Filippo Corridoni

Filippo Corridoni by Alceste de Ambris is a biography of Filippo Corridoni (AD 1887-1915), the charismatic, indefatigable Italian revolutionary syndicalist, and head of the Syndicalist Union of Milan.

"A magnificent agitator, a daring and expert leader of crowds," he was also an anti-militarist, but when WWI broke out, he advocated for Italyʼs intervention, volunteering himself and dying a hero on the front line. Not long before his death, he said: "I will die in a hole, against a rock, or in the fury of an assault; but - if I can - I will fall with my face toward the enemy, as if to go further forward still." Apparently he did.

A willing holocaust for the "the national enrichment" of Italy, he believed in "a celeritous industrial and commercial development [of his country], and [the] proletarianizing [of Italian] workers... [to] create the conditions necessary for a natural interplay of class conflicts, eliminating the false Socialism of cooperatives, mutualists, and petty politickers... [and leading finally] to the triumph of syndicalism."

Alceste de Ambris (AD 1874-1934) was an Italian syndicalist, journalist, and politician. He was a friend and colleague of Corridoniʼs.