the expulsion from constituent bodies of all reformists, Turati being specified by name. A prolonged and very damaging controversy arose. Serrati, the editor of Avanti, adopted a centrist course, advocating the acceptance of the conditions but demanding the right to interpret them according to Italian circumstances. This reservation meant that the reformists should be expelled later on, it being argued that, for the moment, unity was more important to the party than theoretical purity.
An underStanding of this difference between the P.S.I. and the Communist International is essential in order to realise why the Italian Socialists failed to take the opportunities of 1920 and why Fascism became not only possible but inevitable. The crux of the matter is to be found in the centrist attitude of Serrati. The undesirability of the Turati group was agreed on by the vast majority: the dispute was as to the proper time at which their expulsion should take place. The Communists urged that it should be effected at once. They insisted that, in the then existing conditions in Italy, a revolution was immediately possible; in order that the working class should be effectively led in the critical hours of such a revolution, it was essential that the Socialist Party should be single-minded and united: the presence of hesitant elements was then more than ever dangerous. The Executive Committee of the Communist International wrote in October, 1920:—"The P.S.I. acts with too much hesitation. It is not the Party which leads the masses, but the masses which push the Party. … In Italy there exist all the necessary conditions for a victorious revolution except one—a good working-class organisation."
The argument of the Serrati group was that the revolutionary situation was much less ripe than was supposed by people outside Italy, that unity in the Party was essential, that there were not enough suitable Communists to fill the key positions in working-class organisations, and that to get rid of reformist trade union leaders might alienate also the rank and file. They considered that Italy's economic position was such that a revolution there was foredoomed to failure. If foreign supplies were cut off by blockade, Italians would perish for lack of iron and coal. In reply it was pointed out that the proper way to get control of the Trade Unions was not through a compromising alliance with "Yellow" officials, but by direct contact with the workers. The blockade argument was admitted, to constitute a real difficulty, but "if certain Italian comrades claim that they must wait for a revolution in Germany or in England, because Italy cannot exist without imported coal, the comrades of other countries present exactly similar arguments." The economic help that would be given by Russia in case of an Italian revolution was also pointed out.
