Filippo Turati - PSI

PSI

Turati and Anna Kulischov were the most instrumental intellectuals in the founding of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1892(it took that name in 1895). They were reformists, believing that Socialism would come about gradually, primarily through action in the Italian Parliament, labor organization, and education, spreading their ideas through their journal Critica Sociale - a review originally founded by their friend Arcangelo Ghisleri under the title Cuore e Critica. It was the most influential Marxist review in Italy before World War I. Shut down by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime, it was reestablished after World War II, and is still in print.

In the years following the party's foundation, the Italian government attempted to suppress it. Turati advocated alliances with other Italian democratic forces, meant to defeat the government's reactionary policies, and to advance left-wing causes. In 1898 Turati was arrested and charged with being the inspirator of the popular riot that broke out in the whole country against the rise of the bread price. He was freed the following year.

Under Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux, the country was governed by a highly conservative politicians which were met with stiff resistance from the left, and in 1899 they were defeated thanks in large part to the PSI's policies. In 1901, Giuseppe Zanardelli, a Liberal, became Prime Minister - accompanied by Giovanni Giolitti as the Minister of the Interior - Giolitti who would dominate Italian politics until 1915. This Liberal cabinet risked losing a vote in Parliament, with the possibility that a more conservative politician, Sidney Sonnino, would come to power; Turati urged that the Socialist deputies vote for the Zanardelli government. When the party Directorate refused to sanction the vote, he convinced the deputies to do so anyway.

The vote brought the incipient split in the party between right and left wings to a head, even if the Liberal government had allowed workers the right to strike, and despite the fact that the subsequent strike wave resulted in improved conditions in industry and on the land. Between 1901 and 1906, power in the party seesawed between the Turati-led reformists and the revolutionaries under various leaders. After 1906, splits surfaced among the reformists themselves. In 1912, as a result of Socialist reaction against the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912), revolutionaries took over the party. Benito Mussolini, one of their leaders, became editor of the party newspaper Avanti!; Turati opposed Mussolini, but proved unable to dislodge him. He had opposed the conflict, and would oppose Italy's entrance into World War I - while Mussolini moved to an irredentist position (and came to be expelled from the PSI after arguing for Italy to join the Entente Powers). Despite the fact that he was a pacifist in June 1918 he strongly supported the Italian Army that was fighting the Battle of Solstizio.