Bandiera Rossa

Part of a series on
Socialism
Development History of socialism Socialist calculation debate Socialist economics
Ideas Calculation in kind Collective ownership Cooperative Common ownership Economic democracy Economic planning Equal opportunity Free association Industrial democracy Input–output model Internationalism Labour voucher Material balancing Peer‑to‑peer economics (Sharing economy) Production for use State ownership Self-management Social dividend Social ownership & Socialization To each according to his contribution Workplace democracy
Models Decentralized planning Participatory economics Market socialism Economic democracy Georgism Lange model Mutualism Ricardian socialism Planned economy Soviet-type Project Cybersyn Socialist market economy Socialist-oriented market
Variants African Agrarian Anarchist Authoritarian Blanquism Democratic Ethical Ecological Feminist Georgism Guild Impossibilism Liberal Libertarian Market Marhaenism Marxian One country Owenism Reformism Religious Revisionism Revolutionary Ricardian Scientific Social democracy State Syndicalism Technocracy Utopian with Chinese characteristics Zionist 21st-century
History by country Brazil Canada France Hong Kong India Netherlands New Zealand Pakistan United Kingdom United States
People Charles Hall Henri de Saint-Simon François-Noël Babeuf Robert Owen Charles Fourier William Thompson Thomas Hodgskin Louis Auguste Blanqui Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Louis Blanc Moses Hess Mikhail Bakunin Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Ferdinand Lassalle William Morris Mary Harris Jones Eduard Bernstein Errico Malatesta Fred M. Taylor Eugene V. Debs Peter Kropotkin Georgi Plekhanov Enrico Barone John Dewey Ben Tillett Fernand Pelloutier Emma Goldman Vladimir Lenin Rosa Luxemburg Léon Blum Antonie Pannekoek Luis Emilio Recabarren Joseph Stalin Leon Trotsky Clement Attlee Karl Polanyi G. D. H. Cole Ho Chi Minh Antonio Gramsci Farabundo Martí José Carlos Mariátegui Einar Gerhardsen Josip Broz Tito Sidney Hook Abba P. Lerner Mao Zedong Oskar R. Lange Max Shachtman Deng Xiaoping Salvador Allende Enver Hoxha Kwame Nkrumah Edvard Kardelj Kim Il-sung François Mitterrand Gamal Abdel Nasser Fidel Castro Olof Palme Che Guevara Noam Chomsky Mikhail Gorbachev Muammar Gaddafi Bernie Sanders Thomas Sankara Hugo Chávez Evo Morales
Organizations First International (International Workingmen's Assoc) Second International Third International (Comintern) Fourth International Fifth International Socialist International World Federation of Democratic Youth International Union of Socialist Youth World Socialist Movement International Committee of the Fourth International
Related topics Anarchism Capitalism Communism Communist society Criticism of capitalism Economic system List of socialist economists Marxism Nanosocialism Progressivism Socialism and LGBT rights Socialist Party Socialist state
Socialism portal Economics portal Politics portal

Bandiera Rossa (Italian for "Red Flag"), often also called Avanti Popolo after its opening words, is one of the most famous songs of the Italian labour movement. It glorifies the red flag, symbol of the socialist and communist movement. The text was written by Carlo Tuzzi in 1908; the melody is taken from two Lombard folk songs.

Apart from the first Italian text, there are several variants which are identified with certain socialist or communist parties. The last two lines "Evviva il comunismo e la libertà" were put in the text after the rise of Benito Mussolini; at the same time the original beginning "Compagni avanti alla riscossa" was changed to "Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa". Also, the word "comunismo" at the end of the chorus is often replaced with "socialismo", especially in more recent renderings of the song.

Bandiera Rossa was notably quoted in Frederic Rzewski's piano work The People United Will Never Be Defeated!.

Notable covers of the song were made by the Slovenian punk-rock band Pankrti in 1984 on the Rdeči album (Red album),^[1][2] as well as the Croatian punk-rock band KUD Idijoti in 1990, on their album Mi smo ovdje samo zbog para (We are only here for the money).

From the song's opening words is derived the title of the 1986 Israeli film Avanti Popolo. The film's protagonists -- very non-heroic Israeli and Egyptian soldiers wandering the Sinai Desert in the aftermath of the 1967 War -- in one scene sing the song in a rather facetious way.

Excerpt from the text

This version translated for marxists.org by Clara Statello and Mitchell Abidor.^[3]

Foreign language versions

One of the most widely translated Italian songs, Bandiera Rossa has been rendered in several languages including: German,^[4] French,^[5] Swedish,^[6] Norwegian, Danish,^[7] Turkish,^[8] Kurdish,^[8] Finnish,^[9] Icelandic and Russian.^[9]

References