La Plebe (newspaper)

La Plebe

Cover of the first issue, 4 July 1868
Editor	Enrico Bignami
Founded	1868
Political alignment	Socialist
Language	Italian
Ceased publication	1883
Headquarters	Lodi, Milan

La Plebe (The Worker) was an Italian newspaper that was published in Lodi from 1868-1875, then in Milan from 1875-1883. The editor was Enrico Bignami.

Enrico Bignami founded La Plebe in Lodi in 1868 to promoted Giuseppe Mazzini's ideas, financing the paper from his import business. The first issue appeared on 4 July 1868. At first it was published bi-weekly, although for periods during the years that followed it appeared more or less frequently. The paper would last until 1883, despite seizures of issues and several arrests of the editor. It gave continuity from the left wing of the Risorgimento to the post-unification labor movement and the later elaboration of socialist ideology in northern Italy.

Until the early 1870s La Plebe took a mainstream democratic position. However La Plebe was critical of the institutions ruling the new state of Italy, which it saw as opposed to the ideals of the Risorgimento. On 11 August 1868 an article said "the papacy and the monarchy ... are bleeding specters still protesting against the enlightened thought which advances." On 8 September 1868 Mazzini wrote in an article, "a people that has been enslaved for centuries to rotten powers .... does not rise as a nation without overthrowing those ghostly powers."

Bignami became enthusiastic about the 1871 Paris Commune, and from then the paper took a socialist line. In April 1872 La Plebe began to publish a series of letters from Friedrich Engels, which helped to stimulate circulation. This set of letters was suspended in early 1873 when the government took action against the paper. The former communard Benoît Malon contributed to the paper, and influenced it to take an anti-Bakunist position. A series of biographies of communards appeared in La Plebe between 1873 and 1876, written by authors such as Tito Zanardelli, Felice Cameroni, Giovanni La Cecilia and Amilcare Cipriani. These were often imaginative celebrations of the revolutionary acts in eulogic style. The paper also devoted considerable space to developments in the labor movement in Germany.