Carlo Rosselli Carlo Rosselli ( 16 November 18999 June 1937 ) was an Italian political leader , journalist , historian and anti - fascist activist , first in Italy then abroad . He developed a theory of reformist , non - Marxist Socialism inspired by the British Labour movement , that he described as " liberal Socialism " . Rosselli founded the anti - fascist militant movement " Giustizia e Libertà " . Rosselli personally took part in combat in the Spanish Civil War where he served on the Republican side . Life . Birth , war and studies . Rosselli was born in Rome to a wealthy Tuscan Jewish family . His mother , Amelia Pincherle Rosselli , had been active in republican politics and thought and had participated in the unification of Italy . In 1903 he was taken to Florence with his mother and siblings . During the First World War he joined the Italian armed forces and fought in the alpine campaign , rising to the rank of second lieutenant . After the war , thanks to his brother Nello , he studied in Florence with Gaetano Salvemini , who was to be from then a constant companion of both the Rosselli brothers . It was in this period that he became a socialist , sympathetic to the reformist ideas of Filippo Turati , in contrast to that revolutionary thinking of Giacinto Menotti Serrati . In 1921 he graduated with a degree in political sciences from the University of Florence with a thesis titled : " sindacalismo " ( Syndicalism ) . Later he undertook a law degree that he would pursue in Turin and Milan , where he met Luigi Einaudi and Piero Gobetti . He graduated in 1923 from the university of Siena . For some weeks he visited London where he studied the workings of the British Labour Party : the English Labour movement would deeply influence him . The rise of Fascism . An active supporter of the Partito Socialista Unitario of Turati , Matteotti and Treves , he began writing for " Critica Sociale " , a review edited by Turati . After the murder of Matteotti , Rosselli pushed for a more active opposition to Fascism . With the help of Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini he founded the clandestine publication " Non mollare " . During the following months , fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe . Ernesto Rossi left the country for France , followed by Salvemini . In February 1926 fellow activist Piero Gobetti was assassinated in Paris by a Fascist hit squad . Still in Italy , Rosselli and Pietro Nenni founded the review " Quarto Stato " , which was banned after a few months . Later in 1926 , he organized with Sandro Pertini and Ferruccio Parri the escape of Turati to France . While Pertini followed Turati to France , Parri and Rosselli were captured and convicted for their roles in Turati ' s escape and sentenced to a period of confinement on the island of Lipari ( 1927 ) . It is then that Rosselli began to write his most famous work , " Liberal Socialism " . In July 1929 he escaped to Tunisia , from where he travelled to France , and the community of Italian antifascists including Emilio Lussu and Francesco Fausto Nitti . Nitti later portrayed Rosselli ' s adventurous escape in the book " Le nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione " ( " Our Prisons and Our Escape " ) in an Italian edition in 1946 ( the 1929 English first edition was titled " Escape " ) . Exile in Paris : Giustizia e Libertà . In 1929 , with Lussu , Nitti , and a Parisian circle of refugees which had formed around Salvemini , Rosselli helped found the anti - fascist movement " Giustizia e Libertà " . GL various numbers of the review and the notebooks omonimi ( with cadence weekly magazine and salary ) and was active in the organization of various spectacular actions , notable among which was the flight over Milan di Bassanesi ( 1930 ) . In 1930 he published , in French , " Socialisme Libéral " . The book was at once a passionate critique of Marxism , a creative synthesis of the democratic socialist revisionism ( Bernstein , Turati and Treves ) and of classical Italian Liberalism ( Francisco Saverio Merlino and Gaetano Salvemini ) . But it contained also a shattering attack on the Stalinism of the Third International , which had , with the derisive formula of " socialfascism " , lumped together social democracy , bourgeois liberalism and fascism . It was not surprising , therefore , when one of the most important Italian Communists , Togliatti , defined " liberal Socialism " " libellous anti - socialism " and Rosselli " a reactionary ideologue who has nothing to do with the working class " . Giustizia e Libertà joined the Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana ( The Italian Anti - Fascist Concentration ) , a union of all the non - communist anti - fascist forces ( republican , socialist , nationalist ) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy . They also first published the " Giustizia e Libertà Journals " . After the advent of Nazism in Germany ( 1933 ) , the paper began to call for insurgency , revolutionary action , and military action in order to stop the Italian and German regimes before they plunge Europe into a tragic war . Spain , they wrote , seems the destiny of all fascist states . The Spanish civil war . In July 1936 the Spanish Civil War erupted as the fascist - monarchical led army attempted a coup d ' état against the republican government of the Popular Front . Rosselli helped lead the Italian anti - fascist supporters of the republican forces , criticizing the neutrality policy of France and Britain , especially as Italy and Germany sent arms and troops in support of the rebels . In August , Rosselli and the GL organized its own brigades of volunteers to support the Spanish Republic . With Camillo Berneri , Rosselli headed the Matteotti Battalion , a mixed volunteer unit of anarchist , liberal , socialist and communist Italians . The unit was sent to the Aragon front , and participated in a victory against Francoist forces in the Battle of Monte Pelato . Speaking on Barcelona Radio in November , Rosselli made famous the slogan : " Oggi in Spagna , domani in Italia " ( " Today in Spain , tomorrow in Italy " ) . After falling ill , Rosselli was sent back to Paris , from where he led support for the anti - fascist cause , and proposed an even broader ' popular front ' while still remaining critical of the Communist Party of Spain and the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin . In 1937 , Berneri was killed by Communist forces during a purge of anarchists in Barcelona . With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939 , Giustizia e Libertà partisans were forced to flee back to France . Murder . In June 1937 Carlo Rosselli and his brother visited the French resort town of Bagnoles - de - l ' Orne . On 9 June the two were killed by a group of " " cagoulards " " , militants of the " Cagoule " , a French fascist group , probably on the orders of Mussolini . Thought . Carlo Rosselli only published a single book , " Liberal Socialism " , in his life . This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time ( for which Karl Marx ' s " Das Kapital " , variously interpreted , was still the bible ) . Undoubtedly the influence of the British labour movement , which he knew well , is visible . As a result of the electoral successes of the Labour Party , Rosselli was convinced that the ' norms ' of liberal democracy were essential , not only in building Socialism , but also for its concrete realization . This stands in contrast to Leninist tactics , in which these rules , once power is taken , must be set aside . This ' Rossellian ' synthesis is that " [ parliamentary ] liberalism is the method , Socialism is the aim " . The Marxist - Leninist idea of revolution founded on the dictatorship of the proletariat ( which he felt , as in the Russian case , was synonymous with the dictatorship of a single party ) he rejected in favour of a revolution that — as famously put in the GL program — is a coherent system of structural reforms aimed at the construction of a Socialism ; that does not limit , but indeed exalts , freedom of personality and of association . Writing in his final years , Rosselli became more radical in his libertarian positions , defending the social organization of the CNT - FAI he had seen in Anarchist Catalonia and Barcelona during the civil war , and informed by the rise of Nazi Germany .