Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – Revolutionary Entrepreneur

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the entrepreneurial life of a controversial figure such as Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an Italian publisher and political activist who influenced and shaped our culture for a long time. Giangiacomo was born in 1926 into a very wealthy family, but already in his adolescence years he began to follow the socialist ideal and in 1945 he became a member of the communist party. It was within the communist party that he started his publishing activity. His entrepreneurial career began in the late 1940s when he established a library specialised in economic and social history and history of the labour movement. In 1955 he established the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, whose activity was supported by distribution centres, such as the Feltrinelli bookstores. In those years Feltrinelli proved to be a visionary publisher, especially after the publication of the first world edition of The Doctor Zhivago, whose author Boris Paternak won the Nobel Prize, and then with the publication of The Gattopardo, winner of the Strega Prize. From a certain moment in his life, his entrepreneurial choices were constantly intertwined with his political passion. In the late 1950s his editorial decisions, not in line with those of the communist party, led him to leave. The Castro revolution conveyed a new image of revolutionary communism, and Feltrinelli became the major populariser in Italy of this new trend. He convinced himself that the South American revolutionary model could be extended to a developed Western country because of the threat of an authoritarian turn through a coup. At this stage Feltrinelli founded the Partisan Action Groups with the aim of fuelling outbreaks of guerrilla. During one of these guerrilla acts, Feltrinelli died tragically. In this thesis the phases of life of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli are analysed with particular regard to his entrepreneurial career, but also to his political vocation. This is to better understand who the entrepreneur Feltrinelli was and what really influenced his choices.