But following a period of extreme intransigence, isolation and mental decline, Cafiero himself moved towards social democracy and endorsed Costa's candidacy in the 1882 Italian general election.

[5] He joined the radical circle led by Telemaco Signorini, whose criticisms of the nascent Kingdom of Italy laid the foundations for Cafiero's turn towards revolutionary socialism.

[9] As there was not yet any established Marxists in Italy, where left-wing politics were largely influenced by Mikhail Bakunin and Giuseppe Mazzini,[11] Marx and Engels dispatched Cafiero back to his home country.

He instead reported the Italian state's repression against the left-wing, explaining that the material conditions of the Southern peasantry had provided fertile ground for the IWA's organisers and for the possibility of a social revolution.

[33] The dispute between the Italian section and the General Council was exacerbated further when Engels published an attack against Bakunin in La Roma del Popolo [it], which Cafiero fiercely criticised.

[39] In order to strengthen the Italian position against the General Council, Cafiero resolved to unify the different sections of the IWA in Italy into a single national federation.

Historians such as E. H. Carr and George Woodcock concluded that the Italian secession resulted in the weakening of the anarchist voting bloc at the Hague Congress and motivated Marx's denunciations of Bakunin.

[54] In March 1873, members that managed to escape arrest held a secret congress in Bologna,[55] where they adopted the anarchist ideology and federalist structure upheld by the Anti-Authoritarian International and rejected the "dictatorship" of the General Council.

[63] In December 1873, Cafiero and Costa established the Comitato Italiano per la Rivoluzione Sociale (CIRS), an organisation consisting largely of younger Italian anarchists that dedicated themselves to preparing for an imminent insurrection.

Despite Cafiero's request for support, non-Italian delegates refused to endorse the plot, as they favoured the tactic of the general strike and believed that socialism was not yet widespread enough in Italy for an insurrection to be successful.

[70] Cafiero used his money to fund the purchase of weapons,[71] which he sent to Costa in southern Italy in the care of Bakunin's associate Mikhail Sazhin,[72] securing the distribution of over 250 firearms to the insurrectionists.

On 7 August, hundreds of insurgents assembled in Emilia-Romagna and constructed barricades in Bologna, while a call to arms written by Cafiero was pasted on walls throughout the country, to little effect.

[90] In January 1876, Cafiero wrapped up his work at La Plebe and left Milan for Rome, where he reunited with Malatesta, with whom he reestablished the local section of the Italian Federation.

[88] Following the rise to power of Agostino Depretis's Historical Left, Cafiero and Malatesta began planning to officially reconstitute the Italian Federation and resume public activities.

[97] Cafiero also attempted to remedy the issues that had led to the failure of the Bologna insurrection by developing a new revolutionary ideology, which eventually grew into the synthesis of anarchist communism.

[111] Cafiero and Malatesta's movements were tracked by the police, but Interior Minister Giovanni Nicotera held off from arresting them immediately, as he wanted to entrap the insurrectionists after they had taken up arms.

In order to ensure the authorities wouldn't blame the local people for the damages, Cafiero, Malatesta and Ceccarelli made sure to leave written documentation that anarchists had occupied Letino "in the name of social revolution".

[134] When accused by the prosecution of having killed the carabinier due to their "blood lust", Cafiero and Malatesta declared that their goal had been to incite a social revolution and rejected their characterisation as "common criminals and murderers".

[138] In his place, leadership of the southern Italian anarchists was taken up by Merlino, Palladino and Ceccarelli, who continued to uphold Cafiero's insurrectionary platform, although without the resources or organisation to launch another uprising.

[139] Without Cafiero or Malatesta, the Italian anarchist movement entered a sustained period of decline, as its members became disillusioned, isolated or inactive, while intransigent sectarian conflicts began to manifest over ideological and tactical differences.

[157] In letters to other Italian anarchists, Cafiero denounced parliamentarism as "the plague of our revolutionary party" and attacked Costa's calls for "minor and practical programs", which he felt presented a danger to socialism.

[168] He had already been suffering from paranoia for years, but sustained harassment by the police, despair over his revolutionary failures and his personal conflict with Costa drove him further into a deep desire for isolation.

Persuaded by the recent electoral gains of the German Social-Democratic Party, Cafiero decided to move back to Italy, settling in Milan in March and returning to his work at La Plebe.

He proclaimed that he had "submitted" to the will of Costa's party, declaring that "it is much better to take a single step with all the comrades on the real path of life than to remain isolated and to cover hundreds of leagues in the abstract".

Much of the Italian public blamed the government for causing his mental illness and a campaign was swiftly launched to secure his release from prison, forcing the authorities to offer him a choice of house arrest in Barletta or expulsion back to Switzerland.

He believed that a social revolution, after overthrowing the "unnatural" capitalist system that he felt corrupted a naturally rational and communal people, could bring the world into an "equilibrium of the most complete order, peace and happiness".

[209] Inspired by James Guillaume's Idées sur l'organization social, which argued that a collectivist anarchist society could transition towards communism after achieving a situation of post-scarcity, Cafiero began developing his new synthesis in discussions with Emilio Covelli and Errico Malatesta.

[211] Cafiero believed that a post-scarcity society could be rapidly achieved through a combination of cooperation, technological innovation and the elimination of luxury goods from production, which would allow the immediate establishment of anarchist communism after a social revolution.

Without a profit motive or the military industrial complex, this development would be driven by a desire to benefit the common good, transferring attentions towards improving education, medicine and welfare.

[219] Cafiero believed that government existed only to defend the privileged elite and oppress the masses, a system he wished to abolish through the establishment of universal liberty and equality under anarchist socialism.