deemed obscene, Mario Lodi wrote:
"[...]If the first notebooks coincided with the effort of the workers' 
movement to find itself and escape from a state of prostration, from now 
on they will have to be affected by the new role of the working class in 
the small country, in which it has today managerial tasks, and in the 
largest country called Italy. To new perspectives, therefore, to 
different, more in-depth work: to new tasks, new means, which contribute 
to making the people aware, through an education to be achieved on their 
own, of their role as protagonists of history."
In the short passage I have just read, I underline the passage in which 
it is said that the people must become aware of their role, "through an 
education to be achieved on their own". Lodi certainly did not mean 
outside or against workers' parties and organizations, but that "alone" 
somehow tended to reduce their role while accentuating the weight and 
value of the autonomous pressures coming from the base.
At the end of the 1950s, Lodi, and with him the group of young people 
from the Biblioteca Popolare, among whom Giuseppe Morandi was beginning 
to stand out, was already fully aware both of the extraordinary 
experiences gained in the Piadeno laboratory and of the profound 
transformations taking place, at the same time consequence and cause of 
the economic boom, which in the space of a few years would inexorably 
lead to the end of the culture of the peasant world.
The announcement to his collaborators about the intention to create the 
children's book series was given by Bosio in a meeting held at Edizioni 
Avanti on 5 January 1961.
The first organizational meeting was held in Piadena on 11 June 1961 at 
the Biblioteca Popolare.

In that meeting Lodi clearly said that it was now time to move from a 
position of criticism towards the tendentious, historically inaccurate 
or even falsifying production of bourgeois publishing for children, to 
the production of cultural tools which, with new contents, spoke an 
adherent language to the psychology of the child and stimulated him to 
think with his own head and to form a critical habit.
Most of the manuscripts were based on the concept of the child-doll 
without problems or reasoning, a creature to be amused with the silliest 
words.
The coordination of the series, which it was decided to call "Universale 
Ragazzi", was entrusted to Lodi who had a very clear idea of what 
objectives should be set, as emerges from this speech: "publishing 
should be called popular not only for the low prices of books, but for 
the power of penetration and ideological education that they 
contain.[...]the function of Edizioni Avanti! it should be to relaunch 
the ideological and class principles of socialism on all levels, 
starting with children and gradually up to the university and research 
level."
The need to further reduce costs soon led to the Series being put to an 
end. With its closure, Lodi's collaboration ceased, "also for health 
reasons".
In the two years of life of the "Universale Ragazzi", only six titles 
were published, but in the flat panorama of literature of the early 
Sixties, these were proposals that clearly broke with tradition and had 
a strong non-conformist and provocative charge, even for certain areas 
of left: just think of How children are born, a sexual education booklet 
for children according to a secular and modern approach, but also of The 
little soldier of the pim pum pà, a sort of short story, written by Lodi.
The stimuli offered by Lodi and the influence exerted by Bosio during 
his frequent visits to Piadena opened up new avenues of work and new 
horizons to the group that revolved around the Biblioteca Popolare and 
the Quaderni. And it was precisely as a consequence of the birth of the 
Nuovo Canzoniere that the idea of establishing a popular singing group 
took shape in Piadena. It was Sergio Lodi who took the initiative by 
gathering around him Bruno Fontanella and, later, Delio Chitò and Amedeo 
Merli. The "Gruppo Padano di Piadena", this is the name of the new 
formation, after an initial phase of re-proposing the songs recorded in 
the "Dischi del sole", began, stimulated by the work of Bosio and Leydi, 
an intense field research work which Mario Lodi also actively contributed.
The Group participated in the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto in the 
performance of the Nuovo Canzoniere Bella Ciao which triggered, as is 
known, the angry reaction of the military, bourgeois and right-thinking 
people, followed by complaints and parliamentary questions.
In the first months of '67 different points of view on cultural and 
political action began to appear within the Biblioteca Popolare.
Shortly afterwards, on 14 April, Morandi and Gianfranco Azzali (Micio) 
gave life to the Cultural League, in the wake of what had already 
happened in Acquanegra in September of the previous year with the birth 
of the Cultural League. It was the second separation from the Biblioteca 
Popolare after the choice of Delio Chitò and Amedeo Merli, early 
exponents of the Padano Group, to embark on a professional career with 
the name of "Duo di Piadena".
The birth of the League was preceded, accompanied and followed by 
tensions, discussions and exchanges of letters.
Relations between the League of Culture and Lodi gradually became colder 
until they reached open conflict with no holds barred and with a 
consequent impact on the relations between Lodi and Bosio which became 
increasingly sporadic.
We know well about Bosio's political formation, his internal positioning 
with his membership of Lelio Basso's left and the action taken to orient 
the political line of the Party. And we know well, also thanks to his 
work as a historian, what idea of socialism he was inspired by: a 
libertarian, non-dogmatic socialism, with a marked adherence to basic 
struggles and demands.
And what do we know about Lodi's socialism, which left very few writings 
on the subject?
He was the son of a socialist, who had also been a cooperator and 
administrator of the Municipality of Vho, included, during fascism, 
among the subversives. Following in his father's footsteps, Mario joined 
the PSI, then Psiup, in 1946. He left it in 1965, following his 
adhesion, not shared by the Party, to the antimilitarist manifesto, the 
definitive text of which was written by Lodi himself, posted on the 
occasion of the passage of the Bersagliere Monument from Piadena to 
celebrate the 50th anniversary of Italy's entry into the war.

His political activity took place entirely within the Piadenese section, 
without ever holding positions at provincial level. On behalf of the 
Party he ran 5 times, out of 8 in total, in the municipal elections, 
always being elected and holding the position of councilor several 
times; he was section secretary, participated in meetings and 
gatherings, wrote and spoke publicly. We also know that during the 1964 
elections the Party would have wanted him to be elected mayor.
After leaving the PSI, Lodi joined the MAS, or MDSA (Movement of 
Autonomous Socialists), the small group that broke away from the Lombard 
left when unification with the Social Democrats was decided. As a member 
of the MAS he ran for the Chamber in the 1968 political elections on the 
PCI list and in the 1970 administrative elections.
His was a socialism of a humanitarian and libertarian nature, tinged 
with romanticism and a strong ethical motivation from which the 
influence of his mother's humble and simple religiosity was probably not 
unrelated. Certainly, he was far from a dogmatically Marxist vision and 
a Leninist conception of the Party, with respect to which he always 
maintained broad autonomy of judgment and choice.
Within the Party he recognized himself in the positions of the left 
current and the unity of workers and class forces was what was closest 
to his heart.
This is enough to be able to state that Lodi and Bosio had an idea of 
socialism with many affinities.
But there are other aspects, not secondary, in which it is possible to 
trace strong common features. One of these is the theme of participation 
and the relationship with power.
For Lodi it was essential to stimulate and encourage the direct 
participation of citizens and workers in every area, a participation 
that reached its peak in the first half of the seventies, with the 
decision-making Popular Assembly, an institution he proposed, desired 
and supported with all his energies and which ended only after the PCI 
believed that that experience represented an obstacle to the 
implementation of the policy of historical compromise.
Lodi proposes to the left-wing coalition to present itself in the 
municipal elections of 7 June[1970]with the proposal to establish the 
popular assembly. In the electoral leaflet distributed to citizens, the 
proposal is motivated with a writing, certainly attributable to Lodi, 
which says: "Piadenesi, in recent years new ideas from workers and 
students have circulated around the way of being free and managing the 
power. As far as the Municipality is concerned, old concepts have gone 
into crisis.
For example, it was understood that calling citizens every five years to 
elect twenty men to represent them, even if these were chosen by local 
political parties, is not participation in public affairs, it is not 
real democracy. In fact, limiting ourselves to delegating others to 
administer for us is essentially an act of renouncing an interest in the 
problems that arise day by day in the small country as well as in the 
larger reality that is Italy.
The whole life of our society is practically based on delegation, upon 
receipt of which those elected can even govern against the interests of 
the same citizens who voted for them. The demonstration is that the 
majority of citizens are workers but governments have until now made 
laws in favor of the bosses.
Even in small countries, where power is limited, elected representatives 
sometimes behave as if they had been called to command, while they 
should "serve" the base, that is, interpret the needs and will of the 
citizens and decide after having consulted the population on every 
underlying problem.
Thus it can happen that the councilors feel like small masters in the 
context of small power and the mayor becomes the tactician who keeps the 
group of small masters in a precarious balance.
[...]The Municipality must be at the service of the citizen who has the 
right-duty to control and direct it for his purposes. The assembly open 
to all is the means by which the citizen will intervene directly in the 
management of the Municipality."
It is surprising how Nenni, the elderly socialist leader, in his youth a 
libertarian agitator and protagonist of the "Red Week" in 1914, Bosio, 
attracted in his studies by the first anarchist and socialist 
organizations, and Lodi, refractory to any form of delegation and 
critical of the superposition of the parties on the citizens, remain 
linked by the same reading of the struggles of the late 1960s and by the 
same idea of direct participation, beyond the profound gaps created 
between them due to the political choices made by each of them.

Due to its radical nature, intensity and duration, the Piadena People's 
Assembly represents to date the most advanced experiment in direct 
democracy carried out in Italy.
On the idea that Lodi had of parties and their role, an interview from 
1978 is interesting, in which, reflecting on the causes that had 
determined the end of the experience of the decision-making Popular 
Assembly, he stated:
"a) It was not possible to have the method of the popular assembly with 
decision-making power in the Municipality and, at the same time, still 
have a hierarchical structure within the parties.
b) In a broader picture, the historical compromise would lead to an 
encounter with forces that would not accept it. Therefore in this 
difficult and delicate situation everything is at a standstill and there 
is a tendency for those in charge to make top-level agreements instead 
of discussing everything at the base."
The cultural and political ferment that has characterized the Piadeno 
microcosm for decades was largely the result of the happy meeting 
between these two great personalities.
For Piadena we could speak of a true epic. In a town of not even 4,000 
inhabitants, over the course of forty years or so, cooperatives have 
flourished (in the 1950s the Piadena consumer cooperative had 8 shops in 
the town), groups and cultural centres, the list of which is very long . 
Since the Liberation, hundreds and hundreds of leaflets, posters, 
newspapers, notebooks, publications, films, exhibitions, shows and sound 
recordings have been produced. Consider that the League of Culture 
leaflets alone, collected and published, form two substantial volumes. 
The number of meetings and initiatives of all kinds was impressive, 
which saw the participation of famous intellectuals, directors, 
musicians, actors, journalists, writers, artists and politicians. 
Piadena has been talked about in books, magazines, films, conferences 
and television reports, to the point that some have begun to consider it 
a sort of mythical place.
Well, all that excitement has long since died out, erased by the 
desertification, not only metaphorical, which has hit the country of 
Italy and which has not spared this plain land which also seemed to have 
firm and deep roots in the struggles and first organizations of the 
proletariat peasant and worker developed from the mid-nineteenth century.

-Mario Lodi
Piadena, 17 February 1922  Drizzona, 2 March 2014 was an Italian 
teacher, pedagogist and writer.
His educational methodologies were initially inspired by those of 
Célestin Freinet, following a direction that made him become an exponent 
of the Educational Cooperation Movement. (On the MCE see "History of the 
Educational Cooperation Movement" in "il CANTIERE" n.16 April 2023, page 28)
Gianni Bosio
Acquanegra on the Chiese,
October 20, 1923
Mantua, August 21, 1971
he was an Italian historian, publisher and editorial curator, music 
researcher and exponent of the Italian Socialist Party.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en