The Italian Democratic Social Party (Partito Democratico Sociale Italiano, PDSI) was a social-liberal political party in Italy.
It was formed for the 1919 general election by the union of the Constitutional Democratic Party with several other parties of the liberal left. In that occasion the PDSI, that was especially strong in Southern Italy, gained 10.9% of the vote and 60 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while in 1921 it won 4.7% of the vote and 29 seats. The party took part to the governments of Benito Mussolini until July 1924 as other liberal groups and was later disbanded. After World War II some of its members joined the Labour Democratic Party, a centre-left outfit.
Famous quotes containing the words italian, social, democratic and/or party:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)