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An Italian intellectual, economist, journalist, and political leader, Carlo Rosselli was committed to the anti-fascist struggle in Italy and in the Spanish Civil War . A leading political theorist of liberal socialism, Rosselli was killed by fascist assassins. Rosselli was born in 1899 in Rome to a wealthy Tuscan Jewish family and moved to Florence during his childhood. He was strongly influenced by his mother, Amelia Pincherle, who diffused to the family the republican tradition of Giuseppe Mazzini during the process of Italian unification ( Risorgimento ). Rosselli supported Italy's entrance into World War I as a means of democratic rebirth and joined the Italian armed forces fighting in the Alpine campaign. Despite the pacifist positions of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) in the postwar era, Rosselli supported its gradual (reformist) component. He received university degrees in the social sciences at Florence and law at Siena and began a university career in economics, establishing ties with, among others, the liberal Luigi Einaudi and the young socialist liberal Piero Gobetti, who was killed in a fascist assault. Rosselli's political formation and ideals led to his early opposition to fascism, and he joined young intellectuals in Florence who rallied around the historian Gaetano Salvemini . Active in the protest following the assassination ... log in or subscribe to read full text