SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

This novel (255pg) by Giovanni Verga proves once again how radical and progressive an author this great Sicilian was. There are so many things to point out, but I will start first with the structure of this novel: you will notice that the first two pages of this novel contain a "cast of characters" much like that of a play.

Download: 

I Malavoglia - Giovanni Verga.pdf

This play (111pg), "The Pope and the Witch," of leftist Italian playwright Dario Fo, mocks the pope and the vatican as a whole, and is, as with all of Fo's plays, hilarious.

Download: 

The Pope and the Witch - Dario Fo.pdf

This is a short story (5pg) by Italian writer Giovanni Verga. I have read a lot of his work, including two novels which I will be posting soon, and he always writes more like a socialist than a normal writer, which is why I have posted, and will continue posting, his work. This story attacks the repressive foundations and support of the capitalist state, i.e. laws, courts, and "law enforcement" (otherwise know as dirty fucking pigs). This short quote from the story best explains what it is about, and I would even say that this statement is the foundation on which the story was written:

Download: 

Don Licciu Papa - Giovanni Verga.pdf

This is a very informative and interesting article (4pg) written by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in 1916 about the struggles of textile workers in and around Turin.

Download: 

Remembering the Cotton Workers' Struggle - Antonio Gramsci.pdf

I have been reading lately some of Gramsci’s pre-prison writings, and I must say that they are very interesting. I especially liked this essay (written by Antonio Gramsci at the age of 19/20 (i.e. in 1911) at his secondary school in Cagliari, Sardinia), and hope my children write secondary school essays as good as this! Anyway, please read comrades, it is a good introduction to Gramsci if you have not read him before, and if you have it is still very interesting to read:

Oppressed and Oppressors (1911)
By Antonio Gramsci

As with some of Dario Fo's plays this one, The Open Couple, was written with his wife, fellow leftist Franca Rame. In the original productions of this play Fo played the "Man" and Rame played the "Woman." This play is much shorter than the previous plays I have posted by Dario Fo, it was written in 1983 and varies from the previous plays in that it does not focus as much on working class struggle, rather it focuses it's attention on the issues of sexism and marriage.

Download: 

The Open Couple - Dario Fo and Franca Rame.pdf

This short story was written by Italian realist writer Giovanni Verga. In my opinion this story is an excellent portrayal of how capitalism turns workers into beasts of burden, ie brutalizes them and turns them against each other. The main character of this story "Foxfur" is continually described and alluded to as animal-like, which is the logical result of his constant exploitation and the back-breaking manual labor he has been forced to perform since his early youth.

Download: 

Nasty Foxfur - Giovanni Verga.pdf

This is my favorite play of Dario Fo's (that I have read anyway). As with all of Fo's plays it is very comical, yet the theme of the play is only reinforced by this not cheapened. Since Fo's is a socialist most of his plays have elements of socialist ideology in them, but Can't Pay, Won't Pay, in my opinion carries a much more explicitly socialist message than most of Fo's plays.

Download: 

Can't Pay, Won't Pay - Dario Fo.pdf

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dario Fo (1926-), an Italian radical leftist playwright, and the best playwright I have ever read by far. Although you may be wary of political theater, or as Fo put it "Political theater has become a kind of byword for boring theater, conceited theater, pedantic theater, mechanical theater, a non-enjoyable theater," Dario Fo's plays are one of a kind. What do I mean by that?

Download: 

The Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Dario Fo.pdf