XVII Congress Of The Italian Socialist Party

The XVII Congress of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was held at the Carlo Goldoni Theatre in Livorno from 15 to 21 January 1921. After tumultuous proceedings the congress resulted in a split in the party. The communist faction, faced with the refusal of the majority to accept the Comintern line and expel reformists and gradualists, abandoned the PSI and established a new Italian Communist Party.

Background

Communist International

The PSI had joined the Communist International at its XVI Congress in Bologna in October 1919. This marked a leftward shift for the Italian party, emphasising armed revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
However in July-August 1920, the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International then went on to adopt 21 new conditions for all of its member parties. One of these was the requirement that parties remove all reformists, who were considered counter-revolutionaries. The Italian Socialist Party faced the additional criticism that thanks to what the International defined as the "sabotage" by the General Confederation of Labour, the party had not been able to seize the revolutionary opportunity during the Biennio Rosso. The PSI had left the initiative to the union, which had followed gradualist tactics leading to the agreement of 15 September 1920 with the industrialists. Mediated by Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, this had guaranteed wage increases but not led to significant political advances.

However the leadership of the PSI were not keen to adopt the International’s 21 points. Giacinto Menotti Serrati, leader of the majority maximalist grouping in the PSI, feared that the expulsion of figures such as Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves and Ludovico D'Aragona would alienate a large number of workers. Serrati also considered the removal of the right wing of the party unjust, because it had neither participated in bourgeois governments nor supported intervention in the First World War, unlike the French socialists and German Social Democrats.

At the end of three days of heated discussions, the majority in the Directorate agreed to adopt an agenda put forward by Umberto Terracini which implemented the 21 points in full. The agenda was voted for by Terracini himself as well as Egidio Gennari, Ivan Regent, Giuseppe Tuntar, Casimiro Casucci, Tito Marziali and Ambrogio Belloni. A minority of five - Serrati, Adelchi Baratono, Emilio Zannerini, Giovanni Bacci and Gino Giacomini supported an alternative agenda that insisted on party unity and claimed autonomy in the application of international directives. In the light of this result, Serrati resigned as director of ''Avanti!'', official organ of the PSI, but the communist majority decided to keep him temporarily in place.

The factions prepare for the Congress

On the eve of the Congress the party was divided into three main factions and two minor groups: the right wing followed Turati's position of reformist gradualism; in the center were placed most of the maximalists (the "unitary communists") of Serrati; on the left, the "pure" communists of Amadeo Bordiga. In an intermediate position between reformists and unitaries were the so-called "intransigent revolutionaries" of Costantino Lazzari, while alongside the communists was the group around Antonio Graziadei and Anselmo Marabini which, while faithful to the Comintern, wanted to work for a mediation.

Turati’s group did not command a majority, but they had control of the parliamentary group and the General Confederation of Labour. They supported a motion, put forward by Ludovico D'Aragona and Gino Baldesi, recognising the good work done up to then by the Italian Socialist Party; supporting the need for party unity, guaranteeing by the protection of freedom of expression with corresponding discipline in following majority decisions; confirming membership of the Comintern, but asking for interpretative autonomy in the application of the 21 points. It also called into question the fundamentals of the motion adopted by the Bologna Congress - it rejected violent seizure of power and assorted that the dictatorship of the proletariat should be understood as "a transitory necessity imposed by special situations and not as a programmatic obligation", inevitably be modeled on what happened in Russia; finally, it supported "all possible attempts to bring socialist government closer", while judging the idea of short-term revolutionary upheavals in the richest European countries to be childish.

The unitary maximalist motion was proposed by Serrati, Baratono, Bacci, Momigliano, Frola, Vella and Alessandri. It underlined the need to "preserve the unity of the Party in order to better and more quickly achieve the conquest of all political power", to be pursued by any means compatible with "absolute class intransigence", including both legal and extra-legal means. It too reaffirmed membership of the International, but also sought the possibility of applying the 21 points according to the conditions of the individual countries and to temporarily keep the name "socialist" rather than immediately adopting the “communist” name.

The left wing had consolidated itself into a grouping that could already be considered a party within a party. The communist fraction had formed in Milan on 15 October, publishing a manifesto signed by Bordiga, Gramsci, Misiano and Terracini, by the leftist maximalists Bombacci, Repossi and Fortichiari and by the secretary of the Socialist Youth Federation Luigi Polano.

The two main communist elements were the Turin group linked to the magazine ''L'Ordine Nuovo'' and the Naples group linked to ''Il Soviet'', led by Bordiga. These groups met in Imola on November 28 and 29 1920 and agreed a motion for the Livorno conference that confirmed the PSI’s adhesion to the Third International and fully implemented its directives, starting with the decision «to change the name of the Party to that of Communist Party of Italy (Section of the III Communist International)» and to expel all members who would have voted against the complete observance of the 21 conditions for admission to the Comintern and the Communist program of the Party in the Congress. This program was an integral part of the document presented by the fraction and was developed in ten points, which highlighted, among other things, the role of the class political party as an indispensable organ of the revolutionary struggle; the struggle for the violent overthrow of bourgeois power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Provincial congresses and the position of Serrati

The positions of the different factions were discussed and voted on at various provincial party congresses leading up to the national congress in Livorno. The unitary maximalist faction, despite being a minority in the Directorate, obtained a large majority during the progress of the provincial congresses: Serrati's motion obtained about 100,000 votes, against 58,000 for the communist motion and 15,000 for the concentrationist (Turati) one. Despite their commanding support, the Serrati group continued to reject any idea of expulsions of the moderate wing.

This situation raised tension in relations between the PSI and the International; a fruitless exchange of letters took place in November and December 1920 between Serrati and Comintern chief Zinoviev; a meeting in Reval was proposed to clarify the position Serrati’s group, but the Italian delegation declined to undertake such a long trip on the eve of the congress. Zinoviev, in a subsequent letter dated December 20, reaffirmed the Comintern's support for pure communists and accused Serrati of slipping to the right.

Even Lenin, who also admired the PSI, repeatedly criticized the maximalist leader. Nevertheless Serrati, feeling that "evolved" Italy was with him and that consensus around his position was growing, summarized the reasons for his dissent from the Comintern line in the ''Avanti!'' of 16 December, in a long article in which he defended himself against the accusation of opportunism and claimed the need to preserve unity in order to preserve "the Party, the Proletariat and the Revolution from an insane mania for destruction and demolition".

Jules Humbert-Droz would later write that Serrati by this stage had become the only opponent of the Third International in the West, and his articles were echoed by all the enemies of communism and the Russian Revolution in Switzerland, France, Germany and elsewhere. Given his leading role in the world socialist movement, also sanctioned by having presided over the II Congress of the Comintern, his defense of the Italian reformists could not in fact be read only as a matter of local tactics, but became the defense of international reformism against the Comintern itself: «Serrati had involuntarily become an international counter-revolutionary force».

Congressional Debates

15 January

On the eve of the congress, the leadership’s report on the period since the Bologna Congress was distributed. It highlighted the substantial growth achieved: the PSI, which in 1919 had 1,891 sections with 81,464 members, now had 4,367 sections and 216,327 members. This increase was also seen in terms of deputies elected to parliamentary (from 47 to 156) and local government (350 municipalities and 8 provinces at the time of the XVI Congress, 2,500 municipalities and 25 provinces in January 1921).

After the final meetings of the fractions were held on the morning of January 15, the congress was opened at 14:00 by the provisional president Giovanni Bacci, who recalled the anniversary of the Spartacist insurrection of 1919. Francesco Frola then read the greeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International which harshly attacked the unitary faction, whose action was defined in the document as «the realization of the most unfavorable forecasts», and the messages from the left wing of the Swiss Socialist Party and of the Austrian, Dutch and Spanish Communist Parties. The latter's message was a direct indictment against Serrati and provoked disputes and controversies. Paul Levi was present for the Communist Workers' Party of Germany, who in his greeting speech hoped for the establishment of the Communist Party in Italy as well.

The debate on the party's direction then opened; the first speaker was Antonio Graziadei, whose fraction, the "circular", was seeking unity between communists and maximalists: they believed it was still possible to bring the majority into agreement with the positions of the Comintern, and proposed the compromise name «Italian Communist Socialist Party».

16 January

On the morning of 16 January, the representative of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the International, Khristo Kabakchiev presented his report: the text, written in French and read in translation by Francesco Misiano, first dealt with the political situation in the Balkans and then went on to discuss Italy, developing in detail the theme of the poor economic and financial situation of the country in the aftermath of the First World War and indicating the revolutionary way as the only way out of the crisis. This goal was to be pursued by ousting all those who hindered it, i.e. the reformists: according to the Kabakchiev, this split between revolutionary and non-revolutionary forces, which had already occurred in many countries, was also necessary in Italy so that the whole European continent was ready for the final upheaval which would have led to peace and the solution of the problems of unemployment and misery caused by bourgeois policies.

Kabakchiev's text was particularly hard on Serrati, accusing him of reformism and opportunism; this led to uproar, and Serrati himself was forced to take the stage to restore calm. In the continuation of the speech of the Bulgarian delegate it was reiterated that "the CGdL and the PSI have not fulfilled their duty", not having directed the struggle of the Italian proletariat towards the main aim, the conquest of political power, and the finger against the membership of the Confederation of Labor in the International Union of Amsterdam, defined as "one of the most important supports of the international bourgeoisie" and against Serrati's endorsement of this state of affairs. The last part of the speech focused on the analysis of the risks that a revolution would have attracted to Italy in terms of economic blockades and war actions by capitalist countries, which would have brought to the proletariat similar sufferings to those endured by the Russian proletariat, and however it was necessary to face "to break the chains of capitalist slavery and to emancipate oneself from it definitively".

In the afternoon session, chaired by Argentina Altobelli, Adelchi Baratono spoke for the maximalists, who pleaded the cause of party unity, defined the distinctions between the pure and unitary fractions as artificial and insubstantial and underlined how the revolution had been stopped both by the action of the reformists and "the not fully revolutionary orientation of the masses". Baratono then claimed the fidelity of his fraction to the International, emphasizing however that «we must not slavishly copy the Russian figure on the method of revolutionary adaptation». The speaker reiterated the request to Moscow to let the Italian party evaluate questions of a national nature, and to be able to operate with the collaboration of the Bolsheviks, rather than just receiving orders. Baratono, rejecting the charge that the right wing of the party were collaborators ("our right-wingers in Italy correspond to the left-wingers of other nations"), however did not exclude the possibility of starting a periodic review of the sections and a continuous process of purge, without destroying «that marvelous complex organism which is today the Italian Socialist Party».

17 January

The third day was dominated by the speeches of Costantino Lazzari and Umberto Terracini. Lazzari, from the minority fraction of the "intransigent revolutionaries", criticized the splitters and, referring to Marx, underlined how indispensable the unity of the proletariat was, and how the distinction between communism and socialism was forced. The distinction had become necessary terminologically in Russia, where "even the reformists are called revolutionaries", but was misleading in Italy: "it would make one believe that Communism is something different from Socialism". Lazzari also asserted that the Russians did not take into account the fact that in Italy, unlike many other countries, the social democratic currents had already been expelled for a long time, and he recalled in this regard the purge of Leonida Bissolati, Ivanoe Bonomi, Angiolo Cabrini and Guido Podrecca in 1912 for supporting the Italian invasion of Libya. Lazzari therefore said he was against the expulsion of the right wing of the party, according to the principle of «freedom in thought and discipline in action».

Terracini, who claimed that the communist current was the only one that had not waived the decisions of the Congress of Bologna, spoke of the need to modify a party born decades earlier with objectives different from the current ones. Having analyzed the historical trend of the Italian workers' movement towards the seizure of power, he underlined the need to establish the means - such as a revolutionary party - that could achieve it. He urged the party to comply with the 21 points of the International by expelling the reformists, separating itself from those who believed that one could "reach power through the parliamentary regime" and who lacked recognition of the «universal validity of the Bolshevik revolution». Terracini said that this revolution had to be accepted in full, and defended the concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat and socialization.

18 January

On the morning of 18 January it was the concentrationist Gino Baldesi's turn to speak. He claimed the union battle of 1920 had been a victory and underlined how it was inevitable that the union organizers were "all a bit on the right", not because of a "social democratic mentality" but due to the need to deal daily with the individual problems and disputes of the proletariat within a bourgeois society. Baldesi challenged the possibility of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat in an advanced country such as Italy, defining this hypothesis as unfeasible. Instead he put forward the idea that power could be achieved through elections, if support for socialism in southern Italy reached the levels achieved in the centre and north of the country. After arguing that it would have been better to devote the congress to discussing the merits of the 21 points rather than the expulsion of the reformists, he proclaimed that the members of his fraction would accept the discipline of the majority in the name of unity of the party.

In the afternoon, the congress took a stand against the detention and possible extradition of Hungarian socialists who, fleeing the regime of Miklós Horthy, had taken refuge in Italy and had been arrested there. Immediately afterwards Vincenzo Vacirca spoke, claiming that one of the causes of reaction was in the preaching of revolutionary violence, which could not overcome bourgeois violence. The Sicilian orator also lingered on the problems of the South, emphasizing that to transform the party into a truly national structure it would be necessary to develop a political-union organization hitherto lacking in that region, capable of breaking up the large estates and improving production methods and working conditions. Even Vacirca, who had a very heated argument with Nicola Bombacci during his speech (the latter even drew a revolver), reaffirmed his acceptance of the 21 points, but with the reservation that the congress should be able to discuss them and propose modifications.

19 January

On 19 January the session was opened with the commemoration of Andrea Costa on the anniversary of his death. Amadeo Bordiga then took the stage and denounced the entire history of pre-war socialism, accusing it of having become in recent decades a conservative force that had replaced the Marxist conception of violent conflict between classes with a peaceful petit-bourgeois vision. For Bordiga the interest of the proletarian class could not be realized within the present political framework, through the pursuit of gradual conquests and partial results which did not set the objective of overthrowing the bourgeois state. Bordiga made explicit the hard choice between «bourgeois dictatorship or proletarian dictatorship», emphasizing how social democracy, where it had come to power as in Ukraine or Georgia, had betrayed its own theories of freedom and had acted against the proletariat.

Bordiga then reiterated the need to accept the 21 points and, in response to the position of those who considered them inapplicable outside Russia, underlined how they had universal value and were, if anything, less useful precisely where power had already been conquered. The speaker concluded by praising the no-holds-barred struggle against the opponents of the Revolution and the establishment of a Soviet republic.

During the morning Serrati also spoke, centering his speech on a series of recriminations against the behavior of the International towards the PSI, pointing the finger at the unequal treatment reserved for Italian socialists compared to what happened in the congress of French SFIO, where "rightists", "patriotards" and "Freemasons" had been tolerated without ultimatums. His evaluation focused, among other things, on the attitude of the delegates of the International, in particular Kabakchiev but also Mátyás Rákosi

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