Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
Turati now began to approach the revolutionaries, said that they had
given up their dogmatism, immoderation, and justification of violence,
and that he only differed from them now on questions of "more or less."
The revolutionaries, however, have made no overtures to Turati, and
Turati's overtures to the revolutionaries have so far been rejected.
Turati's "reformism" seems to be less opportunistic than it was, but as
long as he insists, as he does to-day, that it is only conditions that
have changed and not his reformist tactics, that the revolutionaries are
moving towards the reformists, the relation of the two factions is
likely to remain as embittered as ever. Only if the revolutionaries
continue to grow more powerful, until Turati is obliged still further to
moderate his "reformist" principles and to abandon some of his tactics
permanently, instead of saying, as he does now, that he lays them aside
only temporarily, will there be any real unity in the Italian Socialist
Party.
Within a few weeks after the Modena Congress, Turati had already
initiated a movement in this direction when he persuaded the executive
committee of the Party, after a bitter conflict, and by a majority of
one (12 to 13), to enter definitely into opposition to the government,
which in the meanwhile had given a new cause for offense by delaying on
a military pretext the convocation of the Chamber of Deputies.[107]
Among the opportunist and ultra "reformists" who were still anxious to
take no definite action, were such well-known men as Bissolati,
Podrecca, Calda, and Ciotti. Bissolati deplored all agitation in
criticism of the war except a demand for the convocation of the Chamber.
Turati and others who had at last decided to go over definitely to the
opposition, did so on entirely non-Socialist and capitalist grounds such
as the expense of the war, the unprofitable nature of Tripoli as a
colony, the aid the war gave to clericals and other reactionaries
(elements opposed also by progressive capitalists), and the interference
it caused with other reforms (favored also by progressive capitalists).
Turati, indeed, was frank enough to say that he had Lloyd George's
successful opposition to the Boer War as a model, and called the
attention of his associates to the fact that Lloyd George became
Minister (it will be remembered that Turati is not on the whole opposed
to Socialists also becoming ministers--even in a capitalist cabinet).
Even now it was only the revolutionary Musatti who pointed out the true
Socialist moral of the situation, that failure of the non-Socialist
democrats to stand by their principles and to oppose the war, ought to
lead the party to separate from them, not only temporarily, but
permanently, and to make impossible forever either the participation of
the Socialists in any capitalist administration or even the support of
such an administration in the Chamber of Deputies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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