The Historical Far Left (Italian: Estrema Sinistra Storica), originally known as Far Left (Italian: Estrema Sinistra), Radical Extreme (Italian: Estrema Radicale), simply The Extreme (Italian: L'Estrema), or Party of Democracy (Italian: Partito della Democrazia), was a left-wing parliamentary group and coalition of Radical, Republican and Socialist politicians in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Formerly known as the extreme wing of the Historical Left before the unification of Italy, it became a separate group when the more moderate branch of the Left accepted the leadership of the House of Savoy to build the new Italian state.

History

The Historical Far Left was founded in 1877 by Agostino Bertani and Felice Cavallotti as a radical-liberal party. In 1882, the Radicals formed a far-left parliamentary group with Andrea Costa, the first Socialist to be elected to the Italian Parliament. The party supported complete separation of church and state, decentralization toward municipal governments, the United States of Europe according to Carlo Cattaneo's beliefs, progressive taxation, an independent judiciary, free and compulsory education for children, universal suffrage, women's and workers' rights while opposing capital punishment as well as any kind of protectionism, nationalism, imperialism and colonialism.^[1][2][3]

The Extreme was mainly formed by three groups:

• The Radicals, which supported democratic ideas, transitionally accepting the constitutional monarchy if it would allow universal suffrage.
• The Republicans, which insisted upon an Italian Republic and consequently refused any collaboration with the existing monarchist state.
• The Socialists, which saw the universal suffrage and the proclamation of the republic as a first step to a social revolution.

The Historical Far Left, supporting the republic and consequently the abrogation of the Albertine Statute, was seen as an anticonstitutional movement.^[4] Under the oligarchic electoral law of newly unified Italy, there were no possibilities for The Extreme to enter the Italian Parliament, except for some national heroes such as Giuseppe Garibaldi.^[5] The electoral reform of 1882 allowed the possibility to form a small opposition parliamentary group, but only after the introduction of the universal suffrage in 1913 did The Extreme become the dominant left-wing party of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the winning coalition in many municipal and provincial elections in Northern Italy.^[6]

The Historical Far Left emerged as an important parliamentary force when the progressive Historical Left overthrew Marco Minghetti's government during the so-called Parliamentary Revolution of 1876, which brought Agostino Depretis to become Prime Minister. However, Depretis immediately began to look for support among the Right Members of Parliament, who readily changed their positions, in a context of widespread corruption. This phenomenon, known in Italian as trasformismo (roughly translatable in English as "transformism"—in a satirical newspaper, Prime Minister Depretis was depicted as a chameleon), effectively removed political differences in Parliament, which was dominated by an undistinguished liberal bloc with a landslide majority until after World War I.^[7]

Important members

Important leaders and members of the Historical Far Left were Agostino Bertani, Andrea Costa, Filippo Turati, Napoleone Colajanni, Francesco Saverio Nitti, Giovanni Bovio, Giovanni Cantoni, Felice Cavallotti, Enrico Ferri, Ernesto Nathan and Ettore Sacchi.

Electoral results

Chamber of Deputies
Election year	Votes	%	Seats	+/–	Leader
1861	Unknown (3rd)	2.3	14 / 493	14	Giuseppe Mazzini
1865	Unknown (3rd)	4.9	15 / 493	1
1867	Unknown (3rd)		0 / 493	15	Agostino Bertani
1870	Unknown (3rd)	1.9	0 / 493	–
1874	Unknown (3rd)	1.6	0 / 508	–
1876	Unknown (3rd)	1.5	0 / 508	–
1880	Unknown (4th)	1.8	0 / 508	–
1882	105,251 (3rd)	8.6	44 / 508	44
1886	123,958 (3rd)	5.2	45 / 508	1	Felice Cavallotti
1890	101,924 (3rd)	6.9	42 / 508	3
1892	182,256 (3rd)	11.0	56 / 508	14
1895	224,879 (3rd)	18.5	62 / 508	6
1897	201,120 (3rd)	16.2	82 / 508	20
1900	333,945 (2nd)	26.3	96 / 508	14	Ettore Sacchi

References