Secretary, D’Aragona, is a member of the Executive Committee of the P.S.I. This unity is not, unfortunately, sufficiently developed to ensure immediate common action on matters of urgent importance to the workers. At the time of the occupation of the factories in 1920, much valuable time and energy were wasted in discussing whether the movement was political or industrial in character, and which of the two organisations should accordingly control it.
The policy of the P.S.I. tended continuously leftward throughout the ten years before the Great War. In 1911 the Tripoli war gave the Party an unexpected advantage. This war was remarkable even in the records of European imperialism for the brutality of its motives and methods. In the early stages, the Socialists offered only a slight resistance to the war, but the opposition grew in intensity and influence, its wide popularity becoming manifest. The membership and prestige of the Party rose rapidly and the pro-war sections were expelled.
The experience of 1911 was of the utmost value to the Italian Socialists in 1914. When the campaign was started to secure the intervention of Italy on the side of the Entente, the P.S.I. adopted a clear anti-war attitude. The usual abuse was showered on the Socialists, who were criticised as friends of German autocracy when they were really the friends of the European workers. After the interventionists had triumphed and the workers of yet another nation had been led to the slaughter, the Italian Socialists were amongst the most active to secure peace negotiations. They made every effort to revive the International, and it was their influence that brought about the Conference of Socialists at Zimmerwald in September, 1915.
Anti-war propaganda was certainly more readily received in Italy than in any other belligerent country, and the position of the Party in 1918, as a result of its anti-war policy, was more favourable than ever. The membership stood at 70,000, while the Party's influence was very wide. The years 1919 and 1920 furnished great opportunities to a revolutionary party, and the P.S.I. had many things in its favour. There had grown up in the Party a clear body of opinion in favour of a final break with reformism and the pursuit of a revolutionary policy. The programme had to be brought up to date.
At the Bologna Congress in October, 1919, this step was taken. The Party had already in March of that year affiliated to the Third International by Executive resolution, and at Bologna a Communist resolution supported by Serrati and his friends was carried. The Party declared a belief in the need for illegal and violent methods of revolution, the establishment of soviets, and the dictatorship of
