The bride in red: morality and private relationships in the Italian revolutionary Left – the case of the Maoist group Servire il popolo

Abstract

This article examines internal developments within the revolutionary Left as part of intense social conflicts in 1970s Italy. It focuses on issues related to sexuality, family and gender relations within the Maoist group Servire il popolo (To Serve the People) and shows the non-linear trajectory that the sexual practices of Italian Maoists followed from the late 1960s onwards. In particular, I argue that in lambasting the sexual openness of the New Left in Italy at the end of the 1960s, the Maoists under study chastised sexual patterns that strayed from the norm of the stable heterosexual couple. In this vein, they promoted endogamy, most prominently with the introduction of the so-called ‘Communist’ or ‘red’ wedding in 1972, which continued until the group dissolved. Despite the fact that Servire il Popolo advocated the most stringent approach to sexuality and gender within the Italian Left of the 1970s, this article demonstrates that it was not the only Italian left-wing organisation that endorsed such a moralistic attitude at the time.